23 Past Tense

by Lee Child

  “Are you worried about me?”

  “Purely as a professional responsibility.”

  “I won’t get in the strange man’s car,” Reacher said. “I think I can pretty much guarantee that.”

  Amos didn’t reply.

  Her door opened a crack and a head stuck in and said, “Ma’am, we have reports on the radio of a Massachusetts plate incoming from the southwest, on a black Chrysler 300 sedan, which according to Mass DMV seems to be registered to a freight forwarding operation based out of Logan Airport, in Boston.”

  “What are the demographics on a black Chrysler 300?”

  “Some limo companies, some rentals, but definitely a go-to gangster car.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Still south of downtown. With a squad car right behind it.”

  “Can he see inside?”

  “The windows are tinted.”

  “Dark enough to pull him over?”

  “Ma’am, we can play this any way you tell us.”

  Amos said, “Not yet. Stay with him. Make it obvious. Show the flag.”

  The head ducked out and the door closed again.

  “So,” Amos said. “Here we go.”

  “Not yet,” Reacher said. “Not with this guy.”

  “How many more clues do you need?”

  “That’s my point,” Reacher said. “It’s a big black sedan with tinted windows. It’s a shiny object. It’s immediately traceable back to Boston. It’s owned by a freight forwarding company at a major international airport. It might as well carry a neon sign. It’s a decoy. They want you to follow it. It’s going to drive around all day at exactly twenty-nine miles an hour. It’s going to signal every turn, and you can bet your ass its tail lights are in working order. Meanwhile the real guy is in an electrician’s van. Or a plumber. Or flowers. Or whatever. We have to assume a certain amount of common sense. The real guy is going to slip into town some time today and no one is going to notice. But hopefully after half past nine in the morning. Because that would make sense anyway. By then you’ll have been on a war footing more than six hours. You’ll be getting tired. He’ll know that. He’ll wait. I’ll be long gone.”

  “We’re basing a lot on your friend from yesterday actually showing up again.”

  “I guess we are.”

  “Will he?”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised either way. He was that kind of guy.”

  “On time?”

  “Same answer.”

  “What if he doesn’t show up? You’ll be here all day. That’s the exact scenario I promised Shaw I wouldn’t let happen.”

  Reacher nodded.

  “I don’t want to put you on the spot,” he said. “I apologize if I already have. I’ll give my guy thirty minutes. That’s all. If he doesn’t show by ten o’clock, you can drive me to the city limit yourself. Does that work?”

  “And then what?”

  “Then Shaw is happy. I’ll be outside the jurisdiction.”

  “It’s a line on the map. You could be followed. Electricians go from job to job. Also plumbers and flower delivery.”

  “But at least the county will be stuck with the paperwork, not the city.”

  “Your risk, I guess.”

  “No, the electrician’s risk. He’s going to be the paperwork, not me. What choice do I have? I can’t send him home to Boston with a pat on the back and a candy bar. Not under these circumstances. That would give the wrong impression entirely.”

  “They’ll send a replacement. They’ll send two.”

  “That will be the county’s problem, not yours.”

  “You shouldn’t stick around.”

  “I don’t want to,” Reacher said. “Believe me. I like to keep moving. But on the other hand I don’t like to be chased away. Especially not by people who plan to throw me off a building. Which strikes me as ambitious. They seem awful sure of themselves. Like I’m just a detail.”

  “Don’t let ego get in the way of a good decision.”

  “You just trashed every general in our nation’s history.”

  “You weren’t a general. Don’t make the same mistake.”

  “I won’t,” Reacher said. “I doubt if I’ll get the chance. I doubt if our paths will ever cross. I’ll be gone in a day. Two days max. The kid will heal up. All will be forgotten by the holidays. Life will move on. Hopefully I’ll be somewhere warm.”

  Amos didn’t answer.

  Her door opened again, the same crack, and the same head stuck in, and said, “The black Chrysler is now cruising downtown, with no apparent destination in mind, so far obeying all traffic laws, and the squad car is still behind it.”

