Текст книги "Make Me"

Автор книги: Lee Child

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Which was when he got it.

He said, “Not words or facts or places.”

She said, “What then?”

“Faces,” he said. “Do you remember that Town Car on the 405?”

“There were a million Town Cars on the 405.”

“One of them pulled alongside and kept pace for a second, and then got rear-ended by a red coupe.”

“Oh, that one.”

“Its window came down. I caught a glimpse of the guy inside.”

“How much of a glimpse?”

“Partial, and extremely brief.”

“But?”

“We’ve seen him before.”

“Where?”

“In the diner in Inglewood. That brown place. This morning. Where we met with Westwood the first time. That guy was in there. Elbows on the table, reading a newspaper.”

Now Chang said nothing.

“Same guy,” Reacher said.

“I was trained to think like a defense attorney.”

“And whatever you’re going to say, the front part of my brain agrees with you a hundred percent. It was a split-second glimpse between two vehicles moving at forty miles an hour, and eyewitness testimony is unreliable at best.”

“But?”

“The back part of my brain knows it was the same guy.”

“How?”

“The radio chatter is off the scale.”

“You hear radio chatter?”

“I listen out for it hard. We were wild animals for seven million years. We learned a lot of lessons. We should be careful not to lose them.”

“What is the radio chatter saying?”

“Part of it is tuning up for a fight. It knows nothing good is coming.”

“What about the other part?”

“It’s having a back-and-forth, working out the implications. Which are basically all or nothing. Either I’m completely mistaken, or that guy has been following us from the start. Which would mean he’s tracking us through your cell phone. Which would mean he knows virtually everything so far. And which would mean we better call the Four Seasons or the Peninsula from a pay phone. That way we’ll get ahead. And we need to get ahead, because this guy is escalating. He’s moving right along. At breakfast this morning in the diner he was observing. Maybe eavesdropping a little, reading lips. Now he’s trying to kill us.”

“By opening his window?”

“He looked at me. For a split second I thought he wanted to tell me something. He was kind of locking in on me. In a preparatory way. But not ahead of him telling me something. He was acquiring his target. That’s what he was doing. Logic says he had a sawed-off shotgun in there with him. For a car-to-car drive-by, like an air-to-air missile. Two rounds to make sure, and then everyone panics and crashes, and he gets away in the fast lane, and afterward he was just one Town Car in a million, like you said.”

“That’s a very extreme scenario.”

“It’s all or nothing. What else was he doing, pulling level like that? He’s been told to take us out. Which suggests he’s versatile. And therefore expensive. Which starts to give us a shape for what’s happening in Mother’s Rest. They’re supplying something. In exchange for money. Enough money to hire a versatile private operative to counter a perceived threat.”

“Unless like you said, it was a split-second glimpse at forty miles an hour, two moving vehicles, and eyewitness testimony is unreliable.”

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

“That wouldn’t get us a warrant.”

“Warrants are about what you can prove. Not what you know.”

“And you know?”

“It’s an instinct thing. It’s why I’m still here, after seven million years. Darwinism in action.”

She said, “What did we do between breakfast time and now to make them escalate?”

“Exactly,” he said. “We homed in on McCann.”

“Who must therefore be very dangerous to them. And therefore very interesting to us.”

“And the library will be closed when we get there.”

She said, “If he’s the same guy. You could still be wrong.”

“But the smart money says we should act like I’m right. Just in case.”

“Like Pascal’s Wager.”

“Costs us nothing if we’re wrong, but saves us plenty if we’re right.”

“Except he’s behind us now. He’s still in LA.”

“Not necessarily. This was not the first flight out.”

Chang said nothing. She just took out her phone, and held down a button, and changed it from airplane mode to off completely.

They landed from the east, after a long lazy loop over the lake and the city. A summer dusk was almost done, still bronze and hot, but darkening. The lights on the runways were bright. They taxied and parked, and the seatbelt sign went off, and people stood up and wrestled things out of the overheads and from under the seats, and they started to pack together in the aisle, Reacher and Chang among them.

