by Lee Child
“I’m celebrating the fact that you’re you.”
She raised her arms over her head and held the pose and he pulled her shirt off. She was wearing a tiny black bra. He raised his arms in turn and she knelt up on the sofa and hauled his shirt up over his head. Then his T-shirt. She spread her hands like small starfish on the broad slab of his chest. Ran them south to his waist. Undid his belt. He unclipped her bra. Lifted her up and laid her down flat on the sofa and kissed her breasts. By the time the clock in his head was showing five past ten they were in her bed, naked under the sheet, locked together, making love with a kind of patience and tenderness he had never experienced before.
“Older women,” she said. “We’re worth it.”
He didn’t answer. Just smiled and ducked his head and kissed her neck below her ear, where her skin was damp and tasted of salt water.
Afterward they showered together and finished their wine and went back to bed. Reacher was too tired to think and too relaxed to care. He just floated, warm, spent, happy. Pauling snuggled against him and they fell asleep like that.
Much later Reacher felt Pauling stir and woke up to find her hands over his eyes. She asked him in a whisper, “What time is it?”
“Eighteen minutes to seven,” he said. “In the morning.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“It’s not a very useful talent. Saves me the price of a new watch, maybe.”
“What happened to the old one?”
“I stepped on it. I put it by the bed and I stood on it when I got up.”
“And that broke it?”
“I was wearing shoes.”
“In bed?”
“Saves time getting dressed.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“I don’t do it all the time. It depends on the bed.”
“What would it mean if Gregory was wrong about the time and you were right?”
He took a breath and opened his mouth to say I don’t know.
But then he stopped.
Because suddenly he saw what it would mean.
“Wait,” he said.
He lay back on the pillow and stared up at the darkened ceiling.
“Do you like chocolate?” he asked.
“I guess.”
“You got a flashlight?”
“There’s a small Maglite in my purse.”
“Put it in your pocket,” he said. “Leave the purse home. And wear pants. The skirt is no good.”
CHAPTER 49
They walked, because it was a beautiful city morning and Reacher was too restless to ride the subway or take a cab. Barrow, to Bleecker, then south on Sixth Avenue. It was already warm. They took it slow, to time it right. They turned east on Spring Street at seven-thirty exactly. Crossed Sullivan, crossed Thompson.
“We’re going to the abandoned building?” Pauling asked.
“Eventually,” Reacher said.
He stopped outside the chocolate shop. Cupped his hands against the glass and peered in. There was a light in the kitchen. He could see the owner moving about, small, dark, tired, her back to him. Sixteen-hour days, she had said. Regular as clockwork, seven days a week, small business, we never rest.
He knocked on the glass, loud, and the owner stopped and turned and looked exasperated until she recognized him. Then she shrugged and admitted defeat and walked through the front of the store to the door. Undid the locks and opened the door a crack and said, “Hello.”
Air bitter with chocolate flooded out at him.
He asked, “Can we come through to the alley again?”
“Who’s your friend this time?”
Pauling stepped forward and said her name.
The owner asked, “Are you really exterminators?”
“Investigators,” Pauling said. She had a business card ready.
“What are you investigating?”
“A woman disappeared,” Reacher said. “And her child.”
Silence for a moment.
The owner asked, “You think they’re next door?”
“No,” Reacher said. “Nobody’s next door.”
“That’s good.”
“This is just routine.”
“Would you like a chocolate?”
“Not for breakfast,” Reacher said.
“I would love one,” Pauling said.
The owner held the door wide and Pauling and Reacher stepped inside. Pauling took a moment choosing a chocolate. She settled on a raspberry fondant as big as a golf ball. Took a little bite and made a noise that sounded like appreciation. Then she followed Reacher through the kitchen and down the short tiled hallway. Out through the back door to the alley.
The rear of the abandoned building was exactly as Reacher had last seen it. The dull red door, the corroded black knob, the filthy ground floor window. He turned the knob and pushed, just in case, but the door was locked, as expected. He bent down and unlaced his shoe. Took it off and held the toe in his hand and used the heel like a two-pound hammer. Used it to break the window glass, low down and on the left, close to the door lock.
He tapped a little more and widened the hole and then put his shoe back on. Put his arm through the hole in the glass up to his shoulder and hugged the wall and groped around until he found the inside door handle. He unlocked it and withdrew his arm very carefully.
“OK,” he said.
He opened the door and stood aside to let Pauling get a good look.
“Just like you told me,” Pauling said. “Uninhabitable. No floors.”
“You up for a trip down the ladder?”
“Why me?”
“Because if I’m wrong I might just give up and stay down there forever.”
Pauling craned in and took a look at the ladder. It was right there where it had been before, propped to the right, steeply angled, leaning on the narrow piece of wall that separated the window and the door.
“I did worse at Quantico,” she said. “But that was a long time ago.”
Reacher said, “It’s only ten feet if you fall.”
