‘Scorpio won’t tell him shit.’
‘I think he might. I’m not sure Bigfoot was telling the whole truth about what happened in Wisconsin. I don’t think a biker with a lucrative trade in stolen property would tell anyone anything. Least of all the name of a supplier. Not voluntarily. You should listen to the audio. Jimmy Rat sounds scared.’
‘Of Bigfoot?’
‘I saw him, boss. You could put him in a zoo.’
‘You think Scorpio will be scared too?’
‘Either way I think a serious crime is about to be committed. Either Bigfoot will squeeze too hard, or Scorpio will push back too hard.’
Then she waited.
The lieutenant said, ‘I think we should get the surveillance going again.’
She said, ‘Yes, boss,’ and breathed out.
‘Just you. Eyes on at all times. Nothing subtle. Get right up in his grille.’
‘I might need back-up. I might need to intervene.’
‘No,’ the guy said. ‘Don’t intervene. Let nature take its course. It’s a win-win. If Scorpio hurts the guy, that’s great, because then we’ve got something on him at last. We’ve got you as an actual eyewitness to a felony assault. On the other hand, if the guy hurts Scorpio, that’s good news anyway. The worse the better. Plus you could always arrest the guy afterwards. If you wanted to. For a felony assault of his own. If you need to boost your quarterly numbers, I mean.’
Reacher left the breakfast place through the kitchen door and slipped away through the alley. He didn’t want the front sentry to see him. Not yet. The Bigfoot description would leave the guy in no doubt. Word would pass instantly to Scorpio inside. Better not to get them too excited too soon.
So he skirted around at a safe radius, and then headed downtown, and started looking for better hotels than his own. The kind of place a retired-FBI gumshoe might choose. No fleapits, but nothing fancy, either. Probably a mid-market national chain. The guy probably had a loyalty card.
Reacher found four possibilities. At the first he went in and asked the clerk for a guest named Terrence Bramall, small guy, neat, in a suit and tie. If he was in a car, it might have Illinois plates. The woman pattered at her keyboard and stared at her screen, and then she said she was sorry, but currently the hotel had no guests with that name.
At the second possibility Reacher was told Terrence Bramall had checked out just thirty minutes before.
Or maybe even less, the clerk said. Maybe only twenty. She called up the closed account, to calibrate her memory. It was twenty-seven minutes ago. The guy had stopped at the desk, in his suit and tie, with a leather travelling bag in one hand, and a leather briefcase in the other. He paid his bill, and headed out to his car, which was in the covered lot. It was a black SUV, with Illinois plates. Bramall loaded his bags, and then got in and drove off, towards the Interstate, but whether he then turned east or west was anyone’s guess.
‘Do you have his cell phone number?’ Reacher asked.
The woman glanced at her screen. Left-hand column, Reacher thought, maybe two-thirds of the way up.
The woman said, ‘I really can’t give it out.’
Reacher pointed at the base of the wall behind her.
‘Is that a cockroach?’ he said.
Not a word hotel keepers liked to hear.
She turned to look. He leaned over the desk and bent his neck. Left-hand column, two-thirds of the way up. Ten digits. Not a prodigious feat of memory.
He straightened up.
She turned back.
‘I didn’t see anything,’ she said.
‘False alarm,’ Reacher said. ‘Sorry. Maybe just a shadow.’
Reacher found a pay phone in the lobby of an all-day Chinese restaurant. It was a chromium instrument mounted on a wall of red velvet. Not as glamorous as it looked from a distance. The chrome was pitted and the velvet was threadbare and tacky with grease.
Reacher dialled Bramall’s cell number. It rang and rang. It wasn’t picked up. No big surprise. The guy was probably on the Interstate. Probably a safety first type of person. Probably had to be, to survive a lifetime in the FBI.
No answer.
A recorded voice came on, inviting Reacher to leave a message.
He said, ‘Mr Bramall, my name is Reacher. We waited in line together last night for sandwiches and we were briefly in the breakfast place at the same time this morning. I infer you were watching Arthur Scorpio’s place in connection with a missing persons inquiry. I was watching it in connection with trying to trace the source of a piece of stolen property. I think we should put our heads together, to figure out exactly what we both know. Just in case there’s more here than meets the eye. Could be useful for one of us, if not both. You can’t call me back because I don’t have a phone, so I’ll try you again at a later time. Thank you. Goodbye.’
He hung up.
He stepped out from the velvet lobby to the concrete sidewalk.
Arthur Scorpio’s black sedan stopped at the kerb. Right next to him, level with his hip.
The window buzzed down.
The front-door sentry said, ‘Get in the car.’
TEN
THE GUY HAD a gun. A revolver. It looked like a worn-out Chief’s Special. A .38 five-shooter by Smith & Wesson. Short barrel. It looked small in the guy’s hand. His right hand. He was half-twisted behind the wheel, aiming half-sideways through the open passenger window, with a bent arm and a cramped right shoulder.
‘In the car,’ he said again.
Reacher stood still. He had choices. Life was full of them. Easiest thing would be just walk away. Straight ahead along the sidewalk, in the same direction the car had been driving. A right-handed shooter in a left-hand-drive car would have a practical problem with that kind of geometry. His windshield was in the way. Couldn’t shoot through it. The bullet would deflect and miss. And afterwards there would be a hole in the windshield. Not a smart thing to have. Rapid City was no doubt a tough old town, but it wasn’t South-Central LA. Morning gunfire would get called in. Especially downtown, near the hotels and the restaurants. Police cruisers would show up fast. Questions about a bullet hole in a windshield would be hard to answer.