"I think it's an offer or a bid," Mauney said. "Like, you can have six hundred and fifty of something for a hundred grand each."
"Or a market report," O'Donnell said. "Like six hundred and fifty of something were sold at a hundred grand each. Overall value, sixty-five million dollars. Some kind of a fairly big deal. Certainly big enough for people to get killed over."
"People can get killed for sixty-five cents," Mauney said. "Doesn't always take millions of dollars."
Karla Dixon was silent. Still, quiet, preoccupied. Reacher knew she had seen something in the number 650 that he hadn't. He couldn't imagine what. It wasn't an interesting number.
650 at $100k per.
"No bright ideas?" Mauney asked.
Nobody spoke.
Mauney said, "What did you get from Franz's post office box?"
"A flash memory chip," Reacher said. "For a computer."
"What's on it?"
"We don't know. We can't break the password."
"We could try," Mauney said. "There's a lab we use."
"I don't know. We're down to the last attempt."
"Actually, you don't have a choice. It's evidence, and therefore it's ours."
"Will you share the information?"
Mauney nodded. "We're in sharing mode here, apparently."
"OK," Reacher said. He nodded to Neagley. She put her hand in her tote bag and came out with the silver plastic sliver. Tossed it underhand to him. He caught it and passed it to Mauney.
"Good luck," he said.
"Pointers?" Mauney asked.
"It'll be numbers," Reacher said. "Franz was a numbers type of guy."
"OK."
"It wasn't an airplane, you know."
"I know," Mauney said. "That was just hick stuff to get you interested. It was a helicopter. You know how many private helicopters there are within cruise range of the place we found him?"
"No."
"More than nine thousand."
"Did you check Swan's office?"
"He was canned. He didn't have an office."
"Did you check his house?"
"Through the windows," Mauney said. "It hadn't been tossed."
"Bathroom window?"
"Pebbled glass."
"So one last question," Reacher said. "You checked on Swan and sent the Nevada Staties after Sanchez and Orozco. Why didn't you call D.C. and New York and Illinois about the rest of us?"
"Because at that point I was dealing with what I had."
"Which was what?"
"I had all four of them on tape. Franz, Swan, Sanchez, and Orozco. All four of them together. Video surveillance, the night before Franz went out and didn't come back."
33
Curtis Mauney didn't wait to be asked. He raised the lid of his briefcase again and took out another clear plastic page protector. In it was a copy of a still frame from a black and white surveillance tape. Four men, shoulder to shoulder in front of some kind of a store counter. Upside down and from a distance, Reacher couldn't make out much detail.
Mauney said, "I made the IDs by comparing a bunch of old snapshots from a shoe box in Franz's bedroom closet." Then he passed the photograph to his right, to Neagley. She studied it for a moment, nothing in her face except light reflected off the shiny plastic. She passed it counterclockwise, to Dixon. Dixon looked at it for ten long seconds and blinked once and passed it to O'Donnell. O'Donnell took it and studied it and shook his head and passed it to Reacher.
Manuel Orozco was on the left of the frame, glancing to his right, caught by the camera in his perpetual state of restlessness. Then came Calvin Franz, hands in his pockets, patience on his face. Then came Tony Swan, front and center, looking straight ahead. On the right was Jorge Sanchez, in a buttoned-up shirt, no tie, with a finger hooked under his collar. Reacher knew that pose. He had seen it a thousand times before. It meant that Sanchez had shaved about ten hours previously, and the stubble on his throat was growing back and beginning to irritate him. Even without the time code burned into the lower right of the shot Reacher would have known he was looking at a picture taken early in the evening.
They all looked a little older. Orozco's hair was gray at the temples and his eyes were lined and weary. Franz had maybe lost a little weight. Some of the muscle was gone from his shoulders. Swan was as wide as ever, barrel-chested, thicker in the gut. His hair was short and had crept backward maybe half an inch. Sanchez's scowl had settled into a tracery of permanent down-turned lines running from his nose to his chin and framing his mouth.
Older, but maybe a little wiser, too. There was a lot of talent and experience and capability right there in the picture. And an easy camaraderie and a mutual trust still floating on recent renewal. Four tough guys. In Reacher's opinion, four of the best eight in the world.
Who or what had beaten them?
Behind them, running away from the camera, were narrow store aisles that looked familiar.
"Where is this?" Reacher asked.
Mauney said, "The pharmacy in Culver City. Next to Franz's office. The guy behind the counter remembered them. Swan was buying aspirin."
"That doesn't sound like Swan."
"For his dog. It had arthritis in its hips. He gave it a quarter-tab of aspirin a day. The pharmacist said that's a pretty common practice with dogs. Especially big dogs."
"How much aspirin did he buy?"
"The economy bottle. Ninety-six pills, generic."
Dixon said, "At a quarter-tab a day, that's a year and nineteen days' worth."
Reacher looked at the picture again. Four guys, relaxed poses, no urgency, all the time in the world, a routine purchase, a provision on behalf of a pet animal designed to stretch more than a year into the future.
They never even saw it coming.
Who or what had beaten them?
"Can I keep this picture?" he asked.
"Why?" Mauney said. "You see something in it?"
"Four of my old friends."
Mauney nodded. "So keep it. It's a copy."
"What next?"
"Stay here," Mauney said. He dropped the lid of his case and clicked the latches, loud in the silence. "Stay visible, and call me if you see anyone sniffing around. No more independent action, OK?"
"We're just here for the funeral," Reacher said.
"But whose funeral?"
Reacher didn't reply to that. Just stood up and turned and looked at Raquel Welch's picture again. The glass in the frame was reflective and behind him he saw Mauney getting out of his chair, and the others standing up with him. When a seated person stands up, he slides forward to do it, so that when a seated group stands up they all end up temporarily closer to one another than they were when they were sitting down. Therefore their next communal move is to shuffle backward, turning, dispersing, widening the circle, respecting space. Neagley was first and fastest, of course. Mauney turned toward the door and set himself to thread through the limited space between the chairs. O'Donnell stepped the other way, toward the interior of the hotel. Dixon paralleled him, small, deft, nimble, side-stepping a coffee table.
But Thomas Brant moved the other way.
Inward.
Reacher kept his eye on the glass in front of Raquel. Watched Brant's tan reflection. He knew instantly what was going to happen. Brant was going to tap him on his right shoulder with his left hand. Whereupon Reacher was supposed to turn inquiringly and take a massive straight right to the face.