Blue Moon

“Something else first,” Reacher said. “That awful photograph reminded me. I want to go pay that guy a visit. It’s after twelve o’clock. I bet he’s holding a bunch of repayments. The Shevicks need money today. We’re still a grand short.”

—

This time Abby drove. Reacher could feel the weight in the back. The rear end of the car squatted and dragged. There were more than six hundred pounds in the trunk. Maybe never taken into account, during Lincoln’s design process.

They stopped short of the bar, in a side street. Did Situation C call for extra guards everywhere? Reacher guessed not everywhere. Insufficient manpower. They would consolidate their resources only where they mattered most. Their high-value targets. Did the moneylending operation qualify? He wasn’t sure. He got out and peered around the corner, one-eyed around the brick.

The street was empty. There was nothing parked outside the bar. There were no guys in suits, leaning on walls.

He got back in and they drove on, across the street with the bar, and around to the alley behind. It was the old part of town, built around the time Alexander Graham Bell was inventing the telephone, so anything newer was grafted on, as an afterthought. There were leaning poles carrying sagging thickets of wires and cables, looping here, looping there. There were water meters and gas meters and electricity meters, screwed randomly to the walls. There were head-high garbage receptacles.

There was a black Lincoln parked behind the bar. Empty. The pale guy’s ride, no doubt. Ready for the journey home, at the end of the day. Abby stopped behind it.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“You want to?” he asked back.

“Yes,” she said.

“Walk around to the front. Come in the door like a regular person. Pause for a second. The guy sits in the rear right-hand corner. Walk toward the rear wall.”

“Why?”

“I want the guy distracted. He’ll watch you all the way. Partly because maybe you’re a new customer, but mostly because you’re the best-looking thing he’s seen all day. Maybe all his life. Ignore the barman, whatever he says. He’s an asshole.”

“Got it,” she said.

“You want a gun?”

“Should I?”

“Can’t hurt,” he said.

“OK,” she said.

He gave her the lounge doorman’s H&K. It looked dainty in his hand and huge in hers. She hefted it a couple of times, and stuck it in her pocket. She headed off down the alley. Reacher found the bar’s back door. It was a plain steel panel, dull and old, scarred and dented low down, by hand trucks wheeling kegs and crates. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. No doubt a city regulation. It was a fire exit, too.

Reacher slipped inside. He was at the far end of a short corridor. Restrooms to the left and right. Then a door for employees only. An office, or a storeroom. Or both. Then the end of the corridor, and the room itself, seen in reverse. The square bar now in the near right corner, the worn central track leading away, between the long rows of four-top tables. The same as before. The light was still dim and the air still smelled of spilled beer and disinfectant. This time there were five customers, once again each of them alone at separate tables, defending their drinks, looking miserable. Behind the bar was the same fat guy, now with a six-day beard, but a fresh towel thrown over his shoulder.

The pale guy was at the back table on Reacher’s left. The same as before. Luminescent in the gloom. Glittering hair. Thick white wrists, big white hands, a thick black ledger. The same black suit, the same white shirt, the same black silk necktie. The same tattoo.

Abby stepped in the street door. She stood still as it closed behind her. Performance art. Every eye was on her. She was softly backlit by the dull neon in the windows. Petite and gamine, neat and slender, dressed all in black. Short dark hair, lively dark eyes. A shy but contagious smile. A stranger, dropping by, hoping for a welcome.

She didn’t get one. All five customers looked away. But the barman didn’t. Neither did the pale guy. She set out walking and they watched her all the way.

Reacher took a step. He was six feet behind the pale guy, and six feet to the side, no doubt in the corner of his eye, but hopefully Abby was filling all of it. She kept on coming, and he took another step.

The barman called out, “Hey.”