Make Me (32 page)

“Why?”

“I want to pay him a visit.”

“Why?”

“For Emily. And for McCann’s sister. And the guard in the gatehouse. And my back hurts and I have a headache now. Some things can’t be allowed to continue.”

Chang nodded. “And some things have side benefits.”

“Exactly.”

“Mother’s Rest will be left wide open. We’ll be canceling its security contract. By cutting off its head. Before we go back there.”

“Is that the kind of information your local person would have?”

“I would, if someone called me about Seattle.”

She took out her phone and dialed, first Westwood, about the hotel, and then she scrolled through her contacts and found her local number. A spare bedroom, presumably. Close by. In Mesa or Glendale or Sun City. Fitted out with matching shelves and cabinets, and a desk, and a chest of drawers. And a computer and a telephone and a fax machine and a printer. Investments, for a new career.
We have offices everywhere
.

Reacher got up and headed for the men’s room, where he checked himself in the mirror, for blood, whether his or not, or other signs of mayhem. Always prudent. Once he arrested a guy who had his victim’s tooth stuck in his hair, front and center, like a pale yellow bead from a salon near the beach. Then he washed his hands very thoroughly, and his wrists, and his forearms, with plenty of soap. To get rid of the gunshot residue. Also always prudent. Why make it easy?

Back at the table Chang said, “He’s Ukrainian and his name is Merchenko.”

Reacher said, “Is he fat?”

“Apparently he’s colossal.”

“Do we know where he does business?”

“He has a private club south of the airport.”

“Security?”

“We don’t know.”

“Can we get in the club?”

“Members only.”

“We could apply for jobs. I could be a bouncer.”

“What could I be?”

“Depends what kind of club it is.”

“I think we can guess.”

“Works for me aesthetically,” Reacher said. “We should go look at the place. Right now. Better to see it in the daylight.”

—

South of the
airport was not all badlands, but it was brighter and brasher than what they saw on the way. Merchenko’s club was a metal building about the size of Yankee Stadium. But square. It filled its own block, sidewalk to sidewalk. The walls were painted pink and softened in shape by hundreds of giant foil balloons, also pink, some in the shape of hearts, and some in the shape of lips, all of them somehow fixed to the siding. Lacing in and out between them were miles of neon, right then bleached gray by the sun, but at night no doubt pink. What other color would the neon be? The door was pink, and it had a pink plastic awning above it, and the name of the place was
Pink
.

Chang said, “Should we risk going around the block?”

“It’s early,” Reacher said. “Should be safe enough.”

So she turned left off the frontage, and drove down the right-hand side. Same huge size. Same pink. Same lips and hearts. Which were kind of drunk-friendly, Reacher thought. Better than swaying the other way, into traffic.

Then they saw the building did not fill the whole block. Side to side, maybe, but not front to back. It stopped short, and the rear part of the block was a delivery yard. Which made sense. A club that size would need all kinds of consumables. Like an ocean liner. And it would generate all kinds of trash and recycling. Which would need regular pick up. The yard was fenced, with some kind of superior hurricane wire, interwoven with pink screens, so it wasn’t see-through. The fence was topped with floppy rolls of razor wire, to keep climbers out. But two ten-foot lengths were hinged to fold inward, which made sense because of the truck traffic in and out, food and drink and garbage.

One of those gates was open.

“Stop,” Reacher said.

Chang did, and then backed up discreetly, for a better view.

She said, “I don’t believe it.”

Inside the gate was a line of head-high trash containers, and then next came an area outside the kitchen door, with fake green grass laid on the concrete, and a token picket fence, and a white metal garden bench, and a big canvas sun umbrella. For chefs and waiters to smoke in comfort.

Sitting on the bench was a fat man.

He was smoking a thick cigar and talking to a Hispanic guy, who was wearing a wife-beater and a do-rag, and standing rigidly to attention, his gaze fixed on a spot in the air just above the fat man’s head.

