Bad Luck and Trouble

pollution.
    “I should buy a hat,” he said.
    “You should buy a better shirt,” O’Donnell said. “You can afford one now.”
    “Maybe I will.”
    They saw a store they had passed on the way to Tower Records. It was some kind of a popular chain. It had an artfully pale and un-crowded window, but it wasn’t expensive. It sold cotton stuff, jeans, chinos, shirts, and T-shirts. And ball caps. They were brand new but looked like they had been worn and washed a thousand times already. Reacher picked one out, blue, no writing on it. He never bought anything with writing on it. He had spent too long in uniform. Name tapes and badges and alphabet soup all over him for thirteen long years.
    He loosened the strap at the back of the cap and tried it on.
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    O’Donnell said, “Find a mirror.”
    “Doesn’t matter what I see in a mirror. You’re the one laughing at how I look.”
    “It’s a nice hat.”
    Reacher kept it on and moved across the store to a low table piled high with T-shirts. In the center of the table was a mannequin torso wearing two of them, one under the other, pale green and dark green. The underneath shirt showed at the hem and the sleeves and the collar. Together the two layers were reassuringly thick and hefty.
    Reacher asked, “What do you think?”
    “It’s a look,” O’Donnell said.
    “Do they need to be different sizes?”
    “Probably not.”
    Reacher picked a light blue and a dark blue, both XXLs. He took off the hat and carried the three items to the register. Refused a bag and bit off the tags and stripped off his bowling shirt right there in the middle of the store. Stood and waited, naked to the waist in the chill of the air conditioning.
    “Got a trash can?” he asked.
    The girl behind the counter bent down and came back with a plastic item with a liner. Reacher tossed his old shirt in and put his new shirts on, one after the other. Tugged them around and rolled his shoulders to get them comfortable and jammed the cap on his head. Then he headed back to the street. Turned east.
    O’Donnell asked, “What are you running from?”
    “I’m not running from anything.”
    “You could have kept the old shirt.”
    “Slippery slope,” Reacher said. “I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants. Then I’d need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.”
    “People do that.”
    “Not me.”
    “So like I said, what are you running from?”
    “From being like people, I guess.”
    “I’m like people. I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan. I fill out forms.”
    “Whatever works for you.”
    “Do you think I’m ordinary?”
    Reacher nodded. “In that respect.”
    “Not everyone can be like you.”
    “That’s ass-backward. The fact is, a few of us can’t be like you.”
    “You want to be?”
    “It’s not about wanting. It just can’t be done.”
    “Why not?”
    “OK, I’m running.”
    “From what? Being like me?”
    “From being different than I used to be.”
    “We’re all different than we used to be.”
    “We don’t all have to like it.”
    “I don’t like it,” O’Donnell said. “But I deal with it.”
    Reacher nodded. “You’re doing great, Dave. I mean it. It’s me that I worry about. I’ve been looking at you and Neagley and Karla and feeling like a loser.”
    “Really?”
    “Look at me.”
    “All that we’ve got that you don’t is suitcases.”
    “But what have I got that you don’t?”
    O’Donnell didn’t answer. They turned north on Vine, middle of the afternoon in America’s second-largest city, and saw two guys with pistols in their hands jumping out of a moving car.

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