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[ 1451] He looked at me. Grunted.

[ 1452] “Only three of us?” he said. “You’re a cautious guy, Reacher.”

[ 1453] “You bet your ass I’m a cautious guy, Finlay,” I said. “People are getting killed here. One of them was my only brother.”

[ 1454] We stood up from the bench on the sidewalk. Across the street, the Kliner kid killed his motor and got out of the pickup. Started walking slowly over. Finlay rubbed his face with his hands, like he was washing without water.

[ 1455] “So what now?” he said.

[ 1456] “You got things to do,” I said. “You need to get Roscoe on one side and fill her in with the details, OK? Tell her to take a lot of care. Then you need to make some calls and find out from Washington what Joe was doing down here.”

[ 1457] “OK,” Finlay said. “What about you?”

I nodded across at the Kliner kid.

[ 1458] “I’m going to have a talk with this guy,” I said. “He keeps looking at me.”

[ 1459] Two things happened as the Kliner kid came near. First, Finlay left in a hurry. He just strode off north without another word. Second, I heard the barbershop blinds coming down in the window behind me. I glanced around. There could have been nobody else on the planet except for me and the Kliner kid.

[ 1460] Up close, the kid was an interesting study. He was no lightweight. Probably six-two, maybe one ninety, shot through with some kind of a restless energy. There was a lot of intelligence in his eyes, but there was also some kind of an eerie light burning in there. His eyes told me this probably wasn’t the most rational character I was ever going to meet in my whole life. He came close and stood in front of me. Just stared at me.

[ 1461] “You’re trespassing,” he said.

[ 1462] “This is your sidewalk?” I said.

[ 1463] “It sure is,” the kid said. “My daddy’s Foundation paid for every inch of it. Every brick. But I’m not talking about the sidewalk. I’m talking about Miss Roscoe. She’s mine. She’s mine, right from when I first saw her. She’s waiting for me. Five years, she’s been waiting for me, until the time is right.”

[ 1464] I gazed back at him.

[ 1465] “You understand English?” I said.

[ 1466] The kid tensed up. He was just about hopping from foot to foot.

[ 1467] “I’m a reasonable guy,” I said. “First time Miss Roscoe tells me she wants you instead of me, I’m out of here. Until then, you back off. Understand that?”

[ 1468] The kid was boiling. But then he changed. It was like he was operated by a remote control and somebody had just hit a button and switched the channel. He relaxed and shrugged and smiled a wide, boyish smile.

[ 1469] “OK,” he said. “No hard feelings, right?”

[ 1470] He stuck out his hand to shake on it and he nearly fooled me. Right at the last split second I pulled my own hand back a fraction and closed around his knuckles, not his palm. It’s an old army trick. They go to shake your hand, but they’re aiming to crush it. Some big macho ritual. The way out is to be ready. You pull back a fraction and you squeeze back. You’re squeezing their knuckles, not the meat of their palm. Their grip is neutralized. If you catch it right, you can’t lose.

[ 1471] He started crushing, but he never stood a chance. He was going for the steady squeeze, so he could stare into my eyes while I sweated it out. But he never got near. I crunched his knuckles once, then twice, a little harder, and then I dropped his hand and turned away. I was a good sixty yards north before I heard the truck start up. It rumbled south and its noise was lost in the buzz of the heat.

[ 1472] BACK AT THE STATION HOUSE THERE WAS A BIG WHITE CADILLAC parked right across the entrance. Brand-new, fully loaded. Full of puffy black leather and fake wood. It looked like a Vegas whorehouse after the stern walnut and old hide in Charlie Hubble’s Bentley. Took me five strides to get around its hood to the door.

[ 1473] Inside in the chill everybody was milling around a tall old guy with silver hair. He was in an old-fashioned suit. Bootlace tie with a silver clasp. Looked like a real asshole. Some kind of a politician. The Cadillac driver. He must have been about seventy-five years old and he was limping around, leaning on a thick cane with a huge silver knob at the top. I guessed this was Mayor Teale.

[ 1474] Roscoe was coming out of the big office in back. She had been pretty shaken up after being at the Morrison place. Wasn’t looking too good now, but she waved and tried a smile. Gestured me over. Wanted me to go into the office with her. I took another quick glance at Mayor Teale and walked over to her.

[ 1475] “You OK?” I said.

[ 1476] “I’ve had better days,” she said.

[ 1477] “You up to speed?” I asked her. “Finlay give you the spread?”

[ 1478] She nodded.

[ 1479] “Finlay told me everything,” she said.

[ 1480] We ducked into the big rosewood office. Finlay was sitting at the desk under the old clock. It showed a quarter of four. Roscoe closed the door and I looked back and forth between the two of them.

[ 1481] “So who’s getting it?” I said. “Who’s the new chief?”

[ 1482] Finlay looked up at me from where he was sitting. Shook his head.

[ 1483] “Nobody,” he said. “Mayor Teale is going to run the department himself.”

[ 1484] I went back to the door and cracked it open an inch. Peered out and looked at Teale across the squad room. He had Baker pinned up against the wall. Looked like he was giving him a hard time about something. I watched him for a moment.

[ 1485] “So what do you make of that?” I asked them.

[ 1486] “Everybody else in the department is clean,” Roscoe said.

[ 1487] “Looks that way, I guess,” I said. “But it proves Teale himself is on board. Teale’s their replacement, so Teale’s their boy.”