Chapter 32

Eventually Reacher and Chang crabbed one at a time down the aisle to the airplane door, and out to the jet bridge, and then out to the concourse, which was packed full of a thousand people either sitting and waiting or hustling fast in every direction. Reacher had the unknown man’s face front and center in his mind, like a Most Wanted photograph in the post office, and he scanned the crowds obliquely, in the corner of his eye, looking away, not thinking, trusting his instincts to snag the resemblance, if it was there.

It wasn’t. The guy wasn’t sitting, wasn’t waiting, wasn’t hustling in any direction. They walked together through the long concourse corridor, past people waiting outside restroom doors, past people lining up for coffee, past newsstands, past silvery boutiques, past fast-food eateries with their laminate tables and their hunched solo travelers. Reacher scanned ahead for newspapers being read, for elbows on the table, for a familiar slope of shoulders, but he saw nothing. No guy. Not in the building.

They made it to the airside exit, and stepped out to landside, to baggage claim, and onward toward the door for ground transportation, and they saw a wall of pay phones, lonely and ignored, but better still they found a concierge desk, which offered all kinds of helpful services to new arrivals, including hotel bookings made direct. A cheerful woman in a blazer recommended the Peninsula, and made the call for them, and got them a suite, and told them where the cab line was.

It was a warm evening, and the air outside was thick with humidity and gas fumes and cigarette smoke. They waited five minutes, and got a tired guy in a tired Crown Vic, who took off for town as fast as he could. Reacher watched out the window until the airport crowds were gone, but he saw no faces he knew. On the highway he watched the cars around them, but none pulled close or kept pace. They all just rolled along through the evening dark, individually, oblivious, all lit up, in worlds of their own.

Chang said, “We should buy a burner phone.”

Reacher said, “And we should tell Westwood to buy one too. Because that’s how our guy got this whole thing started, presumably. He was sitting on Westwood, monitoring his calls. We came to him, this morning. We walked right into it.”

“Which proves they’re worried about Westwood. Which confirms something Westwood wrote is highly relevant.”

“Probably not the sharks and the Frenchman.”

“Or the gerbils or the climate change.”

“See? We’re narrowing it down already.”

They came in parallel to the L tracks, and saw the great city huge and high and implacable in front of them, by that time a purely nighttime vista, with a million lit windows against an inky eastern sky. The Peninsula hotel was ready and waiting for them, with a suite twice as large as the service bungalows Reacher had grown up in, and a thousand times plusher. The room service menu was the size of a phone book, and bound in leather. They ordered whatever they wanted, on the assumption the LA Times would pay. They ate it slowly, on the assumption they had the whole night ahead, uninterrupted. No need to rush. Better to savor the certainty. Better to bask in the upcoming promise. Through appetizers, and entrees, and desserts, and coffee.

They woke early the next morning, despite the time zones, partly because they had things on their minds, but mostly because they hadn’t bothered to close the drapes the night before, and the bedroom faced east, where it caught the morning sun. What was on Reacher’s mind was his theory, which had suffered further revision. The fourth time had been better than the third. Hard to believe. But true. Which was bittersweet. Because one day it would have to be average. It had to stop somewhere. Sooner or later. It couldn’t keep on getting better forever.

Could it?

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Apparently what was on Chang’s mind was Lincoln Park, and an irony, because she said, “I’m wondering how to get there. It’s pretty close. I’m not sure it’s worth renting a car. It might be hard to park. And taxis will add up, and might be hard to find. So overall I’m thinking we should get a Town Car for the day. Preferably black.”

“Through the hotel,” Reacher said. “Another layer of staying ahead.”

“Pick up at nine. We’ll be at the library about ten minutes after it opens.”

“Outstanding.”

Which because of the early hour gave them plenty of time, for a long slow room service breakfast, and long slow showers, after other things best done long and slow, in the morning, including the testing of theories.

