Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  He’d been dead a few hours. He’d been shot through the forehead with a .38. From close range. The revolver barrel must have been about six inches from his head. I rubbed my thumb across the skin around the bullet hole. Looked at it. There was no soot, but there were tiny gunpowder particles blasted into the skin. They wouldn’t rub off. That kind of tattooing means a fairly close range. Six inches will do it, maybe eight. Somebody had suddenly raised a gun and the slow heavy assistant warden hadn’t been quick enough to duck.

  There was a scab on his chin where I’d cut him with Morrison’s blade. His small snake eyes were open. He was still in his greasy uniform. His white hairy belly showed through where I’d slashed at his shirt. He had been a big guy. To fit him in the trunk, they’d broken his legs. Probably with a shovel. They’d broken them and folded them sideways at the knee to get his body in. I gazed at him and felt angry. He’d known, and he hadn’t told me. But they’d killed him anyway. The fact that he hadn’t told me hadn’t counted for anything. They were panicking. They were silencing everybody, while the clock ticked slowly around to Sunday. I gazed into Spivey’s dead eyes, like there was information still in there.

  Then I ran back to the bodies on the edge of the copse and searched them. Two wallets and a car rental agreement. A mobile phone. That was all. The rental agreement was for the Buick. Rented at the Atlanta airport, Monday morning at eight. An early flight in from somewhere. I went through the wallets. No airline tickets. Florida driver’s licenses, both with Jacksonville addresses. Bland photographs, meaningless names. Credit cards to match. Lots of cash in the wallets. I stole it all. They weren’t going to spend it.

  I took the battery out of the mobile phone and put the phone in one guy’s pocket and the battery in the other’s. Then I dragged the bodies over to the Buick and heaved them into the trunk with Spivey. Not easy. They weren’t tall guys, but they were floppy and awkward. Made me sweat, despite the chill. I had to shove them around to get them both in the space Spivey was leaving. I scouted around and found their revolvers. Both .38 caliber. One had a full load. The other had fired once. Smelled recent. I pitched the guns into the trunk. Found the passenger’s shoes. The Desert Eagle had blown him right out of them. I threw them in the trunk and slammed the lid. Walked back into the field and found my hiding place in the bushes. Where I’d shot them from. Scrabbled around and picked up the two shell cases. Put them in my pocket.

  Then I locked up the Buick and left it. Popped the Bentley’s trunk. Pulled out the bag with my old clothes in it. My new gear was covered in red mud and streaked with the dead guys’ blood. I put the old things back on. Balled up the muddy bloodstained stuff and shoved it in the bag. Threw the bag in the Bentley’s trunk and closed the lid on it. Last thing I did was use a tree branch to sweep away all the footprints I could see.

  I drove the Bentley slowly back east to Margrave and used the time to calm down. A straightforward ambush, no technical difficulty, no real danger. I had thirteen years of hard time behind me. I should be able to walk through a one-on-two against amateurs in my sleep. But my heart was thumping harder than it should have been and a cold blast of adrenaline was shaking me up. It was the sight of Spiveylying there with his legs folded sideways that had done it. I breathed hard and got myself under control. My right arm was sore. Like somebody had hit my palm with a hammer. It jarred all the way up to the shoulder. That Desert Eagle had a hell of a recoil. And it made a hell of a noise. My ears were still ringing from the twin explosions. But I felt good. It had been a job well done. Two tough guys had followed me out there. They weren’t following me back.

  I PARKED UP IN THE STATION HOUSE LOT, FARTHEST SLOT from the door. Put my gun back in the glove compartment and got out of the car. It was getting late. The evening gloom was gathering. The huge Georgia sky was darkening. Turning a deep inky shade. The moon was coming up.

  Roscoe was at her desk. She got up when she saw me and walked over. We went back out through the door. Walked a few paces. Kissed.

  “Anything from the car rental people?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Picard’s dealing with it. He’s doing his best.”

