Hard Way (25 page)

"An Englishman in New York," Reacher said. "Probably drank tea."

The bigger bedroom was spare, almost monastic. White walls, a king bed, gray linens, an Italian desk light on a night table, more books, another painting by the same artist. The closet had a hanging rail and a wall of open shelves. The rail was full of suits and jackets and shirts and pants grouped precisely by season and colour. Each garment was clean and pressed and ironed. Each hanger was exactly one inch from the next. The shelves were stacked with piles of T-shirts and underwear and socks. Each stack was exactly vertical and the same height as all the others. The bottom shelf held shoes. They were all solid English items like Reacher's own, black and brown, shined like mirrors. They all had cedar shoe trees in them.

"This is amazing," Pauling said. "I want to marry this guy."

Reacher said nothing and moved on to the second bedroom. The second bedroom was where the money or the will or the enthusiasm had run out. It was a small plain undecorated space. It felt unused. It was dark and hot and damp. There was no lightbulb in the ceiling fixture. The room held nothing but two narrow iron beds. They had been pushed together. There were used sheets on them. Dented pillows. The window was covered with a width of black fabric. It had been duct-taped to the walls, across the top, across the bottom, down both sides. But the tape had been picked away on one side and a narrow rectangle of cloth had been folded back to provide a sliver of a view, or air, or ventilation.

"This is it," Reacher said. "This is where Kate and Jade were hidden."

"By who? The man who can't talk?"

"Yes," Reacher said. "The man who can't talk hid them here."

CHAPTER 52

PAULING STEPPED OVER next to the twin beds and bent to examine the pillows. "Long dark hairs," she said. "A woman's and a girl's. They were tossing and turning all night."

"I bet they were," Reacher said.

"Maybe two nights." Reacher walked back to the living room and checked the desk. The handyman watched him from the doorway. The desk was as neatly organized as the closet, but there wasn't much in it. Some personal papers, some financial papers, some lease papers for the apartment. Taylor's first name was Graham. He was a U.K. citizen and a resident alien. He had a Social Security number. And a life insurance policy, and a retirement plan. There was a console telephone on the desk. A stylish thing, made by Siemens. It looked brand new and recently installed. It had ten speed-dial buttons with paper strips next to them under plastic. The paper strips were marked with initials only. At the top was L. For Lane, Reacher guessed. He hit the corresponding button and a 212 number lit up in neat alphanumeric script in a gray LCD window. Manhattan. The Dakota, presumably. He hit the other nine buttons one after the other. The gray window showed three 212 numbers, three 917 numbers, two 718s, and a long number with 01144 at the beginning. The 212s would all be Manhattan. Buddies, probably, maybe including Gregory, because there was a G on the paper strip. The 917s would be cell phones. Maybe for the same set of guys, for when they were on the road, or for people who didn't have landlines. The 718s would be for Brooklyn. Probably buddies who weren't up for Manhattan rents. The long 01144 number would be for Great Britain. Family, maybe. The corresponding initial was S. A mom or a dad, possibly.

Reacher kept on pressing buttons on the phone for a while and then he finished up at the desk and went back to the second bedroom. Pauling was standing at the window, half turned away, looking through the narrow slot.

"Weird," she said. "Isn't it? They were right here in this room. This view was maybe the last thing they ever saw."

"They weren't killed here. Too difficult to get the bodies out." "Not literally the last view. Just the last normal thing from their old lives."

Reacher said nothing. "Can you feel them in here?" Reacher said, "No."

He tapped the wall with his knuckles and then knelt and tapped the floor. The walls felt thick and solid and the floor felt like concrete under hardwood. An apartment building was an odd place to keep people prisoner but this one felt safe enough. Terrorize your captives into silence and adjacent residents wouldn't know much. If anything. Ever. Like Patti Joseph had said: This city is incredibly anonymous. You can go years without ever laying eyes on your neighbour. Or his guests, Reacher thought.

"You think there are doormen here twenty-four hours?" he asked. "I doubt it," Pauling said. "Not this far downtown. Mine aren't. They're probably part-time here. Maybe until eight."

"Then that might explain the delays. He couldn't bring them in past a doorman. Not kicking and struggling. The first day, he would have had to wait hours. Then he kept the intervals going for consistency." "And to create an impression of distance."

