Tripwire (42 page)

14

FOR THE FIRST time in his life, Reacher was truly comfortable in an airplane. He had been flying since birth, first as a soldier’s kid and then as a soldier himself, millions of miles in total, but all of them hunched in roaring spartan military transports or folded into hard civilian seats narrower than his shoulders. Traveling first-class on a scheduled airline was a completely new luxury.

The cabin was dramatic. It was a calculated insult to the passengers who filed down the jetway and glanced into it before shuffling along the aisle to their own mean accommodations. It was cool and pastel in first class, with four seats to a row where there were ten in coach. Arithmetically, Reacher figured that made each seat two and a half times as wide, but they felt better than that. They felt enormous. They felt like sofas, wide enough for him to squirm left and right without bruising his hips against the arms. And the legroom was amazing. He could slide right down and stretch right out without touching the seat in front. He could hit the button and recline almost horizontally without bothering the guy behind. He operated the mechanism a couple of times like a kid with a toy, and then he settled on a sensible halfway position and opened the in-flight magazine, which was crisp and new and not creased and sticky like the ones they were reading forty rows back.

Jodie was lost in her own seat, with her shoes off and her feet tucked up under her, the same magazine open on her lap and a glass of chilled champagne at her elbow. The cabin was quiet. They were a long way forward of the engines, and their noise was muted to a hiss no louder than the hiss of the air coming through the vents in the overhead. There was no vibration. Reacher was watching the sparkling gold wine in Jodie’s glass, and he saw no tremor on its surface.

“I could get accustomed to this,” he said.

She looked up and smiled.

“Not on your wages,” she said.

He nodded and went back to his arithmetic. He figured a day’s earnings from digging swimming pools would buy him fifty miles of first-class air travel. Cruising speed, that was about five minutes’ worth of progress. Ten hours of work, all gone in five minutes. He was spending money 120 times faster than he had been earning it.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “When this is all over?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

The question had been in the back of his mind ever since she told him about the house. The house itself sat there in his imagination, sometimes benign, sometimes threatening, like a trick picture that changed depending on how you tilted it against the light. Sometimes it sat there in the glow of the sun, comfortable, low and spreading, surrounded by its amiable jungle of a yard, and it looked like home. Other times, it looked like a gigantic millstone, requiring him to run and run and run just to stay level with the starting line. He knew people with houses. He had talked to them, with the same kind of detached interest he would talk to a person who kept snakes as pets or entered ballroom dancing competitions. Houses forced you into a certain lifestyle. Even if somebody gave you one for nothing, like Leon had, it committed you to a whole lot of different things. There were property taxes. He knew that. There was insurance, in case the place burned down or was blown away in a high wind. There was maintenance. People he knew with houses were always doing something to them. They would be replacing the heating system at the start of the winter, because it had failed. Or the basement would be leaking water, and complicated things with excavations would be required. Roofs were a problem. He knew that. People had told him. Roofs had a finite life span, which surprised him. The shingles needed stripping off and replacing with new. Siding, also. Windows, too. He had known people who had put new windows in their houses. They had deliberated long and hard about what type to buy.

“Are you going to get a job?” Jodie asked.

He stared out through the oval window at southern California, dry and brown seven miles below him. What sort of a job? The house was going to cost him maybe ten thousand dollars a year in taxes and premiums and maintenance. And it was an isolated house, so he would have to keep Rutter’s car, too. It was a free car, like the house, but it would cost him money just to own. Insurance, oil changes, inspections, title, gasoline. Maybe another three grand a year. Food and clothes and utilities were on top of all of that. And if he had a house, he would want other things. He would want a stereo. He would want Wynonna Judd’s record, and a whole lot of others, too. He thought back to old Mrs. Hobie’s handwritten calculations. She had settled on a certain sum of money she needed every year, and he couldn’t see getting it any lower than she had gotten it. The whole deal added up to maybe thirty thousand dollars a year, which meant earning maybe fifty, to take account of income taxes and the cost of five days a week traveling back and forth to wherever the hell he was going to earn it.

