Lee Child's Jack Reacher Books 1-6

by Lee Child

  The honor guard dispersed in the sudden silence and the American woman shook hands with the three Vietnamese officers and walked back to her car. The three Vietnamese officers walked in a different direction, back to theirs. It was a Japanese sedan, repainted a dull military green. The woman drove, and the two men sat in back. It was a short trip to the center of Hanoi. The woman parked in a chain-link compound behind a low concrete building painted the color of sand. The men got out without a word and went inside through an unmarked door. The woman locked the car and walked around the building to a different entrance. She went inside and up a short flight of stairs to her office. There was a bound ledger open on her desk. She recorded the safe dispatch of the cargo in neat handwriting and closed the ledger. She carried it to a file cabinet near her office door. She locked it inside, and glanced through the door, up and down the corridor. Then she returned to her desk and picked up her telephone and dialed a number eleven thousand miles away in New York City.

  MARILYN WOKE UP Sheryl and brought Chester around into some sort of consciousness before the thickset man came into the bathroom with the coffee. It was in mugs, and he was holding two in one hand and one in the other, unsure of where to leave them. He paused and stepped to the sink and lined them up on the narrow granite ledge under the mirror. Then he turned without speaking and walked back out. Pulled the door closed after him, firmly, but without slamming it.

  Marilyn handed out the mugs one at a time, because she was trembling and pretty sure she was going to spill them if she tried them two at a time. She squatted down and gave the first one to Sheryl, and helped her take the first sip. Then she went back for Chester’s. He took it from her blankly and looked at it like he didn’t know what it was. She took the third for herself and stood against the sink and drank it down, thirstily. It was good. The cream and the sugar tasted like energy.

  “Where are the stock certificates?” she whispered.

  Chester looked up at her, listlessly. “At my bank, in my box.”

  Marilyn nodded. Came face-to-face with the fact she didn’t know which was Chester’s bank. Or where it was. Or what stock certificates were for.

  “How many are there?”

  He shrugged. “A thousand, originally. I used three hundred for security against the loans. I had to give them up to the lender, temporarily.”

  “And now Hobie’s got those?”

  He nodded. “He bought the debt. They’ll messenger the security to him, today, maybe. They don’t need it anymore. And I pledged him another ninety. They’re still in the box. I guess I was due to deliver them soon.”

  “So how does the transfer actually happen?”

  He shrugged again, wearily, vaguely. “I sign the stock over to him, he takes the certificates and registers them with the Exchange, and when he’s got five hundred and one registered in his name, then he’s the majority owner.”

  “So where’s your bank?”

  Chester took his first sip of coffee. “About three blocks from here. About five minutes’ walk. Then another five minutes to the Exchange. Call it ten minutes beginning to end, and we’re penniless and homeless on the street.”

  He set the mug on the floor and lapsed back into staring. Sheryl was listless. Not drinking her coffee. Her skin looked clammy. Maybe concussed, or something. Maybe still in shock. Marilyn didn’t know. She had no experience. Her nose was awful. Black and swollen. The bruising was spreading under her eyes. Her lips were cracked and dry, from breathing through her mouth all night.

  “Try some more coffee,” she said. “It’ll be good for you.” She squatted beside her and guided her hand up to her mouth. Tilted the mug. Sheryl took a sip. Some of the hot liquid ran down her chin. She took another sip. She glanced up at Marilyn, with something in her eyes. Marilyn didn’t know what it was, but she smiled back anyway, bright with encouragement.

  “We’ll get you to the hospital,” she whispered.

  Sheryl closed her eyes and nodded, like she was suddenly filled with relief. Marilyn knelt beside her, holding her hand, staring at the door, wondering how she was going to deliver on that promise.

  “ARE YOU GOING to keep this thing?“ Jodie asked.

  She was talking about the Lincoln Navigator. Reacher thought about it as he waited. They were jammed up on the approach to the Triborough.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  It was more or less brand new. Very quiet and smooth. Black metallic outside, tan leather inside, four hundred miles on the clock, still reeking of new hide and new carpet and the strong plastic smell of a box-fresh vehicle. Huge seats, each one identical with the driver’s chair, lots of fat consoles with drinks holders and little lids suggestive of secret storage spaces.

  “I think it’s gross,” she said.

  He smiled. “Compared to what? That tiny little thing you were driving?”

  “That was much smaller than this.”

  “You’re much smaller than me.”

  She was quiet for a beat.

  “It was Rutter’s,” she said. “It’s tainted.”

  The traffic moved, and then stopped again halfway over the Harlem River. The buildings of midtown were faraway to his left, and hazy, like a vague promise.

  “It’s just a tool,” he said. “Tools have no memory.”

  “I hate him,” she said. “I think more than I’ve ever hated anybody.”

  He nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “The whole time we were in there I was thinking about the Hobies, up there in Brighton, alone in their little house, the look in their eyes. Sending your only boy off to war is a hell of a thing, and to be lied to and cheated afterward, Jodie, there’s no excuse for that. Swap the chronology, it could have been my folks. And he did it fifteen times. I should have hurt him worse.”

