Blue Moon

“He’s a good man,” Jetmir said.

“He can’t talk,” Dino said. “He may never. He has a serious injury to his throat.”

“We must hope for the best.”

“Who did this?”

“We don’t know.”

“Where did it happen?”

“We don’t know.”

“When exactly did it happen?”

“He was found at dawn,” Jetmir said. “Obviously the attack was prior to that, by an hour or two, possibly.”

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Dino said. “Gezim Hoxha is a man with valuable experience, having been a policeman in Tirana, and therefore he’s a man of great substance in our organization, and I gave him his job myself, and he has been with us a very long time, and he has served us well, and therefore all in all he’s considered a very senior figure here. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why was he running errands in the middle of the night?”

Jetmir didn’t answer.

Dino said, “Did I ask him to do something? Have I forgotten?”

“No,” Jetmir said. “I don’t think so.”

“Did you ask him to do something?”

Look for lights behind drapes. Knock on doors and ask questions if necessary.

“No,” Jetmir said.

“I don’t understand it,” Dino said. “I don’t run around in the middle of the night. I have people for that. Hoxha should have been tucked up in bed. Why wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who else was running around in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should know. You’re my chief of staff.”

“I could ask around.”

“I already did,” Dino said. His tone changed. “Turns out a lot of guys were running around in the middle of the night. Clearly connected to something serious enough to leave a mean old bastard like Hoxha with a stoved-in throat. Given the stakes involved and the numbers involved, that sounds like a big deal to me. Sounds like something I should have been involved with. At the discussion stages at least. Sounds like something that should have gotten my personal approval. That’s the way we do business here.”

Jetmir didn’t reply.

Dino was quiet a long time.

Then finally he said, “Also I hear Gregory came by this morning. He paid us another state visit. Naturally I’m wondering why I wasn’t informed.”

Jetmir didn’t speak. Instead the inevitable remaining paragraphs of the conversation played out inside his head, fast, abbreviated, like speed chess. Back and forth. Dino would chip away relentlessly, remorselessly, until the betrayal was fully revealed, in all its damning detail. Perhaps he already knew. I could ask around. I already did. He knew some, at least. Jetmir went cold. Suddenly he thought perhaps it was already too late. Then he recovered and thought perhaps it was not. He simply didn’t know. In which case, better safe than sorry. An ancient instinct. Ten thousand generations of his own slipped his hand under his coat, one, and came back with his gun, two, and shot Dino in the face, three. From a yard away, across the desk. Dino’s head kicked back an inch and blood and brain slop and bone fragments slapped the wall behind him. The nine-mil round was loud in the small wood room. Colossally loud. Like a bomb. After it there was hissing silence for a long second, and then people burst in. All kinds of people. Made men from nearby offices, guys from the inner council, lumber yard workers covered in dust, doormen, bagmen, legbreakers, all of them shouting and running and pulling guns, like in a movie, when the president goes down. Confusion, madness, mayhem, panic.

At that moment the black Chrysler pulled in at the lumber yard gate, with Reacher and Abby in the trunk.

Chapter 35

The driver paused with his foot on the brake. The gate was open but there was no one watching it. Which was unusual. But the guy was keen to get in and display his prize, so he didn’t think too much about it. He just drove in and swooped around and reversed toward the roll-up door. The passenger climbed out and smacked a green mushroom button with his palm. The door moved up slowly, with the rattle of chains and the clatter of metal slats. The driver backed in under it. He shut down the motor and got out and joined the passenger at the rear of the car. They pulled their guns and stood well back.

The driver blipped the button on the key fob.

The trunk lid raised up, slow, damped, majestic.

They waited.

Nothing.

The smell of pine, but no whine of saws. The low corrugated shed was quiet. There was no one in it. Then from somewhere deep in the back they heard voices, dulled by walls and doors, but nevertheless loud and panicked and confused. And footsteps too, urgent, agitated, but going nowhere. Just milling around in place. As if something weird was going down in one of the inner offices.

They listened.

Maybe Dino’s office itself.

—