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  “You must think us very foolish,” she said. “To have gotten ourselves in this situation.”

  “Not really,” Reacher said. “Very unlucky, perhaps. Or very desperate. I’m sure this situation is a last resort. You sold your TV. Plus many other things, no doubt. I assume you took out a loan on the house. But it wasn’t enough. You had to find alternative arrangements.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m sure there were good reasons.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  She said nothing more. She and her husband ate slowly, one small bite at a time, one chip, one sip of soda. As if savoring the novelty. Or worrying about indigestion. The kitchen was quiet. No passing traffic, no street sounds, no commotion. There was old subway tile on the walls, and wallpaper where there wasn’t, with flowers on it, like Mrs. Shevick’s mother’s dress, in the very first photograph, but paler and less boldly delineated. The floor was linoleum, pitted long ago by stiletto heels, now rubbed almost smooth again. The appliances had been replaced, maybe back when Nixon was president. But Reacher figured the countertops were still original. They were pale yellow laminate, with fine wavy lines that looked like heartbeats on a hospital machine.

  Mrs. Shevick finished her sandwich. She drained her soda. She dabbed up the last fragments of her potato chips on a dampened fingertip. She pressed her napkin to her lips. She looked at Reacher.

  She said, “Thank you.”

  He said, “You’re welcome.”

  “You think Fisnik can’t ask for another thousand dollars.”

  “In the sense of shouldn’t. I guess that’s different from won’t.”

  “I think we’ll have to pay.”

  “I’m happy to go discuss it with the guy. On your behalf. If you like. I could make a number of arguments.”

  “And I’m sure you would be convincing. But my husband told me you’re only passing through. You won’t be here tomorrow. We will. It’s probably safer to pay.”

  Aaron Shevick said, “We don’t have it.”

  His wife didn’t answer. She twisted the rings on her finger. Maybe subconsciously. She had a slim gold wedding band, and a token diamond next to it. She was thinking about the pawn shop, Reacher figured. Probably near the bus depot, on a cheap street. But she would need more than a wedding band and a small solitaire, for a thousand bucks. Maybe she still had her mother’s stuff, upstairs in a drawer. Maybe there had been random inheritances, from old aunts and uncles, pins and pendants and retirement watches.

  She said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Maybe he’ll be reasonable. Maybe he won’t ask for it.”

  Her husband said, “These are not reasonable people.”

  Reacher asked him, “Do you have direct evidence of that?”

  “Only indirect evidence,” Shevick said. “Fisnik explained the various penalties to me, right back at the beginning. He had photographs on his phone, and a short video. I was made to watch it. As a consequence, we have never been late with a payment. Until now.”

  “Did you think about going to the police?”

  “Of course we thought about it. But it was a contract voluntarily entered into. We borrowed their money. We accepted their terms. One of which was no police. I had been shown the punishment, on Fisnik’s phone. Overall we thought it was too much of a risk.”

  “Probably wise,” Reacher said, although he didn’t really mean it. He figured what Fisnik needed was a punch in the throat, not contractual respect. Maybe followed by slamming him face down on the tabletop, way in the far back corner. But then, Reacher wasn’t either seventy or stooped or starving. Probably wise.

  Mrs. Shevick said, “We’ll know where we stand at six o’clock.”

  * * *

  —

  They avoided the subject for the rest of the afternoon. Some kind of unspoken agreement. Instead they swapped biographies, like regular polite conversation. Mrs. Shevick had indeed inherited the house from her parents, who had bought it sight unseen through the GI Bill, all caught up in the crazy postwar land rush toward the middle class. She herself had been born a year later, like the lawn showed in the photograph, and she had grown up there, and then her parents died and she met her husband all in the same year. He was a machine tool operator, very skilled, raised nearby. An essential occupation, so he was never drafted for Vietnam. They had a daughter within a year, just the same as her parents had, and the daughter grew up there, the second generation to do so. She did well in school, and got a job. Never married, no grandchildren, but hey. Reacher noticed their tone changed the nearer the story got to the present day. It got bleaker, and strangled, as if there were things they couldn’t say.

  The clock in his head hit five. A mile was fifteen minutes for him, and twenty for most other people, but at Shevick’s pace it was going to be close to the full hour.

  “It’s time,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 5

  Once again Reacher helped Shevick down the far curb, and across the street, and up the near curb, and across the sidewalk to the door. Once again he went in first. For the same reason. An unknown guy coming in immediately before a target was ten times less subconsciously connected than an unknown guy coming in immediately after. Human nature. Mostly bullshit, but sometimes it rang a bell.

  The same fat guy was behind the bar. There were now nine other customers. Two pairs, and five singletons alone at separate tables. One of the singletons had been in the same spot six hours previously. Another was a woman about eighty years old. She was cradling a glass full of clear liquid. Probably not water.

  There was a guy at the four-top in the far back corner.

