They changed at the motel and spent ten minutes in the lounge storing one another's numbers in their phones and learning how to set up conference calls. Then they headed north and west to Van Nuys Boulevard, looking for cars. All cities had at least one strip full of auto dealers, and LA had more than one. LA had many. But O'Donnell had heard that Van Nuys north of the Ventura Freeway was the best of them all. And he had heard right. It was a cornucopia. Unlimited choice, new or pre-owned, cheap or expensive, no awkward questions. Four hours after they arrived, most of Neagley's automotive budget was gone and they owned four used Hondas. Two slammed Civics and two slammed Preludes, two silver and two white. All four were beat up and well on their way to being worn out. But they started and stopped and steered, and no one would give them a second glance.
Including the captured Chrysler, they had five cars to ferry back to Sunset, but only four drivers, so they had to make two trips. Then they took a Honda each and battled out to East LA for a swing past New Age's glass cube. But traffic was slow and it was late in the day when they got there. The place was locked up and deserted. Nothing to see.
***
They planned via a four-way mobile conference call and went out for dinner in Pasadena. They found a burger bar on a busy street and sat at a table for four, two opposite two, shoulder to shoulder in their new gray denims. A uniform, of sorts. Nobody admitted it but Reacher knew they all felt good. Focused, energized, in motion, up against high stakes. They talked about the past. Escapades, capers, scandals, outrages. Years fell away and Reacher's mind's eye swapped the gray for green and Pasadena for Heidelberg or Manila or Seoul.
The old unit, back together.
Almost.
Back on Sunset two hours later, O'Donnell and Neagley volunteered to take first watch at New Age. They planned to get there before five the next morning. Reacher and Dixon were left with the task of buying guns. Before he went to bed, Reacher took the dead guy's phone out of the captured Chrysler and redialed the number he had spoken to from Vegas. There was no answer. Just voice mail. Reacher didn't leave a message.
60
In Reacher's experience the best way to get hold of a random untraceable gun was to steal it from someone who had already stolen it. Or from someone who owned it illegally. That way there were no official comebacks. Sometimes there could be unofficial comebacks, like with the guys behind the wax museum, but they could be handled with minimal hassle.
But to get hold of four specific weapons was a taller order. Groups were always harder to supply than individuals. Limiting the ammunition requirement made it harder still. Concerns about condition and maintenance made it harder again. During his first cup of coffee of the day he ran an idle calculation. The 9mm Parabellum was certainly a popular load, but there were still plenty of.380s and.45s and.22s and.357s and.40s on the street, in all their many different variations. So if there was, say, a one-in-four chance that any particular robbery would yield a pistol that used 9mm Parabellums, and a one-in-three chance that the prize wasn't already trashed beyond redemption, they would have to stage forty-eight separate thefts to guarantee getting what they wanted. They would be at it all day. It would be a crime wave all its own.
Then he thought about finding a bent army quartermaster. Fort Irwin wasn't far away. Or better still, a bent Marine quartermaster. Camp Pendleton was farther away than Irwin, but the roads were better, and therefore it was closer in a sense. And there was an institutional belief among Marines that the Beretta M9 was an unreliable weapon. Armorers were very ready to condemn them as faulty. Some were, some weren't. The ones that weren't went out the back door for a hundred bucks each. Same principle as New Age's own scam. But setting up a buy could take days. Even weeks. Trust had to be gained. Not easy. Years ago he had done it undercover, several times. A lot of work for not very much of a tangible gain.
Karla Dixon thought she had a better idea. She ran through it over breakfast. Obviously she dismissed the notion of going to a store and buying guns legally. Neither she nor Reacher knew the exact details relevant to California, but they both assumed there would be registration and an ID requirement and maybe some kind of cooling-off period involved. So Dixon proposed driving out of LA County into a neighboring county heavier with Republican voters, which in practical terms meant south into Orange. Then she proposed finding pawn shops and using generous applications of Neagley's cash to get around whatever lesser regulations might apply down there. She thought enhanced local respect for the Second Amendment plus enhanced profit margins would do the trick. And she figured there would be a big choice of merchandise. They could cherry-pick exactly what they wanted.
Reacher wasn't as confident as she was, but he agreed anyway. He suggested she change out of her denims and into her black suit. He suggested they take the blue Chrysler, not one of the beat-up Hondas. That way she would look like a concerned middle-class citizen. Fewer alarm bells would ring. She would buy one piece at a time. He would pose as her adviser. Her neighbor, maybe, calling on some relevant weapons experience from his past.
"The others got this far, didn't they?" Dixon asked.
"Further," Reacher said.
She nodded. "They knew it all. Who, what, where, why, and how. But something brought them down. What was it?"
"I don't know," Reacher said. He had been asking himself the same question for days.
They left for Orange County right after breakfast. They didn't know what time pawn shops opened for business, but they guessed they would be quieter earlier in the day than later. Reacher drove, the 101 and then the 5, the same way O'Donnell's GPS had led them down to Swan's house. But this time they stayed with the freeway a little longer and exited on the other side, to the east. Dixon wanted to try Tustin first. She had heard bad things about it. Or good things, depending on your point of view.
She asked, "What are you going to do when this is over?"
"Depends if I survive."
"You think you won't?"
"Like Neagley said, we're not what we used to be. The others weren't, for sure."
"I think we'll be OK."
"I hope so."
"Feel like dropping by New York afterward?"
"I'd like to."
"But?"
"I don't make plans, Karla."
"Why not?"
"I already had this conversation with Dave."
"People make plans."
"I know. People like Calvin Franz. And Jorge Sanchez and Manuel Orozco. And Tony Swan. He planned to give his dog an aspirin every day for the next fifty-four and a half weeks."
They nosed around the surface streets that ran parallel with the freeway. Strip malls and gas stations and drive-through banks lay stunned and sleepy under the morning sun. Mattress dealers and tanning salons and furniture outlets were doing no business at all.
Dixon asked, "Who needs a tanning salon in southern California?"
They found their first pawn shop next to a book store in an upmarket strip mall. But it was all wrong. First, it was closed. Metal lattice shutters were down over the windows. Second, it dealt in the wrong kind of stuff. The displays were full of antique silver and jewelry. Flatware, fruit bowls, napkin rings, pins, pendants on fine chains, ornate picture frames. Not a Glock to be seen. No SIG-Sauers, no Berettas, no H amp;Ks.
They moved on.
Two spacious blocks east of the freeway they found the right kind of place. It was open. Its windows were full of electric guitars, and chunky men's rings made of nine-carat gold inset with small diamonds, and cheap watches.