25

The Chateau Marmont was a bohemian old pile on Sunset, near the foot of Laurel Canyon. All kinds of movie stars and rock stars had stayed there. There were plenty of photographs on the walls. Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, James Dean, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison. Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane had booked in there. John Belushi had died in there, after speedballing enough heroin and cocaine to take down every guest in the hotel. There were no photographs of him.

The desk clerk wanted IDs along with Neagley’s platinum card, so they all checked in under their real names. No choice. Then the guy told them there were only three rooms available. Neagley had to be alone, so Reacher and O’Donnell bunked together and let the women have a room each. Then O’Donnell drove Neagley back to the Beverly Wilshire in Dixon’s car to pick up their bags and check out. Then Neagley would take the Mustang back to LAX and O’Donnell would follow her in convoy to bring her back. It would be a three-hour hiatus. Reacher and Dixon would stay behind and spend the three hours working on the numbers.

They set up in Dixon’s room. According to the desk guy, Leonardo DiCaprio had been in there once, but there was no remaining sign of him. Reacher laid the seven spreadsheets side by side on the bed and watched as Dixon bent down and scanned them, the same way some people read music or poetry.

“Two key issues,” she said immediately. “There are no hundred percent scores. No ten out of ten, no nine out of nine.”

“And?”

“The first three sheets have twenty-six numbers, the fourth has twenty-seven, and the last three all have twenty-six again.”

“Which means what?”

“I don’t know. But none of the sheets is full. Therefore the twenty-six thing and the twenty-seven thing must mean something. It’s deliberate, not accidental. It’s not just a continuous list of numbers with page breaks. If it was, Franz could have gotten them onto six sheets, not seven. So it’s seven separate categories of something.”

“Separate but similar,” Reacher said. “It’s a descriptive sequence.”

“The scores get worse,” Dixon said.

“Radically.”

“And quite suddenly. They’re OK, and then they fall off a cliff.”

“But what are they?”

“No idea.”

Reacher asked, “What can be measured like that, repetitively?”

“Anything can, I guess. Could be mental health, answers to simple questions. Could be physical performance, coordination tasks. It could be that errors are being recorded, in which case the numbers are actually getting better, not worse.”

“What are the categories? What are we looking at? Seven of what?”

Dixon nodded. “That’s the key. We need to understand that first.”

“Can’t be medical tests. Can’t be any kind of tests. Why stick twenty-seven questions in the middle of a sequence where everything else is twenty-six questions? That would destroy consistency.”

Dixon shrugged and stood up straight. She took off her jacket and dumped it on a chair. Walked to the window and pulled a faded drape aside and looked out and down. Then up at the hills.

“I like LA,” she said.

“Me too, I guess,” Reacher said.

“I like New York better.”

“Me too, probably.”

“But the contrast is nice.”

“I guess.”

“Shitty circumstances, but it’s great to see you again, Reacher. Really great.”

Reacher nodded. “Likewise. We thought we’d lost you. Didn’t feel good.”

“Can I hug you?”

“You want to hug me?”

“I wanted to hug all of you at the Hertz office. But I didn’t, because Neagley wouldn’t have liked it.”

“She shook Angela Franz’s hand. And the dragon lady’s, at New Age.”

“That’s progress,” Dixon said.

“A little,” Reacher said.

“She was abused, way back. That was always my guess.”

“She’ll never talk about it,” Reacher said.

“It’s sad.”

“You bet.”

Karla Dixon turned to him and Reacher took her in his arms and hugged her hard. She was fragrant. Her hair smelled of shampoo. He lifted her off her feet and spun her around, a complete slow circle. She felt light and thin and fragile. Her back was narrow. She was wearing a black silk shirt, and her skin felt warm underneath it. He set her back on her feet and she stretched up tall and kissed his cheek.

“I’ve missed you,” she said. “Missed you all, I mean.”

“Me too,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much.”

“You like life after the army?” she asked.

“Yes, I like it fine.”

“I don’t. But maybe you’re reacting better than me.”

“I don’t know how I’m reacting. I don’t know whether I’m reacting at all. I look at you people and I feel like I’m just treading water. Or drowning. You all are swimming.”

“Are you really broke?”

“Almost penniless.”

“Me too,” she said. “I earn three hundred grand a year and I’m on the breadline. That’s life. You’re well out of it.”

“I feel that way, usually. Until I have to get back in it. Neagley put a thousand and thirty bucks in my bank account.”

“Like a ten-thirty radio code? Smart girl.”

“And for my airfare. Without that I’d still be on my way down here, hitch-hiking.”

“You’d be walking. Nobody in their right mind would pick you up.”

Reacher glanced at himself in an old spotted mirror. Six-five, two-fifty, hands as big as frozen turkeys, hair all over the place, unshaven, torn shirtcuffs up on his forearms like Frankenstein’s monster.

A bum.

From the big green machine to this.

Dixon said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“I always wished we had done more than just work together.”

“Who?”

“You and me.”

“That was a statement, not a question.”

“Did you feel the same way?”

“Honestly?”

“Please.”

“Yes, I did.”

“So why didn’t we do more?”

“Wouldn’t have been right.”

“We ignored all kinds of other regulations.”

“It would have wrecked the unit. The others would have been jealous.”

“Including Neagley?”

“In her way.”

“We could have kept it a secret.”

Reacher said, “Dream on.”

“We could keep it a secret now. We’ve got three hours.”

Reacher said nothing.

Dixon said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that all of this bad stuff makes me feel that life is so short.”

Reacher said, “And the unit is wrecked now anyway.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t you have a boyfriend back East?”

“Not right now.”

Reacher stepped back to the bed. Karla Dixon came over and stood right next to him, her hip against his thigh. The seven sheets of paper were still laid out in a line.

“Want to look at these some more?” Reacher asked.

“Not right now,” Dixon said.

“Me either.” He gathered them up and butted them together. Placed them on the nightstand and trapped them under the phone. Asked, “You sure about this?”

“I’ve been sure for thirteen years.”

“Me too. But it has to stay a secret.”

“Agreed.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her mouth. The shape of her teeth was new to his tongue. The buttons on her shirt were small and awkward.