Bad Luck and Trouble

67

In retrospect it was a tale that Reacher could have scripted in advance. The original development engineer up at the Highland Park plant was now the quality control manager and he had started showing signs of severe stress. His name was Edward Dean and he lived way to the north, beyond the mountains. By chance his annual performance review was scheduled three weeks after he started his weird behavior. Being a trained professional, Margaret Berenson noticed his distress, and she pursued the matter.

At first Dean claimed his move north was the root of his problem. He had wanted a relaxed lifestyle and had bought acres of land out in the desert some ways south of Palmdale. The commute was killing him. Berenson didn’t buy that. All Angelinos had the commute from hell. So then Dean said his neighbors were problematical. There were outlaw bikers and meth labs close by. Berenson was readier to believe that. Stories about the badlands were legion. But a pained echo in a chance remark about Dean’s daughter led her to believe that the kid was in some way the problem. She was fourteen years old. Berenson put two and two together and made five. She figured maybe the kid was hanging with the bikers or experimenting with crystal and causing big problems at home.

Then she revised her opinion. The quality problems up at Highland Park became common knowledge inside the company. Berenson knew that Dean had a difficult split responsibility. As a director of the corporation he had a fiduciary duty to see it do well. But he also had a parallel responsibility to the Pentagon to make sure New Age sold it only the good stuff. Berenson figured the conflict in his mind was causing his stress. But overall he was doing the right thing according to the law, so she shelved her concerns.

Then Tony Swan disappeared.

He just vanished. One day he was there, the next day he wasn’t. Being a trained professional, Margaret Berenson noticed his absence. She followed up. She had split responsibilities of her own. Swan had classified knowledge. There were national security implications. She got into it like a dog with a bone. She asked all kinds of questions of all kinds of people.

Then one day she got home and found Allen Lamaison on her driveway, playing one-on-one basketball with her son.

Berenson was afraid of Lamaison. Always had been. How much, she hadn’t really realized until she saw him tousle her twelve-year-old’s hair with a hand big enough to crush the child’s skull. He suggested the kid stay outside and practice his foul throws while he went inside for an important chat with Mom.

The chat started with a confession. Lamaison told Berenson exactly what had happened to Swan. Every detail. And he hinted as to the reason. This time Berenson put two and two together and made four. She recalled Dean’s stress. By and by Lamaison revealed that Dean was cooperating with a special project, because if he didn’t his daughter would disappear and be found weeks later with blood running down to her ankles amid a happy band of bikers.

Or on the other hand, maybe she would never be found at all.

Then Lamaison said the exact same thing could happen to Berenson’s son. He said a lot of outlaw bikers were happy to swing both ways. Most of them had been in prison, and prison distorted a person’s tastes.

He issued a warning, and two instructions. The warning was that sooner or later two men and two women would show up and start asking questions. Old friends from Swan’s service days. The first instruction was that they were to be deflected, firmly, politely, and definitively. The second instruction was that nothing of this current conversation was ever to be revealed.

Then he made Berenson take him upstairs and perform a certain sexual act on him. To seal their understanding, he said.

Then he went out and sank a few more baskets with her son.

Then he drove away.

Reacher believed her. In his life he had listened to people telling lies, and less often to people telling the truth. He knew how to distinguish between the two. He knew what to trust and what to distrust. He was a supremely cynical man, but his special talent lay in retaining a small corner of open-mindedness. He believed the basketball part, and the prison reference, and the sex act. People like Margaret Berenson didn’t make up that kind of stuff. They couldn’t. Their frames of reference weren’t wide enough. He took the kitchen knife and cut the duct tape off her. Helped her to her feet.

“So who knew?” he asked.

“Lamaison,” Berenson said. “Lennox, Parker, and Saropian.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“What about the other four ex-LAPD?”

“They’re different. From a different era and a different place. Lamaison wouldn’t really trust them on a thing like this.”

“So why did he hire them?”

“Warm bodies. Numbers. And he trusts them on everything else. They do what he tells them.”

“Why did he hire Tony Swan? Swan was always going to be a rod for his back.”

“Lamaison didn’t hire Swan. He didn’t want him. But I convinced our CEO we needed some diversity of background. It wasn’t healthy to have all of them from the same place.”

“So you hired him?”

“Basically. I’m sorry.”

“Where did all the bad stuff happen?”

“Highland Park. The helicopter is there. And there are outbuildings. It’s a big place.”

“Is there somewhere you can go?” Reacher asked.

