Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

Milena was moving around the space, listlessly, putting more stuff in tentative piles, stopping occasionally to leaf through a book or look at a picture. She used her thigh to butt the ruined sofa back to its proper position, even though no one would ever sit on it again.

Reacher asked her, “Have the cops been here?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did they have any conclusions?”

“They think whoever came here dressed up as phony contractors. Cable, or phone.”

“OK.”

“But I think they bribed the doorman. That would be easier.”

Reacher nodded. Vegas, a city of scams . “Did the cops have an opinion as to why?”

“No,” she said.

He asked her, “When did you last see Jorge?”

“We had dinner,” she said. “Here. Chinese takeout.”

“When?”

“His last night in Vegas.”

“You were here then?”

“It was just the two of us.”

Reacher said, “He wrote something on a napkin.”

Milena nodded.

“Because someone called him?”

Milena nodded again.

Reacher asked, “Who called him?”

Milena said, “Calvin Franz.”

Milena was looking shaky, so Reacher used his forearm to clear shards of broken china off the kitchen countertop, to give her a place to sit. She boosted herself up and sat with her elbows turned out and her hands laid flat on the laminate, palms down, trapped under her knees.

Reacher said, “We need to know what Jorge was working on. We need to know what caused all this trouble.”

“I don’t know what it was.”

“But you spent time with him.”

“A lot.”

“And you knew each other well.”

“Very well.”

“For years.”

“On and off.”

“So he must have talked to you about his work.”

“All the time.”

“So what was on his mind?”

Milena said, “Business was slow. That’s what was on his mind.”

“His business here? In Vegas?”

Milena nodded. “It was great in the beginning. Years ago, they were always busy. They had a lot of contracts. But the big places dropped them, one by one. They all set up in-house operations. Jorge said it was inevitable. Once they reach a certain size, it makes more sense.”

“We met a guy at our hotel who said Jorge was still busy. ‘Like a one-armed paperhanger.’”

Milena smiled. “The guy was being polite. And Jorge put a brave face on it. Manuel Orozco, too. At first they used to say, We’ll fake it until we make it . Then they said, We’ll fake it now we’re not making it anymore . They kept up a front. They were too proud to beg.”

“So what are you saying? They were going down the tubes?”

“Fast. They did a bit of muscle work here and there. Doormen at some of the clubs, running cheats out of town, stuff like that. They did some consulting for the hotels. But not much anymore. Those people always think they know better, even when they don’t.”

“Did you see what Jorge wrote on the napkin?”

“Of course. I cleared dinner away after he left. He wrote numbers.”

“What did they mean?”

“I don’t know. But he was very worried about them.”

“What did he do next? After Franz’s call?”

“He called Manuel Orozco. Right away. Orozco was very worried about the numbers, too.”

“How did it all start? Who came to them?”

“Came to them?”

Reacher asked, “Who was their client?”

Milena looked straight at him. Then she turned and twisted and looked at O’Donnell, and then Dixon, and then Neagley.

“You’re not listening to me,” she said. “They didn’t really have clients. Not anymore.”

“Something must have happened,” Reacher said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, someone must have come to them with a problem. On the job somewhere, or at the office.”

“I don’t know who came to them.”

“Jorge didn’t say?”

“No. One day they were sitting around doing nothing, the next day they were as busy as blue-assed flies. That’s what they used to call it. Blue-assed flies, not one-armed paperhangers.”

“But you don’t know why?”

Milena shook her head. “They didn’t tell me.”

“Who else might know?”

“Orozco’s wife might know.”

The wrecked apartment went very quiet and Reacher stared straight at Milena and said, “Manuel Orozco was married?”

Milena nodded. “They have three children.”

Reacher looked at Neagley and asked, “Why didn’t we know that?”

“I don’t know everything,” Neagley said.

“We told Mauney the next of kin was the sister.”

Dixon asked, “Where did Orozco live?”

“Down the street,” Milena said. “In a building just like this.”

Milena led them another quarter mile away from the center of town to an apartment house on the other side of the same street. Orozco’s place. It was very similar to Sanchez’s. Same age, same style, same construction, same size, a blue sidewalk awning where Sanchez’s had been green.

Reacher asked, “What is Mrs. Orozco’s name?”

“Tammy,” Milena said.

“Will she be home?”

Milena nodded. “She’ll be asleep. She works nights. In the casinos. She gets home and gets the children on the school bus and then she goes right to bed.”

“We’re going to have to wake her up.”

It was the building’s doorman who woke her up. He called upstairs on the house phone. There was a long wait and then there was a reply. The doorman announced Milena’s name, and then Reacher’s, and Neagley’s, and Dixon’s, and O’Donnell’s. The guy had picked up on the mood and he used a serious tone of voice. He left no doubt that the visit wasn’t good news.

There was another long wait. Reacher guessed Tammy Orozco would be matching the four new names with her husband’s nostalgic recollections, and putting two and two together. Then he guessed she would be putting on a housecoat. He had visited widows before. He knew how it went.

“Please go on up,” the doorman said.

They rode the elevator to the eighth floor, packed tight in a small car. Turned left on a corridor and stopped at a blue door. It was already standing open. Milena knocked anyway and then led them inside.

Tammy Orozco was a small hunched figure on a sofa. Wild black hair, pale skin, a patterned housecoat. She was probably forty but right then she could have passed for a hundred. She looked up. She ignored Reacher and O’Donnell and Dixon and Neagley completely. Didn’t look at them at all. There was some hostility there. Not just jealousy or vague resentment, like Angela Franz had shown. There was real anger instead. She looked directly at Milena and said, “Manuel is dead, isn’t he?”

Milena sat down beside her and said, “These guys say so. I’m very sorry.”

Tammy asked, “Jorge too?”

Milena said, “We don’t know yet.”

The two women hugged and cried. Reacher waited it out. He knew how it went. The apartment was a larger unit than Sanchez’s. Maybe three bedrooms, a different layout, facing a different direction. The air was stale and smelled of fried food. The whole place was battered and untidy. Maybe because it had been tossed three weeks ago, or maybe it was always in a state of chaos with two adults and three children living in it. Reacher didn’t know much about children, but he guessed Orozco’s three were young, from the kind of books and toys and scattered clothing he saw lying around. There were dolls and bears and video games and complex constructions made from plastic components. Therefore the children were maybe nine, seven, and five. Approximately. But all recent. All postservice. Orozco hadn’t been married in the service. Reacher was fairly sure of that, at least.