  The head withdrew and the door closed.

  “Decoy,” Reacher said.

  “When will the real guy get here?”

  He didn’t answer.

  —

  The second arrival had many more moving parts than the first. It was a whole big production. Peter drove his Mercedes SUV to a small airfield near Manchester. Not even executive aviation. More of a hobby field. No tower, no log, no reporting requirements at all. He parked inside the fence, level with the end of the runway. He waited, with his window down.

  Five minutes later he heard the distant clatter of a propeller plane. In the far distance he saw winks of light in the pale dawn sky. A twin engine Cessna, that kind of thing, hopping and jumping, weightless on the wind. It came in low, and landed, and slowed immediately to a fussy, bustling land-bound scurry, like a nervous bird, roaring with noise. Peter flashed his lights, and it rolled on toward him.

  It was an air taxi, out of Syracuse, New York, booked by a shell corporation owned by a nest of ten others, on behalf of a passenger who had an Illinois driver’s license in the name of Hogan. He had arrived in Syracuse moments earlier in a charter Gulfstream out of Houston, Texas, booked by a different shell corporation owned by a different nest of ten others, on behalf of a passenger with a California license in the name of Hourihane. Neither license was real, and no one knew where he had come in from, prior to the wheels-up in Houston.

  He climbed down from the plane and Peter helped him put his stuff in the Mercedes. Three soft bags and two hard cases. The money was in one of the soft bags, Peter assumed. The contribution. A physical weight, even in hundreds.

  The plane shuddered around in place, a deafening half circle, and then it blared away down the runway and into the air. Peter drove the other way, out the gate, left and right along the back roads. The new arrival sat beside him, in the front passenger seat. He looked excited. He was sweating a little. He wanted to say something. Peter could tell. But he didn’t. Not at first. He didn’t speak at all. He stared ahead through the windshield and rocked in his seat, small movements, sometimes back and forth, sometimes side to side.

  But eventually he had to know.

  He had to ask.

  He said, “What are they like?”

  “They’re perfect,” Peter said.

  Chapter 24

  Dawn came up bright and clear, and a patrolman came by to take breakfast orders, from a diner two blocks down the street. Reacher chose a fried egg sandwich. Ten minutes later it arrived, still hot in greasy aluminum foil. It tasted pretty good. Maybe a little rubbery. Nutritious, anyway. Protein, carbohydrate, grease. All the food groups. He got more coffee from the squad room pot. No one was in there. Day watch was an hour away.

  There was a feed from the radio room playing softly through a speaker on someone’s empty desk. Reacher went closer and listened. There were slow blasts of static, like breathing, and call signs and code words and addresses that meant nothing, but he caught the drift. A dispatcher was talking to two separate squad cars. The dispatcher was probably down the hall, and the squad cars seemed to be circling the center of town. One of them seemed to be right behind the Chrysler, and the other seemed to be tracking them both, from a block away. Reacher figured the regular night watch would be just one car. They were spending overtime money.


  A voice that could have been Davison’s broke in and said, “Now he’s in the drive-through lane for coffee.”

  “That’s good,” the dispatcher said. “It means sooner rather than later he’ll need to take a leak. Maybe you can get a look at him.”

  No need, Reacher thought. He would be about five-ten tall, and five-nine wide, in a dark cashmere overcoat and a pink button-down shirt, with greasy black hair slicked back, and aviator shades and a gold chain around his neck. Like central casting. Whatever caught the eye.

  Then a new voice said, “The cameras at the highway cloverleaf show a Massachusetts plate heading our way. On a dark blue panel van. A Persian carpet cleaning company out of Boston. If it doesn’t turn off, it’s about ten minutes away.”

  “Back burner,” the dispatcher said. “We’re going to get plenty of clutter. We’re going to get FedEx and UPS and all kinds of things.”