[ 1488] “How do we know he’s just their boy?” she said. “Maybe he’s the big boss. Maybe he’s running the whole thing.”

[ 1489] “No,” I said. “The big boss had Morrison carved up as a message. If Teale was the big boss, why would he send a message to himself? He belongs to somebody. He’s been put in here to run interference.”

[ 1490] “That’s for sure,” Finlay said. “Started already. Told us Joe and Stoller are going on the back burner. We’re throwing everything at the Morrison thing. Doing it ourselves, no outside help, no FBI, no nothing. He says the pride of the department is at stake. And he’s already driving us up a blind alley. Says it’s obvious Morrison was killed by somebody just out of prison. Somebody Morrison himself put away a long time ago, out for revenge.”

[ 1491] “And it’s a hell of a blind alley,” Roscoe said. “We’ve got to trawl through twenty years of old files and cross-check every name in every file against parole records from across the entire country. It could take us months. He’s pulled Ste venson in off the road for it. Until this is over, he drives a desk. So do I.”

[ 1492] “It’s worse than a blind alley,” Finlay said. “It’s a coded warning. Nobody in our files looks good for violent revenge. Never had that sort of crime here. We know that. And Teale knows we know that. But we can’t call his bluff, right?”

[ 1493] “Can’t you just ignore him?” I said. “Just do what needs doing?”

[ 1494] He leaned back in his chair. Blew a sigh at the ceiling and shook his head.

[ 1495] “No,” he said. “We’re working right under the enemy’s nose. Right now, Teale’s got no reason to think we know anything about any of this. And we’ve got to keep it that way. We’ve got to play dumb and act innocent, right? That’s going to limit our scope. But the big problem is authorization. If I need a warrant or something, I’m going to need his signature. And I’m not going to get it, am I?”

I shrugged at him.

[ 1496] “I’m not planning on using warrants,” I said. “Did you call Washington?”

[ 1497] “They’re getting back to me,” he said. “Just hope Teale doesn’t grab the phone before I can.”

I nodded.

[ 1498] “What you need is somewhere else to work,” I said. “What about that buddy of yours up in Atlanta FBI? The one you told me about? Could you use his office as a kind of private facility?”

[ 1499] Finlay thought about it. Nodded.

[ 1500] “Not a bad idea,” he said. “I’ll have to go off the record. I can’t ask Teale to make a formal request, right? I’ll call from home, tonight. Guy called Picard. Nice guy, you’ll like him. He’s from the Quarter, down in New Orleans. He did a spell in Boston about a million years ago. Great big guy, very smart, very tough.”

[ 1501] “Tell him we need it kept very quiet,” I said. “We don’t want his agents down here until we’re ready.”

[ 1502] “What are you going to do about Teale?” Roscoe asked me. “He works for the guys who killed your brother.”

I shrugged again.

[ 1503] “Depends how involved he was,” I said. “He wasn’t the shooter.”

[ 1504] “He wasn’t?” Roscoe said. “How do you know that?”

[ 1505] “Not fast enough,” I said. “Limps around with a cane in his hand. Too slow to pull a gun. Too slow to get Joe, anyway. He wasn’t the kicker, either. Too old, not vigorous enough. And he wasn’t the gofer. That was Morrison. But if he starts messing with me, then he’s in deep shit. Otherwise, to hell with him.”

“So what now?” she said.

I shrugged at her. Didn’t reply.

[ 1506] “I think Sunday is the thing,” Finlay said. “Sunday is going to solve some kind of a problem for them. Teale being put in here feels so temporary, you know? The guy’s seventy-five years old. He’s got no police experience. It’s a temporary fix, to get them through until Sunday.”

[ 1507] The buzzer on the desk went off. Stevenson’s voice came over the intercom asking for Roscoe. They had files to check. I opened the door for her. But she stopped. She’d just thought of something.

[ 1508] “What about Spivey?” she said. “Over at Warburton? He was ordered to arrange the attack on Hubble, right? So he must know who gave him the order. You should go ask him. Might lead somewhere.”

[ 1509] “Maybe,” I said. Closed the door behind her.

[ 1510] “Waste of time,” Finlay said to me. “You think Spivey’s just going to tell you a thing like that?”

I smiled at him.

[ 1511] “If he knows, he’ll tell me,” I said to him. “A question like that, it’s how you ask it, right?”

[ 1512] “Take care, Reacher,” he said. “They see you getting close to what Hubble knew, they’ll waste you like they wasted him.”

[ 1513] Charlie and her kids flashed into my mind and I shivered. They would figure Charlie was close to what Hubble had known. That was inevitable. Maybe even his kids as well. A cautious person would assume kids could have overheard something. It was four o’clock. The kids would be out of school. There were people out there who had loaded up with rubber overshoes, nylon bodysuits and surgical gloves. And sharp knives. And a bag of nails. And a hammer.

[ 1514] “Finlay, call your buddy Picard right now,” I said. “We need his help. We’ve got to put Charlie Hubble somewhere safe. And her kids. Right now.”

[ 1515] Finlay nodded gravely. He saw it. He understood.

[ 1516] “For sure,” he said. “Get your ass up to Beckman. Right now. Stay there. I’ll organize Picard. You don’t leave until he shows up, OK?”

[ 1517] He picked up the phone. Dialed an Atlanta number from memory.