"Left-handed, too," O'Donnell said. "I hope you noticed that."
"You're right-handed."
"I was falling on my right arm."
"Outstanding," Reacher said.
"What did you hear?"
"The slide. It's an evolution thing. Like a predator stepping on a twig."
"So there's an advantage in being closer to the cavemen than the rest of us."
"You bet there is."
"But who does that? Attacks without a round in the chamber?"
Reacher stepped away and looked down for a full-length view.
"I think I recognize him," he said.
"How could you?" Dixon asked. "His own mother wouldn't know him."
"The suit," Reacher said. "I think I saw it before."
"Here?"
"I don't know. Somewhere. I can't remember."
"Think hard."
O'Donnell said, "I never saw that suit before."
"Me either," Neagley said.
"Nor me," Dixon said. "But whatever, it's a good sign, isn't it? Nobody tried to shoot us in LA. We must be getting close."
Reacher tossed the guy's gun and car keys to Neagley and broke down a section of the construction site's fence. He hauled the guy through the gap as fast as he could, to minimize the blood smear. The guy was still leaking a little. Reacher dragged him across rough ground past tall piles of gravel until he found a wide trench built up with plywood formwork. The trench was about eight feet deep. The bottom was lined with gravel. The formwork was there to mold concrete for a foundation. Reacher rolled the guy into the trench. He fell eight feet and crunched on the stones and settled heavily, half on his side.
"Find shovels," Reacher said. "We need to cover him with more gravel."
Dixon said, "Is he dead yet?"
"Who cares?"
O'Donnell said, "We should put him on his back. That way we need less gravel."
"You volunteering?" Reacher said.
"I've got a good suit on. And I did all the hard work so far."
So Reacher shrugged and vaulted down into the pit. Kicked the guy onto his back and stamped him flat and got him partway embedded in the gravel that was already there. Then he hauled himself back out and O'Donnell handed him a shovel. Between them they had to make ten trips to the gravel pile before the guy was adequately hidden. Neagley found a standpipe and unrolled a hose and turned on the water. She rinsed the sidewalk and chased watery blood into the gutter. Then she waited and followed the others out backward and hosed away their footprints from the construction site's sand. Reacher pulled the fence back into shape. Turned a full circle and checked the view. Not perfect, but reasonable. He knew there would be plenty a competent CSI team could get its teeth into, but there was nothing that would attract anyone's attention in the short term. They had a margin of safety. A few hours, at least. Maybe longer. Maybe concrete would get poured right at the start of the work day and the guy would become just one more missing person. Not the only person missing in a building's foundation, he guessed, in Las Vegas.
He breathed out.
"OK," he said. "Now we take the rest of the night off."
They dusted themselves down and formed up and resumed their walk down the Strip, slowly, four abreast, ready to relax. But Wright was waiting for them in the hotel lobby. The house security manager. For a Vegas guy, he didn't have a great poker face. It was clear that he was uptight about something.
47
Wright hurried over to them when they came in and led them away to the same quiet corner of the lobby that they had used before.
"Azhari Mahmoud isn't in any Las Vegas hotel," he said. "That's definitive. Also negative on Andrew MacBride and Anthony Matthews."
Reacher nodded.
"Thanks for checking," he said.
Wright said, "And I made a few panic calls to my opposite numbers. Better that than lying awake all night, worrying. And you know what I found? You guys are completely full of shit. No way is this town down sixty-five million dollars in the last four months. It just isn't happening."
"Can you be sure?"
Wright nodded. "We all ran emergency cash-flow audits. And there's nothing going on. The usual bits and pieces, that's all. Nothing else. I'm going to send you my Prozac bill. I practically overdosed tonight."
***
They found a bar off the lobby and bought one another beers and sat in a line in front of four idle slots. Reacher's was simulating a big jackpot win, over and over again, like a tempting advertisement. Four reels were clicking to a stop on four cherries and lights were flashing and strobing and chasing themselves all over the front. Four reels, eight symbols on each. Astronomical odds, even without the microprocessor's covert intervention. Reacher tried to calculate the tonnage of quarters a player would need to get through before he could expect his first win. But he didn't know exactly how much a quarter weighed. Some small fraction of an ounce, obviously, which would add up fast. Tendon damage would be involved, muscle strain, repetitive stress injury. He wondered if casino owners had stock in orthopedic clinics. Probably.
Dixon said, "Wright already figured it would have to be industrial-scale scamming. He came right out and said so. Dealers, pit bosses, security guys, cameras, tapes, cashiers. It's not much more of a leap to imagine that apparent cash flow could be massaged. They could have installed a phony program that makes everything look kosher for as long as they need it to. It's exactly what I would do."
Reacher asked, "When would they find out?"
"When they do their books at the end of their financial year. By that point the money is either there or it's not."
"How would Sanchez and Orozco find out ahead of that?"
"Maybe they tapped in lower down the food chain and extrapolated backward."
"Who would need to be involved?"
"Key people."
"Like Wright himself?"
"Possibly," Dixon said.
O'Donnell said, "We talked to him and a half-hour later someone was trying to shoot us in the back."
"We need to find Sanchez's friend," Neagley said. "Before someone else does."
"We can't," Reacher said. "No bar is going to give out a girl's address to a bunch of complete strangers."
"We could tell them she's in danger."
"Like they haven't heard that before."
"Some other way," Dixon said. "The UPS thing."
"We don't have her second name."
"So what do we do?"
"We suck it up and wait for morning."
"Should we move hotels? If Wright could be a bad guy?"
"No point. He'll have buddies all over town. Just lock your door."
Reacher followed his own advice when he got back to his room. He clicked the security lever and put the chain on. No real defense against a determined opponent, but it would buy a second or two, and a second or two was generally all that Reacher needed.
He put the Hardballer in the bedside drawer. Put his clothes under the mattress to press and took a long hot shower. Then he started thinking about Karla Dixon.
She was alone.
Maybe she didn't like that.
Maybe she would appreciate a little safety in numbers.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded over to the phone. But before he got to it there was a knock at his door. He changed course. Ignored the peephole. He didn't like to put his eye to the glass undefended. Easiest thing in the world for an assailant in the corridor to wait for the lens to darken and then fire a large-caliber handgun straight through it. Such a move would make a hell of a mess. The bullet, plus shards and fragments of glass and steel, all of them through the eye and into the brain and out the back of the skull. Peepholes were a very bad idea, in Reacher's opinion.