Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,52
instruments on stands, amplifiers, giant loudspeaker cabinets. Here and there among the clutter were narrow armchairs, thinly upholstered with stained and threadbare fabrics. Reacher had one, Abby had one, and Barton had the third and last. Hogan sat on his drum stool. The white Toyota was parked outside the window.
Barton said, “This is crazy, man. I know those guys. I play the clubs over there. They never forget. Abby can’t go back there, ever again.”
“Unless I find Trulenko,” Reacher said.
“How will that help?”
“I think a defeat of that magnitude would change things a little.”
“How?”
Reacher didn’t answer.
Hogan said, “He means the only route to a high-value target like Trulenko will be straight through the top levels of the organization. Therefore afterward the remaining survivors will be no better than low-level drones running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The Albanians will eat them for breakfast. They’ll own the whole city. What the Ukrainians were once upon a time worried about won’t matter a damn anymore. Because the Ukrainians will all be dead.”
Once a U.S. Marine. A sound grasp of strategy.
“This is crazy,” Barton said again.
Six chances before the week is over, Reacher thought.
Chapter 22
Gregory’s right-hand man knocked on the inner office door and entered and took a seat in front of the massive desk. He ran through what he knew. Two guys had been deployed outside Abigail Gibson’s house. They were now missing. They were not answering their phones. Their car was no longer where it should be.
Gregory said, “Dino?”
“Maybe not.”
“Why?”
“Maybe this was never Dino. Not at first, anyway. We made certain assumptions. Now we need to take a fresh look at the facts. Think about the first two, who got in the wreck up at the Ford dealer. Who was their last known contact?”
“They were doing an address check.”
“On Aaron Shevick. And who was observed flirting with the waitress outside of whose house two more guys just disappeared?”
“Aaron Shevick.”
“No such thing as a coincidence.”
“Who is he?”
“Someone is paying him. To set you and Dino at each other’s throat. So that we destroy each other. So the someone can take over.”
“Who?”
“Shevick will tell us. When we find him.”
* * *
—
The Albanians hauled the smoking wreck to the crusher, and then they started asking around. The inner council. The top boys. Unused to legwork. Their question was fairly simple. Did you see a two-vehicle convoy, one of which was a Lincoln Town Car? No one lied to them. They were pretty sure about that. Folks had seen what happened to people who lied to them. Instead everyone racked their brains. But results were disappointing. Partly because the concept of the convoy was sometimes hard to grasp. During rush hour, for instance, there were no two-car convoys. There were hundred-and-two-car convoys. Anywhere downtown, at the best of times, maybe twenty-two-car. Who knew which two were the convoy in question? People didn’t want to give the wrong answer. Not when the top boys were asking.
So a different way was found, to ask the same question. It was quickly agreed that among the traffic there had been a handful of black Lincolns. Probably six in total. Three of them had been the fat-ass kind the Ukrainians drove. The top boys encouraged detailed descriptions of what had been in front of each of them, and what had been behind. There was a two-car convoy in there somewhere.
Three separate witnesses remembered a small white sedan with a hanging-off front fender. In each report it was ahead of one particular Lincoln, which seemed attentive to its lane changes and such, definitely as if following it. Coming out of the west of the city, heading east.
The two-car convoy.
The small white sedan was maybe a Honda. Or the other H. Hyundai. Or maybe Kia. Was there another new brand? Or maybe it wasn’t a new brand at all, because it was a pretty old car. Could have been a Toyota. Yes, that was it. A Toyota Corolla. Poverty spec. That was the final conclusion. All three witnesses agreed.
No one had seen it leave.
The top boys put the word out. All eyes open. An old white Toyota Corolla sedan, with a hanging-off front fender. Report back immediately.
* * *
—
By that point it was late in the afternoon, which was a respectable time for musicians to start their day. Hogan warmed up with a steady 4/4 beat, hi-hat working, ride cymbal ticking. Barton plugged in a battered Fender and turned on his amp, buzzing and humming. He laid