Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

my hand was a testimony to that. Spirenza had pulled in the FBI and the IRS. They’d searched every cent in every account for unexplained cash payments to the elusive shooter.
    They’d searched for a year and found nothing. On the way, they turned up a lot of unsavory stuff. Spirenza was convinced the guy had killed his wife. Plain beat her to death was his verdict. The guy had married again and Spirenza had faxed the local police department with a warning. The guy’s only son was a psychopath. Worse than his father, in Spirenza’s view. A stone-cold psychopath. The textile processor had protected his son every step of the way. Covered for him. Paid his way out of trouble. The boy had records from a dozen different institutions.
    But nothing would stick. New Orleans FBI had lost interest. Spirenza had closed the case. Forgotten all about it, until an old detective from an obscure Georgia jurisdiction had faxed him, asking for information on the Kliner family.

    FINLAY CLOSED HIS FILE. SPUN HIS BARBER CHAIR TO FACE mine.
    “The Kliner Foundation is bogus,” he said. “Totally bogus. It’s a cover for something else. It’s all here. Gray bust it wide open. Audited it from top to bottom. The Foundation is spending millions every year, but its audited income is zero. Precisely zero.”
    He selected a sheet from the file. Leaned over. Passed it over to me. It was a sort of balance sheet, showing the Foundation’s expenditures.
    “See that?” he said. “It’s incredible. That’s what they’re spending.”
    I looked at it. The sheet contained a huge figure. I nodded.
    “Maybe a lot more than that,” I said. “I’ve been down here five days, right? Prior to that I was all over the States for six months. Prior to that I was all over the world. Margrave is by far the cleanest, best maintained, most manicured place I’ve ever seen. It’s better looked after than the Pentagon or the White House. Believe me, I’ve been there. Everything in Margrave is either brand-new or else perfectly renovated. It’s completely perfect. It’s so perfect it’s frightening. That must cost an absolute fortune.”
    He nodded.
    “And Margrave is a very weird place,” I said. “It’s deserted most of the time. There’s no life. There’s practically no commercial activity in the whole town. Nothing ever goes on. Nobody is earning any money.”
    He looked blank. Didn’t follow.
    “Think about it,” I said. “Look at Eno’s, for example. Brand-new place. Gleaming, state-of-the-art diner. But he never has any customers. I’ve been in there a couple of times. There were never more than a couple of people in the place. The waitresses outnumber the customers. So how is Eno paying the bills? The overhead? The mortgage? Same goes for everywhere in town. Have you ever seen lines of customers rushing in and out of any of the stores?”
    Finlay thought about it. Shook his head.
    “Same goes for this barbershop,” I said. “I was in here Sunday morning and Tuesday morning. The old guy said they’d had no customers in between. No customers in forty-eight hours.”
    I stopped talking then. I thought about what else the old guy had said. That gnarled old barber. I suddenly thought about it in a new light.
    “The old barber,” I said. “He told me something. It was pretty weird. I thought he was crazy. I asked him how they make a living with no customers. He said they don’t need customers to make a living because of the money they get from the Kliner Foundation. So I said, what money? He said a thousand bucks. He said all the merchants get it. So I figured he meant some kind of a business grant, a thousand bucks a year, right?”
    Finlay nodded. Seemed about right to him.
    “I was just chatting,” I said. “Like you do in the barber’s chair. So I said a thousand bucks a year is OK, but it’s not going to keep the wolf from the door, something like that, right? You know what he said then?”
    He shook his head and waited. I concentrated on remembering the old guy’s exact words. I wanted to see if he would dismiss it as easily as I had done.
    “He made it sound like a big secret,” I said. “Like he was way out on a limb even to mention it. He was whispering to me. He said he shouldn’t tell me, but he would, because I knew his sister.”
    “You know his sister?” Finlay asked. Surprised.
    “No, I don’t,” I said. “He was acting very confused. On Sunday, I’d been asking him about Blind Blake, you