It’s not about what happened an hour and seventeen minutes ago, he said to himself. No way was this all organized in an hour and seventeen minutes. He kept quiet and absolutely still. He was worried about the whiteness in the woman’s knuckle where it wrapped around the SIG-Sauer’s trigger. Accidents can happen.

  ‘You don’t want to know what this is about?’ she asked.

  He looked at her, blankly. No handcuffs, he thought. Why not? The woman shrugged at him. OK, have it your own way, she was saying. Her face settled to a stare. It was not a pretty face, but it was interesting. Some character there. She was about thirty-five, which is not old, but there were lines in her skin, like she spent time making animated expressions. Probably more frowns than smiles, he thought. Her hair was jet black but thin. He could see her scalp. It was white. It gave her a tired, sickly look. But her eyes were bright. She glanced beyond him, out into the darkness through the car window, out to where her men were doing things in his house.

  She smiled. Her front teeth were crossed. The right one was canted sideways and it overlaid the left one by a fraction. An interesting mouth. It implied some kind of a decision. Her parents hadn’t had the flaw corrected, and later neither had she. She must have had the opportunity. But she had decided to stick with nature. Probably the right choice. It made her face distinctive. Gave it character.

  She was slim under her bulky coat. There was a black jacket that matched the skirt, and a cream blouse loose over small breasts. The blouse looked like polyester that had been washed many times. It spiralled down into the waistband of the skirt. She was twisted sideways and the skirt was halfway up her thighs. Her legs were thin and hard under black nylon. Her knees were pressed together, but there was a gap between her thighs.

  ‘Would you stop doing that, please?’ she said.

  Her voice had gone cold, and the gun moved.

  ‘Doing what?’ Reacher asked.

  ‘Looking at my legs.’

  He switched his gaze up to her face. ‘Somebody points a gun at me, I’m entitled to check them out head to toe, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You like doing that?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Looking at women.’

  He shrugged. ‘Better than I like looking at some things, I guess.’

  The gun moved closer. ‘This isn’t funny, asshole. I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘What way am I looking at you?’ he asked.

  ‘You know what way.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he said.

  ‘Like you’re making advances,’ she said. ‘You’re disgusting, you know that?’

  He listened to the contempt in her voice and stared at her thin hair, her frown, her crooked tooth, her hard dried-up body in its ludicrous cheap businesswoman’s uniform.

  ‘You think I’m making advances to you?’

  ‘Aren’t you? Wouldn’t you like to?’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘Not while there are dogs on the street,’ he said.

  They sat in crackling hostile silence for the best part of twenty minutes. Then the sandy guy with the moustache came back to the car and slid into the front passenger seat. The driver’s door opened and a second man got in. He had keys in his hand. He watched the mirror until the woman nodded and then fired up the motor and eased past Reacher’s parked truck and headed out toward the road.

  ‘Do I get to make a phone call?’ Reacher asked. ‘Or doesn’t the FBI believe in stuff like that?’

  The sandy guy was staring straight ahead, at the windshield.

  ‘At some point within the first twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘We’ll make sure you’re not denied your constitutional rights.’

  The woman kept the SIG-Sauer’s muzzle close to Reacher’s head all the way back to Manhattan, fifty-eight fast miles through the dark and the fog.

  THREE

  They parked underground someplace south of Midtown and forced him out of the car into a white-painted garage full of bright light and dark sedans. The woman turned a full circle on the concrete floor with her shoes scraping in the silence. She was examining the whole crowded space. A cautious approach. Then she pointed toward a single black elevator door located in a distant corner. There were two more guys waiting there. Dark suits, white shirts, quiet ties. They watched the woman and the sandy guy all the way in across the diagonal. There was deference in their faces. They were junior guys. But they were also comfortable, and a little proud. Like they were some kind of hosts. Reacher suddenly understood the woman and the sandy guy were not New York agents. They were visitors from somewhere else. They were on somebody else’s turf. The woman hadn’t examined the whole garage simply because she was cautious. She had done it because she didn’t know where the elevator was.

