The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [136]
“I don’t know who it is,” I said. “Not for sure. Not yet.”
Chapter
79
We finished our lunch without saying much more. Then we had pie. Peach, naturally. And coffee. I asked her, “Did the Kelham PR squad come see you?”
She nodded. “Just before I came out for lunch.”
“So you know what’s happening tonight.”
“Eight o’clock,” she said. “Everyone on best behavior.”
“You OK with that?”
“They know the rules. If they stick to them, I won’t give them any trouble.”
Then the phone rang. Deveraux whipped around and stared at it, as if she had never heard it ring before. Which was possible. I said, “It’s for me.”
I walked over and picked up. It was Munro. He said, “I have the transportation details, if you’re interested. Reed Riley doesn’t own a car anymore, as you know, so he’s borrowing a plain olive drab staff car. He’ll be driving with his father as his only passenger. The motor pool has been told to have the car ready at eight o’clock exactly.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good to know. Is there a return ETA?”
“There’s an eleven o’clock curfew tonight. Unofficial, all done in whispers, but it’ll happen. A few beers is authentic. Too many is embarrassing. That’s the thinking. So people will be leaving town from ten-thirty onwards. The senator’s plane is scheduled to be wheels-up at midnight.”
“Good to know,” I said again. “Thanks. Has he arrived yet?”
“Twenty minutes ago, in an army Lear.”
“Has the hoopla started yet?”
“First pitch in about an hour.”
“Will you bring me your interview notes?”
“Why?”
“There are a couple of things I want to check. As soon as the senator looks like he’s going to stay put for ten minutes, would you bring them down to me in the diner?”
Munro agreed to do that, so I hung up the phone and walked back to the table, but by then Deveraux was already getting up to leave. She said, “I’m sorry, I have to get back to work. I’ve got a lot to do. I have three homicides to solve.”
Then she pushed past me and walked out the door.
Waiting. I passed some of the time by taking a walk. I looped around the Sheriff’s Department building and entered the acre of beaten earth behind Main Street from the top. The railroad track on my left was silent. The stores and bars on my right were all open, but they had no customers. The bars all had cleaners working in them, all of them black women over forty, all of them bent low over mops and pails, all of them supervised by anxious owners well aware that a U.S. senator would be passing by, and maybe even dropping in. Brannan’s was getting more attention than most. Furniture was being moved, refrigerators were being topped off, trash was being hauled out. Even the windows were being wiped.
Across the alley from Brannan’s the loan office was doing no business at all. Shawna Lindsay had worked there before she died, and evidently she had been replaced by another young woman, less beautiful, but possibly just as good with her numbers. She was sitting on a high stool behind a counter, with a lit-up Western Union sign behind her head. I had time to kill, so on a whim I went inside. The woman looked up as the door opened, and she smiled like she was happy to see me. Maybe I was the only customer of the day so far.
I asked her how the system worked, and after a little back and forth I understood I could call my bank on the phone and order money to be sent to any such office in America. I would need a password for the bank, and either ID or the same password for the office. This was 1997, remember. Things were still pretty casual back then. I knew there were all kinds of banks close to the Pentagon, because thirty thousand people all in one place was a big market to exploit. I decided next time I was in D.C. I would move my account to one of them, and find out its phone number, and register a password. Just in case.
I thanked the young woman and moved on, to the next place in line, which was a gun shop. I bought spare ammunition for the Beretta,