Tripwire

confidence it put in his walk and his gaze redoubled the effect he had on people. The dynamics of the city.
    Fifty-five minutes into the hour he moved out of the shadows and stood on the corner, leaning back against the brick wall of the restaurant building, still waiting. He could hear the opera, just a faint breath of sound coming through the glass next to him. The traffic thumped and banged through potholes on the street. There was a bar on the opposite corner with an extractor roaring and steam drifting outward through the neon glare. It was cold and the people on the sidewalk were hurrying past with their faces ducked deep into scarves. He kept his hands in his pockets and leaned on one shoulder and watched the traffic flow coming toward him.
    The two guys came back right on time in a black Mercedes sedan. It parked a block away with one tire hard against the curb, and the lights went out and the two front doors opened in unison. The guys stepped out with their long coats flowing and reached back and opened the rear doors and pulled ball bats off the rear seat. They slipped the bats under their coats and slammed the doors and glanced around once and started moving. They had ten yards of sidewalk, then the cross street, then ten more yards. They moved easily. Big, confident guys, moving easily, striding long. Reacher pushed off the wall and met them as they stepped up onto his curb.
    “In the alley, guys,” he said.
    Up close, they were impressive enough. As a pair, they certainly looked the part. They were young, some way short of thirty. They were heavy, padded with that dense flesh, which isn’t quite pure muscle but that works nearly as well. Wide necks, silk ties, shirts and suits that didn’t come out of a catalog. The bats were upright under the left side of their coats, gripped around the meat of the wood with their left hands through their pocket linings.
    “Who the hell are you?” the right-hand guy said.
    Reacher glanced at him. The first guy to speak is the dominant half of any partnership, and in a one-on-two situation you put the dominant one down first.
    “The hell are you?” the guy said again.
    Reacher stepped to his left and turned a fraction, blocking the sidewalk, channeling them toward the alley.
    “Business manager,” he said. “You want to get paid, I’m the guy who can do it for you.”
    The guy paused. Then he nodded. “OK, but screw the alley. We’ll do it inside.”
    Reacher shook his head. “Not logical, my friend. We’re paying you to stay out of the restaurant, starting from now, right?”
    “You got the money?”
    “Sure,” Reacher said. “Two hundred bucks.”
    He stepped in front of them and walked into the alley. Steam was drifting up to meet him from the kitchen vents. It smelled of Italian food. There was trash and grit underfoot and the crunch of his steps echoed off the old brick. He stopped and turned and stood like an impatient man bemused by their reluctance to follow him. They were silhouetted against the red glare of traffic waiting at the light behind them. They looked at him and looked at each other and stepped forward shoulder to shoulder. Walked into the alley. They were happy enough. Big confident guys, bats under their coats, two-on-one. Reacher waited a beat and moved through the sharp diagonal division between the light and the shadow. Then he paused again. Stepped back like he wanted them to precede him. Like a courtesy. They shuffled forward. Came close.
    He hit the right-hand guy in the side of the head with his elbow. Lots of good biological reasons for doing that. Generally speaking, the human skull is harder than the human hand. A hand-to-skull impact, the hand gets damaged first. The elbow is better. And the side of the head is better than the front or the back. The human brain can withstand front-to-back displacement maybe ten times better than side-to-side displacement. Some kind of a complicated evolutionary reason. So it was the elbow, and the side of the head. It was a short, hard blow, well delivered, but the guy stayed upright on rubber knees for a long second. Then he let the bat go. It slid down inside his coat and hit the ground end-on with a loud wooden clonk. Then Reacher hit him again. Same elbow. Same side of the head. Same snap. The guy went down like a trapdoor had opened up under his feet.
    The second guy was almost on the ball. He got his right hand on the bat handle, then his left. He got it clear of his coat and