Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “You sure about that?” he said. “Exactly the same?”

  “Word for word,” I said. “Totally identical. Nailed to the wall, balls cut off, the wife forced to eat the balls, then they get their throats cut. Word-for-word identical, Finlay. So unless we got two threateners at the same time in the same place making the exact same threat, that’s another link.”

  “So Morrison was inside the same scam as Hubble?” he said.

  “Owned and operated by the same people,” I said.

  Then I told him Hubble had been talking to an investigator. And I told him the investigator had been talking to Sherman Stoller, whoever he had been.

  “Who was the investigator?” he asked. “And where does Joe fit in?”

  “Joe was the investigator,” I said. “Hubble told me the tall guy with the shaved head was an investigator, trying to get him free.”

  “What sort of an investigator was your brother?” Finlay said. “Who the hell was he working for?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Last I heard he was working for the Treasury Department.”

  Finlay pushed off the statue and started walking back north.

  “I got to make some calls,” he said. “Time to go to work on this thing.”

  “Walk slow,” I said. “I haven’t finished yet.”

  FINLAY WAS ON THE SIDEWALK. I WAS IN THE ROAD, STAYING clear of the low awnings in front of every store. There was no traffic on the street to worry about. Monday, two o’clock in the afternoon, and the town was deserted.

  “How do you know Hubble’s dead?” Finlay asked me.

  So I told him how I knew. He thought about it. He agreed with me.

  “Because he was talking to an investigator?” he said.

  I shook my head. Stopped outside the barbershop.

  “No,” I said. “They didn’t know about that. If they had, they’d have got to him much earlier. Thursday at the latest. I figure they made the decision to waste him Friday, about five o’clock. Because you pulled him in with the phone number in Joe’s shoe. They figured he couldn’t be allowed to talk to cops or prison guards. So they set it up with Spivey. But Spivey’s boys blew it, so they tried over again. His wife said he got a call to wait at home today. They were setting him up for a second attempt. Looks like it worked.”

  Finlay nodded slowly.

  “Shit,” he said. “He was the only link we had to exactly what the hell is going on here. You should have hit on him while you had the chance, Reacher.”

  “Thanks, Finlay,” I said. “If I’d known the dead guy was Joe, I’d have hit on him so hard, you’d have heard him yelling all the way over here.”

  He just grunted. We moved over and sat together on the bench under the barbershop window.

  “I asked him what Pluribus was,” I said. “He wouldn’t answer. He said there were ten local people involved in the scam, plus hired help in from the outside when necessary. And he said the scam is vulnerable until something happens on Sunday. Exposed, somehow.”

  “What happens on Sunday?” Finlay asked.

  “He didn’t tell me,” I said.

  “And you didn’t press him?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t very interested,” I said. “I told you that.”

  “And he gave you no idea what the scam is all about?” he asked.

  “No idea,” I said.

  “Did he say who these ten people are?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Christ, Reacher, you’re a big help, you know that?” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Finlay,” I said. “I thought Hubble was just some asshole. If I could go back and do it again, I’d do it a lot different, believe me.”

  “Ten people?” he said again.

  “Not counting himself,” I said. “Not counting Sherman Stoller, either. But I assume he was counting Chief Morrison.”

  “Great,” Finlay said. “That only leaves me another nine to find.”

  “You’ll find one of them today,” I said.

  THE BLACK PICKUP I’D LAST SEEN LEAVING ENO’S PARKING lot pulled up short at the opposite curb. It waited there, motor running. The Kliner kid leaned his head on his forearm and stared out of the window at me from across the street. Finlay didn’t see him. He was looking down at the sidewalk.

  “You should be thinking about Morrison,” I said to him.

  “What about him?” he said. “He’s dead, right?”

  “But dead how?” I said. “What should that be saying to you?”

  He shrugged.

  “Somebody making an example of him?” he said. “A message?”

  “Correct, Finlay,” I said. “But what had he done wrong?”

