Make Me

He navigated by instinct, looking for the kind of place where people could gather and cars could double park for a moment. There were cars at the curbs, and some in motion. There were tricked-out Japanese coupes, and low-riders, and enormous old aircraft-carrier sedans from Buick and Plymouth and Pontiac. Some had custom modifications, with wide mag wheels, and chrome pipes, and blue chassis lights underneath. One car was lowered waist-high, with the motor sticking up through a hole in the hood panel, vertical like a miniature oil rig, with a huge four-barrel carburetor and a giant chrome air filter about level with the roof.

Reacher stopped and looked at it.

He said, “I need to see those satellite pictures again.”

Chang said, “Why?”

“There’s something wrong with them.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something in the back of my mind. Not a regular memory thing. I’m OK.”

“You sure?”

“Ask me a question.”

“Teddy Roosevelt’s vice president.”

“Charles Fairbanks.”

“I thought he was a movie actor.”

“I think that was Douglas.”

They moved on, past sagging wood houses set close together, past weedy front yards behind wire fences, some empty, some full of trash, some with chained dogs, some littered with bright bicycles and tricycles and other children’s toys. They found a diagonal street that cut the corner between one not-quite-main drag and another. It was wide enough for three lanes, but the curbs were parked solid. It was long enough to slow down, and stop, and speed up again.

Reacher said, “This should be fine.”

There was stoop activity, but most of it was happening about halfway down the street. Young guys, maybe twelve years old, milling around in groups, scanning left and right for traffic.

Reacher said, “OK, here’s where we pretend we suddenly realize what we’ve gotten ourselves into, and we beat a hasty retreat.”

They turned around and hustled back to the not-quite-main drag behind them. They turned the tight right and walked on, roughly the same direction they had been headed, behind the street they had seen. They stopped when they guessed they were level with the invisible knot of twelve-year-olds, who they figured were hanging out a long lot’s length to their right. Plus the depth of their own back yard, plus the depth of their own house, plus their own front yard, and the sidewalk. About four hundred dark feet, Reacher figured.

He said, “Let’s go see what they have for us.”

Chapter 50

They picked a boarded-up house with a broken chain on its gate. They went in, swift and decisive like they belonged, and they slipped down the side of the house, and through its back yard, to its back fence, which shared a blunt angle with the back yard of a house on the diagonal street. Probably not the house they were looking for, but close. Reacher forced a wire panel out of its frame and they slipped through, unobtrusive except for the white gleam of their faces in the yellow evening gloom.

They walked through the new back yard and checked the view between the house and its neighbor. They were one short. All the commerce was taking place one lot to the left. There was a chain-link fence separating the yards. Easily climbed, at the cost of metallic chinking and clinking. Chang was agile. Better than Reacher. He was built for bulldozing, not gymnastics.

The back yard they climbed into was ill maintained. Not really maintained at all, to be accurate. It was full of thigh-high grass and weeds. The rear of the house had one lit window.

Reacher said, “Keep your right hand in your pocket when you can. Make them think you have a weapon.”

“Does that work?”

“Sometimes.”

She said, “Are they dope dealers?”

He nodded. “Like drive-through hamburgers. They use juveniles to carry the baggies and the cash back and forth to the cars. Young enough not to get arrested. Although that part might have changed. Might be just a myth these days. Especially in Oklahoma. They probably try them as adults now.”

The lit window was on the right. Probably a living room of some kind. On the left was a window and a door, both dark. A kitchen, presumably. They swished through the miniature prairie to the door. Reacher tried the handle. Locked. He stepped sideways and looked in the window. A dim space, piled high with trash and dirty dishes. Pizza rinds, and empty cans. Red Bull and beer.

Reacher took another sideways step and pressed against the wall. He looked in the lit window, half an eye, at an angle. He saw two guys. They were sprawled on separate sofas, staring at their phones. Their thumbs were moving. They were playing games, or texting. On a low table between them were two duffel bags. Black nylon, new but poor quality. The kind of thing that costs five bucks in a store selling cameras for ten and telescopes for twenty. On top of one bag was a bulk pack of rubber bands from an office supply store.

On top of the other bag was an Uzi sub-machinegun.

Reacher crept back and rejoined Chang at the kitchen door.

He whispered, “We need to find a rock.”

“For the window?”

He nodded.