Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “And tell him to fax the trust deeds to me,” he whispered. “Immediately. I need to know what the hell I’m dealing with.”

  Marilyn was shaking inside. She pushed down on the soft upholstery, trying to ground herself. “There won’t be a problem. It’s really just a formality.”

  “So let’s go make the call,” Hobie said.

  Marilyn was unsteady on her feet. She stood swaying, smoothing the dress down over her thighs. Chester touched her elbow, just for a second. A tiny gesture of support. She straightened and followed Hobie out to the reception counter.

  “Dial nine for a line,” he said.

  She moved behind the counter and the three men watched her. The phone was a small console. She scanned across the buttons and saw no speakerphone facility. She relaxed a fraction and picked up the handset. Pressed nine and heard a dial tone.

  “Behave yourself,” Hobie said. “You’re a smart woman, remember, and right now you need to stay smart.”

  She nodded. He raised the hook. It glittered in the artificial light. It looked heavy. It was beautifully made and lovingly polished, mechanically simple and terribly brutal. She saw him inviting her to imagine the things that could be done with it.

  “Forster and Abelstein,” a bright voice said in her ear. “How may we help you?”

  “Marilyn Stone,” she said. “For Mr. Forster.”

  Her throat was suddenly dry. It made her voice low and husky. There was a snatch of electronic music and then the boomy acoustic of a large office.

  “Forster,” a deep voice said.

  “David, it’s Marilyn Stone.”

  There was dead silence for a second. In that second, she knew Sheryl had done it right.

  “Are we being overheard?” Forster asked quietly.

  “No, I’m fine,” Marilyn said, brightness in her voice. Hobie rested the hook on the counter, the steel glittering chest high, eighteen inches in front of her eyes.

  “You need the police for this,” Forster said.

  “No, it’s just about a trustees’ meeting. What’s the soonest we can do?”

  “Your friend Sheryl told me what you want,” Forster said. “But there are problems. Our staff people can’t handle this sort of stuff. We’re not equipped for it. We’re not that sort of law firm. I’ll have to find you a private detective.”

  “Tomorrow morning would be good for us,” she said back. “There’s an element of urgency, I’m afraid.”

  “Let me call the police for you,” Forster said.

  “No, David, next week is really too late. We need to move fast, if we can.”

  “But I don’t know where to look. We’ve never used private detectives.”

  “Hold on a moment, David.” She covered the mouthpiece with the heel of her hand and glanced up at Hobie. “If you want it tomorrow, it’s got to be at their offices.”

  Hobie shook his head. “It has to be here, on my turf.”

  She took her hand away. “David, what about the day after tomorrow? It really needs to be here, I’m afraid. It’s a delicate negotiation.”

  “You really don’t want the police? You absolutely sure about that?”

  “Well, there are complications. You know how things can be sometimes, sort of delicate?”

  “OK, but I’m going to have to find somebody suitable. It could take me some time. I’ll have to ask around for recommendations.”

  “That’s great, David,” she said.

  “OK,” Forster said again. “If you’re sure you’re sure, I’ll get on it right away. But I’m really not clear exactly what you’re hoping to achieve.”

  “Yes, I agree,” she said. “You know we’ve always hated the way Dad set it up. Outside interference can change things, can’t it?”

  “Two in the afternoon,” Forster said. “Day after tomorrow. I don’t know who it’ll be, but I’ll get you someone good. Will that be OK?”

  “Day after tomorrow, two in the afternoon,” she repeated. She recited the address. “That’s great. Thanks, David.”

  Her hand was shaking and the phone rattled in the cradle as she hung it up.

  “You didn’t ask for the trust deeds,” Hobie said.

  She shrugged nervously.

  “There was no need. It’s a formality. It would have made him suspicious.”

  There was silence. Then Hobie nodded.

  “OK,” he said. “Day after tomorrow. Two in the afternoon.”

  “We need clothes,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a business meeting. We can’t be dressed like this.”

  Hobie smiled. “I like you dressed like that. Both of you. But I guess old Chester here can borrow my suit back for the meeting. You’ll stay as you are.”

  She nodded, vaguely. She was too drained to push it.

