Blue Moon Read online

  “Wait,” Mrs. Shevick said. “I heard it on the radio. Last week, I think. We’re getting a new police commissioner. He says we have rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs in town.”

  Reacher nodded.

  “There you go,” he said. “The Ukrainians are moving in on a part of the Albanians’ business. You’re dealing with new people now.”

  “Did they want the extra thousand dollars?”

  “They’re looking ahead, not back in the past. They’re prepared to write off Fisnik’s old loans. All or part. Because they have to. They have no choice. They don’t know what anyone owes. They don’t have the information. And why wouldn’t they write it off anyway? It wasn’t their money. They want his customers. That’s all. For the future. They want to service their needs for the next many years.”

  “Did you pay the man?”

  “He asked what I owed and I took a chance and told him fourteen hundred dollars. He looked down at his blank page and nodded solemnly and agreed. So I paid him fourteen hundred dollars. At which point he said I was good to go and he confirmed I was paid off in full.”

  “Where’s the rest of the money?”

  “Right here,” Reacher said. He took the envelope out of his pocket. Barely thinner than it was before. Still two hundred eleven bills in it. Twenty-one thousand one hundred dollars. He put it on the table, in the middle, equidistant. Shevick and his wife stared at it and said nothing.

  Reacher said, “This is a random universe. Once in a blue moon things turn out just right. Like now. Someone started a war and you’re the exact opposite of collateral damage.”

  Shevick said, “Not if Fisnik shows up next week wanting all this plus seven grand more.”

  “He won’t,” Reacher said. “Fisnik has been replaced. Which coming from a Ukrainian gangster with prison ink on his neck almost certainly means Fisnik is dead. Or otherwise incapacitated. He won’t be showing up next week. Or any week. And you’re all squared away with the new guys. They said so. You’re out of the woods.”

  There was silence for a long moment.

  Mrs. Shevick looked at Reacher.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Then Shevick’s cell phone rang. He limped out to the hallway and took the call. Reacher heard a faint plastic quack from the earpiece. A man’s voice, he thought. He couldn’t make out the words. Some long stream of information. He heard Shevick reply, loud and clear, ten feet away, with a muttered assent that sounded weary and unsurprised, yet still disappointed. Then Shevick asked what was unmistakably a question.

  He said, “How much?”

  The faint plastic quack answered.

  Shevick closed his phone. He stood still for a moment, and then he limped back into the kitchen and sat down again at the table. He folded his hands in front of him. He looked at the envelope. Not a stare, not a gaze. Some kind of a bittersweet glance. Equidistant. Equally far away from all of them.

  He said, “They need another forty thousand dollars.”

  His wife closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her face.

  Reacher said, “Who needs?”

  “Not Fisnik,” Shevick said. “Not the Ukrainians, either. Not any of them. This is the other end of the issue entirely. This is the reason we had to borrow money in the first place.”

  “Are you being blackmailed?”

  “No, nothing like that. I wish it was that simple. All I can say is there are bills we have to pay. One just came due. Now we have to find another forty thousand dollars.” He glanced at the envelope again. “Some of which we’ve already got, thanks to you.” He worked it out in his head. “Technically we need to find another eighteen thousand nine hundred dollars.”

  “By when?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Can you?”

  “We couldn’t find another eighteen cents.”

  “Why so quick?”

  “Some things can’t wait.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Shevick didn’t answer.

  His wife took her hands away from her face.

  “We’re going to borrow it,” she said. “What else can we do?”

  “Who from?”

  “The man with the prison tattoo,” she said. “What choice do we have? We’re maxed out everywhere else.”

  “Can you pay it back?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  No one spoke.

  Reacher said, “I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”

  Mrs. Shevick looked at him.

  “You can,” she said.

  “Can I?”

  “In fact you’ll have to.”

  “Will I?”

  “The man with the prison tattoo thinks you’re Aaron Shevick. You have to go get our money for us.”

  Chapter 7

  They discussed it thirty minutes more. Reacher and the Shevicks, back and forth. Certain facts were established early. The fixed points. The dealbreakers. They absolutely needed the money. No question. No debate. They absolutely needed it by morning. No leeway. No flexibility.

  They absolutely would not say why.

  Their life savings were gone. Their house was gone. They were newly into an old-person’s mortgage arrangement, whereby they were allowed to live there the rest of their lives, but the title had already passed to the bank. The lump sum they had gotten was already spent. No more could be raised. Their credit cards were maxed out and canceled. They had borrowed against their Social Security checks. They had cashed in their life insurance and given up their landline telephone. Now that their car was gone they had sold everything of value. All they had left were personal trinkets. Between their own stuff and family heirlooms they had five nine-carat wedding bands, three small diamond rings, and a gold-plated wristwatch with a crack in the crystal. Reacher figured on the happiest day of his life the most warmhearted pawnbroker in the world might have given them two hundred bucks. No more than that. Maybe less than a hundred on a bad day. Not even a drop in the bucket.

