Never Go Back (36 page)

Reacher said, ‘Wait.’

Turner said, ‘For what?’

‘The Big Dog’s lawyer was in Studio City. Right on Ventura Boulevard. I remember from the affidavit.’

‘And?’

‘Maybe his locks and his alarm aren’t so great either.’

‘That’s a big step, Reacher. That’s a whole bunch of extra crimes right there.’

‘Let’s at least go take a look.’

‘I’ll be an accessory.’

‘You can have a veto,’ Reacher said. ‘Two thumbs on the button, like a nuclear launch.’

He turned left, and rolled down the road. Then a phone rang. A loud, electronic trill, like a demented songbird. Not his phone, and not Turner’s, but Rickard’s, from the back seat, next to his empty wallet.

FIFTY-FIVE

REACHER PULLED OVER
and squirmed around and picked up the phone. It was trilling loud, and vibrating in his hand. The screen said
Incoming Call
, which was superfluous information, given all the trilling and vibrating, but it also said
Shrago
, which was useful. Reacher opened the phone and held it to his ear and said, ‘Hello?’

A voice said, ‘Rickard?’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘Not Rickard.’

Silence.

Reacher said, ‘What were you thinking? A bunch of ware-housemen against the 110th MP? We’re three for three. It’s like batting practice. And you’re all that’s left. And you’re all alone now. And you’re next. How does that even feel?’

Silence.

Reacher said, ‘But they shouldn’t have put you in this position. It was unfair. I know that. I know what Pentagon people are like. I’m not unsympathetic. I can help you out.’

Silence.

Reacher said, ‘Tell me their names, go straight back to Bragg, and I’ll leave you alone.’

Silence. Then a fast
beep-beep-beep
in the earpiece, and
Call Ended
on the screen. Reacher tossed the phone back on the rear seat and said, ‘I’ll ask twice, but I won’t ask three times.’

They drove on, and then Studio City came at them, thick and fast. The boulevard was lined with enterprises, some of them in buildings all their own, some of them huddled together in strip malls, like the place in North Hollywood, with some of the buildings and some of the malls approached by shared service roads, and others standing behind parking lots all their own. Numbers were hard to see, because plenty of storefronts were dark. They made two premature turns, in and out of the wrong parking lots. But they found the right place soon enough. It was a lime-green mall, five units long. The Big Dog’s lawyer was in the centre unit.

Except he wasn’t.

The centre unit was occupied by a tax preparer. Se Habla Español, plus about a hundred other languages.

Turner said, ‘Things change in sixteen years. People retire.’

Reacher said nothing.

She said, ‘Are you sure this is the right address?’

‘You think I’m mistaken?’

‘You could be forgiven.’

‘Thank you, but I’m sure.’ Reacher moved closer, for a better look. The style of the place was not cutting edge. The signage and the messages and the boasts and the promises were all a little dated. The lawyer had not retired recently.

There was a light on in back.

‘On a timer,’ Turner said. ‘For security. No one is in there.’

‘It’s winter,’ Reacher said. ‘Tax time is starting. The guy is in there.’

‘And?’

‘We could talk to him.’

‘What about? Are you due a refund?’

‘He forwards the old guy’s mail, at least. Maybe he even knows him. Maybe the old guy is still the landlord.’

‘Maybe the old guy died ten years ago. Or moved to Wyoming.’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Reacher said. He stepped up and rapped hard on the glass. He said, ‘At this time of night it will work better if you do the talking.’

Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘Shrago tells me Reacher has Rickard’s phone. And therefore also his gun, I assume. And he knows they’re ware-housemen from Fort Bragg.’

Romeo said, ‘Because of Zadran’s bio. It was an easy connection to make.’

‘We’re down to the last man. We’re nearly defenceless.’

‘Shrago is worth something.’

‘Against them? We’ve lost three men.’

‘Are you worried?’

‘Of course I am. We’re losing.’

‘Do you have a suggestion?’

‘It’s time,’ Juliet said. ‘We know Reacher’s target. We should give Shrago permission.’