  “Screwed something up, I guess,” he said.

  “Correct, Finlay,” I said again. “He was told to cover up what went down at the warehouse Thursday night. That was his task for the day. He was up there at midnight, you know.”

  “He was?” Finlay said. “You said that was a bullshit story.”

  “No,” I said. “He didn’t see me up there. That part was the bullshit story. But he was up there himself. He saw Joe.”

  “He did?” Finlay said. “How do you know that?”

  “First time he saw me was Friday, right?” I said. “In the office? He was staring at me like he’d seen me before, but he couldn’t place where. That was because he’d seen Joe. He noticed a resemblance. Hubble said the same thing. He said I reminded him of his investigator.”

  “So Morrison was there?” Finlay said. “Was he the shooter?”

  “Can’t figure it that way,” I said. “Joe was a reasonably smart guy. He wouldn’t let a fat idiot like Morrison shoot him. The shooter must have been somebody else. I can’t figure Morrison for the maniac, either. That much physical exertion would have dropped him with a heart attack. I think he was the third guy. The clean-up guy. But he didn’t search Joe’s shoes. And because of that, Hubble got hauled in. That got somebody mad. It meant they had to waste Hubble, so Morrison was wasted as a punishment.”

  “Some punishment,” Finlay said.

  “Also a message,” I said. “So think about it.”

  “Think about what?” he said. “Wasn’t a message for me.”

  “So who was it a message for?” I said.

  “Who is any such message for?” he said. “The next guy in line, right?”

  I nodded.

  “See why I was worried who was going to be the next chief?” I said.

  Finlay dropped his head again and stared at the sidewalk.

  “Christ,” he said. “You think the next chief will be in the scam?”

  “Got to be,” I said. “Why would they have Morrison inside? Not for his wonderful personality, right? They had him inside because they need the chief on board. Because that’s useful to them in some particular way. So they wouldn’t waste Morrison unless they had a replacement ready. And whoever it is, we’re looking at a very dangerous guy. He’ll be going in there with Morrison’s example staring him in the face. Somebody will have just whispered to him: see what we did to Morrison? That’s what we’ll do to you if you screw up the way he did.”

  “So who is it?” Finlay said. “Who’s going to be the new chief?”

  “That’s what I was asking you,” I said.

  WE SAT QUIET ON THE BENCH OUTSIDE THE BARBERSHOP FOR a moment. Enjoyed the sun creeping in under the edge of the striped awning.

  “It’s you, me and Roscoe,” I said. “Right now, the only safe thing is to assume everybody else is involved.”

  “Why Roscoe?” he said.

  “Lots of reasons,” I said. “But mainly because she worked hard to get me out of Warburton. Morrison wanted me in there as a fall guy for Thursday night, right? So if Roscoe was inside the scam, she’d have left me in there. But she got me out. She pulled in the exact opposite direction from Morrison. So if he was bent, she isn’t.”

  He looked at me. Grunted.

  “Only three of us?” he said. “You’re a
cautious guy, Reacher.”

  “You bet your ass I’m a cautious guy, Finlay,” I said. “People are getting killed here. One of them was my only brother.”

  We stood up from the bench on the sidewalk. Across the street, the Kliner kid killed his motor and got out of the pickup. Started walking slowly over. Finlay rubbed his face with his hands, like he was washing without water.

  “So what now?” he said.

  “You got things to do,” I said. “You need to get Roscoe on one side and fill her in with the details, OK? Tell her to take a lot of care. Then you need to make some calls and find out from Washington what Joe was doing down here.”

  “OK,” Finlay said. “What about you?”

  I nodded across at the Kliner kid.

  “I’m going to have a talk with this guy,” I said. “He keeps looking at me.”

  Two things happened as the Kliner kid came near. First, Finlay left in a hurry. He just strode off north without another word. Second, I heard the barbershop blinds coming down in the window behind me. I glanced around. There could have been nobody else on the planet except for me and the Kliner kid.

