Lee Child - The Hard Way

Reacher stepped over and sat down on the chair, feet planted, relaxed but alert. The way his body settled naturally put the fireplug across Sixth directly in front of him. A shallow downward angle, easily enough to clear a parked panel truck. Enough to clear a parked semi. A ninety-foot range. No problem for anyone who wasn’t clinically blind. He stood up again and turned a full circle. Saw a door that locked. Saw three solid walls. Saw a window free of drapes. A soldier knows that a satisfactory observation point provides an unobstructed view to the front and adequate security to the flanks and the rear, provides protection from the elements and concealment of the observers, and offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation .

“Feels just like Patti Joseph’s place,” Pauling said.

“You been there?”

“Brewer described it.”

“Eight million stories,” Reacher said.

Then he turned to the super and said, “Tell us about this guy.”

“He can’t talk,” the super said.

“What do you mean?”

“He can’t speak.”

“What, like he’s a mute?”

“Not by birth. Because of a trauma.”

“Like something struck him dumb?”

“Not emotional,” the super said. “Physical. He communicated with me by writing on a pad of yellow paper. Full sentences, quite patiently. He wrote that he had been injured in the service. Like a war wound. But I noticed that he had no visible scarring. And I noticed that he kept his mouth tight shut all the time. Like he was embarrassed about me seeing something. And it reminded me very strongly of something I saw once before, more than twenty years ago.”

“Which was?”

“I am Russian. For my sins I served with the Red Army in Afghanistan. Once we had a prisoner returned to us by the tribesmen as a warning. His tongue had been cut out.”

THE SUPER TOOKReacher and Pauling down to his own apartment, which was a squared-away semi-basement space in the back of the building. He opened a file cabinet and took out the current lease papers for apartment five. They had been signed exactly a week previously by a guy calling himself Leroy Clarkson. Which as expected was a blatantly phony name. Clarkson and Leroy were the first two streets coming off the West Side Highway north of Houston, just a few blocks away. At the far end of Clarkson was a topless bar. At the far end of Leroy was a car wash. In between was a tiny aluminum coach diner that Reacher had once eaten in.

“You don’t see ID?” Pauling asked.

“Not unless they want to pay by check,” the super said. “This guy paid cash.”

The signature was illegible. The Social Security number was neatly written but was no doubt just a random sequence of nine meaningless digits.

The super gave a decent physical description, but it didn’t help much because it did nothing more than match what Reacher himself had seen on two separate occasions. Late thirties, maybe forty, white, medium height and weight, clean and trim, no facial hair. Blue jeans, blue shirt, ball cap, sneakers, all of them worn and comfortable.

“How was his health?” Reacher asked.

“Apart from the fact that he couldn’t speak?” the super said. “He seemed OK.”

“Did he say if he’d been out of town for a while?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“How long did he pay for?”

“A month. It’s the minimum. Renewable.”

“This guy’s not coming back,” Reacher said. “You should go ahead and call The Village Voice now. Get them to run your ad again.”

“What happened to your pal from the Red Army?” Pauling asked.

“He lived,” the super said. “Not happily, but he lived.”

Reacher and Pauling came out the blue door and took three paces north and stopped in for espresso. They took the end table on the sidewalk and Reacher took the same seat he had used twice before.

Pauling said, “So he wasn’t working alone.”

Reacher said nothing.

Pauling said, “Because he couldn’t have made the phone calls.”

Reacher didn’t reply.

Pauling said, “Tell me about the voice you heard.”

“American,” Reacher said. “The machine couldn’t disguise the words or the cadence or the rhythm. And he was patient. Intelligent, in command, in control, not worried. Familiar with the geography of New York City. Possibly military, from a couple of phrases. He wanted to know Burke’s name, which suggests he’s familiar with Lane’s crew or he was calibrating a lie detector. Apart from that, I’m just guessing. The distortion was huge. But I felt he wasn’t old. There was a lightness there. A kind of nimbleness in his voice. Maybe he was a small guy.”

“Like a Special Forces veteran.”

“Possibly.”

“Unworried and in command makes him sound like the prime mover here. Not like a sidekick.”

Reacher nodded. “Good point. I felt that way, listening to him. It was like he was calling the shots. Like an equal partner, at the very least.”

“So who the hell is he?”

“If your Pentagon guy hadn’t told us different I’d say it was both of Hobart and Knight, both still alive, back here together, working together.”

“But it isn’t,” Pauling said. “My Pentagon guy wouldn’t get that kind of thing wrong.”

“So whichever one came back alive picked up a new partner.”

“One that he trusts,” Pauling said. “And he did it real fast.”

Reacher gazed over at the hydrant. Traffic obscured his view in waves, held back and then released by the light at Houston.

“Would a remote clicker work at this distance?” he asked.

“For a car?” Pauling said. “Maybe. I guess it would depend on the car. Why?”

“After Burke switched the bag I heard a sound like car doors locking. I guess the guy did it from up there in his room. He was watching. He didn’t want to leave the money in an unlocked car for a second longer than he had to.”

“Sensible.”

Reacher paused a beat. “But you know what isn’t sensible? Why was he up there in the room at all?”

“We know why he was up there.”

“No, why was he up there and not the other guy? We’ve got two guys here, one can talk and the other can’t. Why would the guy who can’t talk go rent the apartment? Anyone who comes into contact with him isn’t going to forget him in a hurry. And what’s an observation point for anyway? It’s for command and control. As the visible situation develops the observer is supposed to issue a stream of orders and adjustments. But this guy couldn’t even get on a cell phone. What do we suppose happened exactly, the first two times with Gregory? The guy is upstairs, he sees Gregory park, what can he do? He can’t even get on the phone and tell his partner to stand by down at Spring Street.”

“Text messaging,” Pauling said.

“What’s that?”

“You can send written words by cell phone.”

“When did that start?”

“Years ago.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Live and learn.” Then he said, “But I still don’t see why they sent the guy who couldn’t talk to meet with the building super.”

“Neither do I,” Pauling said.

“Or to run the OP. It would make more sense if he had been on the other end of the phone. He can’t talk, but he can listen.”

Silence for a moment.

“What next?” Pauling asked.

“Hard work,” Reacher said. “You up for it?”

“Are you hiring me?”

“No, you’re putting whatever else you’re doing on hold and you’re volunteering. Because if we do this right you’ll find out what happened to Anne Lane five years ago. No more sleepless nights.”