Their Town Car was the traditional sedan, black in color, as requested, and waxed to a shine. Its driver was a small man in a gray suit. He professed himself equally happy to drive through traffic or sit at a curb. No skin off his nose. He was getting paid either way. It took him ten minutes to Lincoln Park. The library had a start-of-the-day feel, when they stepped inside. There was a little discreet bustling going on, getting things ready. They asked for the woman they had spoken to on the phone the day before, on the inquiries number, after touching nine, and they got directions from one helpful staffer after another, like a relay race, all the way to a desk labeled Inquiries, which stood alone in a side alcove, and which was currently unattended. Its chair was neatly tucked in, and its computer screen was blank. As yet undisturbed. The inquiries lady was late for work.

But all was not lost. Because in the end wall of the alcove was a door, and behind the door were voices, and on the door was a sign: Volunteer Room. From inside of which McCann had made fifteen calls, until Westwood had run out of patience.

Reacher knocked on the door, and the voices fell silent. He opened the door, and saw a break room, very municipal, full of inoffensive colors and low chairs with fabric upholstery. In the chairs were five people, two men, three women, different ages, different types.

The phone was on a low table, between two of the chairs.

“Excuse me,” Reacher said. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m looking for Mr. McCann.”

An old guy said, “He isn’t here,” and he said it in a way that made Reacher assume he knew McCann, possibly well, in order to answer with such authority, and to appoint himself spokesperson on the matter. He was a thin old specimen, with pleated no-iron khaki pants and a full head of white hair, neatly brushed, and a tucked-in plaid shirt, like a retired-person uniform. Retired from an executive position, probably, full of spreadsheets and data, still needing to feel wanted, or wanting to feel needed.

Reacher asked him, “When was the last time you saw Mr. McCann?”

“Three or four weeks ago.”

“Is that usual?”

“He comes and goes. These are volunteer positions, after all. I gather he has many other interests.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

The old guy said, “I’m sorry, but these are personal questions, and I have no idea who you are.”

“A short time ago Mr. McCann hired a firm of private inquiry agents, to help him with a problem. We’re the agents. We’re here to help him.”

“Then you must know where he lives.”

Reacher said quietly, “Sir, may we speak alone?”

Which hit the spot, as far as the old guy’s ego was concerned. He had been recognized as a cut above. As exactly the kind of man you pulled aside and brought closer to the center. He said to the other volunteers, “Would you give us the room? It’s time to start work anyway. You’ve all got things to do.”

So the others trooped out, the younger man and three women, and Chang closed the door behind them, and she and Reacher sat down in places just vacated, in a triangle with the old guy, who hadn’t moved.

Chang said, “The agent who dealt with Mr. McCann is missing, I’m afraid. And the first thing we need to do in a case like this is make sure the client is safe. That’s our standard operating procedure. But we’re going to need help finding him.”

The old guy said, “What’s this about?”

“We don’t know exactly. Maybe you can help us there too. We think Mr. McCann is all worked up about something. Maybe he mentioned it.”

“I know he’s not a happy man.”

“Do you know why?”

“We aren’t close. We don’t exchange confidences. We have a working relationship. We talk about library matters, of course, often at length, and we agree on most of them, but I recall very little personal conversation. I get the impression he has family problems. That’s as much as I can tell you. I think his wife is long dead and his grown-up son is an issue. Or a challenge, as they would say nowadays.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“No, he never told me.”

Reacher said, “Isn’t that unusual? Don’t people normally talk about where they live? The stores on their block, or how far they have to go for a cup of coffee?”

The old guy said, “I got the strong impression he was ashamed of where he lived.”

They left the old guy in the room, and found the inquiries lady at work at her desk outside. She had showed up, just in time. Chang renewed their acquaintance, and showed one of her defunct FBI cards, and it was all going as smoothly as could be, but still the woman wouldn’t give up McCann’s address. She was unmovable. She was passionate on the subject of privacy. She said a request could be made to the director. But Reacher figured the director would be equally passionate, maybe not on the subject of privacy, but certainly on the subject of possible litigation, and therefore just as unmovable.