  “OK,” I said. “What hotels you got up at the airport?”

  She reeled off a list of hotels. Pretty much the same list you got at any airport. I picked the first name she’d listed. Then I told her what had happened with the two Florida boys. Last week, she’d have arrested me for it. Sent me to the chair. Now, her reaction was different. Those four men who had padded through her place in their rubber shoes had changed her mind about a lot of things. So she just nodded and smiled a tight grim smile of satisfaction.

  “Two down,” she said. “Good work, Reacher. Were they the ones?”

  “From last night?” I said. “No. They weren’t local. We can’t count them in Hubble’s ten. They were hired help from outside.”

  “Were they any good?” she asked.

  I shrugged at her. Rocked my hand from side to side, equivocally.

  “Not really,” I said. “Not good enough, anyway.”

  Then I told her what I had found in the Buick’s trunk. She shivered again.

  “So is he one of the ten?” she asked. “Spivey?”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t see it. He was outside help, too. Nobody would have a slug like that on the inside.”

  She nodded. I opened up the Bentley and got the gun out of the glove box. It was too big to go in my pocket. I put it back in the old file box with the bullets. Roscoe put the whole thing in the trunk of her Chevy. I got the carrier bag of stained clothes out. Locked the Bentley up and left it there in the police lot.

  “I’m going to call Molly again,” I said. “I’m getting in pretty deep. I need some background. There are things I don’t understand.”

  The place was quiet so I used the rosewood office. I dialed the Washington number and got Molly on the second ring.

  “Can you talk?” I asked her.

  She told me to wait, and I heard her get up and close her office door.

  “It’s too soon, Jack,” she said. “I can’t get the stuff until tomorrow.”

  “I need background,” I said. “I need to understand this international stuff Joe was doing. I need to know why things are happening here, if the action is supposed to be overseas.”

  I heard her figuring out where to start.

  “OK, background,” she said. “I guess Joe’s assumption was it’s maybe controlled from this country. And it’s a very difficult problem to explain, but I’ll try. The forging happens abroad, and the trick is most of it stays abroad. Only a few of the fake bills ever come back here, which is not a huge deal domestically, but obviously it’s something we want to stop. But abroad, it presents a completely different type of problem. You know how much cash is inside the U.S., Jack?”

  I thought back to what the bank guy had told me.

  “A hundred and thirty billion dollars,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. “But exactly twice that much is held offshore. That’s a fact. People all over the world are holding onto two hundred and sixty billion dollars’ worth of American cash. It’s in safety deposits in London, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, stuffed into mattresses all over South America, Eastern Europe, hidden under floorboards, false walls, in banks, travel agencies, everywhere. And why is that?”

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  “Because the dollar is the world’s most trusted currency,” she said. “People believe in it. They want it. And naturally, the government is very, very happy about that.”

  “Good for the ego, right?” I said.

  I heard her change the phone to the other hand.

  “It’s not an emotional thing,” she said. “It’s business. Think about it, Jack. If there’s a hundred-dollar bill in somebody’s bureau in Bucharest, that means somebody somewhere once exchanged a hundred dollars’ worth of foreign assets for it. It means our g
overnment sold them a piece of paper with green and black ink on it for a hundred bucks. Good business. And because it’s a trusted currency, chances are that hundred-dollar bill will probably stay in that bureau in Bucharest for many years. The U.S. will never have to deliver the foreign assets back again. As long as the dollar stays trusted, we can’t lose.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked her.

  “Difficult to describe,” Molly said. “It’s all about trust and faith. It’s almost metaphysical. If foreign markets are getting flooded with fake dollars, that doesn’t really matter in itself. But if the people in those foreign markets find out, then it does matter. Because they panic. They lose their faith. They lose their trust. They don’t want dollars anymore. They’ll turn to Japanese yen or German marks to stuff their mattresses with. They’ll get rid of their dollars. In effect, overnight, the government would have to repay a two-hundred-sixty-billion-dollar foreign loan. Overnight. And we couldn’t do that, Jack.”