  “As long as he doesn’t do it again,” she said.

  He shook his head. “The list of targets is shrinking. Not too many BNR families left now to fall for it.”

  They made it off the bridge and headed south on Second Avenue. It was fast and clear ahead for sixty blocks.

  “And it wasn’t him coming after us,” she said quietly. “He didn’t know who we were.”

  Reacher shook his head again. “No. How many fake photographs do you have to sell to make it worth trashing a Chevy Suburban? We need to analyze it right from the beginning, Jodie. Two full-time employees get sent to the Keys and up to Garrison, right? Two full-time salaries, plus weapons and airfare and all, and they’re riding around in a Tahoe, then a third employee shows up with a Suburban he can afford to just dump on the street? That’s a lot of money, and it’s probably just the visible tip of some kind of an iceberg. It implies something worth maybe millions of dollars. Rutter was never making that kind of money, ripping off old folks for eighteen thousand bucks a pop.”

  “So what the hell is this about?”

  Reacher just shrugged and drove, and watched the mirror all the way.

  HOBIE TOOK THE call from Hanoi at home. He listened to the Vietnamese woman’s short report and hung up without speaking. Then he stood in the center of his living room and tilted his head to one side and narrowed his good eye like he was watching something physical happening in front of him. Like he was watching a baseball soaring out of the diamond, looping upward into the glare of the lights, an outfielder tracking back under it, the fence getting closer, the glove coming up, the ball soaring, the fence looming, the outfielder leaping. Will the ball clear the fence? Or not? Hobie couldn’t tell.

  He stepped across the living room and out to the terrace. The terrace faced west across the park, from thirty floors up. It was a view he hated, because all the trees reminded him of his childhood. But it enhanced the value of his property, which was the name of the game. He wasn’t responsible for the way other people’s tastes drove the market. He was just there to benefit from them. He turned and looked left, to where he could see his office building, all the way downtown. The Twin Towers looked shorter than they should, because of the
curvature of the earth. He turned back inside and slid the door closed. Walked through the apartment and out to the elevator. Rode down all the way to the parking garage.

  His car was not modified in any way to help him with his handicap. It was a late-model Cadillac sedan with the ignition and the selector on the right of the steering column. Using the key was awkward, because he had to lean across with his left hand and jab it in backward and twist. But after that, he never had much of a problem. He put it in drive by using the hook on the selector and drove out of the garage one-handed, using his left, the hook resting down in his lap.

  He felt better once he was south of Fifty-ninth Street. The park disappeared and he was deep in the noisy canyons of midtown. The traffic comforted him. The Cadillac’s air-conditioning relieved the itching under his scars. June was the worst time for that. Some particular combination of heat and humidity acted together to drive him crazy. But the Cadillac made it better. He wondered idly whether Stone’s Mercedes would be as good. He thought not. He had never trusted the air on foreign cars. So he would turn it into cash. He knew a guy in Queens who would spring for it. But it was another chore on the list. A lot to do, and not much time to do it in. The outfielder was right there, under the ball, leaping, with the fence at his back.

  He parked in the underground garage, in the slot previously occupied by the Suburban. He reached across and pulled the key and locked the Cadillac. Rode upstairs in the express elevator. Tony was at the reception counter.

  “Hanoi called again,” Hobie told him. “It’s in the air.”

  Tony looked away.

  “What?” Hobie asked him.

  “So we should just abandon this Stone thing.”

  “It’ll take them a few days, right?”

  “A few days might not be enough,” Tony said. “There are complications. The woman says she’s talked it over with him, and they’ll do the deal, but there are complications we don’t know about.”

  “What complications?”

  Tony shook his head. “She wouldn’t tell me. She wants to tell you, direct.”

  Hobie stared at the office door. “She’s kidding, right? She damn well better be kidding. I can’t afford any kind of complications now. I just presold the sites, three separate deals. I gave my word. The machinery is in motion. What complications?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” Tony said again.

  Hobie’s face was itching. There was no air-conditioning in the garage. The short walk to the elevator had upset his skin. He pressed the hook to his forehead, looking for some relief from the metal. But the hook was warm, too.

  “What about Mrs. Jacob?” he asked.

  “She was home all night,” Tony said. “With this Reacher guy. I checked. They were laughing about something this morning. I heard them from the corridor. Then they drove somewhere, north on the FDR Drive. Maybe going back to Garrison.”

  “I don’t need her in Garrison. I need her right here. And him.”

  Tony was silent.

  “Bring Mrs. Stone to me,” Hobie said.

  He walked into to his office and across to his desk. Tony went the opposite way, toward the bathroom. He came out a moment later, pushing Marilyn in front of him. She looked tired. The silk sheath looked ludicrously out of context, like she was a partygoer caught out by a blizzard and stranded in town the morning after.

  Hobie pointed to the sofa.

  “Sit down, Marilyn,” he said.

