Tripwire Part 18

The guy looked blank for a second, and then he glanced sideways at his boys, like he was spooling backward all the way through their lives and far beyond, back to when he last knew Victor Hobie.

'He died in 'Nam, right?' he said.

'I need some background.'

'Checking for his folks again?' He said it without surprise, and there was an edge of weariness in there, too. Like the Hobies' problems were well known in the town, and gladly tolerated, but no longer exciting any kind of urgent sympathy.

Reacher nodded. 'I need to get a feel for what sort of a guy he was. Story is you knew him pretty well.'

Steven looked blank again. 'Well, I did, I guess. But we were just kids. I only saw him once, after high school.'

'Want to tell me about him?'

'I'm pretty busy. I've got unloading to see to.'

'I could give you a hand. We could talk while we're doing it.'

Steven started to say a routine no, but then he glanced at Reacher, saw the size of him, and smiled like a labourer who's been offered the free use of a forklift.

'OK,' he said. 'Out back.'

He came out from the corral of counters and led Reacher through a rear door. There was a dusty pickup parked in the sun next to an open shed with a tin roof. The pick-up was loaded with bags of cement.

The shelves in the open shed were empty. Reacher took his jacket off and laid it on the hood of the truck.

The bags were made of thick paper. He knew from his time with the pool gang that if he used two hands on the middle of the bags, they would fold themselves over and split. The way to do it was to clamp a palm on the corner and lift them one-handed. That would keep the dust off his new s.h.i.+rt, too. The bags weighed a hundred pounds, so he did them two at a time, one in each hand, holding them out, counterbalanced away from his body. Steven watched him, like he was a sideshow at the circus.

'So tell me about Victor Hobie,' Reacher grunted.

Steven shrugged. He was leaning on a post, under the tin roof, out of the sun.

'Long time ago,' he said. 'What can I tell you? We were just kids, you know? Our dads were in the chamber of commerce together. His was a printer. Mine ran this place, although it was just a lumberyard back then. We were together all the way through school. We started kindergarten on the same day, graduated high school on the same day. I only saw him once after that, when he was home from the Army. He'd been in Vietnam a year, and he was going back again.'

'So what sort of a guy was he?'

Steven shrugged again. 'I'm kind of wary about giving you an opinion.'

'Why? Some kind of bad news in there?'

'No, no, nothing like that,' Steven said. 'There's nothing to hide. He was a good kid. But I'd be giving you one kid's opinion about another kid from thirty-five years ago, right? Might not be a reliable opinion.'

Reacher paused, with a hundred-pound bag in each hand. Glanced back at Steven. He was leaning on his post in his red ap.r.o.n, lean and fit, the exact picture of what Reacher a.s.sumed was a typical cautious smalltown Yankee businessman. The sort of guy whose judgement might be reasonably solid. He nodded.

'OK, I can see that. I'll take it into account.'

Steven nodded back, like the ground rules were clear. 'How old are you?'

'Thirty-eight,' Reacher said.

'From around here?'

Reacher shook his head. 'Not really from around anywhere.'

'OK, couple of things you need to understand,' Steven said. 'This is a small, small suburban town, and Victor and I were born here in '48. We were already fifteen years old when Kennedy got shot, and sixteen before the Beatles arrived, and twenty when there was all that rioting in Chicago and LA. You know what I'm saying here?'

'Different world,' Reacher said.

'You bet your a.s.s it was,' Steven said back. 'We grew up in a different world. Our whole childhood. To us, a real daring guy was one who put baseball cards in the wheels of his Schwinn. You need to bear that in mind, when you hear what I say.'

Reacher nodded. Lifted the ninth and tenth bag out of the pick-up bed. He was sweating lightly, and worrying about the state of his s.h.i.+rt when Jodie next saw it.

'Victor was a very straight kid,' Steven said. 'A very straight and normal kid. And like I say, for comparative purposes, that was back when the rest of us thought we were the bee's knees for staying out until half past nine on a Sat.u.r.day night, drinking milk shakes.'

'What was he interested in?' Reacher asked.

Steven blew out his cheeks and shrugged. 'What can I tell you? Same things as all the rest of us, I guess. Baseball, Mickey Mantle. We liked Elvis, too. Ice cream, and the Lone Ranger. Stuff like that. Normal stuff.'

