Tripwire (Page 72)

He detoured to the concierge’s desk and left the envelope of keys for the real-estate guy. Used the stairway to the parking garage and carried the garment bag over to the Cadillac. He locked it into the trunk and walked around to the driver’s door. Slid inside and leaned over with his left hand and fired it up. Squealed around the garage and up into the daylight. He drove south on Fifth, carefully averting his eyes until he was clear of the park and safe in the bustling canyons of Midtown.

He leased three bays under the World Trade Center, but the Suburban was gone, and the Tahoe was gone, so they were all empty when he arrived. He put the Cadillac in the middle slot and left the garment bag in the trunk. He figured he would drive the Cadillac to LaGuardia and abandon it in the long-term parking lot. Then he would take a cab to JFK, carrying the bag, looking like any other transfer passenger in a hurry. The car would sit there until the weeds grew up under it, and if anybody ever got suspicious they would comb through the LaGuardia manifests, not JFK’s. It meant writing off the Cadillac along with the lease on the offices, but he was always comfortable about spending money when he got value for it, and saving his life was about the best value he could think of getting.

He used the express elevator from the garage and was in his brass-and-oak reception area ninety seconds later. Tony was behind the chest-high counter, drinking coffee, looking tired.

"Boat?" Hobie asked him.

Tony nodded. "It’s at the broker’s. They’ll wire the money. They want to replace the rail, where that asshole damaged it with the cleaver. I told them OK, just deduct it from the proceeds."

Hobie nodded back. "What else?"

Tony smiled, at an apparent irony. "We got more money to move. The first interest payment just came in from the Stone account. Eleven thousand dollars, right on time. Conscientious little asshole, isn’t he?"

Hobie smiled back. "Robbing Peter to pay Paul, only now Peter and Paul are the same damn guy. Wire it down to the islands at start of business, OK?"

Tony nodded and read a note. "Simon called from Hawaii again. They made the plane. Right now they’re over the Grand Canyon somewhere."

"Has Newman found it yet?" Hobie asked.

Tony shook his head. "Not yet. He’s going to start looking this morning. Reacher pushed him into doing it. Sounds like a smart guy."

"Not smart enough," Hobie said. "Hawaii’s five hours behind, right?"

"It’ll be this afternoon. Call it he starts at nine, spends a couple of hours looking, that’s four o’clock our time. We’ll be out of here."

Hobie smiled again. "I told you it would work out. Didn’t I tell you it would work out? Didn’t I tell you to relax and let me do the thinking?"

REACHER WOKE UP at seven o’clock on his watch, which was still set to St. Louis time as far as he could remember, which made it three o’clock in the morning back in Hawaii, and six in Arizona or Colorado or wherever they were seven miles above, and already eight in New York. He stretched in his seat and stood up and stepped over Jodie’s feet. She was curled in her chair, and a stewardess had covered her with a thin plaid blanket. She was fast asleep, breathing slow, her hair over her face. He stood in the aisle for a moment and watched her sleep. Then he went for a walk.

He walked through business class, and on into coach. The lights were dimmed and it got more crowded the farther back he walked. The tiny seats were packed with people huddled under blankets. There was a smell of dirty clothes. He walked right down to the rear of the plane and looped around through the galley past a quiet huddle of cabin staff leaning on the aluminum lockers. He walked back up the other aisle, through coach, into business class. He paused there a second and scanned the passengers. There were men and women in suits, jackets discarded, ties pulled down. There were laptop computers open. Briefcases stood on unoccupied seats, bulging with folders with plastic covers and comb bindings. Reading lights were focused on tray tables. Some of the people were still working, late in the night or early in the morning, depending on where you measured it from.

