Bad Luck and Trouble

33

Curtis Mauney didn’t wait to be asked. He raised the lid of his briefcase again and took out another clear plastic page protector. In it was a copy of a still frame from a black and white surveillance tape. Four men, shoulder to shoulder in front of some kind of a store counter. Upside down and from a distance, Reacher couldn’t make out much detail.

Mauney said, “I made the IDs by comparing a bunch of old snapshots from a shoe box in Franz’s bedroom closet.” Then he passed the photograph to his right, to Neagley. She studied it for a moment, nothing in her face except light reflected off the shiny plastic. She passed it counterclockwise, to Dixon. Dixon looked at it for ten long seconds and blinked once and passed it to O’Donnell. O’Donnell took it and studied it and shook his head and passed it to Reacher.

Manuel Orozco was on the left of the frame, glancing to his right, caught by the camera in his perpetual state of restlessness. Then came Calvin Franz, hands in his pockets, patience on his face. Then came Tony Swan, front and center, looking straight ahead. On the right was Jorge Sanchez, in a buttoned-up shirt, no tie, with a finger hooked under his collar. Reacher knew that pose. He had seen it a thousand times before. It meant that Sanchez had shaved about ten hours previously, and the stubble on his throat was growing back and beginning to irritate him. Even without the time code burned into the lower right of the shot Reacher would have known he was looking at a picture taken early in the evening.

They all looked a little older. Orozco’s hair was gray at the temples and his eyes were lined and weary. Franz had maybe lost a little weight. Some of the muscle was gone from his shoulders. Swan was as wide as ever, barrel-chested, thicker in the gut. His hair was short and had crept backward maybe half an inch. Sanchez’s scowl had settled into a tracery of permanent down-turned lines running from his nose to his chin and framing his mouth.

Older, but maybe a little wiser, too. There was a lot of talent and experience and capability right there in the picture. And an easy camaraderie and a mutual trust still floating on recent renewal. Four tough guys. In Reacher’s opinion, four of the best eight in the world.

Who or what had beaten them?

Behind them, running away from the camera, were narrow store aisles that looked familiar.

“Where is this?” Reacher asked.

Mauney said, “The pharmacy in Culver City. Next to Franz’s office. The guy behind the counter remembered them. Swan was buying aspirin.”

“That doesn’t sound like Swan.”

“For his dog. It had arthritis in its hips. He gave it a quarter-tab of aspirin a day. The pharmacist said that’s a pretty common practice with dogs. Especially big dogs.”

“How much aspirin did he buy?”

“The economy bottle. Ninety-six pills, generic.”

Dixon said, “At a quarter-tab a day, that’s a year and nineteen days’ worth.”

Reacher looked at the picture again. Four guys, relaxed poses, no urgency, all the time in the world, a routine purchase, a provision on behalf of a pet animal designed to stretch more than a year into the future.

They never even saw it coming.

Who or what had beaten them?

“Can I keep this picture?” he asked.

“Why?” Mauney said. “You see something in it?”

“Four of my old friends.”

Mauney nodded. “So keep it. It’s a copy.”

“What next?”

“Stay here,” Mauney said. He dropped the lid of his case and clicked the latches, loud in the silence. “Stay visible, and call me if you see anyone sniffing around. No more independent action, OK?”

“We’re just here for the funeral,” Reacher said.

“But whose funeral?”

Reacher didn’t reply to that. Just stood up and turned and looked at Raquel Welch’s picture again. The glass in the frame was reflective and behind him he saw Mauney getting out of his chair, and the others standing up with him. When a seated person stands up, he slides forward to do it, so that when a seated group stands up they all end up temporarily closer to one another than they were when they were sitting down. Therefore their next communal move is to shuffle backward, turning, dispersing, widening the circle, respecting space. Neagley was first and fastest, of course. Mauney turned toward the door and set himself to thread through the limited space between the chairs. O’Donnell stepped the other way, toward the interior of the hotel. Dixon paralleled him, small, deft, nimble, side-stepping a coffee table.

But Thomas Brant moved the other way.

Inward.

Reacher kept his eye on the glass in front of Raquel. Watched Brant’s tan reflection. He knew instantly what was going to happen. Brant was going to tap him on his right shoulder with his left hand. Whereupon Reacher was supposed to turn inquiringly and take a massive straight right to the face.

Brant stepped closer. Reacher focused on the gold ring between the two halves of Raquel’s bikini top. Brant’s left hand snaked forward and his right hand eased back. His left hand had the index finger extended and his right hand was bunched into a fist the size of a softball. Good but not great technique. Reacher sensed that Brant’s feet were not perfectly placed. Brant was a brawler, not a fighter. He was hobbling himself about fifty percent.

Brant tapped Reacher on the shoulder.

Because he was expecting it Reacher turned much faster than he might have done and caught the incoming straight right in his left palm a foot in front of his face. Like snaring a line drive barehanded in the infield. It was a hefty blow. A lot of weight behind it. It made a hell of a smack. It stung Reacher’s palm all the way down to the tendons.

Then it was all about superhuman self-control.

Every ounce of Reacher’s animal instinct and muscle memory dictated a head butt to Brant’s damaged nose. It was a no-brainer. Use the adrenaline. Jerk forward from the waist, plenty of snap, bury that forehead deep. A move that Reacher had perfected at the age of five. A reaction that was almost mandatory a lifetime later.

But Reacher held off.

He just stood still, gripping Brant’s bunched fist. He looked into Brant’s eyes, breathed out, and shook his head.

“I apologized once,” he said. “And I’m apologizing again, right now. If that’s not good enough for you, then wait until after this is all over, OK? I’ll stick around. You can get a couple of buddies and jump me three-on-one when I’m not looking for it. That’s fair, right?”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” Brant said.

“You should. But choose your buddies carefully. Don’t pick anyone who can’t afford six months in the hospital.”

“Tough guy.”

“I ain’t the one wearing the splint here.”

Curtis Mauney came over and said, “No fighting. Not now, not ever.” He hauled Brant away by the collar. Reacher waited until they were both out the door and then grimaced and shook his left hand wildly and said, “Damn, that stings.”

“Put some ice on it,” Neagley said.

“Wrap it around a cold beer,” O’Donnell said.

“Get over it and let me tell you about the number six hundred and fifty,” Dixon said.