Reacher said, “I look like a bum in here.”
“Or like a billionaire. Nowadays you can’t tell.”
She led him to the counter and checked him in. She had reserved his room under the name Thomas Shannon, who had been Stevie Ray Vaughan’s giant bass player back in the day, and one of Reacher’s favorites. He smiled. He liked to avoid paper trails, whenever possible. He always had. Pure reflex. He turned to Neagley and nodded his thanks and asked, “What are you calling yourself here?”
“My real name,” she said. “I don’t do that stuff anymore. Too complicated now.”
The clerk handed over a key card and Reacher put it in his shirt pocket. He turned away from the desk and faced the room. Stone, dim chandeliers, thick carpet, flowers in huge glass vases. Perfumed air.
“Let’s make a start,” he said.
They started in Neagley’s room, which was actually a two-room suite. The living room portion was tall and square and stately and had been done up in blues and golds. It could have been a room in Buckingham Palace. There was a desk in the window with two laptop computers on it. Next to the laptops was an empty cell phone cradle and next to that was an open spiral-bound notebook, new, letter-size, the kind of thing a high school student might buy in September. Last in line was a thin stack of printed papers. Forms. Five of them. Five names, five addresses, five telephone numbers. The old unit, less two dead and two already present.
Reacher said, “Tell me about Stan Lowrey.”
“Not much to tell. He quit the army, moved to Montana, got hit by a truck.”
“Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What was he doing in Montana?”
“Raising sheep. Churning butter.”
“Alone?”
“There was a girlfriend.”
“She still there?”
“Probably. They had a lot of acres.”
“Why sheep? Why butter?”
“No call for private eyes in Montana. And Montana was where the girlfriend was.”
Reacher nodded. At first glance Stan Lowrey had not been an obvious candidate for a rural fantasy. He had been a big-boned black guy from some scruffy factory town in Western Pennsylvania, smart as a whip and hard as a railroad tie. Dark alleys and pool halls had seemed to be his natural habitat. But somewhere in his DNA there had been a clear link with the earth. Reacher wasn’t surprised he had become a farmer. He could picture him, in a raggedy old barn coat, knee-high in prairie grass, under a huge blue sky, cold but happy.
“Why can’t we raise the others?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Neagley said.
“What was Franz working on?”
“Nobody seems to have that information.”
“Didn’t the new wife say anything?”
“She isn’t new. They were married five years.”
“She’s new to me,” Reacher said.
“I couldn’t interrogate her, exactly. She was on the phone, telling me her husband was dead. And maybe she doesn’t know anyway.”
“We’re going to have to go ask her. She’s the obvious starting point here.”
“After we try the others again,” Neagley said.
Reacher picked up the five sheets of printed paper and gave three to Neagley and kept two for himself. She used her cell phone and he used a room phone on a credenza. They started dialing. His numbers were for Dixon and O’Donnell. Karla and Dave, the East Coast residents, New York and D.C. Neither one of them answered. He got their business office machines instead, and heard their long-forgotten voices. He left the same message for both of them: “This is Jack Reacher with a ten-thirty from Frances Neagley at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Get off your ass and call her back.” Then he hung up and turned to where Neagley was pacing and leaving the same kind of message for Tony Swan.
“Don’t you have home numbers for them?” he asked.
“They’re all unlisted. Which is only to be expected. Mine is, too. My guy in Chicago is working on it. But it’s not easy these days. Phone company computers have gotten a lot more secure.”
“They must be carrying cell phones,” he said. “Doesn’t everyone now?”
“I don’t have those numbers either.”
“But wherever they are they can call in and check their office voice mail remotely, can’t they?”
“Easily.”
“So why haven’t they? In three whole days?”
“I don’t know,” Neagley said.
“Swan must have a secretary. He’s an assistant director of something. He must have a whole staff.”
“All they’re saying is that he’s temporarily out of the office.”
“Let me try.” He took Swan’s number from her and hit nine for a line. Dialed. Heard the connection go through, heard Swan’s phone ringing on the other end.
And ringing, and ringing.
“No answer,” he said.
“Someone answered a minute ago,” Neagley said. “It’s his direct line.”
No answer. He held the phone at his ear and listened to the patient electronic purr. Ten times, fifteen, twenty. Thirty. He hung up. Checked the number and tried again. Same result.
“Weird,” he said. “Where the hell is he?”
He checked the paper again. Name and number. The address line was blank.
“Where is this place?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Does it have a name?”
“New Age Defense Systems. That’s how they’ve been answering.”
“What kind of a name is that for a weapons manufacturer? Like they kill you with kindness? They play Pan pipe music until you save them the trouble and slit your wrists?” He dialed information. Information told him there was no listing for New Age Defense Systems anywhere in the United States. He hung up.
“Can corporations be unlisted, too?” he asked.
Neagley said, “I guess so. In the defense business, certainly. And they’re new.”
“We have to find them. They must have a physical plant somewhere. At least an office, so Uncle Sam can send them checks.”
“OK, we’ll add that to the list. After the visit to Mrs. Franz.”
“No, before,” Reacher said. “Offices close. Widows are always around.”