“Go?” Berenson said.

“For a couple of days, until this is over.”

“It won’t be over. You don’t know Lamaison. You can’t beat him.”

Reacher looked at Neagley.

“Can we beat him?” he asked.

“Like a drum,” she said.

Berenson said, “But there are four of them.”

“Three,” Reacher said. “Saropian is already down. Three of them, four of us.”

“You’re crazy.”

“They’re going to think so. That’s for damn sure. They’re going to think I’m completely psychotic.”

Berenson was quiet for a long moment.

“I could go to a hotel,” she said.

“When does your son get home?”

“I’ll go get him out of school.”

Reacher nodded. “Pack your bags.”

Berenson said, “I will.”

“Who flew?” Reacher asked.

“Lamaison, Lennox, and Parker. Just the three of them.”

“Plus the pilot,” Reacher said. “That’s four.”

Berenson went upstairs to pack and Reacher put the kitchen knife away. Then he put Swan’s rock back in his pocket and pulled the Evian bottle off the Glock.

“Would that really have worked?” Neagley asked. “As a silencer?”

“I doubt it,” Reacher said. “I read it in a book once. It worked on the page. But in the real world I imagine it would have exploded and blinded me with shards of flying plastic. But it looked good, didn’t it? It added an extra element. Better than just pointing the gun.”

Then his phone rang. His Radio Shack pay-as-you-go, not Saropian’s cell from Vegas. It was Dixon. She and O’Donnell had been on station in Highland Park for four and a half hours. They had seen all they were going to see, and they were starting to feel conspicuous.

“Head home,” Reacher said. “We’ve got what we need.”

Then Neagley’s phone rang. Her personal cell, not her pay-as-you-go. Her Chicago guy. Ten-thirty in LA, lunch time in Illinois. She listened, not moving, not asking questions, just absorbing information. Then she clicked off.

“Preliminary data from the LAPD grapevine,” she said. “In twenty years Lamaison fought eighteen Internal Affairs investigations and won all of them.”

“Charges?”

“You name it. Excessive force, bribery, corruption, missing dope, missing money. He’s a bad guy, but smart.”

“How does a guy like that get a job with a defense contractor?”

“How does he get one with the LAPD in the first place? And then promotions on top? By putting up a front and working hard to keep his record clean, that’s how. And by having a partner who knew when and how to keep quiet.”

“His partner was probably just as bad. It usually works that way.”

“You should know,” Neagley said.

Forty minutes later Berenson came downstairs with two bags. An expensive black leather carry-on, and a bright green nylon duffel with a sports logo on it. Hers, and the kid’s, Reacher guessed. She loaded them into the Toyota’s trunk. Reacher and Neagley walked down to get their cars and drove them back and formed up into a close protection convoy. Same basic method as surveillance, different purpose. Neagley stayed tight, and Reacher hung back. After a mile he decided O’Donnell had been wrong about the tricked-out Hondas being the most invisible cars in California. The Toyota fit that bill better. He was staring right at it and could barely see it.

Berenson stopped at a school. It was a big tan spread with the kind of black-hole silence around it that schools get when all the kids are inside working. After twenty minutes she came back out with a brown-haired boy in tow. He was small. He barely reached her shoulder. He looked a little puzzled, but happy enough to be dragged away from class.

Then Berenson drove a little ways on the 110 and came off in Pasadena and headed for an inn on a quiet street. Reacher approved of her choice. The place had a lot in back where the Toyota wouldn’t be seen from the road, and a bellman at the door, and two women behind a counter inside. Plenty of vigilant eyes before the elevators and the rooms. Better than a motel.

Reacher and Neagley stayed on site to give Berenson and her kid time to settle in. They figured ten minutes would do it. They used the time getting lunch, in a bar off the lobby. Club sandwiches, coffee for Reacher, soda for Neagley. Reacher liked club sandwiches. He liked the way he could pick his teeth afterward with the tasseled thing that had held the sandwich together. He didn’t want to be talking to people with chicken fibers caught in there.

His phone rang as he was finishing up his coffee. Dixon again. She was back at the motel, with O’Donnell. There was an urgent message waiting at the desk. From Curtis Mauney.

“He wants us up at that place north of Glendale,” Dixon said. “Right now.”

“Where we went for Orozco?”

“Yes.”

“Because they found Sanchez?”

“He didn’t say. But Reacher, he didn’t tell us to meet him at the morgue. He said meet him at the hospital across the street. So if it’s Sanchez, he’s still alive.”