  “Back in the bathroom,” Hobie said. “You can come out again day after tomorrow, two o’clock. Behave yourselves and you’ll eat twice a day.”

  They walked silently ahead of Tony. He closed the bathroom door on them and walked back through the dark office and rejoined Hobie in the reception area.

  “Day after tomorrow is way too late,” he said. “For God’s sake, Hawaii is going to know today. Tomorrow, at the very latest, right?”

  Hobie nodded. The ball was dropping through the glare of the lights. The outfielder was leaping. The fence was looming.

  “Yes, it’s going to be tight, isn’t it?” he said.

  “It’s going to be crazy tight. You should just get the hell out.”

  “I can’t, Tony. I’ve given my word on the deal, so I need that stock. But it’ll be OK. Don’t you worry about it. Day after tomorrow at two-thirty, the stock will be mine, it’ll be registered by three, it’ll be sold on by five, we’ll be out of here by suppertime. Day after tomorrow, it’ll all be over.”

  “But it’s crazy. Involving a lawyer? We can’t let a lawyer in here.”

  Hobie stared at him.

  “A lawyer,” he repeated slowly. “You know what the basis of justice is?”

  “What?”

  “Fairness,” Hobie said. “Fairness and equality. They bring a lawyer, we should bring a lawyer, too, shouldn’t we? Keep things fair?”

  “Christ, Hobie, we can’t have two lawyers in here.”

  “We can,” Hobie said. “In fact, I think we should.”

  He walked around the reception counter and sat down where Marilyn had sat. The leather was still warm from her body. He took the Yellow Pages from a cubbyhole and opened it up. Picked up the phone and hit nine for a line. Then he used the tip of the hook in seven precise little motions to dial the number.

  “Spencer Gutman,” a bright voice said in his ear. “How may we help you?”

  SHERYL WAS ON her back on a bed, with an IV needle taped into a vein in her left hand. The IV was a square polyethylene bag hanging off a curled steel stand behind her. The bag contained liquid, and she could feel the pressure as it seeped down into her hand. She could feel it pushing her blood pressure higher than usual. There was hissing in her temples, and she could feel the pulses behind her ears. The liquid in the bag was clear, like thick water, but it was doing the job. Her face had stopped hurting. The pain had just faded away, leaving her feeling calm and sleepy. She had almost called out to the nurse that she could manage without the painkiller now, because the pain had gone away anyhow, but then she caught herself and realized it was the drug that was taking it away, and it would come right back if the IV stopped. She tried to giggle at her confusion, but her breathing was too slow to get much of a sound out. So she just smiled to herself and closed her eyes and swam down into the warm depths of the bed.

  Then there was a sound somewhere in front of her. She opened her eyes and saw the ceiling. It was white and illuminated from above. She swiveled her gaze toward her feet. It was a big effort. There were two people standing at the end of the bed. A man, and a woman. They were looking at her. They were dressed in uniforms. Short-sleeved blue shirts, long dark pants, big comfortable sho
es for walking. Their shirts were all covered in badges. Bright embroidered badges and metal signs and plates. They had belts, all loaded down with equipment. There were nightsticks and radios and handcuffs. Revolvers with big wooden handles were strapped into holsters. They were police officers. Both of them were old. Quite short. Quite broad. The heavy loaded belts made them ungainly.

  They were looking at her, patiently. She tried to giggle again. They were looking at the patient, patiently. The man was balding. The illuminated ceiling was reflected in his shiny forehead. The woman had a tight perm, dyed orange, like a carrot. She was older than he was. She must have been fifty. She was a mother. Sheryl could tell that. She was gazing down with a kind expression, like a mother would.

  “Can we sit down?” the woman asked.

  Sheryl nodded. The thick liquid was buzzing in her temples, and it was confusing her. The woman scraped a chair across the floor and sat down on Sheryl’s right, away from the IV stand. The man sat directly behind her. The woman leaned toward the bed, and the man leaned the other way, so his head was visible in a line behind hers. They were close, and it was a struggle to focus on their faces.

  “I’m Officer O’Hallinan,” the woman said.

