Bad Luck and Trouble

by Lee Child

  Reacher pulled to the curb. There was a wide alley behind the wax museum. Really a vacant half-lot, gravel surface, unfenced, colonized by cars into a turning loop, recolonized by dealers into a drive-through facility. The operation was organized in the conventional triangulated manner. A buyer would drive in and slow up. A kid not more than eleven years old would approach. The driver would place his order and hand over his cash. The kid would run the cash to a bag man and then continue to a stash man and pick up the product. Meanwhile the driver would be crawling through a slow half-circle, ready to meet the kid again on the other side of the lot. Whereupon the transfer would be made and the driver would leave. The kid would run back to where he began and wait to start all over again.

  A smart system. Complete separation of product and money, easy instant dispersal in three different directions if necessary, and no one was seen with anything except someone way too young to be prosecuted. The stash would be refreshed often, leaving the stash man holding the bare minimum at any one time. The cash bag would be emptied frequently, reducing potential losses and the bag man’s vulnerability.

  A smart system.

  A system Reacher had seen before.

  A system he had exploited before.

  The bag man was literally a bag man. He was sitting on a concrete block in the middle of the lot with a black vinyl duffel at his feet. He was wearing sunglasses and would be armed with whatever was the handgun of choice that week.

  Reacher waited.

  A black Mercedes ML slowed and pulled into the lot. A pretty SUV, tinted windows, California vanity plates spelling out an acronym Reacher didn’t understand. It paused at the entry and the kid ran up. His head barely reached the driver’s window. But his hand did. It snaked up and came back down with a folded wad. The Mercedes eased forward and the kid ran over to the bag man. The wad went into the bag and the kid headed for the stash man. The Mercedes was beginning to turn its slow half-circle.

  Reacher put Dixon’s Ford in gear. Checked north, checked south. Hit the gas and turned the wheel and slammed into the lot. Ignored the worn circular path and aimed straight for the center of the space.

  Straight for the bag man, accelerating, front wheels spraying gravel.

  The bag man froze.

  Ten feet before hitting him head-on Reacher did three things. He twitched the wheel. He stamped on the brake. And he opened his door. The car slewed right and the front wheels washed into the loose stones and the door swung out through a moving arc and caught the guy like a full-on punch. It smacked him solidly from his waist up to his face. He went over backward and the car stopped dead and Reacher leaned down and grabbed the vinyl duffel left-handed from the floor. Pitched it into the passenger seat and hit the gas and slammed his door shut and pulled a tight U-turn inside the slow Mercedes. Roared back out of the lot and bounced over the curb onto Highland. In the mirror he saw dust in the air and confusion and the bag man flat on his back and two guys running. Ten yards later he was behind the bulk of the wax museum. Then he was through the light, back on Hollywood Boulevard.

  Twelve seconds, beginning to end.

  No reaction. No gunshots. No pursuit.

  Nor would there be any, Reacher guessed. They would have clocked the plain-vanilla Ford and the appalling shirt and the short hair and put it down to an LAPD freelance looking to supplement his pension fund. The cost of doing business. And the Mercedes driver couldn’t afford to say a word to anyone.

  Yeah baby, you do not mess with the special investigators.

  Reacher slowed and caught his breath and made a right and drove a complete counterclockwise scenic circle. Nichols Canyon Road, Woodrow Wilson Drive, and back on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Nobody was behind him. He stopped on a deserted hairpin up high and emptied the bag and ditched it on the shoulder. Then he counted the money. Close to nine hundred dollars, mostly in twenties and tens. Enough for dinner. Even with Norwegian water. And a tip.

  He got out and checked the car. The driver’s door was a little dented, right in the center. The bag man’s face. No blood. He got back in and buckled up. Ten minutes later he was in the Chateau Marmont’s lobby, sitting in a faded velvet armchair, waiting for the others.

  Twelve hundred miles northeast of the Chateau Marmont, the dark-haired forty-year-old calling himself Alan Mason was riding the underground train from his arrival gate to the Denver airport’s main terminal. He was alone in the car, sitting down, tired, but smiling all the same at the crazy bursts of jug-band music that preceded the station announcements. He figured they had been specified by a psychologist to reduce travel stress. In which case they were working. He felt fine. A lot more relaxed than he had any right to be.

