Rocked the key. The small metallic sound was very loud.
Failure.
The lobby was silent.
Reacher tried the lowest box in the eighth row.
Rocked the key.
It moved.
The lock opened.
Reacher stepped back a foot and swung the little door all the way open and crouched down. The box was stuffed. Padded envelopes, big brown envelopes, big white envelopes, letters, catalogs, magazines wrapped in plastic, postcards.
Sound came back to the lobby.
Reacher heard Neagley say, “Thank you very much for your help.” He heard her footsteps on the tile. Heard the line behind her move up. Sensed people refocusing on their chances of getting their business done before they grew old and died. He slid his hand into the box and raked the contents forward. Butted everything together into a steady stack and clamped it between his palms and stood up. Jammed the stack under his arm and relocked the box and pocketed the key and walked away like the most natural thing in the world.
Neagley was waiting in the Mustang, three doors down. Reacher leaned in and dumped the stack of mail on the center console and then followed it inside. Sorted through the stack and pulled out four small padded envelopes self-addressed in Franz’s own familiar handwriting.
“Too small for CDs,” he said.
He arranged them in date order according to the postmarks. The most recent had been stamped the same morning that Franz had disappeared.
“But mailed the night before,” he said.
He opened the envelope and shook out a small silver object. Metal, flat, two inches long, three-quarters of an inch wide, thin, capped with plastic. Like something that would go on a keyring. It had 128 MB printed on it.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Flash memory,” Neagley said. “The new version of floppy discs. No moving parts and a hundred times the storage capacity.”
“What do we do with it?”
“We plug it into one of my computers and we see what’s on it.”
“Just like that?”
“Unless it’s password-protected. Which it probably will be.”
“Isn’t there software to help with that?”
“There used to be. But not anymore. Things get better all the time. Or worse, depending on your point of view.”
“So what do we do?”
“We spend the drive time making mental lists. Likely choices for his password. The old-fashioned way. My guess is we’ll get three tries before the files erase themselves.”
She started the motor and eased away from the curb. Pulled a neat U-turn in the strip mall’s fire lane and headed back north to La Cienega.
The man in the dark blue suit watched them go. He was low down behind the wheel of his dark blue Chrysler sedan, forty yards away, in a slot that belonged to the pharmacy. He opened his cell phone and dialed his boss.
“This time they ignored Franz’s place completely,” he said. “They talked to the landlord instead. Then they were in the post office a long time. I think Franz must have been mailing the stuff to himself. That’s why we couldn’t find it. And they’ve probably got it now.”
15
Neagley plugged the flash memory into a socket on the side of her laptop computer. Reacher watched the screen. Nothing happened for a second and then an icon appeared. It looked like a stylized picture of the physical object she had just attached. It was labeled No Name. Neagley ran her forefinger over the touch pad and then tapped it twice.
The icon blossomed into a full-screen demand for a password.
“Damn,” she said.
“Inevitable,” he said.
“Ideas?”
Reacher had busted computer passwords many times before, back in the day. As always, the technique was to consider the person and think like them. Be them. Serious paranoids used long complex mixes of lower-case and upper-case letters and numbers that meant nothing to anyone, including themselves. Those passwords were effectively unbreakable. But Franz had never been paranoid. He had been a relaxed guy, serious about but simultaneously a little amused by security demands. And he was a words guy, not a numbers guy. He was a man of interests and enthusiasms. Full of affections and loyalties. Middlebrow tastes. A memory like an elephant.
Reacher said, “Angela, Charlie, Miles Davis, Dodgers, Koufax, Panama, Pfeiffer, M*A*S*H, Brooklyn, Heidi, or Jennifer.”
Neagley wrote them all down on a new page in her spiral-bound notebook.
“Why those?” she asked.
“Angela and Charlie are obvious. His family.”
“Too obvious.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Miles Davis was his favorite music, the Dodgers were his favorite team, and Sandy Koufax was his favorite player.”
“Possibilities. What’s Panama?”
“Where he was deployed at the end of 1989. I think that was the place he had the most professional satisfaction. He’ll have remembered it.”
“Pfeiffer as in Michelle Pfeiffer?”
“His favorite actress.”
“Angela looks a little like her, doesn’t she?”
“There you go.”
“M*A*S*H?”
“His all-time favorite movie,” Reacher said.
“More than ten years ago, when you knew him,” Neagley said. “There have been a lot of good movies since then.”
“Passwords come from down deep.”
“It’s too short. Most software asks for a minimum of six characters now.”
“OK, scratch M*A*S*H.”
“Brooklyn?”
“Where he was born.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people did. They moved west when he was little. That’s what would make it a good password.”
“Heidi?”
“His first serious girlfriend. Hot as hell, apparently. Terrific in the sack. He was crazy about her.”
“I didn’t know anything about that. Clearly I was excluded from the guy talk.”
“Clearly,” Reacher said. “Karla Dixon was, too. We didn’t want to look emotional.”
