Jack Reacher 21 - Night School by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child [Child, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780593073902
Published: 2016-11-07T04:00:37+00:00

Chapter 24

Reacher stepped around the guy with the top hat and set out walking. It was midnight local time. The streets were lit by lamps on poles, and by the soft light of storefronts dimmed to a nighttime glow, and by the blue flicker of late shows on television sets behind undraped apartment windows. He walked a figure-of-eight around two random blocks and saw no one behind him. Or ahead of him. Or in the shadows. Just a routine precaution. A habit. He was thirty-five years old and still alive. Had to mean something.

He found the street with the bar in it. Where Klopp had seen Wiley the first time. Where Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee had sold their scrap Berettas. Where German ID was for sale. He stopped forty yards short and eyeballed the place from an angle. The ground floor of the stone building, the center door, the planked wood façade, varnished and shiny. The small windows, with their lace curtains, and their paper flags. The lights were on inside. By night they looked warm and welcoming.

Reacher crossed the street and went in through the door. Inside it was smoky and loud. It was late, but there were maybe sixty people still in there, mostly men, in tight private groups of three or four. Some were at tables, and some were standing, cramped and back-to-back with other huddles. There were upholstered benches under the windows. All were full, like seats on a rush-hour subway. Reacher eased through the crowd, gently but firmly, like a police horse at a riot. Most folks got out of his way fast enough. They looked like business people, or clerical workers. Some of them senior, some of them doing well. Reacher didn’t see Wiley. He didn’t expect to. He was a lucky man, but not that lucky. He sensed people looking at him from behind. Delayed reaction. Weren’t we warned about a man like that?

He made it to the bar after a roundabout route, and he wedged himself in, and waited to be served. Both bartenders were men. Both had heavy canvas aprons tied around their waists. One glanced his way. Reacher asked for a cup of black coffee. The guy set an espresso machine going, and ducked back for his money. Reacher asked him no questions. Life wasn’t like the television shows. Bartenders never spilled the beans. Why would they? Who came first, the sixty people they had to live with every night of their lives, or the lone guy they had never seen before?

Instead he carried his coffee into the crowd and sat down in the spare seat where three guys were at a four-top table. They looked at him like he had committed an embarrassing faux pas, and then they looked away, and a lot of coughing and false starts indicated they were changing the subject. And commenting. Reacher heard the word arschloch, which he knew from many in-country arguments meant asshole. But he didn’t react. Instead he drained his cup and headed for the pay phone on the opposite wall.

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