  “Big problem,” I said.

  “That’s the truth,” she said. “And a remote problem. The fakes are all made abroad, and they’re mostly distributed abroad. It makes sense that way. The factories are hidden away in some remote foreign region, where we don’t know about them, and the fakes are distributed to foreigners who are happy as long as the stuff looks vaguely like real dollars are supposed to look. That’s why not very many are imported. Only the very best fakes come back to the States.”

  “How many come back?” I asked her.

  I heard her shrug. A little breath sound, like she had pursed her lips.

  “Not many,” she said. “A few billion, now and then, I guess.”

  “A few billion?” I said. “That’s not many?”

  “A drop in the ocean,” she said. “From a macroeconomic point of view. Compared to the size of the economy, I mean.”

  “And what exactly are we doing about it?” I asked her.

  “Two things,” she said. “First thing is Joe was trying like mad to stop it from happening. The reason behind that is obvious. Second thing is we’re pretending like mad it isn’t happening at all. So as to keep the faith.”

  I nodded. Started to see some shape behind the big-time secrecy going on up there in Washington.

  “OK,” I said. “So if I were to call the Treasury and ask them about it?”

  “We’d deny everything,” she said. “We’d say, what counterfeiting?”

  I WALKED THROUGH THE SILENT SQUAD ROOM AND JOINED Roscoe in her car. Told her to drive out toward Warburton. It was dark when we reached the little stand of trees. Just enough moonlight to pick it out. Roscoe pulled up where I showed her. I kissed her and got out. Told her I’d see her up at the hotel. Slapped lightly on the Chevy’s roof and waved her off. She turned in the road. Drove slowly away.

  I pushed directly through the copse. Didn’t want to leave footprints on the track. The fat carrier bag made it awkward. It kept snagging in the brush. I came out right by the Buick. Still there. All quiet. I unlocked the driver’s door with the key and got in. Started up and bounced down the track. The rear suspension kept bottoming out on the ruts. I wasn’t too surprised about that. Must have been about five hundred pounds weight in the trunk.

  I jounced out onto the road and drove east toward Margrave. But I turned left at the county road and headed north. Cruised the rest of the fourteen miles up to the highway. Passed by the warehouses and joined the stream north to Atlanta. I didn’t drive fast, didn’t drive slow. Didn’t want to get noticed. The plain Buick was very anonymous. Very inconspicuous. That was how I wanted to keep it.

  After an hour I followed the airport signs. Found my way around to the long-term parking. Took a ticket at the little automated barrier and nosed in. It was a huge lot. Couldn’t be better. I found a slot near the middle, about a hundred yards from the nearest fence. Wiped off the wheel and the transmission. Got out with the carrier bag. Locked the Buick and walked away.

  After a minute, I looked back. Couldn’t pick out the car I’d just dumped. What’s the best place to hide a car? In an airport long-term lot. Like where’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On the beach. The Buick could sit there for a month. Nobody would think twice.

  I walked back toward the entrance barrier. At the first trash can I dumped the carrier bag. At the second I got rid of the parking ticket. At the barrier I caught the little courtesy bus and rode to the departure terminal. Walked in and found a bathroom. Wrapped the Buick keys in a paper towel and dropped them in the garbage. Then I slipped down to the arrivals hall and stepped out into the damp night again. Caught the hotel courtesy bus and rode off to meet Roscoe.

  I FOUND HER IN THE NEON GLARE OF A HOTEL LOBBY. I PAID cash for a room. Used a bill I’d taken from the Florida boys. We went up in the elevator. The room was a dingy, dark place. Big enough. Looked out over the airport sprawl. The window had three layers of glass against the jet noise. The place was airless.

  “First, we eat,” I said.

  “First, we shower,” Roscoe said.