“I’m crossing Heidi off the list. Only five letters, and he was too much into Angela now anyway. He wouldn’t have felt right using an old girlfriend’s name for a password, however hot and terrific she was. I’m crossing Pfeiffer off for the same reason. And who was Jennifer? His second girlfriend? Was she hot, too?”
“Jennifer was his dog,” Reacher said. “When he was a kid. A little black mutt. Lived for eighteen years. Broke him up when it died.”
“Possibility, then. But that’s six. We’ve only got three tries.”
“We’ve got twelve tries,” Reacher said. “Four envelopes, four flash memories. If we start with the earliest postmark we can afford to burn the first three. That information is old anyway.”
Neagley laid the four flash memories on the hotel desk in strict date order. “You sure he wouldn’t have changed his password daily?”
“Franz?” Reacher said. “Are you kidding? A guy like Franz latches onto a word that means something to him and he sticks with it forever.”
Neagley clicked the oldest memory unit into the port and waited until the corresponding icon appeared on the screen. She clicked on it and tabbed the cursor straight to the password box.
“OK,” she said. “You want to nominate a priority order?”
“Do the people names first. Then the place names. I think that’s how it would have worked for him.”
“Is Dodgers a people name?”
“Of course it is. Baseball is played by people.”
“OK. But we’ll start with music.” She typed MilesDavis and hit enter. There was a short pause and then the screen redrew and came back with the dialog box again and a note in red: Your first attempt was incorrect.
“One down,” she said. “Now sports.”
She tried Dodgers.
Incorrect.
“Two down.” She typed Koufax.
The hard dr
ive inside her laptop chattered and the screen went blank.
“What’s happening?” Reacher asked.
“It’s dumping the data,” she said. “Erasing it. It wasn’t Koufax. Three down.”
She pulled the flash memory out of the port and tossed it through a long silver arc into the trash can. Inserted the second unit in its place. Typed Jennifer.
Incorrect.
“Four down,” she said. “Not his puppy.”
She tried Panama.
Incorrect.
“Five down.” She tried Brooklyn.
The screen went blank and the hard drive chattered.
“Six down,” she said. “Not his old hood. You’re zip for six, Reacher.”
The second unit clattered into the trash and she plugged in the third.
“Ideas?”
“Your turn. I seem to have lost my touch.”
“What about his old service number?”
“I doubt it. He was a words guy, not a numbers guy. And for me anyway my number was the same as my Social Security number. Same for him, probably, which would make it too obvious.”
“What would you use?”
“Me? I am a numbers guy. Top row of the keyboard, all in a line, easy to get to. No typing skills required.”
“What number would you use?”
“Six characters? I’d probably write out my birthday, month, day, year, and find the nearest prime number.” Then he thought for a second and said, “Actually, that would be a problem, because there would be two equally close, one exactly seven less and one exactly seven more. So I guess I’d use the square root instead, rounded to three decimal places. Ignore the decimal point, that would give me six numbers, all different.”
“Weird,” Neagley said. “I think we can be sure Franz wouldn’t do anything like that. Probably nobody else in the world would do anything like that.”
“Therefore it would be a good password.”
“What was his first car?”
“Some piece of shit, probably.”
“But guys like cars, right? What was his favorite car?”
“I don’t like cars.”
“Think like him, Reacher. Did he like cars?”
“He always wanted a red Jaguar XKE.”
“Would that be worth a try?”
A man of interests and enthusiasms. Full of affections and loyalties.
“Maybe,” Reacher said. “It’s certainly going to be something special to him. Something talismanic, something that would give him a feeling of warmth just recalling the word. Either an early role model or a longstanding object of desire or affection. So the XKE might work.”
“Should I try it? We’ve only got six left.”
“I’d try it for sure if we had six hundred left.”
“Wait a minute,” Neagley said. “What about what Angela told us? The way he kept on saying you do not mess with the special investigators?”
“That would make a hell of a long password.”
“So break it down. Either special investigators, or do not mess.”
A memory like an elephant. Reacher nodded. “We had a good time back then, basically, didn’t we? So remembering the old days might have given him a warm feeling. Especially stuck out there in Culver City, busy doing nothing much. People enjoy nostalgia, don’t they? Like that song, ‘The Way We Were.’”
“It was a movie, too.”
“There you go. It’s a universal feeling.”
“Which should we try first?”
Reacher heard Charlie in his mind, the little boy’s piping treble: You do not mess.
“Do not mess,” he said. “Nine letters.”
Neagley typed donotmess.
Hit enter.
Incorrect.
“Shit,” she said.
She typed specialinvestigators. Held her finger over the enter key.
“That’s very long,” Reacher said.
“Yes or no?”
“Try it.”
Incorrect.
Neagley said, “Damn,” and went quiet.
Charlie was still in Reacher’s mind. And his tiny chair, with the neat branded name at the top. He could see Franz’s steady hand at work. He could smell the smoking wood. A gift, father to son. Probably intended to be the first of many. Love, pride, commitment.