So Neagley called her guy in Chicago and told him to track down a physical address for New Age Defense Systems. From the half of the conversation Reacher could hear it seemed like the best way to proceed was to hack into FedEx’s computer. Or UPS’s, or DHL’s. Everyone received packages, and couriers needed street addresses. They couldn’t use post office boxes. They had to hand stuff across the transom to actual people and get signatures in return.
“Get cell phone numbers, too,” Reacher called. “For the others.”
Neagley covered the phone. “He’s been on that for three days. It isn’t easy.” Then she hung up and walked to the window. Looked out and down at the people parking cars.
“So now we wait,” she said.
They waited less than twenty minutes and then one of Neagley’s laptops pinged to announce an e-mail incoming from Chicago.
10
The e-mail from Neagley’s guy in Chicago contained New Age’s address, courtesy of UPS. Or actually, two addresses. One in Colorado, one in East LA.
“Makes sense,” she said. “Distributed manufacture. Safer that way. In case of attack.”
“Bullshit,” Reacher said. “It’s about two lots of senators. Two lots of pork. Republicans up there, Democrats down here, they get their snouts in the trough both ways around.”
“Swan wouldn’t have gone there if that was all they were into.”
Reacher nodded. “Maybe not.”
Neagley opened a map and they checked the East LA address. It was out past Echo Park, past Dodger Stadium, somewhere in the no man’s land between South Pasadena and East LA proper.
“That’s a long way,” Neagley said. “
It could take forever. Rush hour has started.”
“Already?”
“Rush hour in LA started thirty years ago. It’ll finish when the oil runs out. Or the oxygen. But whatever, we won’t make it over there before they close. So it might be better to save New Age for tomorrow and go see Mrs. Franz today.”
“Like you said in the first place. You’re playing me like a violin.”
“She’s closer, is all. And important.”
“Where is she?”
“Santa Monica.”
“Franz lived in Santa Monica?”
“Not on the ocean. But still, I bet it’s nice.”
It was nice. Way nicer than it could have been. It was a small bungalow on a small street trapped halfway between the 10 and the Santa Monica airport, about two miles inland. On the face of it, not a prime real estate location. But it was a beautifully presented house. Neagley drove past it twice, looking for a place to park. It was a tiny symmetrical structure. Two bay windows with the front door between them. An overhanging roof with a front porch below. Twin rocking chairs on the porch. Some stone, some Tudor beams, some Arts and Crafts influences, some Frank Lloyd Wright, Spanish tiles. A real confusion of styles in one very small building, but it worked. It had a lot of charm. And it was totally immaculate. The paint was perfect. It gleamed. The windows were clean. They shone. The yard was tidy. Green lawn, clipped. Bright flowers, no weeds. Short blacktop driveway, smooth as glass and swept clean. Calvin Franz had been a thorough and meticulous man, and Reacher felt he could see an expression of his old friend’s whole personality displayed right there in a little piece of real estate.
Eventually a pretty lady two streets away pulled her Toyota Camry out of a curbside spot and Neagley swerved the Mustang right in after her. She locked it up and they walked back together. It was late afternoon but still faintly warm. Reacher could smell the ocean.
He asked, “How many widows have we been to see?”
“Too many,” Neagley said.
“Where do you live?”
“Lake Forest, Illinois.”
“I’ve heard of that. It’s supposed to be a nice place.”
“It is.”
“Congratulations.”
“I worked hard for it.”
They turned together into Franz’s street, and then into his driveway. They slowed a little on the short walk to the door. Reacher wasn’t sure what they were going to find. In the past he had dealt with widows a lot fresher than one of seventeen days’ vintage. Very often they hadn’t even known they were widows until he had shown up and told them they were. He wasn’t sure what difference the seventeen days were going to make. Didn’t know where in the process she was going to be.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
“Angela,” Neagley said.
“OK.”
“The kid is called Charlie. A boy.”
“OK.”
“Four years old.”
“OK.”
They stepped up on the porch and Neagley found a bell push and laid a fingertip on it, gently, briefly, respectfully, as if the electric circuit could sense deference. Reacher heard the sound of a muted bell inside the house, and then nothing. He waited. About a minute and a half later the door was opened. Apparently by nobody. Then Reacher looked down and saw a little boy stretching up to the handle. The handle was high and the boy was small and his stretch was so extreme that the arc of the door’s travel was pulling him off his tiptoes.
“You must be Charlie,” Reacher said.
“I am,” the boy said.
“I was a friend of your dad’s.”
“My dad’s dead.”
“I know. I’m very sad about that.”
“Me too.”
“Is it OK to be opening the door all by yourself?”
“Yes,” the boy said. “It’s OK.”
He looked exactly like Calvin Franz. The resemblance was uncanny. The face was the same. The body shape was the same. The short legs, the low waist, the long arms. The shoulders were just skin and bone under a child’s T-shirt but somehow they already hinted at the simian bulk they would carry later. The eyes were Franz’s own, exactly, dark, cool, calm, reassuring. Like the boy was saying, Don’t worry, everything will turn out fine.
