Manhattan Mayhem (8 page)

“Plus the counter man. He’s kind of bent over, doing something in the well. There are two coffee urns behind him.”

“First there’s a couple, close but not touching, and then one lonely guy all by himself. With his back to us. In a hat.”

“All the men wear hats.”

“The woman is a redhead. She looks sad. It’s the loneliest picture I’ve ever seen.”

Reacher looked through the real-life glass. Easy to imagine bright fluorescent light in there, pinning people like searchlight beams, exposing them in a merciless way to the dark streets all around. Except the streets all around were empty, so there was no one to see.

In the painting, and in real life, too.

He said, “What have I walked into?”

The woman said, “You’re to stand still, right where you are, and
don’t move until I tell you to.”

“Or what?”

“Or you’ll go to prison for interfering with a national security operation.”

“Or you’ll get fired for continuing with a national security operation after it suddenly got a civilian in the way.”

“The operation isn’t here. It’s in the park.”

She looked diagonally across the wide junction, three major thoroughfares all meeting, at the mass of trees beyond.

He said, “What have I walked into?”

She said, “I can’t tell you.”

“I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”

“Military police, right?”

“Like the FBI, but on a much lower budget.”

“We have a target in the park. Sitting on a bench all alone. Waiting for a contact who isn’t coming.”

“Who is he?”

“A bad apple.”

“From your barrel?”

She nodded. “One of us.”

“Is he armed?”

“He’s never armed.”

“Why isn’t his contact coming?”

“He died an hour ago in a hit-and-run accident. The driver didn’t stop. No one got the plate.”

“There’s a big surprise.”

“He turned out to be Russian. The State Department had to inform their consulate. Which turned out to be where the guy worked. Purely by coincidence.”

“Your guy was talking to the Russians? Do people still do that?”

“More and more. And it’s getting more and more important all the time. People say we’re headed back to the 1980s. But they’re wrong. We’re headed back to the 1930s.”

“So, your guy ain’t going to win employee of the month.”

She didn’t answer.

He said, “Where are you going to take him?”

She paused a beat. She said, “All that’s classified.”

“All that? All what? He can’t be going to multiple destinations.”

She didn’t answer.

Now he paused a beat.

He said, “Is he headed for the destination you want?”

She didn’t answer.

“Is he?”

She said, “No.”

“Because of suits higher up?”

“As always.”

“Are you married?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Are you?”

“I’m hanging in there.”

“So you’re the redhead.”

“And?”

“I’m the guy in the hat with his back to us, all alone.”

“Meaning, what?”

“Meaning, I’m going to take a walk. Like a First Amendment thing. Meaning, you’re going to stay here. Like a smart tactical thing.”

And he turned and moved away before she had a chance to object. He rounded the tip of the cowcatcher and headed diagonally across the heart of the complex junction, moving fast, not breaking stride at the curbs and the painted lines, ignoring the
DON
’
T WALK
signs, not slowing at all, and finally straight into the park itself, by its southwest gate. Ahead was a dry fountain and a closed-up burger stall. Curving left was the main center path, clearly following some kind of a design scheme that featured large ovals, like running tracks.

There were dim fancy lights on poles, and the Times Square glow was bouncing off the clouds like a magnesium flare. Reacher could see pretty well, but all he saw were empty benches, at least at the start of the curve. More came into sight as he walked, but they too stayed
empty, all the way to the far tip of the oval, where there was another dry fountain, and a children’s playground, and finally the continuation of the path itself, curving down the other side of the oval, back toward the near tip. And it had benches, too.

And one of them was occupied.

By a big guy, all pink and fleshy, maybe fifty years old, in a dark suit. Pouchy face and thinning hair. A guy who looked like his life had passed him by.

Reacher stepped close and the guy looked up, and then he looked away, but Reacher sat down next to him anyway. He said, “Boris or Vladimir or whatever his name was isn’t coming. You’re busted. They know you’re not armed, but they’ve gone ahead and cleared about twenty square blocks, which means they’re going to shoot you. You’re about to be executed. But not while I’m here. Not with witnesses. And as it happens, the SAC isn’t happy with it. But she’s getting pressure from above.”

The guy said, “So?”

Reacher said, “So, here’s my good deed of the day. If you want to turn yourself in to her, I’ll walk with you. Every step of the way. You can tell her what you know, and you can get three squares a day in prison for the rest of your life.”

The guy didn’t answer.

Reacher said, “But maybe you don’t want to go to prison for the rest of your life. Maybe you’re ashamed. Maybe suicide by cop is better. Who am I to judge? So my super-good deed of the day is to walk away if you tell me to. Your choice.”

The guy said, “Then walk away.”

