‘Leon Trotsky, I think.’
‘He was stabbed to death with an ice pick. In Mexico.’
‘That doesn’t invalidate his overall position. Not in and of itself.’
‘What was his overall position?’
‘Solid. He also said, if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk. He was a man of sound instincts. In his private life, I mean. Apart from getting stabbed to death with an ice pick in Mexico, that is.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We should start by getting dressed, probably. Except that most of my clothes are in the other room.’
‘My fault,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t make a whole big thing out of it. We’ll survive. You get dressed, and we’ll both go next door, and I’ll get dressed. Safe enough. We’ll only be out there a couple of seconds. But take a shower first. There’s no rush. They’ll wait. They won’t come in here. They won’t break down Cousin Asshole’s door. I’m sure that’s part of the Claughton family code.’
Turner matched Reacher’s habitual shower time exactly, dead on eleven minutes, from the first hand on the faucet to stepping out the door. Which in this instance involved a long pause, spent trying to time it right, to get to the next room unseen by a circling pick-up truck, and then deciding that with four of them each moving at close to thirty miles an hour, remaining unseen was not an available option. So they went for it, and for ten of the twenty feet they were ahead of the game, until a truck came around and Reacher heard a rush under its hood, as the driver reacted instinctively to the sudden appearance of his quarry, by stamping on the gas. Chasing it, Reacher supposed. Running it down. An evolutionary mechanism, like so many things. He unlocked his door and they spilled inside. He said, ‘Now they know for sure we’re here. Not that they didn’t know already. I’m sure Cyber Boy has been giving them chapter and verse.’
His room was undisturbed. His boots were under the window, with his socks nearby, and his underwear, and his second T-shirt on a chair, and his jacket on a hook. He said, ‘I should take a shower too. If they keep on driving circles like that, they’ll be dizzy before we come out.’
Reacher was ready in eleven minutes. He sat on the bed and laced his boots, and he put his coat on and zipped it up. He said, ‘I’m happy to do this by myself, if you like.’
Turner said, ‘What about the troopers across the street? We can’t afford for them to come over.’
‘I bet the troopers let the Claughtons do whatever they want. Because I bet the troopers are mostly Claughtons too. But I’m sure we’ll do it all out of sight, anyway. That’s what usually happens.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Have you done this before?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Not too many times.’
‘They won’t all fight. There’ll be a congestion problem, apart from anything else. And we can kerb their enthusiasm by putting the first few down hard. The key is not to spend too much time on any one individual. The minimum, ideally. Which would be one blow, and then move on to the next. Elbows are better than hands, and kicking is better than both.’
‘OK.’
‘But I’ll talk to them first. It’s not like they don’t have a slight point.’
They opened the door and stepped out to the walkway and the bright noon light, and as Reacher expected they saw the four trucks drawn up tight, nose-in at the bottom of the concrete staircase, like suckerfish. Eight guys were leaning against their doors and their fenders and their load beds, patiently, like they had all the time in the world, which they did, because there was no way down from the second-floor walkway other than the concrete staircase. Reacher recognized the three guys from the night before, on the hill road, small, medium and large, the latter two looking more or less the same as they had before, and the small guy looking much better, like he was most of the way recovered from whatever binge had led to his accident. The other five were similar fellows, all hardscrabble types, the smallest of them a wiry guy all sinew and leathery skin, the largest somewhat bloated, by beer and fast food, probably. None of them was armed in any way. Reacher could see all sixteen hands, and all sixteen were empty. No guns, no knives, no wrenches, no chains.
Amateurs.
Reacher put his hands on the walkway’s rail, and he gazed out over the scene below, serenely, like a dictator in an old movie, ready to address a crowd.
He said, ‘We need to find a way of getting you guys home before you get hurt. You want to work with me on that?’
He had overheard a guy in a suit on a cell phone one time, who kept on asking,
But the guy from the half-ton did.
He said, ‘No one is here to work with you, boy. We’re here to kick your butt and take our car and our money back.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘We can go down that road, if you like. But there’s no reason why all of you should go to the hospital. You ever heard of Gallup?’
‘Who?’
‘It’s a polling organization. Like at election time. They tell you this guy is going to get fifty-one per cent of the vote, and this other guy is going to get forty-nine.’
‘I’ve heard of them.’
