Tripwire

carried the garment bag over to the Cadillac. He locked it into the trunk and walked around to the driver’s door. Slid inside and leaned over with his left hand and fired it up. Squealed around the garage and up into the daylight. He drove south on Fifth, carefully averting his eyes until he was clear of the park and safe in the bustling canyons of Midtown.
    He leased three bays under the World Trade Center, but the Suburban was gone, and the Tahoe was gone, so they were all empty when he arrived. He put the Cadillac in the middle slot and left the garment bag in the trunk. He figured he would drive the Cadillac to LaGuardia and abandon it in the long-term parking lot. Then he would take a cab to JFK, carrying the bag, looking like any other transfer passenger in a hurry. The car would sit there until the weeds grew up under it, and if anybody ever got suspicious they would comb through the LaGuardia manifests, not JFK’s. It meant writing off the Cadillac along with the lease on the offices, but he was always comfortable about spending money when he got value for it, and saving his life was about the best value he could think of getting.
    He used the express elevator from the garage and was in his brass-and-oak reception area ninety seconds later. Tony was behind the chest-high counter, drinking coffee, looking tired.
    “Boat?” Hobie asked him.
    Tony nodded. “It’s at the broker’s. They’ll wire the money. They want to replace the rail, where that asshole damaged it with the cleaver. I told them OK, just deduct it from the proceeds.”
    Hobie nodded back. “What else?”
    Tony smiled, at an apparent irony. “We got more money to move. The first interest payment just came in from the Stone account. Eleven thousand dollars, right on time. Conscientious little asshole, isn’t he?”
    Hobie smiled back. “Robbing Peter to pay Paul, only now Peter and Paul are the same damn guy. Wire it down to the islands at start of business, OK?”
    Tony nodded and read a note. “Simon called from Hawaii again. They made the plane. Right now they’re over the Grand Canyon somewhere.”
    “Has Newman found it yet?” Hobie asked.
    Tony shook his head. “Not yet. He’s going to start looking this morning. Reacher pushed him into doing it. Sounds like a smart guy.”
    “Not smart enough,” Hobie said. “Hawaii’s five hours behind, right?”
    “It’ll be this afternoon. Call it he starts at nine, spends a couple of hours looking, that’s four o’clock our time. We’ll be out of here.”
    Hobie smiled again. “I told you it would work out. Didn’t I tell you it would work out? Didn’t I tell you to relax and let me do the thinking?”
    REACHER WOKE UP at seven o’clock on his watch, which was still set to St. Louis time as far as he could remember, which made it three o’clock in the morning back in Hawaii, and six in Arizona or Colorado or wherever they were seven miles above, and already eight in New York. He stretched in his seat and stood up and stepped over Jodie’s feet. She was curled in her chair, and a stewardess had covered her with a thin plaid blanket. She was fast asleep, breathing slow, her hair over her face. He stood in the aisle for a moment and watched her sleep. Then he went for a walk.
    He walked through business class, and on into coach. The lights were dimmed and it got more crowded the farther back he walked. The tiny seats were packed with people huddled under blankets. There was a smell of dirty clothes. He walked right down to the rear of the plane and looped around through the galley past a quiet huddle of cabin staff leaning on the aluminum lockers. He walked back up the other aisle, through coach, into business class. He paused there a second and scanned the passengers. There were men and women in suits, jackets discarded, ties pulled down. There were laptop computers open. Briefcases stood on unoccupied seats, bulging with folders with plastic covers and comb bindings. Reading lights were focused on tray tables. Some of the people were still working, late in the night or early in the morning, depending on where you measured it from.
    He guessed these were middle-ranking people. A long way from the bottom, but nowhere near the top. In Army terms, these were the majors and the colonels. They were the civilian equivalents of himself. He had finished a major, and might be a colonel now if he’d stayed in uniform. He leaned on a bulkhead and looked at the backs of the bent