Tripwire

by Child, Lee

  “I’m management,” Reacher said. “I’m refusing you admission.”

  The guy glanced between the sign and Reacher’s face.

  “You want a translation?” Reacher asked him. “Words of one syllable? It means I’m the boss and you can’t come in.”

  “Save it, Tarzan,” the guy said.

  Reacher let him get level, shoulder to shoulder on his way past. Then he raised his left hand and caught the guy’s elbow. He straightened the joint with his palm and dug his fingers into the soft nerves at the bottom of the guy’s tricep. It’s like getting a continuous pounding on the funny bone. The guy was jumping around like he was getting flooded with electricity.

  “Downstairs,” Reacher said softly.

  The other guy was busy calculating the odds. Reacher saw him doing it and figured full and fair disclosure was called for. He held his right hand up, eye level, to confirm it was free and ready for activity. It was a huge hand, brown, callused from the shovel handle, and the guy got the message. He shrugged and started down the stairs. Reacher straight-armed his pal after him.

  “We’ll see you again,” the guy said.

  “Bring all your friends,” Reacher called down. “Three bucks each to get in.”

  He started back into the room. The dancer called Crystal was standing right there behind him.

  “What did they want?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Looking for somebody.”

  “Somebody called Reacher?”

  He nodded.

  “Second time today,” she said. “There was an old guy in here before. He paid the three bucks. You want to go after them? Check them out?”

  He hesitated. She swept his shirt off the barstool and handed it to him.

  “Go for it,” she said. “We’re OK in here for a spell. Quiet night.”

  He took the shirt. Pulled the sleeves right side out.

  “Thanks, Crystal, he said.”

  He put the shirt on and buttoned it. Headed for the stairs.

  “You’re welcome, Reacher,” she called after him.

  He spun around, but she was already walking back toward the stage. He looked blankly at the desk girl and headed down to the street.

  KEY WEST AT eleven in the evening is about as lively as it gets. Some people are halfway through their night, others are just starting out. Duval is the main street, running the length of the island east to west, bathed in light and noise. Reacher wasn’t worried about the guys waiting for him on Duval. Too crowded. If they had revenge on their minds, they’d pick a quieter location. Of which there was a fair choice. Off Duval, especially to the north, it gets quiet quickly. The town is miniature. The blocks are tiny. A short stroll takes you twenty blocks up into what Reacher thought of as the suburbs, where he dug pools into the tiny yards behind the small houses. The street lighting gets haphazard and the bar noise fades into the heavy buzz of nighttime insects. The smell of beer and smoke is replaced by the heavy stink of tropical plants blooming and rotting in the gardens.

  He walked a sort of spiral through the darkness. Nobody around. He walked in the middle of the road. Anybody hiding in a doorway, he wanted to give them ten or fifteen feet of open space to cover. He wasn’t worried about getting shot at. The guys had no guns. Their suits proved it. Too tight to conceal weapons. And the suits meant they’d come south in a hurry. Flown down. No easy way to get on a plane with a gun in your pocket.

  He gave it up after a mile or so. A tiny town, but still big enough for a couple of guys to lose themselves in. He turned left along the edge of the graveyard and headed back toward the noise. There was a guy on the sidewalk against the chain-link fence. Sprawled out and inert. Not an unusual sight in Key West, but there was something wrong. And something familiar. The wrong thing was the guy’s arm. It was trapped under his body. The shoulder nerves would be shrieking hard enough to cut through however drunk or stoned the guy was. The familiar thing was the pale gleam of an old beige jacket. The top half of the guy was light, the bottom half was dark. Beige jacket, gray pants. Reacher paused and glanced around. Stepped near. Crouched down.

  It was Costello. His face was pounded to pulp. Masked in blood. There were crusty brown rivulets all over the triangle of blue-white city skin showing through at the neck of his shirt. Reacher felt for the pulse behind the ear. Nothing. He touched the skin with the back of his hand. Cool. No rigor, but then it was a hot night. The guy was dead maybe an hour.

