“Africa?” Reacher said.
No response.
“Whatever,” Reacher said. “Not my business where you’ve been. All I need to know is where Mrs. Lane has been. For the last couple of weeks.”
“What difference does that make?” Kowalski asked.
“There was some surveillance,” Reacher said. “Don’t you think? I don’t suppose the bad guys were just hanging out at Bloomingdale’s every day on the off chance.”
“Mrs. Lane was in the Hamptons,” Gregory said. “With Jade, most of the summer. They only came back three days ago.”
“Who drove them back?”
“Taylor.”
“And then they were based here?”
“Correct.”
“Anything happen out in the Hamptons?”
“Like what?” Groom asked.
“Like anything unusual,” Reacher said. “Anything out of the ordinary.”
“Not really,” Groom said.
“A woman showed up at the door one day,” Gregory said.
“What kind of a woman?”
“Just a woman. She was fat.”
“Fat?”
“Kind of heavyset. About forty. Long hair, center part. Mrs. Lane took her walking on the beach. Then the woman left. I figured it was a friend on a visit.”
“Ever saw her before?”
Gregory shook his head. “Maybe an old friend. From the past.”
“What did Mrs. Lane and Jade do after they got back here to the city?”
“I don’t think they did anything yet.”
“No, she went out once,” Groom said. “Mrs. Lane, I mean. Not Jade. On her own, shopping. I drove her.”
“Where?” Reacher asked.
“Staples.”
“The office supply store?” Reacher had seen them all over. A big chain, red and white décor, huge places full of stuff he had no need of. “What did she buy?”
“Nothing,” Groom said. “I waited twenty minutes on the curb, and she didn’t bring anything out.”
“Maybe she arranged a delivery,” Gregory said.
“She could have done that on-line. No need to drag me out in the car.”
“So maybe she was just browsing,” Gregory said.
“Weird place to browse,” Reacher said. “Who does that?”
“School is back soon,” Groom said. “Maybe Jade needed stuff.”
“In which case she’d have gone along,” Reacher said. “Don’t you think? And she’d have bought something.”
“Did she take something in?” Gregory asked. “Maybe she was returning something.”
“She had her tote,” Groom said. “It’s possible.” Then he looked up, beyond Reacher’s shoulder. Edward Lane was back in the room. He was carrying a large leather duffel, and struggling with its bulk. Five million dollars, Reacher thought. So that’s what it looks like. Lane dropped the bag on the floor at the entrance to the foyer. It thumped down on the hardwood and settled like the carcass of a small fat animal.
“I need to see a picture of Jade,” Reacher said.
“Why?” Lane asked.
“Because you want me to pretend I’m a cop. And pictures are the first things cops want to see.”
“Bedroom,” Lane said.
So Reacher fell in behind him and followed him to a bedroom. It was another tall square space, painted a chalky off-white, as serene as a monastery and as quiet as a tomb. There was a cherrywood king-sized bed with pencil posts at the corners. Matching tables at each side. A matching armoire that might have held a television set. A matching desk, with a chair standing in front of it and a framed photograph sitting on it. The photograph was a ten-by-eight, rectangular, set horizontal, not vertical, on the axis that photographers call landscape, not portrait. But it was a portrait. That was for sure. It was a portrait of two people. On the right was Kate Lane. It was the same shot as in the living room print. The same pose, the same eyes, the same developing smile. But the living room print had been cropped to exclude the object of her affection, which was her daughter Jade. Jade was on the left of the bedroom picture. Her pose was a mirror-image of her mother’s. They were about to look at each other, love in their eyes, smiles about to break out on their faces like they were sharing a private joke. In the picture Jade was maybe seven years old. She had long dark hair, slightly wavy, as fine as silk. She had green eyes and porcelain skin. She was a beautiful kid. It was a beautiful photograph.
“May I?” Reacher asked.
