39
The car was a black Lexus sedan, brand new. It sped up and took off again immediately, leaving the two guys alone on the sidewalk maybe thirty yards ahead. They were the bag man and the stash man from the vacant lot behind the wax museum. The pistols were AMT Hardballers, which were stainless-steel copies of Colt Government 1911 .45 automatics. The hands holding them were shaking a little and moving up level and rotating through ninety degrees into flat movie-approved bad-boy grips.
O’Donnell’s own hands went straight to his pockets.
“They want us?” he said.
“They want me,” Reacher said. He glanced back at what was behind him. He wasn’t very worried about being hit by a badly-held .45 from thirty yards away. He was a big target but statistics were on his side. Handguns were in-room weapons. Under expert control in high-pressure situations the average range for a successful engagement was about eleven feet. But even if Reacher himself wasn’t hit, someone else might be. Or something else. A person a block away, or a low-flying plane, maybe. Collateral damage. The street was thick with potential targets. Men, women, children, plus other folks Reacher wasn’t entirely sure how to categorize.
He turned to face front again. The two guys hadn’t moved far. Not more than a couple of steps. O’Donnell’s eyes were locked hard on them.
“We should take this off the street, Dave,” Reacher said.
O’Donnell said, “Roger that.”
“Moving left,” Reacher said. He crabbed sideways and risked a glance to his left. The nearest door was a narrow tarot reader’s dive. His mind was working with a kind of icy high-pressure speed. He was moving normally, but the world around him had slowed. The sidewalk had become a four-dimensional diagram. Forward, backward, sideways, time.
“Break back a yard and left, Dave,” he said.
O’Donnell was like a blind man. His eyes were tight on the two guys and wouldn’t leave them. He heard Reacher’s voice and tracked backward and left, fast. Reacher pulled the tarot reader’s door and held it open and let O’Donnell loop in around him. The two guys were following. Now twenty yards away. Reacher crowded inside after O’Donnell. The tarot parlor was empty apart from a woman of about nineteen sitting alone at a table. The table was a dining room item about seven feet long, draped to the floor with red cloth. Packs of cards all over it. The woman had long dark hair and was wearing a purple cheesecloth dress that was probably leaking vegetable dye all over her skin.
“Got a back room?” Reacher asked her.
“Just a toilet,” she said.
“Go in there and lie down on the floor, right now.”
“What’s up?”
“You tell me.”
The woman didn’t move until O’Donnell’s hands came out of his pockets. The knuckles were on his right fist like a shark’s smile. The switchblade was in his left hand. It was closed. Then it popped open with a sound like a bone breaking. The woman jumped up and fled. An Angelina, who worked on Vine. She knew the rules of the game.
O’Donnell said, “Who are these guys?”
“They just bought me these shirts.”
“Is this going to be a problem?”
“Possibly.”
“Plan?”
“You like the Hardballer?”
“Better than nothing.”
“OK, then.” Reacher flipped up the edge of the tablecloth and crouched down and backed under the table on his knees. O’Donnell followed him to his left and dragged the cloth back into position. He touched it with his knife, a short gentle sideways stroke, and a slit appeared in front of him. He widened it to the shape of an eye with his fingers. Then he did the same in front of Reacher. Reacher braced the flat of his hands against the underside of the table. O’Donnell swapped the knife into his right hand and braced his left the same way as Reacher’s.
Then they waited.
The guys were at the door within about eight seconds. They paused and peered in through the glass and then they pulled the door and came inside. Paused again, six feet in front of the table, guns pointed straight out with the butts twisted parallel to the floor.
They took a cautious step forward.
Paused again.
O’Donnell’s right hand was wrapped with the knuckles and was gripping the knife but it was the only free hand under the table. He used it to count down. Thumb, index finger, middle finger. One, two, three.
On three Reacher and O’Donnell heaved the table up and out. They powered it through an explosive quarter-circle, three feet in the air, three feet forward. The flat of the top tipped vertical and collected the guns first and then moved on and smacked the two guys full in the chests and faces. It was a heavy table. Solid wood. Maybe oak. It put the guys straight down with no trouble at all. They went over on their backs in a cloud of tarot cards and lay still under the slab in a tangle of red cloth. Reacher got up and stepped onto the upside-down table and rode it like a surfboard. Then he jumped up and down a couple of times. O’Donnell timed it for when Reacher’s weight was off it and kicked the table backward six inches until the two guys were exposed to the waist and their gun hands were accessible. He took the Hardballers and used his switchblade to slice the webs of the two guys’ thumbs. Painful, and a real disincentive against holding pistols again until they healed, which could be a long time, depending on their approach to nutrition and antisepsis. Reacher smiled, briefly. The technique had been a part of his unit’s SOP. Then he stopped smiling, because he recalled that Jorge Sanchez had developed it, and Jorge Sanchez was dead in the desert somewhere.
“Not too much of a problem,” O’Donnell said.
“We’ve still got the good stuff,” Reacher said.
