Part 1 (2/2)
He turned back to wait.
Customers turned to look at him, one after the other. They appraised him quite openly and then looked away. The waitress made another slow circuit of the room, looking everywhere except at him. He stood still, running the situation through a mental database and trying to understand it. Then he lost patience with it and stepped past the sign and moved into the room and sat down alone at a table for four. He sc.r.a.ped his chair in and made himself comfortable. The waitress watched him do it, and then she headed for the kitchen.
She didn't come out again.
Reacher sat and waited. The room was silent. No talking. No sounds at all, except for the quiet metallic clash of silverware on plates and the smack of people chewing and the ceramic click of cups being lowered carefully into saucers and the wooden creak of chair legs under s.h.i.+fting bodies. Those tiny noises rose up and echoed around the vast tiled s.p.a.ce until they seemed overwhelmingly loud.
Nothing happened for close to ten minutes.
Then an old crew-cab pick-up truck slid to a stop on the curb outside the door. There was a second's pause and four guys climbed out and stood together on the sidewalk outside the restaurant's door. They grouped themselves into a tight little formation and paused another beat and came inside. They paused again and scanned the room and found their target. They headed straight for Reacher's table. Three of them sat down in the empty chairs and the fourth stood at the head of the table, blocking Reacher's exit.
4
The four guys were each a useful size. The shortest was probably an inch under six feet and the lightest was maybe an ounce over two hundred pounds. They all had walnut knuckles and thick wrists and knotted forearms. Two of them had broken noses and none of them had all their teeth. They all looked pale and vaguely unhealthy. They were all grimy, with ingrained gray dirt in the folds of their skin that glittered and shone like metal. They were all dressed in canvas work s.h.i.+rts with their sleeves rolled to their elbows. They were all somewhere between thirty and forty. And they all looked like trouble.
”I don't want company,” Reacher said. ”I prefer to eat alone.”
The guy standing at the head of the table was the biggest of the four, by maybe an inch and ten pounds. He said, ”You're not going to eat at all.”
Reacher said, ”I'm not?”
”Not here, anyway.”
”I heard this was the only show in town.”
”It is.”
”Well, then.”
”You need to get going.”
”Going?”
”Out of here.”
”Out of where?”
”Out of this restaurant.”
”You want to tell me why?”
”We don't like strangers.”
”Me either,” Reacher said. ”But I need to eat somewhere. Otherwise I'll get all wasted and skinny like you four.”
”Funny man.”
”Just calling it like it is,” Reacher said. He put his forearms on the table. He had thirty pounds and three inches on the big guy, and more than that on the other three. And he was willing to bet he had a little more experience and a little less inhibition than any one of them. Or than all of them put together. But ultimately, if it came to it, it was going to be his two hundred and fifty pounds against their c.u.mulative nine hundred. Not great odds. But Reacher hated turning back.
The guy who was standing said, ”We don't want you here.”
Reacher said, ”You're confusing me with someone who gives a s.h.i.+t what you want.”
”You won't get served in here.”
”You could order for me.”
”And then what?”
”Then I could eat your lunch.”
”Funny man,” the guy said again. ”You need to leave now.”
”Why?”
”Just leave now.”
Reacher asked, ”You guys got names?”
”Not for you to know. And you need to leave.”
”You want me to leave, I'll need to hear it from the owner. Not from you.”
”We can arrange that.” The guy who was standing nodded to one of the guys in the seats, who sc.r.a.ped his chair back and got up and headed for the kitchen. A long minute later he came back out with a man in a stained ap.r.o.n. The man in the ap.r.o.n was wiping his hands on a dish towel and didn't look particularly worried or perturbed. He walked up to Reacher's table and said, ”I want you to leave my restaurant.”
”Why?” Reacher asked.
”I don't need to explain myself.”
”You the owner?”
”Yes, I am.”
Reacher said, ”I'll leave when I've had a cup of coffee.”
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