“About Wiley.”
“I saw him on the liquor store video. He looked as quick as an outhouse rat. And he has a gun. And he’s about to do the deal of the century. But that’s OK. I like a challenge.”
“We’ll arrest him as soon as he opens the door. He won’t have time to do anything.”
“Suppose he doesn’t open the door? Suppose he looks out the peephole and waits in the bedroom?”
Sinclair didn’t answer.
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened.
Griezman was already out. Apart from him the corridor was empty. There were doors every thirty feet. Unit numbers were marked on narrow vertical panels next to the doors. The panels had an integrated wall sconce above, and the number below. They were all different bright colors. The numbers were written like a book from elementary school. Wiley’s was 9b. His panel was green, and his door was yellow. Like a playhouse. My first apartment.
There was no peephole in the yellow door. Instead there was a head-height plastic eye on the green panel, the size of an egg, bulging out, smoky gray. A camera. Presumably with a screen on the wall inside. A big fish-eye picture. Below the camera at elbow height was a doorbell button. A visitor who got close enough to ding the bell would have his face right in front of the camera. Which made sense.
Neagley tapped her chest. I’ll go first. She kept close to the wall, approaching the fish’s eye at a ninety-degree angle, and when she was an arm’s length away she clamped her left palm over the lens, and took out her Colt, and used the muzzle to press the bell.
Chapter 37
There was no response. Neagley pressed the bell again. Reacher heard a soft chime inside the apartment. Gentle, melodious, not urgent.
No response.
Nothing.
Silence.
Neagley stood back.
Griezman said, “We need a warrant.”
Reacher said, “Are you sure?”
“In Germany it is essential.”
“But he’s American. And we’re American. Let’s do this the American way.”
“You need a warrant also. I have seen it in the movies. You have an Amendment.”
“And credit cards.”
“What for? To buy something? To pay someone off?”
“For ingenuity and self-reliance. That’s the American way.”
Neagley asked Sinclair for a credit card, and got a government Amex in return. She took it to Wiley’s door, and stood sideways, her back to the hinge, her inside hand on the handle, her outside hand holding the card, fingertips only. She pressed on the door with her shoulder, and hauled straight back on the handle, against whatever extra compression the hinges could give her, and she slid the government Amex into the frame and touched it to the tongue of the lock. She dabbed it and tapped it, and moved the door a fraction one way by pushing with her shoulder, and a fraction another way by hauling on the handle a degree more or less, trying random combinations, until finally the lock snicked back and the door came open. At which point she ducked low, because she knew Reacher would be aiming center-mass at anyone standing behind it.
There was no one there.
There was no one anywhere.
They cleared the place room by room, first with hasty left-right glances over iron sights, and then again patiently, and slower.
Still no one there.
They gathered in the kitchen. There was a map folded open on the counter. Large scale, plenty of detail. The center section of a country. Ocean to the left, ocean to the right. A perfect square rubbed greasy by a finger. The city of Buenos Aires in the top right corner.
“Argentina,” Reacher said. “He’s buying a ranch. Has to be a thousand square miles. He changed his money for pesos at the railroad station. He’s going to South America.”
Neagley opened cupboards, and checked the dishwasher, and pulled drawers. She reached into the recycle bin and came out with a dark bottle with a thin neck. Rinsed and empty. A dull gold label. Dom Perignon. Then she checked the trash. Crusts and rinds and coffee grounds. And a bloody shirt, and spattered pants, and a red file folder. Made of stiff board covered in vinyl, with four rings inside, and pre-punched pages with lines of handwritten code, in five separate columns.
“That’s Schlupp’s,” Griezman said. “That’s all the evidence I need.”
Sinclair came back from the bedroom.
“He packed a bag,” she said. “But it’s still in the closet. He’s still in town.”