  They said they had first used Fisnik five weeks previously. They had gotten his name from a neighbor. As an item of gossip, not as a recommendation. Some kind of a scandal. Some lurid story about some other neighbor’s nephew’s wife’s cousin borrowing money from a gangster in a bar. Name of Fisnik, imagine that. Shevick had narrowed the search radius based on detail and rumor, and he had started checking every bar within that predicted area, one by one, blushing, embarrassed, stared at, asking every barman if he knew a guy named Fisnik, until at his fourth stop a fat man with a sarcastic manner jerked his thumb at the corner table.

  Reacher said, “How did it work?”

  “Very easy,” Shevick said. “I approached his table, and stood there, while he inspected me, and then he signaled me to sit down, so I did. I guess at first I beat about the bush a bit, but then I just came out and said, look, I need to borrow money, and I understand you lend it. He asked how much, and I told him. He explained the terms of the contract. He showed me the photographs. I watched the video. I gave him my account number. Twenty minutes later the money was in my bank. It was wired in from somewhere untraceable via a corporation in Delaware.”

  “I pictured a bag of cash,” Reacher said.

  “We had to make our repayments in cash.”

  Reacher nodded.

  “Two things in one,” he said. “Both at the same time. Loansharking and money laundering. They wired dirty electrons and in return they got random clean cash from the streets. Plus a healthy rate of interest on top. Most money laundering involves losing a percentage, not gaining one. I guess those boys weren’t dumb.”

  “Not in our experience.”

  “You think the Ukrainians will be better or worse?”

  “Worse, I expect. The law of the jungle seems to be proving it already.
”

  “So how are you going to pay them back?”

  “That’s tomorrow’s problem.”

  “You have nothing left to sell.”

  “Something might show up.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “No, in reality. We’re waiting for something. We have reason to believe it will come very soon. We have to hang tough until it does.”

  They absolutely would not say what they were waiting for.

  * * *

  —

  Twenty minutes later Reacher stepped down the far curb unencumbered, and crossed the street in four fast strides, and stepped up the near curb, and pulled the bar door. Inside it felt brighter than before, because it was darker outside, and it was a click noisier, because there were more people, including a group of five men all squeezed around a four-top table, all reminiscing about something or other.

  The pale guy was still in the far back corner.

  Reacher walked toward him. The pale guy watched him all the way. Reacher dialed it back a little. There were conventions to follow. Lender and borrower. He walked what he thought of as his friendly walk, pure unselfconscious locomotion, no threat to anybody. He sat down in the same chair he had used before.

  The pale guy said, “Aaron Shevick, right?”

  “Yes,” Reacher said.

  “What brings you back so soon?”

  “I need a loan.”

  “Already? You just paid me off.”

  “Something came up.”

  “I told you,” the guy said. “Losers like you always come back.”

  “I remember,” Reacher said.

  “How much do you want?”

  “Eighteen thousand nine hundred dollars,” Reacher said.

  The pale guy shook his head.

  “Can’t do it,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a big jump up from eight hundred last time.”

  “Fourteen hundred.”

  “Six hundred of that was fees and charges. The capital sum was eight hundred only.”

  “That was then. This is now. It’s what I need.”

  “You good for it?”

  “I always was before,” Reacher said. “Ask Fisnik.”

  “Fisnik is history,” the pale guy said.

  Nothing more.

  Reacher waited.

  Then the pale guy said, “Maybe there’s a way I can help you. Although you got to understand, I would be taking a risk, which would have to be reflected in the price. You comfortable with that scenario?”

  “I guess,” Reacher said.

  “And I have to tell you, I’m pretty much a round-figures guy. Can’t do eighteen-nine. We would have to call it twenty. Then I would take eleven hundred off the top as an administration fee. You would get the exact amount you need. You want to hear the interest rates?”

  “I guess,” Reacher said again.

  “Things have moved on since Fisnik’s day. We’re in an era of innovation now. We operate what they call dynamic pricing. We pitch the rate up or down, depending on supply and demand and things like that, but also on what we think of the borrower. Will he be reliable? Can we trust him? Questions of that nature.”

  “So what am I?” Reacher asked. “Up or down?”

  “I’m going to start you off way up there at the very top. Where the worst risks are. Truth is, I don’t like you very much, Aaron Shevick. I’m not getting a good feeling. You take twenty tonight, you bring me twenty-five, a week from today. After that, interest continues at twenty-five percent a week or part of a week, plus a late fee of a thousand dollars a day, or part of a day. After the first deadline, all sums become payable in full immediately on demand. Refusal or inability to pay on demand may expose you to unpleasant things of various different types. You have to understand that ahead of time. I need to hear you say so, in your own words. It’s not the kind of thing that can be written down and signed. I have photographs for you to look at.”

  “Terrific,” Reacher said.

