Without Fail

the storefronts were churches, also closed. There were auto body shops nearer the railroad tracks, all shuttered and still. There was a pawnshop with a very old guy outside washing the windows. He was the only thing moving on the street. His store was tall and narrow and had concertina barriers inside the glass. The display space was crammed with junk of every description. There were clocks, coats, musical instruments, alarm radios, hats, record players, car stereos, binoculars, strings of Christmas lights. There was writing on the windows, offering to buy just about any article ever manufactured. If it didn’t grow in the ground or move by itself, this guy would give you money for it. He also offered services. He would cash checks, appraise jewelry, repair watches. There was a tray of watches on view. They were mostly old-fashioned wind-up items, with bulging crystals and big square luminescent figures and sculpted hands. Reacher glanced again at the sign: Watches Repaired . Then he glanced again at the old guy. He was up to his elbows in soap suds.
    “You fix watches?” he asked.
    “What have you got?” the old guy said. He had an accent. Russian, probably.
    “A question,” Reacher said.
    “I thought you had a watch to fix. That was my business, originally. Before quartz.”
    “My watch is fine,” Reacher said. “Sorry.”
    He pulled back his cuff to check the time. Quarter past eleven.
    “Let me see that,” the old guy said.
    Reacher extended his wrist.
    “Bulova,” the old guy said. “American military issue before the Gulf War. A good watch. You buy it from a soldier?”
    “No, I was a soldier.”
    The old guy nodded. “So was I. In the Red Army. What’s the question?”
    “You ever heard of squalene?”
    “It’s a lubricant.”
    “You use it?”
    “Time to time. I don’t fix so many watches now. Not since quartz.”
    “Where do you get it?”
    “Are you kidding?”
    “No,” Reacher said. “I’m asking a question.”
    “You want to know where I get my squalene?”
    “That’s what questions are for. They seek to elicit information.”
    The old guy smiled. “I carry it around with me.”
    “Where?”
    “You’re looking at it.”
    “Am I?”
    The old guy nodded. “And I’m looking at yours.”
    “My what?”
    “Your supply of squalene.”
    “I haven’t got any squalene,” Reacher said. “It comes from sharks’ livers. Long time since I was next to a shark.”
    The old man shook his head. “You see, the Soviet system was very frequently criticized, and believe me I’ve always been happy to tell the truth about it. But at least we had education. Especially in the natural sciences.”
    “C-thirty H-fifty,” Reacher said. “It’s an acyclic hydrocarbon. Which when hydrogenated becomes squalane with an a .”
    “You understand any of that?”
    “No,” Reacher said. “Not really.”
    “Squalene is an oil,” the old guy said. “It occurs naturally in only two places in the known biosphere. One is inside a shark’s liver. The other is as a sebaceous product on the skin around the human nose.”
    Reacher touched his nose. “Same stuff? Sharks’ livers and people’s noses?”
    The old guy nodded. “Identical molecular structure. So if I need squalene to lubricate a watch, I just dab some off on my fingertip. Like this.”
    He wiped his wet hand on his pant leg and extended a finger and rubbed it down where his nose joined his face. Then he held up the fingertip for inspection.
    “Put that on the gear wheel and you’re OK,” he said.
    “I see,” Reacher said.
    “You want to sell the Bulova?”
    Reacher shook his head.
    “Sentimental value,” he said.
    “From the Army?” the old guy said. “You’re nekulturniy .”
    He turned back to his task and Reacher walked on.
    “Happy Thanksgiving,” Reacher called. There was no reply. He met Neagley a block from the shelter. She was walking in from the opposite direction. She turned around and walked back with him, keeping her customary distance from his shoulder.
    “Beautiful day,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “How would you do it?”
    “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Not here. Not in Washington D.C. This is their backyard. I’d wait for a better chance someplace else.”
    “Me too,” she said. “But they missed in Bismarck. Wall Street in ten days is no good to them. Then they’re deep into December, and the next thing is more holidays and then the inauguration. So