He said, “OK, don’t tell me the address. But at least tell me if Mr. McCann has an address.”

The woman said, “Of course he has.”

“And you know what it is?”

“Yes, I do. But I can’t tell you.”

“Is it local?”

“I can’t give you the address.”

“I don’t want it. I don’t care about the address anymore. I wouldn’t listen if you told me. I just want to know if it’s local. That’s all. Which doesn’t give anything away. Every neighborhood has thousands of people.”

“Yes, it’s local.”

“How local? Does he walk here, the days he works?”

“You’re asking me for his address.”

“No, I’m not. I don’t want his address. I wouldn’t even let you tell me now. I would stick my fingers in my ears and sing la-la-la. I just want to know if it’s walking distance. It’s a geography question. Or physiology. How old would you say Mr. McCann is?”

“How what?

“Old. His age is different than his address. You’re free to talk about it. You’re free to share your impressions.”

“He’s sixty. He was sixty last year.”

“Is he in good shape?”

“Hardly. He looks terrible.”

“That’s too bad. In what way?”

“He’s too thin. He doesn’t look after himself. He takes no care at all.”

“Is he lacking in energy?”

“Yes, I would say so. He’s kind of down all the time.”

“Then he wouldn’t want to walk too far, would he? Let’s say three blocks maximum. Would that be a fair conclusion?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“A three block radius is thirty-six square blocks. That’s bigger than Milwaukee. You wouldn’t be telling me anything.”

“OK, yes, he walks to work, and yes, it’s a short walk. But that’s it. I can’t tell you anything else.”

“What’s his first name? Can you tell us that?”

“It’s Peter. Peter McCann.”

“What about his wife? How long has he been widowed?”

“I think that was all a long time ago.”

“What’s his son’s name?”

“It’s Michael, I think. Michael McCann.”

“Is there an issue with Michael?”

“We didn’t talk about it.”

“But you must have pieced something together.”

“I would be betraying a confidence.”

“Not if he didn’t tell you himself. You would be sharing your own conclusions. That’s all. That’s a big difference.”

“I think Mr. McCann’s son Michael has a behavioral issue. I don’t know what, exactly. Not something to be proud of, I think. That would be my conclusion.”

Reacher made a sympathetic face, and tried one last time, but still she wouldn’t give up McCann’s address. So they took their leave and detoured to the reference desk and checked the Chicago phone books. There were too many P. McCanns and too many M. McCanns to be useful. They stepped back out to the street armed with precisely nothing except impressions and guesses.

Chapter 33

They turned left on the sidewalk outside the library door, and found the mom-and-pop pharmacy exactly where it should have been, which was directly adjacent. It was a narrow storefront, with an awning and a door and a small display window, which was full of not-very-tempting items, including elastic bandages and heat pads and a toilet seat for folks having difficulty with mobility. Pharmacy windows were a marketing challenge, in Reacher’s opinion. It was hard to think of a display liable to make people rush inside with enthusiasm. But he saw one item of interest. It was a burner cell, in a plastic package, hanging on a peg on a board. The phone looked old-fashioned. The plastic package looked dusty. The price was advertised as super-low.

They went inside and found six more identical phones pegged to a panel otherwise covered with two-dollar cases and two-dollar chargers, and car adapters, and wires of many different descriptions, most of them white. The phones themselves were priced a penny shy of thirteen dollars. They came pre-loaded with a hundred minutes of talk time.

Reacher said, “We should buy one.”

Chang said, “I was thinking of something more modern.”

“How modern does it need to be? All it has to do is work.”

“It won’t get the internet.”

“You’re talking to the wrong person. That’s a feature, as far as I’m concerned. And it’s a karma thing. We’ll have the same phone as McCann. It might bring us luck.”

