Finlay and I stood there looking at the boxes. Just staring at them. Then I walked over and rocked one out from the wall. Took out Morrison’s knife and popped the blade. Pushed the point under the sealing tape and slit the top open. Pulled up the flaps on the top and pushed the box over.
It landed with a dusty thump on the concrete floor. An avalanche of paper money poured out. Cash fluttered over the floor. A mass of paper money. Thousands and thousands of dollar bills. A river of singles, some new, some crumpled, some in thick rolls, some in wide bricks, some loose and fluttering. The carton spilled its contents and the flood tide of cash reached Finlay’s polished shoes. He crouched down and plunged his hands into the lake of money. He grabbed two random fistfuls of cash and held them up. The tiny garage was dim. Just a small dirty windowpane letting in the pale morning light. Finlay stayed down on the floor with his big hands full of dollar bills. We looked at the money and we looked at each other.
“How much was in there?” Finlay asked.
I kicked the box over to find the handwritten number. More cash spilled out and fluttered over the floor.
“Nearly a hundred thousand,” I told him.
“What about the other one?” he said.
I looked over at the other box. Read the long hand written number.
“A hundred grand plus change,” I said. “Must be packed tighter.”
He shook his head. Dropped the dollar bills and started swishing his hands through the pile. Then he got up and started kicking it around. Like a kid does with fall leaves. I joined him. We were laughing and kicking great sprays of cash all over the place. The air was thick with it. We were whooping and slapping each other on the back. We were smacking high tens and dancing around in a hundred thousand dollars on a garage floor.
FINLAY REVERSED THE BENTLEY UP TO THE GARAGE DOOR. I kicked the cash into piles and started stuffing it back into the air conditioner box. It wouldn’t all go in. Problem was the tight rolls and bricks had sprung apart. It was just a mess of loose dollar bills. I stood the box upright and crushed the money down as far as I could, but it was hopeless. I must have left about thirty grand on the garage floor.
“We’ll take the sealed box,” Finlay said. “Come back for the rest later.”
“It’s a drop in the bucket,” I said. “We should leave it for the old folks. Like a pension fund. An inheritance from their boy.”
He thought about it. Shrugged, like it didn’t matter. The cash was just lying around like litter. There was so much of it, it didn’t seem like anything at all.
“OK,” he said.
We dragged the sealed box out into the morning light. Heaved it into the Bentley’s trunk. It wasn’t easy. The box was very heavy. A hundred thousand dollars weighs about two hundred pounds. We rested up for a moment, panting. Then we shut the garage door. Left the other hundred grand in there.
“I’m going to call Picard,” Finlay said.
He went back into the old couple’s house to borrow their phone. I leaned against the Bentley’s warm hood and enjoyed the morning sun. Two minutes, he was back out again.
“Got to go to his office,” he said. “Strategy conference.”
He drove. He threaded his way out of the untidy maze of little streets toward the center. Spun the big Bakelite wheel and headed for the towers.
“OK,” he said. “You proved it to me. Tell me how you figured it.”
I squirmed around in the big leather seat to face him.
“I wanted to check Joe’s list,” I said. “That punctuation thing with the Stollers’ garage. But the list had gotten soaked in chlorinated water. All the writing had bleached off.”
He glanced across.
“You put it together from that?” he said.
I shook my head.
“I got it from the Senate report,” I said. “There were a couple of little paragraphs. One was about an old scam in Bogotá. There was another about an operation in Lebanon years ago. They were doing the same thing, bleaching real dollar bills so they could reprint the blank paper.”
Finlay ran a red light. Glanced over at me.
“So Kliner’s idea isn’t original?” he asked.
“Not original at all,” I said. “But those other guys were very small scale. Very low-level stuff. Kliner built it up to a huge scale. Sort of industrial. He’s the Henry Ford of counterfeiting. Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile, right? But he invented mass production.”
He stopped at the next red light. There was traffic on the cross street.
