Bad Luck and Trouble

figured you’d take United. You must hate Alaska Airlines. Then a cab ride here. Your ETA was easy enough to predict.”
    “You knew I would come here? To this diner?”
    “Like you taught me, back in the day.”
    “I didn’t teach you anything.”
    “You did,” Neagley said. “Remember? Think like them, be them. So I was being you being me. You’d figure I’d head for Hollywood. You’d start right here on Sunset. But there’s no meal on United from Portland, so I figured you’d be hungry and want to eat first. There are a couple of possible places on the block but this one has the biggest sign and you’re no gourmet. So I decided to meet you here.”
    “Meet me here? I thought I was tracking you.”
    “You were. And I was tracking you tracking me.”
    “ Are you staying here? In Hollywood?”
    She shook her head. “Beverly Hills. The Wilshire.”
    “So you came out here just to scoop me up?”
    “I got here ten minutes ago.”
    “The Beverly Wilshire? You’ve changed.”
    “Not really. It’s the world that has changed. Cheap motels don’t do it for me anymore. I need e-mail and the internet and FedEx service now. Business centers and concierges.”
    “You make me feel old-fashioned.”
    “You’re improving. You use ATMs now.”
    “That was a good move. The bank balance message.”
    “You taught me well.”
    “I didn’t teach you anything.”
    “Like hell.”
    “But it was an extravagant move,” Reacher said. “Ten dollars and thirty cents would have worked just as well. Maybe even better, with the period between the ten and the thirty.”
    Neagley said, “I thought you might need the airfare.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “I found your account, obviously,” Neagley said. “Wasn’t too much more trouble to hack in and take a look. You’re not rich.”
    “I don’t want to be rich.”
    “I know. But I didn’t want you to have to respond to my ten-thirty on your own dime. That wouldn’t have been fair.”
    Reacher shrugged and let it go. Truth was, he wasn’t rich. Truth was, he was almost poor. His savings had eroded to the point where he was starting to think about how to boost them back up again. Maybe a couple of months of casual labor were in his future. Or some other kind of a score. The waitress came over with menus. Neagley ordered without looking, a cheeseburger and a soda. Reacher matched her for speed, tuna melt and hot coffee. The waitress retrieved the menus and went away.
    Reacher said, “So are you going to tell me what your ten-thirty was for exactly?”
    Neagley answered him by leaning down and pulling a black three-ring binder out of a tote bag on the floor. She passed it across the table. It was a copy of an autopsy report.
    “Calvin Franz is dead,” she said. “I think someone threw him out of an airplane.”

6
    The past, which meant the army. Calvin Franz had been an MP and Reacher’s exact contemporary and pretty much his equal all the way through his thirteen years of service. They had met here and there in the way that brother officers often tended to, rubbing shoulders in different parts of the world for a day or two at a time, consulting on the phone, crossing paths when two or more investigations had tangled or collided. Then they had done a serious spell together in Panama. Quality time. It had been very short but very intense, and they had seen things in each other that left them feeling more like real brothers than brother officers. After Reacher had been rehabilitated from his temporary demotion disgrace and given the special investigations operation to build, Franz’s name had been near the top of his personnel wish list. They had spent the next two years together in a real unit-within-a-unit hothouse. They had become fast friends. Then as often happened in the army, new orders had come in and the special operation had been disbanded and Reacher had never seen Franz again.
    Until that moment, in an autopsy photograph punched into a three-ring binder laid flat on a sticky laminate table in a cheap diner.
    In life Franz had been smaller than Reacher but bigger than most other people. Maybe six-three and two-ten. Powerful upper body, low waist, short legs. Primitive, in a way. Like a caveman. But overall he had been reasonably handsome. He had been calm, resolute, capable, relaxing to be around. His manner had tended to reassure people.
    He looked awful in the autopsy photograph. He was laid out flat and naked on a stainless tray and the