Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  The Zec didn’t move.

  “Someone right here, right now, in fact,” Reacher said.

  The Zec said nothing.

  “One thing always bothered me,” Reacher said. “From the start. At first I didn’t know if I was right or if I was letting my ego get in the way. I went back and forth with it. Finally I decided I was right. The thing is, when I was in the service I was a hell of a good investigator. I was maybe the best they ever had. I would have put myself up against anyone. And you know what?”

  “What?” Helen Rodin asked.

  “I would never have thought of emptying that parking meter. Not in a million years. It would never have occurred to me to do that. So I was facing a question. Was Emerson a better investigator than me? Or did he know that quarter was there?”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Emerson is not better than I was,” Reacher said. “That’s just not possible. That’s what I decided.” Then he turned to the Zec. “The coin was one clue too many. You see that now? It was unnatural. Was it Chenko’s idea?”

  The Zec nodded.

  “You should have overruled him,” Reacher said. He turned to Emerson. “Or you should have left it there. It wasn’t like you needed it to make the case.”

  “This is bullshit,” Emerson said.

  Reacher shook his head. “A lot of things clicked into place after that. I read the 911 transcripts and the squad car call log. Right at the start you were awful quick to make up your mind. You had a bunch of incoherent panic calls but within twenty seconds you were on the radio telling your guys that this was a lone nutcase with an automatic rifle. There was no basis for that conclusion. Six shots fired, ragged sequence, it could have been six kids with a handgun each, firing once. But you knew it wasn’t.”

  “Bullshit,” Emerson said again.

  Reacher shook his head again. “Final proof was when I was negotiating with your boss here. I said he’d have to tell the truth to a detective called Emerson. I could have said the cops generically, or Alex Rodin the DA. But I didn’t. I said your name specifically, and a little light came on in his eyes. He sparred around for a minute more, for form’s sake, but basically he agreed real fast because he figured he’d be OK as long as you were in charge.”

  Silence. Then Cash said, “But Oline Archer went to Alex Rodin here. He buried it. That’s what you found out.”

  Reacher shook his head again. “We found out that Oline went to the DA’s office. I went there myself, first thing after I got to town. And you know what? Alex here has got himself a couple of real dragon ladies working the door. They know he doesn’t like walk-ins. Dollars to doughnuts they sent Oline on her way. That’s a matter for the police, they’ll have told her. Her co-worker said she was gone most of the afternoon. My guess is the dragon ladies sent her trekking all across town to the station house, where she sat down with Emerson here.”

  Silence in the room.

  The Zec struggled on the sofa. “Emerson, do something, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Nothing he can do,” Reacher said. “I’m not dumb. I think ahead. I’m sure he’s got a Glock under his arm, but he’s got me behind him with a .38 and a knife, and he’s got Cash facing him with a sniper rifle hidden behind the sofa, and what can he do anyway? I guess he could try to kill us all and say there was some kind of a big massacre here, but how would that help him with NBC?”

  Emerson stared at him.

  “NBC?” Cash repeated.

  “I saw Yanni fiddling with her phone earlier. I’m assuming she’s transmitting all of this back to the studios.”

  Yanni pulled out her Nokia.

  “Open channel,” she said. “Digital audio recording on three separate hard discs, plus two analog tapes as backup. They’ve all been running since well before we got in the Humvee.”

  Cash stared at her. “That’s why you asked me that dumb question about the night scope. That’s why you were talking to yourself like a sports announcer.”

  “She’s a journalist,” Reacher said. “She’s going to win an Emmy.”

  He stepped forward and leaned over the back of Emerson’s chair and slid his hand under his coat. Came back out with a Glock nine. Handed it to Bianca.

  “You’ve got arrests to make,” he said.

  Then the Zec smiled, and Chenko walked into the room.

  Chenko was covered in mud and his right arm was broken, or his shoulder, or his collarbone, or maybe all three. His wrist was jammed into his shirt like a sling. But there was nothing wrong with his left arm. Nothing at all. Reacher turned around to face him and saw the sawn-off rock-steady in his left hand. He thought, irrelevantly: Where did he get that from? His car? Were the cars parked to the east?

  Chenko glanced at Bianca.

  “Put the gun down, lady,” he said.

  Bianca laid Emerson’s Glock on the floor. No sound as it touched the carpet.

  “Thank you,” Chenko said.

  Nobody spoke.

  “I guess I was out for a little while,” Chenko said. “But I got to tell you, I feel a whole hell of a lot better now.”

  “We survive,” the Zec said from across the room. “That’s what we do.”

  Reacher didn’t look back at the old man. He looked at Chenko’s gun instead. It had been a Benelli Nova Pump. The stock had been cut off behind the pistol grip. The barrel had been hacked off ahead of the slide. Twelve-gauge. Four-shot magazine. A handsome weapon, butchered.

  “Emerson,” the Zec called. “Come over here and untie me.”

  Reacher heard Emerson stand up. He didn’t look back at him. Just took a tiny pace forward and sideways, closer to Chenko. He was a foot taller and twice as wide.

  “I need a knife here,” Emerson said.

