Tripwire

“How many are there?”

He shrugged. “A thousand, originally. I used three hundred for security against the loans. I had to give them up to the lender, temporarily.”

“And now Hobie’s got those?”

He nodded. “He bought the debt. They’ll messenger the security to him, today, maybe. They don’t need it anymore. And I pledged him another ninety. They’re still in the box. I guess I was due to deliver them soon.”

“So how does the transfer actually happen?”

He shrugged again, wearily, vaguely. “I sign the stock over to him, he takes the certificates and registers them with the Exchange, and when he’s got five hundred and one registered in his name, then he’s the majority owner.”

“So where’s your bank?”

Chester took his first sip of coffee. “About three blocks from here. About five minutes’ walk. Then another five minutes to the Exchange. Call it ten minutes begi

He set the mug on the floor and lapsed back into staring. Sheryl was listless. Not drinking her coffee. Her skin looked clammy. Maybe concussed, or something. Maybe still in shock. Marilyn didn’t know. She had no experience. Her nose was awful. Black and swollen. The bruising was spreading under her eyes. Her lips were cracked and dry, from breathing through her mouth all night.

“Try some more coffee,” she said. “It’ll be good for you.” She squatted beside her and guided her hand up to her mouth. Tilted the mug. Sheryl took a sip. Some of the hot liquid ran down her chin. She took another sip. She glanced up at Marilyn, with something in her eyes. Marilyn didn’t know what it was, but she smiled back anyway, bright with encouragement.

“We’ll get you to the hospital,” she whispered.

Sheryl closed her eyes and nodded, like she was suddenly filled with relief. Marilyn knelt beside her, holding her hand, staring at the door, wondering how she was going to deliver on that promise.

“ARE YOU GOING to keep this thing?“ Jodie asked.

She was talking about the Lincoln Navigator. Reacher thought about it as he waited. They were jammed up on the approach to the Triborough.

“Maybe,” he said.

It was more or less brand new. Very quiet and smooth. Black metallic outside, tan leather inside, four hundred miles on the clock, still reeking of new hide and new carpet and the strong plastic smell of a box-fresh vehicle. Huge seats, each one identical with the driver’s chair, lots of fat consoles with drinks holders and little lids suggestive of secret storage spaces.

“I think it’s gross,” she said.

He smiled. “Compared to what? That tiny little thing you were driving?”

“That was much smaller than this.”

“You’re much smaller than me.”

She was quiet for a beat.

“It was Rutter’s,” she said. “It’s tainted.”

The traffic moved, and then stopped again halfway over the Harlem River. The buildings of midtown were faraway to his left, and hazy, like a vague promise.

“It’s just a tool,” he said. “Tools have no memory.”

“I hate him,” she said. “I think more than I’ve ever hated anybody.”

He nodded.

“I know,” he said. “The whole time we were in there I was thinking about the Hobies, up there in Brighton, alone in their little house, the look in their eyes. Sending your only boy off to war is a hell of a thing, and to be lied to and cheated afterward, Jodie, there’s no excuse for that. Swap the chronology, it could have been my folks. And he did it fifteen times. I should have hurt him worse.”

“As long as he doesn’t do it again,” she said.

He shook his head. “The list of targets is shrinking. Not too many BNR families left now to fall for it.”

They made it off the bridge and headed south on Second Avenue. It was fast and clear ahead for sixty blocks.

“And it wasn’t him coming after us,” she said quietly. “He didn’t know who we were.”

Reacher shook his head again. “No. How many fake photographs do you have to sell to make it worth trashing a Chevy Suburban? We need to analyze it right from the begi

“So what the hell is this about?”

Reacher just shrugged and drove, and watched the mirror all the way.

HOBIE TOOK THE call from Hanoi at home. He listened to the Vietnamese woman’s short report and hung up without speaking. Then he stood in the center of his living room and tilted his head to one side and narrowed his good eye like he was watching something physical happening in front of him. Like he was watching a baseball soaring out of the diamond, looping upward into the glare of the lights, an outfielder tracking back under it, the fence getting closer, the glove coming up, the ball soaring, the fence looming, the outfielder leaping. Will the ball clear the fence? Or not? Hobie couldn’t tell.

He stepped across the living room and out to the terrace. The terrace faced west across the park, from thirty floors up. It was a view he hated, because all the trees reminded him of his childhood. But it enhanced the value of his property, which was the name of the game. He wasn’t responsible for the way other people’s tastes drove the market. He was just there to benefit from them. He turned and looked left, to where he could see his office building, all the way downtown. The Twin Towers looked shorter than they should, because of the curvature of the earth. He turned back inside and slid the door closed. Walked through the apartment and out to the elevator. Rode down all the way to the parking garage.

His car was not modified in any way to help him with his handicap. It was a late-model Cadillac sedan with the ignition and the selector on the right of the steering column. Using the key was awkward, because he had to lean across with his left hand and jab it in backward and twist. But after that, he never had much of a problem. He put it in drive by using the hook on the selector and drove out of the garage one-handed, using his left, the hook resting down in his lap.

He felt better once he was south of Fifty-ninth Street. The park disappeared and he was deep in the noisy canyons of midtown. The traffic comforted him. The Cadillac’s air-conditioning relieved the itching under his scars. June was the worst time for that. Some particular combination of heat and humidity acted together to drive him crazy. But the Cadillac made it better. He wondered idly whether Stone’s Mercedes would be as good. He thought not. He had never trusted the air on foreign cars. So he would turn it into cash. He knew a guy in Queens who would spring for it. But it was another chore on the list. A lot to do, and not much time to do it in. The outfielder was right there, under the ball, leaping, with the fence at his back.

He parked in the underground garage, in the slot previously occupied by the Suburban. He reached across and pulled the key and locked the Cadillac. Rode upstairs in the express elevator. Tony was at the reception counter.

“Hanoi called again,” Hobie told him. “It’s in the air.”

Tony looked away.

“What?” Hobie asked him.

“So we should just abandon this Stone thing.”

“It’ll take them a few days, right?”

“A few days might not be enough,” Tony said. “There are complications. The woman says she’s talked it over with him, and they’ll do the deal, but there are complications we don’t know about.”