Running Blind(The Visitor) - By Lee Child Page 0,2

One blow could smash them all, top to bottom, he was suggesting. The owner was going pale. He was glancing sideways at his shelves.

Then the guy on the left shot his cuff and tapped the face of his watch and turned to leave. His partner straightened up and followed him. He trailed his hand over the nearest table and knocked a plate to the floor. It shattered on the tile, loud and dissonant against the opera floating in the air. The sandy guy and the dark woman sat still and looked away. The two guys walked slowly to the door, heads up, confident. Reacher watched them all the way out to the sidewalk. Then the owner came out from behind the bar and knelt down and raked through the fragments of the broken plate with his fingertips.

"You OK?" Reacher called to him.

Soon as the words were out, he knew it was a dumb thing to say. The guy just shrugged and put an all-purpose miserable look on his face. He cupped his hands on the floor and started butting the shards into a pile. Reacher slid out of his chair and stepped away from the table and squared his napkin on the tile next to him and started collecting the debris into it. The couple five tables away was watching him.

"When are they coming back?" Reacher asked.

"An hour," the guy said.

"How much do they want?"

The guy shrugged again and smiled a bitter smile.

"I get a start-up discount," he said. "Two hundred a week, goes to four when the place picks up."

"You want to pay?"

The guy made another sad face. "I want to stay in business, I guess. But paying out two bills a week ain't exactly going to help me do that."

The sandy guy and the dark woman were looking at the opposite wall, but they were listening. The opera fell away to a minor-key aria and the diva started in on it with a low mournful note.

"Who were they?" Reacher asked quietly.

"Not Italians," the guy said. "Just some punks."

"Can I use your phone?"

The guy nodded.

"You know an office-supply store open late?" Reacher asked.

"Broadway, two blocks over," the guy said. "Why? You got business to attend to?"

Reacher nodded.

"Yeah, business," he said.

He stood up and slid around behind the bar. There was a new telephone next to a new reservations book. The book looked like it had never been opened. He picked up the phone and dialed a number and waited two beats until it was answered a mile away and forty floors up.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hey, Jodie," he said.

"Hey, Reacher, what's new?"

"You going to be finished anytime soon?"

He heard her sigh.

"No, this is an all-nighter," she said. "Complex law, and they need an opinion like yesterday. I'm real sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I've got something to do. Then I guess I'll head back on up to Garrison."

"OK, take care of yourself," she said. "I love you."

He heard the crackle of legal documents and the phone went down. He hung up and came out from behind the bar and stepped back to his table. He left forty dollars trapped under his espresso saucer and headed for the door.

"Good luck," he called.

The guy crouched on the floor nodded vaguely and the couple at the distant table watched him go. He turned his collar up and shrugged down into his coat and left the opera behind him and stepped out to the sidewalk. It was dark and the air was chill with fall. Small haloes of fog were starting up around the lights. He walked east to Broadway and scanned through the neon for the office store. It was a narrow place packed with items marked with prices on large pieces of fluorescent card cut in the shape of stars. Everything was a bargain, which suited Reacher fine. He bought a small labeling machine and a tube of superglue. Then he hunched back down in his coat and headed north to Jodie's apartment.

His four-wheel-drive was parked in the garage under her building. He drove it up the ramp and turned south on Broadway and west back to the restaurant. He slowed on the street and glanced in through the big windows. The place gleamed with halogen light on white walls and pale wood. No patrons. Every single table was empty and the owner was sitting on a stool behind the bar. Reacher glanced away and came around the block and parked illegally at the mouth of the alley that ran down toward