“The bleaching thing was in the Senate report?” he said. “So how come Bartholomew or Kelstein didn’t get it? They wrote the damn thing, right?”
“I think Bartholomew did get it,” I said. “I think that’s what he finally figured out. That’s what the e-mail was about. He’d just remembered it. It was a very long report. Thousands of pages, written a long time ago. The bleaching thing was just one tiny footnote in a mass of other stuff. And it referred to very small-scale operations. No comparison at all with the volume Kliner’s into. Can’t blame Bartholomew or Kelstein. They’re old guys. No imagination.”
Finlay shrugged. Parked up next to a hydrant in a tow zone.
28
PICARD MET US IN HIS DOUR LOBBY AND TOOK US OFF INTO a side room. We ran through what we knew. He nodded and his eyes gleamed. He was looking at a big case.
“Excellent work, my friends,” he said. “But who are we dealing with now? I think we got to say all these little Hispanic guys are outsiders. They’re the hired help. They’re not concealed. But locally, we still got five out of the original ten hidden away. We haven’t identified them. That could make things very tricky for us. We know about Morrison, Teale, Baker and the two Kliners, right? But who are the other five? Could be anybody down there, right?”
I shook my head at him.
“We only need to ID one more,” I said. “I sniffed out four more last night. There’s only the tenth guy we don’t know.”
Picard and Finlay both sat up.
“Who are they?” Picard said.
“The two gatemen from the warehouse,” I said. “And two more cops. The backup crew from last Friday.”
“More cops?” Finlay said. “Shit.”
Picard nodded. Laid his giant hands palm down on the table.
“OK,” he said. “You guys head back to Margrave right now. Try to stay out of trouble, but if you can’t, then make the arrests. But be very careful of this tenth guy. Could be anybody at all. I’ll be right behind you. Give me twenty minutes to go get Roscoe back, and I’ll see you down there.”
We all stood up. Shook hands all round. Picard headed upstairs and Finlay and I headed back out to the Bentley.
“How?” he asked me.
“Baker,” I said. “He bumped into me last night. I spun him a yarn about going up to Hubble’s place looking for some documentation, then I went up there and waited to see what would happen. Along came the Kliner kid and four of his pals. They came to nail me to Hubble’s bedroom wall.”
“Christ,” he said. “So what happened?”
“I took them out,” I said.
He did his thing of staring sideways at me at ninety miles an hour.
“You took them out?” he said. “You took the Kliner kid out?”
I nodded. He was quiet for a while. Slowed to eighty-five.
“How did it go down?” he asked.
“I ambushed them,” I said. “Three of them, I hit on the head. One of them, I cut his throat. The Kliner kid, I drowned in the swimming pool. That’s how Joe’s list got soaked. Washed all the writing off.”
“Christ,” he said again. “You killed five men. That’s a hell of a thing, Reacher. How do you feel about that?”
I shrugged. Thought about my brother Joe. Thought about him as a tall gawky eighteen-year-old, just off to West Point. Thought about Molly Beth Gordon, holding up her heavy burgundy leather briefcase, smiling at me. I glanced across at Finlay and answered his qu
estion with one of my own.
“How do you feel when you put roach powder down?” I asked him.
He shook his head in a spasm like a dog clearing its coat of cold water.
“Only four left,” he said.
He started kneading the old car’s steering wheel like he was a baker making a pastry twist. He looked through the windshield and blew a huge sigh.
“Any feeling for this tenth guy?” he said.
“Doesn’t really matter who it is,” I said. “Right now he’s up at the warehouse with the other three. They’re short of staff now, right? They’ll all be on guard duty overnight. Loading duty tomorrow. All four of them.”
I flicked on the Bentley’s radio. Some big chrome thing. Some kind of a twenty-year-old English make. But it worked. It pulled in a decent station. I sat listening to the music, trying not to fall asleep.
“Unbelievable,” Finlay said. “How the hell did a place like Margrave start up with a thing like this?”
“How did it start?” I said. “It started with Eisenhower. It’s his fault.”