'His dad said he always wanted to be a soldier.'

'We all did. First it was cowboys and Indians, then it was soldiers.'

'So did you go to 'Nam?'

Steven shook his head. 'No, I kind of moved on from the soldier thing. Not because I disapproved. You got to understand, this was way, way before all that long-hair stuff arrived up here. n.o.body objected to the military. 1 wasn't afraid of it, either. Back then there was nothing to be afraid of. We were the US, right? We were going to whip the a.s.s off those slanty-eyed gooks, six months maximum. n.o.body was worried about going. It just seemed old-fas.h.i.+oned. We all respected it, we all loved the stories, but it seemed like yesterday's thing, you know what I mean? I wanted to go into business. I wanted to build my dad's yard up into a big corporation. That seemed like the thing to do. To me, that seemed like more of an American thing than going into the military. Back then, it seemed just as patriotic'

'So you beat the draft?' Reacher asked.

Steven nodded. 'Draft board called me, but I had college applications pending and they skipped right over me. My dad was close to the board chairman, which didn't hurt any, I guess.'

'How did Victor react to that?'

'He was fine with it. There was no issue about it. I wasn't anti-war or anything. I supported Vietnam, same as anybody else. It was just a personal choice, yesterday's thing or tomorrow's thing. I wanted tomorrow's thing, Victor wanted the Army. He kind of knew it was kind of, well, staid. Truth is, he was pretty much influenced by his old man. He was Four-F in World War Two. Mine was a foot soldier, went to the Pacific. Victor kind of felt his family hadn't done its bit. So he wanted to do it, like a duty. Sounds stuffy now, right? Duty? But we all thought like that, back then. No comparison at all with the kids of today. We were all pretty serious and old-fas.h.i.+oned around here, Victor maybe slightly more than the rest of us. Very serious, very earnest. But not really a whole lot out of the ordinary.'

Reacher was three-quarters through with the bags. He stopped and rested against the pick-up door. 'Was he smart?'

'Smart enough, I guess,' Steven said. 'He did well in school, without exactly setting the world on fire. We had a few kids here, over the years, gone to be lawyers or doctors or whatever. One of them went to NASA, a bit younger than Victor and me. Victor was smart enough, but he had to work to get his grades, as I recall.'

Reacher started with the bags again. He had filled the farthest shelves first, which he was glad about, because his forearms were starting to burn.

'Was he ever in any kind of trouble?'

Steven look impatient. 'Trouble? You haven't been listening to me, mister. Victor was straight as an arrow, back when the worst kid would look like a complete angel today.'

Six bags to go. Reacher wiped his palms on his pants.

'What was he like when you last saw him? Between the two tours?'

Steven paused to think about it. 'A little older, I guess. I'd grown up a year, it seemed like he'd grown up five. But he was no different. Same guy. Still serious, still earnest. They gave him a parade when he came home, because he had a medal. He was real embarra.s.sed about it, said the medal was nothing. Then he went away again, and he never came back.'

'How did you feel about that?'

Steven paused again. 'Pretty bad, I guess. This was a guy I'd known all my life. I'd have preferred him to come back, of course, but I was real glad he didn't come back in a wheelchair or something, like a lot of them did.'

Reacher finished the work. He b.u.t.ted the last bag into position on the shelf with the heel of his hand and leaned on the post opposite Steven.

'What about the mystery? About what happened to him?'

Steven shook his head and smiled, sadly. "There's no mystery. He was killed. This is about two old folks refusing to accept three unpleasant truths, is all.'

'Which are?'

'Simple,' Steven said. 'Truth one is their boy died. Truth two is he died out there in some G.o.dforsaken impenetrable jungle where n.o.body will ever find him. Truth three is the government got dishonest around that time, and they stopped listing the MIAs as casualties, so they could keep the numbers reasonable. There were... what? Maybe ten boys on Vic's chopper when it went down? That's ten names they kept off the nightly news. It was a policy, and it's too late for them to admit to anything now.'

'That's your take?'

'Sure is,' Steven said. 'The war went bad, and the government went bad with it. Hard enough for my generation to accept, let me tell you. You younger guys are probably more at home with it, but you better believe the old folk like the Hobies are never going to square up to it.'

