Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,51
a certain amount of resources, and planning, and coordination. And secrecy. Five guys drove out here. I assume two of them didn’t know what was about to happen.”
“I guess not.”
“But why did it happen? What was the strategic objective?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did he set the car on fire?”
“I don’t know,” the guy said again.
Dino looked around the table.
He asked, “Do we all agree the shooter was in the back seat all along, and therefore was one of them?”
Everyone nodded, most of them gravely, as if coming to a weighty conclusion made inevitable by many hours of deliberation.
“And then after he shot the guys in the front seats, we know he set the car on fire.”
More nods, this time faster and brisker, because some things were self-evident.
“Why all that?” Dino asked.
No one answered.
No one could.
“It feels like myth and legend,” Dino said. “It feels highly symbolic. Like the Vikings burning their warriors in their boats. Like a ceremonial funeral pyre. Like a ritual sacrifice. It feels like Gregory is making an offering to us.”
“Of two of his men?” his right-hand man asked.
“The number is significant.”
“How?”
“We’re getting a new police commissioner. Gregory can’t afford to fight a war. He knows he went too far. Now he’s apologizing. He’s making peace. He knows he was in the wrong. Now he’s trying to make it right. He’s making it six for four, in our favor. As a gesture. So we don’t have to do it ourselves. He’s showing that he agrees with us. He agrees we should be ahead in the count.”
No one responded.
No one could.
Dino got up and walked out. The others heard his footsteps click through the outer office, and through the big corrugated shed. They heard his driver start his car. They heard it drive away. The yard went quiet.
At first no one spoke.
Then someone said, “An offering?”
Silence for a moment.
“You see it different?” the right-hand man asked.
“We would never do a thing like that. Therefore neither would Gregory. Why would he?”
“You think Dino is wrong?”
A huge, dangerous question.
The guy looked all around.
“I think Dino is losing it,” he said. “A Viking funeral pyre? That’s crazy talk.”
“Those are bold words.”
“Do you disagree with them?”
Silence again.
Then the right-hand man shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t disagree. I don’t think it was a sacrifice or an offering.”
“Then what was it?”
“I think it was outside interference.”
“Who?”
“I think someone killed those guys here so Gregory would blame us for it. He’ll attack us, we’ll attack him back. We’ll end up destroying each other. For someone else’s benefit. So someone else can move in on both our turf. I think that might be the intention.”
“Who?” the guy asked again.
“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out. Then we’re going to kill them all. They’re completely out of line.”
“Dino wouldn’t sign off on that. He thinks it’s an offering. He thinks everything is sweetness and light now.”
“We can’t wait.”
“Are we not going to tell him?” the guy asked.
The right-hand man was quiet a beat.
Then he said, “No, not yet. He would only slow us down. This is too important.”
“Are you the new boss now?”
“Maybe. If Dino has really lost it. Which you said first, by the way. Everyone heard you.”
“I meant no disrespect. But this is a very big step. We better be sure we know what we’re doing. Otherwise it’s a betrayal. The worst kind. He’ll kill us all.”
“Time to choose up sides,” the right-hand man said. “Time for us all to place our bets. It’s either Viking rituals or it’s some out-of-towner’s takeover bid. Which will kill us all faster than Dino could anyway.”
The guy didn’t speak for ten long seconds.
Then he said, “What should we do first?”
“Put the fire out. Haul the wreck to the crusher. Then start asking around. Two cars drove in. One was a big shiny Lincoln. Someone will remember the other one. We’ll find it, and we’ll find the guy who was in it, and we’ll make him tell us who he’s working for.”
* * *
—
At that moment Reacher was four streets away, in the front parlor of a battered row house owned by a musician named Frank Barton. Barton was Abby’s friend in the east of the city. Also present in the house was Barton’s lodger, a man named Joe Hogan, once a U.S. Marine, now also a musician. A drummer, to be exact. His kit took up half the room. Barton played the bass guitar. His stuff took up the other half. Four