"And we'll help you if we can."
"I'd appreciate that, too. But see to the woman and the child first."
"We think we're already too late."
"Don't say that. It depends who took them. Where there's hope, there's life. Hope kept me going, five hard years."
Reacher and Pauling left Hobart and Dee Marie right there, together on their battered sofa, the bowl of soup half-gone. They walked down four flights to the street and stepped out into the afternoon shadows of a fabulous late-summer day. Traffic ground past on the street, slow and angry. Horns blared and sirens barked. Fast pedestrians swerved by on the sidewalk.
Reacher said, "Eight million stories in the naked city."
Pauling said, "We're nowhere."
Chapter 43
REACHER LED PAULING north on Hudson, across Houston, to the block between Clarkson and Leroy. He said, "I think the man with no tongue lives near this spot."
"Twenty thousand people live near this spot," Pauling said.
Reacher didn't reply.
"What now?" Pauling said.
"Back to the hard way. We wasted some time, that's all. Wasted some energy. My fault entirely. I was stupid."
"How?"
"Did you see how Hobart was dressed?"
"Cheap new denims."
"The guy I saw driving the cars away was wearing old denims. Both times. Old, soft, washed, worn, faded, comfortable denims. The Soviet super said the same thing. And the old Chinese man. No way was the guy I saw just back from Africa. Or back from anywhere. It takes ages to get jeans and a shirt looking like that. The guy I saw has been safe at home for five years doing his laundry, not jammed up in some hellhole jail."
Pauling said nothing.
"You can split now," Reacher said. "You got what you wanted. Anne Lane wasn't your fault. She was dead before you ever even heard of her. You can sleep at night."
"But not well. Because I can't touch Edward Lane. Hobart's testimony is meaningless."
"Because it's hearsay?"
"Hearsay is sometimes OK. Knight's dying declaration would be admissible, because the court would assume he had no motive to lie from his deathbed."
"So what's the problem?"
"There was no dying declaration. There were dozens of random fantasies spun over a four-year period. Hobart chose to back one of them, that's all. And he freely admits that both he and Knight were as good as insane most of the time. I'd be laughed out of court, literally."
"But you believed him."
Pauling nodded. "No question."
"So you can settle for half a loaf. Patti Joseph, too. I'll drop by and tell her."
"Would you be happy with half a loaf?"
"I said you can split. Not me. I'm not quitting yet. My agenda is getting longer and longer by the minute."
"I'll stick with it, too."
"Your choice."
"I know. You want me to?"
Reacher looked at her. Answered honestly. "Yes, I do."
"Then I will."
"Just don't get all scrupulous on me. This thing isn't going to be settled in any court of law with any dying declarations."
"How is it going to be settled?"
"The first colonel I really fell out with, I shot him in the head. And so far I like Lane a lot less than that guy. That guy was practically a saint compared to Lane."
"I'll come with you to Patti Joseph's."
"No, I'll meet you there," Reacher said. "Two hours from now. We should travel separately."
"Why?"
"I'm going to try to get killed."
Pauling said she would be in the Majestic's lobby in two hours and headed for the subway. Reacher started walking north on Hudson, not fast, not slow, center of the left-hand sidewalk. Twelve stories above him and ten yards behind his left shoulder was a north-facing window. It had heavy black cloth taped behind it. The cloth had been peeled back across a quarter of its width to make a tall narrow slit, as if a person in the room had wanted at least a partial view of the city.
Reacher crossed Morton, and Barrow, and Christopher. On West 10th he started zigzagging through the narrow tree-lined Village streets, east for a block, then north, then west, then north again. He made it to the bottom of Eighth Avenue and walked north for a spell and then started zigzagging again where the Chelsea side streets were quiet. He stopped in the lee of a brownstone's front steps and bent down and retied his shoes. Walked on and stopped again behind a big square plastic trash bin and studied something on the ground. At West 23rd Street he turned east and then north again on Eighth. Stuck to the center of the left-hand sidewalk and slow-marched onward. Patti Joseph and the Majestic lay a little more than two miles ahead in a dead-straight line, and he had a whole hour to get there.
Thirty minutes later at Columbus Circle, Reacher entered Central Park. Daylight was fading. Shadows had been long, but now they were indistinct. The air was still warm. Reacher stuck to the paths for a spell and then he stepped off and walked a haphazard and unofficial route through the trees. He stopped and leaned against one trunk, facing north. Then another, facing east. He got back on the path and found an empty bench and sat down with his back to the stream of people walking past. He waited there until the clock in his head told him it was time to move.
Reacher found Lauren Pauling waiting in one of a group of armchairs in the Majestic's lobby. She had freshened up. She looked good. She had qualities. Reacher found himself thinking that Kate Lane might have ended up looking like that, twenty years down the road.
"I stopped by and asked that Russian super," she said. "He'll go over later tonight to fix the door."
"Good," Reacher said.
"You didn't get killed," she said.
He sat down beside her.
"Something else I got wrong," he said. "I've been assuming there was inside help from one of Lane's crew. But now I don't think there can have been. Yesterday morning Lane offered me a million bucks. This morning when he lost hope he told me to find the bad guys. Seek and destroy. He was about as serious as a man can get. Anyone watching from the inside would have to assume I was pretty well motivated. And I've shown them that I'm at least partially competent. But nobody has tried to stop me. And they would try, wouldn't they? Any kind of an inside ally would be expected to. But they haven't. I just spent two hours strolling through Manhattan. Side streets, quiet places, Central Park. I kept stopping and turning my back. I gave whoever it might be a dozen chances to take me out. But nobody tried."
"Would they have been on your tail?"
"That's why I wanted to start between Clarkson and Leroy. That's got to be some kind of a base camp. They could have picked me up there."
"How could they have done this whole thing without inside help?"
"I have absolutely no idea."
"You'll figure it out."
"Say that again."
"Why? You need inspiration?"
"I just like the sound of your voice."
"You'll figure it out," Pauling said, low and husky, like she had been getting over laryngitis for the last thirty years.
They checked in at the desk and then rode up to seven in the elevator. Patti Joseph was out in the corridor, waiting for them. There was a little awkwardness when she and Pauling met. Patti had spent five years thinking Pauling had failed her sister, and Pauling had spent the same five years thinking pretty much the same thing. So there was ice to break. But the implied promise of news helped Patti thaw. And Reacher figured Pauling had plenty of experience with grieving relatives. Any investigator does.