Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  Who was he?

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt paused at the Prince Street crosswalk. Waited for the light, even though there was no traffic. Used the time to complete his inspection. The big guy’s clothes were garbage, but his shoes were good. Leather, heavy, solid, proper stitched welts. Probably English. Probably three hundred dollars a pair. Maybe three-fifty. Each shoe on its own was worth twice the price of everything else the guy was wearing.

  So who was he?

  A bum who had stolen a pair of fancy shoes? Or not?

  Not, thought the man in the hooded sweatshirt.

  He turned ninety degrees and crossed West Broadway against the light. Headed straight for the doorway.

  * * *

  Gregory blew past a small traffic snarl at 42nd Street and caught green lights all the way to the back of the Post Office at 31st. Then the lights and his luck changed. He had to stop the BMW behind a garbage truck. He waited. Checked his watch. He had plenty of time.

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt stopped one quiet pace north of the doorway. Held his breath. The guy at his feet slept on. He didn’t smell. His skin was good. His hair was clean. He wasn’t malnourished.

  Not a bum with a pair of stolen shoes.

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt smiled to himself. This was some asshole from some million-dollar SoHo loft, been out for some fun, had a little too much, couldn’t make it home.

  A prime target.

  He shuffled half a pace forward. Breathed out, breathed in. Leveled the twin searchlights on the chino pockets. Scoped them out.

  There it was.

  The left-hand front pocket. The familiar delicious bulge. Exactly two and five-eighths inches wide, half an inch thick, three and a quarter inches long.

  Folding money.

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt had plenty of experience. He could call it sight unseen. There would be a bunch of crisp new twenties from an ATM, a couple of leathery old fives and tens from taxi change, a wrapping of crumpled ones. Total: a hundred and seventy-three dollars. That was his prediction. And his predictions were usually pretty good. He doubted that he would be disappointed. But he was prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

  He bent at the waist and extended his arm.

  He used his fingertips to lift the top seam of the pocket. To make a little tunnel. Then he flattened his hand, palm down, and slid his index and middle fingers inside, light, like feathers. He crossed them, like scissors, or a promise. His index finger went under the cash, all the way to the first knuckle. His middle finger went over the cash. Over the fold. Like a pincer. He used light pressure. Used the pad of his middle finger to press down through the wad to the nail of his index finger. Used a brief subtle tug to break the fiber-on-fiber bond between money and pocket. Started the slow, smooth extraction.

  Then his wrist broke.

  Two giant hands seized it and snapped it like a rotten twig. One shattering sudden explosion of motion. A blur. At first there was no pain. Then it kicked in like a tidal wave. But by then it was too late to scream. One of the giant hands was clamped over his mouth. It was like being hit hard in the face with a first baseman’s mitt.

  “I’ve got three questions,” the big guy said, quietly. “Tell me the truth and I’ll let you go. Tell me a lie and I’ll break your other wrist. We clear on that?”

  The big guy had hardly moved. Just his hands, once, twice, three times, fast, efficient, and lethal. He wasn’t even breathing hard. The man in the hooded sweatshirt couldn’t breathe at all. He nodded desperately.

  “OK, first question: What exactly are you doing?” The big guy took his hand away, to enable the answer.

  “Your money,” the man in the hooded sweatshirt said. His voice wouldn’t work properly. It was all strangled up with pain and panic.

  “Not your first time,” the big guy said. His eyes were half-open, clear blue, expressionless. Hypnotic. The man in the sweatshirt couldn’t lie.

  “I call it the dawn patrol,” he said. “There’s sometimes two or three guys like you.”

  “Not exactly like me,” the big guy said.

  “No.”

  “Bad choice.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Second question: Are you alone?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Third question: Do you want to walk away now?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So do it. Slow and natural. Go north. Turn right on Prince. Don’t run. Don’t look back. Just disappear. Right now.”

