The Hard Way

"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."