by Child, Lee
FORTY-EIGHT
REACHER PARKED IN the mouth of a cross street, and they gazed south together, at the blocks north of the Ventura Freeway, which were a bustling A–Z catalogue of American commercial activity, from medium size on down through small and all the way to super-tiny, with retail enterprises, and wholesale enterprises, and service enterprises, some of them durable, some of them wildly optimistic, some of them up-and-coming, some of them fading fast, some of them familiar and ubiquitous. A visitor from outer space would conclude that acrylic nails were just as important as eight-by-four boards.
Turner still had the map open, and she said, ‘He’s on Vineland Avenue, two blocks north of the freeway. So make a left on Burbank Boulevard, and then Vineland is a right, and then it’s a straight shot. No one knows this car, but we can’t afford to drive by more than two times.’
So Reacher set off again, and made the turns, and drove Vineland like anyone else, not slow and peering, not fast and aggressive, just another anonymous vehicle rolling through the sunny morning. Turner said, ‘He’s coming up, on the right side, next block. I see a parking lot out front.’
Which Reacher saw, too. But it was a shared lot, not the lawyer’s own. Because the right side of the block was all one long low building, with a shake roof and a covered walkway in front, with the exterior walls painted what Reacher thought of as a unique Valley shade of beige, like flesh-coloured make-up from the movies. The building was divided along its length, into six separate enterprises, including a wig shop, and a crystal shop, and a geriatric supplier, and a coffee shop, and a Se Habla Español tax preparer, with Candice Dayton’s lawyer more or less right in the centre of the row, between the magic crystals and the electric wheelchairs. The parking lot was about eight slots deep, and it ran the whole width of the building’s facade, serving all the stores together. Reacher guessed any customer was entitled to park in any spot.
The lot was about half full, with most of the cars at first glance entirely legitimate, most of them clean and bright under the relentless sun, some of them parked at bad angles, as if their drivers had ducked inside just long enough for a simple errand. Reacher had given much thought to what kind of a car two people could live in, and he had concluded that an old-fashioned wagon or a modern SUV would be the minimum requirement, with a fold-flat rear bench and enough unimpeded length between the front seats and the tailgate to fit a mattress. Black glass to the sides and the rear would be an advantage. An old Buick Roadmaster or a new Chevy Suburban would fit the bill, except that anyone planning to live in a new Chevy Suburban would surely see an advantage in selling it and buying an old Buick Roadmaster, and keeping the change. So mostly he scanned for old wagons, maybe dusty, maybe on soft tyres, settled somehow, as if parked for a long time.
But he saw no such vehicles. Most were entirely normal, and three or four of them were new enough and bland enough to be airport rentals, which was what Espin and the 75th MP would be using, and two or three of them were weird enough to be FBI seizures, reissued for use as unmarked stake-out cars. Shadows and the glare of the sun and window tints made it hard to be sure whether any were occupied, or not.
They drove on, same speed, same trajectory, and they got on the freeway again, because Reacher felt a sudden U-turn or other atypical choice of direction would stand out, and they drove around the same long slow rectangle, and they came down Lankershim for the second time, and they parked in the mouth of the same cross street again, feeling comfortably remote and invisible from the south.
‘Want to see it again?’ Turner asked.
‘Don’t need to,’ Reacher said.
‘So what next?’
‘They could be anywhere. We don’t know what they look like, or what car they’ve got. So there’s no point driving around. We need to get a precise location from the lawyer. If the lawyer even knows, day to day.’
‘Sure, but how?’
‘I could call, or I could get Edmonds to call for me, but the lawyer is going to say all correspondence should come to the office, and all meetings should be held at the office. He can’t afford to give her location to a party as involved as I’m supposed to be. He would have to assume any contact I had would end up either creepy or violent. Basic professional responsibility. He could get sued for millions of dollars.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to do what guys do when they have nothing better going on.’
‘Which is what?’
‘I’m going to call a hooker.’