  * * *

  Gregory turned left off Hudson Street onto Houston and waited at the light at the bottom of Seventh Avenue. He was a block and a half from the fireplug and about eight minutes early. He figured he would pull in at the curb before he got to Sixth. He figured he should try to time it exactly.

  * * *

  Reacher’s heart rate was back to normal within about fifteen seconds. He jammed his cash deeper in his pocket and put his arms back behind his head. Let his head fall sideways and let his eyes half-close. He saw nobody near the red door. Saw nobody even glance at it.

  * * *

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt cradled his broken wrist and made it as far as Prince. Then he abandoned the slow and natural walk and just ran east as fast as he could. Stopped two blocks away and threw up in the gutter. Stayed there for a spell, bent at the waist, panting, his good hand on his knee, his bad hand tucked in the sweatshirt pocket like a sling.

  * * *

  Reacher had no watch but he figured when he saw Gregory it must have been between eight and nine minutes after seven o’clock. Below Houston the north-south blocks are long. Eight or nine minutes was about right for the walk down from the fireplug on Sixth. So Gregory was right on time. He came in on Spring from the west. He was walking briskly. His hand was in the pocket of his suit coat. He stopped on the sidewalk outside the dull red door and turned with military precision and walked up the three short steps, light and easy, balanced on the balls of his feet. Then his hand came out of his pocket and Reacher saw the flash of metal and black plastic. Saw Gregory lift the mail slot’s flap with his left hand and shovel the keys through with his right. Saw him drop the flap back into place and turn and walk away. Saw him make the left onto West Broadway. He didn’t look back. He just kept on walking, playing his part, trying to keep Kate Lane alive.

  Reacher kept his eyes on the red door. Waited. Three minutes, he figured. Five million bucks was a lot of money. There would be a certain degree of impatience. As soon as the one guy confirmed that Gregory was safely distant, the other guy would be in through the door. And they would figure one long block plus a crosswalk was safely distant. So as soon as Gregory was south of Broome, the call would come.

  One minute.

  Two minutes.

  Three minutes.

  Nothing happened.

  Reacher laid back, stayed relaxed, stayed casual. No outward sign of his interest. Or his concern.

  Four minutes. Nothing happened.

  Reacher kept his eyes half-closed but stared at the door so hard that its details etched themselves in his mind. Scars, nicks, streaks of dirt and rust, graffiti overspray. He felt that fifty years in the future he would be able to draw a picture as accurate as a Polaroid.

  Six minutes. Eight. Nine.

  Nothing happened.

  There were all kinds of people on the sidewalks now but none of them went anywhere near the red door. There was traffic and there were trucks unloading and there were bodegas and bakeries open for business. There were people with newspapers and closed cups of coffee heading for the subway.

  Nobody stepped up to the red door.

  Twelve minutes. Fifteen.

  Reacher asked himself: Did they see me? He answered himself: Of course they did. Close to a certainty. The mugger saw me. That was for damn sure. And these other guys are smarter than any mugger. They’re the type who see everything. Guys good enough to take down an SAS veteran outside a department store were going to check th
e street pretty carefully. Then he asked himself: But were they worried? Answered himself: No, they weren’t. The mugger saw a professional opportunity. That was all. To these other guys, people in doorways were like trash cans or mail boxes or fire hydrants or cruising taxis. Street furniture. You see them, you see the city. And he was alone. Cops or FBI would have come in a group. Mob-handed. There would have been a whole bunch of unexplained people hanging around looking shifty and awkward with walkie-talkies in brown paper bags made up to look like pints of liquor.

  So they saw me, but they didn’t scare.

  So what the hell was happening?

  Eighteen minutes.

  Fire hydrants, Reacher thought.

  The BMW was parked on a fire hydrant. Rush hour was building. NYPD tow trucks were firing up and leaving their garages and starting their day. They all had quotas to make. How long could a sane person leave five million bucks inside an illegally parked car in New York City?