  Up close, the kid was an interesting study. He was no lightweight. Probably six-two, maybe one ninety, shot through with some kind of a restless energy. There was a lot of intelligence in his eyes, but there was also some kind of an eerie light burning in there. His eyes told me this probably wasn’t the most rational character I was ever going to meet in my whole life. He came close and stood in front of me. Just stared at me.

  “You’re trespassing,” he said.

  “This is your sidewalk?” I said.

  “It sure is,” the kid said. “My daddy’s Foundation paid for every inch of it. Every brick. But I’m not talking about the sidewalk. I’m talking about Miss Roscoe. She’s mine. She’s mine, right from when I first saw her. She’s waiting for me. Five years, she’s been waiting for me, until the time is right.”

  I gazed back at him.

  “You understand English?” I said.

  The kid tensed up. He was just about hopping from foot to foot.

  “I’m a reasonable guy,” I said. “First time Miss Roscoe tells me she wants you instead of me, I’m out of here. Until then, you back off. Understand that?”

  The kid was boiling. But then he changed. It was like he was operated by a remote control and somebody had just hit a button and switched the channel. He relaxed and shrugged and smiled a wide, boyish smile.

  “OK,” he said. “No hard feelings, right?”

  He stuck out his hand to shake on it and he nearly fooled me. Right at the last split second I pulled my own hand back a fraction and closed around his knuckles, not his palm. It’s an old army trick. They go to shake your hand, but they’re aiming to crush it. Some big macho ritual. The way out is to be ready. You pull back a fraction and you squeeze back. You’re squeezing their knuckles, not the meat of their palm. Their grip is neutralized. If you catch it right, you can’t lose.

  He started crushing, but he never stood a chance. He was going for the steady squeeze, so he could stare into my eyes while I sweated it out. But he never got near. I crunched his knuckles once, then twice, a little harder, and then I dropped his hand and turned away. I was a good sixty yards north before I heard the truck start up. It rumbled south and its noise was lost in the buzz of the heat.

  14

  BACK AT THE STATION HOUSE THERE WAS A BIG WHITE CADILLAC parked right across the entrance. Brand-new, fully loaded. Full of puffy black leather and fake wood. It looked like a Vegas whorehouse after the stern walnut and old hide in Charlie Hubble’s Bentley. Took me five strides to get around its hood to the door.

  Inside in the chill everybody was milling around a tall old guy with silver hair. He was in an old-fashioned suit. Bootlace tie with a silver clasp. Looked like a real asshole. Some kind of a politician. The Cadillac driver. He must have been about seventy-five years old and he was limping around, leaning on a thick cane with a huge silver knob at the top. I guessed this was Mayor Teale.

  Roscoe was coming out of the big office in back. She had been pretty shaken up after being at the Morrison place. Wasn’t looking too good now, but she waved and tried a smile. Gestured me over. Wanted me to go into the office with her. I took another quick glance at Mayor Teale and walked over to her.

  “You OK?” I said.

  “I’ve had better days,” she said.

  “You up to speed?” I asked her. “Finlay give you the spread?”

  She nodded.

  “Finlay told me everything,” she said.

  We ducked into the big rosewood office. Finlay was sitting at the desk under the old clock. It showed a quarter of four. Roscoe closed the door and I looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “So who’s getting it?” I said. “Who’s the new chief?”

  Finlay looked up at me from where he was sitting. Shook his head.

  “Nobody,” he said. “Mayor Teale is going to run the department himself.”

  I went back to the door and cracked it open an inch. Peered out and looked at Teale across the squad room. He had Baker pinned up against the wall. Looked like he was giving him a hard time about something. I watched him for a moment.

  “So what do you make of that?” I asked them.

  “Everybody else in the department is clean,” Roscoe said.

  “Looks that way, I guess,” I said. “But it proves Teale himself is on board. Teale’s their replacement, so Teale’s their boy.”

  “How do we know he’s just their boy?” she said. “Maybe he’s the big boss. Maybe he’s running the whole thing.”

