“Pull over at the next place,” he said.
I saw a sign for gas near a place called Madison. I pulled off and drove the Bentley over to the pumps. Chose the furthest island and eased to a stop.
“Are you going to do this for me?” I asked Picard.
He looked at me in surprise.
“No,” he said. “What the hell do you think I am? A damn pump jockey? Do it yourself.”
That was the answer I wanted to hear. I got out of the car. Picard got out on the other side. The plain sedan pulled up close by and the two guys got out. I looked them over. They were the same two I’d scuffled with in New York, on that crowded sidewalk outside Kelstein’s college. The smaller guy had his khaki raincoat on. I nodded amiably to the two of them. I figured they had less than an hour to live. They strolled over and stood with Picard in a knot of three. I unhooked the nozzle and shoved it in the Bentley’s tank.
It was a big tank. Well over twenty gallons. I trapped my finger under the trigger on the nozzle so that it wouldn’t pump at full speed. I held it in a casual backhand grip and leaned against the car as the gas trickled in. I wondered whether I should start whistling. Picard and the two Hispanics lost interest. There was a breeze coming up and they shuffled about in the slight evening chill.
I slipped Eno’s flatware out of my pocket and pressed the tip of the knife into the tire tread next to my right knee. From where Picard was standing, it looked like I was maybe rubbing my leg. Then I took the fork and bent one of the tines outward. Pressed it into the cut I’d made and snapped it off. Left a half inch sticking into the tire. Then I finished up pumping the gas and latched the nozzle back into the pump.
“You paying for this?” I called to Picard.
He looked around and shrugged. Peeled a bill off his roll and sent the guy in the raincoat off to pay. Then we got back into the car.
“Wait,” Picard said.
I waited until the plain sedan had started up behind me and flashed its headlights twice. Then I moved out and accelerated gently back onto the highway and settled into the same steady cruise. Kept on going and the signs started flashing past. Augusta, seventy miles. Augusta, sixty miles. Augusta, forty miles. The old Bentley hummed along. Rock steady. The two guys followed. The setting sun behind me was red in the mirror. The horizon up ahead was black. It was already night far out over the Atlantic Ocean. We drove on.
The rear tire went flat about twenty miles out from Augusta. It was past seven thirty and it was getting dark. We both felt the rumbling from the wheel and the car wouldn’t track straight.
“Shit,” I said. “Flat tire.”
“Pull over,” Picard said.
I slowed to a stop well over on the shoulder. The plain sedan pulled over and stopped behind us. We all four got out. The breeze had freshened up to a cold wind blowing in from the east. I shivered and popped the trunk. Picked up my jacket and put it on, like I was grateful for the warmth.
“Spare wheel’s under the trunk floor,” I said to Picard. “Want to help me get this box out?”
Picard stepped over and looked at the box of dollar bills.
“We burned the wrong house,” he said, and laughed.
He and I heaved the heavy box out and set it on its end on the highway shoulder. Then he pulled his gun out and showed it to me. His huge jacket was flapping in the wind.
“We’ll let the little guys change the wheel,” he said. “You stand still, right there, next to the box.”
He waved the two Hispanics over and told them to do the work. They found the jack and the wrench for the bolts. Jacked up the car and took the wheel off. Then they lined up the spare and lifted it into place. Bolted it carefully on. I was standing there next to the carton of money, shivering in the wind, wrapping my coat tight around me. Thrusting my hands deep in the pockets and stamping from foot to foot, trying to look like a guy who was getting cold standing around doing nothing.
I waited until Picard stepped around to check the bolts were tight. He put his weight on the lever and I could hear the metal graunching. I came out with Morrison’s switchblade already open and sliced up one side of the air conditioner box. Then across the top. Then down the other side. Before Picard could line up his gun, the box fell open like a steamer trunk and the wind caught a hundred thousand dollar bills and blew them all over the highway like a blizzard.