“You sure?”

“I can’t face it.”

“Why did you do it?”

“To be somebody.”

“What kind of stuff could you tell the SAC?”

“Nothing important. Damage assessment is their main priority. But they already know what I had access to, so they already know what
I told them.”

“And you’ve got nothing worthwhile to add?”

“Not a thing. I don’t know anything. My contacts aren’t stupid. They know this can happen.”

“Okay,” Reacher said. “I’ll walk away.”

And he did, out of the park in its northeast corner, where he heard faint radio chatter in the shadows announcing his departure, and a deserted block up Madison Avenue, where he waited against the limestone base of a substantial building. Four minutes later he heard suppressed handguns, eleven or twelve rounds expended, a volley of thudding percussions like phone books slammed on desks. Then he heard nothing more.

He pushed off the wall and walked north on Madison, imagining himself back at the lunch counter, his hat in place, his elbows drawn in, nursing a new secret in a life already full of old secrets.

LEE CHILD
was fired and on the dole when he hatched a harebrained scheme to write a best-selling novel, thus saving his family from ruin.
Killing Floor
was an immediate success and launched the series, which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. His series hero, Jack Reacher, besides being fictional, is a kind-hearted soul who allows Lee lots of spare time for reading, listening to music, the Yankees, and Aston Villa. Visit
LeeChild.com
for info about the novels, short stories, the movie
Jack Reacher,
and more—or find Lee on
Facebook.com/LeeChildOfficial
,
Twitter.com/LeeChildReacher
, and
YouTube.com/leechildjackreacher
.

Priscilla laughed hysterically when her doctor told her she had only a few weeks to live.

When she saw the shocked dismay on his handsome face, she waved away his worry and kept guffawing like a four-year-old who had just heard the funniest knock-knock joke on earth. And, being a preschool teacher, she knew knock-knock jokes and four-year-olds.

Knock, knock. Who’s there?

Not me!

Of
course,
she had a rare, virulent, quick-killing cancer.

Of course, she did! It had been that kind of week. Month. Year.
Death could only improve my life,
she thought, and giggled wildly again.

When she finally came out of her initial hysteria and started crying the other kind of tears, her doctor handed her his box of tissues and a long thin notepad. She grabbed both but held up the notepad as she blew her nose.

“What’s this for?”

“Some of my patients like to make bucket lists.”

“Oh, God,” she said, rolling her eyes up to stare at him. “You keep a bunch of these pads in your desk? Sucks to be you! It’s life’s little ultimate to-do list, isn’t it? Buy bananas, but not too ripe. Pick up the dry cleaning, but what for? And forget the super-sized laundry soap.”

She giggled and sobbed at the same time.

“I can’t die, Sam!” She’d been his patient for a long time; he’d seen her through regular checkups and emergencies. If he called her by her first name, she’d long ago made it clear that she’d call him by his. “I don’t even have a prearrangement plan with a funeral home!”

He didn’t laugh.

“It’s not too late,” he said carefully.

“There just won’t be much ‘pre-’ to it, will there?”

“No,” he said even more gently.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Yeah, it is. I’ll be the girl with only one thing on her bucket list.”

“What?”

“Live longer.”

He looked as if he might cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling bad for him. Her humor was normally softer; incipient death had given her an edge. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not anybody’s fault,” he said, shaking his head and pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Nobody’s fault? She wasn’t so sure about that.

What about the pollution she breathed, the chemicals she drank? And what about stress? Couldn’t that kill you? Well, yes, it looked as if it could, though she probably couldn’t prove that to her stressful employer, her stressful parents, her stressful sister, her stressful boyfriend,
the stressful parents at DayGlow DayCare with their screaming stressed-out children, the stressful woman with the stressful dog in the next apartment, the stressful man at the food cart with her favorite hot dogs, not to mention all the pedestrians who bumped into her on streets and taxis that honked at her in intersections.

And doctors who told her she was going to die.

He said, “If drugs aren’t going to help you, or surgery, or radiation … what do you want to do with the time you have left, Priscilla?”

“I’m only twenty-six,” she whispered, all her laughter used up now.

“I know.” His eyes filled again, but he forced an encouraging smile. “So your list ought to be a lot more fun than the one my hundred-year-old patient just drew up—”

“A hundred years old?” she said wistfully. “I wish.”

“It’s not so great. Her big moment was drinking cranberry juice in spite of being allergic to it. Go for it, Priss. Go for more than cranberry juice. Don’t hold back. Who knows? Maybe happiness will cure you.”

He didn’t believe that.

She didn’t, either.

But as a way to kill time for the next couple weeks, before time killed her, it did beat shooting herself. She said as much to Sam, which made him grimace.