Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

He stepped up and rapped hard on the glass. He said, ‘At this time of night it will work better if you do the talking.’

    Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘Shrago tells me Reacher has Rickard’s phone. And therefore also his gun, I assume. And he knows they’re ware-housemen from Fort Bragg.’
    Romeo said, ‘Because of Zadran’s bio. It was an easy connection to make.’
    ‘We’re down to the last man. We’re nearly defenceless.’
    ‘Shrago is worth something.’
    ‘Against them? We’ve lost three men.’
    ‘Are you worried?’
    ‘Of course I am. We’re losing.’
    ‘Do you have a suggestion?’
    ‘It’s time,’ Juliet said. ‘We know Reacher’s target. We should give Shrago permission.’

    For a spell it looked like Turner was right, and there was no one there, just a light on a security timer, but Reacher kept on knocking, and eventually a guy stepped into view making shooing motions with his arms. To which Reacher replied with beckoning motions of his own, which produced a standoff, the guy miming I don’t do night-time walk-ins , and Reacher feeling like the kid in the movie that gets sent to the doctor’s house in the middle of the night, all Come quickly, old Jeb got buried alive in a pile of W9s . And the guy cracked first. He snorted in exasperation and set off stomping up his store’s centre aisle. He undid the lock and opened the door. He was a young Asian man. Early thirties, maybe. He was wearing grey pants and a red sweater vest.
    He said, ‘What do you want?’
    Turner said, ‘To apologize.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘Interrupting you. We know your time is valuable. But we need five minutes of it. For which we’d be happy to pay you a hundred dollars.’
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Technically at the moment we work for the government.’
    ‘May I see ID?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But you want to pay me a hundred dollars?’
    ‘Only if you have material information.’
    ‘On what subject?’
    ‘The lawyer that had this place before you.’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘Congress requires us to verify certain types of information a minimum of five separate ways, and we’ve done four of them, so we’re hoping you can be number five tonight, so we can all go home.’
    ‘What type of information?’
    ‘First of all, we’re required to ask, purely as a formality, do you have personal knowledge whether the subject of our inquiry is alive or dead?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘And which is it?’
    ‘Alive.’
    ‘Good,’ Turner said. ‘That’s just a baseline thing. And all we need now is his full legal name and his current address.’
    ‘You should have come to me first, not fifth. I forward his mail.’
    ‘No, we tackle the hard ones early. Makes the day go better. Downhill, not up.’
    ‘I’ll write it down.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Turner said.
    ‘It has to be exact,’ Reacher said. ‘You know what Congress is like. If one guy puts Avenue and another guy puts A-v-e, it’s liable to get thrown out.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ the guy said.

    The lawyer’s full legal name was Martin Mitchell Ballantyne, and he hadn’t moved to Wyoming. His address was still Studio City, Los Angeles, California. Almost walking distance. Turner’s map showed it to be close to the Ventura end of Coldwater Canyon Drive. Maybe where the guy had lived all along.
    In which case he had been a lousy lawyer. The address was a garden apartment, probably from the 1930s, which was eight decades of decay. It had been dowdy long ago. Now it was desperate. Dark green walls, like slime, and yellow light in the windows.
    Turner said, ‘Don’t get your hopes up. He might refuse to see us. It’s kind of late to come calling.’
    Reacher said, ‘His light is still on.’
    ‘And he might not remember a thing about it. It was sixteen years ago.’
    ‘Then we’re no worse off.’
    ‘Unless he calls it tampering with a prosecution witness.’
    ‘He should think of it as a deposition.’
    ‘Just don’t be surprised if he throws us out.’
    ‘He’s a lonely old guy. Nothing he wants more than a couple of visitors.’

    Ballantyne neither threw them out nor looked happy to see them. He just stood at his door, rather passively, as if a lot of his life had been spent opening his door late in the LA evening, in response to urgent demands. He looked medium-sized and reasonably healthy, and not much over sixty. But he looked tired. And he had a very lugubrious manner. He had the