Part 20 (1/2)
”For what?”
”He used a fireplug three times running. Why? Because a fireplug almost always guarantees a stretch of empty curb, that's why. Because of the parking prohibition. No parking next to a hydrant. Everyone knows that. But he used the same fireplug each time. Why? There are plenty to choose from. There's at least one on every block. So why that one? Because he liked that one, that's why. But why did he like that one? What makes a person like one fireplug more than another?”
”What?”
”Nothing,” Reacher said. ”They're all the same. They're ma.s.s-produced. They're identical. What this guy had was a vantage point that he liked. The vantage point came first, and the fireplug was merely the nearest one to it. The one most visible from it. As you so correctly pointed out, he needed cover that was reliable and un.o.btrusive, late night, early morning, and rush hour. And potentially he might have needed to be there for extended periods. As it happened Gregory was punctual both times, but he could have hit traffic. And who knew where Burke was going to be when he got the call on the car phone? Who knew how long he might take to get down there? So wherever this guy was waiting, he was comfortable doing it.”
”But does this help us?”
”You bet your a.s.s it does. It's the first definite link in the chain. It was a fixed, identifiable location. We need to get down to Sixth Avenue and figure out where it was. Someone might have seen him there. Someone might even know who he is.”
CHAPTER 29
REACHER AND PAULING caught a cab on Second Avenue and it took them all the way south to Houston Street and then west to Sixth. They got out on the southeast corner and glanced back at the empty sky where the Twin Towers used to be and then they turned north together into a warm breeze full of trash and grit.
”So show me the famous fireplug,” Pauling said.
They walked north until they came to it, right there on the right-hand sidewalk in the middle of the block. Fat, short, squat, upright, chipped dull paint, flanked by two protective metal posts four feet apart. The curb next to it was empty. Every other legal parking spot on the block was taken. Pauling stood near the hydrant and pirouetted a slow circle. Looked east, north, west, south.
”Where would a military mind want to be?” she asked.
Reacher recited, ”A soldier knows that a satisfactory observation point provides an un.o.bstructed view to the front and adequate security to the flanks and the rear. He knows it provides protection from the elements and concealment of the observers. He knows it offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.”
”What would the duration be?”
”Say an hour maximum, each time.”
”How did it work, the first two times?”
”He watched Gregory park, and then he followed him down to Spring Street.”
”So he wasn't waiting inside the derelict building?”
”Not if he was working alone.”
”But he still used the back door.”
”On the second occasion, at least.”
”Why not the front door?”
”I don't know.”
”Have we definitely decided he was working alone?”
”Only one of them came back alive.”
Pauling turned the same slow circle. ”So where was his observation point?”
”West of here,” Reacher said. ”He will have wanted a full-on view.”
”Across the street?”
Reacher nodded. ”Middle of the block, or not too far north or south of it. Nothing too oblique. Range, maybe up to a hundred feet. Not more.
”He could have used binoculars. Like Patti Joseph does.”
”He would still need a good angle. Like Patti has. She's more or less directly across the street.”
”So set some limits.”
”A maximum forty-five-degree arc. That's twenty-some degrees north to twenty-some degrees south. Maximum radius, about a hundred feet.”
Pauling turned to face the curb square-on. She spread her arms out straight and forty-five degrees apart and held her hands flat and upright like mimed karate chops. Scoped out the view. A forty-five-degree bite out of a circle with a radius of a hundred feet gave her an arc of about seventy-eight feet to look at. More than three standard twenty-foot Greenwich Village storefronts, less than four. A total of five establishments to consider. The centre three were possibilities. The one to the north and the one to the south were marginal. Reacher stood directly behind her and looked over her head. Her left hand was pointing at a flower store. Then came his new favourite cafe. Then came a picture framer. Then a double-fronted wine store, wider than the others. Her right hand was pointing at a vitamin shop.
”A flower store would be no good,” she said. ”It offers a wall behind him and a window in front of him but it wouldn't be open at eleven-forty at night.”
Reacher said nothing.
”The wine store was probably open,” she said. ”But it wouldn't have been at seven in the morning.”
Reacher said, ”Can't hang around in a flower store or a wine store for an hour at a time. Neither one of them offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.”
”Same with all of them, then,” she said. ”Except the cafe. The cafe would have been open all three times. And you can sit for an hour in a cafe.”
”The cafe would have been pretty risky. Three separate lengthy spells, someone would have remembered him. They remembered me after one cup of coffee.”
”Were the sidewalks crowded when you were here?”
”Fairly.”
”So maybe he was just out on the street. Or in a doorway. In the shadows. He might have risked it. He was on the other side from where the cars were parking.”
”No protection from the elements and no concealment. It would have been an uncomfortable hour, three times in a row.”
”He was a Recon Marine. He was in prison in Africa for five years. He's used to discomfort.”
”I meant tactically. This part of town, he would have been afraid of getting busted for a drug dealer. Or a terrorist. South of Twenty-third Street they don't like you to hang around at all anymore.'
”So where was he?”
Reacher looked left, looked right.