  28

  Dinner cost Reacher way less than nine hundred bucks. Either out of taste or preference or respect for the context or deference to his economic predicament, the others opted for a noisy hamburger barn on Sunset, just east of the Mondrian Hotel. There was no Norwegian water on offer. Just tap and domestic beer and thick juicy patties and pickles and loud vintage rhythm and blues. Reacher looked right at home, in a fifties kind of a way. The others looked a little out of place. They were at a round table set for four. Conversation stopped and started as the pleasure of being among old friends was overtaken by memories of the others who were missing. Reacher mostly listened. The dynamic of the round table meant that no one person was dominant. The center of attention bounced back and forth randomly. After thirty minutes of reminiscence and catch-up the talk turned back to Franz.

  O’Donnell said, “Start at the very beginning. If we believe his wife, he quit everything except routine database mining more than four years ago. So why would he suddenly launch into something this serious?”

  Dixon said, “Because someone asked him to.”

  “Exactly,” O’Donnell said. “This thing starts with his client. So who was it?”

  “Could have been anybody.”

  “No,” O’Donnell said. “It was someone special. He went the extra mile here. He broke a four-year habit for this guy. Kind of broke faith with his wife and son, too.”

  Neagley said, “It could have been a big payer.”

  “Or someone he was obligated to somehow,” Dixon said.

  Neagley said, “Or it might have looked routine at the get-go. Maybe he had no idea where it was leading. Maybe the client didn’t, either.”

  Reacher listened. It had to be someone special. Someone he was obligated to somehow. He watched as O’Donnell took the floor, then Dixon, then Neagley. The vector bounced around between them and traced a heavy triangle in the air. Something stirred in the back of his mind. Something Dixon had said, hours ago, in the car leaving LAX. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t get it. He spoke up and the triangle changed to a square, to include him.

  “We should ask Angela,” he said. “If he had some kind of a longstanding big-deal client, he might have mentioned him at home.”

  “I’d like to meet Charlie,” O’Donnell said.

  “We’ll go tomorrow,” Reacher said. “Unless the deputies come for me. In which case you can go on ahead without me.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Dixon said. “Maybe you gave the guy a concussion. Maybe he doesn’t remember who he is, let alone who you are.”

  They walked back to the hotel and split up in the lobby. No appetite for a nightcap. Just an unspoken agreement to get some sleep and start work again bright and early. Reacher and O’Donnell headed up together. Didn’t talk much. Reacher was asleep five seconds after his head hit the pillow.

  He woke up again at seven o’clock in the morning. Early sun was coming in the window. David O’Donnell was coming in the door. In a hurry. Fully dressed, a newspaper under his arm, cardboard cups of coffee in both hands.

  “I went for a walk,” he said.

  “And?”

  “You’re in trouble,” he said. “I think.”

  “Who?”

  “That deputy. He’s parked a hundred yards from here.” />
  “The same guy?”

  “The same guy and the same car. He’s got a metal splint on his face and a garbage bag taped across his window.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Just sitting there. Like he’s waiting.”

  29

  They ordered breakfast in Dixon’s room. First rule, learned a long time ago: Eat when you can, because you never know when the next chance will come. Especially when you’re about to disappear into the system. Reacher shoveled eggs and bacon and toast down his throat and followed it with plenty of coffee. He was calm, but frustrated.

  “I should have stayed in Portland,” he said. “I might as well have.”

  “How did they find us so fast?” Dixon asked.

  “Computers,” Neagley said. “Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. They can search hotel registers anytime they want now. This is a police state.”

  “We are the police,” O’Donnell said.

  “We used to be.”

  “I wish we still were. You’d hardly have to break a sweat anymore.”

  “You guys get going,” Reacher said. “I don’t want you to get snarled up in this. We can’t spare the time. So don’t let the deputy see you leave. Go visit with Angela Franz. Chase the client. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  He drained the last of his coffee and headed back to his room. Put his folding toothbrush in his pocket and hid his passport and his ATM card and seven hundred of his remaining eight hundred dollars in O’Donnell’s suit carrier. Because certain things can go missing, after an arrest. Then he took the elevator down to the lobby. Just sat in an armchair and waited. No need to turn the whole thing into a big drama, running up and down hotel corridors. Because, second rule, learned from a lifetime of bad luck and trouble: Maintain a little dignity.

  He waited.

