"Shall we try the super?"
"Use one of your business cards. Put your finger over the Ex- part. Make out like you're still with the Bureau."
"Think that'll be necessary?"
"We need all the help we can get. This is a radical building. We've got Che Guevara watching over us. And macrame."
Pauling put an elegant nail on the super's call button and pressed. She was answered a long minute later by a distorted burst of sound from the speaker. It might have been the word yes, or who, or what. Or just a blast of static.
"Federal agents," Pauling called. Which was remotely true. Both she and Reacher had once worked for Uncle Sam. She slipped a business card out of her purse. There was another burst of noise from the speaker.
"He's coming," Reacher said. He had seen plenty of buildings like this one, back in the day, when his job had been chasing AWOL soldiers. They liked cash rents and short leases. And in his experience building superintendents usually cooperated. They liked their free accommodations well enough not to jeopardize them. Better that someone else should go to jail, and they should stay where they were.
Unless the super was the bad guy, of course.
But this one seemed to have nothing to hide. The blue door opened inward and revealed a tall gaunt man in a stained wife-beater. He had a black knit cap on his head and a flat Slavic face like a length of two by-four.
"Yes?" he said. Strong Russian accent. Almost Da?
Pauling waved her card long enough for some of the words to register.
"Tell us about your most recent tenant," she said.
"Most recent?" the guy repeated. No hostility. He sounded like a fairly smart guy struggling with the nuance of a foreign language, that was all.
Reacher asked, "Did someone sign on within the last couple of weeks?"
"Number five," the guy said. "One week ago. He responded to a newspaper advertisement I was asked to place by the management."
"We need to see his apartment," Pauling said.
"I'm not sure I should let you," the guy said. "There are rules in America."
"Homeland Security," Reacher said. "The Patriot Act. There are no rules in America anymore."
The guy just shrugged and turned his tall thin frame around in the narrow space. Headed for the stairs. Reacher and Pauling followed him in. Reacher could smell coffee coming through the walls from the cafe. There was no apartment number one or number two. Number four was the first door they came to, at the head of the stairs at the back of the building. Then number three was on the same floor, along a hallway at the front of the building. Which meant that number five was going to be directly above it, third floor, looking east across the street. Pauling glanced at Reacher, and Reacher nodded.
"The one with nothing in the window," he said to her.
On the third floor they passed number six at the back of the building and walked forward toward number five. The smell of coffee had faded and been replaced by the universal hallway smell of boiled vegetables.
"Is he in?" Reacher asked.
The super shook his head. "I only ever saw him twice. He's out now for sure. I was just all over the building fixing pipes." He used a master key from a ring on his belt and unlocked the door. Pushed it open and stood back.
The apartment was what a real estate broker would have called an alcove studio. All one room, with a crooked L that was theoretically large enough for a bed if the bed was small. A kitchen corner and a tiny bathroom with an open door. But mostly what was on show was dust and floorboards.
Because the apartment was completely empty.
Except for a single upright dining chair. The chair was not old, but it was well used. It was the kind of thing you see for sale on the Bowery sidewalks where the bankrupt restaurant dealers hawk seized inventory. It was set in front of the window and turned slightly north and east. It was about twenty feet above and three feet behind the exact spot that Reacher had chosen for coffee, two nights running.
Reacher stepped over and sat down on the chair, feet planted, relaxed but alert. The way his body settled naturally put the fireplug across Sixth directly in front of him. A shallow downward angle, easily enough to clear a parked panel truck. Enough to clear a parked semi. A ninety-foot range. No problem for anyone who wasn't clinically blind. He stood up again and turned a full circle. Saw a door that locked. Saw three solid walls. Saw a window free of drapes. A soldier knows that a satisfactory observation point provides an unobstructed view to the front and adequate security to the flanks and the rear, provides protection from the elements and concealment of the observers, and offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.
"Feels just like Patti Joseph's place," Pauling said.
"You been there?"
"Brewer described it."
"Eight million stories," Reacher said.
Then he turned to the super and said, "Tell us about this guy."
"He can't talk," the super said.
"What do you mean?"
"He can't speak."
"What, like he's a mute?"
"Not by birth. Because of a trauma."
"Like something struck him dumb?"
"Not emotional," the super said. "Physical. He communicated with me by writing on a pad of yellow paper. Full sentences, quite patiently. He wrote that he had been injured in the service. Like a war wound. But I noticed that he had no visible scarring. And I noticed that he kept his mouth tight shut all the time. Like he was embarrassed about me seeing something. And it reminded me very strongly of something I saw once before, more than twenty years ago."
"Which was?"
"I am Russian. For my sins I served with the Red Army in Afghanistan. Once we had a prisoner returned to us by the tribesmen as a warning. His tongue had been cut out."
Chapter 31
THE SUPER TOOK Reacher and Pauling down to his own apartment, which was a squared-away semi-basement space in the back of the building. He opened a file cabinet and took out the current lease papers for apartment five. They had been signed exactly a week previously by a guy calling himself Leroy Clarkson. Which as expected was a blatantly phony name. Clarkson and Leroy were the first two streets coming off the West Side Highway north of Houston, just a few blocks away. At the far end of Clarkson was a topless bar. At the far end of Leroy was a car wash. In between was a tiny aluminum coach diner that Reacher had once eaten in.
"You don't see ID?" Pauling asked.
"Not unless they want to pay by check," the super said. "This guy paid cash."
The signature was illegible. The Social Security number was neatly written but was no doubt just a random sequence of nine meaningless digits.
The super gave a decent physical description, but it didn't help much because it did nothing more than match what Reacher himself had seen on two separate occasions. Late thirties, maybe forty, white, medium height and weight, clean and trim, no facial hair. Blue jeans, blue shirt, ball cap, sneakers, all of them worn and comfortable.
"How was his health?" Reacher asked.
"Apart from the fact that he couldn't speak?" the super said. "He seemed OK."
"Did he say if he'd been out of town for a while?"
"He didn't say anything."
"How long did he pay for?"
"A month. It's the minimum. Renewable."
"This guy's not coming back," Reacher said. "You should go ahead and call The Village Voice now. Get them to run your ad again."