For a spell it looked like Turner was right, and there was no one there, just a light on a security timer, but Reacher kept on knocking, and eventually a guy stepped into view making shooing motions with his arms. To which Reacher replied with beckoning motions of his own, which produced a standoff, the guy miming
I don’t do night-time walkins
, and Reacher feeling like the kid in the movie that gets sent to the doctor’s house in the middle of the night, all
Come quickly, old Jeb got buried alive in a pile of W9s
. And the guy cracked first. He snorted in exasperation and set off stomping up his store’s centre aisle. He undid the lock and opened the door. He was a young Asian man. Early thirties, maybe. He was wearing grey pants and a red sweater vest.

He said, ‘What do you want?’

Turner said, ‘To apologize.’

‘For what?’

‘Interrupting you. We know your time is valuable. But we need five minutes of it. For which we’d be happy to pay you a hundred dollars.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Technically at the moment we work for the government.’

‘May I see ID?’

‘No.’

‘But you want to pay me a hundred dollars?’

‘Only if you have material information.’

‘On what subject?’

‘The lawyer that had this place before you.’

‘What about him?’

‘Congress requires us to verify certain types of information a minimum of five separate ways, and we’ve done four of them, so we’re hoping you can be number five tonight, so we can all go home.’

‘What type of information?’

‘First of all, we’re required to ask, purely as a formality, do you have personal knowledge whether the subject of our inquiry is alive or dead?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘And which is it?’

‘Alive.’

‘Good,’ Turner said. ‘That’s just a baseline thing. And all we need now is his full legal name and his current address.’

‘You should have come to me first, not fifth. I forward his mail.’

‘No, we tackle the hard ones early. Makes the day go better. Downhill, not up.’

‘I’ll write it down.’

‘Thank you,’ Turner said.

‘It has to be exact,’ Reacher said. ‘You know what Congress is like. If one guy puts Avenue and another guy puts A-v-e, it’s liable to get thrown out.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the guy said.

The lawyer’s full legal name was Martin Mitchell Ballantyne, and he hadn’t moved to Wyoming. His address was still Studio City, Los Angeles, California. Almost walking distance. Turner’s map showed it to be close to the Ventura end of Coldwater Canyon Drive. Maybe where the guy had lived all along.

In which case he had been a lousy lawyer. The address was a garden apartment, probably from the 1930s, which was eight decades of decay. It had been dowdy long ago. Now it was desperate. Dark green walls, like slime, and yellow light in the windows.

Turner said, ‘Don’t get your hopes up. He might refuse to see us. It’s kind of late to come calling.’

Reacher said, ‘His light is still on.’

‘And he might not remember a thing about it. It was sixteen years ago.’

‘Then we’re no worse off.’

‘Unless he calls it tampering with a prosecution witness.’

‘He should think of it as a deposition.’

‘Just don’t be surprised if he throws us out.’

‘He’s a lonely old guy. Nothing he wants more than a couple of visitors.’

Ballantyne neither threw them out nor looked happy to see them. He just stood at his door, rather passively, as if a lot of his life had been spent opening his door late in the LA evening, in response to urgent demands. He looked medium-sized and reasonably healthy, and not much over sixty. But he looked tired. And he had a very lugubrious manner. He had the look of a man who had taken on the world, and lost. He had a scar on his lip, which Reacher guessed was not the result of a surgical procedure. And behind him he had what Reacher took to be a wife. She looked just as glum, but less passive and more overtly hostile.

Reacher said, ‘We’d like to buy fifteen minutes of your time, Mr Ballantyne. How would a hundred bucks work for you?’

The guy said, ‘I no longer practise law. I no longer have a licence.’

‘Retired?’

‘Disbarred.’

‘When?’

‘Four years ago.’

‘It’s an old case we want to talk about.’

‘What’s your interest in it?’

‘We’re making a movie.’

‘How old is the case?’

‘Sixteen years.’

‘For a hundred bucks?’

‘It’s yours if you want it.’

‘Come in,’ the guy said. ‘We’ll see if I want it.’

They all four crabbed down a narrow hallway, and into a narrow living room, which had better furniture than Reacher expected, as if the Ballantynes had downsized from a better place. Four years ago, perhaps. Disbarred, maybe fined, maybe sued, maybe bankrupted.

Ballantyne said, ‘What if I can’t remember?’