Then I dove over the concrete wall at the edge of the shoulder and rolled down the shallow bank. Pulled out the Desert Eagle. Shot at the guy with the raincoat as he came over the wall after me, but I missed my aim and just blew his leg away. Beyond him I saw a truck with dollar bills plastered all over its windshield run off the road and smash into the plain sedan behind the Bentley. Picard was batting away the snowstorm of cash and dancing over to the wall. I could hear tires shrieking as cars on the highway braked and swerved to avoid the wreckage of the truck. I rolled over and aimed up the bank and shot the second Hispanic guy. Caught him through the chest and he came crashing down toward me. The guy with the raincoat was rolling around at the top of the slope, screaming, clutching his shattered leg, trying to free the small automatic he’d shown me in New York. I fired a third time and shot him through the head. I could see Picard aiming his .38 down at me. All the time the wind was howling and cars were sliding to a stop on the highway. I could see drivers getting out and jumping around, snatching at the money swirling in the air. It was chaos.
“Don’t shoot me, Picard,” I yelled. “You won’t get Hubble if you do.”
He knew that. And he knew he was a dead man if he didn’t get Hubble. Kliner wouldn’t tolerate failure. He stood there with his .38 aimed at my head. But he didn’t shoot. I ran up the bank and circled the car, forcing him out toward the traffic with the Desert Eagle.
“You don’t shoot me, either,” Picard screamed. “My phone call is the only way you’re going to save that woman. That’s for sure. You better believe it.”
“I know that, Picard,” I yelled back. “I believe it. I’m not going to shoot you. Are you going to shoot me?”
He shook his head over the .38.
“I’m not going to shoot you, Reacher,” he said.
It looked like a stalemate. We circled the Bentley with our fingers white on the triggers, telling each other we weren’t going to shoot.
He was telling the truth. But I was lying. I waited until he was lined up with the wreckage of the truck and I was next to the Bentley. Then I pulled the trigger. The .44 shell caught him and smashed his huge bulk backward into the tangled metal. I didn’t wait around for a second shot. I slammed the trunk lid and jumped for the driver’s seat. Fired the car up and burned rubber. I peeled away from the shoulder and dodged the people running around after the dollar bills. Jammed my foot down and hurtled east.
Twenty miles to go. Took me twenty minutes. I was gasping and shaky with adrenaline. I forced my heartbeat down and took big gulps of air. Then I yelled to myself in triumph. Screamed and yelled out loud. Picard was gone.
31
IT WAS DARK WHEN I HIT THE OUTLYING AUGUSTA SUBURBS. I pulled off the highway as soon as the taller buildings started to thicken up. Drove down the city streets and stopped at the first motel I saw. Locked the Bentley up and dodged into the office. Stepped over to the desk. The clerk looked up.
“Got a room?” I asked him.
“Thirty-six bucks,” the guy said.
“Phone in the room?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “Air-conditioning and cable TV.”
“Yellow Pages in the room?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Got a map of Augusta?” I said.
He jerked his thumb over to a rack next to a cigarette machine. It was stuffed with maps and brochures. I peeled off thirty-six bucks from the roll in my trouser pocket. Dropped the cash on the desk. Filled in the register. I put my name down as Roscoe Finlay.
“Room twelve,” the guy said. Slid me the key.
I stopped to grab a map and hust
led out. Ran down the row to room twelve. Let myself in and locked the door. I didn’t look at the room. Just looked for the phone and the Yellow Pages. I lay on the bed and unfolded the map. Opened up the Yellow Pages to H for hotels.
There was a huge list. In Augusta, there were hundreds of places where you could pay for a bed for the night. Literally hundreds. Pages and pages of them. So I looked at the map. Concentrated on a wedge a half mile long and four blocks deep, either side of the main drag in from the west. That was my target area. I downgraded the places right on the main drag. I upgraded the places a block or two off. Prioritized the places between a quarter mile and a half mile out. I was looking at a rough square, a quarter mile long and a quarter mile deep. I put the map and the phone book side by side and made a hit list.