O’Donnell put his ceramic collection back in his pockets and tucked a Hardballer into his waistband under his suit coat. Handed the second gun to Reacher, who shoved it in his pants pocket and draped his T-shirts over it. Then they stepped out to the sunshine and headed north on Vine again and turned west on Hollywood Boulevard.
Karla Dixon was waiting for them in the Chateau Marmont’s lobby.
“Curtis Mauney called,” she said. “He liked that thing you did with Franz’s mail. So he got the Vegas PD to check through the stuff in Sanchez and Orozco’s office. And they found something.”
40
Mauney showed up in person thirty minutes later. He stepped through the lobby door, still tired, still carrying his battered leather briefcase. He sat down and asked, “Who is Adrian Mount?”
Reacher looked up. Azhari Mahmoud, Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews. The Syrian and his four aliases. Information Mauney didn’t know they had.
“No idea,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Pretty much.”
Mauney balanced his briefcase on his knees and opened the lid and took out a sheet of paper. Handed it over. It was blurred and indistinct. It looked like a fax of a copy of a copy of a fax. At the top it said Department of Homeland Security. But not in the style of an official letterhead. It looked more like content hacked out of a computer file. Plain DOS script. It related to an airline booking that a guy called Adrian Mount had made on British Airways, London to New York. The booking had been finalized two weeks ago for a flight three days ago. First class, one way, Heathrow to JFK, seat 2K, last departure of the evening, expensive, paid for with a legitimate credit card. Booked through British Airways’ U.K. website, although it was impossible to say exactly where in the world the mouse had been physically clicked.
“This came in the mail?” Reacher asked.
Mauney said, “It was stored in their fax machine’s memory. It came in two weeks ago. The machine was out of paper. But we know that Sanchez and Orozco weren’t around two weeks ago. Therefore this must be a response to a request they made at least a week earlier. We think they put a bunch of names on an unofficial watch list.”
“A bunch of names?”
“We found what we think is the original request. They had n
otes circulating in the mail, just like Franz. Four names.” Mauney pulled a second sheet of paper from his case. It was a photocopy of a sheet of blank paper with Manuel Orozco’s spidery handwriting all over it. Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews, check w. DHS for arrival. Fast untidy scrawl, written in a hurry, not that Orozco’s penmanship had ever been neat.
Four names. Not five. Azhari Mahmoud’s real name wasn’t there. Reacher figured that Orozco knew that whoever the hell Mahmoud was, he would be traveling under an alias. No point in having aliases if you didn’t use them.
“DHS,” Mauney said. “The Department of Homeland Security. You know how hard it is for a civilian to get cooperation out of Homeland Security? Your pal Orozco must have called in a shitload of favors. Or spent a shitload of bribe money. I need to know why.”
“Casino business, maybe.”
“Possible. Although Vegas security doesn’t necessarily worry if bad guys show up in New York. New York arrivals are more likely headed for Atlantic City. Someone else’s problem.”
“Maybe they share. Maybe there’s a network. Guys can hit Jersey first and Vegas second.”
“Possible,” Mauney said again.
“Did this Adrian Mount guy actually arrive in New York?”
Mauney nodded. “The INS computer has him entering through Terminal Four. Terminal Seven had already closed for the night. The flight was delayed.”
“And then what?”
“He checks in at a Madison Avenue hotel.”
“And then?”
“He disappears. No further trace.”
“But?”
“We move on down the list. Alan Mason flies to Denver, Colorado. Takes a room at a downtown hotel.”
“And then?”
“We don’t know yet. We’re still checking.”
“But you think they’re all the same guy?”
“Obviously they’re all the same guy. The initials are a dead giveaway.”
Reacher said, “That makes me Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.”
“You sure act like it.”
“So who is he?”
“I have no idea. The INS inspector won’t remember him. Those Terminal Four guys see ten thousand faces a day. The New York hotel people won’t remember him. We haven’t spoken to Denver yet. But they probably won’t remember him, either.”
“Wasn’t he photographed at Immigration?”
“We’re working on getting the picture.”
Reacher went back to the first fax. The Homeland Security data. The advance passenger information.
“He’s British,” he said.
Mauney said, “Not necessarily. He had at least one British passport, that’s all.”
“So what’s your play?”
“We start a watch list of our own. Sooner or later Andrew MacBride or Anthony Matthews will show up somewhere. Then at least we’ll know where he’s going.”
“What do you want from us?”
“You ever heard any of those names?”
“No.”
“No friends anywhere with the initials A and M?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Enemies?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Did Orozco know anyone with those initials?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to Orozco in ten years.”
“I was wrong,” Mauney said. “About the rope on his hands and feet. I had a guy take a look at it. It isn’t very common after all. It’s a sisal product from the Indian subcontinent.”
“Where would someone get it?”
“It’s not for sale anywhere in the United States. It would have to come in on whatever gets exported from there.”
“Which is what?”
“Rolled carpets, bales of unfinished cotton fabric, stuff like that.”
“Thanks for sharing.”
