Make Me

Chang said, “Then you’re the taxi driver. We saw you at the motel this morning.”

The guy didn’t answer.

“And yesterday morning,” Chang said.

No reply.

There was a small wire-mesh holder on the counter, full of business cards supplied by the MoneyGram franchise. A side benefit, presumably, along with the commission. Reacher took a card and read it. The guy’s name was not Maloney. Reacher asked him, “You got a local phone book?”

“What for?”

“I want to balance it on my head to improve my deportment.”

“What?”

“I want to look up a number. What else is a phone book for?”

The guy paused a long moment, as if searching for a legitimate reason to deny the request, but in the end he couldn’t find one, apparently, because he dipped down and hauled a slim volume from a shelf under the counter, and rotated it 180 degrees, and slid it across the plywood.

Reacher said, “Thank you,” and thumbed it open, to where L changed to M.

Chang leaned in for a look.

No Maloney.

Reacher said, “Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?”

The guy behind the counter said, “I don’t know.”

Chang said, “How old is your Cadillac?”

“How is that your business?”

“It isn’t, really. We’re not from the DMV. We don’t care about the license plates. We’re interested, is all. It looks like a fine automobile.”

“It does its job.”

“Which is what?”

The guy paused a beat.

“Taxi,” he said. “Like you figured.”

Reacher said, “You know anyone named Maloney?”

“Should I?”

“You might.”

“No,” the guy said, with a measure of certainty, as if glad to be on solid ground. “There’s no one named Maloney in this county.”

Reacher and Chang walked back to the wide street and stood in the morning sun. Chang said, “He was lying about the Cadillac. It’s not a taxi. A place like this doesn’t need a taxi.”

Reacher said, “So what is it?”

“It felt like a club car, didn’t it? Like a golf cart at a resort. To take guests from one place to another. From reception to their rooms. Or from their rooms to the spa. As a courtesy. Especially without the license plates.”

“Except this place isn’t a resort. It’s a giant wheat field.”

“Whatever, he didn’t go far. He was there and back in the time it took us to shower and eat breakfast. An hour, maybe. Thirty minutes there, thirty minutes back. A maximum twenty-mile radius, on these roads.”

“That’s more than a thousand square miles,” Reacher said. “Pi times the radius squared. More than twelve hundred square miles, actually. Connected with Keever’s thing, or separate?”

“Connected, obviously. At the motel the guy acted the same way as the spare parts guy who met the train. Like a lackey. And the spare parts guy dimed you out because you look a bit like Keever. So it’s connected.”

Reacher said, “We’d need a helicopter to search twelve hundred square miles.”

“And no Maloney,” Chang said. She stuck her hand in her back pocket and came out with Keever’s bookmark. Mother’s Rest — Maloney. “Unless the guy is lying about that too. Not being in the phone book doesn’t necessarily prove anything. He could be unlisted. Or new in town.”

“Would the waitress lie too?”

“We should try the general store. If he exists, and he isn’t eating in the diner, then he’s buying food there. He has to be feeding himself somehow.”

They set out walking, south on the wide street.

Meanwhile the Cadillac driver was busy calling it in. Such as it was. He said, “They’re nowhere.”

In the motel office the one-eyed guy said, “How do you figure that?”

“You ever heard of a guy named Maloney?”

“No.”

“That’s who they’re looking for.”

“A guy named Maloney?”

“They checked my phone book.”

“There is no guy named Maloney.”

“Exactly,” the Cadillac driver said. “They’re nowhere.”

The general store looked like it might not have changed in fifty years, except for brand names and prices. Beyond the entrance vestibule it was dark and dusty and smelled of damp canvas. It had five narrow aisles piled high with stuff ranging from woodworking tools to packaged cookies, and candles to canning jars, and toilet paper to light bulbs. There was a rail of work clothes that caught Reacher’s eye. His own duds were four days old, and being around Chang made him conscious of it. She smelled of soap and clean skin and a dab of perfume. He had noticed, when she leaned close for a look at the phone book, and he wondered what she had noticed. He picked out pants and a shirt, and found socks and underwear and a white undershirt on a shelf opposite. A dollar per, for the smaller stuff, and less than forty for the main items. Overall a worthwhile investment, he thought. He hauled it all to the counter in back and dumped it all down.

The store owner wouldn’t sell it to him.

The guy said, “I don’t want your business. You’re not welcome here.”