Never Go Back

FIFTY

Emily got out of a cab, just like the first time, still in character, all radiant and naive, and she hustled over and stood where she had before, about five feet from Turner’s window. Turner buzzed the glass down, and Emily said, ‘I felt bad doing that.’

‘Why?’ Reacher said.

‘She was a nice woman. I manipulated her.’

‘Successfully?’

‘I got the location.’

‘Where is it?’

‘You owe me six hundred bucks.’

‘Not technically. It’s a tip, which means it’s a gift outside of the main contract. There’s no element of owing.’

‘Are you trying to get out of it now?’

‘No, I’m just naturally pedantic.’

‘Whichever, I still need six hundred bucks.’

Which Ronald Baldacci paid, from the plank of twenties in his wallet. Reacher passed it to Turner, who passed it out the window to Emily, who glanced around and said, ‘This looks like a drug deal.’

‘What’s the location?’ Reacher asked.

She gave a street address, complete with a house number.

Reacher said, ‘What is that? A vacant lot? A business with its own parking?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What was the mood in the office?’

‘Very busy. I don’t think Ms Dayton is high on their list of priorities.’

‘OK, thank you, Emily,’ Reacher said. ‘It was nice to meet you. Have a great day.’

‘That’s it?’

‘What else is there?’

‘Aren’t you going to ask what a nice girl like me is doing in a job like this? Aren’t you going to give me advice for the future?’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘No one should listen to my advice. And you seem to be doing fine anyway. A thousand bucks an hour ain’t bad. I know people who get screwed for twenty.’

‘Who?’

‘People who wear uniforms, mostly.’

Turner’s map showed the new location to be south of the Ventura Freeway, in a neighbourhood without a name. Not really Universal City, not really West Toluca Lake, definitely not Griffith Park, and too far south to be North Hollywood. But Reacher figured it was the right kind of place. It would have a high turnover of people, all coming and going and incurious, and it would have ventures and operations starting up and shutting down. Therefore it would have empty buildings, and it would have staff-only lots in front of failed businesses. Best way to get there was south on Vineland again, past the law office, across the Ventura Freeway, and then the neighbourhood lay waiting on the right.

Turner said, ‘We have to assume the MPs and the FBI have this same information.’

‘I’m sure they do,’ Reacher said. ‘So we’ll do it the same way we did the law office.’

‘One pass.’

‘Which might be the second pass for some of them, because I’m sure they’re rotating back and forth. Between there and the law office, I mean. They can’t let either scene get too static.’

‘What if it’s a little alley, or a one-way street?’

‘Then we’ll abort. We’ll find some other way.’

‘And best case, all we do is eyeball it. No meet and greet. We need a whole lot of long-range surveillance before we even think about that.’

‘Understood.’

‘Even if the cutest fourteen-year-old in the world runs out waving a home-made banner that says Welcome Home Daddy. Because it might be the wrong fourteen-year-old, with a different daddy.’

‘Understood,’ Reacher said again.

‘Say it.’

‘No meet and greet,’ Reacher said.

‘So let’s go.’

They didn’t use Vineland Avenue. They figured rolling past the law office again would turn one pass into two, for some of the watchers, for no productive reason at all, and then the two could become three, if the rotation was timed just wrong. And three times was not a charm. Most people picked up on things the third time around. That was Reacher’s experience. Even if they didn’t know they were noticing. A stumble on a word while talking to a friend? You just saw the same guy for the third time, in the corner of your eye. Or the same car, or the same flower truck, or the same coat or dog or shoes or walk.

So they looped clockwise, east first, and then south, and they crossed the freeway a little to the right of a straight line. Then they pulled over. The target neighbourhood was ahead on the right. It was a low-rise warren with concrete kerbs and dry grass shoulders, with tarred poles carrying dozens of wires, some of them as thick as Reacher’s wrist, and behind them were small buildings, some of them bungalows, some of them garden apartments, some of them stores or bodegas. There was one nail salon and one pick-up truck clearly visible. There were basketball hoops and ice hockey goals and satellite dishes as big as hot tubs, and parked cars everywhere.

‘Not good,’ Turner said.

Reacher nodded, because it wasn’t. It was tight-packed and close-quarters, and rolling through would mean stopping and starting and manoeuvring around one obstacle after another. Walking speed would be a luxury.

He said, ‘You’re the CO.’

She said, ‘You’re the XO.’

‘I say go for it. But it’s your decision.’

‘Why do you say go for it?’

‘The negatives look bad, but they’re actually positives. Things could work out in our favour. The MPs and the FBI don’t know what we’re driving. As far as they’re concerned, this is just an old truck with dark windows. They’re not looking for it.’

‘But the two guys from the dented car might be. They’re getting good intelligence. Worst case, someone saw the credit card and knows what we’re driving.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Reacher said. ‘They can’t do anything to us. Not here. Not in front of government witnesses. They must know the MPs and the FBI are right there with them. It’s a perfect Catch-22. They’ll just have to sit there and take it.’

‘They might follow us. The MPs and the FBI wouldn’t see anything wrong with that. Just another car leaving the neighbourhood.’

