The Essential Jack Reacher 10-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  “What’s the deal here?” I asked her.

  She smiled shyly, like she had never been asked such a thing before. Then she told me I could watch her onstage in exchange for dollar tips, or I could spend ten to get a private show in a back room. She explained the private show could involve touching, and to make sure I was paying attention she ran her hand up the inside of my thigh.

  I could see how a guy could be tempted. She was cute. She looked to be about twenty. Except for her eyes. Her eyes looked like a fifty-year-old’s.

  “What about something more?” I said. “Someplace else we could go?”

  “We can talk about that during the private show.”

  She took me by the hand and led me past their dressing room door and through a velvet curtain into a dim room behind the stage. It wasn’t small. It was maybe thirty feet by twenty. It had an upholstered bench running around the whole perimeter. It wasn’t especially private either. There were about six guys in there, each of them with a naked woman on his lap. The blonde girl led me to a space on the bench and sat me down. She waited until I came out with my wallet and paid her ten bucks. Then she draped herself over me and snuggled in tight. The way she sat made it impossible for me not to put my hand on her thigh. Her skin was warm and smooth.

  “So where can we go?” I asked.

  “You’re in a hurry,” she said. She moved around and eased the hem of her dress up over her hips. She wasn’t wearing anything under it.

  “Where are you from?” I asked her.

  “Atlanta,” she said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sin,” she said. “Spelled S, i, n.”

  I was fairly certain that was a professional alias.

  “What’s yours?” she said.

  “Reacher,” I said. There was no point adopting an alias of my own. I was fresh from the widow visit, still in Class As, with my nameplate big and obvious on my right jacket pocket.

  “That’s a nice name,” she said, automatically. I was fairly certain she said it to everybody. Quasimodo, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, that’s a nice name. She moved her hand. Started with the top button of my jacket and undid it all the way down. Smoothed her fingers inside across my chest, under my tie, on top of my shirt.

  “There’s a motel across the street,” I said.

  She nodded against my shoulder.

  “I know there is,” she said.

  “I’m looking for whoever went over there last night with a soldier.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  She pushed against my chest. “Are you here to have fun, or ask questions?”

  “Questions,” I said.

  She stopped moving. Said nothing.

  “I’m looking for whoever went over to the motel last night with a soldier.”

  “Get real,” she said. “We all go over to the motel with soldiers. There’s practically a groove worn in the pavement. Look carefully, and you can see it.”

  “I’m looking for someone who came back a little sooner than normal, maybe.”

  She said nothing.

  “Maybe she was a little spooked.”

  She said nothing.

  “Maybe she met the guy there,” I said. “Maybe she got a call earlier in the day.”

  She eased her butt up off my knee and pulled her dress down as far as it would go, which wasn’t very far. Then she traced her fingertips across my lapel badge.

  “We don’t answer questions,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  I saw her glance at the velvet curtain. Like she was looking through it and all the way across the big square room to the register by the door.

  “Him?” I said. “I’ll make sure he isn’t a problem.”

  “He doesn’t like us to talk to cops.”

  “It’s important,” I said. “The guy was an important soldier.”

  “You all think you’re important.”

  “Any of the girls here from California?”

  “Five or six, maybe.”

  “Any of them used to work Fort Irwin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So here’s the deal,” I said. “I’m going to the bar. I’m going to get another beer. I’m going to spend ten minutes drinking it. You bring me the girl who had the problem last night. Or you show me where I can find her. Tell her there’s no real problem. Tell her nobody will get in trouble. I think you’ll find she understands that.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I’ll roust everybody out of here and I’ll burn the place to the ground. Then you can all find jobs somewhere else.”

  She glanced at the velvet curtain again.

  “Don’t worry about the fat guy,” I said. “Any pissing and moaning out of him, I’ll bust his nose again.”

  She just sat still. Didn’t move at all.

  “It’s important,” I said again. “We fix this now, nobody gets in trouble. We don’t, then someone winds up with a big problem.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Spread the word,” I said. “Ten minutes.”

  I bumped her off my lap and watched her disappear through the curtain. Followed her a minute later and fought my way to the bar. I left my jacket hanging open. I thought it made me look off duty. I didn’t want to ruin everybody’s evening.

  I spent twelve minutes drinking another overpriced domestic beer. I watched the waitresses and the hookers work the room. I saw the big guy with the face moving through the press of people, looking here, looking there, checking on things. I waited. My new blonde friend didn’t show. And I couldn’t see her anywhere. The place was very crowded. And it was dark. The music was thumping away. There were strobes and black lights and the whole scene was confusion. The ventilation fans were roaring but the air was hot and foul. I was tired and I was getting a headache. I slid off my stool and tried a circuit of the whole place. Couldn’t find the blonde anywhere. I went around again. Didn’t find her. The Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to before stopped me halfway through my third circuit.

  “Looking for your girlfriend?” he said.

  I nodded. He pointed at the dressing room door.

  “I think you just caused her some trouble,” he said.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  He said nothing. Just held up his left palm and smacked his right fist into it.