He lapsed into silence, and glanced absently back and forth between the empty pick-up and the full shelves. 'That's a ton of cement you s.h.i.+fted. You want to come in and wash up and let me buy you a soda?'

'I need to eat,' Reacher said. 'I missed lunch.'

Steven nodded, and then he smiled, ruefully. 'Head south. There's a diner right after the train station. That's where we used to drink milk shakes, half past nine Sat.u.r.day night, thinking we were practically Frank Sinatra.'

The diner had obviously changed many times since daring boys with baseball cards in the wheels of their bicycles had sipped milk shakes there on Sat.u.r.day nights. Now it was a seventies-style eaterie, low and square, a brick facade, green roof, with a nineties-style gloss in the form of elaborate neon signs in every window, hot pinks and blues. Reacher took the leather-bound folder with him and pulled the door and stepped into chilly air smelling of Freon and burgers and the strong stuff they squirt on the tables before wiping them down. He sat at the counter and a cheerful heavy girl of twenty-something boxed him in with flatware and a napkin and handed him a menu card the size of a billboard with photographs of the food positioned next to the written descriptions. He ordered a half-pounder, Swiss, rare, slaw and onion rings, and made a substantial wager with himself that it wouldn't resemble the photograph in any way at all. Then he drank his iced water and got a refill before opening the folder.

He concentrated on Victor's letters to his folks. There were twenty-seven of them in total, thirteen from his training postings and fourteen from Vietnam. They bore out everything he'd heard from Ed Steven. Accurate grammar, accurate spelling, plain terse phrasing. The same handwriting used by everybody educated in America between the twenties and the sixties, but with a backward slant. A left-handed person. None of the twenty-seven letters ran more than a few lines over the page. A dutiful person. A person who knew it was considered impolite to end a personal letter on the first page. A polite, dutiful, left-handed, dull, conventional, normal person, solidly educated, but no kind of a rocket scientist.

The girl brought him the burger. It was adequate in itself, but very different from the gigantic feast depicted in the photograph on the menu. The slaw was floating in whitened vinegar in a crimped paper cup, and the onion rings were bloated and uniform, like small brown automobile tyres. The Swiss was sliced so thin it was transparent, but it tasted like cheese.

The photograph taken after the pa.s.sing-out parade down at Rucker was harder to interpret. The focus was off, and the peak of his cap put Victor's eyes into deep shadow. His shoulders were back, and his body was tense. Bursting with pride, or embarra.s.sed by his mother? It was hard to tell. In the end, Reacher voted for pride, because of the mouth. It was a tight line, slightly down at the edges, the sort of mouth that needs firm control from the facial muscles to stop a huge joyful grin. This was a photograph of a guy at the absolute peak of his life so far. Every goal attained, every dream realized. Two weeks later, he was overseas. Reacher shuffled through the letters for the note from Mobile. It was written from a bunk, before sailing. Mailed by a company clerk in Alabama. Sober phrases, a page and a quarter. Emotions tightly checked. It communicated nothing at all.

He paid the check and left the girl a two-dollar tip for being so cheerful. Would she have written home a page and a quarter of tight-a.s.sed nothingness the day she was sailing off to war? No, but she would never sail off to war. Victor's helicopter went down maybe seven years before she was born, and Vietnam was just something she had suffered through in eleventh-grade history cla.s.s.

It was way too early to head straight back to Wall Street. Jodie had said seven o'clock. At least two hours to kill, minimum. He slid into the Taurus and put the air on high to blow the heat away. Then he flattened the Hertz map on the stiff leather of the folder and traced a route away from Brighton. He could take Route 9 south to the Bear Mountain Parkway, the Bear east to the Taconic, the Taconic south to the Sprain, and the Sprain would dump him out on the Bronx River Parkway. That road would take him straight down to the Botanical Gardens, which was a place he had never been, and a place he was pretty keen to visit.

Marilyn got to her lunch a little after three o'clock. She had checked the cleaning crew's work before she let them leave, and they had done a perfect job. They had used a steam-cleaner on the hall rug, not because it was dirty, but because it was the best way of raising up the dents in the pile left by the credenza's feet. The steam swelled the wool fibres, and after a thorough vacuuming n.o.body was ever going to know a heavy piece of furniture had once rested there.