  So we showered. Put us in a better frame of mind. We soaped up and started fooling around. Ended up making love in the stall with the water beating down on us. Afterward, I just wanted to curl up in the glow. But we were hungry. And we had things to do. Roscoe put on the clothes she’d brought from her place in the morning. Jeans, shirt, jacket. Looked wonderful. Very feminine, but very tough. She had a lot of spirit.

  We rode up to a restaurant on the top floor. It was OK. A big panoramic view of the airport district. We sat in candlelight by a window. A cheerful foreign guy brought us food. I crammed it all down. I was starving. I had a beer and a pint of coffee. Started to feel halfway human again. Paid for the meal with more of the dead guys’ money. Then we rode down to the lobby and picked up an Atlanta street map at the desk. Walked out to Roscoe’s car.

  The night air was cold and damp and stank of kerosene. Airport smell. We got in the Chevy and pored over the street map. Headed out northwest. Roscoe drove and I tried to direct her. We battled traffic and ended up roughly in the right place. It was a sprawl of low-rise housing. The sort of place you see from planes coming in to land. Small houses on small lots, hurricane fencing, aboveground pools. Some nice yards, some dumps. Old cars up on blocks. Everything bathed in yellow sodium glare.

  We found the right street. Found the right house. Decent place. Well looked after. Neat and clean. A tiny one-story. Small yard, small single-car garage. Narrow gate in the wire fence. We went through. Rang the bell. An old woman cracked the door against the chain.

  “Good evening,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for Sherman Stoller.”

  Roscoe looked at me after she said it. She should have said we were looking for his house. We knew where Sherman Stoller was. Sherman Stoller was in the Yellow Springs morgue, seventy miles away.

  “Who are you?” the old woman asked, politely.

  “Ma’am, we’re police officers,” Roscoe said. Half true.

  The old lady eased the door and took the chain off.

  “You better come in,” she said. “He’s in the kitchen. Eating, I’m afraid.”

  “Who is?” said Roscoe.

  The old lady stopped and looked at her. Puzzled.

  “Sherman,” she said. “That’s who you want, isn’t it?”

  We followed her into the kitchen. There was an old guy eating supper at the table. When he saw us, he stopped and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

  “Police officers, Sherman,” the old lady said.

  The old guy looked up at us blankly.

  “Is there another Sherman Stoller?” I asked him.

  The old guy nodded. Looked worried.

  “Our son,” he said.

  “About thirty?” I asked him. “Thirty-five?”

  The old guy nodded again. The old lady moved behind him and put her hand on his arm. Parents.

  “He don’t live here,” the old man said.

  “Is he in trouble?” the old lady aske
d.

  “Could you give us his address?” Roscoe said.

  They fussed around like old people do. Very deferential to authority. Very respectful. Wanted to ask us a lot of questions, but just gave us the address.

  “He hasn’t lived here for two years,” the old man said.

  He was afraid. He was trying to distance himself from the trouble his son was in. We nodded to them and backed out. As we were shutting their front door, the old man called out after us.

  “He moved out there two years ago,” he said.

  We trooped out through the gate and got back in the car. Looked on the street map again. The new address wasn’t on it.

  “What did you make of those two?” Roscoe asked me.

  “The parents?” I said. “They know their boy was up to no good. They know he was doing something bad. Probably don’t know exactly what it was.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “Let’s go find this new place.”

  We drove off. Roscoe got gas and directions at the first place we saw.

  “About five miles the other way,” she said. Pulled the car around and headed away from the city. “New condominiums on a golf course.”

  She was peering into the gloom, looking for the landmarks the gas station attendant had given her. After five miles she swung off the main drag. Nosed along a new road and pulled up by a developer’s sign. It advertised condominiums, top quality, built right on the fairway. It boasted that only a few remained unsold. Beyond the billboard were rows of new buildings. Very pleasant, not huge, but nicely done. Balconies, garages, good details. Ambitious landscaping loomed up in the dark. Lighted pathways led over to a health club. On the other side was nothing. Must have been the golf course.