“Doesn’t seem to have worked for him,” Chang said. But she unhooked a phone from the display anyway, and carried it to the counter, where an old lady waited behind the register. She had steel-gray hair in a bun, and she was dressed with last-century, old-country formality. Way in the back of the store was an old guy working on prescriptions. Same kind of age, same kind of style. A white coat over a suit and tie. Same kind of hair, apart from the bun. Mom and Pop, presumably. No other staff. Low overhead.

Reacher asked the woman, “Do these phones have voice mail?”

She repeated the question, much louder, not directed at him, he realized, but at Pop in back, who called out, “No.”

The woman said, “No.”

Reacher said, “A friend of ours bought one here. Peter McCann. Do you know him?”

She called out loudly, “Do we know Peter McCann?”

The old guy in back shouted, “No.”

“No,” the woman said.

“Do you know his son Michael?”

“Do we know his son Michael?”

“No.”

“No.”

“OK,” Reacher said. He found a ten and a five in his pocket, and paid for the phone. His change came in coins, expertly reckoned and deftly dispensed. They stopped on the sidewalk outside the store and wrestled the package open. Wasn’t easy. In the end Reacher gave up on finesse and tore it in half down the middle. He put the charger in his pocket and passed the phone itself to Chang. She looked it over, and figured it out, and turned it on. It came up with a welcome screen, small, blurred, and black and white. It showed its own number. Area code 501, plus seven more digits. It showed a battery icon, at about fifty percent capacity. Charged at the factory, but not all the way. The icon was like a tiny flashlight battery, tipped over on its side, solid at one end and hollow at the other. Reacher said, “Try McCann again. Maybe this time he’ll answer. Maybe his phone will recognize a kindred spirit.”

There was no speaker option. Not for thirteen bucks. Chang dialed, and they stood together cheek to cheek, listening, her right ear, his left, and they heard McCann’s phone ring. And ring. Endlessly. The same as before. No answer, and no voice mail.

Like a faithful spaniel, not understanding.

Chang ended the call.

She said, “Now what? We search an area bigger than Milwaukee?”

“I was dramatizing for effect. Milwaukee is bigger than thirty-six blocks. It’s a pretty nice place.”

Then he stopped.

She said, “What?”

He said, “Nothing.”

He had been about to say we should go there sometime.

She said, “OK, we have to search an area smaller than Milwaukee, but not by much.”

“A couple of blocks might do it. If we point ourselves in the right direction. This is a man who looks terrible because he doesn’t take care of himself. Probably doesn’t eat right, maybe doesn’t sleep right. Probably won’t go to the doctor, so he doesn’t get prescriptions to fill. And he certainly isn’t trawling the aisles comparison shopping for vitamin pills. Pharmacies are not on his radar. He doesn’t have a favorite. He’s indifferent to them all. Therefore he had no particular reason to buy his phone from this particular pharmacy. So why did he? Because he walks past it twice a day, to and from the library. How else would he even notice? They had one phone in the window, all covered with dust. So I think we can conclude he walks home in this direction. Out the library door, turn left, past the pharmacy, and onward.”

“To where?”

“I think this is a pretty nice neighborhood. I think the real estate here is solid. But apparently McCann is ashamed of where he lives. What does that mean? You see anything around here you’d be ashamed to live in?”

“I’m not McCann.”

“Exactly. It’s all relative. The old guy in the volunteer room looks like a retired CEO or something, and I’m sure he’s local, and I’m sure he lives in a house. Pretty much impossible to have a shirt like that without living in a house. The two things go together. Practically a requirement. Probably some kind of a nice brownstone on a quiet leafy street. Therefore if it’s relative, McCann doesn’t live in a house. But not in an apartment, either. Apartments are perfectly legitimate alternatives to houses. Better in some ways. Certainly nothing to be ashamed about. So McCann lives in something less than a house, but not an apartment.”

