The Hard Way

and stood aside to let Pauling get a good look.
    “Just like you told me,” Pauling said. “Uninhabitable. No floors.”
    “You up for a trip down the ladder?”
    “Why me?”
    “Because if I’m wrong I might just give up and stay down there forever.”
    Pauling craned in and took a look at the ladder. It was right there where it had been before, propped to the right, steeply angled, leaning on the narrow piece of wall that separated the window and the door.
    “I did worse at Quantico,” she said. “But that was a long time ago.”
    Reacher said, “It’s only ten feet if you fall.”
    “Thanks.” She turned around and backed up to the void. Reacher took her right hand in his and she sidled left and swung her left foot and left hand onto the ladder. Got steady and let Reacher’s hand go and paused a beat and climbed down into the dark. The ladder bounced and rattled a little and then he heard the crunch and rustle of trash as she hit bottom and stepped off.
    “It’s filthy down here,” she called.
    “Sorry,” he said.
    “There could be rats.”
    “Use the flashlight.”
    “Will that scare them off?”
    “No, but you’ll see them coming.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    He leaned in over the pit and saw her flashlight beam stab the gloom. She called, “Where am I going?”
    “Head for the front of the building. Directly underneath the door.”
    The flashlight beam leveled out and established a direction and jerked forward. The basement walls had been whitewashed years before with some kind of lime compound and they reflected a little light. Reacher could see deep drifts of garbage everywhere. Paper, cartons, piles of unidentifiable rotted matter.
    Pauling reached the front wall. The flashlight beam stabbed upward and she located the door above her. She moved left a little and lined herself up directly beneath it.
    “Look down now,” Reacher called. “What do you see?”
    The beam stabbed downward. Short range, very bright.
    “I see trash,” Pauling called.
    Reacher called, “Look closer. They might have bounced.”
    “What might have bounced?”
    “Dig around and you’ll see. I hope.”
    The flashlight beam traced a small random circle. Then a wider one. Then it stopped dead and held steady.
    “OK,” Pauling called. “Now I see. But how the hell did you know?”
    Reacher said nothing. Pauling held still for a second longer and then bent down. Stood up again with her hands held high. In her right hand was the flashlight. In her left hand were two sets of car keys, one for a Mercedes Benz and one for a BMW.

CHAPTER 50
    PAULING WADED THROUGH the garbage back to the base of the ladder and tossed the keys up to Reacher. He caught them one-handed, left and then right. Both sets were on chrome split rings and both had black leather fobs decorated with enamel car badges. The three-pointed Mercedes star, the blue and white BMW propeller. Both had a single large car key and a remote clicker. He blew dust and fragments of trash off them and put them in his pocket. Then he leaned in over the void and caught Pauling’s arm and hauled her off the ladder to the safety of the alley. She brushed herself down and kicked the air hard to get trash off her shoes.
    “So?” she said.
    “We’re one for one,” he said.
    He closed the dull red door and put his arm back through the hole in the window glass and hugged the wall again and clicked the lock from the inside. Extricated himself carefully and tested the knob. It was solid. Safe.
    “This whole thing with the mail slot was a pure decoy,” he said. “Just a piece of nonsense designed to distract attention. The guy already had keys. He had spares from the file cabinet in Lane’s office. There was a whole bunch of car stuff in there. Some of the valet keys were filed away and some of them were missing.”
    “So you were right about the time.”
    Reacher nodded. “The guy was in the apartment above the café. Sitting on the chair, looking out the window. He watched Gregory park at eleven-forty and watched him walk away but he didn’t follow him down here to Spring Street. He didn’t need to. He didn’t give a damn about Spring Street. He just came out his door and crossed Sixth Avenue and used the valet key from his pocket. Immediately, much closer to eleven-forty than midnight.”
    “Same thing with the blue BMW the second morning.”
    “Exactly the same thing,” Reacher said. “I watched the damn door for twenty minutes and he never came