Eighteen hotels. One of them was the place I was lying there in. So I picked up the phone and dialed zero for the desk. The clerk answered.
“You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?” I asked him.
There was a pause. He was checking the book.
“Lennon?” he said. “No, sir.”
“OK,” I said. Put the phone down.
I took a deep breath and started at the top of my list. Dialed the first place.
“You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?” I asked the guy who answered.
There was a pause.
“No, sir,” the guy said.
I worked down the list. Dialed one place after another.
“You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?” I asked each clerk.
There was always a pause while they checked their registers. Sometimes I could hear the pages turning. Some of them had computers. I could hear keyboards pattering.
“No, sir,” they all said. One after the other.
I lay there on the bed with the phone balanced on my chest. I was down to number thirteen out of the eighteen on my list.
“You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?” I asked.
There was a pause. I could hear pages turning.
“No, sir,” the thirteenth clerk said.
“OK,” I said. Put the phone down.
I picked it up again and stabbed out the fourteenth number. Got a busy signal. So I dabbed the cradle and stabbed out the fifteenth number.
“You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?” I asked.
There was a pause.
“Room one twenty,” the fifteenth clerk said.
“Thank you,” I said. Put the phone down.
I lay there. Closed my eyes. Breathed out. I put the phone back on the nightstand thing and checked the map. The fifteenth hotel was three blocks away. North of the main drag. I left the room key on the bed and went back out to the car. The engine was still warm. I’d been in there about twenty-five minutes.
I had to drive three blocks east before I could make a left. Then three blocks north before I could make another. I went around a kind of jagged spiral. I found the fifteenth hotel and parked at the door. Went into the lobby. It was a dingy sort of a place. Not clean, not well lit. It looked like a cave.
“Can I help you?” the desk guy asked.
“No,” I said.
I followed an arrow down a warren of corridors. Found room one twenty. Rapped on the door. I heard the rattle of the chain going on. I stood there. The door cracked open.
“Hello, Reacher,” he said.
“Hello, Hubble,” I said.
HE WAS SPILLING OVER WITH QUESTIONS FOR ME, BUT I JUST hustled him out to the car. We had four hours on the road for all that stuff. We had to get going. I was over two hours ahead of schedule. I wanted to keep it that way. I wanted to put those two hours in the bank. I figured I might need them later.
He looked OK. He wasn’t a wreck. He’d been running for six days and it had done him good. It had burned off that complacent gloss he’d had. Left him looking a little more tight and rangy. A bit tougher. More like my type of a guy. He was dressed up in cheap chainstore clothes and he was wearing socks. He was using an old pair of spectacles made from stainless steel. A seven-dollar digital watch covered the band of pale skin where the Rolex had been. He looked like a plumber or the guy who runs your local muffler franchise.
He had no bags. He was traveling light. He just glanced around his room and walked out with me. Like he couldn’t believe his life on the road was over. Like he might be going to miss it to a degree. We stepped through the dark lobby and out into the night. He stopped when he saw the car parked at the door.
“You came in Charlie’s car?” he said.
“She was worried about you,” I told him. “She asked me to find you.”
He nodded. Looked blank.
“What’s with the tinted glass?” he said.
I grinned at him and shrugged.
“Don’t ask,” I said. “Long story.”
I started up and eased away from the hotel. He should have asked me right away how Charlie was, but something was bothering him. I had seen when he cracked the hotel room door that a tidal wave of relief had hit him. But he had a tiny reservation. It was a pride thing. He’d been running and hiding. He’d thought he’d been doing it well. But he hadn’t been, because I had found him. He was thinking about that. He was relieved and disappointed all at the same time.
“How the hell did you find me?” he asked.
I shrugged at him again.
“Easy,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of practice. I’ve found a lot of guys. Spent years picking up deserters for the army.”
I was threading through the grids, working my way back to the highway. I could see the line of lights streaming west, but the on-ramp was like the prize at the center of a maze. I was unwinding the same jagged spiral I’d been forced around on the way in.
“But how did you do it?” he said. “I could have been anywhere.”
