The Hard Way

he wasn’t old. There was a lightness there. A kind of nimbleness in his voice. Maybe he was a small guy.”
    “Like a Special Forces veteran.”
    “Possibly.”
    “Unworried and in command makes him sound like the prime mover here. Not like a sidekick.”
    Reacher nodded. “Good point. I felt that way, listening to him. It was like he was calling the shots. Like an equal partner, at the very least.”
    “So who the hell is he?”
    “If your Pentagon guy hadn’t told us different I’d say it was both of Hobart and Knight, both still alive, back here together, working together.”
    “But it isn’t,” Pauling said. “My Pentagon guy wouldn’t get that kind of thing wrong.”
    “So whichever one came back alive picked up a new partner.”
    “One that he trusts,” Pauling said. “And he did it real fast.”
    Reacher gazed over at the hydrant. Traffic obscured his view in waves, held back and then released by the light at Houston.
    “Would a remote clicker work at this distance?” he asked.
    “For a car?” Pauling said. “Maybe. I guess it would depend on the car. Why?”
    “After Burke switched the bag I heard a sound like car doors locking. I guess the guy did it from up there in his room. He was watching. He didn’t want to leave the money in an unlocked car for a second longer than he had to.”
    “Sensible.”
    Reacher paused a beat. “But you know what isn’t sensible? Why was he up there in the room at all?”
    “We know why he was up there.”
    “No, why was
he
up there and not the other guy? We’ve got two guys here, one can talk and the other can’t. Why would the guy who can’t talk go rent the apartment? Anyone who comes into contact with him isn’t going to forget him in a hurry. And what’s an observation point for anyway? It’s for command and control. As the visible situation develops the observer is supposed to issue a stream of orders and adjustments. But this guy couldn’t even get on a cell phone. What do we suppose happened exactly, the first two times with Gregory? The guy is upstairs, he sees Gregory park, what can he do? He can’t even get on the phone and tell his partner to stand by down at Spring Street.”
    “Text messaging,” Pauling said.
    “What’s that?”
    “You can send written words by cell phone.”
    “When did
that
start?”
    “Years ago.”
    “OK,” Reacher said. “Live and learn.” Then he said, “But I still don’t see why they sent the guy who couldn’t talk to meet with the building super.”
    “Neither do I,” Pauling said.
    “Or to run the OP. It would make more sense if he had been on the other end of the phone. He can’t talk, but he can listen.”
    Silence for a moment.
    “What next?” Pauling asked.
    “Hard work,” Reacher said. “You up for it?”
    “Are you hiring me?”
    “No, you’re putting whatever else you’re doing on hold and you’re volunteering. Because if we do this right you’ll find out what happened to Anne Lane five years ago. No more sleepless nights.”
    “Unless I find out five years ago was for real. Then I might never sleep again.”
    “Life’s a gamble,” Reacher said. “It wouldn’t be so much fun otherwise.”
    Pauling was quiet for a long moment.
    “OK,” she said. “I’m volunteering.”
    Reacher said, “So go hassle our Soviet pal again. Get the chair. They bought it within the last week. We’ll walk it over to the Bowery and find out where it came from. Maybe the new buddy picked it out. Maybe someone will remember him.”

CHAPTER 32
    REACHER CARRIED THE chair in his hand like a bag and he and Pauling walked together east. South of Houston the Bowery had organized itself into a sequence of distinct retail areas. Like a string of unofficial malls. There were electrical supplies, and lighting fixtures, and used office gear, and industrial kitchen equipment, and restaurant front-of-house outlets. Reacher liked the Bowery. It was his kind of a street.
    The chair in his hand was fairly generic, but it had a certain number of distinguishing characteristics. Impossible to describe it a moment after closing the door on it, but with it right there for direct comparison a match might be found. They started with the northernmost of six separate chaotic establishments. Less than a hundred yards of real estate, but if someone buys a used dining chair in Manhattan, chances are he buys it somewhere in that hundred yards.
    Put the good stuff in the store window
was the usual retail