  She remained standing. The sofa was too low. Too low to sit on in a short dress, and too low to achieve the psychological advantage she was going to need. But to stand in front of his desk was wrong, too. Too supplicant. She walked around to the wall of windows. Eased the slats apart and gazed out at the morning. Then she turned and propped herself against the ledge. Made him rotate his chair to face her.

  “What are these complications?” he asked.

  She looked at him and took a deep breath.

  “We’ll get to that,” she said. “First we get Sheryl to the hospital.”

  There was silence. No sound at all, except the rumbling and booming of the populated building. Faraway to the west, a siren sounded faintly. Maybe all the way over in Jersey City.

  “What are these complications?” he asked again. He used the same exact voice, the same exact intonation. Like he was prepared to overlook her mistake.

  “The hospital first.”

  The silence continued. Hobie turned back to Tony.

  “Get Stone out of the bathroom,” he said.

  Stone stumbled out, in his underwear, with Tony’s knuckles in his back, all the way to the desk. He hit his shins on the coffee table and gasped in pain.

  “What are these complications?” Hobie asked him.

  He just glanced wildly left and right, like he was too scared and disoriented to speak. Hobie waited. Then he nodded.

  “Break his leg,” he said. He turned to look at Marilyn. There was silence. No sound, except Stone’s ragged breathing and the faint boom of the building. Hobie stared on at Marilyn. She stared back at him.

  “Go ahead,” she said quietly. “Break his damn leg. Why should I care? He’s made me penniless. He’s ruined my life. Break both his damn legs if you feel like it. But it won’t get you what you want any quicker. Because there are complications, and the sooner we get to them, the better it is for you. And we won’t get to them until Sheryl is in the hospital.”

  She leaned back on the window ledge, palms down, arms locked from the shoulder. She hoped it made her look relaxed and casual, but she was doing it to keep herself from falling on the floor.

  “The hospital first,” she said again. She was concentrating so hard on her voice, it sounded like somebody else’s. She was pleased with it. It sounded OK. A low, firm voice, steady and quiet in the silent office.

  “Then we deal,” she said. “Your choice.”

  The outfielder was leaping, glove high, and the ball was dropping. The glove was higher than the fence. The trajectory of the ball was too close to call. Hobie tapped his hook on the desk. The sound was loud. Stone was staring at him. Hobie ignored him and glanced up at Tony.

  “Take the bitch to the hospital,” he said sourly.

  “Chester goes with them,” Marilyn said. “For verification. He needs to see her go inside to the ER, alone. I stay here, as surety.”

  Hobie stopped tapping. Looked at her and smiled. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “No, I don’t trust you. We don’t do it this way, you’ll just take Sheryl out of here and lock her up someplace else.”

  Hobie was still smiling. “Farthest thing from my thoughts. I was going to have Tony shoot her and dump her in the sea.”

  There was silence again. Marilyn was shaking inside.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Hobie asked her. “She says one word to the hospital people, she gets you killed, you know that, right?”

  Marilyn nodded. “She won’t say anything to anybody. Not knowing you’ve still got me here.”

  “You better pray she doesn’t.”

  “She won’t. This isn’t about us. It’s about her. She needs to get help.”

  She stared at him, leaning back, feeling faint. She was searching his face for a sign of compassion. Some acceptance of his responsibility. He stared back at her. There was no compassion in his face. Nothing there at all, except annoyance. She swallowed and took a deep breath.

  “And she needs a skirt. She can’t go out without one. It’ll look suspicious. The hospital will get the police involved. Neither of us wants that. So Tony needs to go out and buy her a new skirt: ‘

  “Lend her your dress,” Hobie said. “Take it off and give it to her.”

  There was a long silence.

  “It wouldn’t fit her,” Marilyn said.

  “That’s not the reason, is it?”

  She made no reply. Silence. Hobie shrugged.

  “OK,” he said.

  She swallowed again. “And shoes.”

  “What?
”

  “She needs shoes,” Marilyn said. “She can’t go without shoes.”

  “Jesus,” Hobie said. “What the hell next?”

  “Next, we deal. Soon as Chester is back here and tells me he saw her walk in alone and unharmed, then we deal.”

  Hobie traced the curve of his hook with the fingers of his left hand.

  “You’re a smart woman,” he said.

  I know I am, Marilyn thought. That’s the first of your complications.

  REACHER PLACED THE sports bag on the white sofa underneath the Mondrian copy. He unzipped it and turned it over and spilled out the bricks of fifties. Thirty-nine thousand, three hundred dollars in cash. He split it in half by tossing the bricks alternately left and right to opposite ends of the sofa. He finished up with two very impressive stacks.

  “Four trips to the bank,” Jodie said. “Under ten thousand dollars, the reporting rules don’t apply, and we don’t want to be answering any questions about where we got this from, right? We’ll put it in my account and cut the Hobies a cashier’s check for nineteen-six-fifty. Our half, we’ll access through my gold card, OK?”

  Reacher nodded. “We need airfare to St. Louis, Missouri, plus a hotel. Nineteen grand in the bank, we can stay in decent places and go business class.”

  “It’s the only way to fly,” she said. She put her arms around his waist and stretched up on tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back, hard.