Make Me

There were plenty of names, because there were plenty of labels, because there were plenty of bells, because there were four streets, not a couple, and they were long. The first two turned left and right off the main drag two blocks after the library, and the third and the fourth came another block further out. They were low-rise enclaves between taller buildings, not shoe-horned in but there from the beginning. There was nothing off-putting or unpleasant about them. No trash in the gutters, no busted syringes crunching underfoot, no graffiti, no rot or decay. Nothing overt. But somehow the mysterious and unforgiving calculus of real estate had downgraded them. Maybe there were missing trees, or damp in the basements, or too much window AC. Maybe the breeze blew wrong. Maybe way back a poor widow had split up her house to make ends meet, and then another, and another. Image was a very subtle thing.

They had their Town Car quarter the neighborhood at a slow speed, to establish the search area’s boundaries. Then they had the guy park, and they got out to walk. The sun was over the lake, and the light was sharp with reflections. It was already hot, two hours before noon.

Chang took the sunny side of the street, and Reacher stayed in the morning shadows. They moved door to door, separately, unsynchronized, up brownstone stoops and down again, like restaurant workers delivering menus, or missionaries seeking converts. Reacher found that most bell buttons had names against them, some handwritten, some typed, some printed, some embossed on narrow black tape and stuck over previous tenants’. There were Polish names, and African names, and South American names, and Irish names, a whole United Nations right there, but on the first street at least none of the names was McCann.

Twenty miles south of Mother’s Rest, the man with the ironed jeans and the blow-dried hair took another call on his land line. His contact said, “She’s not using her phone anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Hard to say. A precaution, possibly. She’s ex-FBI and he’s ex-military. They’re not babes in the wood.”

“In other words you’re saying Hackett can’t find them.”

“No, he found them. He found them real easy. He watched the library. They showed up right on time. They were inside for half an hour, and then they bought a burner phone in the drugstore next door.”

“So what is he waiting for?”

“Opportunity.”

“They must not talk to McCann.”

“Don’t worry. That ain’t going to happen. I can promise you that.”

They crossed the main drag and entered the second street, up brownstone stoops and down again, house by house. Most places seemed to have three floors with up to four separate dwellings on each. The names kept on coming. One place had Javier, Hiroto, Giovanni, Baker, Friedrich, Ishiguro, Akwame, Engelman, Krupke, Dassler, Leonidas, and Callaghan. Perfectly alphabetical, if you changed the order. The first twelve letters. And Callaghan at least was Irish. But it wasn’t McCann.

The houses themselves had touches of faded glory. There were remnants of stained glass, and Victorian tile. The front doors were crusted with layers of paint, and most of them had pebble glass panels, with blurred and hazy views of inside lobbies, with shapes that might have been parked bicycles, or baby carriages. Reacher moved on, door to door, one place after another, the end of the street coming close, the search nearly half over, and he didn’t find McCann.

But Chang did.

She waved from across the street, from the stoop of a house just like all the others, and he raised his palms in a semaphored question, and she pumped her fist, discreetly, like a golfer after a long but successful putt. He crossed the street and joined her, and she pointed at the bell box, and ran an elegant nail over a ribbon of white paper neatly printed with the name Peter J. McCann.

Chapter 34

McCann’s digs were listed as apartment 32, which Reacher figured was the second apartment on the third floor, possibly a back room, if they were counting clockwise from the front left, as was likely. A top-floor walk-up, in other words, with no view. In an unremarkable building on a second-rate street. Location was working against the guy.

The street door was stout and securely locked.

Chang pressed McCann’s call button. They heard no sound inside. Too far away, presumably. There was no crackling reply over the speaker. Nothing at all. Just a hot quiet morning, with nothing stirring.

Reacher said, “Try his phone again.”

Their burner had a redial facility. Not bad for thirteen bucks. Chang hit it and they waited cheek to cheek.

It rang and rang.

No answer.

She killed the call.

She said, “Now what?”

“Too early for pizza,” Reacher said. “We’ll have to be UPS.”

He pressed nine separate buttons, and when the first of them answered he said, “Package delivery, ma’am.”

There was a pause, and then the door lock buzzed and clicked.