“No problem. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Mauney left and they went up to Dixon’s room. No real reason. They were still dead-ended. But they had to be somewhere. O’Donnell cleaned blood off his switchblade and checked over the captured Hardballers in his usual meticulous fashion. They had been manufactured by AMT not far away in Irwindale, California. They were fully loaded with jacketed .45s. They were in fine condition and fully operational. Clean, oiled, undamaged, which made it likely that they had been very recently stolen. Dope dealers were not usually careful with weapons. The Hardballers’ only limitations came from being faithful copies of a design that had been around since the year 1911. Magazine capacity was only seven rounds, which must have seemed more than OK in a world full of six-shooters, but which didn’t stack up very well against modern capacities of fifteen or more.
“Pieces of shit,” Neagley said.
“Better than throwing stones,” O’Donnell said.
“Too big for my hand,” Dixon said. “I like the Glock 19, personally.”
“I like anything that works,” Reacher said.
“The Glock holds seventeen rounds.”
“It only takes one per head. I’ve never had seventeen people after me all at once.”
“Could happen.”
The dark-haired forty-year-old calling himself Andrew MacBride was on the underground train inside the Denver airport. He had time to kill so he was riding it back and forth over and over again between the main terminal and Concourse C, which was the last stop. He was enjoying the jug-band music. He felt lightened, unburdened, and free. His luggage was now minimal. No more heavy suitcase. Just an overnight roll-on and a briefcase. The bill of lading was inside the briefcase, folded into a hardcover book. The padlock key was zipped into a secure pocket.
The man in the blue suit in the blue Chrysler sedan dialed his cell phone.
“They’re back in the hotel,” he said. “All four of them.”
“Are they getting close to us?” his boss asked.
“I have no way of telling.”
“Gut feeling?”
“Yes, I think they’re getting close.”
“OK, it’s time to take them down. Leave them there and come on in. We’ll make our move in a couple of hours.”
41
O’Donnell stood up and walked to Dixon’s window and asked, “What have we got?”
It was a routine question from the past. It had been a big part of the special unit’s standard operating procedure. Like an unbreakable habit. Reacher had always insisted on constant recaps. He had insisted on combing through accumulated information, restating it, testing it, re-examining it, looking at it from new angles in the light of what had come afterward. But this time nobody answered, except Dixon, who said, “All we’ve got is four dead friends.”
The room went quiet.
“Let’s get dinner,” Neagley said. “No point in the rest of us starving ourselves to death.”
Dinner. Reacher recalled the burger barn, twenty-four hours previously. Sunset Boulevard, the noise, the thick beef patties, the cold beer. The round table for four. The conversation. The way the center of attention had rotated freely between them all. Always one talker and three listeners, a shifting pyramid that had swung first one way and then another.
One talker, three listeners.
“Mistake,” he said.
Neagley said, “Eating is a mistake?”
“No, eat if you want to. But we’re making a mistake. A major conceptual error.”
“Where?”
“My fault entirely. I jumped to a false conclusion.”
“How?”
“Why can’t we find Franz’s client?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because Franz didn’t have a client. We made a mistake. His was the first body found, so we just went ahead and assumed this whole thing was about him. Like he had to have been the prime mover here. Like he was the talker and the other three were the listeners. But suppose he wasn’t the talker?”
“So who was?”
“We’ve been saying all along he wouldn�
��t have put himself on the line except for someone special. Someone he was obligated to somehow.”
“But that’s back to saying he was the prime mover. With a client we can’t find.”
“No, we’re imagining the hierarchy all wrong. It doesn’t necessarily go, first the client, then Franz, then the others helping Franz. I think Franz was actually lower down the pecking order. He wasn’t at the top of the tree. See what I mean? Suppose he was actually helping one of the others? Suppose he was a listener, not the talker? Suppose this whole thing is basically Orozco’s deal? For one of his clients? Or Sanchez’s? If they needed help, who were they going to call?”
“Franz and Swan.”
“Exactly. We’ve been wrong from the start. We need to reverse the paradigm. Suppose Franz got a panic call from Orozco or Sanchez? That’s certainly someone he regards as special. That’s someone he’s obligated to somehow. Not a client, but he can’t say no. He’s got to pitch in and help, no matter what Angela or Charlie think.”
Silence in the room.
Reacher said, “Orozco contacted Homeland Security. That’s difficult to do. And it’s the only really proactive thing we’ve seen so far. It’s more than Franz seems to have done.”
O’Donnell said, “Mauney’s people think Orozco was dead before Franz. That might be significant.”
“Yes,” Dixon said. “If this was Franz’s deal, why would he farm out the heavy-duty inquiries to Orozco? I imagine Franz was better equipped to handle them himself. That kind of proves the dynamic was flowing the other way, doesn’t it?”
“It’s suggestive,” Reacher said. “But let’s not make the same mistake twice. It could have been Swan.”
“Swan wasn’t working.”
“Sanchez, then, not Orozco.”
“More likely both of them together.”
Neagley said, “Which would mean this was something based in Vegas, not here in LA. Could those numbers be something to do with casinos?”
“Possibly,” Dixon said. “They could be house win percentages taking a hit after someone worked out a system.”
“What kind of thing gets played nine or ten or twelve times a day?”
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