“I don’t know,” he said again.

“Plenty of things you could do.”

“Like what?”

“You’ve got talents. You’re a hell of an investigator, for instance. Dad always used to say you’re the best he ever saw.”

“That was in the Army.” he said. “That’s all over now.”

“Skills are portable, Reacher. There’s always demand for the best.”

Then she looked up, a big idea in her face. “You could take over Costello’s business. He’s going to leave a void. We used him all the time.”

“That’s great. First I get the guy killed, then I steal his business.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “You should think about it.”

So he looked back down at California and thought about it. Thought about Costello’s well-worn leather chair and his aging, comfortable body. Thought about sitting in his pastel room with its pebble glass windows, spending his whole life on the telephone. Thought about the cost of running the Greenwich Avenue office and hiring a secretary and providing her with new computers and telephone consoles and health insurance and paid vacations. All on top of running the Garrison place. He would be working ten months of the year before he got ahead by a single dollar.

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I’m not sure I want to think about it.”

“You’re going to have to.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But not necessarily right now.”

She smiled like she understood and they lapsed back into silence. The plane hissed onward and the stewardess came back with the drinks cart. Jodie got a refill of champagne and Reacher took a can of beer. He flipped through the airline magazine. It was full of bland articles about nothing much in particular. There were advertisements for financial services and small, complicated gadgets, all of which were black and ran on batteries. He arrived at the section where the airline’s operational fleet was pictured in little colored drawings. He found the plane they were on and read about its passenger capacity and its range and the power of its engines. Then he arrived at the crossword in back. It filled a page and looked pretty hard. Jodie was already there in her own copy, ahead of him.

“Look at eleven down,” she said.

He looked.

“They can weigh heavy,” he read. “Sixteen letters.”

“Responsibilities,” she said.

MARILYN AND CHESTER Stone were huddled together on the left-hand sofa in front of the desk, because Hobie was in the bathroom, alone with the two cops. The thickset man in the dark suit sat on the opposite sofa with the shotgun resting in his lap. Tony was sprawled out next to him with his feet on the coffee table. Chester was inert, just staring into the gloom. Marilyn was cold and hungry, and terrified. Her eyes were darting all around the room. There was total silence from the bathroom.

“What’s he doing in there with them?” she whispered.

Tony shrugged. “Probably just talking to them right now.”

“About what?”

“Well, asking them questions about what they like and what they don’t. In terms of physical pain, you understand. He likes to do that.”

“God, why?”

Tony smiled. “He feels it’s more democratic, you know, letting the victims decide their own fate.”

Marilyn shuddered. “Oh God, can’t he just let them go? They thought Sheryl was a battered wife, that’s all. They didn’t know anything about him.”

“Well, they’ll know something about him soon,” Tony said. “He makes them pick a number. They never know whether to pick high or low, because they don’t know what it’s for. They think they might please him, you know, if they pick right. They spend forever trying to figure it out.”

“Can’t he just let them go? Maybe later?”

Tony shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He’s very tense right now. This will relax him. Like therapy.”

Marilyn was silent for a long moment. But then she had to ask.

“What is the number for?” she whispered.

“How many hours it takes them to die,” Tony said. “The ones who pick high get real pissed when they find that out.”

“You bastards.”

“Some guy once picked a hundred, but we let him off with ten.”

“You bastards.”

“But he won’t make you pick a number. He’s got other plans for you.”

Total silence from the bathroom.

“He’s insane,” Marilyn whispered.

Tony shrugged. “A little, maybe. But I like him. He’s had a lot of pain in his life. I think that’s why he’s so interested in it.”

Marilyn stared on at him in horror. Then the buzzer sounded at the oak door out to the elevator lobby. Very loud in the awful silence. Tony and the thickset man with the shotgun spun around and stared in that direction.

“Check it out,” Tony said.