She took a long shower and wiped out the stall with a kitchen towel to leave the tiling dry and s.h.i.+ny. She combed her hair and left it to air-dry. She knew the June humidity would put a slight curl in it. Then she got dressed, which involved one garment only. She put on Chester's favourite thing, a dark pink silk sheath which worked best with nothing on underneath. It came just above the knee, and although it wasn't exactly tight, it clung in all the right places, as if it had been made for her, which in fact it had been, although Chester wasn't aware of that. He thought it was just a lucky off-the-peg accident. She was happy to let him think that, not because of the money, but because it felt a little, well, brazen to admit to having such a s.e.xy thing custom-made. And the effect on him was, frankly, brazen. It was like a trigger. She used it when she thought he needed rewarding. Or deflecting. And he was going to need deflecting tonight. He was going to arrive home and find his house up for sale and his wife in charge. Any old way she looked at it, it was going to be a difficult evening, and she was prepared to use any advantage she could to get through it, brazen or not.

She chose the Gucci heels that matched the sheath's colour and made her legs look long. Then she went down to the kitchen and ate her lunch, which was an apple and a square of reduced-fat cheese, and then she went back upstairs and brushed her teeth again and thought about make-up. Being naked under the dress and with her hair down in a natural style, the way to go was really no make-up at all, but she was prepared to admit she was just a little beyond being able to get away with that, so she set out on the long haul of making herself up so she would look like she hadn't troubled to.

It took her twenty minutes, and then she did her nails, toes too, because she felt that counted when it was likely her shoes would be coming off early. Then she dabbed her favourite perfume on, enough to be noticed without being overwhelming. Then the phone rang. It was Sheryl.

'Marilyn?' she said. 'Six hours on the market, and you've got a nibble!'

'I have? But who? And how?'

'I know, the very first day, before you're even listed anywhere, isn't it wonderful? It's a gentleman who's relocating with his family, and he was cruising the area, getting a feel for it, and he saw your sign. He came straight over here for the particulars. Are you ready? Can I bring him right over?'

'Wow, right now? Already? This is quick, isn't it? But yes, I guess I'm ready. Who is it, Sheryl? You think he's a serious buyer?'

'Definitely I do, and he's only here today. He has to go back west tonight.'

'OK, well, bring him on over, I guess. I'll be ready.'

She realized she must have been rehearsing the whole routine, unconsciously, without really being aware of it. She moved fast, but she wasn't fl.u.s.tered. She hung up the phone and ran straight down to the kitchen and switched the oven on low. Spooned a heap of coffee beans on to a saucer and placed them on the middle shelf. Shut the oven door and turned to the sink. Dropped the apple core into the waste disposal and stacked the plate in the dishwasher. Wiped the sink down with a paper towel and stood back, hands on hips, scanning the room. She walked to the window and angled the blind until the light caught the s.h.i.+ne on the floor.

'Perfect,' she said to herself.

She ran back up the stairs and started at the top of the house. She ducked into every room, scanning, checking, adjusting flowers, angling blinds, plumping pillows. She turned lamps on everywhere. She had read that to turn them on after the buyer was already in the room was a clear message the house was gloomy. Better to have them on from the outset, which was a clear message of cheerful welcome.

She ran back down the stairs. In the family room, she opened the blind all the way to show off the pool. In the den, she turned on the reading lamps and tilted the blind almost closed, to give a dark, comfortable look. Then she ducked into the living room. s.h.i.+t, Chester's side-table was still there, right next to where his armchair had been. How could she have missed that? She grabbed it two-handed and ran with it to the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. She heard Sheryl's car on the gravel. She opened the bas.e.m.e.nt door and ran down and dumped the table and ran back up. Closed the door on it and ducked into the powder room. Straightened the guest towel and dabbed at her hair and checked herself in the mirror. G.o.d! She was wearing her silk sheath. With nothing underneath. The silk was clinging to her skin. What the h.e.l.l was this poor guy going to think?

The doorbell rang. She was frozen. Did she have time to change? Of course not. They were at the door, right now, ringing the bell. A jacket or something? The doorbell rang again. She took a breath and shook her hips to loosen the fabric and walked down the hall. Took another breath and opened the door.

