by Lee Child
“I can’t talk about it,” the woman said. “It’s a forbidden subject. It was the start of everything bad. And I was wrong, anyway. It was a false allegation.”
Reacher got up off the bed. He headed for the bathroom and rinsed his face with cold water and brushed his teeth. Behind him the woman stripped the bed with fast, practiced movements of her wrists, sheets going one way, blankets the other. She said, “You’re heading for Virginia.”
Reacher said, “You know my Social Security number too?”
“The doctor told his wife you’re a military cop.”
“Were, as in used to be. Not anymore.”
“So what are you now?”
“Hungry.”
“No breakfast here.”
“So where?”
“There’s a diner an hour or so south. In town. Where the county cops get their morning coffee and doughnuts.”
“Terrific.”
The housekeeper stepped out to the path and took fresh linens from a cart. Bottom sheet, top sheet, pillowcases. Reacher asked her, “What does Vincent pay you?”
“Minimum wage,” she said. “That’s all he can afford.”
“I could pay you more than that to cook me breakfast.”
“Where?”
“Your place.”
“Risky.”
“Why? You a terrible cook?”
She smiled, briefly. “Do you tip well?”
“If the coffee’s good.”
“I use my mother’s percolator.”
“Was her coffee good?”
“The best.”
“So we’re in business.”
“I don’t know,” the woman said.
“They’re not going to be conducting house-to-house searches. They expect to find me out in the open.”
“And when they don’t?”
“Nothing for you to worry about. I’ll be long gone. I like breakfast as much as the next guy, but I don’t take hours to eat it.”
The woman stood there for a minute, unsure, a crisp white pillowcase held flat across her chest like a sign, or a flag, or a defense. Then she said, “OK.”
Four hundred and fifty miles due north, because of the latitude, dawn came a little later. The gray panel truck sat astride the sandy path, hidden, inert, dewed over with cold. Its driver woke up in the dark and climbed down and took a leak against a tree, and then he drank some water and ate a candy bar and got back in his sleeping bag and watched the pale morning light filter down through the needles. He knew at best he would be there most of the day, or most of two days, and at worst most of three or four days. But then would come his share, of money and fun, and both things were worth waiting for.
He was patient by nature.
And obedient.
Reacher stood still in the middle of the room and the housekeeper finished up around him. She made the bed tight enough to bounce a dime, she changed the towels, she replaced a tiny vial of shampoo, she put out a new morsel of paper-wrapped soap, she folded an arrowhead into the toilet roll. Then she went to get her truck. It was a pickup, a battered old item, very plain, with rust and skinny tires and a sagging suspension. She looped around the wrecked Subaru and parked with the passenger door next to the cabin door. She checked front and rear, long and hard, and then she paused. Reacher could see she wanted to forget the whole thing and take off without him. It was right there in her face. But she didn’t. She leaned across the width of the cab and opened the door and flapped her hand. Hurry up.
Reacher stepped out of the cabin and into the truck. The woman said, “If we see anyone, you have to duck down and hide, OK?”
Reacher agreed, although it would be hard to do. It was a small truck. A Chevrolet, grimy and dusty inside, all worn plastic and vinyl, with the dash tight against his knees and the window into the load bed tight against the back of his seat.
“Got a bag?” he asked.
“Why?”
“I could put it on my head.”
“This isn’t funny,” she said. She drove off, the worn old transmission taking a second to process her foot’s command, something rattling under the hood, a holed muffler banging away like a motorcycle. She turned left out of the lot and drove through the crossroads and headed south. There was no other traffic. In the daylight the land all around looked flat and featureless and immense. It was all dusted white with frost. The sky was high and blank. After five minutes Reacher saw the two old buildings in the west, the sagging barn and the smaller shed with the captured pick-up in it. Then three minutes later they passed the Duncans’ three houses standing alone at the end of their long shared driveway. The woman’s hands went tight on the wheel and Reacher saw she had crossed her fingers. The truck rattled onward and she watched the mirror more than the road ahead and then a mile later she breathed out and relaxed.
Reacher said, “They’re only people. Three old guys and a skinny kid. They don’t have magic powers.”
“They’re evil,” the woman said.
They were in Jonas Duncan’s kitchen, eating breakfast, biding their time, waiting for Jacob to come out with it. He had a pronouncement to make. A decision. They all knew the signs. Many times Jacob had sat quiet and distracted and contemplative, and then eventually he had delivered a nugget of wisdom, or an analysis that had cut to the heart of the matter, or a proposal that had killed three or four birds with one stone. So they waited for it, Jonas and Jasper patiently enjoying their meal, Seth struggling with it a little because chewing had become painful for him. Bruising was spreading out from under his aluminum mask. He had woken up with two black eyes the size and color of rotting pears.
Jacob put down his knife and his fork. He dabbed his lips with his cuff. He folded his hands in front of him. He said, “We have to ask ourselves something.”
Jonas was hosting, so he was entitled to the first response.
“What something?” he asked.
“We have to consider whether it might be worth trading a little dignity and self-respect for a useful outcome.”