  “No,” I said. “The big boss had Morrison carved up as a message. If Teale was the big boss, why would he send a message to himself? He belongs to somebody. He’s been put in here to run interference.”

  “That’s for sure,” Finlay said. “Started already. Told us Joe and Stoller are going on the back burner. We’re throwing everything at the Morrison thing. Doing it ourselves, no outside help, no FBI, no nothing. He says the pride of the department is at stake. And he’s already driving us up a blind alley. Says it’s obvious Morrison was killed by somebody just out of prison. Somebody Morrison himself put away a long time ago, out for revenge.”

  “And it’s a hell of a blind alley,” Roscoe said. “We’ve got to trawl through twenty years of old files and cross-check every name in every file against parole records from across the entire country. It could take us months. He’s pulled Ste venson in off the road for it. Until this is over, he drives a desk. So do I.”

  “It’s worse than a blind alley,” Finlay said. “It’s a coded warning. Nobody in our files looks good for violent revenge. Never had that sort of crime here. We know that. And Teale knows we know that. But we can’t call his bluff, right?”

  “Can’t you just ignore him?” I said. “Just do what needs doing?”

  He leaned back in his chair. Blew a sigh at the ceiling and shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “We’re working right under the enemy’s nose. Right now, Teale’s got no reason to think we know anything about any of this. And we’ve got to keep it that way. We’ve got to play dumb and act innocent, right? That’s going to limit our scope. But the big problem is authorization. If I need a warrant or something, I’m going to need his signature. And I’m not going to get it, am I?”

  I shrugged at him.

  “I’m not planning on using warrants,” I said. “Did you call Washington?”

  “They’re getting back to me,” he said. “Just hope Teale doesn’t grab the phone before I can.”

  I nodded.

  “What you need is somewhere else to work,” I said. “What about that buddy of yours up in Atlanta FBI? The one you told me about? Could you use his office as a kind of private facility?”

  Finlay thought about it. Nodded.

  “Not a bad idea,” he said. “I’ll have to go off the record. I can’t ask Teale to make a formal request, right? I’
ll call from home, tonight. Guy called Picard. Nice guy, you’ll like him. He’s from the Quarter, down in New Orleans. He did a spell in Boston about a million years ago. Great big guy, very smart, very tough.”

  “Tell him we need it kept very quiet,” I said. “We don’t want his agents down here until we’re ready.”

  “What are you going to do about Teale?” Roscoe asked me. “He works for the guys who killed your brother.”

  I shrugged again.

  “Depends how involved he was,” I said. “He wasn’t the shooter.”

  “He wasn’t?” Roscoe said. “How do you know that?”

  “Not fast enough,” I said. “Limps around with a cane in his hand. Too slow to pull a gun. Too slow to get Joe, anyway. He wasn’t the kicker, either. Too old, not vigorous enough. And he wasn’t the gofer. That was Morrison. But if he starts messing with me, then he’s in deep shit. Otherwise, to hell with him.”

  “So what now?” she said.

  I shrugged at her. Didn’t reply.

  “I think Sunday is the thing,” Finlay said. “Sunday is going to solve some kind of a problem for them. Teale being put in here feels so temporary, you know? The guy’s seventy-five years old. He’s got no police experience. It’s a temporary fix, to get them through until Sunday.”

  The buzzer on the desk went off. Stevenson’s voice came over the intercom asking for Roscoe. They had files to check. I opened the door for her. But she stopped. She’d just thought of something.

  “What about Spivey?” she said. “Over at Warburton? He was ordered to arrange the attack on Hubble, right? So he must know who gave him the order. You should go ask him. Might lead somewhere.”

  “Maybe,” I said. Closed the door behind her.

  “Waste of time,” Finlay said to me. “You think Spivey’s just going to tell you a thing like that?”

  I smiled at him.

  “If he knows, he’ll tell me,” I said to him. “A question like that, it’s how you ask it, right?”