“Special Agent Julia Lamarr,” the woman said, and glanced to her left.
“Agent-in-Charge Nelson Blake,” the guy with the blood pressure said. “The three of us are up here from Quantico. I run the Serial Crimes Unit. Special Agents Lamarr and Poulton work for me there. We came up here to talk to you.”
There was a pause and the guy called Deerfield turned the other way and looked toward the man on his left.
“Agent-in-Charge James Cozo,” the guy said. “Organized Crime, here in New York City, working on the protection rackets.”
More silence.
“OK now?” Deerfield asked.
Reacher squinted through the glare. They were all looking at him. The sandy guy, Poulton. The woman, Lamarr. The hypertensive, Blake. All three of them from Serial Crimes down in Quantico. Up here to talk to him. Then Deerfield, the New York Bureau chief, a heavyweight. Then the lean guy, Cozo, from Organized Crime, working on the protection rackets. He glanced slowly left to right, and right to left, and finished up back on Deerfield. Then he nodded.
“OK,” he said. “Pleased to meet you all. So what about those Yankees? You think they need to trade?”
Five different people facing him, five different expressions of annoyance. Poulton turned his head like he had been slapped. Lamarr snorted, a contemptuous sound in her nose. Blake tightened his mouth and got redder. Deerfield stared and sighed. Cozo glanced sideways at Deerfield, lobbying for intervention.
“We’re not going to talk about the Yankees,” Deerfield said.
“So what about the Dow? We going to see a big crash anytime soon?”
fu/tjun* filing 23
Deerfield shook his head. “Don’t mess with me, Reacher. Right now I’m the best friend you got.”
“No, Ernesto A. Miranda is the best friend I got,” Reacher said. “Miranda versus Arizona, Supreme Court decision in June of 1966. They said his Fifth Amendment rights were infringed because the cops didn’t warn him he could stay silent and get himself a lawyer.”
ur1 ^w
So?
“So you can’t talk to me until you read me my Miranda rights. Whereupon you can’t talk to me anyway because my lawyer could take some time to get here and then she won’t let me talk to you even when she does.”
The three agents from Serial Crime were smiling broadly. Like Reacher was busy proving something to them.
“Your lawyer is Jodie Jacob, right?” Deerfield asked. “Your girlfriend?”
“What do you know about my girlfriend?”
“We know everything about your girlfriend,” Deerfield said. “Just like we know everything about you, too.”
“So why do you need to talk to me?”
“She’s at Spencer Gutman, right?” Deerfield said. “Big reputation as an associate. They’re talking about a partnership for her, you know that?”
“So I heard.”
“Maybe real soon.”
“So I heard,” Reacher said again.
“Knowing you isn’t going to help her, though. You’re not exactly the ideal corporate husband, are you?”
“I’m not any kind of a husband.”
Deerfield smiled. “Figure of speech, is all. But Spencer Gutman is a real white-shoe operation. They consider stuff like that, you know. And it’s a financial firm, right? Real big in the world of banking, we all know that. But not much expertise in the field of criminal law. You sure you want her for your attorney? Situation like this?”
“Situation like what?”
“Situation you’re in.”
“What situation am I in?”
“Ernesto A. Miranda was a moron, you know that?” Deerfield said. “A couple of smokes short of a pack? That’s why the damn Court was so soft on him. He was a subnormal guy. He needed the protection. You a moron, Reacher? You a subnormal guy?”
24
l”fci(
“Probably, to be putting up with this shit.”
“Rights are for guilty people, anyway. You already saying you’re guilty of something?”
Reacher shook his head. “I’m not saying anything. I’ve got nothing to say.”
“Old Ernesto went to jail anyhow, you know that? People tend to forget that fact. They retried him and convicted him just the same. He was in jail five years. Then you know what happened to him?”
Reacher shrugged. Said nothing.
“I was working in Phoenix at the time,” Deerfield said. “Down in Arizona. Homicide detective, for the city. Just before I made it to the Bureau. January of 1976, we get a call to a bar. Some piece of shit lying on the floor, big knife handle sticking up out of him. The famous Ernesto A. Miranda himself, bleeding all over the place. Nobody fell over themselves rushing to call any medics. Guy died a couple minutes after we got there.”