  “And you didn’t do anything?” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “You’re the cop,” he said. “Not me.”

  The dressing room door was a plain plywood rectangle painted black. I didn’t knock. I figured the women who used the room weren’t shy. I just pulled it open and stepped inside. There were regular lightbulbs burning in there, and piles of clothes, and the stink of perfume. There were vanity tables with theater mirrors. There was an old sofa, red velvet. Sin was sitting on it, crying. She had a vivid red outline of a hand on her left cheek. Her right eye was swollen shut. I figured it for a double slap, first forehand, then backhand. Two heavy blows. She was pretty shaken. Her left shoe was off. I could see needle marks between her toes. Addicts in the skin trades often inject there. It rarely shows. Models, hookers, actresses.

  I didn’t ask if she was OK. That would have been a stupid question. She was going to live, but she wasn’t going to work for a week. Not until the eye went black and then turned yellow enough to hide with makeup. I just stood there until she saw me, through the eye that was still open.

  “Get out,” she said.

  She looked away.

  “Bastard,” she said.

  “You find the girl yet?” I said.

  She looked straight at me.

  “There was no girl,” she said. “I asked all around. I asked everybody. And that’s what I heard back. Nobody had a problem last night. Nobody at all.”

  I paused a beat. “Anyone not here who should be?”

  “We’re all here. We’ve all got Christmas to pay for.”

  I didn’t speak.

&nb
sp; “You got me slapped for nothing,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for your trouble.”

  “Get out,” she said again, not looking at me.

  “OK,” I said.

  “Bastard,” she said.

  I left her sitting there and forced my way back through the crowd around the stage. Through the crowd around the bar. Through the bottleneck entrance, to the doorway. The guy with the face was right there in the shadows again, behind the register. I guessed where his head was in the darkness and swung my open right hand and slapped him on the ear, hard enough to rock him sideways.

  “You,” I said. “Outside.”

  I didn’t wait for him. Just pushed my way out into the night. There was a bunched-up crowd of people in the lot. All military. The ones who had trickled out when I came in. They were standing around in the cold, leaning on cars, drinking beer from the long-neck bottles they had carried out with them. They weren’t going to be a problem. They would have to be very drunk indeed to mix it up with an MP. But they weren’t going to be any help either. I wasn’t one of them. I was on my own.

  The door burst open behind me. The big guy came out. He had a couple of locals with him. Both looked like farmers. We all stepped into a pool of yellow light from a fixture on a pole. We all faced each other. Our breath turned to vapor in the air. Nobody spoke. No preamble was required. I guessed that parking lot had seen plenty of fights. I guessed this one would be no different from all the others. It would finish up just the same, with a winner and a loser.

  I slipped out of my jacket and hung it on the nearest car’s door mirror. It was a ten-year-old Plymouth, good paint, good chrome. An enthusiast’s ride. I saw the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to come out into the lot. He looked at me for a second and then stepped away into the shadows and stood with his men by the cars. I took my watch off and turned away and dropped it in my jacket pocket. Then I turned back. Studied my opponent. I wanted to mess him up bad. I wanted Sin to know I had stood up for her. But there was no percentage in going for his face. That was already messed up bad. I couldn’t make it much worse. And I wanted to put him out of action for a spell. I didn’t want him coming around and taking his frustration out on the girls, just because he couldn’t get back at me.

  He was barrel-chested and overweight, so I figured I might not have to use my hands at all. Except on the farmers, maybe, if they piled in. Which I hoped wouldn’t happen. No need to start a big conflict. On the other hand, it was their call. Everybody has a choice in life. They could hang back, or they could choose up sides.

  I was maybe seven inches taller than the guy with the face, but maybe seventy pounds lighter. And ten years younger. I watched him run the numbers. Watched him conclude that on balance he would be OK. I guessed he figured himself for a real junkyard dog. Figured me for an upstanding representative of Uncle Sam. Maybe the Class As made him think I was going to act like an officer and a gentleman. Somewhat proper, somewhat inhibited.

  His mistake.

  He came at me, swinging. Big chest, short arms, not much reach at all. I arched around the punch and let him skitter away. He came back at me. I swatted his hand away and tapped him in the face with my elbow. Not hard. I just wanted to stop his momentum and get him standing still right in front of me, just for a moment.

  He put all his weight on his back foot and lined up a straight drive aimed for my face. It was going to be a big blow. It would have hurt me if it had landed. But before he let it go I stepped in and smashed my right heel into his right kneecap. The knee is a fragile joint. Ask any athlete. This guy had three hundred pounds bearing down on it and he got two hundred thirty driving straight through it. His patella shattered and his leg folded backward. Exactly like a regular knee joint, but in reverse. He went down forward and the top of his boot came up to meet the front of his thigh. He screamed, real loud. I stepped back and smiled. He shoots, he scores.

  I stepped back in and looked at the guy’s knee, carefully. It was messed up, but good. Broken bone, ripped ligaments, torn cartilage. I thought about kicking it again, but I really didn’t need to. He was in line for a visit to the cane store, as soon as they let him out of the orthopedic ward. He was going to be choosing a lifetime supply. Wood, aluminum, short, long, his pick.