Lane nodded. Said nothing. Reacher picked the picture up and looked closer. The photographer had caught the bond between mother and child perfectly and completely. Quite apart from the similarity in appearance there was no doubt about their relationship. No doubt at all. They were mother and daughter. But they were also friends. They looked like they shared a lot. It was a great picture.
“Who took this?” Reacher asked.
“I found a guy downtown,” Lane said. “Quite famous. Very expensive.”
Reacher nodded. Whoever the guy was, he was worth his fee. Although the print quality wasn’t quite as good as the living room copy. The colors were a little less subtle and the contours of the faces were a little plastic. Maybe it was a machine print. Maybe Lane’s budget hadn’t run to a custom hand-print where his stepdaughter was concerned.
“Very nice,” Reacher said. He put the photograph back on the desk, quietly. The room was totally silent. Reacher had once read that the Dakota was the most soundproof building in New York City. It had been built at the same time that Central Park was landscaped. The builder had packed three feet of excavated Central Park clay and mud between the floors and the ceilings. The walls were thick, too. All that mass made the building feel like it was carved from solid rock. Which must have been a good thing, Reacher figured, back when John Lennon lived here.
“OK?” Lane said. “Seen enough?”
“You mind if I check the desk?”
“Why?”
“It’s Kate’s, right?”
“Yes, it is.”
“So it’s what the cops would do.”
Lane shrugged and Reacher started with the bottom drawers. The left-hand drawer held boxes of stationery and notepaper and cards engraved simply with the name Kate Lane. The right-hand drawer was fitted with file hangers and the contents related exclusively to Jade’s education. She was enrolled at a private school nine blocks north of the apartment. It was an expensive school, judging by the bills and the canceled checks. The checks were all drawn on Kate Lane’s personal account. The upper drawers held pens and pencils, envelopes, stamps, self-stick return address labels, a checkbook. And credit card receipts. But nothing very significant. Nothing recent. Nothing from Staples, for instance.
The center drawer at the top held nothing but two American passports, one for Kate and one for Jade.
“Who is Jade’s father?” Reacher asked.
“Does it matter?”
“It might. If this was a straightforward abduction, we’d definitely have to look at him. Estranged parents are who usually snatch kids.”
“But this is a kidnap for ransom. And it’s Kate they’re talking about. Jade was just there by chance.”
“Abductions can be disguised. And her father would need to clothe and feed her. And send her to school. He might want money.”
“He’s dead,” Lane said. “He died of stomach cancer when Jade was three.”
“Who was he?”
“He owned a jewelry store. Kate ran it for a year, afterward. Not very well. She had been a model. But that’s where I met her. In the store. I was buying a watch.”
“Any other relatives? Possessive grandparents, aunts, uncles?”
“Nobody that I ever met. Therefore nobody that saw Jade in the last several years. Therefore nobody you could really describe as possessive.”
Reacher closed the center drawer. Straightened the photograph and turned around.
“Closet?” he said.
Lane pointed at one
of a pair of narrow white doors. Behind it was a closet, large for a New York City apartment, small for anyplace else. It had a pull chain for a light. Inside were racks of women’s clothes and shoes. Fragrance in the air. There was a jacket neatly folded on the floor. Ready for the dry cleaner, Reacher thought. He picked it up. There was a Bloomingdale’s label in it. He checked the pockets. Nothing in them.
“What was she wearing when she went out?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Lane said.
“Who would know?”
“We all left before her,” Lane said. “I don’t think anyone was still here. Except Taylor.”
Reacher closed the closet door and stepped away to the armoire. It had double doors at the top and drawers below. One of the drawers held jewelry. One was full of miscellaneous junk like paper packets of spare buttons from new garments and discarded pocket change. One was full of lacy underwear. Bras, panties, all of them either white or black.
“May I see Jade’s room?” Reacher asked.