“No, you couldn’t,” I said. “That was the exact point. That’s what made it easy. You had no credit cards, no driver’s license, no ID. All you had was cash. So you weren’t using planes or rental cars. You were stuck with the bus.”
I found the on-ramp. Concentrated on the lane-change and nudged the wheel. Accelerated up the ramp and merged with the flow back toward Atlanta.
“That gave me a start,” I said to him. “Then I put myself in your shoes, psychologically. You were terrified for your family. So I figured you’d circle around Margrave at a distance. You’d want to feel you were still connected, consciously or subconsciously. You took the taxi up to the Atlanta bus depot, right?”
“Right,” he said. “First bus out of there was to Memphis, but I waited for the next one. Memphis was too far. I didn’t want to go that far away.”
“That’s what made it easy,” I said. “You were circling Margrave. Not too close, not too far. And counterclockwise. Give people a free choice, they always go counterclockwise. It’s a universal truth, Hubble. All I had to do was to count the days and study the map and predict the hop you’d take each time. I figure Monday you were in Birmingham, Alabama. Tuesday was Montgomery, Wednesday was Columbus. I had a problem with Thursday. I gambled on Macon, but I thought it was maybe too close to Margrave.”
He nodded.
“Thursday was a nightmare,” he said. “I was in Macon, some terrible dive, didn’t sleep a wink.”
“So Friday morning you came out here to Augusta,” I said. “My other big gamble was you stayed here two nights. I figured you were shaken up after Macon, maybe running out of energy. I really wasn’t sure. I nearly went up to Greenville tonight, up in South Carolina. But I guessed right.”
Hubble went quiet. He’d thought he’d been invisible, but he’d been circling Margrave like a beacon flashing away in the night sky.
“But I used a false name,” he said. Defiantly.
“You used five false names,” I said. “Five nights, five hotels, five names. The fifth name was the same as the first name, right?”
He was amazed. He thought back and nodded.
“How the hell did
you know that?” he said again.
“I’ve hunted a lot of guys,” I said. “And I knew a little about you.”
“Knew what?” he said.
“You’re a Beatles guy,” I said. “You told me about visiting the Dakota building and going to Liverpool in England. You’ve got just about every Beatles CD ever made in your den. So the first night, you were at some hotel desk and you signed Paul Lennon, right?”
“Right,” he said.
“Not John Lennon,” I said. “People usually stick with their own first name. I don’t know why, but they usually do. So you were Paul Lennon. Tuesday, you were Paul Mc-Cartney. Wednesday, you were Paul Harrison. Thursday, you were Paul Starr. Friday in Augusta, you started over again with Paul Lennon, right?”
“Right,” he said. “But there’s a million hotels in Augusta. Conventions, golf. How the hell did you know where to look?”
“I thought about it,” I said. “You got in Friday, late morning, coming in from the west. Guy like you walks back the way he’s already seen. Feels safer that way. You’d been on the bus four hours, you were cramped up, you wanted the air, so you walked a spell, maybe a quarter mile. Then you got panicky and dived off the main drag a block or two. So I had a pretty small target area. Eighteen places. You were in number fifteen.”
He shook his head. Mixed feelings. We barreled on down the road in the dark. The big old Bentley loped along, a hair over the legal limit.
“How are things in Margrave now?” he asked me.
That was the big question. He asked it tentatively, like he was nervous about it. I was nervous about answering it. I backed off the gas a little and slowed down. Just in case he got so upset that he grabbed at me. I didn’t want to wreck the car. Didn’t have time for that.
“We’re in deep shit,” I told him. “We’ve got about seven hours to fix it.”
I saved the worst part for last. I told him Charlie and the kids had gone with an FBI agent back on Monday. Because of the danger. And then I told him the FBI agent had been Picard.
There was silence in the car. I drove on three, four miles in the silence. It was more than a silence. It was a crushing vacuum of stillness. Like all the atmosphere had been sucked off the planet. It was a silence that roared and buzzed in my ears.
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