"That was Gregory's guess. He was right and I was wrong. I said the Catskills."

"It was a reasonable assumption." Reacher said nothing. Pauling asked, "What next?"

"I'd like to meet with your Pentagon buddy again."

"I'm not sure if he'll agree to. I don't think he likes you."

"I'm not crazy about him, either. But this is business. Make him an offer."

"What can we offer him?"

"Tell him we'll take Lane's crew off the board if he helps us out with one small piece of information. He'll take that deal. Ten minutes with us in a coffee shop will get him more than ten years of talking at the U.N. One whole band of real live mercenaries out of action forever."

"Can we deliver that?"

"We'll have to anyway. Sooner or later it's going to be them or us." They walked back to Pauling's office by their previous route in reverse. Saint Luke's Place, Seventh Avenue, Cornelia Street, West 4th. Then Reacher lounged in one of Pauling's visitor chairs while she played phone tag around the U.N. Building, looking for her friend. She got him after about an hour of trying. He was reluctant but he agreed to meet in the same coffee shop as before, at three o'clock in the afternoon.

"Time is moving on," Pauling said.

"'It always does. Try Brewer again. We need to hear from him."

But Brewer wasn't back at his desk and his cell was switched off. Reacher leaned back and closed his eyes. No use fretting about what you can't control. At two o'clock they went out to find a cab, well ahead of time, just in case. But they got one right away and were in the Second Avenue coffee shop forty minutes early. Pauling tried Brewer again. Still no answer. She closed her phone and put it on the table and spun it like a top. It came to rest with its antenna pointing straight at Reacher's chest.

"You've got a theory," she said to him. "Haven't you? Like a physicist. A unified theory of everything.'

"No," Reacher said. "Not everything. Not even close. It's only partial. I'm missing a big component. But I've got a name for Lane."

"What name?"

"Let's wait for Brewer," Reacher said. He waved to the waitress. The same one as before. He ordered coffee. Same brown mugs, same Bunn flask. Same hot, strong, generic taste. Pauling's phone buzzed with thirty minutes to go before the Pentagon guy was due to show. She answered it and said her name and listened for a spell and then she gave their current location. A coffee shop, east side of Second between 44th and 45th, booth in the hack. Then she hung up.

"Brewer," she said. "Finally. He's meeting us here. Wants to talk face-to-face."

"Why?"

"He didn't say."

"Where is he now?"

"He's leaving the morgue."

"It's going to be crowded in here. He's going to arrive at the same time as your guy."

"My guy's not going to like that. I don't think he likes crowds."

"If I see him balking I'll talk to him outside."

But Pauling's Pentagon friend showed up a little early. Presumably to scope out the situation ahead of the rendezvous. Reacher saw him out on the sidewalk, looking in, checking the clientele one face at a time. He was patient about it. Thorough. But eventually he was satisfied and he pulled the door. Walked quickly through the room and slid into the booth. He was wearing the same blue suit. Same tie. Probably a fresh shirt, although there was no real way of telling. One white button-down Oxford looks pretty much the same as another.

"I'm concerned about your offer," he said. "I can't condone illegality."

Take the poker out of your ass, Reacher thought. Be grateful for once in your miserable life. You might he a general now but you know how things are. But he said, "I understand your concern, sir. Completely. And you have my word that no cop or prosecutor anywhere in America will think twice about anything that I do."

"I have your word?"

"As an officer."

The guy smiled. "And as a gentleman?"

Reacher didn't smile back. "I can't claim that distinction."

"No cop or prosecutor anywhere in America?"

"I guarantee it."

"You can do that, realistically?"

"I can do that absolutely."

The guy paused. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Get me confirmation of something so I don't waste my time or money."

"Confirmation of what?"

"I need you to check a passenger name against flight manifests out of this area during the last forty-eight hours."

"Military?"

"No, commercial."

"That's a Homeland Security issue."

Reacher nodded. "Which is why I need you to do it for me. I don't know who to call. Not anymore. But I'm guessing you do."

"Which airport? What flight?"

"I'm not sure. You'll have to go fishing. I'd start with JFK. British Airways, United, or American to London, England. I'd start with late evening the day before yesterday. Failing that, try flights out of Newark. No hits, try JFK again yesterday morning."