“I like Charlie,” he said.
“Me too,” Neagley said. “He’s a cute kid.”
“No, for the password.”
“Too obvious.”
“He didn’t take this kind of stuff very seriously. He was going through the motions. Easier to put in any old thing than to reprogram the software to get around it.”
“Still too obvious. And he had to be taking it seriously. At least this time. He was in big trouble and he was mailing stuff to himself.”
“So it could be a double bluff. It’s obvious but it’s the last thing anyone would think of trying. That makes for a very effective password.”
“Possible but unlikely.”
“What are we going to find on there anyway?”
“Something we really need to see.”
“Try Charlie for me.”
Neagley shrugged and typed Charlie.
Hit enter.
Incorrect.
The hard disc spun up and the memory unit erased itself.
“Nine down,” Neagley said. She pitched the third unit into the trash and plugged the fourth one in. The last one. “Three to go.”
Reacher asked, “Who did he love before Charlie?”
“Angela,” Neagley said. “Way too obvious.”
“Try it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m a gambler.”
“We’re down to our last three chances.”
“Try it,” he said again.
She typed Angela.
Hit enter.
Incorrect.
“Ten down,” she said. “Two to go.”
“What about Angela Franz?”
“That’s even worse.”
“What about her unmarried name?”
“I don’t know what it was.”
“Call her and ask.”
“Are you serious?”
“At least let’s find out.”
So Neagley thumbed through her notebook and found the number and fired up her cell phone. Introduced herself again. Small-talked for a moment. Then Reacher heard her ask the question. He didn’t hear Angela’s answer. But he saw Neagley’s eyes widen a fraction, which for her was about the same thing as falling on the floor with shock.
She hung up.
“It was Pfeiffer,” she said.
“Interesting.”
“Very.”
“Are they related?”
“She didn’t say.”
“So try it. It’s a perfect twofer. He feels good twice over and doesn’t have to feel disloyal at all.”
Neagley typed Pfeiffer.
Hit enter.
Incorrect.
16
The room was hot and stuffy. No air in it. And it seemed to have gotten smaller. Neagley said, “Eleven down. One to go. Do or die. Last chance.”
Reacher asked, “What happens if we don’t do anything?”
“Then we don’t get to see what’s on the file.”
“No, I mean do we have to do it right now? Or can it keep?”
“It’s not going anywhere.”
“So we should take a break. Come back to it later. One to go, we’ve got to pay attention.”
“Weren’t we already?”
“Clearly not the right kind of attention. We’ll go out to East LA and look for Swan. If we find him, he might have ideas. If not, then at least we’ll come back to this fresh.”
Neagley called down to the valet station again and ten minutes later they were in the Mustang heading east on Wilshire. Through Wilshire Center, through Westlake, through a dogleg south that took them straight through MacArthur Park. Then north and east on the Pasadena Freeway, past the c
oncrete bulk of Dodger Stadium all alone in acres of empty parking. Then deep into a rat’s nest of surface streets bounded by Boyle Heights, Monterey Park, Alhambra, and South Pasadena. There were science parks and business parks and strip malls and old housing and new housing. The curbs were thick with parked cars and there was traffic everywhere, moving slow. A brown sky. Neagley had an austere Rand McNally map in the glove box. Looking at it was like looking at the surface of the earth from fifty miles up. Reacher squinted and followed the faint gray lines. Matched the street names on signposts to the street names on the map and pinpointed specific junctions about thirty seconds after they blew through them. He had his thumb on New Age’s location and steered Neagley toward it in a wide ragged spiral.
When they got there they found a low sign of chiseled granite and a big prosperous mirror-glass cube set behind a tall hurricane fence topped with coils of razor wire. The fence was impressive at first sight, but only semi-serious, in that ten seconds and a pair of bolt cutters would get a person through it unscathed. The building itself was surrounded by a wide parking lot studded with specimen trees. The way the mirror glass reflected the trees and the sky made the building look like it was there and not there simultaneously.
The main gate was lightweight and standing wide open and there was no sentry post next to it. It was just a gate. Beyond it the lot was about half-full of parked cars. Neagley paused to let a photocopier truck out and then drove in and put the Mustang in a visitor slot near the entrance lobby. She and Reacher got out and stood for a moment. It was the middle of the morning and the air was warm and heavy. The neighborhood was quiet. It sounded like a whole lot of people were concentrating very hard, or else no one was doing very much of anything.
The reception entrance had a shallow step up to double glass doors that opened for them automatically and admitted them to a large square lobby that had a slate floor and aluminum walls. There were leather chairs and a long reception counter in back. Behind the counter was a blonde woman of about thirty. She was wearing a corporate polo shirt with New Age Defense Systems embroidered above her small left breast. Clearly she had heard the doors open but she waited until Reacher and Neagley were halfway across the floor before she looked up.
Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16] Page 420