Killing Floor

“OK,” I said.

“But how much cash does he have?” the guy asked me.

“No idea,” I said.

“Probably about fifty dollars,” he said. “About fifty dollars in a leather billfold which cost him a hundred and fifty dollars.”

I looked at him. I wasn’t following his drift. The guy changed gear. Became very patient with me.

“The U.S. economy is huge,” he said. “Net assets and net liabilities are incalculably large. Trillions of dollars. But almost none of it is actually represented by cash. That gentleman had a net worth of a half million dollars, but only fifty of it was in actual cash. All the rest of it is on paper or in computers. The fact is, there isn’t much actual cash around. There’s only about a hundred and thirty billion actual cash dollars inside the whole U.S.”

I shrugged at him again.

“Sounds like enough to me,” I said.

The guy looked at me severely.

“But how many people are there?” he asked me. “Nearly three hundred million. That’s only about four hundred and fifty actual cash dollars per head of population. That’s the problem a retail bank has to deal with, day by day. Four hundred and fifty dollars is a very modest cash withdrawal, but if everybody chose to make such a withdrawal, the nation’s banks would run out of cash in the blink of an eye.”

He stopped and looked at me. I nodded.

“OK,” I said. “I see that.”

“And most of that cash isn’t in banks,” he said. “It’s in Vegas or at the racetrack. It’s concentrated in what we call cash-intensive areas of the economy. So a good currency manager, and Mr. Hubble was one of the very best, has a constant battle just to keep enough paper dollars on hand in our part of the system. He has to reach out and find them. He has to know where to locate them. He has to sniff them out. It’s not easy. In the end, it was one of the factors which made retail so expensive for us. One of the reasons why we pulled out. We kept it going as long as we could, but we had to close the operation eventually. We had to let Mr. Hubble go. We were very sorry about it.”

“Any idea where he’s working now?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

“Must be working somewhere, right?” I said.

The guy shook his head again.

“Professionally, he’s dropped out of sight,” he said. “He’s not working in banking, I’m sure of that. His institute membership lapsed immediately, and we’ve never had an inquiry for a recommendation. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. If he was working anywhere in banking, I’d know it, I can assure you of that. He must be in something else now.”

I shrugged. Hubble’s trail was stone cold. And the discussion with this guy was over. His body language indicated it. He was shifting forward, ready to get up and get on. I stood up with him. Thanked him for his time. Shook his hand. Stepped through the antique gloom to the elevator. Hit the button for the street and walked out into the dull gray weather.

My assumptions had been all wrong. I had seen Hubble as a banker, doing a straight job. Maybe turning a blind eye to some peripheral con, maybe with half a finger in some dirty pie. Maybe signing off on a few bogus figures. With his arm twisted way up his back. Involved, useful, tainted, but somehow not central. But he hadn’t been a banker. Not for a year and a half. He had been a criminal. Full time. Right inside the scam. Right at the center. Not peripheral at all.

I DROVE STRAIGHT BACK TO THE MARGRAVE STATION house. Parked up and went looking for Roscoe. Teale was stalking around in the open area, but the desk guy winked and nodded me back to a file room. Roscoe was in there. She looked weary. She had an armful of old files. She smiled.

“Hello, Reacher,” she said. “Come to take me away from all this?”

“What’s new?” I said.

She dumped the stack of paper onto a cabinet top. Dusted herself off and flicked her hair back. Glanced at the door.

“Couple of things,” she said. “Teale’s got a Foundation board meeting in ten minutes. I’m getting the fax from Florida soon as he’s out of here. And we’re due a call from the state police about abandoned cars.”

“Where’s the gun you’ve got for me?” I asked her.

She paused. Bit her lip. She was remembering why I needed one.

“It’s in a box,” she said. “In my desk. We’ll have to wait until Teale is gone. And don’t open it here, OK? Nobody knows about it.”

We stepped out of the file room and walked over toward the rosewood office. The squad room was quiet. The two backup guys from Friday were paging through computer records. Neat stacks of files were everywhere. The bogus hunt was on for the chief’s killer. I saw a big new bulletin board on the wall. It was marked Morrison. It was empty. Not much progress was being made.

We waited in the rosewood office with Finlay. Five minutes. Ten. Then we heard a knock and Baker ducked his head around the door. He gri

“Teale’s gone,” he said.

We went out into the open area. Roscoe turned on the fax machine and picked up the phone to call Florida. Finlay dialed the state police for news on abandoned rental cars. I sat down at the desk next to Roscoe’s and called Charlie Hubble. I dialed the mobile number that Joe had printed out and hidden in his shoe. I got no answer. Just an electronic sound and a recorded voice telling me the phone I was calling was switched off.

I looked across at Roscoe.

“She’s got the damn mobile switched off,” I said.

Roscoe shrugged and moved over to the fax machine. Finlay was still talking to the state police. I saw Baker hanging around on the fringe of the triangle the three of us were making. I got up and went to join Roscoe.

“Does Baker want in on this?” I asked her.

“He seems to,” she said. “Finlay’s got him acting as a kind of a lookout. Should we get him involved?”

I thought about it for a second, but shook my head.

“No,” I said. “Smaller the better, a thing like this, right?”

I sat down again at the desk I was borrowing and tried the mobile number again. Same result. Same patient electronic voice telling me it was switched off.

“Damn,” I said to myself. “Can you believe that?”

I needed to know where Hubble had spent his time for the last year and a half. Charlie might have given me some idea. The time he left home in the morning, the time he got home at night, toll receipts, restaurant bills, things like that. And she might have remembered something about Sunday or something about Pluribus. It was possible she might have come up with something useful. And I needed something useful. I needed it very badly. And she’d switched the damn phone off.

“Reacher?” Roscoe said. “I got the stuff on Sherman Stoller.”

She was holding a couple of fax pages. Densely typed.

“Great,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”

Finlay got off the phone and stepped over.

“State guys are calling back,” he said. “They may have something for us.”

“Great,” I said again. “Maybe we’re getting somewhere.”

We all went back into the rosewood office. Spread the Sherman Stoller stuff out on the desk and bent over it together. It was an arrest report from the police department in Jacksonville, Florida.

“Blind Blake was born in Jacksonville,” I said. “Did you know that?”

“Who’s Blind Blake?” Roscoe asked.

“Singer,” Finlay said.

“Guitar player, Finlay,” I said.

Sherman Stoller had been flagged down by a sector car for exceeding the speed limit on the river bridge between Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach at a quarter to midnight on a September night, two years ago. He had been driving a small panel truck eleven miles an hour too fast. He had become extremely agitated and abusive toward the sector car crew. This had caused them to arrest him for suspected DUI. He had been printed and photographed at Jacksonville Central and both he and his vehicle had been searched. He had given an Atlanta address and stated his occupation as truck driver.