They backed up and headed north again, and they found a hamburger restaurant, where they drank coffee and Reacher studied certain entries in a Yellow Pages borrowed from the owner, and then they got back on the road again, as far as a motel they saw next to one of the Burbank airport’s long-term parking lots. They didn’t check in. They stayed in the car, and Reacher dialled a number he had memorized. The call was answered by a woman with a foreign accent. She sounded middle-aged, and sleepy.
Reacher asked her, ‘Who’s your top-rated American girl?’
The foreign woman said, ‘Emily.’
‘How much?’
‘A thousand an hour.’
‘Is she available now?’
‘Of course.’
‘Does she take credit cards?’
‘Yes, but then she’s twelve hundred an hour.’
Reacher said nothing.
The foreign woman said, ‘She can be with you in less than thirty minutes, and she’s worth every penny. How would you like her to dress?’
‘Like a grade-school teacher,’ Reacher said. ‘About a year out of college.’
‘Girl next door? That’s always a popular look.’
Reacher gave his name as Pete Lozano, and he gave the name and the address of the motel behind him.
‘Is that next to the airport parking lot?’ the foreign woman asked.
‘Yes,’ Reacher said.
‘We use it a lot. Emily will have no trouble finding it.’
Reacher clicked off the call, and they got comfortable, and they waited, not talking, doing nothing at all but look ahead through the windshield.
After ten minutes Turner said, ‘You OK?’
Reacher said, ‘Not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m sitting here staring at fourteen-year-old girls. I feel like a pervert.’
‘Recognize any?’
‘Not yet.’
Altogether they waited more than thirty-five minutes, and then Reacher’s phone rang. Not the foreign woman calling back with an excuse for Emily’s lateness, but Captain Edmonds calling back with what she announced as front-page news. Reacher tilted the phone and Turner put her head close to listen. Edmonds said, ‘I got the full jacket on A.M. 3435. It came through five minutes ago. Not without a little hustle on my part, I might add.’
Reacher said, ‘And?’
‘No, really, you’re most welcome, major. Absolutely my pleasure. I don’t mind risking my entire career by entering in where JAG captains should fear to tread.’
‘OK, thank you. I should have said that first. I’m sorry.’
‘Some things you need to understand. We’ve been in Afghanistan more than ten years now, and in that context 3435 is a relatively low number. Currently we’re well over a hundred thousand. Which means the data on this man was created some time ago. About seven years ago, I think, as far as I can tell. And there have been no significant updates. Nothing beyond the routine minimum. Because this is a fairly ordinary guy. Boring, even. At first glance he’s a meaningless peasant.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Emal Gholam Zadran. He’s now forty-two years old, and he’s the youngest of five Zadran brothers, all of them still alive. He seems to be the black sheep of the family, widely regarded as disreputable. The elder brothers are all fine upstanding poppy growers, working the family farm, like their ancestors did for a thousand years before them, very traditional, small time and modest. But young Emal didn�
�t want to settle for that. He tried his hand at a number of things, and failed at them all. His brothers forgave him, and took him back, and as far as anyone knows he lives near them in the hills, does absolutely nothing productive, and keeps himself to himself.’
‘What was he written up for seven years ago?’
‘One of the things he tried out, and failed at.’
‘Which was?’
‘Nothing was proved, or we’d have shot him.’
‘What wasn’t proved?’
‘The story is he set up as an entrepreneur. He was buying hand grenades from the 10th Mountain Division and selling them to the Taliban.’
‘How much did he get for them?’
‘It doesn’t say.’
‘Not proved?’
‘They tried their best.’
‘Why didn’t they shoot him anyway?’
‘Reacher, you’re talking to an army lawyer here. Nothing was proved, and we’re the United States of America.’
‘Suppose I wasn’t talking to an army lawyer.’
‘Then I would say nothing was proved, and right then we were probably kissing Afghan butt and hoping they would set up a civilian government of their own at some point in the not-too-distant future, so we could get the hell out of there, and in that atmosphere shooting indigenous individuals against whom nothing had been proved, even by our own hair-trigger military justice system, would have been regarded as severely counterproductive. Otherwise I’m sure they would have shot him anyway.’