“In what way?”
“We have a provocation and a threat. The provocation comes from the stranger in the motel throwing his weight around in matters that don’t concern him. The threat comes from our friend to the south getting impatient. The first thing must be punished, and the second thing shouldn’t have happened at all. No date should have been guaranteed. But it was, so we have to deal with it, and without judgment either. No doubt Seth was doing what he thought was best for all of us.”
Jonas asked, “How do we deal with it?”
“Let’s think about the other thing first. The stranger from the motel.”
Seth said, “I want him hurt bad.”
“We all do, son. And we tried, didn’t we? Didn’t work out so well.”
“What, now we’re afraid of him?”
“We are, a little bit, son. We lost three guys. We’d be stupid not to be at least a little concerned. And we’re not stupid, are we? That’s one thing a Duncan will never be accused of. Hence my question about self-respect.”
“You want to let him walk?”
“No, I want to tell our friend to the south that the stranger is the problem. That he’s somehow the reason for the delay. Then we point out to our friend that he’s already got two of his boys up here, and if he wants a bit of giddy-up in the shipment process, then maybe those two boys could be turned against the stranger. That’s a win all around, isn’t it? Three separate ways. First, those two boys are off Seth’s back, as of right now, and second, the stranger gets hurt or killed, and third, some of the sting comes out of our friend’s recent attitude, because he comes to see that the delay isn’t really our fault at all. He comes to see that we’re beleaguered, by outside forces, in ways that he’ll readily understand, because no doubt he’s beleaguered too, from time to time, in similar ways. In other words, we make common cause.”
Silence for a moment.
Then Jasper Duncan said, “I like it.”
Jacob said, “I like it too. Otherwise I wouldn’t be proposing it. The only downside is a slight blow to our self-respect and dignity, in that it won’t be our own hands on the man who transgressed against us, and we’ll be admitting to our friend to the south that there are problems in this world that we can’t solve all by ourselves.”
“No shame in that,” Jonas said. “This is a very complicated business.”
Seth asked, “You figure his boys are better than our boys?”
“Of course they are, son,” Jacob said. “As good as our boys are, his are in a different league. There’s no comparison. Which we need to bear in mind. Our friend to the south needs to remain our friend, because he would make a very unpleasant enemy.”
“But suppose the delay doesn’t go away?” Jasper asked. “Suppose nothing changes? Suppose the stranger gets nailed today and we still can’t deliver for a week? Then our friend to the south knows we were lying to him.”
“I don’t think the stranger will get nailed in one day,” Jacob said.
“Why not?”
“Because he seems to be a very capable person. All the evidence so far points in that direction. It could take a few days, by which time our truck could well be on its way. And even if it isn’t, we could say that we thought it prudent to keep the merchandise out of the country until the matter was finally resolved. Our friend might believe that. Or, of course, he might not.”
“It’s a gamble, then.”
“Indeed it is. But it’s probably the best we can do. Are we in or out?”
“We should offer assistance,” Jasper said. “And information. We should require compliance from the population.”
Jacob said, “Naturally. Our friend would expect nothing less. Instructions will be issued, and sanctions will be advertised.”
“And our boys should be out there too. Ears and eyes open. We need to feel we made some contribution, at least.”
“Naturally,” Jacob said again. “So are we in or out?”
No one spoke for a long moment. Then Jasper said, “I’m in.”
“Me too,” Jonas said.
Jacob Duncan nodded and unfolded his hands.
“That’s a majority, then,” he said. “Which I’m mighty relieved to have, because I took the liberty of calling our friend to the south two hours ago. Our boys and his are already on the hunt.”
“I want to be there,” Seth said. “When the stranger gets it.”
Chapter 15
Reacher was half-expecting something nailed together from sod and rotten boards, like a Dust Bowl photograph, but the woman drove him down a long gravel farm track to a neat two-story dwelling standing alone in the corner of a spread that might have covered a thousand acres. The woman parked behind the house, next to a line of old tumbledown barns and sheds. Reacher could hear chickens in a coop, and he could smell pigs in a sty. And earth, and air, and weather. The countryside, in all its winter glory. The woman said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but how much are you planning to pay me?”
Reacher smiled. “Deciding how much food to give me?”
“Something like that.”
“My breakfast average west of the Mississippi is about fifteen bucks with tip.”
The woman looked surprised. And satisfied.
“That’s a lot of money,” she said. “That’s two hours’ wages. That’s like having a nine-day workweek.”
“Not all profit,” Reacher said. “I’m hungry, don’t forget.”
She led him inside through a door to a back hallway. The house was what Seth Duncan’s place might have been before the expensive renovations. Low ceilings overhead, small panes of wavy glass in the windows, uneven floors underfoot, the whole place old and antique and outdated in every possible way, but cleaned and tidied and well maintained for a hundred consecutive years. The kitchen was immaculate. The stove was cold.
“You didn’t eat yet?” Reacher asked.
“I don’t eat,” the woman said. “Not breakfast, at least.”
“Dieting?”
The woman didn’t answer, and Reacher immediately felt stupid.