‘I agree. But like I said. That would be things working out in our favour. That would be two birds with one stone. We eyeball the location, and we lure the guys out to a place of our choosing. All in all, I would call that a good day’s work. Speaking as an XO, that is. But it’s your decision. That’s why you get the big bucks. Almost as many as some high-school teachers.’

Turner said nothing.

Reacher said, ‘Two front burners, remember.’

Turner said, ‘OK, go for it.’

They checked the map and Reacher rehearsed the turns. A right, a left, a right, and that was her street, apparently. Her lot number looked to be about halfway between one end and the other. Turner said, ‘Remember, eyeballs only. No meet and greet.’

‘Got it,’ Reacher said.

‘No exceptions.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He eased off the kerb and rolled down to the first turn and swung the wheel, and then he was in the neighbourhood. The first street was a mess. Mixed-use zoning, with a bakery truck stopped outside a grocery, and a kid’s bike dumped in the gutter, and a car with no wheels up on blocks. The second street was better. It was no wider, but it was straight and less cluttered. The tone of the neighbourhood rose through its first fifty yards. There were little houses on the left and the right. Not prosperous, but solid. Some had new roofs, and some had painted stucco, and some had parched plants in concrete tubs. Regular people, doing their best, making ends meet.

Then came the final right turn, and the tone rose some more. But not to dizzying heights. Reacher saw a long straight street, with the 101 plainly visible at the far end, behind hurricane fencing. The street had tract housing on both sides, built for GIs in the late 1940s, and still there more than sixty years later. The houses were all cared for, but to varying degrees, some of them well maintained, some of them refurbished, and some of them extended, but others more marginal. Most had cars on their driveways, and most had extra cars on the kerb. Overall so many it was effectively a one-lane road.

Slow, and awkward.

Turner said, ‘FBI ahead on the right, for sure.’

Reacher nodded and said nothing. One of the cars on the kerb was a Chevy Malibu, about sixty feet away, plain silver, base specification, with plastic where there should have been chrome, with two stubby antennas glued to the back glass, with a guy behind the wheel wearing a white-collared shirt. An unmarked car, but no real attempt at deception. Therefore possibly a supervisor, just stopping by for a moment, to check on morale and spread good cheer. To the guy he was parked right behind, maybe.

Reacher said, ‘Check out the thing in front of him.’

It was a civilian Hummer H2, wide, tall, gigantic, all waxed black paint and chrome accents, with huge wheels and thin tyres, like black rubber bands.

‘So eight years ago,’ Turner said. A legal seizure, possibly, because of coke in the door pocket, or because it was charged to a scam business, or it had carried stolen goods in the back, first confiscated and then reissued as an undercover surveillance vehicle, slightly tone deaf in terms of credibility, like the government usually was.

And sixty feet in front of the Hummer was a small white compact, parked on the other kerb, facing towards them, clean and bland, barely used, not personalized in any way. An airport rental, almost certainly. The 75th MP. Some unfortunate guy, coach class to LAX, and then a bare-bones government account with Hertz or Avis. The worst car on the lot, and no upgrade.

‘See it?’ Reacher asked.

Turner nodded beside him. ‘And now we know where the address is. Exactly halfway between the Hummer’s front bumper and that thing’s, I would say. Subtle, aren’t they?’

‘As always.’ Reacher had been checking house numbers, and the lot they were looking for was going to be on the left, about ninety feet ahead, if the government’s triangulation was dead-on accurate. He said, ‘Do you see anyone else?’

‘Hard to tell,’ Turner said. ‘Any one of these cars could have people in it.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Reacher said. ‘Two people in particular.’

He rolled on, slow and careful, giving himself a margin of error. The old truck’s steering was a little vague and sloppy. Plus or minus six inches was all it was good for. He passed the silver Malibu, and glanced down to his right. The white-collared shirt had a necktie down the front. FBI for sure. Probably the only necktie inside a square mile. Then next up was the Hummer. It had a fair-haired white guy behind the wheel. With a whitewall crew cut, high and tight. Probably the first whitewall crew cut ever seen inside a pimped-out H2. Government. Tone deaf.

Then Reacher glanced to his left, and started tracking the numbers. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. A gap of some kind, basically. Something different from the places before and after. Something boarded up and foreclosed, or burned down and bulldozed, or never built in the first place. With a big old car parked back in the shadow of its neighbours. Maybe a Buick Roadmaster.

But the address Emily had gotten was a house like all the others. Not different from the places before or after, not boarded up by the bank, and not burned and levelled. Just a regular house, on a regular lot. It had a car on its driveway, but it wasn’t a Buick Roadmaster. It was a two-door coupé, imported, sunfaded red, fairly old, and even smaller than the MP’s white compact. Therefore not big enough for two people to sleep in. Not even close. The house itself was an old one-storey, extended upward, with a ground-floor window on the left, and a groundfloor window on the right, and a new attic window punched out directly above a blue front door.

And coming out the blue front door was a girl.

She could have been fourteen years old. Or fifteen. She was blonde.

And she was tall.