Neagley asked him, “Charlie, is your mom home?”
The boy nodded.
“She’s in back,” he said. He let the handle go and stepped away to let them enter. Neagley went first. The house was too small for any one part of it to be really in back of any other part. It was like one generous room divided into four quadrants. Two small bedrooms on the right with a bathroom between, Reacher guessed. A small living room in the left front corner and a small kitchenette behind it. That was all. Tiny, but beautiful. Everything was off-white and pale yellow. There were flowers in vases. The windows were shaded with white wooden shutters. Floors were dark polished wood. Reacher turned and closed the door behind him and the street noise disappeared and silence clamped down over the house. A good feeling, once upon a time, he thought. Now maybe not so good.
A woman stepped out of the kitchen area, from behind a half-wide dividing wall so abbreviated that it couldn’t have offered accidental concealment. Reacher felt she must have gone and hidden behind it, deliberately, when the doorbell rang. She looked a lot younger than him. A little younger than Neagley.
Younger than Franz had been.
She was a tall woman, white blonde, blue-eyed like a Scandinavian, and thin. She was wearing a light V-neck sweater and the bones showed in the front of her chest. She was clean and made up and perfumed and her hair was brushed. Perfectly composed, but not relaxed. Reacher could see wild bewilderment around her eyes, like a fright mask worn under the skin.
There was awkward silence for a moment and then Neagley stepped forward and said, “Angela? I’m Frances Neagley. We spoke on the phone.”
Angela Franz smiled in an automatic way and offered her hand. Neagley took it and shook it briefly and then Reacher stepped forward and took his turn. He said, “I’m Jack Reacher. I’m very sorry for your loss.” He took her hand, which felt cold and fragile in his.
“You’ve used those words more than a few times,” she said. “Haven’t you?”
“I’m afraid so,” Reacher said.
“You’re on Calvin’s list,” she said. “You were an MP just like him.”
Reacher shook his head. “Not just like him. Not nearly as good.”
“You’re very kind.”
“It’s how it was. I admired him tremendously.”
“He told me about you. All of you, I mean. Many times. Sometimes I felt like a second wife. Like he had been married before. To all of you.”
“It’s how it was,” Reacher said again. “The service was like a family. If you were lucky, that is, and we were.”
“Calvin said the same thing.”
“I think he got even luckier afterward.”
Angela smiled again, automatically. “Maybe. But his luck ran out, didn’t it?”
Charlie was watching them, Franz’s eyes half-open, appraising. Angela said, “Thank you very much for coming.”
“Is there anything we can do for you?” Reacher asked.
“Can you raise the dead?”
Reacher said nothing.
“The way he used to talk about you, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could.”
Neagley said, “We could find out who did it. That’s what we were good at. And that’s as close as we can come to bringing him back. In a manner of speaking.”
“But it won’t actually bring him back.”
“No, it won’t. I’m very sorry.”
“Why are you here?”
“To give you our condolences.”
“But you don’t know me. I came later. I wasn’t a part of all that.” Angela moved away, toward the kitchen. Then she changed her mind and turned back and squeezed sideways between Reacher and Neagley and sat down in the living room. Laid her palms on the ar
ms of her chair. Reacher saw her fingers moving. Just a slight imperceptible flutter, like she was typing or playing an invisible piano in her sleep.
“I wasn’t part of the group,” she said. “Sometimes I wished I had been. It meant so much to Calvin. He used to say, You do not mess with the special investigators. He used it like a catchphrase, all the time. He would be watching football, and the quarterback would get sacked, something real spectacular, and he would say, Yeah baby, you do not mess with the special investigators. He would say it to Charlie. He would tell Charlie to do something, and Charlie would moan, and Calvin would say, Charlie, you do not mess with the special investigators.”
Charlie looked up and smiled. “You do not mess,” he said, in a little piping voice, but with his father’s intonation, and then he stopped, as if the longer words were too hard for him to say.
Angela said, “You’re here because of a slogan, aren’t you?”
“Not really,” Reacher said. “We’re here because of what lay behind the slogan. We cared about one another. That’s all. I’m here because Calvin would have been there for me if the shoe was on the other foot.”
“Would he have been?”
“I think so.”
“He gave up all of that. When Charlie was born. No pressure from me. But he wanted to be a father. He gave it all up apart from the easy, safe stuff.”
“He can’t have done.”
“No, I guess not.”
“What was he working on?”
“I’m sorry,” Angela said. “I should have asked you to sit down.”
There was no sofa in the room. No space for one. Any kind of a normal-sized sofa would have blocked access to the bedrooms. There were two armchairs instead, plus a half-sized wooden rocker for Charlie. The armchairs were either side of a small fireplace that held pale dried flowers in a raw china jug. Charlie’s rocker was to the left of the chimney. His name had been branded into the wood at the top of the back, with a hot poker or a soldering iron, seven letters, neat script. Tidy, but not a professional job. Franz’s own work, probably. A gift, father to son. Reacher looked at it for a moment. Then he took the armchair opposite Angela’s and Neagley perched on the arm next to him, her thigh less than an inch from his body, but not touching it.
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