  Sheryl nodded again. The name suited her. The gingery hair, the heavy face, the heavy body, she needed an Irish name. And a lot of New York cops were Irish. Sheryl knew that. Sometimes it was like a family trade. One generation would follow the other.

  “I’m Officer Sark,” the man said, from behind her.

  He was pale. He had the sort of pale white skin that looks papery. He had shaved, but there was gray shadow showing. His eyes were deep set, but kindly. They were in a web of lines. He was an uncle. Sheryl was sure of that. He had nephews and nieces who liked him.

  “We want you to tell us what happened,” the woman called O’Hallinan said.

  Sheryl closed her eyes. She couldn’t really remember what happened. She knew she had stepped in through Marilyn’s door. She remembered the smell of rug shampoo. She remembered thinking that was a mistake. Maybe the client would wonder what needed covering up. Then she was suddenly on her back on the hallway floor with agony exploding from her nose.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” the man called Sark asked.

  “I walked into a door,” she whispered. Then she nodded, like she was confirming it to them. It was important. Marilyn had told her no police. Not yet.

  “Which door?”

  She didn’t know which door. Marilyn hadn’t told her. It was something they hadn’t talked about. Which door? She panicked.

  “Office door,” she said.

  “Is your office here in the city?” O’Hallinan asked.

  Sheryl made no reply. She just stared blankly into the woman’s kindly face.

  “Your insurance carrier says you work up in Westchester,” Sark said. “At a real estate broker in Pound Ridge.”

  Sheryl nodded, cautiously.

  “So you walked into your office door in Westchester,” O’Hallinan said. “And now you’re in the hospital fifty miles away in New York City.”

  “How did that happen, Sheryl?” Sark asked.

  She made no reply. There was silence inside the curtain area. Hissing and buzzing in her temples.

  “We can help, you know,” O’Hallinan said. “That’s why we’re here. We’re here to help you. We can make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

  Sheryl nodded again, cautiously.

  “But you have to tell us how it came about. Does he do this often?”

  Sheryl stared at her, confused.

  “Is that why you’re down here?” Sark asked. “You know, new hospital, no records from the other times? If we were to ask up in Mount Kisco or White Plains, what would we find? Would we find they know you up there? From before, maybe? From the other times he’s done this to you?”

  “I walked into a door,” Sheryl whispered.

  O’Hallinan shook her head. “Sheryl, we know you didn’t.”

  She stood up and peeled the X-ray films off the light box on the wall. Held them up to the light from the ceiling, like a doctor would.

  “Here’s your nose,” she said, pointing. “Here’s your cheekbones, and here’s your brow, and here’s your chin. See here? Your nose is broken, and your cheekbones, Sheryl. There’s a depressed fracture. That’s what the doctor is calling it. A depressed fracture. The bones are pushed down below the level of your chin and your brow. But your chin and your brow are OK. So this was done by something horizontal, wasn’t it? Something like a bat? Swinging sideways?”

  Sheryl stared at the films. They were gray and milky. Her bones looked like vague blurred shapes. Her eye sockets were enormous. The painkiller buzzed in her head, and she felt weak and sleepy.

  “I walked into a door,” she whispered.

  “The edge of a door is vertical,” Sark said, patiently. “There would be damage to your chin and your brow as well, wouldn’t there? It stands to reason, doesn’t it? If a vertical thing had depressed your cheekbones, it would have hit your brow and your chin pretty hard as well, wouldn’t it?”

  He gazed at the X rays, sadly.

  “We can help you,” O’Hallinan said. “You tell us all about it, and we can keep it from happening again. We can keep him from doing this to you again.”

  “I want to sleep now,” Sheryl whispered.

  O’Hallinan leaned forward and spoke softly. “Would it help if my partner left? You know, just you and me talking?”

  “I walked into a door,” Sheryl whispered. “Now I want to go to sleep.”

  O’Hallinan nodded, wisely and patiently. “I’ll leave you my card. So if you want to talk to me when you wake up, you can just call me, OK?”

  Sheryl nodded vaguely and O’Hallinan slipped a card from her pocket and bent down and placed it on the cabinet next to the bed.

  “Don’t forget, we can help you,” she whispered.