Lane led him through a short interior hallway. Jade’s room was all pale pastels and kid stuff. Furry bears, china dolls, toys, games. A low bed. Pajamas folded on the pillow. A nightlight still burning. A low desk covered in drawings done with wax crayons on butcher paper. A small chair, neatly tucked in.
Nothing that meant anything to a military cop.
“I’m done,” Reacher said. “I’m very sorry to intrude.”
He followed Lane back to the living room. The leather bag was still there on the floor, near the foyer. Gregory and the five other soldiers were still in their places, still quiet and pensive.
“Decision time,” Lane said. “Do we assume Reacher was observed entering the building tonight? Or not?”
“I didn’t see anyone,” Gregory said. “And I think it’s very unlikely. Round-the-clock surveillance would eat manpower. So I would say not.”
“I agree,” Lane said. “I think Reacher is still Joe Public to them. So he should be on the street at seven o’clock. We should try a little surveillance of our own.”
There was no objection. Reacher nodded.
“I’ll watch the front of the Spring Street building,” he said. “That way I’ll see one of them at least. Maybe two of them.”
“Don’t show yourself,” Lane said. “You understand my concern, right?”
“Completely,” Reacher said. “They won’t make me.”
“Surveillance only. Absolutely no intervention.”
“Don’t worry.”
“They’ll be there early,” Lane said. “So you be in position earlier.”
“Don’t worry,” Reacher said again. “I’ll leave right now.”
“Don’t you want to know which building you’re supposed to be watching?”
“I don’t need to know,” Reacher said. “I’ll see Gregory leave the keys.”
Then he let himself out of the apartment and rode down in the elevator. Nodded to the doorman and walked out to the street. Headed for the subway at 72nd and Broadway.
* * *
The woman who was watching the building saw him go. She had seen him arrive with Gregory, and now he was leaving alone. She checked her watch and made a note of the time. She craned her neck and tracked his progress west. Then she lost sight of him and moved back deep in the shadows.
CHAPTER 7
FIRST IN WAS a 9 train. Reacher used the Metrocard he had bought the day before and rode eleven stops south to Houston Street. Then he came up from under the ground and walked south on Varick. It was past three o’clock in the morning, and very quiet. In Reacher’s experience the city that doesn’t sleep sometimes did, at least for an hour or two, on some nights of the week. There was sometimes a short intermission after the late folk had rolled home and before the early people had gotten up. Then the city went silent and took a breath and shiny darkness owned the streets. That was Reacher’s time. He liked to picture the sleeping people stacked twelve, thirty, fifty stories high, often head to head with perfect strangers on opposite sides of thin apartment walls, deep in slumber, unaware of the tall quiet man striding beneath them in the shadows.
He made a left on Charlton Street, and crossed Sixth Avenue, and Charlton became Prince. Three blocks later he was on West Broadway, in the heart of SoHo, a block north of Spring Street, three hours and forty minutes ahead of schedule. He walked south, with the leisurely gait of a man with a place to go but in no hurry to get there. West Broadway was wider than the cross streets, so as he ambled past Spring he had a good view of the southwest corner. There was a narrow iron-fronted building with a dull red door set high. Three steps up to it. The building’s façade was covered with graffiti low down and laced with a complex fire escape high up. The upper-story windows were filthy and backed with some kind of a dark fabric. On the ground floor there was a single window, pasted over with faded building permits. There was a mail slot in the door, a narrow rectangle with a flap. Maybe once it had been shiny brass, but now it was dull with tarnish and pitted by corrosion.
That’s the one, Reacher thought. Got to be.
He turned east a block later on Broome and then backtracked north on Greene Street, past shuttered boutiques that sold sweaters that cost more than first-class airplane tickets and household furniture that cost more than domestic automobiles. He turned west on Prince and completed his circuit around the block. Walked south on West Broadway again and found a doorway on the east sidewalk. It had a stoop a foot and a half high. He kicked garbage out of his way and lay down on his back, his head cradled on his folded arms, his head canted sideways like a somnolent drunk, but with his eyes half-open and focused on the dull red door seventy feet away.