  He checked inside the jacket. The overloaded wallet was gone. Then he saw the hands. The fingertips had been sliced off. All ten of them. Quick efficient angled cuts, with something neat and sharp. Not a scalpel. A broader blade. Maybe a linoleum knife.

  2

  “’IT’S MY FAULT,“ Reacher said.

  Crystal shook her head.

  “You didn’t kill the guy,” she said.

  Then she looked up at him, sharply. “Did you?”

  “I got him killed,” Reacher said. “Is there a difference?”

  The bar had closed at one o’clock and they were side by side on two chairs next to the empty stage. The lights were off and there was no music. No sound at all, except the hum of the air-conditioning running at quarter speed, sucking the stale smoke and sweat out into the still, night air of the Keys.

  “I should have told him,” Reacher said. “I should have just told him sure, I’m Jack Reacher. Then he’d have told me whatever he had to tell me, and he’d be back home by now, and I could have just ignored it all anyway. I’d be no worse off, and he’d still be alive.”

  Crystal was dressed in a white T-shirt. Nothing else. It was a long T-shirt, but not quite long enough. Reacher was not looking at her.

  “Why do you care?” she asked.

  It was a Keys question. Not callous, just mystified at his concern about a stranger down from another country. He looked at her.

  “I feel responsible,” he said.

  “No, you feel guilty,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” she said. “You didn’t kill him.”

  “Is there a difference?” he asked again.

  “Of course there is,” she said. “Who was he?”

  “A private detective,” he said. “Looking for me.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head.

  “No idea,” he said.

  “Were those other guys with him?”

  He shook his head again.

  “No,” he said. “Those other guys killed him.”

  She looked at him, startled. “They did?”

  “That’s my guess,” he said. “They weren’t with him, that’s for sure. They were younger and richer than he was. Dressed like that? Those suits? Didn’t look like his subordinates. Anyway, he struck me as a loner. So the two of them were working for somebody else. Probably told to follow him down here, find out what the hell he was doing. He must have stepped on some toes up north, given somebody a problem. So he was tailed down here. They caught up with him, beat out of him who he was looking for. So then they came looking, too.”

  “They killed him to get your name?”

  “Looks that way,” he said.

  “Are you going to tell the cops?”

  Another Keys question. Involving the cops with anything was a matter for long and serious debate. He shook his head for the third time.

  “No,” he said.

  “They’ll trace him, then they’ll be looking for you, too.”

  “Not right away,” he said. “There’s no ID on the body. And no fingerprints, either. Could be weeks before they even find out who he was.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find Mrs. Jacob,” he said. “The client. She’s looking for me.”

  “You know her?”

  “No, but I want to find her.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged.

  “I need to know what’s going on,” he said.

  “Why?” s
he asked again.

  He stood up and looked at her in a mirror on the wall. He was suddenly very restless. Suddenly more than ready to get right back to reality.

  “You know why,” he said to her. “The guy was killed because of something to do with me, so that makes me involved, OK?”

  She stretched a long, bare leg onto the chair he had just vacated. Pondered his feeling of involvement like it was some kind of an obscure hobby. Legitimate, but strange, like folk dancing.

  “OK, so how?” she asked.

  “I’ll go to his office,” he said. “Maybe he had a secretary. At least there’ll be records there. Phone numbers, addresses, client agreements. This Mrs. Jacob was probably his latest case. She’ll probably be top of the pile.”

  “So where’s his office?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “New York somewhere, according to the way he sounded. I know his name, I know he was an ex-cop. An ex-cop called Costello, about sixty years old. Can’t be too hard to find.”

  “He was an ex-cop?” she asked. “Why?”

  “Most private dicks are, right?” he said. “They retire early and poor, they hang out a shingle, they set up as one-man bands, divorce and missing persons. And that thing about my bank? He knew all the details. No way to do that, except through a favor from an old buddy still on the job.”

  She smiled, slightly interested. Stepped over and joined him near the bar. Stood next to him, close, her hip against his thigh.

