‘Hello?’ he said.
There was a pause. ‘Who’s that? I’m trying to reach Mrs Jacob.’
It was a man’s voice, young, busy, harassed. A voice he knew. Jodie’s secretary at the law firm, the guy who had dictated Leon’s address.
‘She’s in the shower.’
‘Ah,’ the voice said.
There was another pause.
‘I’m a friend,’ Reacher said.
‘I see,’ the voice said. ‘Are you still up in Garrison?’
‘No, we’re in St Louis, Missouri.’
‘Goodness, that complicates things, doesn’t it? May I speak with Mrs Jacob?’
‘She’s in the shower,’ Reacher said again. ‘She could call you back. Or I could take a message, I guess.’
‘Would you mind?’ the guy said. ‘It’s urgent, I’m afraid.’
‘Hold on,’ Reacher said. He walked back to the bed and picked up the little pad and the pencil the hotel had placed on the nightstand next to the telephone. Sat down and juggled the mobile into his left hand.
‘OK, shoot,’ he said. The guy ran through his message. It was very non-specific. The guy was choosing his words carefully to keep the whole thing vague. Clearly a friend couldn’t be trusted with any secret legal details. He put the pad and pencil down again. He wasn’t going to need them.
‘I’ll have her call you back if that’s not clear,’ he said ambiguously.
‘Thank you, and I’m sorry to interrupt, well, whatever it is I’m interrupting.’
‘You’re not interrupting anything,’ Reacher said. ‘Like I told you, she’s in the shower right now. But ten minutes ago might have been a problem.’
‘Goodness,’ the guy said again, and the phone went dead.
Reacher smiled and studied the buttons again and pressed end. He dropped the phone on the bed and heard the water cut off in the bathroom. The door
opened and she came out, wrapped in a towel and a cloud of steam.
‘Your secretary just called on your mobile,’ he said. ‘I think he was a little shocked when I answered.’
She giggled. ‘Well, there goes my reputation. It’ll be all over the office by lunchtime. What did he want?’
‘You’ve got to go back to New York.’
‘Why? He give you the details?’
He shook his head.
‘No, he was very confidential, very proper, like a secretary should be, I guess. But you’re an ace lawyer, apparently. Big demand for your services.’
She grinned. ‘I’m the best there is. Didn’t I tell you that? So who needs me?’
‘Somebody called your firm. Some financial corporation with something to handle. Asked for you personally. Presumably because you’re the best there is.’
She nodded and smiled. ‘He say what the problem is?’
He shrugged. ‘Your usual, I guess. Somebody owes somebody else some money, sounds like they’re all squabbling over it. You have to go to a meeting tomorrow afternoon and try to talk some sense into one side or the other.’
Another of the thousands of phone calls taking place during the same minute in the Wall Street area was a call from the law offices of Forster and Abelstein to the premises of a private detective called William Curry. Curry was a twenty-year veteran of the NYPD’s detective squads, and he had taken his pension at the age of forty-seven and was looking to pay his alimony by working private until his ex-wife
got married again or died or forgot about him. He had been in business for two lean years, and a personal call from the senior partner of a white-shoe Wall Street law firm was a breakthrough event, so he was pleased, but not too surprised. He had done two years of good work at reasonable rates with the exact aim of creating some kind of reputation, so if the reputation was finally spreading and the big hitters were finally calling, he was pleased about it without being astonished by it.
But he was astonished by the nature of the job.
‘I have to impersonate you?’ he repeated.
‘It’s important,’ Forster told him. ‘They’re expecting a lawyer called David Forster, so that’s what we have to give them. There won’t be any law involved. There probably won’t be anything involved at all. Just being there will keep the lid on things. It’ll be straightforward enough. OK?’