Bad Luck and Trouble

over the passenger seat. There was a radio mounted under the dash.
    Not a taxicab radio.
    “Shit,” Reacher said. “We just took down a cop.”
    “You did the hard part,” O’Donnell said.
    Reacher crouched and put his fingers against the guy’s neck. Felt for his pulse. It was there, strong and regular. The guy was breathing. His nose was busted bad, which would be an aesthetic problem later, but he hadn’t been very good-looking to start with.
    “Why was he tailing us?” Neagley said.
    “We’ll work that out later,” Reacher said. “When we’re a long way from here.”
    “Why did you hit him so hard?”
    “I was upset about the dog.”
    “This guy didn’t do that.”
    “I know that now.”
    Neagley dug through the guy’s pockets. Came out with a leather ID folder. There was a chrome-plated badge pinned inside it, opposite a laminated card behind a milky plastic window.
    “His name is Thomas Brant,” she said. “He’s an LA County deputy.”
    “This is Orange County,” O’Donnell said. “He’s outside of his jurisdiction. As he was on Sunset and in Santa Monica.”
    “Think that will help us?”
    “Not very much.”
    Reacher said, “Let’s get him comfortable and get the hell out of here.”
    O’Donnell took Brant’s feet and Reacher took his shoulders and they piled him into the rear seat of his car. They stretched him out and arranged him and left him in what medics call the recovery position, on his side, one leg drawn up, able to breathe, unlikely to choke. The Crown Vic was spacious. The engine was off and there was plenty of fresh air coming in through the broken window.
    “He’ll be OK,” O’Donnell said.
    “He’ll have to be,” Reacher said.
    They closed the door on him and turned back to O’Donnell’s rental. It was still right there in the middle of the street, three doors open, engine still running. Reacher got in the back. O’Donnell drove. Neagley sat next to him. The polite voice inside the GPS set about guiding them back toward the freeway.
    “We should return this car,” Neagley said. “Right now. And then my Mustang. He’ll have gotten both the plate numbers.”
    “And then do what for transport?” Reacher asked.
    “Your turn to rent something.”
    “I don’t have a driver’s license.”
    “Then we’ll have to take cabs. We have to break the link.”
    “That means changing hotels, too.”
    “So be it.”

    The GPS wouldn’t allow adjustment on the fly. A liability issue. O’Donnell pulled over and stopped and altered the destination from the Beverly Wilshire to the Hertz lot at LAX. The unit took the change in its stride. There was a second’s delay while a Calculating Route bar spooled up and then the patient voice came back and told O’Donnell to turn around and head west instead of east, toward the 405 instead of the 5. Traffic was OK through the subdivisions and heavy on the freeway. Progress was slow.
    “Tell me about yesterday,” Reacher said to Neagley.
    “What about it?”
    “What you did.”
    “I flew into LAX and rented the car. Drove to the hotel on Wilshire. Checked in. Worked for an hour. Then I drove up to the Denny’s on Sunset. Waited for you.”
    “You must have been tailed all the way from the airport.”
    “Clearly. The question is, why?”
    “No, that’s the second question. The first question is, how? Who knew when and where you were coming in?”
    “The cop, obviously. He put a flag against my name and Homeland Security tipped him off as soon as I bought my ticket.”
    “OK, why?”
    “He’s working on Franz. LA County deputies. I’m a known associate.”
    “We all are.”
    “I was the first to arrive.”
    “So are we suspects?”
    “Maybe. In the absence of any others.”
    “How stupid are they?”
    “They’re about normal. Even we looked at known associates if we struck out everywhere else.”
    Reacher said, “You do not mess with the special investigators.”
    “Correct,” Neagley said. “But we just messed with the LA County deputies. Big time. I hope they don’t have a similar slogan.”
    “You can bet your ass they do.”

    LAX was a gigantic, sprawling mess. Like every airport Reacher had ever seen it was permanently half-finished. O’Donnell threaded through construction zones and perimeter roads and made it to the car rental returns. The different organizations were all lined up, the red one, the green one, the blue one, and finally the Hertz yellow. O’Donnell parked on the