A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were
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two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They
looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired,
stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag
locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths
and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was
carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on her back like a pack. It
had a long hose with a broad nozzle. The other woman was
carrying a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. The
mop had a square foam pad on the head and a complicated
hinge halfway up the handle, for squeezing excess water away.
All three of them were wearing rubber gloves. The gloves
looked pale on their hands. Maybe clear plastic, maybe light
yellow. All three of them looked tired. Like night workers.
But they looked neat and clean and professional. They had
tidy haircuts and their expressions said: we know this ain’t
the world’s most exciting job, but we’re going to do it properly. Froelich paused the tape and froze them as they approached
Stuyvesant’s door.
‘Who are they?’ Reacher asked.
‘Direct government employees,’ Froelich said. ‘Most office
cleaners in this city are contract people, minimum wage, no
benefits, high turnover nobodies. Same in any city-. But we hire
our own. The FBI, too. We need a high degree of reliability,
obviously. We keep two crews at all times. They’re properly
interviewed, they’re background-checked, and they don’t get in
the door unless they’re good people. Then we pay them real
well, and give them full health plans, and dental, and paid
vacations, the whole nine yards. They’re department members,
same as anybody else.’
‘And they respond?’
She nodded. ‘They’re terrific, generally.’
‘But you think this crew smuggled the letter in.’
‘No other conclusion to come to.’
Reacher pointed at the screen. ‘So where is it now?’
‘Could be in the garbage bag, in a stiff envelope. Could be in
a page protector, taped underneath one of the trays or the
shelves. Could be taped to the guy’s back, under his overalls.’
She hit play and the cleaners continued onward into Stuyve
sant’s office. The door swung shut behind them. The camera
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stared forward blankly. The time counter ticked on, five
minutes, seven, eight. Then the tape ran out.
‘Midnight,’ Froelich said.
She ejected the cassette and put the second tape in. Pressed
play and the date changed to Thursday and the timer restarted
at midnight exactly. It crawled onward, two minutes, four, six.
if’hey certainly do a thorough job,’ Neagley said. ‘Our office
cleaners would have done the whole building by now. A lick
and a promise.’
‘Stuyvesant likes a clean working environment,’ Froelich said.
At seven minutes past midnight the door opened and the
crew filed out.
‘So now you figure the letter is there on the desk,’ Reacher
said.
Froelich nodded. The video showed the cleaners starting
work around the secretarial station. They missed nothing.
Everything was energetically dusted and wiped and polished.
Every inch of carpet was vacuumed. Garbage was emptied
into the black bag. It had bellied out to twice its size. The
man looked a little dishevelled by his efforts. He pushed the
cart backward foot by foot and the women retreated with
him. Sixteen minutes past midnight, they backed away into the
gloom and left the picture still and quiet, as it had been before
they came.
¢I’hat’s it,’ Froelich said. ‘Nothing more for the next five
hours and forty-four minutes. Then we change tapes again and
find nothing at all from six a.m. until eight, when the secretary
comes in, and then it goes down exactly as she and Stuyvesant
claimed it did.’
‘As one might expect,’ said a voice from the door. ‘I think our
word can be trusted. After all, I’ve been in government service
for twenty-five years, and my secretary even longer than that, I
believe.’
85
FIVE
T
HE GUY AT THE DOOR WAS STUYVESANT, NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT. Reacher recognized him from his appearance on the
tape. He was tall, broad-shouldered, over fifty, still in