“A broken-up house,” Chang said. “A not-very-nice brownstone, on a not-very-leafy street, all divided up into separate rooms. Probably not still cooking on electric hotplates, but close. Which is hard for one guy to admit to another guy, especially when the other guy has a brownstone all to himself. Maybe the exact same brownstone. Same builder, same plan. But his street didn’t fall on hard times. Which is way too pointed for testosterone to bear.”

“That’s how I see it,” Reacher said. “Roughly. Maybe not the hormonal stuff. But two or three blocks in this direction, we’re going to find a couple of streets of tumbledown row houses, each with about a dozen bells on the door, and those kind of bells usually have labels next to them, sometimes with names on, and with a bit of luck we’ll find one of those names is McCann.”

There were plenty of names, because there were plenty of labels, because there were plenty of bells, because there were four streets, not a couple, and they were long. The first two turned left and right off the main drag two blocks after the library, and the third and the fourth came another block further out. They were low-rise enclaves between taller buildings, not shoe-horned in but there from the beginning. There was nothing off-putting or unpleasant about them. No trash in the gutters, no busted syringes crunching underfoot, no graffiti, no rot or decay. Nothing overt. But somehow the mysterious and unforgiving calculus of real estate had downgraded them. Maybe there were missing trees, or damp in the basements, or too much window AC. Maybe the breeze blew wrong. Maybe way back a poor widow had split up her house to make ends meet, and then another, and another. Image was a very subtle thing.

They had their Town Car quarter the neighborhood at a slow speed, to establish the search area’s boundaries. Then they had the guy park, and they got out to walk. The sun was over the lake, and the light was sharp with reflections. It was already hot, two hours before noon.

Chang took the sunny side of the street, and Reacher stayed in the morning shadows. They moved door to door, separately, unsynchronized, up brownstone stoops and down again, like restaurant workers delivering menus, or missionaries seeking converts. Reacher found that most bell buttons had names against them, some handwritten, some typed, some printed, some embossed on narrow black tape and stuck over previous tenants’. There were Polish names, and African names, and South American names, and Irish names, a whole United Nations right there, but on the first street at least none of the names was McCann.

Twenty miles south of Mother’s Rest, the man with the ironed jeans and the blow-dried hair took another call on his land line. His contact said, “She’s not using her phone anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Hard to say. A precaution, possibly. She’s ex-FBI and he’s ex-military. They’re not babes in the wood.”

“In other words you’re saying Hackett can’t find them.”

“No, he found them. He found them real easy. He watched the library. They showed up right on time. They were inside for half an hour, and then they bought a burner phone in the drugstore next door.”

“So what is he waiting for?”

“Opportunity.”

“They must not talk to McCann.”

“Don’t worry. That ain’t going to happen. I can promise you that.”

They crossed the main drag and entered the second street, up brownstone stoops and down again, house by house. Most places seemed to have three floors with up to four separate dwellings on each. The names kept on coming. One place had Javier, Hiroto, Giovanni, Baker, Friedrich, Ishiguro, Akwame, Engelman, Krupke, Dassler, Leonidas, and Callaghan. Perfectly alphabetical, if you changed the order. The first twelve letters. And Callaghan at least was Irish. But it wasn’t McCann.

The houses themselves had touches of faded glory. There were remnants of stained glass, and Victorian tile. The front doors were crusted with layers of paint, and most of them had pebble glass panels, with blurred and hazy views of inside lobbies, with shapes that might have been parked bicycles, or baby carriages. Reacher moved on, door to door, one place after another, the end of the street coming close, the search nearly half over, and he didn’t find McCann.

But Chang did.

She waved from across the street, from the stoop of a house just like all the others, and he raised his palms in a semaphored question, and she pumped her fist, discreetly, like a golfer after a long but successful putt. He crossed the street and joined her, and she pointed at the bell box, and ran an elegant nail over a ribbon of white paper neatly printed with the name Peter J. McCann.