Blue Moon

Reacher pulled out his gun, and aimed it. One of the two H&K P7s taken from the guys in the Lincoln. Before it burned up. German police issue. Beautifully engineered. Steely and hard edged. The guy froze. Reacher was three steps away. Just enough time. Tempting. The guy dropped his phone and put his hand up under his armpit to get his own gun.

Not enough time.

The guy was right inside the door. Right inside the glass. Reacher got to him before his gun was halfway out, and he pressed the H&K’s muzzle against his right eye, hard enough not to get shaken loose, hard enough to get the guy’s attention, which it did right away, because the guy went immediately quiet and still. With his left hand Reacher picked up his phone, and then took his gun, which was another H&K P7, just like the two he had already. Maybe standard issue west of Center. Maybe a bulk order, at a good price, from some bent German copper.

With his left hand he put the phone and the gun in his pockets. With his right hand he pressed his own H&K harder on the guy’s eyeball.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

The guy got up off his stool, awkward, all bent backward against the pressure, and he shuffled around and backed out the door, to the sidewalk, where Reacher turned him right, and pushed him six more backward paces, and turned him right again, backward into an alley that smelled like a garbage receptacle and a kitchen door.

Reacher backed the guy against the wall.

He said, “How many people saw?”

The guy said, “Saw what?”

“You with a gun to your head.”

“A few, I guess.”

“How many came to help you out?”

The guy didn’t answer.

“Yeah, none of them,” Reacher said. “No one likes you. No one would piss on you if you were on fire. So it’s just you and me now. No one is going to ride to the rescue. Are we clear on that?”

“What do you want?”

“Where is Max Trulenko?”

“No one knows.”

“Someone must.”

“Not me,” the guy said. “I promise. I swear on my sister’s life.”

“Where is your sister right now?”

“Kiev.”

“Which makes your promise kind of theoretical. Don’t you think? Try again.”

“On my life,” the guy said.

“Which is not so theoretical,” Reacher said. He pressed harder with the H&K. Through the steel he felt the guy’s eyeball squash. He felt the jelly.

The guy gasped and said, “I swear I don’t know where Trulenko is.”

“But you heard of him.”

“Of course.”

“Does he work for Gregory now?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Where?”

“No one knows,” the guy said. “It’s a big secret.”

“You sure?”

“On my mother’s grave.”

“Which is where?”

“You got to believe me. Maybe six people know where Trulenko is. I ain’t one of them. Please, sir. I’m just a doorman.”

Reacher took the gun away. He stepped back. The guy blinked and rubbed his eye and stared through the gloom. Reacher kicked him hard in the nuts, and left him there, doubled over, making all kinds of retching and puking sounds.

—

Reacher got back to Center Street with no trouble anywhere. His problems started immediately after that. When he was east of Center, which he didn’t understand at all. Wrong faction, surely. But right away he felt eyes on him. He felt people watching him. No benevolence in their gaze. He knew that absolutely. He got a chill on his neck. Some kind of an ancient instinct. A sixth sense. A survival mechanism, baked deep in the back of his brain by evolution. How not to get eaten. Millions of years of practice. His hundred-thousand-times-great-great-grandmother, stiffening, changing course, looking for the trees and the shadows. Living to fight another day. Living to have a kid, who a hundred thousand generations later had a descendant also looking for the shadows, not on the verdant savannah but on the gray nighttime streets, as he slid by lit-up clubs and bars and storefront restaurants.

It was the men in suits who were watching him. Organized guys. Made men, and the soon-to-be. Why? He didn’t know. Had he upset the Albanians too? He didn’t see how. Mostly he had done them a favor, surely, according to their own crude calculus. They should be giving him a parade.

He moved on.

He heard a footstep far behind him.

He kept on walking. The glow of Center Street was long gone, both literally and figuratively. The streets ahead were narrow and dark, and got shabbier with every step. There were parked cars and alleys and deep doorways. Two out of three street lights were busted. There were no pedestrians.

His kind of place.

He stopped walking.

More than one way not to get eaten. Grandma’s instinct worked for today. A hundred thousand generations later her descendant’s instinct worked for tomorrow, too. And forever. More efficient. Natural selection, right there. He stood in the half gloom for a minute, and then backed away into deep shadow, and listened.