  “I’ll come back and do the other one,” I said. “If anything happens that I don’t want to happen.”

  I don’t think he heard me. He was writhing around in an oily puddle, panting and whimpering, trying to get his knee in a position where it would stop killing him. He was shit out of luck there. He was going to have to wait for surgery.

  The farmers were busy choosing up sides. Both of them were pretty dumb. But one of them was dumber than the other. Slower. He was flexing his big red hands. I stepped in and headbutted him full in the face, to help with the decision-making process. He went down, head-to-toe with the big guy, and his pal beat a fast retreat behind the nearest pickup truck. I lifted my jacket off the Plymouth’s door mirror and shrugged back into it. Took my watch out of my pocket. Strapped it back on my wrist. The soldiers drank their beer and looked at me, nothing in their faces. They were neither pleased nor disappointed. They had invested nothing in the outcome. Whether it was me or the other guys on the ground was all the same to them.

  I saw Lieutenant Summer on the fringe of the crowd. Threaded my way through cars and people toward her. She looked tense. She was breathing hard. I guessed she had been watching. I guessed she had been ready to jump in and help me out.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “The fat guy hit a woman who was asking questions for me. His pal didn’t run away fast enough.”

  She glanced at them and then back at me. “What did the woman say?”

  “She said nobody had a problem last night.”

  “The kid in the motel still denies there was a hooker with Kramer. He’s pretty definite about it.”

  I heard Sin say: You got me slapped for nothing. Bastard.

  “So what made him go looking in the room?”

  Summer made a face. “That was my big question, obviously.”

  “Did he have an answer?”

  “Not at first. Then he said it was because he heard a vehicle leaving in a hurry.”

  “What vehicle?”

  “He said it was a big engine, revving hard, taking off fast, like a panic situation.”

  “Did he see it?”

  Summer just shook her head.

  “Makes no sense,” I said. “A vehicle implies a call girl, and I doubt if they have many call girls here. And why would Kramer need a call girl anyway, with all those other hookers right here in the bar?”

  Summer was still shaking her head. “The kid says the vehicle had a very distinctive sound. Very loud. And diesel, not gasoline. He says he heard the exact same sound again a little later on.”

  “When?”

  “When you left in your Humvee.”

  “What?”

  Summer looked right at me. “He says he checked Kramer’s room because he heard a military vehicle peeling out of the lot in a panic.”

  four

  We went back across the road to the motel and made the kid tell the story all over again. He was surly and he wasn’t talkative, but he made a good witness. Unhelpful people often do. They’re not trying to please you. They’re not trying to impress you. They’re not making all kinds of stuff up, trying to tell you what you want to hear.

  He said he was sitting in the office, alone, doing nothing, and at about eleven twenty-five in the evening he heard a vehicle door slam and then a big turbodiesel start up. He described sounds that must have been a gearbox slamming into reverse and a four-wheel-drive transfer case locking up. Then there was tire noise and engine noise and gravel noise and something very large and heavy sped away in a big hurry. He said he got off his stool and went outside to look. Didn’t see the vehicle.

  “Why did you check the room?” I asked him.

  He
shrugged. “I thought maybe it was on fire.”

  “On fire?”

  “People do stuff like that, in a place like this. They set the room on fire. And then hightail out. For kicks. Or something. I don’t know. It was unusual.”

  “How did you know which room to check?”

  He went very quiet at that point. Summer pressed him for an answer. Then I did. We did the good cop, bad cop thing. Eventually he admitted it was the only room rented for the whole night. All the others were renting by the hour, and were being serviced by foot traffic from across the street, not by vehicles. He said that was how he had been so sure there was never a hooker in Kramer’s room. It was his responsibility to check them in and out. He took the money and issued the keys. Kept track of the comings and the goings. So he always knew for sure who was where. It was a part of his function. A part he was supposed to keep very quiet about.

  “I’ll lose my job now,” he said.

  He got worried to the point of tears and Summer had to calm him down. Then he told us he had found Kramer’s body and called the cops and cleared all the hourly renters out for safety’s sake. Then Deputy Chief Stockton had shown up within about fifteen minutes. Then I had shown up, and when I left sometime later the kid recognized the same vehicle sounds he had heard before. Same engine noise, same drivetrain noises, same tire whine. He was convincing. He had already admitted that hookers used the place all the time, so he had no more reason to lie. And Humvees were still relatively new. Still relatively rare. And they made a distinctive noise. So I believed him. We left him there on his stool and stepped outside into the cold red glow of the Coke machine.

  “No hooker,” Summer said. “A woman from the base instead.”

  “A woman officer,” I said. “Maybe fairly senior. Someone with permanent access to her own Humvee. Nobody signs out a pool vehicle for an assignation like that. And she’s got his briefcase. She must have.”

  “She’ll be easy to find. She’ll be in the gate log, time out, time in.”