“Thanks.” She turned around and backed up to the void. Reacher took her right hand in his and she sidled left and swung her left foot and left hand onto the ladder. Got steady and let Reacher’s hand go and paused a beat and climbed down into the dark. The ladder bounced and rattled a little and then he heard the crunch and rustle of trash as she hit bottom and stepped off.
“It’s filthy down here,” she called.
“Sorry,” he said.
“There could be rats.”
“Use the flashlight.”
“Will that scare them off?”
“No, but you’ll see them coming.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He leaned in over the pit and saw her flashlight beam stab the gloom. She called, “Where am I going?”
“Head for the front of the building. Directly underneath the door.”
The flashlight beam leveled out and established a direction and jerked forward. The basement walls had been whitewashed years before with some kind of lime compound and they reflected a little light. Reacher could see deep drifts of garbage everywhere. Paper, cartons, piles of unidentifiable rotted matter.
Pauling reached the front wall. The flashlight beam stabbed upward and she located the door above her. She moved left a little and lined herself up directly beneath it.
“Look down now,” Reacher called. “What do you see?”
The beam stabbed downward. Short range, very bright.
“I see trash,” Pauling called.
Reacher called, “Look closer. They might have bounced.”
“What might have bounced?”
“Dig around and you’ll see. I hope.”
The flashlight beam traced a small random circle. Then a wider one. Then it stopped dead and held steady.
“OK,” Pauling called. “Now I see. But how the hell did you know?”
Reacher said nothing. Pauling held still for a second longer and then bent down.
Stood up again with her hands held high. In her right hand was the flashlight. In her left hand were two sets of car keys, one for a Mercedes Benz and one for a BMW.
CHAPTER 50
Pauling waded through the garbage back to the base of the ladder and tossed the keys up to Reacher. He caught them one-handed, left and then right. Both sets were on chrome split rings and both had black leather fobs decorated with enamel car badges. The three-pointed Mercedes star, the blue and white BMW propeller. Both had a single large car key and a remote clicker. He blew dust and fragments of trash off them and put them in his pocket. Then he leaned in over the void and caught Pauling’s arm and hauled her off the ladder to the safety of the alley. She brushed herself down and kicked the air hard to get trash off her shoes.
“So?” she said.
“We’re one for one,” he said.
He closed the dull red door and put his arm back through the hole in the window glass and hugged the wall again and clicked the lock from the inside. Extricated himself carefully and tested the knob. It was solid. Safe.
“This whole thing with the mail slot was a pure decoy,” he said. “Just a piece of nonsense designed to distract attention. The guy already had keys. He had spares from the file cabinet in Lane’s office. There was a whole bunch of car stuff in there. Some of the valet keys were filed away and some of them were missing.”
“So you were right about the time.”
Reacher nodded. “The guy was in the apartment above the café. Sitting on the chair, looking out the window. He watched Gregory park at eleven-forty and watched him walk away but he didn’t follow him down here to Spring Street. He didn’t need to. He didn’t give a damn about Spring Street. He just came out his door and crossed Sixth Avenue and used the valet key from his pocket. Immediately, much closer to eleven-forty than midnight.”
“Same thing with the blue BMW the second morning.”
“Exactly the same thing,” Reacher said. “I watched the damn door for twenty minutes and he never came anywhere near it. He never even came south of Houston Street. He was in the BMW about two minutes after Gregory got out of it.”
“And that’s why he specified the cars so exactly. He needed to match them with the stolen keys.”
“And that’s why it bugged me when Gregory let me into his car that first night. Gregory used the remote thing from ten feet away, like anyone would. But the night before the other guy didn’t do that with the Mercedes. He walked right up to it and stuck the key in the door. Who does that anymore? But he did, because he had to, because he didn’t have the remote. All he had was the valet key. Which also explains why he used the Jaguar for the final installment. He wanted to be able to lock it from the other side of the street, as soon as Burke put the money in it. For safety’s sake. He could do that with the Jaguar only, because the only remote he had was for the Jaguar. He inherited it at the initial takedown.”
Pauling said nothing.
Reacher said, “I told Lane the guy used the Jaguar as a taunt. As a reminder. But the real reason was practical, not psychological.”
Pauling was quiet for a second more. “But you’re back to saying there was inside help. Aren’t you? And there must have been, right? To steal the valet keys? But you already discounted inside help. You already decided there wasn’t any.”
“I think I’ve got that figured.”
“Who?”
“The guy with no tongue. He’s the key to the whole ballgame.”
CHAPTER 51
Pauling and Reacher trooped back through the chocolate shop and were back on the street before eight-thirty in the morning. They were back in Pauling’s office on West 4th before nine.
“We need Brewer now,” Reacher said. “And Patti Joseph.”
“Brewer’s still asleep,” Pauling said. “He works late.”
“Today he’s going to work early. He’s going to get his ass in gear. Because we need a definitive ID on that body from the Hudson River.”
“Taylor?”