  Thirty minutes. Sixty. The lobby had three morning papers, and he read them all. Every word. Sports, features, editorials, national, international. And business. There was a story about Homeland Security’s financial impact on the private sector. It quoted the same seven-billion-dollar figure that Neagley had mentioned. A lot of money. Surpassed only, the article said, by the bonanza for the defense contractors. The Pentagon still had more cash than anyone else, and it was still spreading it around like crazy.

  Ninety minutes.

  Nothing happened.

  At the two-hour point Reacher got up and put the papers back on the rack. Stepped to the door and looked outside. Bright sun, blue sky, not much smog. A light wind tossing exotic trees. Waxed cars rolling past, slow and glittering. A fine day. The twenty-fourth day Calvin Franz hadn’t been around to see. Nearly four whole weeks. Same for Tony Swan and Jorge Sanchez and Manuel Orozco, presumably.

  There are dead men walking, as of right now. You don’t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.

  Reacher stepped outside. Stood for a second, exposed, like he was expecting sniper fire. Certainly there had been time to get whole SWAT teams into position. But the sidewalk was quiet. No parked vehicles. No innocuous florists’ trucks. No bogus telephone linemen. No surveillance. He turned left on Sunset. Left again on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Walked slow and kept close to hedges and plantings. Turned left again on the winding canyon road that ran behind the hotel.

  The tan Crown Vic was dead ahead.

  It was parked at the far curb, alone, isolated, a hundred yards away. Still, inert, engine off. Like O’Donnell had said, its broken front passenger window was taped over with a black garbage bag, pulled taut. The driver was in the seat. Just sitting there. Not moving, except for regular turns of his head. Rearview mirror, straight ahead, door mirror. The guy had a real rhythm going. Hypnotic. Rearview mirror, straight ahead, door mirror. Reacher caught a flash of an aluminum splint fixed across his nose.

  The car looked low and cold, like it hadn’t been run for many hours.

  The guy was on his own, just watching and waiting.

  But for what?

  Reacher turned around and backtracked the way he had come. Made it back to the lobby and back to his chair. Sat down again, with the seed of a germ of a new theory in his mind.

  His wife called me, Neagley had said.

  What did she want you to do?

  Nothing, Neagley had said. She was just telling me.

  Just telling me.

  And then: Charlie swinging on the door handle. Reacher had asked: Is it OK to be opening the door all by yourself? And the little boy had said: Yes, it’s OK.

  And then: Charlie, you should go out and play.

  And then: I think there’s something you’re not telling us.

  The cost of doing business.

  Reacher sat in the Chateau Marmont’s velvet lobby armchair, thinking, waiting to be proved right or wrong by whoever came through the street door first, his old unit or a bunch of fired-up LA County deputies.

  30

  His old unit came through the door first. What was left of it, anyway. The remnant. O’Donnell and Neagley and Dixon, all of them fast and anxious. They stopped dead in surprise when they saw him and he raised a hand in greeting.

  “You’re still here,” O’Donnell said.

  “No, I’m an optical illusion.”

  “Outstanding.”

  “What did Angela say?”

  “Nothing. She doesn’t know anything about his clients.”

  “How was she?”

  “Like a woman whose husband just died.”

  “What did you think of Charlie?”

  “Nice kid. Like his dad. Franz lives on, in a way.”

  Dixon said, “Why are you still here?”

  “That’s a very good question,” Reacher said.

  “What’s the answer?”

  “Is the deputy still out there?”

  Dixon nodded. “We saw him from the end of the street.”

  “Let’s go upstairs.”

  They used the room that Reacher and O’Donnell were in. It was a little bigger than Dixon’s, because it was a double. The first thing Reacher did was retrieve his money and his passport and his ATM card from O’Donnell’s bag.

  O’Donnell said, “Looks like you think you’re sticking around.”

  “I think I am,” Reacher said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Charlie opened the door all by himself.”

  “Which means?”

  “Seems to me that Angela is a pretty good mom. Normal, at worst. Charlie was clean, well fed, well dressed, well balanced, well cared for, well looked after. So we can conclude that Angela is doing a conscientious job with the parenting thing. Yet she let the kid open the door to a couple of complete strangers.”

  Dixon said, “Her husband was just killed. Maybe she was distracted.”

  “More likely the opposite. Her husband was killed more than three weeks ago. My guess is she’s over whatever initial reaction she had. Now she’s clinging to Charlie more than ever because he’s