  They put Reacher in the centre of the elevator car and crowded in around him. The woman, the sandy guy, the driver, the two local boys. Five people, five weapons. The four men took a corner each and the woman stood in the centre, close to Reacher, like she was claiming him as hers. One of the local boys touched a button and the door rolled shut and the elevator took off.

  It traveled upward for a long time and stopped hard with 21 showing on the floor indicator. The door thumped back and the local boys led the way out into a blank corridor. It was grey. Thin grey carpet, grey paint, grey light. It was quiet, like everyone except the hard-core enthusiasts had gone home hours before. There were closed doors spaced along the corridor wall. The guy who had driven the sedan down from Garrison paused in front of the third and opened it up. Reacher was manoeuvred to the doorway and looked in at a bare space, maybe twelve by sixteen, concrete floor, cinderblock walls, all covered in thick grey paint like the side of a battleship. The ceiling was unfinished, and the ducting was all visible, square trunking made from thin flecked metal. Fluorescent fittings hung from chains and threw a flat glare across the grey. There was a single plastic garden chair in the corner. It was the only thing in the room.

  ‘Sit down,’ the woman said.

  Reacher walked away from the chair to the opposite corner and sat on the floor, wedged into the angle of the cinderblock walls. The cinderblock was cold and the paint was slick. He folded his arms over his chest and stretched his legs out straight and crossed his ankles. Rested his head on the wall, forty-five degrees to his shoulders, so he was gazing straight at the people standing by the door. They backed out into the corridor and closed the door on him. There was no sound of a lock turning, but there didn’t need to be, because there was no handle on the inside.

  He felt the faint shudder of footsteps receding through the concrete floor. Then he was left with nothing but silence floating on a whisper of air from the vents above his head. He sat in the silence for maybe five minutes and then he felt more footsteps outside and the door opened again and a man stuck his face inside the room and stared straight in at him. It was an older face, big and red and bloated with strain and puffy with blood pressure, full of hostility, and its frank stare said so you’re the guy, huh? The stare lasted three or four long seconds and then the face ducked back out and the door slammed and the silence came back again.

  The same thing happened over again five minutes later. Footsteps in the corridor, a face around the door, the same frank stare. So you’re the guy. This time the face was leaner and darker. Younger. Shirt and tie below it, no jacket. Reacher stared back, three or four seconds. The face disappeared and the door slammed.

  This time the silence lasted longer, somewhere around twenty minutes. Then a third face came to stare. Footsteps, the rattle of the handle, the door opening, the stare. This is the guy, huh? This third face was older again, a man somewhere in his fifties, a competent expression, a thatch of grey hair. He wore thick glasses and behind them his eyes were calm. Serious speculation in both of them. He looked like a guy with responsibilities. Maybe some kind of a Bureau chief. Reacher stared back at him, wearily. No words were spoken. No communication took place. The guy just stared for a spell and then his face disappeared and the door closed again.

  Whatever was happening outside kept on happening for the best part of an hour. Reacher was left alone in the room, sitting comfortably on the floor, just waiting. Then the waiting was over. A whole crowd of people came back together, noisy in the corridor, like an anxious herd. Reacher felt the stamp and shuffle of footsteps. Then the door opened and the grey-haired guy with the eyeglasses stepped into the room. He kept his trailing foot near the threshold and leaned his weight inside at an angle.

  ‘Time to talk,’ he said.

  The two junior agents pushed in behind him and took up station like an escort. Reacher waited a beat and then he jacked himself upright and stepped away from his corner.

  ‘I want to make a call,’ he said.

  The grey-haired guy shook his head.

  ‘Calling comes later,’ he said. ‘Talking comes first, OK?’

  Reacher shrugged. The problem with getting your rights abused was that somebody had to witness it for it to mean anything. Somebody had to see it happen. And the two young agents were seeing nothing. Or maybe they were seeing Moses himself coming down and reading the whole Constitution off big tablets of stone. Maybe that’s what they would swear to later.

