Running Blind (The Visitor)

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.”
    “You INS?” the guy asked.
    Reacher smiled. “Mislaid your green cards?”
    The brothers said nothing.
    “I’m not INS,” Reacher said. “I told you, I’m not anything. I’m nobody. Just a guy who wants an answer. You tell me the answer, you can stay here as long as you want, enjoy the benefits of American civilization. But I’m getting impatient. Those shoes aren’t going to do it forever.”
    “Shoes?”
    “I don’t want to hit a guy wearing slippers like that.”
    There was silence.
    “New Jersey,” the older brother said. “Through the Lincoln Tunnel, there’s a roadhouse set back where Route 3 meets the turnpike.”
    “What’s it called?”
    “I don’t know,” the guy said. “Somebody’s Bar, is all I know. Mac something, like Irish.”
    “Who did you see in there?”
    “Guy called Bob.”
    “Bob what?”
    “Bob, I don’t know. We didn’t exchange business cards or anything. Petrosian just told us Bob.”
    “A soldier?”
    “I guess. I mean, he wasn’t in uniform or nothing. But he had real short hair.”
    “How does it go down?”
    “You go in the bar, you find him, you give him the cash, he takes you in the parking lot and gives you the stuff out of the trunk of his car.”
    "A Cadillac,” the other guy said. "An old DeVille, some dark color.”
    “How many times?”
    “Three.”
    “What stuff?”
    “Berettas. Twelve each trip.”
    “What time of day?”
    “Evening time, around eight o’clock.”
    “You have to call him ahead?”
    The younger brother shook his head.
    “He’s always in there by eight o’clock,” he said. “That’s what Petrosian told us.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “So what does Bob look like?” he asked.
    “Like you,” the older brother said. “Big and mean.”

23
    THE LAW PROVIDES that a narcotics conviction can be accompanied by confiscation of assets, which means that the DEA in New York City ends up with more automobiles than it can possibly ever need, so it loans out the surplus to other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. The FBI uses those vehicles when it needs some anonymous transport that doesn’t look like government-issue. Or when it needs to preserve some respectable distance between itself and some unspecified activity taking place. Therefore James Cozo withdrew the Bureau’s sedan and the services of its driver and tossed Harper the keys to a black one-year-old Nissan Maxima currently parked in the back row of the underground lot.
    “Have fun,” he said again.
    Harper drove. It was the first time she had driven in New York City, and she was nervous about it. She threaded around a couple of blocks and headed south on Fifth and motored slowly, with the taxis plunging and darting and honking around her.
    “OK, what now?” she said.
    Now we waste some time , Reacher thought.
    “Bob’s not around until eight,” he said. “We’ve got the whole afternoon to kill.”
    “I feel like we should be doing something.”
    “No rush,” Reacher said. “We’ve got three weeks.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “First we eat,” Reacher said. “I missed breakfast.”
    YOU’RE HAPPY TO miss