  “How do you know all this complicated stuff?”

  He listened to the rush of the air through the extractors.

  “I was an investigator myself,” he said. “Military police. Thirteen years. I was pretty good at it. I’m not just a pretty face.”

  “You’re not even a pretty face,” she said back. “Don’t flatter yourself. When do you start?”

  He looked around in the darkness.

  “Right now, I guess. Certain to be an early flight out of Miami.”

  She smiled again. This time, warily.

  “And how are you going to get to Miami?” she asked. “This time of night?”

  He smiled back at her. Confidently.

  “You’re going to drive me,” he said.

  “Do I have time to get dressed?”

  “Just shoes,” he said.

  He walked her around to the garage where her old Porsche was hidden. He rolled the door open and she slid into the car and fired it up. She drove him the half mile north to his motel, taking it slowly, waiting until the oil warmed through. The big tires banged on broken pavement and thumped into potholes. She eased to a stop opposite his neon lobby and waited, the motor running fast against the choke. He opened his door, and then he closed it again, gently.

  “Let’s just go,” he said. “Nothing in there I want to take with me.”

  She nodded in the glow from the dash.

  “OK, buckle up,” she said.

  She snicked it into first and took off through the town. Cruised up North Roosevelt Drive. Checked the gauges and hung a left onto the causeway. Switched on the radar detectors. Mashed the pedal into the carpet and the rear end dug in hard. Reacher was pressed backward into the leather like he was leaving Key West on board a fighter plane.

  SHE KEPT THE Porsche above three figures all the way north to Key Largo. Reacher was enjoying the ride. She was a great driver. Smooth, economical in her movements, flicking up and down the box, keeping the motor wailing, keeping the tiny car in the center of her lane, using the cornering forces to catapult herself out into the straightaways. She was smiling, her flawless face illuminated by the red dials. Not an easy car to drive fast. The heavy motor is slung out way behind the rear axle, ready to swing like a vicious pendulum, ready to trap the driver who gets it wrong for longer than a split second. But she was getting it right. Mile for mile, she was covering the ground as fast as a light plane.

  Then the radar detectors started screaming and the lights of Key Largo appeared a mile ahead. She braked hard and rumbled through the town and floored it again and blasted north toward the dark horizon. A tight curving left, over the bridge, onto the mainland of America, and north toward the town called Homestead on a flat, straight road cut through the swamp. Then a tight right onto the highway, high speed all the way, radar detectors on maximum, and they were at Miami Departures just before five o’clock in the morning. She eased to a stop in the drop-off lane and waited, motor running.

  “Well, thanks for the ride,” Reacher said to her.

  She smiled.

  “Pleasure,” she said. “Believe me.”

  He opened the door and stared forward.

  “OK,” he said. “See you later, I guess.”

  She shook her head.

  “No you won’t,” she said. “Guys like you never come back. You leave, and you don’t come back.”

  He sat in the warmth of her car. The motor popped and burbled. The mufflers ticked as they cooled. She leaned toward him. Dipped the clutch and shoved the gearshift into first so that she had room to get close. Threaded an arm behind his head and kissed him hard on the lips.

  “Good-bye, Reacher,” she said. “I’m glad I got to know your name, at least.”

  He kissed her back, hard and long.

  “So what’s your name?” he asked.

  “Crystal,” she said, and laughed.

  He laughed with her and lifted himself up and out of the car. She leaned across and pulled the door behind him. Gunned the motor and drove away. He stood by himself on the curb and watched her go. She turned in front of a hotel bus and was lost to sight. Three months of his life disappeared with her like the haze of her exhaust.

  FIVE O’CLOCK IN the morning, fifty miles north of New York City, the CEO was lying in bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. It had just been painted. The whole house had just been painted. He had paid the decorators more than most of his employees earned in a year. Actually, he hadn’t paid them. He had fudged their invoice through his office and his company had paid them. The expense was hidden somewhere in the secret spreadsheet, part of a seven-figure total for buildings maintenance. A seven-figure total on the debit side of the accounts, pulling his business down like heavy cargo sinks a listing ship. Like a straw breaks a camel’s back.

