“He said Fisnik had been replaced. He said whatever business anyone had with Fisnik, now they had it with him. He said Fisnik’s clients were now his clients. He said if you owed money to Fisnik, now you owed it to him. He made the same kind of point several times over. He said it wasn’t rocket science.”
“Did he want another thousand dollars?”
“He propped his book open so close to his chest it was awkward. At first I wasn’t sure why. I assumed he didn’t want me to see what was in it. He asked my name, and I said Aaron Shevick. He looked down at his book and nodded. Which I thought was weird.”
“Why?”
“What were the odds the book happened to be propped open at the S page? One in twenty-six. Possible, but unlikely. So then I started to think he was hiding the book not because he didn’t want me to see what was in it, but because he didn’t want me to see what wasn’t in it. Because there was nothing in it. It was blank. That was my guess. Then he proved it. He asked me how much I owed. He didn’t know. He didn’t have Fisnik’s previous data. It wasn’t Fisnik’s old ledger. It was a new blank book.”
“What does all that mean?”
“It means this wasn’t a routine internal reorganization. They didn’t bench Fisnik and send in a pinch hitter. It was a hostile takeover from the outside. There’s a whole new management now. I went back through the guy’s words. His use of language. He made it clear. Someone else is muscling in.”
“Wait,” Mrs. Shevick said. “I heard it on the radio. Last week, I think. We’re getting a new police commissioner. He says we have rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs in town.”
Reacher nodded.
“There you go,” he said. “The Ukrainians are moving in on a part of the Albanians’ business. You’re dealing with new people now.”
“Did they want the extra thousand dollars?”
“They’re looking ahead, not back in the past. They’re prepared to write off Fisnik’s old loans. All or part. Because they have to. They have no choice. They don’t know what anyone owes. They don’t have the information. And why wouldn’t they write it off anyway? It wasn’t their money. They want his customers. That’s all. For the future. They want to service their needs for the next many years.”
“Did you pay the man?”
“He asked what I owed and I took a chance and told him fourteen hundred dollars. He looked down at his blank page and nodded solemnly and agreed. So I paid him fourteen hundred dollars. At which point he said I was good to go and he confirmed I was paid off in full.”
“Where’s the rest of the money?”
“Right here,” Reacher said. He took the envelope out of his pocket. Barely thinner than it was before. Still two hundred eleven bills in it. Twenty-one thousand one hundred dollars. He put it on the table, in the middle, equidistant. Shevick and his wife stared at it and said nothing.
Reacher said, “This is a random universe. Once in a blue moon things turn out just right. Like now. Someone started a war and you’re the exact opposite of collateral damage.”
Shevick said, “Not if Fisnik shows up next week wanting all this plus seven grand more.”
“He won’t,” Reacher said. “Fisnik has been replaced. Which coming from a Ukrainian gangster with prison ink on his neck almost certainly means Fisnik is dead. Or otherwise incapacitated. He won’t be showing up next week. Or any week. And you’re all squared away with the new guys. They said so. You’re out of the woods.”
There was silence for a long moment.
Mrs. Shevick looked at Reacher.
“Thank you,” she said.
Then Shevick’s cell phone rang. He limped out to the hallway and took the call. Reacher heard a faint plastic quack from the earpiece. A man’s voice, he thought. He couldn’t make out the words. Some long stream of information. He heard Shevick reply, loud and clear, ten feet away, with a muttered assent that sounded weary and unsurprised, yet still disappointed. Then Shevick asked what was unmistakably a question.
He said, “How much?”
The faint plastic quack answered.
Shevick closed his phone. He stood still for a moment, and then he limped back into the kitchen and sat down again at the table. He folded his hands in front of him. He looked at the envelope. Not a stare, not a gaze. Some kind of a bittersweet glance. Equidistant. Equally far away from all of them.
He said, “They need another forty thousand dollars.”
His wife closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her face.
Reacher said, “Who needs?”
“Not Fisnik,” Shevick said. “Not the Ukrainians, either. Not any of them. This is the other end of the issue entirely. This is the reason we had to borrow money in the first place.”
“Are you being blackmailed?”
“No, nothing like that. I wish it was that simple. All I can say is there are bills we have to pay. One just came due. Now we have to find another forty thousand dollars.” He glanced at the envelope again. “Some of which we’ve already got, thanks to you.” He worked it out in his head. “Technically we need to find another eighteen thousand nine hundred dollars.”
“By when?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Can you?”
“We couldn’t find another eighteen cents.”
“Why so quick?”
“Some things can’t wait.”
“What are you going to do?”
Shevick didn’t answer.
His wife took her hands away from her face.
“We’re going to borrow it,” she said. “What else can we do?”
“Who from?”
“The man with the prison tattoo,” she said. “What choice do we have? We’re maxed out everywhere else.”
“Can you pay it back?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
No one spoke.
Reacher said, “I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”
Mrs. Shevick looked at him.
“You can,” she said.
“Can I?”
“In fact you’ll have to.”
“Will I?”
“The man with the prison tattoo thinks you’re Aaron Shevick. You have to go get our money for us.”