Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,53
down a line, looping and sinuous, staying firmly in the pocket with the kick drum, coming home on the two and the four, launching again on the one of the new measure. Reacher and Abby listened for a spell, and then went to find the guest room.
It was upstairs at the front of the house, a small space over the street door, with a round window made of wavy glass that could have been a hundred years old. The Toyota was directly below. The bed was a queen. The night table was an old guitar amplifier tipped up on its end. There was no closet. There was a row of brass hooks instead, screwed to the wall. The thump of the drums and the bass roared up through the floor.
“Not as nice as your place,” Reacher said. “I’m sorry.”
Abby didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “I asked the guys in the Lincoln where Trulenko was. They didn’t know. So then I asked their opinion about a smart first place to look. They said where he works.”
“Does he work?”
“Got to admit, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Maybe in exchange for hiding him. Maybe there’s no money left after all. Maybe he’s working his passage.”
“That would be a drag,” Reacher said.
“Why else would he work?”
“Maybe he was getting bored.”
“Possible.”
“What kind of work would he do?”
“Nothing physical,” Abby said. “He looked like a pretty small guy. His picture was in the paper all the time. He was young but his hair was going and he wore eyeglasses. He won’t be breaking rocks in a quarry. He’ll be in an office somewhere. Organizing data systems or something. That’s what he was good at. His new product was an app on your phone that linked your vital signs direct to your doctor. In real time, just in case. Or something like that. Or maybe your watch linked to your phone, and then to the doctor. No one really understood it. But anyway, Trulenko is a desk guy. A thinker.”
“So he’s in an office somewhere on the west side of the city. With accommodations either very close by, or integrated. With security. Maybe an underground bunker. With a single bottleneck entrance, heavily defended. No one gets in or out except for known and trusted faces.”
“Therefore you can’t get near him.”
“I agree there will be an element of challenge.”
“More like impossible.”
“No such word.”
“How big of a place would it be?”
“I don’t know,” Reacher said. “A couple dozen people, maybe. Or more. Or less. Some kind of nerve center. Where they send all the texts. You said they were good with technology.”
“There can’t be many suitable locations.”
“See?” Reacher said. “We’re making progress already.”
“No point, if the money is gone.”
“His employers will have some. I never met a poor gangster.”
“The Shevicks can’t sue Trulenko’s new-found employers. They had nothing to do with it. It’s not their fault.”
“By that point the spirit of the law might feel more important than the letter.”
“You would steal it?”
Reacher moved to the window and looked down.
“The capo over there is a guy named Gregory,” he said. “I would ask him to consider it a charitable donation. For a hard-luck story I heard about. I could deploy a number of arguments. I’m sure he would agree. And if he’s profiting from Trulenko’s labor in some way, then it’s almost the same thing as taking Trulenko’s own money anyway.”
Abby got a faraway look in her eyes, and she put her hand up to her cheek, as if automatically.
“I heard of Gregory,” she said. “Never met him. Never even saw him.”
“How did you hear about him?”
She didn’t answer. Just shook her head.
He said, “What happened to you?”
“Who says anything did?”
“You just saw two dead bodies. Now I’m talking about threatening people and stealing their money. I’m that kind of guy. We’re standing by a queen bed. Most women would be edging out the door by now. You’re not. You really, really don’t like these people. Must be a reason.”
“Maybe I really like you.”
“I live in hope,” Reacher said. “But I’m realistic.”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said. “Maybe.”
“OK.”
“What now?”
“We should go get your bag. And we should go move your car. I don’t want it parked right outside. They already saw it at the Shevick house. Someone else might have seen it driving in today. We should go put it somewhere random. Always safer that way.”
“How long will we have to live like this?”
“I live like this all the time. I would have been pushing up daisies long