Wrong season, Reacher thought. But Harper was more than six feet tall and had blond hair more than a yard long and her hands in her pockets so the front of her shirt was pulled tight. The door pushed shut for a second and the chain rattled again and the door swung back. Harper stepped inside like she was accepting a gracious invitation.
Reacher peeled off the wall and followed her in before the door closed again. It was a small dark apartment with a view of the light well. Everything was brown, rugs, furniture, drapes. There was a small foyer opening to a small living room. The living room held a sofa and two armchairs, and Harper. And both of the guys Reacher had last seen leaving the alley behind Mostro’s.
“Hey, guys,” he said.
“We’re brothers,” the first guy said, irrelevantly.
They both had broad strips of hospital gauze taped to their foreheads, stark white, a little longer and broader than the labels Reacher had stuck there. One of them had bandages on his hands. They were dressed identically in sweaters and golf pants. Without their bulky overcoats, they looked smaller. One guy was wearing boat shoes. The other was wearing moccasin slippers that looked
ifu/l/U/W (filing 249
like he’d made them himself from a mail order kit. Readier stared at them and felt his aggression drain away.
“Shit,” he said.
They stared back at him.
“Sit down,” he said.
They sat, side by side on the sofa. They watched him, with fearful eyes hooded under the ludicrous gauze.
“Are these the right guys?” Harper asked.
Reacher nodded.
“Things change, I guess,” he said.
“Petrosian’s dead,” the first guy said.
“We know that already,” Reacher said back.
“We don’t know nothing else,” the second guy said.
Reacher shook his head. “Don’t say that. You know plenty of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like where Bellevue is.”
The first guy looked nervous. “Bellevue?”
Reacher nodded. “The hospital they took you to.”
Both brothers looked at the wall.
“You liked it there?” Reacher asked.
Neither one of them replied.
“You want to go back there?”
No reply.
“Big emergency room there, right?” Reacher said. “Good for fixing all kinds of things. Broken arms, broken legs, all kinds of injuries.”
The brother with the bandaged hands was older. The spokesman.
“What do you want?” he said.
“A trade.”
“What for what?”
“Information,” Reacher said. “In exchange for not sending you back to Bellevue.”
“OK,” the guy said.
Harper smiled. “Tha: was easy.”
“Easier than I thought it would be,” Reacher said.
“Things change,” the guy said. “Petrosian’s dead.”
“Those guns you had,” Reacher said. “Where did you get them?”
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1″&M
The guy was wary.
“The guns?” he said.
“The guns,” Reacher repeated. “Where did you get them?”
“Petrosian gave them to us,” the guy said.
“Where did he get them from?”
“We don’t know.”
Reacher smiled and shook his head. “You can’t say that. You can’t just say we don’t know. It’s not convincing. You could say / don’t know, but you can’t answer for your brother. You can’t know for sure what he knows, can you?”
“We don’t know,” the guy said again.
“They came from the Army,” Reacher said.
“Petrosian bought them,” the guy said.
“He paid for them,” Reacher said.
“He bought them.”
“He arranged their purchase, I accept that.”
“He gave them to us,” the younger brother said.
“Did they come in the mail?”
The older brother nodded. “Yes, in the mail.”
Reacher shook his head. “No, they didn’t. He sent you to pick them up someplace. Probably a whole consignment.”
“He picked them up himself.”
“No, he didn’t. He sent you. Petrosian wouldn’t go himself. He sent you, in that Mercedes you were using.”
The brothers stared at the wall, thinking, like there was a decision to be made.
“Who are you?” the older one asked.
“I’m nobody,” Reacher said.
“Nobody?”
“Not a cop, not FBI, not ATF, not anybody.”
No reply.
“So there’s an upside and a downside here,” Reacher said. “You tell me stuff, it stays with me. Doesn’t have to go any farther. I’m interested in the Army, not you. The downside is, you don’t tell me, I’m not concerned with sending you off to court with all kinds of civil rights. I’m concerned with sending you back to Bellevue with all kinds of broken arms and legs.”