“Eisenhower?” he said. “What’s he got to do with it?”
“He built the interstates,” I said. “He killed Margrave. Way back, that old county road was the only road. Everybody and everything had to pass through Margrave. The place was full of rooming houses and bars, people were passing through, spending money. Then the highways got built, and air travel got cheap, and suddenly the town died. It withered away to a dot on the map because the highway missed it by fourteen miles.”
“So it’s the highway’s fault?” he said.
“It’s Mayor Teale’s fault,” I said. “The town sold the land for the warehouses to earn itself some new money, right? Old Teale brokered the deal. But he didn’t have the courage to say no when the new money turned out to be bad money. Kliner was fixing to use it for the scam he was setting up, and old Teale jumped straight into bed with him.”
“He’s a politician,” Finlay said. “They never say no to money. And it was a hell of a lot of money. Teale rebuilt the whole town with it.”
“He drowned the whole town with it,” I said. “The place is a cesspool. They’re all floating around in it. From the mayor right down to the guy who polishes the cherry trees.”
We stopped talking again. I fiddled with the radio dial and heard Albert King tell me if it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have no luck at all.
“But why Margrave?” Finlay said again.
Old Albert told me bad luck and trouble’s been his only friend.
“Geography and opportunity,” I said. “It’s in the right place. All kinds of highways meet down here and it’s a straight run on down to the boatyards in Florida. It’s a quiet place and the people who ran the town were greedy scumbags who’d do what they were told.”
He went quiet. Thinking about the torrent of dollar bills rushing south and east. Like a storm drain after a flood. A little tidal wave. A small and harassed workforce in Margrave keeping it rolling on. The slightest hitch and tens of thousands of dollars would back up and jam. Like a sewer. Enough money to drown a whole town in. He drummed his long fingers on the wheel. Drove the rest of the way in silence.
WE PARKED UP IN THE SLOT NEAREST THE STATION HOUSE door. The car was reflected in the plate glass. An antique black Bentley, worth a hundred grand on its own. With another hundred grand in the trunk. The most valuable vehicle in the State of Georgia. I popped the trunk lid. Laid my jacket on top of the air conditioner box. Waited for Finlay and walked up to the door.
The place was deserted apart from the desk sergeant. He nodded to us. We skirted the reception counter. Walked through the big quiet squad room to the rosewood office in back. Stepped in and closed the door. Finlay looked uneasy.
“I want to know who the tenth guy is,” he said. “It could be anybody. Could be the desk sergeant. There’s been four cops in this already.”
“It’s not him,” I said. “He never does anything. Just parks his fat ass on that stool. Could be Stevenson, though. He was connected to Hubble.”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Teale pulled him in off the road when he took over. He wanted him where he could see him. So it’s not Stevenson. I guess it could be anybody. Could be Eno. Up at the diner? He’s a bad-tempered type of a guy.”
I looked at him.
“You’re a bad-tempered type of a guy, Finlay,” I said. “Bad temper never made anybody a criminal.”
He shrugged. Ignored the jibe.
“So what do we do?” he said.
“We wait for Roscoe and Picard,” I said. “We take it from there.”
I sat on the edge of the big rosewood desk, swinging my leg. Finlay paced up and down on the expensive carpet. We waited like that for about twenty minutes and then the door opened. Picard stood there. He was so big, he filled the whole doorway. I saw Finlay staring at him, like there was something wrong with him. I followed his gaze.
There were two things wrong with Picard. First, he didn’t have Roscoe with him. Second, he was holding a government-issue .38 in his giant hand. He was holding it rock steady, and he was pointing it straight at Finlay.
29
“YOU?” FINLAY GASPED.
Picard smiled a cold smile at him.
“None other,” he said. “The pleasure’s all mine, believe me. You’ve been very helpful, both of you. Very considerate. You’ve kept me in touch every step of the way. You’ve given me the Hubbles, and you’ve given me Officer Roscoe. I really couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
Finlay was rooted to the spot. Shaking.
“You?” he said again.