  ‘So let’s go,’ the grey-haired guy said.

  Reacher was crowded out into the grey corridor and into a big knot of people. The woman was there, and the sandy guy with the moustache, and the older guy with the blood pressure, and the younger guy with the lean face and the shirtsleeves. They were buzzing. It was late in the evening, but they were all pumped up with excitement. They were up on their toes, weightless with the intoxication of progress. It was a feeling Reacher recognized. It was a feeling he had experienced, more times than he cared to remember.

  But they were divided. There were two clear teams. There was tension between them. It became obvious as they walked. The woman stuck close to his left shoulder, and the sandy guy and the bloodpressure guy stuck close to her. That was one team. On his right shoulder was the guy with the lean face. He was the second team, alone and outnumbered and unhappy about it. Reacher felt his hand near his elbow, like he was ready to make a grab for his prize.

  They walked down a narrow grey corridor like the bowels of a battleship and spilled into a grey room with a long table filling most of the floor space. The table was curved on both long edges and chopped off straight at the ends. On one long side, backs to the door, were seven plastic chairs in a line, well spaced out, with the curve of the table edge focusing them all across toward a single identical chair placed in the exact centre of the opposite side.

  Reacher paused in the doorway. Not too difficult to work out which chair was his. He looped around the end of the table and sat down in it. It was flimsy. The legs squirmed under his weight and the plastic dug into the muscle under his shoulder blades. The room was cinderblock, painted grey like the first one, but this ceiling was finished. There was stained acoustic tile in warped framing. There was track lighting bolted to it, with large can-shaped fixtures angled down and toward him. The tabletop was cheap mahogany, thickly lacquered with shiny varnish. The light bounced off the varnish and came up into his eyes from below.

  The two junior agents had taken up position against the walls at opposite ends of the table, like sentries. Their jackets were open and their shoulder holsters were visible. Their hands were folded comfortably at their waists. Their heads were turned, watching him. Opposite him, the two teams were forming up. Seven chairs, five people. The grey-haired guy took the centre chair. The light caught his eyeglasses and turned them into blank mirrors. Next to him on his right-hand side was the guy with the blood pressure, and next to him was the woman, and next to her was the sandy guy. The guy with the lean face and the shirtsleeves was alone in the middle chair of the left-hand three. A lopsided inquisition, hunching toward him, indistinct through the glare of the lights.

  The grey-haired guy leaned forward, sliding his forearms onto the shiny wood, claiming authority. And subconsciously separating the factions to his left and right.

  ‘We’ve been squabbling over you,’ he said.

  ‘Am I in custody?’ Reacher asked.

  The guy shook his head. ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘So I’m free to go?’

  The guy looked over the top of his eyeglasses. ‘Well, we’d rather you stayed right here, so we can keep this whole thing civilized for a spell.’

  There was silence for a long moment.

  ‘So make it civilized,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m Jack Reacher. Who the hell are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s have some introductions. That’s what civilized people do, right? They introduce themselves. Then they chat politely about the Yankees or the stock market or something.’

  More silence. Then the guy nodded.

  ‘I’m Alan Deerfield,’ he said. ‘Assistant Director, FBI. I run the New York Field Office.’

  Then he turned his head to his right and stared at the sandy guy on the end of the line and waited.

  ‘Special Agent Tony Poulton,’ the sandy guy said, and glanced to his left.

  ‘Special Agent Julia Lamarr,’ the woman said, and glanced to her left.

  ‘Agent-in-Charge Nelson Blake,’ the guy with the blood pressure said. ‘The three of us are up here from Quantico. I run the Serial Crimes Unit. Special Agents Lamarr and Poulton work for me there. We came up here to talk to you.’

  There was a pause and the guy called Deerfield turned the other way and looked toward the man on his left.

  ‘Agent-in-Charge James Cozo,’ the guy said. ‘Organized Crime, here in New York City, working on the protection rackets.’

  More silence.