  The static breathed in and out. Reacher had seen Persian carpets. Mostly in old houses, or rich houses, or old rich houses. He knew they were expensive. He knew they were often treasured heirlooms. Therefore cleaning them was a delicate matter. Experts were no doubt few and far between. So it was immediately plausible that a discerning customer in Laconia would need to send to Boston for a satisfactory service. Pick-up and drop-off included, no doubt, in the same all-in-one delicate and expert price.

  All good.

  Except.

  He topped up his coffee and headed back to Amos’s office. She was at her desk, with her hand on the phone, as if she had just put it down, or couldn’t remember who she wanted to call.

  He said, “I heard the radio in the squad room.”

  She nodded.

  “I got an update,” she said. “The decoy is getting drive-through coffee.”

  “And a blue van came off the highway.”

  “That too.”

  “Got an opinion?”

  “It’s a van,” she said. “I can think of a hundred reasons why it’s OK.”

  “Ninety-nine,” Reacher said.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “How many Persian carpets have you seen?”

  “A few.”

  “Where?”

  “An old lady we used to visit. In a big old house. We were told to call her an aunt. We weren’t allowed to touch anything.”

  “Exactly. An old biddy. A rich old fussbudget. No doubt very organized. Probably she gets her mahogany polished at the same time her rug is out for cleaning. Which happens every time the latest labrador dies. When she also has her great-grandmother’s china washed. What’s the earliest time of day such a grand New Hampshire lady would be prepared to receive tradespeople at her door?”

  Amos said nothing.

  “The van is too early,” Reacher said. “That’s what’s wrong with it. It’s just after dawn. It’s not making a customer call in Laconia.”

  “Want me to have it stopped?”

  “I don’t care,” Reacher said. “I’ll survive either way. But if it’s the guy, you could get a nice bust out of it. He’s got to be carrying. Probably a big shotgun, if he seriously expects me to get in the van with him.”

  “You’re about the size of a rolled-up rug,” she said. “From a big room. Maybe this is how they move people now. Since the new cars came out, with the smaller trunks.”

  Reacher didn’t know if she was kidding or not.

  “Up to you,” he said. “Taking a look might put your mind at rest.”

  “I would need a SWAT team, if you’re right about the shotgun.”

  Reacher didn’t answer. She thought for a moment, and then she picked up the phone. She said to whoever answered, “Keep eyes on the blue van from the carpet cleaner. Let me know where it goes.”

  —

  An hour later the work day was fully underway. The new watch was in. The station was bustling and crowded. Reacher kept out of the way. He heard a patchwork of news, some of it from the radio feed, which was still playing softly, and some of it from people calling out updates to each other, desk to desk across busy rooms, and some of it by eavesdropping on hurried corridor conversations. The decoy in the Chrysler was still driving around, ostentatiously legal, taking scrupulous care at every four-way, yielding and deferring to pedestrians and local drivers every chance he got. He had not yet stopped for gas. Or the bathroom. Opinion was divided as to which was the more impressive feat.

  But they had lost the blue van. By then they had three squad cars out, one behind the Chrysler, and two patrolling the southern approaches, and the van had been seen once, but not again. Opinion was divided between two competing theories. Either the van had parked in a carefully hidden location, perhaps an alley or a courtyard, which automatically made it suspicious, or else it had driven straight through town and exited to the northwest, perhaps to service an address in a close-by community, which automatically didn’t.

  Reacher wondered if the apple farmer had a Persian carpet in his house.

  Amos said, “It’s nearly time for you to go.”

  He said, “Maybe I’ll walk through a couple of alleys and courtyards.”

  “You won’t walk through anywhere. I’m going to drive you. In a marked car. No one would be dumb enough to attack a police vehicle.”

  “Are you worried about me?”

  “Purely in an operational sense. I want you out of here. Definitively. Once and for all. No delays. Because then my problem is solved. For avoidance of doubt I want to see it happen with my own eyes.”