  He was a big slab of a man, maybe forty years old, so pale he looked luminescent in the gloom. He had pale eyes, and pale eyelashes, and pale eyebrows. He had hair the color of corn silk, buzzed so short it glittered. He had thick white wrists resting on the edge of the table, and big white hands resting on a large black ledger. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a black silk tie. He had a tattoo coming up out of the neck of the shirt. Some kind of writing. A foreign alphabet. Not Russian. Something else.

  Reacher sat down without ordering. A minute later Shevick limped in. Once again he glanced ahead at the table in the far back corner. Once again he stopped in surprise. He shuffled sideways and sat down at an empty four-top next to Reacher’s.

  He whispered, “That’s not Fisnik.”

  “You sure?”

  “Fisnik has dark skin and black hair.”

  “Have you ever seen this other guy before?”

  “Never. It was always Fisnik.”

  “Maybe he’s indisposed. Maybe that’s what the phone call was about. He needed to find a replacement, which he couldn’t, not before six o’clock.”

  “Maybe.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “What?” Shevick whispered.

  “You sure you never saw this guy before?”

  “Why?”

  “Because then he never saw you before. All he has is an entry in a book.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I could be you. I could go pay this guy for you, and get all the details squared away.”

  “You mean if he asks for more?”

  “I could attempt to persuade him. Most people do the right thing in the end. That’s been my experience.”

  Now Shevick said nothing.

  “I would need to be sure of something,” Reacher said. “Otherwise I’ll look stupid.”

  “Sure of what?”

  “Is this the end of it? Twenty-two-five and you’re done?”

  “That’s what we owe them.”

  “Give me the envelope,” Reacher said.

  “This is nuts.”

  “You’ve had a hard day. Take a load off.”

  “W
hat Maria said was right. You won’t be here tomorrow.”

  “I won’t leave you with a problem. He’ll either agree or he won’t. If he doesn’t, you won’t be any worse off. But it’s your call. Either way is fine with me. I’m not looking for trouble. I like a quiet life. That said, you could save yourself the walk there and back. That knee still looks pretty bad.”

  Shevick sat still and said nothing for a long moment. Then he gave Reacher the envelope. He took it out of his pocket and slid it across, low and furtive. Reacher took it from him. Three quarters of an inch thick. Heavy. He put it in his own pocket.

  “Sit tight,” he said.

  He stood up and walked toward the far back corner. He considered himself a modern man, born in the twentieth century, living in the twenty-first, but he also knew he had some kind of a wide-open portal in his head, a wormhole to humanity’s primitive past, where for millions of years every living thing could be a predator, or a rival, and therefore had to be assessed, and judged, instantly, and accurately. Who was the superior animal? Who would submit?

  What he saw at the back table was going to be a challenge. If it came to it. If matters moved from the verbal to the physical. Not a colossal challenge. Somewhere between major and minor. The guy would be technically less skilled, almost certainly, unless he had also served in the U.S. Army, which taught the dirtiest fighting in the world, not that it would ever admit it in public. Against that the guy was big, and younger by a number of years, and he looked like he had been around the block a couple of times. He looked like he wouldn’t scare easy. He looked like he was accustomed to winning. The ancient part of Reacher’s brain took in all the subliminal information, and it flashed an amber warning, but it didn’t stop him walking. Ahead of him the guy at the table watched him in turn, all the way, apparently making his own atavistic calculations. Who was the superior animal? The guy looked pretty confident. As if he liked his chances.

  Reacher sat down where Shevick had perched six hours previously. The visitor chair. Up close the guy in the executive chair could have been a little older than he seemed at first sight. Forty-something. Maybe halfway to fifty. Fairly senior. A man of substance, chronologically, but the weighty impression was undercut by the guy’s ghostlike pallor. That was the most noticeable thing about him. Plus his tattoo. It was inexpert and uneven. Prison ink. Probably not an American prison.

  The guy picked up his ledger and opened it and propped it upright on his edge of the table. He peered down at it, with difficulty, like a guy playing his cards too close to his vest.

  He said, “What’s your name?”

  “What’s yours?” Reacher said.

  “My name is of no importance.”

  “Where’s Fisnik?”

  “Fisnik has been replaced. Whatever business you had with him, now you have it with me.”

  “I need more than that,” Reacher said. “This is an important transaction. This is a serious financial matter. Fisnik lent me money, and I need to pay him back.”

  “I just told you, whatever business you had with Fisnik, now you have it with me. Fisnik’s clients are now my clients. If you owed money to Fisnik, now you owe it to me. This is not rocket science. What’s your name?”

  Reacher said, “Aaron Shevick.”

  The guy squinted down at his book.

  He nodded.

  He said, “Is this a final payment?”

  “Do I get a receipt?” Reacher asked.

  “Did Fisnik give you receipts?”

  “You’re not Fisnik. I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name is of no importance.”

  “It is to me. I need to know who I’m paying.”

  The guy tapped his finger, white as a bone, against the side of his glittering head.

  “Your receipt is in here,” he said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “I could have Fisnik coming after me tomorrow.”