  “The soldier’s got a knife,” Chenko said. “I’m damn sure of that, based on what I saw happened to my buddies downstairs.”

  Reacher moved a little closer to him. A big guy and a little guy directly face-to-face, separated by about three feet, most of which was occupied by the Benelli. Reacher’s waist was level with Chenko’s chest.

  “Knife,” Emerson said.

  “Come and get it,” Reacher said.

  “Slide it across the floor.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll shoot,” Chenko said. “Twelve-gauge, in the gut.”

  Reacher thought: And then what? A pump-action shotgun ain’t much use to a one-armed man.

  “So shoot,” he said.

  He felt eyes on him. He knew everyone was looking at him. Staring at him. Silence buzzed in his ears. He was suddenly aware of the smells in the room. Dust in the carpet, worn furniture, fear, tension, damp night air blowing in from the open door downstairs and the busted window upstairs and carrying with it the odor of rich earth and fertilizer and budding new growth.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Shoot.”

  Chenko did nothing. Just stood there. Reacher stood there directly in front of him. He knew exactly how the room was laid out. He had arranged it. He pictured it in his mind. Chenko was in the doorway facing the window. Everyone else was facing the other way. Reacher himself right in front of Chenko, face-to-face, close enough to touch. Cash directly behind him all the way in back, behind the sofa, on the windowsill, staring forward. Then the Zec on the sofa, looking the same way. Then Emerson in the middle of the floor, near the Zec, standing up, indecisive, watching. Then Yanni and Franklin and Helen and Rosemary Barr in the armchairs against the side walls, heads turned. Then Donna Bianca and Alex Rodin on their dining chairs, twisted around at the waist, eyes wide.

  Reacher knew where everyone was, and he knew what they were looking at.

  “Shoot,” he said. “Aim at my belt. That’ll work. Go ahead.”

  Chenko did nothing. Just stared up at him. Reacher was so close and so big he was all Chenko could see. It was just the two of them, like they were alone in the room.

  “I’ll help you out,” Reacher said. “I’ll count to three. Then you pull the trigger.”

&
nbsp; Chenko just stood there.

  “You understand?” Reacher said.

  No reply.

  “One,” Reacher said.

  No reaction.

  “Two,” Reacher said.

  Then he stepped out of the way. Just took a long fast sideways shuffle to his right. Cash fired from behind the sofa at the spot where Reacher’s belt had been a split second before, and Chenko’s chest blew apart.

  Then Cash put his rifle back on the floor just as silently as he had picked it up.

  ______

  Two night-shift squad cars came and took the Zec and Emerson away. Then four ambulances arrived for the casualties. Bianca asked Reacher what exactly had happened to the first three. Reacher told her he had absolutely no idea. None at all. He speculated that it might have been some kind of an internal dispute. A falling-out among thieves, maybe? Bianca didn’t push it. Rosemary Barr borrowed Franklin’s cell phone and used it to call area hospitals, looking for a safe berth for her brother. Helen and Alex Rodin sat close together, talking. Gunny Cash sat in a chair and dozed. An old soldier’s habit. Sleep when you can. Yanni stepped up close to Reacher and said, “Rough men stand ready in the night.” Reacher found himself very aware of the live phone. He just smiled and said, “I’m usually in bed by twelve o’clock.”

  “Me too,” Yanni said. “Alone. You remember my address?”

  Reacher smiled again, and nodded. Then he went downstairs and stepped out to the front porch and walked a little ways south across the dirt until he could see past the bulk of the house to the eastern sky. Dawn was coming. Black shaded to purple right on the horizon. He turned and watched the last ambulance loading up. Vladimir’s final ride, judging by the size of the shape under the sheet on the gurney. Reacher emptied his pockets and left Emerson’s torn business card, and Helen Rodin’s cocktail napkin, and the motor court’s big brass key, and the Smith 60, and Gunny Cash’s Navy SEAL SRK, all in a neat little pile beside the front door. Then he asked the paramedics if he could ride with them to town. He figured he could walk east from the hospital and be at the bus depot before the sun was fully up. He could be in Indianapolis before lunch. Then he could buy a pair of shoes and be just about anywhere before the sun went down again.

  The Hard Way

  CHAPTER 1

  JACK REACHER ORDERED espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all.

  But that was enough.

  * * *

  The espresso had been close to perfect, so Reacher went back to the same café exactly twenty-four hours later. Two nights in the same place was unusual for Reacher, but he figured great coffee was worth a change in his routine. The café was on the west side of Sixth Avenue in New York City, in the middle of the block between Bleecker and Houston. It occupied the ground floor of an undistinguished four-story building. The upper stories looked like anonymous rental apartments. The café itself looked like a transplant from a back street in Rome. Inside it had low light and scarred wooden walls and a dented chrome machine as hot and long as a locomotive, and a counter. Outside there was a single line of metal tables on the sidewalk behind a low canvas screen. Reacher took the same end table he had used the night before and chose the same seat. He stretched out and got comfortable and tipped his chair up on two legs. That put his back against the café’s outside wall and left him looking east, across the sidewalk and the width of the avenue. He liked to sit outside in the summer, in New York City. Especially at night. He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.