He guessed these were middle-ranking people. A long way from the bottom, but nowhere near the top. In Army terms, these were the majors and the colonels. They were the civilian equivalents of himself. He had finished a major, and might be a colonel now if he’d stayed in uniform. He leaned on a bulkhead and looked at the backs of the bent heads and thought Leon made me, and now he’s changed me. Leon had boosted his career. He hadn’t created it, but he had made it what it became. There was no doubt about that. Then the career ended and the drifting began, and now the drifting was ended, too, because of Leon. Not just because of Jodie. Because of Leon’s last will and testament. The old guy had bequeathed him the house, and the bequest had sat there like a time bomb, waiting to anchor him. Because the vague promise was enough to do it. Before, settling down had seemed theoretical. It was a distant country he knew he would never visit. The journey there was too long to manage. The fare was too high. The sheer difficulty of insinuating himself into an alien lifestyle was impossibly great. But Leon’s bequest had kidnapped him. Leon had kidnapped him and dumped him right on the border of that distant country. Now his nose was pressed right up against the fence. He could see life waiting for him on the other side. Suddenly it seemed insane to turn back and hike the impossible distance in the other direction. That would turn drifting into a conscious choice, and conscious choice would turn drifting into something else completely. The whole point of drifting was happy, passive acceptance of no alternatives. Having alternatives ruined it. And Leon had handed him a massive alternative. It sat there, still and amiable above the rolling Hudson, waiting for him. Leon must have smiled as he sat and wrote out that provision. He must have grinned and thought let’s see how you get out of this one, Reacher.

He stared at the laptops and the comb-bound folders and winced inside. How was he going to cross the border of the distant country without getting issued with all this stuff? The suits and the ties and the black plastic battery-driven devices? The lizard-skin cases and the memorandums from the main office? He shuddered and found himself paralyzed against the bulkhead, panicking, not breathing, completely unable to move. He recalled a day not more than a year ago, stepping out of a truck at a crossroads near a town he had never heard of in a state he had never been. He had waved the driver away and thrust his hands deep in his pockets and started walking, with a million miles behind him and a million miles ahead of him. The sun was shining and the dust was kicking up off his feet as he walked and he had smiled with the joy of being alone with absolutely no idea where he was headed.

But he also recalled a day nine months after that. Realizing he was running out of money, thinking hard. The cheapest motels still required some small amount of dollars. The cheapest diners, likewise. He had taken the job in the Keys, intending to work a couple of weeks. Then he had taken the evening job, too, and he was still working both of them when Costello came calling three whole months later. So the reality was that drifting was already over. He was already a working man. No point in denying it. Now it was just a question of where and how much and for who. He smiled. Like prostitution, he thought. No going back. He relaxed a little and pushed off the bulkhead and padded back through to first class.

The guy with the striped shirt and the arms the same length as Victor Hobie’s was awake and watching him. He nodded a greeting. Reacher nodded back and headed for the bathroom. Jodie was awake when he got back to his seat. She was sitting up straight, combing her hair with her fingers.

"Hi, Reacher," she said.

"Hey, Jodie," he said back.

He bent and kissed her on the lips. Stepped over her feet and sat down.

"Feel OK?" he asked.

She ducked her head in a figure eight to put her hair behind her shoulders.

"Not bad. Not bad at all. Better than I thought I would. Where did you go?"

"I took a walk," he said. "I went back to see how the other half lives."

"No, you were thinking. I noticed that about you fifteen years ago. You always go walking when you have something to think about."

"I do?" he said, surprised. "I didn’t know that."

"Of course you do," she said. "I noticed it. I used to watch every detail about you. I was in love with you, remember?"

"What else do I do?"

"You clench your left hand when you’re angry or tense. You keep your right hand loose, probably from weapons training. When you’re bored, you play music in your head. I could see it in your fingers, like you’re playing along on a piano or something. The tip of your nose moves a little bit when you talk."

"It does?"

"Sure it does," she said. "What were you thinking about?"

He shrugged.

"This and that," he said.

"The house, right?" she said. "It’s bothering you, isn’t it? And me. Me and the house, tying you down, like that guy in the book, Gulliver? You know that book?"

He smiled. "He’s a guy gets captured by tiny little people when he’s asleep. They peg him down flat with hundreds of tiny little ropes."

"You feel that way?"

He paused a beat. "Not about you."

But the pause had been a fraction of a second too long. She nodded.

"It’s different than being alone, right?" she said. "I know, I was married. Somebody else to take into account all the time? Somebody to worry about?"