“Should have spotted it Wednesday, asshole,” Picard said. “I sent the little guy to Joe’s hotel two hours before I told you about it. You disappointed me. I expected to be doing this scene way before now.”
He looked at us and smiled. Finlay turned away. Looked at me. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. I couldn’t think about anything at all. I just looked at Picard’s huge bulk in the doorway and had a strong feeling that this was going to be the last day of my life. Today, it would end.
“Get over there,” Picard said to me. “Next to Finlay.”
He had taken two giant strides into the room and he was pointing the gun straight at me. I noticed mechanically that it was a new .38 with a short barrel. I calculated automatically that it would be accurate over such a short distance. But that a .38 couldn’t be relied on to put a target down. And there were two of us and one of him. And Finlay had a weapon in a shoulder holster under the tweed jacket. I spent a fraction of a second weighing up the odds. Then I abandoned the calculation because Mayor Teale stepped through the open door behind Picard. He had his heavy cane in his left hand. But in his right hand he was carrying a police-issue shotgun. It was an Ithaca Mag-10. Didn’t really matter where he was pointing it.
“Get over there,” Picard said to me again.
“Where’s Roscoe?” I said to him.
He laughed at me. Just laughed and gestured with the gun barrel that I should stand up and move over next to Finlay. I heaved myself off the desk and stepped over. I felt like I was weighted down with lead. I clamped my lips and moved with the grim determination of a cripple trying to walk.
I stood next to Finlay. Teale covered us with the giant scatter gun. Picard darted his hand up under Finlay’s jacket. Took the revolver out of his holster. Slipped it into the pocket of his own enormous jacket. The jacket flapped open under the weight. It was the size of a tent. He stepped sideways and patted me down. I was unarmed. My jacket was outside in the Bentley’s trunk. Then he stepped back and stood side by side with Teale. Finlay stared at Picard like his heart was breaking.
“What’s this all about?” Finlay said. “We go back a long way, right?”
Picard just shrugged at him.
“I told you to stay away,” he said. “Back in March, I tried to stop you coming down here. I warned you off. That’s true,
right? But you wouldn’t listen, would you, you stubborn asshole? So you get what you get, my friend.”
I listened to Picard’s growl and felt worse for Finlay than I did for myself. But then Kliner stepped in through the door. His bone-hard face was cracked into a grin. His feral teeth glittered. His eyes bored into me. He was carrying another Ithaca Mag-10 in his left hand. In his right hand, he was carrying the gun that had killed Joe. It was pointed straight at me.
It was a Ruger Mark II. A sneaky little .22-caliber automatic. Fitted with a fat silencer. It was a gun for a killer who enjoys getting close. I stared at it. Nine days ago, the end of that silencer had touched my brother’s temple. There was no doubt about that. I could feel it.
Picard and Teale moved around behind the desk. Teale sat in the chair. Picard towered over his shoulder. Kliner was gesturing Finlay and me to sit. He was using his shotgun barrel as a baton. Short jerky movements to move us around. We sat. We were side by side in front of the big rosewood desk. We stared straight at Teale. Kliner closed the office door and leaned on it. He held the shotgun one-handed, at his hip. Pointed at the side of my head. The silenced .22 was pointing at the floor.
I looked hard at the three of them in turn. Old Teale was staring at me with all kinds of hate showing in his leathery old face. He was shaken up. He looked like a man under terrible stress. He looked desperate. Like he was near collapse. He looked twenty years older than the smooth old guy I’d met on Monday. Picard looked better. He had the calm of a great athlete. Like a football star or an Olympic champion on a visit to his old high school. But there was a tightening around his eyes. And he was rattling his thumb against his thigh. There was some strain there.
I stared sideways at Kliner. Looked hard at him. But there was nothing on show. He was lean and hard and dried out. He didn’t move. He was absolutely still. His face and body betrayed nothing. He was like a statue hewn from teak. But his eyes burned with a kind of cruel energy. They sneered at me out of his blank, bone-hard face.
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