“I’m buying,” he said. “Thirty bucks. Let’s both have some fun.”
“I don’t want charity.”
“It isn’t charity. I’m returning a favor, that’s all. You stuck your neck out bringing me here.”
“I was just trying to be a decent person.”
“Me too,” Reacher said. “Take it or leave it.”
She said, “I’ll take it.”
He said, “What’s your name? Most times when I have breakfast with a lady, I know her name at least.”
“My name is Dorothy.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Dorothy. You married?”
“I was. Now I’m not.”
“You know my name?”
“Your name is Jack Reacher. We’ve all been informed. The word is out.”
“I told the doctor’s wife.”
“And she told the Duncans. Don’t blame her for it. It’s automatic. She’s trying to pay down her debt, like all of us.”
“What does she owe them?”
“She sided with me, twenty-five years ago.”
Roberto Cassano and Angelo Mancini were driving north in a rented Impala. They were based in a Courtyard Marriott, which was the only hotel in the county seat, which was nothing more than a token grid of streets set in the middle of what felt like a billion square miles of absolutely nothing at all. They had learned to watch their fuel gauge. Nebraska was that kind of place. It paid to fill up at every gas station you saw. The next one could be a million miles away.
They were from Vegas, which as always meant they were really from somewhere else. New York, in Cassano’s case, and Philadelphia, in Mancini’s. They had paid their dues in their hometowns, and then they had gotten hired together in Miami, like playing triple-A ball, and then they had moved up to the big show out in the Nevada desert. Tourists were told that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but that wasn’t true as far as Cassano and Mancini were concerned. They were traveling men, always on the move, tasked to roam around and deal with the first faint pre-echoes of trouble long before it rolled in and hit their boss where he lived.
Hence the trip to the vast agricultural wastelands, nearly eight hundred miles north and east of the glitter and the glamour. There was a snafu in the supply chain, and it was a day or two away from getting extremely embarrassing. Their boss had promised certain specific things to certain specific people, and it would do him no good at all if he couldn’t deliver. So Cassano and Mancini had so far been on the scene for seventy-two hours straight, and they had smacked some beanpole yokel’s wife around, just to make their point. Then some other related yokel had called with a claim that the snafu was being caused by a stranger poking his nose in where it didn’t belong. Bullshit, possibly. Quite probably entirely unconnected. Just an excuse. But Cassano and Mancini were only sixty miles away, so their boss was sending them north to help, because if the yokel’s statement was indeed a lie, then it indicated vulnerability, and therefore minor assistance rendered now would leverage a better deal later. An obvious move. This was American business, after all. Forcing down the wholesale price was the name of the game.
They came up the crappy two-lane and rolled through the crappy crossroads and pulled in at the motel. They had seen it before. It looked OK at night. Not so good in the daylight. In the daylight it looked sad and botched and halfhearted. They saw a damaged Subaru standing near one of the cabins. It was all smashed up. There was nothing else to see. They parked in the lot outside the lounge and got out of the rental car and stood and stretched. Two city boys, yawning, scoured by the endless wind. Cassano was medium height, dark, muscled, blank-eyed. Mancini was pretty much the same. They both wore good shoes and dark suits and colored shirts and no ties and wool overcoats. They were often mistaken for each other.
They went inside, to find the motel owner. Which they did, immediately. They found him behind the bar, u
sing a rag, wiping a bunch of sticky overlapping rings off the wood. Some kind of a sad-sack loser, with dyed red hair.
Cassano said, “We represent the Duncan family,” which he had been promised would produce results. And it did. The guy with the hair dropped the rag and stepped back and almost came to attention and saluted, like he was in the army, like a superior officer had just yelled at him.
Cassano said, “You sheltered a guy here last night.”
The guy with the hair said, “No, sir, I did not. I tossed him out.”
Mancini said, “It’s cold.”
The guy behind the bar said nothing, not following.
Cassano said, “If he didn’t sleep here, where the hell did he sleep? You got no local competition. And he didn’t sleep out under a hedge. For one thing, there don’t seem to be any hedges in Nebraska. For another, he’d have frozen his ass off.”
“I don’t know where he went.”
“You sure?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Any kindly souls here, who would take a stranger in?”
“Not if the Duncans told them not to.”
“Then he must have stayed here.”
“Sir, I told you, he didn’t.”
“You checked his room?”
“He returned the key before he left.”
“More than one way into a room, asshole. Did you check it?”
“The housekeeper already made it up.”
“She say anything?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“She finished. She left. She went home.”
“What’s her name?”
“Dorothy.”
Mancini said, “Tell us where Dorothy lives.”
Chapter 16
Dorothy’s idea of a fifteen-dollar breakfast turned out to be a regular feast. Coffee first, while the rest of it was cooking, which was oatmeal, and bacon, and eggs, and toast, big heaping portions, lots of everything, all the food groups, all piping hot, served on thick china plates that must have been fifty years old, and eaten with ancient silverware that had heavy square Georgian handles.
“Fabulous,” Reacher said. “Thank you very much.”