Sheryl beamed in at her, but Marilyn was already looking at the buyer. He was a tallish man, maybe fifty or fifty-five, grey, in a dark suit, standing side-on, looking out and back at the plantings along the driveway. She glanced down at his shoes, because Chester always said wealth and breeding shows up on the feet. These looked pretty good. Heavy Oxfords, polished to a s.h.i.+ne. She started a smile. Was this going to be it? Sold within six hours? That would be a h.e.l.l of a thing. She smiled a quick conspirator's smile with Sheryl and turned to the man.

'Come in,' she said brightly, and held out her hand.

He turned back from the garden to face her. He stared straight at her, frankly and blatantly. She felt naked under his gaze. She practically was naked. But she found herself staring right back at him, because he was terribly burned. One side of his head was just a ma.s.s of s.h.i.+ny pink scars. She kept her polite smile frozen in place and kept her hand extended towards him. He paused. Brought his hand up to meet it. But it wasn't a hand. It was a s.h.i.+ning metal hook. Not an artificial hand, not a clever prosthetic device, just a wicked metal curve made of gleaming steel.

Reacher was at the kerb outside the sixty-storey building on Wall Street ten minutes before seven o'clock. He kept the motor running and scanned a triangle that had its point on the building's exit door and spread sideways across the plaza past the distance where somebody could get to her before he could.

There was n.o.body inside the triangle who worried him. n.o.body static, n.o.body watching, just a thin stream of office workers jostling out to the street, jackets over their arms, bulky briefcases in their hands. Most of them were making a left on the sidewalk, heading for the subway. Some of them were threading through the cars at the kerb, looking for cabs out in the traffic stream.

The other parked cars were harmless. There was a UPS truck two places ahead, and a couple of livery vehicles with drivers standing next to them, scanning for their pa.s.sengers. Innocent bustle, at the weary end of a busy day. Reacher settled back in his seat to wait, his eyes flicking left and right, ahead and behind, always returning to the revolving door.

She came out before seven, which was sooner than he expected. He saw her through the gla.s.s, in the lobby. He saw her hair, and her dress, and the flash of her legs as she skipped sideways to the exit. He wondered for a second if she had just been waiting up on her high floor. The timing was plausible. She could have seen the car from her window, gone straight to the elevator. She pushed the door and spilled out on to the plaza. He got out of the car and moved around the hood to the sidewalk and stood waiting. She was carrying the pilot's case. She skipped through a shaft of sun and her hair lit up like a halo. Ten yards from him, she smiled.

'h.e.l.lo, Reacher,' she called.

'h.e.l.lo, Jodie,' he said.

She knew something. He could see it in her face. She had big news for him, but she was smiling like she was going to tease him with it.

'What?' he asked.

She smiled again and shook her head. 'You first, OK?'

They sat in the car and he ran through everything the old couple had told him. Her smile faded and she turned sombre. Then he gave her the leather-bound folder and left her to scan it through while he fought the traffic in a narrow counterclockwise square that left them facing south on Broadway, two blocks from her place. He pulled in at the kerb outside an espres...o...b..r. She was reading the reconnaissance report from Rutter and studying the photograph of the emaciated grey man and the Asian soldier.

'Incredible,' she said, quietly.

'Give me your keys,' he said back. 'Get a coffee and I'll walk up for you when I know your building's OK.'

She made no objection. The photograph had shaken her up. She just went into her bag for her keys and got out of the car and skipped straight across the sidewalk and into the coffee shop. He watched her inside and then eased south down the street. He turned directly into her garage. It was a different car, and he figured if anybody was waiting down there they would hesitate long enough to give him all the advantage he would need. But the garage was quiet. Just the same group of parked vehicles, looking like they hadn't moved all day. He put the Taurus in her slot and went up the metal stairs to the lobby. n.o.body there. n.o.body in the elevator, n.o.body in the fourth-floor hallway. Her door was undamaged. He opened it up and stepped inside. Quiet, still air. n.o.body there.

He used the fire stairs to get back to the lobby and went out the gla.s.s doors to the street. Walked the two blocks north and ducked into the coffee shop and found her alone at a chrome table, reading Victor Hobie's letters, an espresso untouched at her elbow.