Tripwire

“No problem, Tarzan,” the left-hand guy said.

Reacher smiled. He had been called a lot of things, but that was a new one.

“Three bucks to come in,” he said. “Or it’s free to go back downstairs.”

“We just want to speak with somebody,” the right-hand guy said.

Accents, from both of them. From somewhere in New York. Reacher shrugged.

“We don’t do too much speaking in here,” he said. “Music’s too loud.”

“What’s your name?” the left-hand guy asked.

Reacher smiled again.

“Tarzan,” he said.

“We’re looking for a guy called Reacher,” the guy said back. “Jack Reacher. You know him?”

Reacher shook his head.

“Never heard of him,” he said.

“So we need to talk to the girls,” the guy said. “We were told they might know him.”

Reacher shook his head again.

“They don’t,” he said.

The right-hand guy was looking past Reacher’s shoulder into the long, narrow room. He was glancing at the girls behind the bar. He was figuring Reacher for the only security on duty.

“OK, Tarzan, step aside,” he said. “We’re coming in now.”

“Can you read?” Reacher asked him. “Big words and all?”

He pointed up at a sign hanging above the desk. Big Day-Glo letters on a black background. It read Management Reserves the Right to Refuse Admission.

“I’m management,” Reacher said. “I’m refusing you admission.”

The guy glanced between the sign and Reacher’s face.

“You want a translation?” Reacher asked him. “Words of one syllable? It means I’m the boss and you can’t come in.”

“Save it, Tarzan,” the guy said.

Reacher let him get level, shoulder to shoulder on his way past. Then he raised his left hand and caught the guy’s elbow. He straightened the joint with his palm and dug his fingers into the soft nerves at the bottom of the guy’s tricep. It’s like getting a continuous pounding on the fu

“Downstairs,” Reacher said softly.

The other guy was busy calculating the odds. Reacher saw him doing it and figured full and fair disclosure was called for. He held his right hand up, eye level, to confirm it was free and ready for activity. It was a huge hand, brown, callused from the shovel handle, and the guy got the message. He shrugged and started down the stairs. Reacher straight-armed his pal after him.

“We’ll see you again,” the guy said.

“Bring all your friends,” Reacher called down. “Three bucks each to get in.”

He started back into the room. The dancer called Crystal was standing right there behind him.

“What did they want?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Looking for somebody.”

“Somebody called Reacher?”

He nodded.

“Second time today,” she said. “There was an old guy in here before. He paid the three bucks. You want to go after them? Check them out?”

He hesitated. She swept his shirt off the barstool and handed it to him.

“Go for it,” she said. “We’re OK in here for a spell. Quiet night.”

He took the shirt. Pulled the sleeves right side out.

“Thanks, Crystal, he said.”

He put the shirt on and buttoned it. Headed for the stairs.

“You’re welcome, Reacher,” she called after him.

He spun around, but she was already walking back toward the stage. He looked blankly at the desk girl and headed down to the street.

KEY WEST AT eleven in the evening is about as lively as it gets. Some people are halfway through their night, others are just starting out. Duval is the main street, ru

He walked a sort of spiral through the darkness. Nobody around. He walked in the middle of the road. Anybody hiding in a doorway, he wanted to give them ten or fifteen feet of open space to cover. He wasn’t worried about getting shot at. The guys had no guns. Their suits proved it. Too tight to conceal weapons. And the suits meant they’d come south in a hurry. Flown down. No easy way to get on a plane with a gun in your pocket.

He gave it up after a mile or so. A tiny town, but still big enough for a couple of guys to lose themselves in. He turned left along the edge of the graveyard and headed back toward the noise. There was a guy on the sidewalk against the chain-link fence. Sprawled out and inert. Not an unusual sight in Key West, but there was something wrong. And something familiar. The wrong thing was the guy’s arm. It was trapped under his body. The shoulder nerves would be shrieking hard enough to cut through however drunk or stoned the guy was. The familiar thing was the pale gleam of an old beige jacket. The top half of the guy was light, the bottom half was dark. Beige jacket, gray pants. Reacher paused and glanced around. Stepped near. Crouched down.

It was Costello. His face was pounded to pulp. Masked in blood. There were crusty brown rivulets all over the triangle of blue-white city skin showing through at the neck of his shirt. Reacher felt for the pulse behind the ear. Nothing. He touched the skin with the back of his hand. Cool. No rigor, but then it was a hot night. The guy was dead maybe an hour.

He checked inside the jacket. The overloaded wallet was gone. Then he saw the hands. The fingertips had been sliced off. All ten of them. Quick efficient angled cuts, with something neat and sharp. Not a scalpel. A broader blade. Maybe a linoleum knife.

2

“’IT’S MY FAULT,“ Reacher said.

Crystal shook her head.

“You didn’t kill the guy,” she said.

Then she looked up at him, sharply. “Did you?”

“I got him killed,” Reacher said. “Is there a difference?”

The bar had closed at one o’clock and they were side by side on two chairs next to the empty stage. The lights were off and there was no music. No sound at all, except the hum of the air-conditioning ru

“I should have told him,” Reacher said. “I should have just told him sure, I’m Jack Reacher. Then he’d have told me whatever he had to tell me, and he’d be back home by now, and I could have just ignored it all anyway. I’d be no worse off, and he’d still be alive.”

Crystal was dressed in a white T-shirt. Nothing else. It was a long T-shirt, but not quite long enough. Reacher was not looking at her.

“Why do you care?” she asked.

It was a Keys question. Not callous, just mystified at his concern about a stranger down from another country. He looked at her.

“I feel responsible,” he said.

“No, you feel guilty,” she said.

He nodded.

“Well, you shouldn’t,” she said. “You didn’t kill him.”

“Is there a difference?” he asked again.

“Of course there is,” she said. “Who was he?”

“A private detective,” he said. “Looking for me.”

“Why?”

He shook his head.

“No idea,” he said.

“Were those other guys with him?”

He shook his head again.

“No,” he said. “Those other guys killed him.”

She looked at him, startled. “They did?”

“That’s my guess,” he said. “They weren’t with him, that’s for sure. They were younger and richer than he was. Dressed like that? Those suits? Didn’t look like his subordinates. Anyway, he struck me as a loner. So the two of them were working for somebody else. Probably told to follow him down here, find out what the hell he was doing. He must have stepped on some toes up north, given somebody a problem. So he was tailed down here. They caught up with him, beat out of him who he was looking for. So then they came looking, too.”