`You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?’ I asked the guy who answered.
There was a pause.
`No, sir,’ the guy said.
I worked down the list. Dialled one place after another.
`You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?’ I asked each clerk.
There was always a pause while they checked their registers. Sometimes I could hear the pages turning. Some of them had computers. I could hear keyboards pattering.
`No, sir,’ they all said. One after the other.
I lay there on the bed with the phone balanced on my chest. I was down to number thirteen out of the eighteen on my list.
`You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?’ I asked.
There was a pause. I could hear pages turning.
`No, sir,’ the thirteenth clerk said.
`OK,’ I said. Put the phone down.
I picked it up again and stabbed out the fourteenth number. Got a busy signal. So I dabbed the cradle and stabbed out the fifteenth number.
`You got a guy called Paul Lennon registered?’ I asked.
There was a pause.
`Room one twenty,’ the fifteenth clerk said.
`Thank you,’ I said. Put the phone down.
I lay there. Closed my eyes. Breathed out. I put the phone back on the nightstand thing and checked the map. The fifteenth hotel was three blocks away. North of the main drag. I left the room key on the bed and went back out to the car. The engine was still warm. I’d been in there about twenty-five minutes.
I had to drive three blocks east before I could make a left. Then three blocks north before I could make another. I went around a kind of jagged spiral. I found the fifteenth hotel and parked at the door. Went into the lobby. It was a dingy sort of a place. Not clean, not well lit. It looked like a cave.
`Can I help you?’ the desk guy asked.
`No,’ I said.
I followed an arrow down a warren of corridors. Found room one twenty. Rapped on the door. I heard the rattle of the chain going on. I stood there. The door cracked open.
`Hello, Reacher,’ he said.
`Hello, Hubble,’ I said.
He was spilling over with questions for me, but I just hustled him out to the car. We had four hours on the road for all that stuff. We had to get going. I was over two hours ahead of schedule. I wanted to keep it that way. I wanted to put those two hours in the bank. I figured I might need them later.
He looked OK. He wasn’t a wreck. He’d been running for six days and it had done him good. It had burned off that complacent gloss he’d had. Left him looking a little more tight and rangy. A bit tougher. More like my type of a guy. He was dressed up in cheap chainstore clothes and he was wearing socks. He was using an old pair of spectacles made from stainless steel. A seven-dollar digital watch covered the band of pale skin where the Rolex had been. He looked like a plumber or the guy who runs your local muffler franchise.
He had no bags. He was travelling light. He just glanced around his room and walked out with me. Like he couldn’t believe his life on the road was over. Like he might be going to miss it to a degree. We stepped through the dark lobby and out into the night. He stopped when he saw the car parked at the door.
`You came in Charlie’s car?’ he said.
`She was worried about you,’ I told him. `She asked me to find you.’
He nodded. Looked blank.
`What’s with the tinted glass?’ he said.
I grinned at him and shrugged.
`Don’t ask,’ I said. `Long story.’
I started up and eased away from the hotel. He should have asked me right away how Charlie was, but something was bothering him. I had seen when he cracked the hotel room door that a tidal wave of relief had hit him. But he had a tiny reservation. It was a pride thing. He’d been running and hiding. He’d thought he’d been doing it well. But he hadn’t been, because I had found him. He was thinking about that. He was relieved and disappointed all at the same time.