He went into his jacket and came out with his gun. He held it steady on Chester and Marilyn. His partner with the shotgun jacked himself up out of the low sofa and stepped around the table to the door. He closed it behind him and the office went quiet again. Tony stood up and walked to the bathroom door. Knocked on it with the butt of his gun and opened it a fraction and ducked his head inside.

“Visitors,” he whispered.

Marilyn glanced left and right. Tony was twenty feet from her, and he was the nearest. She jumped to her feet and snatched a deep breath. Hurdled the coffee table and scrambled around the opposite sofa and made it all the way to the office door. She wrenched it open. The thickset man in the dark suit was on the far side of the reception area, talking to a short man framed in the doorway out to the elevator lobby.

“Help us!” she screamed to him.

The man stared over at her. He was dressed in dark blue pants and a blue shirt, with a short jacket open over it, the same blue as the pants. Some kind of uniform. There was a small design on the jacket, left side of the chest. He was carrying a brown grocery sack cradled in his arms.

“Help us!” she screamed again.

Two things happened. The thickset man in the dark suit darted forward and bundled the visitor all the way inside and slammed the door after him. And Tony grabbed Marilyn from behind with a strong arm around her waist. He dragged her backward into the office. She arched forward against the pressure of his arm. She was bending herself double and fighting.

“God’s sake, help us!”

Tony lifted her off her feet. His arm was bunching under her breasts. The short dress was riding up over her thighs. She was kicking and struggling. The short man in the blue uniform was staring. Her shoes came off. Then the short man was smiling. He walked forward into the office after her, stepping carefully over her abandoned shoes, carrying his grocery sack.

“Hey, I’d like to get me a piece of that,” he said.

“Forget it,” Tony gasped from behind her. “This one’s off limits, time being.”

“Pity,” the new guy said. “Not every day you see a thing like that.”

Tony struggled with her all the way back to the sofa. Dumped her down next to Chester. The new guy shrugged wistfully and emptied the grocery sack on the desk. Bricks of cash money thumped out on the wood. The bathroom door opened and Hobie stepped into the room. His jacket was off and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow. On the left was a forearm. It was knotted with muscle and thick with dark hair. On the right was a heavy leather cup, dark brown, worn and shiny, with straps riveted to it running away up into the shirtsleeve. The bottom of the cup was narrowed to a neck, with the bright steel hook coming down out of it, running straight for six or eight inches and then curving around to the point.

“Count the money, Tony,” Hobie said.

Marilyn jerked upright. Turned to face the new guy.

“He’s got two cops in there,” she said urgently. “He’s going to kill them.”

The guy shrugged at her.

“Suits me,” he said. “Kill them all, is what I say.”

She stared at him blankly. Tony moved behind the desk and sorted through the bricks of money. He stacked them neatly and counted out loud, moving them from one end of the desk to the other.

“Forty thousand dollars.”

“So where are the keys?” the new guy asked.

Tony rolled open the desk drawer. “These are for the Benz.”

He tossed them to the guy and went into his pocket for another bunch.

“And these are for the Tahoe. It’s in the garage downstairs.”

“What about the BMW?” the guy asked.

“Still up in Pound Ridge,” Hobie called across the room.

“Keys?” the guy asked.

“In the house, I guess,” Hobie said. “She didn’t bring a pocketbook, and it doesn’t look like she’s concealing them about her person, does it?”

The guy stared at Marilyn’s dress and smiled an ugly smile, all lips and tongue.

“There’s something in there, that’s for damn sure. But it don’t look like keys.”

She looked at him in disgust. The design on his jacket read Mo’s Motors. It was embroidered in red silk. Hobie walked across the room and stood directly behind her. He leaned forward and brought the hook around into her line of vision. She stared at it, close up. She shuddered.

“Where are the keys?” he asked.

“The BMW is mine,” she said.

“Not anymore it isn’t.”

He moved the hook closer. She could smell the metal and the leather.