The Hard Way

  They walked. The noon heat raised sour smells from the milk in dumped lattes in trash cans and gutters. Panel trucks and taxis jammed the streets. Drivers hit their horns in anticipation of potential fractional delays. Second-story air conditioners dripped condensation like fat raindrops. Vendors hawked fake watches and umbrellas and cell phone accessories. The city, in full tumult. Reacher liked New York more than most places. He liked the casual indifference of it all and the frantic hustle and the total anonymity.

  Hudson Street between Clarkson and Leroy had buildings on the west side and James J. Walker Park on the east. Taylor's number matched a brick cube sixteen stories high. It had a plain entrance but a decent lobby. Reacher could see one lone guy behind a long desk. No separate doorman out on the sidewalk. Which made it easier. One guy was always easier than two. No witnesses.

  "Approach?" Pauling asked.

  "The easy way," Reacher said. "The direct approach."

  They pulled the street door and stepped inside. The lobby had dark burr veneers and brushed metal accents. A granite floor. Up to the minute decor, a lot of minutes ago. Reacher walked straight to the desk and the guy behind it looked up and Reacher pointed to Pauling.

  "Here's the deal," he said. "This lady will give you four hundred bucks if you let us into Mr. G. Taylor's apartment."

  The easy way. The direct approach. Concierges are human. And it was a well-chosen sum. Four hundred was a slightly unusual number. It wasn't glib or run of the mill. It didn't go in one ear and out the other. It commanded attention. It was big enough to feel like serious cash. And in Reacher's experience it created an irresistible temptation to bargain upward toward five hundred. And in Reacher's experience once that temptation had taken hold the battle was won. Like prostitution. Once the principle was established, all that was left was the price.

  The desk guy glanced left, glanced right. Saw nobody.

  No witnesses. Easier.

  "Alone?" the desk guy asked.

  "I don't mind," Reacher said. "Come with us. Send a handyman." The guy paused. Said, "OK, I'll send a handyman."

  But you'll keep the cash for yourself, Reacher thought.

  "Five hundred," the guy said. Reacher said, "Deal."

  Pauling opened her purse and her wallet and licked her thumb and counted off five hundred-dollar bills. Folded them around her index finger and slipped them across the desk.

  "Twelfth floor," the concierge said. "Turn left, go to the door at the end on the right. The handyman will meet you there." He pointed toward the elevator bank and picked up a walkie-talkie to summon the guy. Reacher and Pauling stepped over and pressed the up arrow. An elevator door slid open like it had been waiting for them.

  "You owe me a lot of money," Pauling said.

  "I'm good for it," Reacher said. "I'll be rich tonight."

  "I hope the staff in my building are better than that."

  "Dream on. I was in and out of a lot of buildings, back in the day."

  "You had a bribery budget?"

  "Huge. Before the peace dividend. That dropped a rock on a lot of budgets."

  The elevator car stopped on twelve and the door slid back. The corridor was part exposed brick and part white paint and the only lighting was supplied by television screens set waist-high behind glass. They were all glowing dim purple.

  "Nice," Pauling said.

  Reacher said, "I like your place better."

  They turned left and found the end door on the right. It had an integrated box mounted eye-high with a peephole lens and an apartment number and a slot with a black tape sign that said Taylor. Northeast corner of the building. The corridor was still and quiet and smelled faintly of air freshener or carpet cleaner.

  Reacher asked, "What is he paying for a place like this?"

  "Rental?" Pauling said. She glanced at the distance between doors to judge the size of the apartments and said, "Small two-bedroom, maybe four grand a month. Maybe four and a quarter in a building like this."

  "That's a lot."

  "Not when you make twenty-five."

  To their right the elevator bell dinged and a man in a green uniform and a tan tool belt stepped off. The handyman. He walked up and pulled a keyring from his pocket. Asked no questions. Just unlocked Taylor's door and pushed it open and stood back.

  Reacher went in first. The apartment felt empty. The air inside was hot and still. There was a foyer the size of a phone booth and then a stainless-steel kitchen on the left and a coat closet on the right. Living room dead ahead, two bedrooms side by side away to the left, one of them larger than the other. The kitchen and the living room were spotlessly clean and immaculately tidy. The decor was mid-century modern, restrained, tasteful, masculine. Dark wood floors, pale walls, thick wool rugs. There was a maple desk. An Eames lounge chair and an ottoman opposite a Florence Knoll sofa. A Le Corbusier chaise and a Noguchi coffee table. Stylish. Not cheap. Classic pieces. Reacher recognized them from pictures in magazines he had read. There was an original painting on the wall. An urban scene, busy, bright, vibrant, acrylic on canvas. There were lots of books, shelved neatly and alphabetically. A small television set. Lots of CDs and a quality music system dedicated to headphones only. No loudspeakers. A considerate guy. A good neighbor.

  "Very elegant," Pauling said.

  "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 color. 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 neighbor. 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."