The Hard Way

the naked city.”
    Pauling said, “We’re nowhere.”

CHAPTER 43
    REACHER LED PAULING north on Hudson, across Houston, to the block between Clarkson and Leroy. He said, “I think the man with no tongue lives near this spot.”
    “Twenty thousand people live near this spot,” Pauling said.
    Reacher didn’t reply.
    “What now?” Pauling said.
    “Back to the hard way. We wasted some time, that’s all. Wasted some energy. My fault entirely. I was stupid.”
    “How?”
    “Did you see how Hobart was dressed?”
    “Cheap new denims.”
    “The guy I saw driving the cars away was wearing old denims. Both times. Old, soft, washed, worn, faded, comfortable denims. The Soviet super said the same thing. And the old Chinese man. No way was the guy I saw just back from Africa. Or back from anywhere. It takes ages to get jeans and a shirt looking like that. The guy I saw has been safe at home for five years doing his laundry, not jammed up in some hellhole jail.”
    Pauling said nothing.
    “You can split now,” Reacher said. “You got what you wanted. Anne Lane wasn’t your fault. She was dead before you ever even heard of her. You can sleep at night.”
    “But not well. Because I can’t touch Edward Lane. Hobart’s testimony is meaningless.”
    “Because it’s hearsay?”
    “Hearsay is sometimes OK. Knight’s dying declaration would be admissible, because the court would assume he had no motive to lie from his deathbed.”
    “So what’s the problem?”
    “There was no dying declaration. There were dozens of random fantasies spun over a four-year period. Hobart chose to back one of them, that’s all. And he freely admits that both he and Knight were as good as insane most of the time. I’d be laughed out of court, literally.”
    “But you believed him.”
    Pauling nodded. “No question.”
    “So you can settle for half a loaf. Patti Joseph, too. I’ll drop by and tell her.”
    “Would you be happy with half a loaf?”
    “I said you can split. Not me. I’m not quitting yet. My agenda is getting longer and longer by the minute.”
    “I’ll stick with it, too.”
    “Your choice.”
    “I know. You want me to?”
    Reacher looked at her. Answered honestly. “Yes, I do.”
    “Then I will.”
    “Just don’t get all scrupulous on me. This thing isn’t going to be settled in any court of law with any dying declarations.”
    “How is it going to be settled?”
    “The first colonel I really fell out with, I shot him in the head. And so far I like Lane a lot less than that guy. That guy was practically a saint compared to Lane.”
    “I’ll come with you to Patti Joseph’s.”
    “No, I’ll meet you there,” Reacher said. “Two hours from now. We should travel separately.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m going to try to get killed.”

----

    Pauling said she would be in the Majestic’s lobby in two hours and headed for the subway. Reacher started walking north on Hudson, not fast, not slow, center of the left-hand sidewalk. Twelve stories above him and ten yards behind his left shoulder was a north-facing window. It had heavy black cloth taped behind it. The cloth had been peeled back across a quarter of its width to make a tall narrow slit, as if a person in the room had wanted at least a partial view of the city.

----

    Reacher crossed Morton, and Barrow, and Christopher. On West 10th he started zigzagging through the narrow tree-lined Village streets, east for a block, then north, then west, then north again. He made it to the bottom of Eighth Avenue and walked north for a spell and then started zigzagging again where the Chelsea side streets were quiet. He stopped in the lee of a brownstone’s front steps and bent down and retied his shoes. Walked on and stopped again behind a big square plastic trash bin and studied something on the ground. At West 23rd Street he turned east and then north again on Eighth. Stuck to the center of the left-hand sidewalk and slow-marched onward. Patti Joseph and the Majestic lay a little more than two miles ahead in a dead-straight line, and he had a whole hour to get there.

----

    Thirty minutes later at Columbus Circle, Reacher entered Central Park. Daylight was fading. Shadows had been long, but now they were indistinct. The air was still warm. Reacher stuck to the paths for a spell and then he stepped off and walked a haphazard and unofficial route through the trees. He stopped and leaned against one trunk, facing north. Then another, facing east. He got