“OK,” the second guy said. “Were there more boxes?”
“That was the best one. Depends if Mrs. Jacob is big or small, I guess.”
“Depends if she’s finished by tonight.”
“You got any doubts on that score? The mood he’s in today?”
They strolled together to a different slot and unlocked a black Chevy Tahoe. Little brother to the Suburban, but still a giant vehicle.
“So where is she?” the second guy asked.
“A town called Garrison,” the first guy said. “Straight up the Hudson, a ways past Sing Sing. An hour, hour and a half.”
The Tahoe backed out of the slot and squealed its tires on its way around the garage. Bumped up the ramp into the sunshine and headed out to West Street, where it made a right and accelerated north.
4
WEST STREET BECOMES Eleventh Avenue right opposite Pier 56, where the westbound traffic spills out of Fourteenth Street and turns north. The big black Tahoe was caught in the congestion and added its horn to the frustrated blasts cannoning off the high buildings and echoing out over the river. It crawled nine blocks and made a left at Twenty-third Street, then swung north again on Twelfth. It got above walking speed until it passed the back of the Javits Convention Center, and then it got jammed up again in the traffic pouring out of West Forty-second. Twelfth became the Miller Highway and it was still solid, all the way over the top of the huge messy acreage of the old rail yards. Then the Miller became the Henry Hudson Parkway. Still a slow road, but the Henry Hudson was technically Route 9A, which would become Route 9 up in Crotonville and take them all the way north to Garrison. A straight line, no turns anywhere, but they were still in Manhattan, stuck in Riverside Park, a whole half hour after setting out.
IT WAS THE word processor that meant the most. The cursor, patiently blinking in the middle of a word. The open door and the abandoned bag were persuasive, but not critical. Office workers usually take their stuff and close their doors, but not always. The secretary might have just stepped across the hall and gotten involved in something, a quest for bond paper or a plea for help with somebody’s copying machine, leading to a cup of coffee and a juicy story about last night’s date. A person expecting to be absent two minutes might leave her bag behind and her door open and end up being gone a half hour. But nobody leaves computer work unsaved. Not even for a minute. And this woman had. The machine had asked him DO YOU WANT TO SAVE THE CHANGES? Which meant she had gotten up from her desk without clicking on the save icon, which is a habit just about as regular as breathing for people who spend their days fighting with software.
Which put a very bad complexion on the whole thing. Reacher was through in Grand Central’s other big hall, with a twenty-ounce cup of black coffee he had bought from a vendor. He jammed the lid down tight and squeezed the cash roll in his pocket. It was thick enough for what he was going to have to do. He ran back and around to the track where the next Croton train was waiting to leave.
THE HENRY HUDSON Parkway splits into a tangle of curling ramps around 170th Street and the north lanes come out again labeled Riverside Drive. Same road, same direction, no turn, but the complex dynamic of heavy traffic means that if one driver slows down more than the average, then the highway can back up dramatically, with hundreds of people stalled way behind, all because some out-of-towner a mile ahead became momentarily confused. The big black Tahoe was brought to a complete halt opposite Fort Washington and was reduced to a lurching stop-start crawl all the way under the George Washington Bridge. Then Riverside Drive broadens out and it got itself up into third gear before the label changed back to the Henry Hudson and the traffic in the toll plaza stopped it again. It waited in line to pay the money that let it off the island of Manhattan and away north through the Bronx.
THERE ARE TWO types of trains running up and down the Hudson River between Grand Central and Croton- Harmon: locals and expresses. The expresses do not run any faster in terms of speed, but they stop less often. They make the journey last somewhere between forty-nine and fifty-two minutes. The locals stop everywhere, and the repeated braking and waiting and accelerating spin the trip out to anywhere between sixty-five and seventy- three minutes. A maximum advantage for the express of up to twenty-four minutes.
Reacher was on a local. He had given the trainman five and a half bucks for an off-peak one-way and was sitting sideways on an empty three-person bench, wired from too much coffee, his head resting on the window, wondering exactly where the hell he was going, and why, and what he was going to do when he got there. And whether he would get there in time to do it, anyway, whatever it was.
ROUTE 9A BECAME 9 and curved gracefully away from the river to run behind Camp Smith. Up in Westchester, it was a fast enough road. Not exactly a racetrack, because it curved and bounced around too much for sustained high speed, but it was clear and empty, a patchwork of old sections and new stretches carved through the woods. There were housing developments here and there beyond the shoulders, high timber fencing and neatly painted siding and optimistic names carved into imposing boulders flanking the entrance gates. The Tahoe hustled along, one guy driving and the other with a map across his knees.
They passed Peekskill and started hunting a left turn. They found it and swung head-on toward the river, which they sensed ahead of them, an empty break in the landscape. They entered the township of Garrison, and started hunting the address. Not easy to find. The residential areas were scattered. You could have a Garrison zip code and live way in the back of beyond. That was clear. But they found the right road and made all the correct turns and found the right street. Slowed and cruised through the thinning woods above the river, watching the mailboxes. The road curved and opened out. They cruised on. Then they spotted the right house up ahead and slowed abruptly and pulled in at the curb.
REACHER GOT OFF of the train at Croton, seventy-one minutes after getting in. He ran up the stairs and across and down to the taxi rank. There were four operators lined up, all nose-in to the station entrance, all of them using old-model Caprice wagons with fake wood on the sides. The first driver to react was a stout woman who tilted her head up like she was ready to pay attention.
“You know Garrison?” Reacher asked her.
“Garrison?” she said. “That’s a long way, mister, twenty miles.”
“I know where it is,” he said.
“Could be forty bucks.”
“I’ll give you fifty,” he said. “But I need to be there right now.”
He sat in front, next to her. The car stank like old taxis do, sweet cloying air freshener and upholstery cleaner. There were a million miles on the clock and it rode like a boat on a swell as the woman hustled through the parking lot and up onto Route 9 and headed north.
“You got an address for me?” she asked, watching the road.
Reacher repeated what the assistant in the law firm had told him. The woman nodded and settled to a fast cruise.
“Overlooks the river,” she said.
She cruised for a quarter hour, passed by Peekskill and then slowed, looking for a particular left. Hauled the huge boat around and headed west. Reacher could feel the river up ahead, a mile-wide trench in the forest. The woman knew where she was going. She went all the way to the river and turned north on a country road. The rail tracks ran parallel between them and the water. No trains on them. The land fell away and Reacher could see West Point ahead and on his left, a mile away across the blue water.
“Should be along here someplace,” she said.
It was a narrow country road, domesticated with ranch fencing in rough timber and tamed with mowed shoulders and specimen plantings. There were mailboxes a hundred yards apart and poles that hung cables through