  Nineteen minutes.

  Reacher gave it up after twenty. Just rolled out of the doorway and stood up. Stretched once and hustled north, and then west on Prince all the way to Sixth Avenue, and then north again across Houston to the curb with the fireplug.

  It was empty. No BMW.

  CHAPTER 8

  REACHER HEADED SOUTH again, all the way back to Spring Street. Six blocks, moving fast, seven minutes. He found Gregory on the sidewalk outside the dull red door.

  “Well?” Gregory said.

  Reacher shook his head.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Not a damn thing. Nobody showed up. It all turned to rat shit. Isn’t that what you SAS guys call it?”

  “When we’re feeling polite,” Gregory said.

  “The car is gone.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “There’s a back door,” Reacher said. “That’s my best guess right now.”

  “Shit.”

  Reacher nodded. “Like I said, rat shit.”

  “We should check it out. Mr. Lane is going to want the whole story.”

  They found an alley entrance two buildings west. It was gated and the gates were chained. The chains were secured with a padlock the size of a frying pan. Unbreakable. But reasonably new. Oiled, and frequently used. Above the gates was a single iron screen covering the whole width of the alley and extending twenty feet in the air.

  No way in.

  Reacher stepped back and looked left and right. The target building’s right-hand neighbor was a chocolate shop. A security screen was down over the window but Reacher could see confections the size of babies’ fists displayed behind it. Fakes, he guessed. Otherwise they would melt or go white. There was a light on in back of the store. He cupped his hands against the glass and peered inside. Saw a small shadowy figure moving about. He banged on the door, loud, with the flat of his hand. The small figure stopped moving and turned around. Pointed at something waist-high to Reacher’s right. There was a neatly engraved card taped to the door glass: Opening hours, 10 am–10 pm. Reacher shook his head and beckoned the small figure closer. It gave a little universal shrug of exasperation and headed his way. It was a woman. Short, dark, young, tired. She turned numerous complicated locks and opened the door against a thick steel chain.

  “We’re closed,” she said, through the narrow gap.

  “Department of Health,” Reacher said.

  “You don’t look like it,” the woman said. And she was right. Reacher had looked convincing as a bum in a doorway. He didn’t look convincing as a city bureaucrat. So he nodded at Gregory, in his neat gray suit.

  “He’s with the city,” he said. “I’m with him.”

  “I was just inspected,” the woman said.

  “This is about the building next door,” Reacher said.

  “What about it?”

  Reacher glanced behind her. A confectionery store full of luxury items that nobody really needs. Therefore, a fragile client base. Therefore, an insecure proprietor.

  “Rats,” he said. “I’m the exterminator. We’ve had reports.”

  The woman went quiet.

  “You got a key for the alley gate?” Gregory asked her.

  The woman nodded. “But you can use my back door if you want. That would be quicker.”

  She took the door off the chain. Led them inside through air intense with the smell of cocoa. The front of the store was dressed up for retail, and there was a working kitchen in back. Ovens, just now warming up. Dozens of shiny trays. Milk, butter, sugar. Vats of melting chocolate. Steel work-surfaces. A rear door, at the end of a short tiled hallway. The woman let them out through it and Reacher and Gregory found themselves in a brick alley about wide enough for the kind of carts and trucks they had in 1900. The alley ran east to west across the block with a single gated exit on Thompson Street at one end and a right-angle dogleg to the gate they had already seen on Spring at the other. The target building looked just as bad from the back as it had from the front. Or maybe even worse. Less graffiti, more decay. Ice damage on the brickwork, moss from spilling gutters.

  One ground floor window. And a back door.

  It was the same dull red color as the front door, but it looked even more decrepit. It looked like a wooden core sheeted over with steel and last painted by some GI looking for work after Korea. Or after World War Two. Or World War One. But it had a modern lock, just one, a good solid deadbolt. The handle was an old-fashioned brass ball, black and pitted with age. Impossible to tell whether it had been touched within the last hour. Reacher grabbed it and pushed. The door gave an eighth-inch and then stopped dead against the lock’s steel tongue.