‘You still get the money,’ Reacher said. ‘As long as you make an honest effort.’

‘What was the case?’

‘Sixteen years ago you wrote an affidavit for a client named Juan Rodriguez, also known as the Big Dog.’

Ballantyne leaned forward, all set to give it a hundred dollars’ worth of honest effort, but he got there within about a buck and a quarter.

He sat back again.

He said, ‘The thing with the army?’

Recognition in his voice. And some kind of misery. As if some bad thing had stirred, and come back from the dead. As if the thing with the army had brought him nothing but trouble.

‘Yes,’ Reacher said. ‘The thing with the army.’

‘And your interest in it is what, exactly?’

‘You used my name, where you had to fill in the blanks.’

‘You’re the guy?’ Ballantyne said. ‘In my house? Haven’t I suffered enough?’

And his wife said, ‘Get the hell out, right now.’ Which apparently she meant, because she kept on saying it, loud and clear and venomous, over and over again, with heavy emphasis on the
right now
. Which in terms of tone and content Reacher took as clear evidence that consent had been withdrawn, and that trespass had begun, and he had promised Turner two thumbs on the nuclear button, and he was a little mindful of the prosecution witness issue, so he got the hell out, right then, with Turner about a foot behind him. They walked back to the car and leaned on it and Turner said, ‘So it’s all about the filing system.’

Reacher nodded.

‘Fingers crossed,’ he said.

‘Are you going to use Sullivan?’

‘Would you?’

‘Definitely. She’s senior, and she’s right there at JAG, not stuck in HRC.’

‘Agreed,’ Reacher said.

He took out his phone and called Edmonds.

FIFTY-SIX

EDMONDS PICKED UP
, sleepy and a little impatient, and Reacher said, ‘Earlier tonight you told me Major Sullivan told you the office of the Secretary of the Army is pushing for a fast resolution of the Rodriguez issue.’

‘And you’ve woken me up in the middle of the night to give me another witty response?’

‘No, I need you to find out exactly who delivered that message to Major Sullivan, or at least which channel it came through.’

‘Thank you for thinking of me, but shouldn’t Major Sullivan handle this direct?’

‘She’s going to be very busy doing something else. This is very important, captain. And very urgent. I need it done early. So hit up everyone you know, everywhere. As early as you can. While they’re still on the treadmill, or whatever it is people do in the morning.’

Reacher patted his pockets and found Sullivan’s personal cell number, on the torn-in-half scratch pad page that Leach had given him. He dialled, and counted the ring tones. She picked up after six, which he thought was pretty good. A light sleeper, apparently.

She said, ‘Hello?’

‘This is Jack Reacher,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

‘How could I forget? We need to talk.’

‘We are talking.’

‘About your situation.’

‘Later, OK? Right now we have stuff to do.’

‘Right now? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘Either right now or as soon as possible. Depending on your level of access.’

‘To what?’

‘I just spoke with the lawyer who did the Big Dog’s affidavit.’

‘On the phone?’

‘Face to face.’

‘That was completely inappropriate.’

‘It was a very short conversation. We left when requested.’

‘We?’

‘Major Turner is with me. An officer of equal rank and equal ability. An independent witness. She heard it too. Like a second opinion.’

‘Heard what?’

‘Does your legal archive have a computer search function?’

‘Of course it does.’

‘So if I typed
Reacher, complaint against
, what would I get?’

‘Exactly what you got, basically. The Big Dog’s affidavit, or similar.’

‘Is the search fast and reliable?’

‘Did you really wake me up in the middle of the night to talk about computers?’

‘I need information.’

‘The system is pretty fast. Not a very intuitive search protocol, but it’s capable of taking you straight to an individual document.’

‘I mentioned the case to the lawyer and he remembered it immediately. He called it the thing with the army. Then he asked me what my interest was, and I told him, and he said, haven’t I suffered enough?’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘You had to be there to hear it. It was all in his tone of voice. The Big Dog affidavit was not just a complaint he mailed in and forgot about. It was not routine. It was a
thing
. It was a whole story, with a beginning, and a middle, and an end. And I’m guessing it was a bad end. That’s what we heard. He made it sound like a negative episode in his life. He was looking back on it, with regret.’