Bad Luck and Trouble

miles north and east of downtown, nine miles east of where they were standing.
    Close enough to taste.
    “Now turn back a few pages,” Dixon said.
    Reacher leafed backward. There was a whole section showing remote telephone extensions out there in the manufacturing plant.
    “Check under P, ” Dixon said.
    The P section started with a guy called Pascoe and finished with a guy called Purcell. Halfway through the list was Pilot’s office.
    Dixon said, “We found the helicopter.”
    Reacher nodded. Then he smiled at her. Pictured her running in with her flashlight, running out fifty seconds later covered in dust. His old team. He could send them to Atlanta and they would come back with the Coke recipe.
    Neagley had personnel files on the whole Security Division. Nine green file folders. One was Saropian’s, one was Tony Swan’s. Reacher didn’t look at either of those. No point. He started with the top boy, Allen Lamaison. There was a Polaroid photograph clipped to the first sheet inside. Lamaison was a bulky thick-necked man with dark blank eyes and a mouth too small for his jaw. His personal information was on the next sheet and showed he had done twenty years inside the LAPD, the last twelve in Robbery-Homicide. He was forty-nine years old.
    Next up were the two guys sharing the third spot in the hierarchy. The first of them was called Lennox. Forty-one years old, ex-LAPD, gray buzz cut, heavy build, meaty red face.
    The second was the guy in the raincoat. His name was Parker. Forty-two years old, ex-LAPD, tall, slim, a pale hard face disfigured by a broken nose.
    “They’re all ex-LAPD,” Neagley said. “According to the data, they all quit around the same time.”
    “After a scandal?”
    “There are always scandals. It’s statistically difficult to quit the LAPD any other way.”
    “Could your guy in Chicago get their histories?”
    Neagley shrugged. “We might be able to get into their computer. And we know some people. We might get some word of mouth.”
    “What was on Berenson’s office floor?”
    “A new Oriental rug. Persian style, but almost certainly a copy from Pakistan.”
    Reacher nodded. “Swan’s place, too. They must have done the whole executive floor.”
    Neagley dialed her cell for the call to her Chicago guy’s voice mail and Reacher put Parker’s details on one side and checked the photographs of the four remaining foot soldiers. Then he closed their files and butted them together into a neat stack and piled it on top of Parker’s jacket, like a category.
    “I saw these five tonight,” he said.
    “What were they like?” O’Donnell asked.
    “Lousy. Really slow and stupid.”
    “Where were the other two?”
    “Highland Park, presumably. That’s where the good stuff is.”
    O’Donnell slid the five separated files toward him and asked, “How did we lose four guys to the Keystone Kops?”
    “I don’t know,” Reacher said.

65
    Eventually, as he knew he would, Reacher opened Tony Swan’s New Age personnel file. He didn’t get past the Polaroid photograph. It was a year old and not remotely close to studio quality but it was much clearer than Curtis Mauney’s video surveillance still. Ten years after the army Swan’s hair had been shorter than when he was in. Back then the craze for shaved heads had already started among enlisted men but hadn’t spread upward to officers. Swan had worn a regular style, parted and brushed. But over the years it must have thinned and he had changed to an all-over half-inch Caesar. In the army it had been a chestnut brown. Now it was a dusty gray. His eyes were pouched and he had grown balls of fat and muscle at the hinges of his jaw. His neck was wider than ever. Reacher was amazed that anyone made shirts with collars that size. Like automobile tires.
    “What next?” Dixon asked, in the silence. Reacher knew it wasn’t a genuine inquiry. She was just trying to stop him reading. Trying to spare his feelings. He closed the file. Dropped it on the bed well away from the other files, in a category all its own. Swan deserved better than to be associated with his recent colleagues, even on paper.
    “Who knew, and who flew,” Reacher said. “That’s what we need. Anyone else can live a little longer.”
    “When will we know?”
    “Later today. You and Dave can go scope out Highland Park. Neagley and I are going back to East LA. In an hour. So take a nap, and make it count.”

    Reacher and Neagley left the motel at five in the