Running Blind (The Visitor)

side.
    Reacher paused in the doorway. Not too difficult to work out which chair was his. He looped around the end of the table and sat down in it. It was flimsy. The legs squirmed under his weight and the plastic dug into the muscle under his shoulder blades. The room was cinder block, painted gray like the first one, but this ceiling was finished. There was stained acoustic tile in warped framing. There was track lighting bolted to it, with large can-shaped fixtures angled down and toward him. The tabletop was cheap mahogany, thickly lacquered with shiny varnish. The light bounced off the varnish and came up into his eyes from below.
    The two junior agents had taken up position against the walls at opposite ends of the table, like sentries. Their jackets were open and their shoulder holsters were visible. Their hands were folded comfortably at their waists. Their heads were turned, watching him. Opposite him, the two teams were forming up. Seven chairs, five people. The gray-haired guy took the center chair. The light caught his eyeglasses and turned them into blank mirrors. Next to him on his right-hand side was the guy with the blood pressure, and next to him was the woman, and next to her was the sandy guy. The guy with the lean face and the shirtsleeves was alone in the middle chair of the left-hand three. A lop-sided inquisition, hunching toward him, indistinct through the glare of the lights.
    The gray-haired guy leaned forward, sliding his forearms onto the shiny wood, claiming authority. And subconsciously separating the factions to his left and right.
    “We’ve been squabbling over you,” he said.
    “Am I in custody?” Reacher asked.
    The guy shook his head. “No, not yet.”
    “So I’m free to go?”
    The guy looked over the top of his eyeglasses. “Well, we’d rather you stayed right here, so we can keep this whole thing civilized for a spell.”
    There was silence for a long moment.
    “So make it civilized,” Reacher said. “I’m Jack Reacher. Who the hell are you?”
    “What?”
    “Let’s have some introductions. That’s what civilized people do, right? They introduce themselves. Then they chat politely about the Yankees or the stock market or something.”
    More silence. Then the guy nodded.
    “I’m Alan Deerfield,” he said. “Assistant Director, FBI. I run the New York Field Office.”
    Then he turned his head to his right and stared at the sandy guy on the end of the line and waited.
    “Special Agent Tony Poulton,” the sandy guy said, and glanced to his left.
    “Special Agent Julia Lamarr,” the woman said, and glanced to her left.
    “Agent-in-Charge Nelson Blake,” the guy with the blood pressure said. “The three of us are up here from Quantico. I run the Serial Crimes Unit. Special Agents Lamarr and Poulton work for me there. We came up here to talk to you.”
    There was a pause and the guy called Deerfield turned the other way and looked toward the man on his left.
    “Agent-in-Charge James Cozo,” the guy said. “Organized Crime, here in New York City, working on the protection rackets.”
    More silence.
    “OK now?” Deerfield asked.
    Reacher squinted through the glare. They were all looking at him. The sandy guy, Poulton. The woman, Lamarr. The hypertensive, Blake. All three of them from Serial Crimes down in Quantico. Up here to talk to him . Then Deerfield, the New York Bureau chief, a heavyweight. Then the lean guy, Cozo, from Organized Crime, working on the protection rackets . He glanced slowly left to right, and right to left, and finished up back on Deerfield. Then he nodded.
    “OK,” he said. “Pleased to meet you all. So what about those Yankees? You think they need to trade?”
    Five different people facing him, five different expressions of annoyance. Poulton turned his head like he had been slapped. Lamarr snorted, a contemptuous sound in her nose. Blake tightened his mouth and got redder. Deerfield stared and sighed. Cozo glanced sideways at Deerfield, lobbying for intervention.
    “We’re not going to talk about the Yankees,” Deerfield said.
    “So what about the Dow? We going to see a big crash anytime soon?”
    Deerfield shook his head. “Don’t mess with me, Reacher. Right now I’m the best friend you got.”
    “No, Ernesto A. Miranda is the best friend I got,” Reacher said. “Miranda versus Arizona, Supreme Court decision in June of 1966. They said his Fifth Amendment rights were infringed because the cops didn’t warn him he