  His name was Chester Stone. His father’s name had been Chester Stone, and his grandfather’s. His grandfather had established the business, back when a spreadsheet was called a ledger and written by hand with a pen. His grandfather’s ledger had been heavy on the credit side. He had been a clock maker who spotted the coming appeal of the cinema very early. He had used his expertise with gearwheels and intricate little mechanisms to build a projector. He had taken on board a partner who could get big lenses ground in Germany. Together they had dominated the market and made a fortune. The partner had died young with no heirs. Cinema had boomed from coast to coast. Hundreds of movie theaters. Hundreds of projectors. Then thousands. Then tens of thousands. Then sound. Then CinemaScope. Big, big entries on the credit side of the ledger.

  Then television. Movie houses closing down, and the ones that stayed open hanging on to their old equipment until it fell apart. His father, Chester Stone II, taking control. Diversifying. Looking at the appeal of home movies. Eight-millimeter projectors. Clockwork cameras. The vivid era of Kodachrome. Zapruder. The new manufacturing plant. Big profits ticking up on the slow, wide tape of an early IBM mainframe.

  Then the movies coming back. His father dying, the young Chester Stone III at the helm, multiplexes everywhere. Four projectors, six, twelve, sixteen where there had been just one before. Then stereo. Five-channel, Dolby, Dolby Digital. Wealth and success. Marriage. The move to the mansion. The cars.

  Then video. Eight-millimeter home movies deader than the deadest thing that ever died. Then competition. Cutthroat bidding from new outfits in Germany and Japan and Korea and Taiwan, taking the multiplex business out from underneath him. The desperate search for anything to make out of small pieces of sheet metal and
precision-cut gears. Anything at all. The ghastly realization that mechanical things were yesterday’s things. The explosion of solid-state microchips, RAM, games consoles. Huge profits being made from things he had no idea how to manufacture. Big deficits piling up inside the silent software on his desktop machine.

  His wife stirred at his side. She blinked open her eyes and turned her head left and right, first to check the clock and then to look at her husband. She saw his stare, fixed on the ceiling.

  “Not sleeping?” she asked quietly.

  He made no reply. She looked away. Her name was Marilyn. Marilyn Stone. She had been married to Chester for a long time. Long enough to know. She knew it all. She had no real details, no real proof, no inclusion, but she knew it all anyway. How could she not know? She had eyes and a brain. It was a long time since she had seen her husband’s products proudly displayed in any store. It was a long time since any multiplex owner had dined them in celebration of a big new order. And it was a long time since Chester had slept a whole night through. So she knew.

  But she didn’t care. For richer, for poorer was what she had said, and it was what she had meant. Rich had been good, but poor could be good, too. Not that they would ever be poor, like some people are poor. Sell the damn house, liquidate the whole sorry mess, and they would still be way more comfortable than she had ever expected to be. They were still young. Well, not young, but not old, either. Healthy. They had interests. They had each other. Chester was worth having. Gray, but still trim and firm and vigorous. She loved him. He loved her. And she was still worth having, she knew that. Forty-something, but twenty-nine in her head. Still slim, still blond, still exciting. Adventurous. Still worth having, in any old sense of the phrase. It was all going to be OK. Marilyn Stone breathed deeply and rolled over. Pressed herself into the mattress. Fell back to sleep, five-thirty in the morning, while her husband lay quietly beside her and stared at the ceiling.

  REACHER STOOD INSIDE the departures terminal, breathing the canned air, his tan turning yellow in the fluorescence, listening to a dozen conversations in Spanish, checking a television monitor. New York was at the top of the list, as he had thought it would be. First flight of the day was Delta to LaGuardia, via Atlanta, in half an hour. Second was Mexicana heading south, third was United, also to LaGuardia, but direct, leaving in an hour. He headed to the United ticket desk. Asked about the price of a one-way coach. Nodded and walked away.