Ли Чайлд: No Middle Name

There should have been a whole big crowd. There should have been laughter and conversation, and shuffling feet, and the kind of hoots and yelps a happy crowd makes at eleven o’clock on a warm summer’s evening, and sirens and car horns, and the whisper of tyres and the roar of engines.

There was nothing.

Reacher went back down the stairs, and under the tape again. He walked underground, north, to the site of his second attempt, and this time he stepped over the tape, because it was slung lower. He went up the stairs just as cautiously, but faster, now right on the street corner, with Madison Square Park ahead of him, fenced in black iron and packed with dark trees. But its gates were still open. Not that anyone was strolling in or strolling out. There was no one around. Not a soul.

He stepped up to the sidewalk and stayed close to the railing around the subway stair head. A long block to the west he saw flashing lights. Blue and red. A police cruiser was parked sideways across the street. A roadblock. Do Not Enter . Reacher turned and looked east. Same situation. Red and blue lights all the way over on Park Avenue. Do Not Enter . 23rd Street was closed. As were plenty of other cross streets, no doubt, and Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Madison too, presumably, at about 30th Street.

No one around.

Reacher looked at the Flatiron Building. A narrow triangle, sharp at the front. Like a thin wedge, or a modest slice of cake. But to him it looked most like the prow of a ship. Like an immense ocean liner moving slowly towards him. Not an original thought. He knew many people felt the same way. Even with the cowcatcher glasshouse on the front ground floor, which some said ruined the effect, but which he thought added to it, because it looked like the protruding underwater bulge on the front of a supertanker, visible only when the vessel was lightly loaded.

Now he saw a person. Through two panes of the cowcatcher’s windows. A woman. She was standing on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, staring north. She was wearing dark pants and a dark short-sleeved shirt. She had something in her right hand. Maybe a phone. Maybe a Glock 19.

Reacher pushed off the subway railing and crossed the street. Against the light, technically, but there was no traffic. It was like walking through a ghost town. Like being the last human on earth. Apart from the woman on Fifth Avenue. Who he headed for. He aimed at the point of the cowcatcher. His heels were loud in the silence. The cowcatcher had a triangular iron frame, a miniature version of the shape it was backing up against, like a tiny sailboat trying to outrun the liner chasing it. The frame was painted green, like moss, and it had gingerbread curlicues here and there, and what wasn’t metal was glass, whole panels of it, as long as cars, and tall, from above a person’s head to his knees.

The woman saw him coming.

She turned in his direction, but backed off, as if to draw him towards her. Reacher understood. She wanted to pull him south into the shadows. He rounded the point of the cowcatcher.

It was a phone in her hand, not a gun.

She said, ‘Who are you?’

He said, ‘Who’s asking?’

She turned her back and then straightened again, one fast fluid movement, like a fake-out on the basketball court, but enough for him to see FBI in yellow letters on the back of her shirt.

‘Now answer my question,’ she said.

‘I’m just a guy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Looking at this building.’

‘The Flatiron?’

‘No, this part in front. The glass part.’

‘Why?’

Reacher said, ‘Have I been asleep for a long time?’

The woman said, ‘Meaning what?’

‘Did some crazy old colonel stage a coup d’état? Are we living in a police state now? I must have blinked and missed it.’

‘I’m a federal agent. I’m entitled to ask for your name and ID.’

‘My name is Jack Reacher. No middle initial. I have a passport in my pocket. You want me to take it out?’

‘Very slowly.’

So he did, very slowly. He used scissored fingers, like a pickpocket, and drew out the slim blue booklet, and held it away from his body, long enough for her to register what it was, and then he passed it to her, and she opened it.

She said, ‘Why were you born in Berlin?’

He said, ‘I had no control over my mother’s movements. I was just a foetus at the time.’

‘Why was she in Berlin?’

‘Because my father was. We were a Marine family. She said I was nearly born on a plane.’

‘Are you a Marine?’

‘I’m unemployed at the moment.’

‘After being what?’

‘Unemployed for many previous moments.’

‘After being what?’

‘Army.’

‘Branch?’

‘Military Police.’

She handed back the passport.

She said, ‘Rank?’

He said, ‘Does it matter?’

‘I’m entitled to ask.’

She was looking past his shoulder.

He said, ‘I was terminal at major.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘Bad, mostly. If I had been any good at being a major they would have made me stay.’

She didn’t reply.

He said, ‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Rank?’

‘Special Agent in Charge.’

‘Are you in charge tonight?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Outstanding.’

She said, ‘Where did you come from?’

He said, ‘The subway.’

‘Was there police tape?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘You broke through it.’

‘Check the First Amendment. I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to walk around where I want. Isn’t that part of what makes America great?’

‘You’re in the way.’

‘Of what?’

She was still looking past his shoulder.

She said, ‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Then you should have told the train not to stop. Tape isn’t enough.’

‘I didn’t have time.’

‘Because?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

Reacher said nothing.

The woman said, ‘What’s your interest in the glass part of this building?’

Reacher said, ‘I’m thinking of putting in a bid as a window washer. Might get me back on my feet.’

‘Lying to a federal agent is a felony.’

‘A million people every day look in these windows. Have you asked them?’

‘I’m asking you.’

Reacher said, ‘I think Edward Hopper painted Nighthawks here.’

‘Which is what?’

‘A painting. Quite famous. Looking in through a diner’s windows, late at night, at the lonely people inside.’

‘I never heard of a diner called Nighthawks. Not here.’

‘The night hawks were the people. The diner was called Phillies.’

‘I never heard of a diner here called anything.’

‘I don’t think there was one.’

‘You just said there was.’

‘I think Hopper saw this place and made it a diner in his head. Or a lunch counter, at least. The shape is exactly the same. Looked at from right where we’re standing now.’

‘I think I know that picture. Three people, isn’t it?’

‘Plus the counter man. He’s kind of bent over, doing something in the well. There are two coffee urns behind him.’

‘First there’s a couple, close but not touching, and then one lonely guy all by himself. With his back to us. In a hat.’

‘All the men wear hats.’

‘The woman is a redhead. She looks sad. It’s the loneliest picture I’ve ever seen.’

Reacher looked through the real-life glass. Easy to imagine bright fluorescent light in there, pinning people like searchlight beams, exposing them in a merciless way to the dark streets all around, except the streets all around were empty, so there was no one to see.