‘You’re pretty smart,’ Reacher said. ‘For an army lawyer.’
And then he clicked off, because he was watching a kid who had gotten out of a cab and was walking into the motel driveway. She was luminous. She was young and blonde, and fresh and energetic, and somehow earnest, as if she was determined to use all the many years ahead doing nothing but good in the world. She looked like a grade-school teacher, about a year out of college.
FORTY-NINE
THE KID WALKED past the motel office, and then she stopped, as if she didn’t know where to go. She had a name but no room number. Turner buzzed her window down and called out, ‘Are you Emily?’
Which was something she and Reacher had rehearsed. No question it was weird to be approached in a motel parking lot by a woman in a car, ahead of what was clearly going to be a bizarre threesome. But a similar approach by a man would have been weirder still. So Turner got to ask the question, which the kid answered by saying, ‘Yes, I’m Emily.’
Turner said, ‘We’re your clients.’
‘I’m sorry. They didn’t tell me. It’s more money for couples.’
‘You’ve probably heard this before, or not, possibly, but all we want to do is talk. We’ll give you two thousand dollars for an hour of your time. Clothes on throughout, all three of us.’
The kid came nearer, but not too close, and she lined herself up with the open window, and she stooped an inch, and she looked in and said, ‘What exactly is this about?’
Reacher said, ‘An acting job.’
They talked out in the open, to keep it unthreatening, Reacher and Turner leaning on the side of the car, with Emily completing the triangle four feet away, where she was free to turn and run. But she didn’t. She ran Lozano’s Amex through a slot in her iPhone, and as soon as she saw an authorization number she said, ‘I don’t do porn.’
Reacher said, ‘No porn.’
‘Then what kind of acting job?’
‘Are you an actor?’
‘I’m a call girl.’
‘Were you an actor first?’
‘I was an intending actor.’
‘Do you do role-play?’
‘I thought that’s what I was doing today. The naive young idealist, prepared very reluctantly to do whatever it takes to get extra funding for her school. Or possibly I want to borrow a lawnmower from one of the PTA dads. But normally it’s about interviewing for a job. How can I show I’m really committed to the company?’
‘In other words, you’re acting.’
‘All the time. Including now.’
‘I need you to go see a law firm receptionist and act your way into her good books.’ Reacher told her what he wanted. She showed no curiosity as to why. He said, ‘If there’s a choice, pick a motherly type. She’ll be sympathetic. This is about a struggling mother getting some help. Tell her Ms Dayton is a friend of your aunt, and she loaned you some money when you were in college, and it got you out of a hole, and now you can repay the favour. And you want to see her again anyway. Something like that. You can write your own script. But the receptionist is not supposed to give up the location. In fact she’s prohibited from doing so. So this is your Oscar moment.’
‘Who gets hurt here?’
‘No one gets hurt. The opposite.’
‘For two thousand dollars? I never heard of that before.’
‘If she’s for real, she gets helped. If she’s not for real, I don’t get hurt. It’s all good.’
Emily said, ‘I don’t know if I want to do it.’
‘You took our money.’
‘For an hour of my time. I’m happy to stand here and talk. Or we could get in the car. I’ll get naked if you like. That’s what usually happens.’
‘How about an extra five hundred in cash? As a tip. When you get back.’
‘How about seven hundred?’
‘Six.’
Emily said, ‘And the Oscar goes to … Emily.’
She wouldn’t let them drive her. Smart girl. Words were cheap. The long preamble could have been nothing but a hot-air fantasy, ahead of her unclothed body being found dead in a ditch three days later. So they gave her the address and twenty bucks and she caught a cab instead. They watched it out of sight, and then they turned back and got in the Range Rover and waited.
