Gone Tomorrow

‘Saying what?’

‘I didn’t hear very much of it.’

‘Information?’

‘I didn’t hear.’

‘Did she mention names?’

‘She might have.’

‘Did she say the name Lila Hoth?’

‘Not that I heard.’

‘Did she say John Sansom?’

I didn’t answer. The guy asked, ‘What?’

I said, ‘I heard that name somewhere.’

‘From her?’

‘No.’

‘Did she give you anything?’

‘What kind of a thing?’

‘Anything at all.’

‘Tell me what difference it would make.’

‘Our principal wants to know.’

‘Tell him to come ask me himself.’

‘Better to talk to us.’

I smiled and walked on, through the alley they had created. But one of the guys on the right sidestepped and tried to push me back. I caught him shoulder-to-chest and spun him out of my way. He came after me again and I stopped and started and feinted left and right and slid in behind him and shoved him hard in the back so that he stumbled on ahead of me. His jacket had a single centre vent. French tailoring. British suits favour twin side vents and Italian suits favour none at all. I leaned down and caught a coat tail in each hand and heaved and tore the seam all the way up the back. Then I shoved him again. He stumbled ahead and veered right. His coal was hanging off him by the collar. Unbuttoned at the front, open at the back, like a hospital gown.

Then I ran three steps and stopped and turned around. It would have been much more stylish to just keep on walking slowly, but also much dumber. Insouciance is good, but being ready is better. The four of them were caught in a moment of real indecision. They wanted to come get me. That was for sure. But they were on West 35th Street at dawn. At that hour virtually all the traffic would be cops. So in the end they just gave me hard looks and moved away. They crossed 35th in single file and waded south at the corner.

You’re done.

But I wasn’t. I turned to move away and a guy came out of the precinct house and ran after me. Creased grey T-shirt, red sweat pants, grey hair sticking up all over the place. The family member. The brother. The small-town cop from Jersey. He caught up with me and grabbed my elbow in a wiry grip and told me he had seen me inside and had guessed I was the witness. Then he told me his sister hadn’t committed suicide.

ELEVEN

I TOOK THE GUY TO A COFFEE SHOP ON EIGHTH AVENUE. A long time ago I was sent on a one-day MP seminar at Fort Rucker, to learn sensitivity around the recently bereaved. Sometimes MPs had to deliver bad news to relatives. We called them death messages. My skills were widely held to be deficient. I used to walk in and just tell them. I thought that was the nature of a message. But apparently I was wrong. So I was sent to Rucker. I learned good stuff there. I learned to take emotions seriously. Above all I learned that cafés and diners and coffee shops were good environments for bad news. The public atmosphere limits the likelihood of falling apart, and the process of ordering and waiting and sipping punctuates the flow of information in a way that makes it easier to absorb.

We took a booth next to a mirror. That helps, too. You can look at each other in the glass. Face to face, but not really. The place was about half full. Cops from the precinct, taxi drivers on their way to the West Side garages. We ordered coffee. I wanted food too, hut I wasn’t going to eat if he didn’t. Not respectful. He said he wasn’t hungry. I sat quiet and waited. Let them talk first, the Rucker psychologists had said.

He told me that his name was Jacob Mark. Originally Markakis in his grandfather’s day, back when a Greek name was no good to anyone, except if you were in the deli business, which his grandfather wasn’t. His grandfather was in the construction business. Hence the change. He said I could call him Jake. I said he could call me Reacher. He told me he was a cop. I told him I had been one once, in the military. He told me he wasn’t married and lived alone. I said the same went for me. Establish common ground, the teachers at Rucker had said. Up close and looking past his physical disarray he was a squared-away guy. He had any cop’s weary gloss, but under it lay a normal suburban man. With a different guidance counsellor he might have become a science teacher or a dentist or an auto parts manager. He was in his forties, already very grey, but his face was youthful and unlined. His eyes were dark and wide and staring, but that was temporary. Some hours ago, when he went to bed, he must have been a handsome man. I liked him on sight, and I felt sorry for his situation.

He took a breath and told me his sister’s name was Susan Mark. At one time Susan Molina, but many years divorced and reverted. Now living alone. He talked about her in the present tense. He was a long way from acceptance.

He said, ‘She can’t have killed herself. It’s just not possible.’

I said, ‘Jake, I was there.’

The waitress brought our coffee and we sipped in silence for a moment. Passing time, letting reality sink in just a little more. The Rucker psychologists had been explicit: the suddenly bereaved have the IQ of Labradors. Indelicate, because they were army, but accurate, because they were psychologists.

Jake said, ‘So tell rue what happened.’

I asked him, ‘Where are you from?’

He named a small town in northern New Jersey, well inside the New York metro area, full of commuters and soccer moms, prosperous, safe, contented. He said the police department was well funded, well equipped, and generally understretched. I asked him if his department had a copy of the Israeli list. He said that after the Twin Towers every police department in the country had been buried under paper, and every officer had been required to learn every point on every list.

I said, ‘Your sister was behaving strangely, Jake. She rang every bell. She looked like a suicide bomber.’

‘Bullshit,’ he said, like a good brother should.

‘Obviously she wasn’t,’ I said. ‘But you would have thought the same thing. You would have had to, with your training.’

‘So the list is more about suicide than bombing.’

‘Apparently.’

‘She wasn’t an unhappy person.’

‘She must have been.’

He didn’t reply. We sipped a little more. People came and went. Checks were paid, tips were left. Traffic built up on Eighth.

I said, ‘Tell me about her.’

He asked, ‘What gun did she use?’

‘An old Ruger Speed-Six.’

‘Our dad’s gun. She inherited it.’

‘Where did she live? Here, in the city?’

He shook his head. ‘ A

‘Did you know she was up here?’ He shook his head again.

‘Why would she come?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why would she be wearing a winter coat?’

‘I don’t know.’

I said, ‘Some federal agents came and asked me questions. Then some private guys found me, just before you did. They were all talking about a woman called Lila Hoth. You ever hear that name from your sister?’

‘No.’

‘What about John Sansom?’

‘He’s a congressman from North Carolina. Wants to be a senator. Some kind of hard-ass.’

I nodded. I remembered, vaguely. Election season was gearing up. I had seen newspaper stories and television coverage. Sansom had been a late entrant to politics and was a rising star. He was seen as tough and uncompromising. And ambitious. He had done well in business for a spell and before that he had done well in the army. He hinted at a glamorous Special Forces career without supplying details. Special Forces careers arc good for that kind of thing. Most of what they do is secret, or can be claimed to be.

I asked, ‘Did your sister ever mention Sansom?’

He said, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Did she know him?’

‘I can’t see how.’

I asked, ‘What did she do for a living?’