‘So?’
‘Miami airport,’ the second guy said. ‘We took United because it was direct. But there was an earlier flight just leaving, Delta to Atlanta and New York.’
‘And?’
“The big guy from the bar? We saw him, heading down to the gate.’
‘You sure?’
The first guy nodded. ‘Ninety-nine per cent certain. He was a long way ahead, but he’s a real big guy. Difficult to miss.’
Hobie started tapping his hook on the desk again. Lost in thought.
‘OK, he’s Reacher,’ he said. ‘Has to be, right? Costello asking around, then you guys asking on the same day, it spooks him and he runs. But where? Here?’
The second guy nodded. ‘If he stayed on the plane in Atlanta, he’s here.’
‘But why?’ Hobie asked. ‘Who the hell is he?’
He thought for a moment and answered his own question.
The secretary will tell me who the client is, right?’
Then he smiled.
‘And the client will tell me who this Reacher guy is.’
The two guys in the smart suits nodded quietly and stood up. Threaded their way around the furniture and walked out of the office.
Reacher was walking south through Central Park. Trying to get a grip on the size of the task he had set himself. He was confident he was in the right city. The three accents had been definitive. But there was a huge population to wade through. Seven and a half million people spread out over the five boroughs, maybe altogether eighteen million in the metropolitan area. Eighteen million people close enough to focus inward when they want a specialized urban service like a fast and efficient private detective. His gut assumption was Costello may have been located in Manhattan, but it was entirely possible that Mrs Jacob was suburban. If you’re a woman living somewhere in the suburbs and
you want a private detective, where do you look for one? Not next to the supermarket or the video rental. Not in the mall next to the dress shops. You pick up the Yellow Pages for the nearest major city and you start calling. You have an initial conversation and maybe the guy drives out to you, or you get on the train and come in to him. From anywhere in a big dense area that stretches hundreds of square miles.
He had given up on hotels. He didn’t necessarily need to invest a lot of time. Could be he’d be in and out within an hour. And he could use more information than hotels had to offer. He needed phone books for all five boroughs and the suburbs. Hotels wouldn’t have all of those. And he didn’t need to pay the kind of rates hotels like to charge for phone calls. Digging swimming pools had not made him rich.
So he was heading for the public library. Forty-second Street and Fifth. The biggest in the world? He couldn’t remember. Maybe, maybe not. But certainly big enough to have all the phone books he needed, and big wide tables and comfortable chairs. Four miles from Roosevelt Square, an hour’s brisk walk, interrupted only by traffic on the cross streets and a quick diversion into an office-supply store to buy a notebook and a pencil.
The next guy into Hobie’s inner office was the receptionist. He stepped inside and locked the door behind him. Walked over and sat down on the end of the sofa nearest the desk. Looked at Hobie, long and hard, and silently.
‘What?’ Hobie asked him, although he knew what.
‘You should get out,’ the receptionist said. ‘It’s risky now.’
Hobie made no reply. Just held his hook in his left hand and traced its wicked metal curve with his remaining fingers.
‘You planned,’ the receptionist said. ‘You promised. No point planning and promising if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do.’
Hobie shrugged. Said nothing.
‘We heard from Hawaii, right?’ the receptionist said. ‘You planned to run as soon as we heard from Hawaii.’
‘Costello never went to Hawaii,’ Hobie said. ‘We checked.’
‘So that just makes it worse. Somebody else went to Hawaii. Somebody we don’t know.’
‘Routine,’ Hobie said. ‘Had to be. Think about it. No reason for anybody to go to Hawaii until we’ve heard from the other end. It’s a sequence, you know that. We hear from the other end, we hear from Hawaii, step one, step two, and then it’s time to go. Not before.’