“You have the address?”
“We should think ahead. Griezman will go to the apartment. It will be inaccessible to us. But think like a traffic cop. He has a long-wheelbase panel van. Where does he park it? Not on the street, because my guys have been looking for it, and they haven’t found it. And not in a garage, either, because it’s the high-roof model, as well as too long. So it’s in a large shed, or possibly a small warehouse. Near enough to where he lives to be convenient. It’s there right now. Just waiting for us. It’s what we want. Not Wiley himself.”
“Where exactly?”
“You need to ask the people you know. Did anyone rent out an old shed or a warehouse? Possibly for cash, certainly to someone they never saw before, who had some type of vague bullshit story for why he needed it. It’s the kind of thing you people talk about, right? A guy who knows a guy who knows a guy?”
Dremmler said, “I’ll make you chief of police.”
—
Bishop led the way to his office, which had an old-fashioned combination safe in the corner, as big as a basement washing machine. He spun the dials and turned the handle and opened the door. Inside was a mess of stuff, including four handguns stored butts-up in a long cardboard box. He took out three and passed them around. One for Sinclair, one for Reacher, and one for Neagley. They were Colt Government Model .380s. Seven-shooters, blued steel, plastic grips. Short barrel, but accurate. They were loaded.
“Try not to use them,” Bishop said. “And if you do, for God’s sake don’t shoot anyone but Wiley. The legalities would be a nightmare.”
Reacher said, “Tell Orozco where we are and what we’re doing, as soon as he gets here. Tell him to stand by.”
Bishop said, “Sure.”
Sinclair put her gun in her bag. Reacher and Neagley put theirs in their pockets.
Good to go.
—
Griezman stopped on the same curb as the day before, and Sinclair climbed in the front of the car. Reacher and Neagley climbed in the back. Then Griezman took off and threaded through the center of town, on a road Reacher remembered. Eventually they came to the crossroads. High brick buildings on every side. The champagne store was a right turn, and the new urban village was a left.
They turned left.
They drove around the brand-new traffic circle and took the middle exit, straight ahead into the apartment complex. The buildings looked high-rise in their surroundings, but none was more than fifteen stories tall. Exterior panels that in America would have been glass or mirror were sometimes metal painted bright simple colors. As if the dwellings had inspired or been inspired by a child’s construction toy. Or maybe children were supposed to feel at home there. Reacher couldn’t see how. He had been a serious kid. He felt the relentless cheerfulness would have driven him mad.
Griezman slowed the car.
He said, “It’s the next building on the left.”
Which was an identical structure, like a giant shoebox laid on its side, piebald with colored panels, peppered with windows, which were smaller than they might have been, and which had thick, efficient frames. The lobby was a bite out of the lower two floors, like a grand arcade, presumably with entrances right and left. Two elevator banks.
Griezman said, “Should we park and walk, or drive right up?”
“Drive,” Reacher said. “Let’s get this done.”
So Griezman accelerated again and then coasted to a stop outside Wiley’s lobby. There were young trees planted in the shoulders. There was another building dead ahead, and then two more in the distance, with a wide footpath running between them, to the preserved part of the cityscape, and then to a footbridge made of teak and steel. It looped over the water, and away.
They opened all four doors at once and got out of the car. According to his unit number Wiley’s lobby was the left-hand option. There were two elevators serving that half of the building. Both cars were waiting on the lobby level. The morning rush to work was over. Wiley’s unit was on the ninth floor. SOP for an apartment raid was to send people up in every elevator simultaneously, plus more on the stairs. A full-court press, to prevent a lucky escape. Reacher had known it to happen. He had seen security video, of a guy strolling out his door and getting in an elevator, literally half a second before the cops burst out of another elevator. Unfortunate timing. A teaching moment. Reacher figured Griezman would get a heart attack if he had to climb nine floors, so he suggested he ride in one car, with Sinclair in the other. Neagley took the stairs. Reacher went with Sinclair. Her gun was still in her bag. Not good practice. Getting it out would be slow, and the Government Model’s only real weakness was a prominent magazine release near the trigger. A fumble in a bag could unload it. Not ideal.
The elevator doors closed on them. The car moved up. Sinclair said, “How do you feel?”
Reacher said, “Personally or professionally?”