“We need to know for certain it’s Taylor. I’m sure Patti has got a photograph of him. I bet she’s got a photograph of everyone who ever went in or out of the Dakota. If she gave a good clear shot to Brewer he could head for the morgue and make the ID for us.”
“Patti’s not our best buddy here. She wants to take Lane down, not help him.”
“We’re not helping him. You know that.”
“I’m not sure Patti sees the difference.”
“All we want is one lousy photograph. She can go that far.”
So Pauling called Patti Joseph. Patti confirmed that she had a file of photographs of all Lane’s men stretching back through the four years that she had occupied the Majestic apartment. At first she was reluctant to grant access to it. But then she saw that a positive ID of Taylor’s body would put some kind of pressure on Lane, either directly or indirectly. So she agreed to pick out the best full-frontal and put it aside for Brewer to collect. Then Pauling called Brewer and woke him up. He was bad-tempered about it but he agreed to pick up the picture. There was an element of self-interest there, too. ID on an as-yet-unexplained DOA would net him some NYPD Brownie points.
“Now what?” Pauling asked.
“Breakfast,” Reacher said.
“Do we have time? Lane is expecting a name today.”
“Today lasts until midnight.”
“What after breakfast?”
“Maybe you’ll want to take a shower.”
“I’m OK. That basement wasn’t too bad.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the basement. I figured we might take coffee and croissants back to your place. Last time we were there we both ended up taking showers.”
Pauling said, “I see.”
“Only if you want to.”
“I know a great croissant shop.”
Two hours later Reacher was drying his hair with a borrowed towel and trying to decide whether or not to back a hunch. In general he wasn’t a big fan of hunches. Too often they were just wild-assed guesses that wasted time and led nowhere. But in the absence of news from Brewer he had time to waste and nowhere to go anyway. Pauling came out of the bedroom looking spectacular. Shoes, stockings, tight skirt, silk blouse, all in black. Brushed hair, light makeup. Great eyes, open, frank, intelligent.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Eleven-thirteen,” he said. “Give or take.”
“Sometime you’re going to have to explain how you do that.”
“If I ever figure it out you’ll be the first to know.”
“Long breakfast,” she said. “But fun.”
“For me, too.”
“What next?”
“We could do lunch.”
“I’m not hungry yet.”
“We could skip the eating part.”
She smiled.
“Seriously,” she said. “We have things to do.”
“Can we go back to your office? There’s something I want to check.”
Barrow Street was quiet but West 4th was busy with the front end of the city’s lunch break envelope. The sidewalks were packed. Reacher and Pauling had to go with the flow, slower than they would have liked. But there was no alternative. Pedestrian traffic gridlocks just the same as automotive traffic. A five-minute walk took ten. The street door below Pauling’s office was already unlocked. Other tenants were open for business and had been for hours. Reacher followed Pauling up the stairs and she used her keys and they stepped into her waiting room. He walked ahead of her into the back office where the bookshelves and the computer were.
“What do you want to check?” she asked.
“The phone book first,” he said. “T for Taylor.”
She hauled the white pages off the shelf and opened it on the desk. There were plenty of Taylors listed. It was a reasonably common name.
She asked, “Initial?”
“No idea,” he said. “Work off the street addresses. Look for private individuals in the West Village.”
Reacher said, “Start with Hudson Street. Check the city directory and find out what block that address is on.”
Pauling laid the directory over the phone book and slid it down until the top edge of the directory’s jacket underlined the Taylor on Hudson Street. Then she flipped pages and traced the street number to a specific location on a specific block.
She looked up.
“It’s exactly halfway between Clarkson and Leroy,” she said.
Reacher said nothing.
“What’s going on here?”
“Your best guess?”
“The guy with no tongue knew Taylor? Lived with him? Was working with him? Killed him?”
Reacher said nothing.
“Wait,” Pauling said. “Taylor was the inside man, wasn’t he? He stole the valet keys. He stopped the car outside Bloomingdale’s exactly where the other guy wanted him to. You were always worried about the initial takedown. That’s the only way it could have worked.”
Reacher said nothing.
Pauling asked, “Was it really Taylor in the river?”
“We’ll know that as soon as Brewer calls.”
“The boat basin is a long way north of downtown. And downtown is where all the action seems to be.”
“The Hudson is tidal all the way to the Tappan Zee. Technically it’s an estuary, not a river. A floater could drift north as much as south.”
“What exactly is going on here?”
“We’re sweating the details and we’re working the clues. That’s what’s going on here. We’re doing it the hard way. One step at a time. Next step, we go visit the Taylor residence.”
“Now?”
“It’s as good a time as any.”
“Will we get in?”
“Do bears shit in the woods?”
Pauling took a sheet of paper and copied G. Taylor and the address from the phone book. Said, “I wonder what the G stands for.”
“He was British, don’t forget,” Reacher said. “Could be Geoffrey with a G. Or Gerald. Or Gareth or Glynn. Or Gervaise or Godfrey or Galahad.”