  The guy dabbed at his phone, menus, albums, slideshows, and he handed it over sideways, like a landscape, not a portrait, which was appropriate, because all the subjects of all the pictures were lying down. Mostly they were duct-taped to an iron bedstead, in a room with whitewashed walls gone gray with age and damp. Some had their eyeballs popped out with a spoon, and some had been grazed by an electric saw, deeper and deeper, and some had been burned with a smoothing iron, and some had been drilled with cordless power tools, which were left in the pictures as if in proof, yellow and black, top heavy and wobbling, their bits two-thirds buried in yielding flesh.

  Pretty bad.

  But not the worst things Reacher had ever seen.

  Maybe the worst things all on one phone, though.

  He handed it back. The guy dabbed through his menus again, until he got where he wanted to be. Serious business now.

  He said, “Do you understand the terms of the contract?”

  “Yes,” Reacher said.

  “Do you agree to them?”

  “Yes,” Reacher said.

  “Bank account?”

  Reacher gave him Shevick’s numbers. The guy typed them in, right there on his phone, and then he dabbed a big green rectangle at the bottom of the screen. The go button.

  He said, “The money will be in your bank in twenty minutes.”

  Then he dabbed through more menus, and suddenly raised the phone in camera mode, and snapped Reacher’s picture.

  He said, “Thank you, Mr. Shevick. A pleasure doing business. I’ll see you again in one week exactly.”

  Then he tapped his bristly head with his bone-white finger, the same gesture as before. Something about remembering. Some kind of a threatening implication.

  Whatever, Reacher thought.

  He got up and walked away, out the door, into the dark. There was a car at the curb. A black Lincoln, with an idling engine, and an idling driver behind the wheel, leaning back in his seat, head on the cushion, elbows wide, knees wide, like limo guys everywhere, taking a break.

  There was a second guy, outside the car, leaning on the rear fender. He was dressed the same as the driver. And the guy inside the bar. Black suit, white shirt, black silk tie. Like a uniform. He had his ankles crossed, and his arms crossed. He was just waiting. He looked like the guy at the corner table would look, after about a month in the sun. White, not luminescent. He had pale hair buzzed close to his scalp, and a busted nose, and scar tissue on his eyebrows. Not much of a fighter, Reacher thought. Obviously he got hit a lot.

  The guy said, “You Shevick?”

  Reacher said, “Who’s asking?”

  “The people you just borrowed money from.”

  “Sounds like you already know who I am.”

  “We’re going to drive you home.”

  “Suppose I don’t want you to?” Reacher said.

  “Part of the deal,” the guy said.

  “What deal?”

  “We need to know where you live.”

  “Why?”

  “Reassurance.”

  “Look me up.”

  “We did.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not in the book. You don’t own real estate.”

  Reacher nodded. The Shevicks had given up their landline telephone. The title to their house had already passed to the bank.

  The guy said, “So we need to pay a personal visit.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  The guy asked, “Is there a Mrs. Shevick?”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe we should visit a little with her too, while we’re looking at where you live. We like to keep our customers close. We like to make a family’s acquaintance. We find it helpful. Now get in the car.”

  Reacher
shook his head.

  “You misunderstand,” the guy said. “This is not a choice. It’s part of the deal. You borrowed our money.”

  “Your milky-white friend inside explained the contract. He went through all the terms, in considerable detail. The administration fee, the dynamic pricing, the penalties. At one point he even introduced visual aids. After which he asked if I accepted the terms of the contract, and I said yes I did, so at that point the deal was done. You can’t start adding extra stuff afterward, about a ride home and meeting the family. I would have to agree to that, ahead of time. A contract is a two-way street. Subject to negotiation and agreement. It can’t be done unilaterally. That’s a basic principle.”

  “You got a smart mouth.”

  “I can only hope,” Reacher said. “Sometimes I worry I’m just pedantic.”

  “What?”

  “You can offer me a ride, but you can’t insist that I take it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “OK, I’m offering you a ride. Last chance. Get in the car.”

  “Say please.”

  The guy paused a long, long moment.

  He said, “Please get in the car.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “Since you asked so nicely.”

  Chapter 8

  About the safest way to transport an unwilling hostage in a passenger car was to make him drive with his seat belt off. The guys with the Lincoln didn’t do that. They opted for a conventional second best instead. They put Reacher in the back, behind the empty front passenger seat, with nothing dead ahead for him to attack. The guy who had done all the talking got in next to him, on the other side, behind the driver, and he sat half sideways, watchful.

  He said, “Where to?”

  “Turn around,” Reacher said.

  The driver U-turned across the width of the street, bouncing his front right-side wheel up the far curb, and slapping it down again.

  “Go straight for five blocks,” Reacher said.

  The driver rolled on. He was a smaller version of the first guy. Not as pale. Caucasian for sure, but not blinding. He had the same buzzed hair, golden and glittery. He had a knife scar on the back of his left hand. Probably a defensive wound. He had a spidery and fading tattoo snaking out of his right cuff. He had big pink ears, sticking straight out from the sides of his head.