* * *
Kate Lane had been told not to move and to make absolutely no noise at all, but she decided to take a risk. She couldn’t sleep, obviously. Neither could Jade. How could anyone sleep, under circumstances like theirs? So Kate crept out of her bed and grasped the rail at the end and inched the whole bed sideways.
“Mom, don’t,” Jade whispered. “You’re making a noise.”
Kate didn’t answer. Just crept to the head of the bed and inched it sideways. After three more cautious back-and-forth movements she had her mattress butted up hard against Jade’s. Then she got back under the sheet and took her daughter in her arms. Held her tight. If they had to be awake, at least they could be awake together.
* * *
The clock in Reacher’s head crept around to six in the morning. Down in the brick and iron canyons of SoHo it was still dark, but the sky above was already brightening. The night had been warm. Reacher hadn’t been uncomfortable. He had been in worse spots. Many times. Often for much longer. So far he had seen no activity at the dull red door. But the early people were already out and about all around him. Cars and trucks were moving on the streets. People were passing by on both sidewalks. But nobody was looking at him. He was just a guy in a doorway.
He rolled onto his back and looked around. The door he was blocking was a plain gray metal thing. No exterior handle. Maybe a fire exit, maybe a loading dock. With a little luck he wouldn’t be disturbed before seven. He rolled on his side and gazed south and west again. Arched his back like he was relieving a cramp, then glanced north. He figured whoever was coming would be in position soon. They clearly weren’t fools. They would aim for a careful stakeout. They would check rooftops and windows and parked cars for watching cops. Maybe they would check doorways, too. But Reacher had never been mistaken for a cop. There was always something phony about a cop who dresses down. Reacher was the real thing.
Cops, he thought.
The word snagged in his mind the way a twig on a current catches on a riverbank. It hung up just briefly before spinning clear and floating away. Then he saw a real-life cop, in a car, coming north, going slow. Reacher squirmed upright and propped his back against the gray door. Rested his head against the cold hard metal. Sleeping horizontally in public seemed to be against the city’s vagrancy laws. But there seeme
d to be some kind of a constitutional right to sit down. New York cops see a guy lying down in a doorway or on a bench, they blip their siren and yell through their loudhailer. They see a guy sleeping upright, they give him a hard stare and move on.
The prowl car moved on.
Reacher laid down again. Folded his arms behind his head and kept his eyes half-open.
* * *
Four miles north, Edward Lane and John Gregory rode down in the Dakota’s elevator. Lane was carrying the bulging leather duffel. Outside in the gray dawn light the blue BMW waited at the curb. The man who had ferried it back from the garage got out and handed the keys to Gregory. Gregory used the remote to open the trunk and Lane dumped the bag inside. He looked at it for a second and then he slammed the lid on it.
“No heroics,” he said. “Just leave the car, leave the keys, and walk away.”
“Understood,” Gregory said. He walked around the hood and slid into the driver’s seat. Started the motor and took off west. Then he turned south on Ninth Avenue. This early in the morning, he figured the traffic would be OK.
* * *
At that same moment four miles south a man turned off Houston Street and started down West Broadway. He was on foot. He was forty-two years old, white, five feet eleven inches tall, one hundred and ninety pounds. He was wearing a jeans jacket over a hooded sweatshirt. He crossed to the west sidewalk and headed for Prince. He kept his eyes moving. Left, right, near, far. Reconnaissance. He was justifiably proud of his technique. He didn’t miss much. He never had missed much. He imagined his gaze to be twin moving searchlights, penetrating the gloom, revealing everything.
Revealing: Forty-five degrees ahead and to the left, a man sprawled in a doorway. A big man, but inert. His limbs were relaxed in sleep. His head was cradled on his arms and canted sideways at a characteristic angle.
Drunk? Passed out?
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