  No way in.

  Reacher turned back and headed for the chocolatier’s kitchen. She was squeezing molten chocolate out of a heavy linen bag through a silver nozzle, dotting a baking sheet with one squeeze every two inches.

  “Want to lick the spoon?” she asked, watching him watching her.

  “You ever seen anyone next door?” he asked back.

  “Nobody,” she said.

  “Not even coming and going?”

  “Never,” she said. “It’s a vacant building.”

  “Are you here every day?”

  “From seven-thirty in the morning. I fire up the ovens first thing, and I turn them off at ten in the evening. Then I clean up and I’m out of here by eleven-thirty. Sixteen-hour days. I’m regular as clockwork.”

  “Seven days a week?”

  “Small business. We never rest.”

  “Hard life.”

  “For you, too.”

  “Me?”

  “With the rats in this town.”

  Reacher nodded. “Who’s the owner next door?”

  “Don’t you know?” the woman asked. “You’re with the city.”

  “You could save me some time,” Reacher said. “The records are a mess.”

  “I’ve got no idea,” the woman said.

  “OK,” Reacher said. “Have a great day.”

  “Check the building permits on the front window. They have a bunch of phone numbers on them. The owner’s probably listed. You should have seen the shit I had to list to get this place done.”

  “Thanks,” Reacher said.

  “Want a chocolate?”

  “Not on duty,” he said.

  He followed Gregory out of the front of the store and they turned right and checked the target building’s front window. It was backed with dark curtains. There were a dozen permits pasted to the glass. The glass was filthy with soot and the permits were dry and curled. All of them were long expired. But they still had phone numbers handwritten with a black marker pen, one number for each of the participants in the abandoned project. Architect, contractor, owner. Gregory didn’t write them down. Just took out his small silver cell phone and took a picture with it. Then he used it again, this time to make a call to the Dakota.

  “Incoming,” he said.

  He and Reacher walked west to Sixth Avenue and rode the C train eight stops north to 72nd Street. They
came up into the daylight right next to Strawberry Fields. Walked into the Dakota’s lobby at eight-thirty exactly.

  * * *

  The woman who was watching the building saw them enter and made a note of the time.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE BAD NEWS put Edward Lane on a knife edge. Reacher watched him carefully and saw him struggling for control. He paced back and forth across the living room floor and curled his hands compulsively and scratched at his palms with his nails.

  “Conclusions?” he asked. Like a demand. Like an entitlement.

  “I’m revising my conclusions,” Reacher said. “Maybe there aren’t three guys. Maybe there are only two. One stays with Kate and Jade, the other comes down to the city alone. He doesn’t really need to watch Gregory walk away down West Broadway because he’s planning on using the back door anyway. He’s already in the alley, out of sight.”

  “Risky. Safer to be loose on the street.”

  Reacher shook his head. “They did their homework. The neighbor is in her building from seven-thirty in the morning until eleven-thirty at night. Which explains the times they chose. Seven o’clock this morning, before she arrived. Eleven-forty the first night, after she left. Eleven-forty is a weirdly precise choice of time, don’t you think? There had to be some reason for it.”

  Edward Lane said nothing.

  Reacher said, “Or maybe there’s only one guy. On his own. It’s possible. If Kate and Jade are secured upstate, he could have come down alone.”

  “Secured?”

  “Locked up somewhere. Maybe bound and gagged.”

  “For twelve hours at a time? There and back?”

  “This is a kidnap. They’re not at a health spa.”

  “Just one guy?”

  “It’s possible,” Reacher said again. “And maybe he wasn’t in the alley at all. Maybe he was actually inside the building, waiting and ready. Maybe right behind the front door. Maybe Gregory dropped the keys right in his hand.”