  ‘OK now?’ Deerfield asked.

  Reacher squinted through the glare. They were all looking at him. The sandy guy, Poulton. The woman, Lamarr. The hypertensive, Blake. All three of them from Serial Crimes down in Quantico. Up here to talk to him. Then Deerfield, the New York Bureau chief, a heavyweight. Then the lean guy, Cozo, from Organized Crime, working on the protection rackets. He glanced slowly left to right, and right to left, and finished up back on Deerfield. Then he nodded.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you all. So what about those Yankees? You think they need to trade?’

  Five different people facing him, five different expressions of annoyance. Poulton turned his head like he had been slapped. Lamarr snorted, a contemptuous sound in her nose. Blake tightened his mouth and got redder. Deerfield stared and sighed. Cozo glanced sideways at Deerfield, lobbying for intervention.

  ‘We’re not going to talk about the Yankees,’ Deerfield said.

  ‘So what about the Dow? We going to see a big crash any time soon?’

  Deerfield shook his head. ‘Don’t mess with me, Reacher. Right now I’m the best friend you got.’

  ‘No, Ernesto A. Miranda is the best friend I got,’ Reacher said. ‘Miranda versus Arizona, Supreme Court decision in June of 1966. They said his Fifth Amendment rights were infringed because the cops didn’t warn him he could stay silent and get himself a lawyer.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you can’t talk to me until you read me my Miranda rights. Whereupon you can’t talk to me anyway because my lawyer could take some time to get here and then she won’t let me talk to you even when she does.’

  The three agents from Serial Crime were smiling broadly. Like Reacher was busy proving something to them.

  ‘Your lawyer is Jodie Jacob, right?’ Deerfield asked. ‘Your girlfriend?’

  ‘What do you know about my girlfriend?’

  ‘We know everything about your girlfriend,’ Deerfield said. ‘Just like we know everything about you, too.’

  ‘So why do you need to talk to me?’

  ‘She’s at Spencer Gutman, right?’ Deerfield said. ‘Big reputation as an associate. They’re talking about a partnership for her, you know that?’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘Maybe real soon.’

  ‘So I heard,’ Reacher said again.

  ‘Knowing you isn’t going to help her, though. You’re not exactly the ideal corporate husband, are you?’

  ‘I’m not any kind of a husband.’

  Deerfield smiled. ‘Figure of speech, is all. But Spencer Gutman is a real white-shoe operation. They consider stuff like that, you know. And it’s a financial firm, right? Real big in the world of banking, we all know that. But not much expertise in the field of criminal law. You sure you want her for your attorney? Situation like this?’

  ‘Situation like what?’

  ‘Situation you’re in.’

  ‘What situation am I in?’

  ‘Ernesto A. Miranda was a moron, you know that?’ Deerfield said. ‘A couple of smokes short of a pack? That’s why the damn Court was so soft on him. He was a subnormal guy. He needed the protection. You a moron, Reacher? You a subnormal guy?’

  ‘Probably, to be putting up with this shit.’

  ‘Rights are for guilty people, anyway. You already saying you’re guilty of something?’

  Reacher shook his head. ‘I’m not saying anything. I’ve got nothing to say.’

  ‘Old Ernesto went to jail anyhow, you know that? People tend to forget that fact. They retried him and convicted him just the same. He was in jail five years. Then you know what happened to him?’

  Reacher shrugged. Said nothing.

  ‘I was working in Phoenix at the time,’ Deerfield said. ‘Down in Arizona. Homicide detective, for the city. Just before I made it to the Bureau. January of 1976, we get a call to a bar. Some piece of shit lying on the floor, big knife-handle sticking up out of him. The famous Ernesto A. Miranda himself, bleeding all over the place. Nobody fell over themselves rushing to call any medics. Guy died a couple minutes after we got there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So stop wasting my time. I already wasted an hour stopping these guys fighting over you. So now you owe me. So you’ll answer their questions, and I’ll tell you when and if you need a damn lawyer.’