Running Blind (The Visitor)

faced with brown boards and there was a green neon shamrock in every window. Its parking lot was badly lit and three-quarters empty. Reacher put the Maxima at a casual angle across two spaces near the door. Slid out and looked around. The air was cold. He turned a full circle in the dark, scanning the lot against the lights from the street.
    "No Cadillac DeVille,” he said. "He’s not here yet.”
    Harper looked at the door, cautiously.
    “We’re a little early,” she said. “I guess we’ll wait.”
    “You can wait out here,” he said. “If you prefer.”
    She shook her head.
    “I’ve been in worse places,” she said.
    It was hard for Reacher to imagine where and when. The outer door led to a six-by-six lobby with a cigarette machine and a sisal mat worn smooth and greasy with use. The inner door led to a low dark space full of the stink of beer fumes and smoke. There was no ventilation running. The green shamrocks in the windows shone inward as well as outward and gave the place a pale ghostly glare. The walls were dark boards, dulled and sticky with fifty years of cigarettes. The bar was a long wooden structure with halved barrels stuck to the front. There were tall barstools with red vinyl seats and lower versions of the same thing scattered around the room near tables built of lacquered barrels with plywood circles nailed to their tops. The plywood was rubbed smooth and dirty from thousands of wrists and hands.
    There was a bartender behind the bar and eight customers in the body of the room. All of them had glasses of beer set on the plywood in front of them. All of them were men. All of them were staring at the new-comers. None of them was a soldier. They were all wrong for the military. Some were too old, some were too soft, some had long dirty hair. Just ordinary workingmen. Or maybe unemployed. But they were all hostile. They were silent, like they had just stopped talking in the middle of low muttered sentences. They were staring, like they were trying to intimidate.
    Reacher swept his gaze over all of them, pausing on each face, long enough to let them know he wasn’t impressed, and short enough to stop them thinking he was in any way interested. Then he stepped to the bar and rolled a stool out for Harper.
    “What’s on draft?” he asked the bartender.
    The guy was wearing an unwashed dress shirt with no collar. Pleats all the way down the front. He had a dish towel squared over his shoulder. He was maybe fifty, gray-faced, paunchy. He didn’t answer.
    “What have you got?” Reacher asked again.
    No reply.
    “Hey, are you deaf?” Harper called to the guy.
    She was half on and half off the stool, one foot on the floor, the other on the rung. Her jacket was draped open and she was twisting around from the waist. Her hair was loose down her back.
    “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “You give us beer, we give you money, take it from there. Maybe you could turn it into a business, you know, call it running a saloon.”
    The guy turned to her.
    “Haven’t seen you in here before,” he said.
    Harper smiled. “No, we’re new customers. That’s what it’s all about, expanding your customer base, right? Do it well enough, and you’ll be the barroom king of the Garden State, no time at all.”
    “What do you want?” the guy said.
    “Two beers,” Reacher said.
    “Apart from that?”
    “Well, we’re already enjoying the ambiance and the friendly welcome.”
    "People like you don’t come in a place like mine without wanting something.”
    “We’re waiting for Bob,” Harper said.
    “Bob who?”
    “Bob with real short hair and an old Cadillac DeVille, ” Reacher said. “Bob from the Army, comes in here eight o’clock every night.”
    “You’re waiting for him?”
    “Yes, we’re waiting for him,” Harper said.
    The guy smiled. Yellow teeth, some of them missing.
    “Well, you’ve got a long wait, then,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “Buy a drink, and I’ll tell you.”
    “We’ve been trying to buy a drink for the last five minutes,” Reacher said.
    “What do you want?”
    “Two beers,” Reacher said. “Whatever’s on tap.”
    “Bud or Bud Light.”
    “One of each, OK?”
    The guy took two glasses down from an overhead rack and filled them. The room was still silent. Reacher could feel eight pairs of eyes on his back. The guy placed the beers on the bar. There was an inch of soapy foam on the top of each of them. The guy peeled two cocktail napkins from a stack