Lee Child - Persuader

“How did you get in here?” Duke asked. He looked tired.

“Door was open,” I said.

“How did you know which door?” Beck asked.

I kept my hands in my pockets. I couldn’t say I had seen the painted sign, because it was Duffy who had told me the name of his operation, not him.

“Your car’s parked outside,” I said.

He nodded.

“OK,” he said.

He didn’t ask about my day. The new guy with the scanner must have described it already. Now he was just standing there, looking straight at me. He was younger than Beck. Younger than Duke. Younger than me. He was maybe thirty-five. He still looked dangerous. He had flat cheekbones and dull eyes. He was like a hundred bad guys I had busted in the army.

“Enjoy the drive?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer.

“I saw you bring the scanner in,” I said. “I found the first bug. Under the seat.”

“Why did you look?” he asked.

“Habit,” I said. “Where was the second?”

“In the back,” he said. “You didn’t stop for lunch.”

“No money,” I said. “Nobody gave me any yet.”

The guy didn’t smile.

“Welcome to Maine,” he said. “Nobody gives you money here. You earn it.”

“OK,” I said.

“I’m Angel Doll,” he said, like he was expecting his name to impress me. But it didn’t.

“I’m Jack Reacher,” I said.

“The cop-killer,” he said, with something in his voice.

He looked at me for a long moment and then looked away. I couldn’t figure out where he fit in. Beck was the boss and Duke was his head of security but this junior guy seemed very relaxed about talking right over their heads.

“We’re in a meeting,” Beck said. “You can wait out by the car.”

He ushered the other two back inside the room and shut the door on me. That in itself told me there was nothing worth hunting for in the secretarial area. So I wandered outside and took a good look at the security system on my way. It was fairly rudimentary, but effective. There were contact pads on the door and all the windows. They were small rectangular things. They had wires the size and color of spaghetti tacked all along the baseboards. The wires came together in a metal box mounted on the wall next to a crowded notice board. The notice board was full of yellowed paper. There was all kinds of stuff about employee insurance and fire extinguishers and evacuation points. The alarm box had a keypad and two small lights. There was a red one labeled armed and a green one labeled unarmed . There were no separate zones. No motion sensors. It was crude perimeter defense only.

I didn’t wait by the car. I walked around a little, until I had gotten a feel for the place. The whole area was a warren of similar operations. There was a convoluted access road for trucks. I guessed it would operate as a one-way system. Containers would be hauled down from the piers to the north and unloaded into the warehouses. Then delivery trucks would be loaded in turn and take off south. Beck’s warehouse itself wasn’t very private. It was right in the middle of a row of five. But it didn’t have an outside loading dock. No waist-high platform. It had a roller door instead. It was temporarily blocked by Angel Doll’s Lincoln, but it was big enough to drive a truck through. Secrecy could be achieved.

There was no overall external security. It wasn’t like a naval dockyard. There was no wire fencing. No gate, no barriers, no guards in booths. It was just a big messy hundred-acre area full of random buildings and puddles and dark corners. I guessed there would be some kind of activity all around the clock. How much, I didn’t know. But probably enough to mask some clandestine comings and goings.

I was back at the Cadillac and leaning on the fender when the three of them came out. Beck and Duke came first and Doll hung back in the doorway. I still had my hands in my pockets. I was still ready to go for Duke first. But there was no overt aggression in the way anybody was moving. No wariness. Beck and Duke just walked over toward the car. They looked tired and preoccupied. Doll stayed where he was in the doorway, like he owned the place.

“Let’s go,” Beck said.

“No, wait,” Doll called. “I need to talk to Reacher first.”

Beck stopped walking. Didn’t turn around.

“Five minutes,” Doll said. “That’s all. Then I’ll lock up for you.”

Beck didn’t say anything. Neither did Duke. They looked irritated, but they weren’t going to object. I kept my hands in my pockets and walked back. Doll turned and led me through the secretarial pen and into the back office. Through another door and into a glass-walled cubicle inside the warehouse itself. I could see a forklift on the warehouse floor and steel racks loaded with rugs. The racks were easily twenty feet high and the rugs were all tightly rolled and tied with string. The cubicle had a personnel door to the outside and a metal desk with a computer on it. The desk chair was worn out. Dirty yellow foam showed through at every seam. Doll sat down on it and looked up at me and moved his mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. I stood sideways at the end of the desk and looked down on him.

“What?” I said.

“See this computer?” he said. “It’s got taps into every Department of Motor Vehicles in the country.”

“So?”

“So I can check license plates.”

I said nothing. He took a handgun out of his pocket. A neat move, fast and fluid. But then, it was a good pocket gun. It was a Soviet-era PSM, which is a small automatic pistol built as smooth and slim as possible, so it won’t snag on clothing. It uses weird Russian ammunition, which is hard to get. It has a safety catch at the rear of the slide. Doll’s was in the forward position. I couldn’t remember whether that represented safe or fire.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“I want to confirm something with you,” he said. “Before I go public with it and move myself up a rung or two.”

There was silence.

“How would you do that?” I asked.

“By telling them an extra little thing they don’t know about yet,” he said. “Maybe I’ll even earn myself a nice big bonus. Like, maybe I’ll get the five grand they earmarked for you.”

I pressed the Glock’s trigger lock in my pocket. Glanced to my left. I could see all the way through to the back office window. Beck and Duke were standing by the Cadillac. They had their backs to me. They were forty feet away. Too close.

“I dumped the Maxima for you,” Doll said.

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. Then he smiled again.

“What?” I said again.

“You stole it, right? At random, from a shopping mall.”

“So?”

“It had Massachusetts plates,” he said. “They were phony. No such number has ever been issued.”

Mistakes, coming back to haunt me. I said nothing.

“So I checked the VIN,” he said. “The vehicle identification number. All cars have them. On a little metal plate, top of the dash.”

“I know,” I said.

“It came back as a Maxima,” he said. “So far, so good. But it was registered in New York. To a bad boy who was arrested five weeks ago. By the government.”

I said nothing.

“You want to explain all that?” he said.

I didn’t answer.

“Maybe they’ll let me waste you myself,” he said. “I might enjoy that.”

“You think?”

“I’ve wasted people before,” he said, like he had something to prove.

“How many?” I said.

“Enough.”

I glanced through the back office window. Let go of the Glock and took my hands out of my pockets, empty.

“The New York DMV list must be out-of-date,” I said. “It was an old car. Could have been sold out of state a year ago. You check the authentication code?”