39

The car was a black Lexus sedan, brand new. It sped up and took off again immediately, leaving the two guys alone on the sidewalk maybe thirty yards ahead. They were the bag man and the stash man from the vacant lot behind the wax museum. The pistols were AMT Hardballers, which were stainless-steel copies of Colt Government 1911 .45 automatics. The hands holding them were shaking a little and moving up level and rotating through ninety degrees into flat movie-approved bad-boy grips.

O’Donnell’s own hands went straight to his pockets.

“They want us?” he said.

“They want me,” Reacher said. He glanced back at what was behind him. He wasn’t very worried about being hit by a badly-held .45 from thirty yards away. He was a big target but statistics were on his side. Handguns were in-room weapons. Under expert control in high-pressure situations the average range for a successful engagement was about eleven feet. But even if Reacher himself wasn’t hit, someone else might be. Or something else. A person a block away, or a low-flying plane, maybe. Collateral damage. The street was thick with potential targets. Men, women, children, plus other folks Reacher wasn’t entirely sure how to categorize.

He turned to face front again. The two guys hadn’t moved far. Not more than a couple of steps. O’Donnell’s eyes were locked hard on them.

“We should take this off the street, Dave,” Reacher said.

O’Donnell said, “Roger that.”

“Moving left,” Reacher said. He crabbed sideways and risked a glance to his left. The nearest door was a narrow tarot reader’s dive. His mind was working with a kind of icy high-pressure speed. He was moving normally, but the world around him had slowed. The sidewalk had become a four-dimensional diagram. Forward, backward, sideways, time.

“Break back a yard and left, Dave,” he said.

O’Donnell was like a blind man. His eyes were tight on the two guys and wouldn’t leave them. He heard Reacher’s voice and tracked backward and left, fast. Reacher pulled the tarot reader’s door and held it open and let O’Donnell loop in around him. The two guys were following. Now twenty yards away. Reacher crowded inside after O’Donnell. The tarot parlor was empty apart from a woman of about nineteen sitting alone at a table. The table was a dining room item about seven feet long, draped to the floor with red cloth. Packs of cards all over it. The woman had long dark hair and was wearing a purple cheesecloth dress that was probably leaking vegetable dye all over her skin.

“Got a back room?” Reacher asked her.

“Just a toilet,” she said.

“Go in there and lie down on the floor, right now.”

“What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

The woman didn’t move until O’Donnell’s hands came out of his pockets. The knuckles were on his right fist like a shark’s smile. The switchblade was in his left hand. It was closed. Then it popped open with a sound like a bone breaking. The woman jumped up and fled. An Angelina, who worked on Vine. She knew the rules of the game.

O’Donnell said, “Who are these guys?”

“They just bought me these shirts.”

“Is this going to be a problem?”

“Possibly.”

“Plan?”

“You like the Hardballer?”

“Better than nothing.”

“OK, then.” Reacher flipped up the edge of the tablecloth and crouched down and backed under the table on his knees. O’Donnell followed him to his left and dragged the cloth back into position. He touched it with his knife, a short gentle sideways stroke, and a slit appeared in front of him. He widened it to the shape of an eye with his fingers. Then he did the same in front of Reacher. Reacher braced the flat of his hands against the underside of the table. O’Donnell swapped the knife into his right hand and braced his left the same way as Reacher’s.

Then they waited.

The guys were at the door within about eight seconds. They paused and peered in through the glass and then they pulled the door and came inside. Paused again, six feet in front of the table, guns pointed straight out with the butts twisted parallel to the floor.

They took a cautious step forward.

Paused again.

O’Donnell’s right hand was wrapped with the knuckles and was gripping the knife but it was the only free hand under the table. He used it to count down. Thumb, index finger, middle finger. One, two, three.

On three Reacher and O’Donnell heaved the table up and out. They powered it through an explosive quarter-circle, three feet in the air, three feet forward. The flat of the top tipped vertical and collected the guns first and then moved on and smacked the two guys full in the chests and faces. It was a heavy table. Solid wood. Maybe oak. It put the guys straight down with no trouble at all. They went over on their backs in a cloud of tarot cards and lay still under the slab in a tangle of red cloth. Reacher got up and stepped onto the upside-down table and rode it like a surfboard. Then he jumped up and down a couple of times. O’Donnell timed it for when Reacher’s weight was off it and kicked the table backward six inches until the two guys were exposed to the waist and their gun hands were accessible. He took the Hardballers and used his switchblade to slice the webs of the two guys’ thumbs. Painful, and a real disincentive against holding pistols again until they healed, which could be a long time, depending on their approach to nutrition and antisepsis. Reacher smiled, briefly. The technique had been a part of his unit’s SOP. Then he stopped smiling, because he recalled that Jorge Sanchez had developed it, and Jorge Sanchez was dead in the desert somewhere.

“Not too much of a problem,” O’Donnell said.

“We’ve still got the good stuff,” Reacher said.

O’Donnell put his ceramic collection back in his pockets and tucked a Hardballer into his waistband under his suit coat. Handed the second gun to Reacher, who shoved it in his pants pocket and draped his T-shirts over it. Then they stepped out to the sunshine and headed north on Vine again and turned west on Hollywood Boulevard.

Karla Dixon was waiting for them in the Chateau Marmont’s lobby.

“Curtis Mauney called,” she said. “He liked that thing you did with Franz’s mail. So he got the Vegas PD to check through the stuff in Sanchez and Orozco’s office. And they found something.”