But fat was too small a word, and plainly inadequate for the occasion. The man on the bench was not plump or big-boned or overweight or even obese. He was a mountain. He was huge. Over six feet, and that was side to side. He dwarfed the bench. He was wearing an ankle-length caftan, gray in color, and his knees were forced wide by his belly, and he was leaning back, perched with his ass on the very front part of the seat, because in the other direction his belly wouldn’t let him fold up ninety degrees to a normal sitting position. There were no recognizable contours to his body. He was an undifferentiated triangle of flesh, with breasts the size of soft basketballs, and other unexplained lumps and bulges the size of king-size pillows. His arms were resting along the back of the bench, and huge dewlaps of fat hung down either side of dimpled elbows.

All in all he was colossal, which was the word Chang’s contact had used. His head was tiny in comparison with his body. His face was pink and shiny from the sun, and his eyes were small and deep set, partly because he was squinting against the light, and partly because his face was swollen tight, as if someone had stuck a bicycle pump in his ear and given it ten long strokes. His haircut was the same scalped style as the three guys at McCann’s sister’s house.

Chang said, “He could be a brother or a cousin. Maybe it’s a fat family.”

“He looks like the boss,” Reacher said. “Look how he’s talking to that guy. He’s giving him a real hard time.”

And he was. No histrionics. No shouting. Just a steady stream of words, unending, conversational, and therefore probably all the more cruel and effective. The guy in the do-rag wasn’t enjoying himself. That was for damn sure. He was holding himself rigid, staring at the air, riding it out.

Chang said, “We have to be sure. Maybe Merchenko delegates. Maybe there are underbosses. Maybe this is a brother or a cousin taking care of staff relations for him.”

Reacher said, “Did your contact mention family members?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Can you check?”

Chang dialed her phone. Reacher watched the fat man. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet. He was still talking. Chang asked her question and listened to the answer. She hung up the phone.

She said, “We don’t know of any family members.”

“He looks like the boss,” Reacher said again. “Except there’s no security. No guys with sunglasses and wires in their ears. There would be one at the gate, surely. Bare minimum. This guy is supposed to be a crime boss. He’s in full view of the street. We’re just sitting here. No one has tried to chase us away.”

“Confidence, maybe,” Chang said. “Or overconfidence. He thinks we’re dead by now. Maybe he’s got nothing else to worry about. He could be the apex predator here. Unchallenged.”

“If he’s the guy.”

“We shouldn’t assume.”

“I wish we could. I could hit him from here.”

“Really?”

“Figure of speech. Not with a handgun. To be certain I’d want to be closer.”

“Inside the yard?”

“Ideally.”

“Maybe there are guards behind the gate.”

“Could be. But it’s an image thing with these guys. They like to be seen behind a human wall. Or not seen.”

“So maybe he’s not the guy.”

“He sure looks like the guy. He looks like a fat man, and it looks like he’s making rules.”

“We have to be certain.”

“We’ll never be certain. Unless I ask for ID. Which he might not have. I don’t see a pocket in his dress.”

“It’s a caftan. Or a muumuu.”

“What’s a muumuu?”

“What he’s wearing.”

“We need to know. This could be solid gold. He’s right there.”

“Which is the problem. It’s too good to be true.”

“Could be confidence. Like you said. Could be pure routine. Maybe his security is inside. Maybe they’re used to him ducking outside for a smoke. It’s early, and they know no one’s around. Maybe he doesn’t like them close. Or maybe he thinks staff relations are best done in private.”

“How long will he stay there?”

“It’s a big cigar. But maybe he smokes it a bit at a time.”

“We’ll never have a better chance.”

“And it can’t last much longer.”

“But we have to know.”

Reacher said nothing.

The fat man kept on talking. Maybe getting more intense. He was jabbing his head with every beat. The fat on his neck was jiggling. The rest of his body was implacably still. Not made for gesture.

Reacher said, “I think he’s summing up. I think he’s arriving at a conclusion. We don’t have much more time. We need a decision.”

Chang said nothing.

Then she said, “Wait.”

She raised her phone and Reacher saw a picture swim on the screen. The sidewalk, the pink fence, the open gap. An odd angle, unsteady. Camera mode. Then the trash containers, the fake garden, and the fat man.