  Sheryl made no reply. She was either asleep, or pretending to be. O’Hallinan and Sark pulled the curtain and walked away to the desk. The doctor looked up at them. O’Hallinan shook her head.

  “Complete denial,” she said.

  “Walked into a door,” Sark said. “A door who was probably juiced up, weighs about two hundred pounds and swings a baseball bat.”

  The doctor shook her head. “Why on earth do they protect the bastards?”

  A nurse looked up. “I saw her come in. It was really weird. I was on my cigarette break. She got out of a car, way on the far side of the street. Walked herself all the way in. Her shoes were too big, you notice that? There were two guys in the car, watched her every step of the way, and then they took off in a big hurry.”

  “What was the car?” Sark asked.

  “Big black thing,” the nurse said.

  “You recall the plate?”

  “What am I, Mr. Memory?”

  O’Hallinan shrugged and started to move away.

  “But it’ll be on the video,” the nurse said suddenly.

  “What video?” Sark asked.

  “Security camera, above the doors. We stand right underneath it, so the management can’t clock how long we take out there. So what we see, it sees, too.”

  The exact time of Sheryl’s arrival was recorded in the paperwork at the desk. It took just a minute to wind the tape back to that point. Then another minute to run her slow walk in reverse, backward across the ambulance circle, across the plaza, across the sidewalk, through the traffic, into the front of a big black car. O’Hallinan bent her head close to the screen.

  “Got it,” she said.

  JODIE CHOSE THE hotel for the night. She did it by finding the travel section in the nearest bookstore to the NPRC building. She stood there and leafed through the local guides until she found a place recommended in three of them.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said. “We’re in St. Louis here, and the travel section has more guides to St. Louis than anyplace else. So how is that a travel section? Shoul
d be called the stay-at-home section.”

  Reacher was a little nervous. This method was new to him. The sort of places he normally patronized never advertised in books. They relied on neon signs on tall poles, boasting attractions that had stopped being attractions and had become basic human rights about twenty years ago, such as air and cable and a pool.

  “Hold this,” she said.

  He took the book from her and kept his thumb on the page while she squatted down and opened her carry-on. She rooted around and found her mobile phone. Took the book back from him and stood right there in the aisle and called the hotel. He watched her. He had never called a hotel. The places he stayed always had a room, no matter when. They were delirious if their occupancy rates ever made it above 50 percent. He listened to Jodie’s end of the conversation and heard her mentioning sums of money that would have bought him a bed for a month, given a little haggling.

  “OK,” she said. “We’re in. It’s their honeymoon suite. Four-poster bed. Is that neat, or what?”

  He smiled. The honeymoon suite.

  “We need to eat,” he said. “They serve dinner there?”

  She shook her head and thumbed through the book to the restaurant section.

  “More fun to go someplace else for dinner,” she said. “You like French?”

  He nodded. “My mother was French.”

  She checked the book and used the mobile again and reserved a table for two at a fancy place in the historic section, near the hotel.

  “Eight o’clock,” she said. “Gives us time to look around a little. Then we can check in at the hotel and get freshened up.”

  “Call the airport,” he said. “We need early flights out. Dallas-Fort Worth should do it.”

  “I’ll do that outside,” she said. “Can’t call the airport from a bookstore.”

  He carried her bag and she bought a gaudy tourist map of St. Louis and they stepped out into the heat of the late-afternoon sun. He looked at the map and she called the airline from the sidewalk and reserved two business-class seats to Texas, eight-thirty in the morning. Then they set out to walk the banks of the Mississippi where it ran through the city.

  They strolled arm in arm for ninety minutes, which took them about four miles, all the way around to the historic part of town. The hotel was a medium-sized old mansion set on a wide, quiet street lined with chestnut trees. It had a big door painted shiny black and oak floors the color of honey. Reception was an antique mahogany desk standing alone in the corner of the hallway. Reacher stared at it. The places he normally stayed, reception was behind a wire grille or boxed in with bulletproof Plexiglas. An elegant lady with white hair ran Jodie’s card through the swipe machine and the charge slip came chattering out. Jodie bent to sign it and the lady handed Reacher a brass key.