  “Maybe after that you should go stop the decoy and let him know it’s all over. He might be grateful. He must be desperate for a leak by now.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “You could tell him which way I went. Tell him I’d like to meet him. And his pal in the van.”

  “Let it go,” she said. “This ain’t the MPs anymore.”

  “Is that how you feel?”

  “Mostly,” she said.

  She made a couple of arrangements on the phone, and then she grabbed her bag and led Reacher out to the lot, where she chose a black and white still wet from the car wash. The keys were in it. Reacher rode in the front, cramped by the laptop and the custom compartments. He gave her directions, to the corner before the side street where the inn was. Where he had gotten out, the day before. All the way there he watched the traffic. Didn’t see a blue van. Didn’t see a black Chrysler, either. There was a late rush hour jam at one of the lights. Amos checked her watch. Getting close. She lit up her roof bar and slipped through in the wrong lane.

  And there dead ahead was the ancient Subaru. Waiting at the curb. On the right spot. At the right time. Inside was a familiar skinny silhouette. Blue denim, a pencil neck, and a long gray ponytail.

  “Is that him?” Amos asked.

  “Sure is,” Reacher said.

  “Maybe I did something good in a previous life.”

  She pulled in behind the Subaru. The silhouette jerked its head. Like it was suddenly staring in the mirror. Then the Subaru took off. Instantly. It disappeared out from in front of them. It howled off the curb and blasted down the street.

  Maximum acceleration.

  Amos said, “What?”

  “Chase him,” Reacher said. “Go, go, go.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and stamped on the gas and took off in pursuit.

  She said, “What just happened?”

  “You scared him,” Reacher said. “Your red lights were still on. Like you were pulling him over.”

  “He was stationary.”

  “Maybe he thought you were busting him.”

  “Why would I? Was he on a hydrant?”

  “Maybe he’s got weed in the car. Or secret documents. Or something. Maybe he thinks you’re an agent of deep state oppression. We’re dealing with an old guy with a ponytail here.”

  They followed him a hundred yards behind, then eighty, then fifty, then twenty. The Subaru was doing its valiant best, but it was no match for a modern-day police vehicle. With light
s and a siren. Then up ahead the Subaru turned right. It was lost to sight for ten or twelve agonizing seconds, but they turned after it, and saw it turning again, at the end of the block.

  “He’s heading home,” Reacher said. “Somewhere north and west of here.”

  Amos took a shortcut on a block she knew better, and came out right on the Subaru’s bumper. A one way street. Up ahead was a red light, and another small jam. Two lanes of traffic, five cars on the left, and six on the right. The tail end of rush hour. The light went green, but nobody moved. Someone was blocking the box. Not a blue van. Not a black Chrysler. The Subaru braked hard and swerved into the shorter line. Now he was the sixth car on the left, one inch behind the fifth. Amos stopped one inch behind him. On his left was the sidewalk, and on his right was the right-hand queue of vehicles, just as long, just as stopped. He was parked tighter than Paris.

  Amos said, “Technically he committed a number of offenses.”

  “Let it go,” Reacher said. “And thanks for everything.”

  He got out of the car and walked ahead. He tapped on the Subaru’s passenger window. The old guy stared ahead for a long moment, absolutely refusing to look, rigid with principle, but eventually, and reluctantly, he glanced to his right. At which point he looked very surprised. He glanced back at the flashing lights. He was confused. He didn’t understand.

  Reacher opened the door and got in the car.

  “She gave me a ride,” he said. “That’s all. She didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Up ahead the light cycled back to green, and this time the traffic moved. The guy drove forward, with one eye on his mirror. Behind him Amos pulled a wide U turn around the light and headed back the way she had come. Reacher turned in his seat and watched her go.

  The old guy said, “Why would a cop give you a ride?”

  “Protective custody,” Reacher said. “The folks from the apple farm were in town last night.”

  The explanation seemed to settle the guy. He nodded.

  “I told you,” he said. “That family doesn’t let things go.”