Bad Luck and Trouble

habit. Reacher had always insisted on constant recaps. He had insisted on combing through accumulated information, restating it, testing it, re-examining it, looking at it from new angles in the light of what had come afterward. But this time nobody answered, except Dixon, who said, “All we’ve got is four dead friends.”
    The room went quiet.
    “Let’s get dinner,” Neagley said. “No point in the rest of us starving ourselves to death.”
    Dinner. Reacher recalled the burger barn, twenty-four hours previously. Sunset Boulevard, the noise, the thick beef patties, the cold beer. The round table for four. The conversation. The way the center of attention had rotated freely between them all. Always one talker and three listeners, a shifting pyramid that had swung first one way and then another.
    One talker, three listeners.
    “Mistake,” he said.
    Neagley said, “Eating is a mistake?”
    “No, eat if you want to. But we’re making a mistake. A major conceptual error.”
    “Where?”
    “My fault entirely. I jumped to a false conclusion.”
    “How?”
    “Why can’t we find Franz’s client?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Because Franz didn’t have a client. We made a mistake. His was the first body found, so we just went ahead and assumed this whole thing was about him. Like he had to have been the prime mover here. Like he was the talker and the other three were the listeners. But suppose he wasn’t the talker?”
    “So who was?”
    “We’ve been saying all along he wouldn’t have put himself on the line except for someone special. Someone he was obligated to somehow.”
    “But that’s back to saying he was the prime mover. With a client we can’t find.”
    “No, we’re imagining the hierarchy all wrong. It doesn’t necessarily go, first the client, then Franz, then the others helping Franz. I think Franz was actually lower down the pecking order. He wasn’t at the top of the tree. See what I mean? Suppose he was actually helping one of the others? Suppose he was a listener, not the talker? Suppose this whole thing is basically Orozco’s deal? For one of his clients? Or Sanchez’s? If they needed help, who were they going to call?”
    “Franz and Swan.”
    “Exactly. We’ve been wrong from the start. We need to reverse the paradigm. Suppose Franz got a panic call from Orozco or Sanchez? That’s certainly someone he regards as special. That’s someone he’s obligated to somehow. Not a client, but he can’t say no. He’s got to pitch in and help, no matter what Angela or Charlie think.”
    Silence in the room.
    Reacher said, “Orozco contacted Homeland Security. That’s difficult to do. And it’s the only really proactive thing we’ve seen so far. It’s more than Franz seems to have done.”
    O’Donnell said, “Mauney’s people think Orozco was dead before Franz. That might be significant.”
    “Yes,” Dixon said. “If this was Franz’s deal, why would he farm out the heavy-duty inquiries to Orozco? I imagine Franz was better equipped to handle them himself. That kind of proves the dynamic was flowing the other way, doesn’t it?”
    “It’s suggestive,” Reacher said. “But let’s not make the same mistake twice. It could have been Swan.”
    “Swan wasn’t working.”
    “Sanchez, then, not Orozco.”
    “More likely both of them together.”
    Neagley said, “Which would mean this was something based in Vegas, not here in LA. Could those numbers be something to do with casinos?”
    “Possibly,” Dixon said. “They could be house win percentages taking a hit after someone worked out a system.”
    “What kind of thing gets played nine or ten or twelve times a day?”
    “Practically anything. There’s no real minimum or maximum.”
    “Cards?”
    “Almost certainly, if we’re talking about a system.”
    O’Donnell nodded. “Six hundred and fifty unscheduled winning hands at an average of a hundred grand a time would get anyone’s attention.”
    Dixon said, “They wouldn’t let a guy win six hundred and fifty times for four months solid.”
    “So maybe it’s more than one guy. Maybe it’s a cartel.”
    Neagley said, “We have to go to Vegas.”
    Then Dixon’s room phone rang. She answered it. Her room, her phone. She listened for a second and handed the receiver to Reacher.
    “Curtis Mauney,” she said. “For you.”
    Reacher took the phone and said his name and Mauney said: “Andrew MacBride just got on a plane in Denver. He’s heading for