Blue Moon

“Nothing physical,” Abby said. “He looked like a pretty small guy. His picture was in the paper all the time. He was young but his hair was going and he wore eyeglasses. He won’t be breaking rocks in a quarry. He’ll be in an office somewhere. Organizing data systems or something. That’s what he was good at. His new product was an app on your phone that linked your vital signs direct to your doctor. In real time, just in case. Or something like that. Or maybe your watch linked to your phone, and then to the doctor. No one really understood it. But anyway, Trulenko is a desk guy. A thinker.”

“So he’s in an office somewhere on the west side of the city. With accommodations either very close by, or integrated. With security. Maybe an underground bunker. With a single bottleneck entrance, heavily defended. No one gets in or out except for known and trusted faces.”

“Therefore you can’t get near him.”

“I agree there will be an element of challenge.”

“More like impossible.”

“No such word.”

“How big of a place would it be?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said. “A couple dozen people, maybe. Or more. Or less. Some kind of nerve center. Where they send all the texts. You said they were good with technology.”

“There can’t be many suitable locations.”

“See?” Reacher said. “We’re making progress already.”

“No point, if the money is gone.”

“His employers will have some. I never met a poor gangster.”

“The Shevicks can’t sue Trulenko’s new-found employers. They had nothing to do with it. It’s not their fault.”

“By that point the spirit of the law might feel more important than the letter.”

“You would steal it?”

Reacher moved to the window and looked down.

“The capo over there is a guy named Gregory,” he said. “I would ask him to consider it a charitable donation. For a hard-luck story I heard about. I could deploy a number of arguments. I’m sure he would agree. And if he’s profiting from Trulenko’s labor in some way, then it’s almost the same thing as taking Trulenko’s own money anyway.”

Abby got a faraway look in her eyes, and she put her hand up to her cheek, as if automatically.

“I heard of Gregory,” she said. “Never met him. Never even saw him.”

“How did you hear about him?”

She didn’t answer. Just shook her head.

He said, “What happened to you?”

“Who says anything did?”

“You just saw two dead bodies. Now I’m talking about threatening people and stealing their money. I’m that kind of guy. We’re standing by a queen bed. Most women would be edging out the door by now. You’re not. You really, really don’t like these people. Must be a reason.”

“Maybe I really like you.”

“I live in hope,” Reacher said. “But I’m realistic.”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said. “Maybe.”

“OK.”

“What now?”

“We should go get your bag. And we should go move your car. I don’t want it parked right outside. They already saw it at the Shevick house. Someone else might have seen it driving in today. We should go put it somewhere random. Always safer that way.”

“How long will we have to live like this?”

“I live like this all the time. I would have been pushing up daisies long ago if I didn’t.”

“Frank said I can’t ever go home again.”

“And Hogan saw how you could.”

“If you get Trulenko.”

“Six chances before the week is over.”

They went downstairs again into the deep bass groove, and onward out to the car. Abby wrestled her bag off the rear seat and hauled it back to the hallway. They closed the door on it and got in the car. It started the second time and dragged its fender on the tight turn out of its boxed-in slot. They drove a random zigzag route, through different parts of the neighborhood, some of them shabbily residential, some of them commercial, including two full blocks dedicated to the construction trade, including an electrical warehouse, and a plumbing warehouse, and a lumber yard. Then came progressive stages of decay, all the way to abandoned blocks just like the place where the Lincoln had burned.

“Here?” Abby asked.

Reacher looked all around. Desolation everywhere. No owners, no occupants, no residents. No innocent doors to get busted down, if the car was spotted nearby. No risk of collateral damage.

“Works for me,” he said.

She parked and they got out and she locked up and they walked away. They went back more or less the same way they had come, cutting the corners off some of the widest zigs and zags of their earlier random route, but always keeping track of it. Their surroundings grew cleaner and better maintained. They came to the blocks dedicated to the construction trade. First up in the reverse direction came the lumber yard. There was a guy standing in the scoop between the sidewalk and the gate. Somewhat sentry-like. Maybe there to check loads in and out. Presumably lumber got scammed and stolen like anything else.

They passed the guy by and walked on, to the plumbing warehouse, the electrical warehouse, and onward, through a tangle of streets. They heard the bass and drums a hundred yards away.

—