Blue Moon

He pulled with his left and pushed with his right and maneuvered the guy backward off the stool. He stood him upright and got him balanced. He twisted his collar harder. Abby stepped up and patted his pockets and took his phone and his gun. Another steel P7. The band fell straight into the second song in the medley. Faster and louder. Reacher leaned forward again.

He yelled, “Hear that backbeat? I could shoot you four to the bar and no one in here would notice a damn thing. So do exactly what I tell you.”

He pushed the guy along the left-hand wall, stiff, awkward, four-legged, like the shadow he had seen in the Shevicks’ hallway. Abby kept pace a yard away, like a wingman. She roved back and forth. She ducked in and out. The band went straight into the third part of the medley. Faster and louder still. Reacher hustled the guy harder. Ran him all the way to the mouth of the corridor. To the freight elevator. Up to the street. Out to the dock. Out to the daylight. He hauled him around to the rear of the Lincoln. He stood him up straight and made him watch.

Abby pressed the button on the key fob.

The trunk lid raised up.

Two dead guys. Same suits, same ties. Limp, bloody, stinking.

The guy looked away.

Reacher said to him, “That’s you, a minute from now. Unless you answer my questions.”

The guy said nothing. He couldn’t speak. His collar was twisted too tight.

Reacher asked, “Where does Maxim Trulenko work?”

He slackened his grip half an inch. The guy panted a couple of breaths. He glanced left, glanced right, glanced up to the sky, as if he was considering his options. As if he had options to consider. Then he looked down. At the dead guys in the trunk.

Then he stared.

He said, “That’s my cousin.”

“Which one?” Reacher asked. “The one I shot in the head, or the one I shot in the throat?”

“We came here together. From Odessa. We arrived in New Jersey.”

“You must be confusing me with someone who gives a shit. I asked you a question. Where does Maxim Trulenko work?”

The guy said the word they had seen in the text message. Biologically inexact. Either a hive or a nest or a burrow. For something that hummed or buzzed or thrashed around.

“Where is it?” Reacher said.

“I don’t know,” the guy said. “It’s a secret operation.”

“How big is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who else works there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do Danilo and Gregory work there?”

“No.”

“Where do they work?”

“In the office.”

“Is that separate?”

“From what?”

“The word you used. The hive.”

“Of course it is.”

“Where is the office?”

The guy named a street, and a cross street. He said, “Behind the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bonds.”

“We were right there,” Abby said.

Reacher nodded. He slid his hand around under the guy’s collar, from the back, to the side. He dug down with his fingers until he felt the inside face of the guy’s necktie centered in the meat of his palm. He felt it through the cotton of the collar. A silk necktie, at that point about an inch and a half wide. More tensile strength than steel. Silk shimmered because its fibers were triangular, like elongated prisms, which did nice things with light, but which also locked together so tight it was virtually impossible to pull them apart end to end. A steel cable would give way sooner.

Reacher bunched his fist. Took up what slack there was. At first his hand was square on. All his knuckles were lined up parallel with the crushed rim of the collar. Like he was hanging one-handed from a rung on a ladder. Then he rotated his thumb toward him, and his pinkie knuckle away from him. As if he was trying to spin the ladder, like an airplane propeller. Or like a tweak on a rein, turning a horse. All of which drove his pinkie knuckle into the side of the guy’s neck. Which in turn tightened the stronger-than-steel strap against the other side of his neck. Reacher held it like that for a spell, and then he turned his hand another small angle. And then another. The doorman was calm. The pressure was all side to side, not front to back. He wasn’t choking for lack of air. Not thrashing around in desperate panic. Instead the arteries in his neck were closed off and no blood was reaching his brain. Relaxed. Peaceful. Like a narcotic. Warm and comfortable.

Sleepy.

Almost there.

Almost done.

Reacher held it a whole extra minute, just to be sure, and then he tipped the guy in the trunk with his cousin, and he slammed the lid. Abby looked at him. As if to ask, are we going to kill them all? But not disapproving. Not accusatory. Merely a request for information. He thought to himself, I hope so.

Out loud he said, “I should try The Washington Post again.”

She passed him the dead guy’s phone. There was a brand new text on the screen. As yet unread. It had Reacher’s own picture in a fat green bubble. The surprise portrait from the moneylending bar. The pale guy, raising his phone. Below the photo was a block of Cyrillic writing. Some long screed about something or other.

“What the hell is their problem now?” he said.