"Definitely transatlantic?"

"That's my assumption right now."

"OK," the guy said, slowly, like he was taking mental notes. Then he asked, "Who am I looking for? One of Edward Lane's crew?"

Reacher nodded. "A recent ex-member."

"Name?"

Reacher said, "Taylor. Graham Taylor. He's a U.K. citizen."

CHAPTER 53

THE PENTAGON GUY left with a promise to liaise in due course via Lauren Pauling's cell phone. Readier got a coffee refill and Pauling said, "You didn't find Taylor's passport in his apartment."

Reacher said, "No, I didn't."

"So either he's still alive or you think someone's impersonating him."

Reacher said nothing.

Pauling said, "Let's say Taylor was working with the guy with no tongue. Let's say they fell out over something, either what they did to Kate and Jade in the end, or the money, or both. Then let's say one of them killed the other and ran, on Taylor's passport, with all the money."

"If it's the guy with no tongue, why would he use Taylor's passport?"

"Maybe he doesn't have one of his own. Plenty of Americans don't. Or maybe he's on a watch list. Maybe he couldn't get through an airport with his own name."

"Passports have photographs."

"They're often old and generic. Do you look like your passport photograph?"

"A little."

Pauling said, "A little is sometimes all you need. Going out, they don't care as much as when you're coming in."

Reacher nodded and looked up and saw Brewer coming in the door. Big, fast, energetic. Something in his face, maybe frustration, maybe concern, Reacher couldn't tell. Or perhaps the guy was just tired. He had been woken up early. He hurried through the room and slid into the booth and sat in the same spot the Pentagon guy had just vacated.

He said, "The body in the river was not the guy in Patti's photograph."

"You sure?" Reacher asked.

"As sure as I've ever been about anything. Patti's guy is about five-nine and athletic and the floater was six-three and wasted. Those are fairly basic differences, wouldn't you say?"

Reacher nodded. "Fairly basic."

Pauling asked, "Did he have a tongue?"

"A what?" Brewer said.

"A tongue. Did the floater have a tongue?"

"Doesn't everybody? What kind of question is that?"

"We're looking for a guy who had his tongue cut out."

Brewer looked straight at her. "Then the floater ain't yours. I was just at the morgue. He's got everything except a heartbeat."

"You sure?"

"Medical examiners tend to notice things like that."

"OK," Reacher said. "Thanks for your help."

"Not so fast," Brewer said. "Talk to me."

"About what?"

"About why you're interested in this guy."

Something in his face.

Reacher asked, "Did you get an ID?"

Brewer nodded. "From his fingerprints. They were mushy, but we made them work. He was an NYPD snitch. Relatively valuable. I've got buddies uptown who are relatively unhappy."

"What kind of a snitch?"

"Methamphetamine out of Long Island. He was due to testify."

"Where had he been?"

"He just got out of Rikers. They swept him up along with a bunch of others to keep his cover intact. Held him a few days, then turned him loose."

"When?"

"He just got out. The ME figures he was dead about three hours after walking through the gates."

"Then we don't know anything about him," Reacher said. "He's completely unrelated."

This time it was Brewer who said: "You sure?"

Reacher nodded. "I promise."

Brewer gave him a long hard look, cop to cop. Then he just shrugged and said, "OK."

Reacher said, "Sorry we can't help."

"Shit happens."

"You still got Patti's photograph?"

"Photographs," Brewer said. "She gave me two. Couldn't decide which one was better."

"You still got them?"

"In my pocket."

"Want to leave them with me?"

Brewer smiled, man to man. "You planning on returning them personally?"

"I could," Reacher said. "But first I want to look at them."

They were in a standard white letter-size envelope. Brewer pulled it from his inside pocket and laid it on the table. Reacher saw the name Taylor and the words For Brewer written on the front in blue ink and neat handwriting. Then Brewer left. Just stood up and walked back out to the street with the same kind of speed and energy and hustle he had used on the way in. Reacher watched him go and then he turned the envelope facedown and squared it on the table in front of him. Looked at it hard but left it unopened.

"What have we got?" he asked.

"We've got the same as we always had," Pauling said. "We've got Taylor and the guy who can't talk."

Reacher shook his head. "Taylor is the guy who can't talk."