She touched the screen and the phone made a sound like a shutter. Then she swiped and dabbed and typed and dabbed again, and the phone made a sound like a
whoosh
.

She said, “I’m asking my contact for visual ID.”

Reacher said, “She better hurry. This can’t last much longer.”

The fat man kept on talking, and jabbing, and jiggling. The guy in the do-rag kept on taking it. Then the fat man’s fingers started scrabbling at the top slat of the bench. Possibly the beginning of a long and complicated procedure designed to get himself up.

Reacher said, “We’re losing him.”

The fat man threw his cigar on the ground.

Chang’s phone dinged.

She checked the screen.

She said, “Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“She wants me to zoom in. She wants a close-up.”

“What is this, the Supreme Court?”

She raised her phone again and did something with her fingers, like the opposite of a pinch, and she got the fat man as big as she could, and steadied him in the center of the frame, and clicked the picture. Reacher turned around to get the Ruger off the floor in back. Just in case. He heard the
whoosh
of her text, or her e-mail, or whatever it was. He kept the gun low and smuggled it between the seats to his lap. A solid weapon. Nothing fancy. The firearm equivalent of a domestic sedan. Like the rental Chevrolet they were sitting in. The suppressor was an aftermarket item, with a custom mount. The magazine was two rounds short. From the old guy in the booth. The chest and the head.
I hope you folks have a wonderful afternoon
.

Reacher waited.

Then the fat man levered his hips forward. A special technique, clearly. He was going to jack himself straight, like a plank, and then walk himself upright with his hands. Or push off from behind, and hope to totter away. Neither maneuver easy. But one or the other obviously possible. The guy hadn’t spent his whole life in the same spot.

Reacher said, “We’re out of time.”

But then the Hispanic guy spoke.

Maybe a heartfelt statement, full of apology and contrition, full of promises of future reform, and likely polite, and certainly short, but apparently there was something in it the fat man wanted to either rebut or comment on further, because he settled back down, amid much asynchronous wobbling and shaking, and he started talking again.

Chang’s phone dinged.

She checked the screen.

She said, “We’re a hundred percent sure that’s Merchenko.”

Chapter
43

She drove twenty yards down
the street, and then she U-turned, sidewalk to sidewalk, and came back slow, easing to a stop on the curb just shy of the first possible line of sight out the open half of the gate. Which put Reacher about sixty feet from the target. Twenty to the gate, and forty in the yard. A right-hand turn. He opened his door, and climbed out. There was no easy way to hide a silenced pistol, so he carried it down by his leg, long and threatening, mid-thigh to mid-calf. Completely unambiguous. But the acoustic benefits would be worth it, he hoped, during business hours, close to the center of America’s sixth-largest city.

Six paces on the sidewalk, and then he turned in at the yard. No guards behind the gate. The trash containers dead ahead. Then the garden. Then the fat man. Still talking. Not looking. Not yet. The Hispanic guy still standing, chin up, eyes level, still taking it. Reacher kept walking, brisk but not urgent, the gun still down, his heels loud on the concrete, so loud it was impossible the fat man wasn’t already staring at him, but he wasn’t. He was still talking, audible now, the same flat tones from the telephone, scolding, belittling, humiliating, his head jerking above the vast wattle of his neck.

Then he was staring. He turned his head, completely independent of his immobile body, and his mouth came open, and Reacher stepped over the token foot-high picket fence, to the shiny grass, and he raised the gun, and he took one step more.

In the tall tales told by firelight there was always a brief and laconic conversation. Because the bad guy had to be told why he had to die, as if reference to injured parties like Emily Lair and Peter and Lydia McCann and the gate guard’s grandchildren could conjure up spirits and console them, and also because the bad guy had to be given the chance to either repent or snarl further defiance, either of which could turn a story classic, depending on the hero’s next reply.

But tales were tales, and not the real world.

Reacher said nothing, and shot the fat man in the head, twice, a double tap,
pop pop,
and then he watched the kitchen door.

Which stayed shut.

The suppressor worked pretty well, out in the open air.

Reacher turned back, and stepped over the foot-high fence.