Turner said, ‘Man up, Reacher. A.M. 3435 is Emal Zadran, who has a documented history of buying and selling United States ordnance in the hills of the tribal areas. Whereas Peter Lozano and Ronald Baldacci have a documented history of being part of a company tasked to get that very same United States ordnance in and out of those very same hills. Is that deafening noise I hear the sound of the pieces falling into place?’
‘He was buying and selling U.S. ordnance in the hills seven years ago.’
‘After which he fell off the radar. By getting better at it. He moved right up to the top of the tree. Now he’s the top boy and the go-to guy. He’s making a fortune for somebody. He has to be. Why else would they go to such lengths to hide him?’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘I need your serious input here. Not mindless agreement. You’re my executive officer.’
‘Is that a promotion?’
‘Just new orders.’
‘I mean it, you could be right. The informer called him a tribal elder. Which strikes me as a status-based label. Like an honorific. And a black sheep who sits around all day doing nothing productive wouldn’t be thought of as a person of status. More likely the village idiot. Certainly he wouldn’t be honoured. So old Emal is doing something for somebody. And my only objection was having a team on standby in North Carolina, when all the action is in Afghanistan. But maybe there’s a legitimate role for them. Because if what you think is true, then there’s a lot of money coming home. Wagonloads, probably. A big, physical quantity. So yes, they need a team in North Carolina. Just not to handle weapons. To handle the money.’
Romeo called Juliet and said, ‘It’s getting worse.’
Juliet said, ‘How could it?’
‘They just used Lozano’s Amex. Two thousand dollars on an entertainer. Do you know what that means?’
‘They’re bored?’
‘There’s only one kind of entertainer who carries her own card reader, and that’s a prostitute. They’re taunting us. They’d be giving it to homeless people, if homeless people had card readers on their phones. Or phones at all, I suppose.’
‘Which they don’t.’
‘And Reacher’s lawye
r got Zadran’s full jacket, about an hour ago. So it’s out there now.’
‘You worry too much.’
‘It’s an obvious connection. It won’t take a genius to work it out.’
‘Or maybe you worry too soon,’ Juliet said. ‘You haven’t heard the good news yet.’
‘Is there any?’
‘Our boys just saw them drive past the lawyer’s office. In a twenty-year-old Range Rover, black. Hard to be sure, because it had dark windows, but the strong impression was there were two people inside, one large and one small.’
‘When was this?’
‘Less than an hour ago.’
‘Just once?’
‘So far. Reconnaissance, obviously.’
‘Is there much activity there?’
‘It’s a strip mall. It’s like a Fourth of July parade.’
‘Where did they go after they cruised by?’
‘They took the freeway. Probably looped around. They’re probably holed up a few blocks to the north.’
‘Anything we can do?’
‘Yes, I think there is. They were super-cautious around that office. They must know the MPs and the FBI are all over it. And there’s nothing to be learned there. Not for them. It would be the worst kind of malpractice. So I don’t think they’ll go near that office again. In which case guarding it is a waste of personnel. We can’t miss them there, because they won’t go there. Simple as that. Therefore our boys would be better used elsewhere. Possibly in a more proactive role. Just a suggestion.’
‘I agree,’ Romeo said. ‘Turn them loose.’
Reacher and Turner passed the time by trying to figure what kind of ordnance would sell for a lot of money and fit in the back of a pick-up truck. Which was frustrating, because the two categories tended to be mutually exclusive. MOABs were sinister finned pear-shaped cylinders thirty feet long and four feet wide. Drones were worth thirty-seven million dollars a pop, but had a wingspan greater than sixty feet. And without the joystick controls they were just lumps of dumb metal. And the joystick controls were all in Texas or Florida. Conversely rifles and handguns and hand grenades weren’t worth much. A Beretta M9 was about six hundred bucks in a store. Maybe four hundred used, on the street, or in the hills, less overhead and expenses, which meant it would take three or four hundred sales just to cover the hundred grand risked in the Cayman Islands. And even the army would notice if it was losing handguns by the thousand.
