professionally.”
“What do we know about Swan’s company?”
“It exists. It does business. It files. It has an address. Apart from that, not much.”
“Presumably it has security issues, or Swan wouldn’t have gotten hired.”
“All defense contractors have security issues. Or they think they ought to have, because they want to think what they do is important.”
Reacher said nothing to that. Just sat and stared out the window. It was getting dark. A long day, nearly over. He said, “Franz didn’t go to his office the morning he disappeared.”
“You think?”
“We know. Angela had his set of keys. He left them home. He was going somewhere else that day.”
Neagley said nothing.
“And the landlord at the strip mall saw the bad guys,” Reacher said. “Franz’s lock wasn’t broken. They didn’t take Franz’s key from him, because he didn’t have it in his pocket. Therefore they scammed one or bought one from the owner. Therefore the owner saw them. Therefore we need to find him tomorrow, along with everything else.”
“Franz should have called me,” Neagley said. “I would have dropped everything.”
“I wish he had called you,” Reacher said. “If you had been there, none of this bad stuff would have happened.”
Reacher and Neagley ate dinner in the downstairs restaurant, front corner of the lobby, where a bottle of still water from Norway cost eight dollars. Then they said goodnight and split up and headed for their separate rooms. Reacher’s was a chintzy cube two floors below Neagley’s suite. He stripped and showered and folded his clothes and put them under the mattress to press. He got into bed and folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Thought about Calvin Franz for a minute, in random flashing images, the same way a political candidate’s biography is squeezed into a thirty second television commercial. His memory made some of the pictures sepia and some of them washed out, but in all of them Franz was moving, talking, laughing, full of drive and energy. Then Karla Dixon joined the parade, petite, dark, sardonic, laughing with Franz. Dave O’Donnell was there, tall, fair, handsome, like a stockbroker with a switchblade. And Jorge Sanchez, durable, eyes narrowed, with a hint of a smile that showed a gold tooth and was as close as he ever came to showing contentment. And Tony Swan, as wide as he was high. And Manuel Orozco, opening and closing a Zippo lighter because he liked the sound so much. Even Stan Lowrey was there, shaking his head, drumming his fingers on a table to a rhythm only he could hear.
Then Reacher blinked all the pictures away and closed his eyes and fell asleep, ten-thirty in the evening, a long day, over.
Ten-thirty in the evening in Los Angeles was one-thirty the next morning in New York, and the last British Airways flight from London, delayed, had just landed at JFK. The delay meant that the last immigration watch in British Airways’ own terminal had already gone off duty, so the plane taxied to Terminal Four and fed its passengers through the giant arrivals hall there. Third in the visitors’ line was a first-class passenger who had napped in seat 2K for most of the trip. He was medium height, medium weight, expensively dressed, and he radiated the kind of expansive self-confident courtesy typical of people who know how lucky they are to have been rich all their lives. He was perhaps forty years old. He had thick black hair, shiny, beautifully cut, and the kind of mid-brown skin and regular features that could have made him Indian, or Pakistani, or Iranian, or Syrian, or Lebanese, or Algerian, or even Israeli or Italian. His passport was British, and it passed the Immigration agent’s scrutiny with no trouble at all, as did its owner’s manicured forefingers on the electronic fingerprint pad. Seventeen minutes after unclipping his seat belt the guy was out in the shiny New York night, walking briskly to the head of the
“What do we know about Swan’s company?”
“It exists. It does business. It files. It has an address. Apart from that, not much.”
“Presumably it has security issues, or Swan wouldn’t have gotten hired.”
“All defense contractors have security issues. Or they think they ought to have, because they want to think what they do is important.”
Reacher said nothing to that. Just sat and stared out the window. It was getting dark. A long day, nearly over. He said, “Franz didn’t go to his office the morning he disappeared.”
“You think?”
“We know. Angela had his set of keys. He left them home. He was going somewhere else that day.”
Neagley said nothing.
“And the landlord at the strip mall saw the bad guys,” Reacher said. “Franz’s lock wasn’t broken. They didn’t take Franz’s key from him, because he didn’t have it in his pocket. Therefore they scammed one or bought one from the owner. Therefore the owner saw them. Therefore we need to find him tomorrow, along with everything else.”
“Franz should have called me,” Neagley said. “I would have dropped everything.”
“I wish he had called you,” Reacher said. “If you had been there, none of this bad stuff would have happened.”
Reacher and Neagley ate dinner in the downstairs restaurant, front corner of the lobby, where a bottle of still water from Norway cost eight dollars. Then they said goodnight and split up and headed for their separate rooms. Reacher’s was a chintzy cube two floors below Neagley’s suite. He stripped and showered and folded his clothes and put them under the mattress to press. He got into bed and folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Thought about Calvin Franz for a minute, in random flashing images, the same way a political candidate’s biography is squeezed into a thirty second television commercial. His memory made some of the pictures sepia and some of them washed out, but in all of them Franz was moving, talking, laughing, full of drive and energy. Then Karla Dixon joined the parade, petite, dark, sardonic, laughing with Franz. Dave O’Donnell was there, tall, fair, handsome, like a stockbroker with a switchblade. And Jorge Sanchez, durable, eyes narrowed, with a hint of a smile that showed a gold tooth and was as close as he ever came to showing contentment. And Tony Swan, as wide as he was high. And Manuel Orozco, opening and closing a Zippo lighter because he liked the sound so much. Even Stan Lowrey was there, shaking his head, drumming his fingers on a table to a rhythm only he could hear.
Then Reacher blinked all the pictures away and closed his eyes and fell asleep, ten-thirty in the evening, a long day, over.
Ten-thirty in the evening in Los Angeles was one-thirty the next morning in New York, and the last British Airways flight from London, delayed, had just landed at JFK. The delay meant that the last immigration watch in British Airways’ own terminal had already gone off duty, so the plane taxied to Terminal Four and fed its passengers through the giant arrivals hall there. Third in the visitors’ line was a first-class passenger who had napped in seat 2K for most of the trip. He was medium height, medium weight, expensively dressed, and he radiated the kind of expansive self-confident courtesy typical of people who know how lucky they are to have been rich all their lives. He was perhaps forty years old. He had thick black hair, shiny, beautifully cut, and the kind of mid-brown skin and regular features that could have made him Indian, or Pakistani, or Iranian, or Syrian, or Lebanese, or Algerian, or even Israeli or Italian. His passport was British, and it passed the Immigration agent’s scrutiny with no trouble at all, as did its owner’s manicured forefingers on the electronic fingerprint pad. Seventeen minutes after unclipping his seat belt the guy was out in the shiny New York night, walking briskly to the head of the
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