  He was served by the same waiter as the night before and ordered the same drink, double espresso in a foam cup, no sugar, no spoon. He paid for it as soon as it arrived and left his change on the table. That way he could leave exactly when he wanted to without insulting the waiter or bilking the owner or stealing the china. Reacher always arranged the smallest details in his life so he could move on at a split second’s notice. It was an obsessive habit. He owned nothing and carried nothing. Physically he was a big man, but he cast a small shadow and left very little in his wake.

  He drank his coffee slowly and felt the night heat come up off the sidewalk. He watched cars and people. Watched taxis flow north and garbage trucks pause at the curbs. Saw knots of strange young people heading for clubs. Watched girls who had once been boys totter south. Saw a blue German sedan park on the block. Watched a compact man in a gray suit get out and walk north. Watched him thread between two sidewalk tables and head inside to where the café staff was clustered in back. Watched him ask them questions.

  The guy was medium height, not young, not old, too solid to be called wiry, too slight to be called heavy. His hair was gray at the temples and cut short and neat. He kept himself balanced on the balls of his feet. His mouth didn’t move much as he talked. But his eyes did. They flicked left and right tirelessly. The guy was about forty, Reacher guessed, and furthermore Reacher guessed he had gotten to be about forty by staying relentlessly aware of everything that was happening around him. Reacher had seen the same look in elite infantry veterans who had survived long jungle tours.

  Then Reacher’s waiter turned suddenly and pointed straight at him. The compact man in the gray suit stared over. Reacher stared back, over his shoulder, through the window. Eye contact was made. Without breaking it the man in the suit mouthed thank you to the waiter and started back out the way he had entered. He stepped through the door and made a right inside the low canvas screen and threaded his way down to Reacher’s table. Reacher let him stand there mute for a moment while he made up his mind. Then he said “Yes” to him, like an answer, not a question.

  “Yes what?” the guy said back.

  “Yes whatever,” Reacher said. “Yes I’m having a pleasant evening, yes you can join me, yes you can ask me whatever it is you want to ask me.”

  The guy scraped a chair out and sat down, his back to the river of traffic, blocking Reacher’s view.

  “Actually I do have a question,” he said.

  “I know,” Reacher said. “About last night.”

  “How did you know that?” The guy’s voice was low and quiet and his accent was flat and clipped and British.

  “The waiter pointed me out,” Reacher said. “And the only thing that distinguishes me from his other customers is that I was here last night and they weren’t.”

  “You’re certain about that?”

  “Turn your head away,” Reacher said. “Watch the traffic.”

  The guy turned his head away. Watched the traffic.

  “Now tell me what I’m wearing,” Reacher said.

  “Green shirt,” the British guy said. “Cotton, baggy, cheap, doesn’t look new, sleeves rolled to the elbow, over a green T-shirt, also cheap and not new, a little tight, untucked over flat-front khaki chinos, no socks, English shoes, pebbled leather, brown, not new, but not very old either, probably expensive. Frayed laces, like you pull on them too hard when you tie them. Maybe indicative of a self-discipline obsession.”

  “OK,” Reacher said.

  “OK what?”

  “You notice things,” Reacher said. “And I notice things. We’re two of a kind. We’re peas in a pod. I’m the only customer here now who was also here last night. I’m certain of that. And that’s what you asked the staff. Had to be. That’s the only reason the waiter would have pointed me out.”

  The guy turned back.

  “Did you see a car last night?” he asked.

  “I saw plenty of cars last night,” Reacher said. “This is Sixth Avenue.”

  “A Mercedes Benz. Parked over there.�
� The guy twisted again and pointed on a slight diagonal at a length of empty curb by a fire hydrant on the other side of the street.

  Reacher said, “Silver, four-door sedan, an S-420, New York vanity plates starting OSC, a lot of city miles on it. Dirty paint, scuffed tires, dinged rims, dents and scrapes on both bumpers.”

  The guy turned back again.

  “You saw it,” he said.

  “It was right there,” Reacher said. “Obviously I saw it.”

  “Did you see it leave?”

  Reacher nodded. “Just before eleven forty-five a guy got in and drove it away.”

  “You’re not wearing a watch.”

  “I always know what time it is.”

  “It must have been closer to midnight.”

  “Maybe,” Reacher said. “Whatever.”

  “Did you get a look at the driver?”

  “I told you, I saw him get in and drive away.”

  The guy stood up.

  “I need you to come with me,” he said. Then he put his hand in his pocket. “I’ll buy your coffee.”

  “I already paid for it.”

  “So let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To see my boss.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  “A man called Lane.”

  “You’re not a cop,” Reacher said. “That’s my guess. Based on observation.”

  “Of what?”

  “Your accent. You’re not American. You’re British. The NYPD isn’t that desperate.”

  “Most of us are Americans,” the British guy said. “But you’re right, we’re not cops. We’re private citizens.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind that will make it worth your while if you give them a description of the individual who drove that car away.”

  “Worth my while how?”

  “Financially,” the guy said. “Is there any other way?”

  “Lots of other ways,” Reacher said. “I think I’ll stay right here.”

  “This is very serious.”

  “How?”