Bad Luck and Trouble

nodded.
    “OK,” Reacher said. “Take another break. Then we’ll go get some dinner. My treat. Maybe like the last supper. I’ll meet you in the lobby in an hour.”

    Reacher got Dixon’s Ford from the valets and drove east on Hollywood Boulevard. He passed the Entertainment Museum and Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Made the left on Highland. He was two blocks west of Hollywood and Vine, which was where the bad stuff had traditionally been. Now the bad stuff seemed to have migrated, which was usually the way. Law enforcement never really won. It just shoved stuff around, a block here, a block there.
    Reacher pulled to the curb. There was a wide alley behind the wax museum. Really a vacant half-lot, gravel surface, unfenced, colonized by cars into a turning loop, recolonized by dealers into a drive-through facility. The operation was organized in the conventional triangulated manner. A buyer would drive in and slow up. A kid not more than eleven years old would approach. The driver would place his order and hand over his cash. The kid would run the cash to a bag man and then continue to a stash man and pick up the product. Meanwhile the driver would be crawling through a slow half-circle, ready to meet the kid again on the other side of the lot. Whereupon the transfer would be made and the driver would leave. The kid would run back to where he began and wait to start all over again.
    A smart system. Complete separation of product and money, easy instant dispersal in three different directions if necessary, and no one was seen with anything except someone way too young to be prosecuted. The stash would be refreshed often, leaving the stash man holding the bare minimum at any one time. The cash bag would be emptied frequently, reducing potential losses and the bag man’s vulnerability.
    A smart system.
    A system Reacher had seen before.
    A system he had exploited before.
    The bag man was literally a bag man. He was sitting on a concrete block in the middle of the lot with a black vinyl duffel at his feet. He was wearing sunglasses and would be armed with whatever was the handgun of choice that week.
    Reacher waited.
    A black Mercedes ML slowed and pulled into the lot. A pretty SUV, tinted windows, California vanity plates spelling out an acronym Reacher didn’t understand. It paused at the entry and the kid ran up. His head barely reached the driver’s window. But his hand did. It snaked up and came back down with a folded wad. The Mercedes eased forward and the kid ran over to the bag man. The wad went into the bag and the kid headed for the stash man. The Mercedes was beginning to turn its slow half-circle.
    Reacher put Dixon’s Ford in gear. Checked north, checked south. Hit the gas and turned the wheel and slammed into the lot. Ignored the worn circular path and aimed straight for the center of the space.
    Straight for the bag man, accelerating, front wheels spraying gravel.
    The bag man froze.
    Ten feet before hitting him head-on Reacher did three things. He twitched the wheel. He stamped on the brake. And he opened his door. The car slewed right and the front wheels washed into the loose stones and the door swung out through a moving arc and caught the guy like a full-on punch. It smacked him solidly from his waist up to his face. He went over backward and the car stopped dead and Reacher leaned down and grabbed the vinyl duffel left-handed from the floor. Pitched it into the passenger seat and hit the gas and slammed his door shut and pulled a tight U-turn inside the slow Mercedes. Roared back out of the lot and bounced over the curb onto Highland. In the mirror he saw dust in the air and confusion and the bag man flat on his back and two guys running. Ten yards later he was behind the bulk of the wax museum. Then he was through the light, back on Hollywood Boulevard.
    Twelve seconds, beginning to end.
    No reaction. No gunshots. No pursuit.
    Nor would there be any, Reacher guessed. They would have clocked the plain-vanilla Ford and the appalling shirt and the short hair and put it down to an LAPD freelance looking to supplement his pension fund. The cost of doing business. And the Mercedes driver couldn’t afford to say a word to anyone.
    Yeah baby, you do not mess with the special investigators.
    Reacher slowed and caught his breath and made a right and drove a complete counterclockwise scenic circle. Nichols Canyon Road, Woodrow Wilson Drive, and back on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Nobody was behind him. He