  “I told you two times already, yesterday you were Fisnik’s, today you are mine. Tomorrow you will still be mine. Fisnik is history. Fisnik is gone. Things change. How much do you owe?”

  “I don’t know,” Reacher said. “I depended on Fisnik to tell me. He had a formula.”

  “What formula?”

  “For the fees and the penalties and the add-ons. Rounded up to the nearest hundred, plus another five hundred as an administrative charge. That was his rule. I could never work it out right. I didn’t want him to think I was shortchanging him. I preferred to pay what he told me. Safer that way.”

  “How much do you think it should be?”

  “This time?”

  “As your final payment.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to think I was shortchanging you, either. Not if you inherited Fisnik’s business. I assume the same terms apply.”

  “Give it to me both ways,” the guy said. “What you figure, and then what you think Fisnik’s formula would figure. Maybe I’ll cut you a break. Maybe we’ll split the difference. As an introductory offer.”

  “I figure eight hundred dollars,” Reacher said. “But Fisnik would probably figure fourteen hundred. Like I told you. Rounded up to the nearest hundred plus five as a charge.”

  The guy squinted down at his book.

  He nodded, slowly, sagely, in complete agreement.

  “But no break,” he said. “I decided against. I’ll take the full fourteen hundred.”

  He closed his book and laid it flat on the table.

  Reacher put his hand in his pocket and his thumb in the envelope and peeled fourteen bills off the back of Shevick’s wad. He handed them over. The pale guy recounted them with fast practiced fingers, folded them once, and put them in his own pocket.

  “Are we good now?” Reacher asked.

  “Paid off in full,” the guy said.

  “Receipt?”

  The guy tapped the side of his head again.

  “Now get lost,” he said. “Until the next time.”

  “The next time what?” Reacher said.

  “You need a loan.”

  “I hope not to.”

  “Losers like you always do. You know where to find me.”

  Reacher paused a beat.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do. Count on it.”

  He stayed where he was for a long moment, and then he got up out of the visitor chair and walked away, slowly, eyes front, all the way out the door to the sidewalk.

  A minute later Shevick limped out after him.

  “We need to talk,” Reacher said.

  Chapter 6

  Shevick still had a cell phone. He said he hadn’t sold it because it was an old flip worth close to nothing, and he was still using it because canceling his plan would have cost more than continuing it. Plus there were times he really needed it. Reacher told him this was one of those times. He told him to call a cab. Shevick said he couldn’t afford a cab. Reacher told him yes he could, just this once.

  The cab that came was an old beat-up Crown Vic, thick with orange-peel paint, with a cop-car spotlight on the driver’s pillar and a taxi light strapped to the roof. Not an appealing vehicle, visually. But it worked OK. It wallowed and whined the mile to Shevick’s house and pulled up outside. Reacher helped Shevick down the narrow concrete path to his door. Once again it opened before the guy could get his key in the lock. Mrs. Shevick stared out at him. There were silent questions in her face. A taxi? For your knee? Then why did the big man come back, too?

  And above all: Do we owe another thousand dollars?

  “It’s complicated again,” Shevick said.

  They went back to the kitchen. The stove was cold. No dinner. They had already eaten once that day. They all sat down at the table. Shevick told his part of the story. No Fisnik. A substitute instead. A sinister pale stranger with a big black book. Then Reacher’s offer to be a go-bet
ween.

  Mrs. Shevick switched her gaze to Reacher.

  Who said, “I’m pretty sure he was Ukrainian. He had a prison tattoo on his neck. Cyrillic alphabet, certainly.”

  “I don’t think Fisnik was Ukrainian,” Mrs. Shevick said. “Fisnik is an Albanian name. I looked it up at the library.”

  “He said Fisnik had been replaced. He said whatever business anyone had with Fisnik, now they had it with him. He said Fisnik’s clients were now his clients. He said if you owed money to Fisnik, now you owed it to him. He made the same kind of point several times over. He said it wasn’t rocket science.”

  “Did he want another thousand dollars?”

  “He propped his book open so close to his chest it was awkward. At first I wasn’t sure why. I assumed he didn’t want me to see what was in it. He asked my name, and I said Aaron Shevick. He looked down at his book and nodded. Which I thought was weird.”

  “Why?”

  “What were the odds the book happened to be propped open at the S page? One in twenty-six. Possible, but unlikely. So then I started to think he was hiding the book not because he didn’t want me to see what was in it, but because he didn’t want me to see what wasn’t in it. Because there was nothing in it. It was blank. That was my guess. Then he proved it. He asked me how much I owed. He didn’t know. He didn’t have Fisnik’s previous data. It wasn’t Fisnik’s old ledger. It was a new blank book.”

  “What does all that mean?”

  “It means this wasn’t a routine internal reorganization. They didn’t bench Fisnik and send in a pinch hitter. It was a hostile takeover from the outside. There’s a whole new management now. I went back through the guy’s words. His use of language. He made it clear. Someone else is muscling in.”