“That could be normal. You’re a new face in town. They like to know things.”
“Maybe.”
Hogan said, “There’s a guy you should talk to.”
Reacher said, “What guy?”
“He comes to gigs sometimes. A dogface, just like you.”
“Army?”
“Stands for, aren’t really Marines yet.”
“Like Marine stands for muscles are requested, intelligence not expected.”
“This guy I’m talking about speaks a bunch of old Commie languages. He was a company commander late on in the Cold War. Also he knows what’s going on here in town. He could be helpful. Or at least useful. With the languages especially. You can’t rely on a computer translation. Not for a thing like this. I could call him, if you like.”
“You know him well?”
“He’s solid. Good taste in music.”
“Do you trust him?”
“As much as I trust any dogface who doesn’t play the drums.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Call him. Can’t hurt.”
He and Abby stepped out to the nighttime stillness, and Hogan stayed behind, in the half-lit hallway, dialing his phone.
Chapter 25
Reacher and Abby covered the three block distance via a roundabout route. Obviously if the phones were truly traceable, they might have already been discovered, in what was clearly a temporary stash, in which case surveillance might have been set up against their eventual retrieval. Better to play it safe. Or as safe as possible, which wasn’t very. There were shadows and alleys and deep doorways and two out of every three street lights were busted. There was plenty of habitat for hidden nighttime watchers.
Reacher saw the rusty mailbox up ahead. The middle of the next block. He said, “Pretend we’re having some kind of a deep conversation, and when we get level with the mailbox we stop to make an especially big point.”
“OK,” Abby said. “Then what?”
“Then we ignore the mailbox completely and we move on. But at that point very quietly. We glide away.”
“An actual pretend conversation? Or just moving our lips, like a silent movie?”
“Maybe whispered. Like we’re dealing with secret information.”
“Starting when?”
“Now,” Reacher said. “Keep on walking. Don’t slow down.”
“What do you want to whisper about?”
“I guess whatever is on your mind.”
“Are you serious? We could be walking into a dangerous situation here. That’s what’s on my mind.”
“You said you want to do one thing every day that scares you.”
“I’m already way over quota.”
“And you survived every time.”
“We could be walking into a hail of gunfire.”
“They won’t shoot me. They want to ask me questions.”
“You absolutely sure?”
“It’s a psychological dynamic. Like in the theater. It’s not necessarily the kind of thing that has a yes or no answer.”
The mailbox was coming up.
“Get ready to stop,” Reacher whispered.
“And give them a stationary target?”
“Only as long as it takes to make a big imaginary statement. Then we move on again. But very quietly, OK?”
Reacher stopped.
Abby stopped.
She said, “What kind of big imaginary statement?”
“Whatever is on your mind.”
She was quiet a beat.
Then she said, “No. What’s on my mind is I don’t want to make a statement about what’s on my mind. Not yet. That’s my statement.”
“Go,” he said.
They moved on. As quiet as they could. Three paces. Four.
“OK,” Reacher said.
Abby said, “OK what?”
“No one here.”
“And we know this how?”
“You tell me.”
She was quiet another beat, and then she said, “We were quiet because we were listening.”
“And what did we hear?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly. We paused right by the target, and we heard no one stepping out or tensing up, and then we moved on, and we heard no one stepping back and relaxing, or scuffling around, waiting for word on plan B. Therefore there’s no one here.”
“That’s great.”
“So far,” Reacher said. “But who knows how long these things take? Not my area of expertise. They could be here any minute.”
“So what should we do?”
“I guess we should take the phones someplace else. We should make them start the search all over again.”
Two blocks south they saw headlight beams coming out of a cross street. Like a distant early warning. Seconds later a car made the left and drove up toward them. Slowly. Maybe searching. Or maybe just a regular nighttime driver worried about a ticket or a DUI. Hard to tell. The headlights were low and wide spaced. A big sedan. It kept on coming.
“Stand by,” Reacher said.
Nothing. The car drove past, same steady speed, same decided direction. An old Cadillac. The driver looked neither left nor right. An old lady, peering out from underneath the rim of the steering wheel.
Abby said, “Whatever, we better be quick about this. Because like you said, we don’t know how long these things take.”
They walked back, four fast paces, and Reacher pulled his rolled-up jacket out of the rusty mailbox.
* * *
—
Abby carried the phones. She insisted. They walked another three blocks on another roundabout route and found a bodega open late. No man in a suit on the door. No suits anywhere, as a matter of fact. The clerk at the register was wearing a white T-shirt. There were no other customers. The space was crowded with humming chiller cabinets and bright with fluorescent light. There was a two-top table in back, unoccupied.
Reacher got two cardboard cups of coffee and carried them back to the table. Abby had the phones laid out side by side. She was looking at them, conflicted, as if half eager to get started on them, and half worried about them, as if they were pulsing secret SOS signals out into the ether. Find me, find me.