Ли Чайлд - "Этаж смерти" with W_cat

[1857] I walked the three doors south to the barbershop. The younger of the two old guys was on his way out of the door. He stopped and put his hand on my arm.

[1858] “What’s your name, son?” he asked me.

No reason not to tell him. Not that I could see.

“Jack Reacher,” I said.

“You got any Hispanic friends in town?”

“No,” I said.

[1859] “Well, you got some now,” he said. “Two guys, looking all over for you.”

I looked at him. He scanned the street.

“Who were they?” I asked him.

[1860] “Never saw them before,” the old guy said. “Little guys, brown car, fancy shirts. Been all over, asking for Jack Reacher. We told them we never heard of no Jack Reacher.”

[1861] “When was this?” I said.

“This morning,” he said. “After breakfast.”

I nodded.

“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”

The guy held the door open for me.

[1862] “Go right in,” he said. “My partner will take care of you. But he’s a bit skittish this morning. Getting old.”

“Thanks,” I said again. “See you around.”

“Sure hope so, son,” he said.

[1863] He strolled off down Main Street and I went inside his shop. The older guy was in there. The gnarled old man whose sister had sung with Blind Blake. No other customers. I nodded to the old guy and sat down in his chair.

[1864] “Good morning, my friend,” he said.

[1865] “You remember me?” I said.

[1866] “Sure do,” he said. “You were our last customer. Nobody in between to muddle me up.”

[1867] I asked him for a shave and he set about whipping up the lather.

[1868] “I was your last customer?” I said. “That was Sunday. Today is Tuesday. Business always that bad?”

[1869] The old guy paused and gestured with the razor.

[1870] “Been that bad for years,” he said. “Old Mayor Teale won’t come in here, and what the old mayor won’t do, nobody else white will do neither. Except old Mr. Gray from the station house, came in here regular as clockwork three, four times a week, until he went and hung himself, God rest his soul. You’re the first white face in here since last February, yes sir, that’s for sure.”

[1871] “Why won’t Teale come in here?” I asked him.

[1872] “Man’s got a problem,” the old guy said. “I figure he don’t like to sit all swathed up in the towel while there’s a black man standing next to him with a razor. Maybe worried something bad might happen to him.”

[1873] “Might something bad happen to him?” I said.

[1874] He laughed a short laugh.

[1875] “I figure there’s a serious risk,” he said. “Asshole.”

[1876] “So you got enough black customers to make a living?” I asked him.

[1877] He put the towel around my shoulders and started brushing on the lather.

[1878] “Man, we don’t need customers to make a living,” he said.

[1879] “You don’t?” I said. “Why not?”

“We got the community money,” he said.

“You do?” I said. “What’s that?”

“Thousand dollars,” he said.

“Who gives you that?” I asked him.

[1880] He started scraping my chin. His hand was shaking like old people do.

[1881] “Kliner Foundation,” he whispered. “The community program. It’s a business grant. All the merchants get it. Been getting it five years.”

I nodded.

[1882] “That’s good,” I said. “But a thousand bucks a year won’t keep you. It’s better than a poke in the eye, but you need customers too, right?”

[1883] I was just making conversation, like you do with barbers. But it set the old guy off. He was shaking and cackling. Had a whole lot of trouble finishing the shave. I was staring into the mirror. After last night, it would be a hell of a thing to get my throat cut by accident.

[1884] “Man, I shouldn’t tell you about it,” he whispered. “But seeing as you’re a friend of my sister’s, I’m going to tell you a big secret.”

[1885] He was getting confused. I wasn’t a friend of his sister’s. Didn’t even know her. He’d told me about her, was all. He was standing there with the razor. We were looking at each other in the mirror. Like with Finlay in the coffee shop.

[1886] “It’s not a thousand dollars a year,” he whispered. Then he bent close to my ear. “It’s a thousand dollars a week.”

[1887] He started stomping around, chuckling like a demon. He filled the sink and dabbed off the spare lather. Patted my face down with a hot wet cloth. Then he whipped the towel off my shoulders like a conjurer doing a trick.

[1888] “That’s why we don’t need no customers,” he cackled.

I paid him and got out. The guy was crazy.

“Say hello to my sister,” he called after me.

17

[1889] THE TRIP TO ATLANTA WAS THE BEST PART OF FIFTY MILES. Took nearly an hour. The highway swept me right into the city. I headed for the tallest buildings. Soon as I started to see marble foyers I dumped the car and walked to the nearest corner and asked a cop for the commercial district.

[1890] He gave me a half mile walk after which I found one bank after another. Sunrise International had its own building. It was a big glass tower set back behind a piazza with a fountain. That part looked like Milan, but the entranceway at the base of the tower was clad in heavy stone, trying to look like Frankfurt or London. Trying to look like a big heavy-duty bank. Foyer full of dark carpet and leather. Receptionist behind a mahogany counter. Could have been a quiet hotel.

[1891] I asked for Paul Hubble’s office and the receptionist flipped through a directory. She said she was sorry, but she was new in the job and she didn’t recognize me, so would I wait while she got clearance for my visit? She dialed a number and started a low conversation. Then she covered the phone with her hand.

“May I say what it’s in connection with?”

“I’m a friend,” I said.

[1892] She resumed the phone call and then directed me to an elevator. I had to go to reception on the seventeenth floor. I got in the elevator and tapped the button. Stood there while it carried me up.

[1893] The seventeenth floor looked even more like a gentleman’s club than the entrance foyer had. It was carpeted and paneled and dim. Full of glowing antiques and old pictures. As I waded across the thick pile a door opened and a suit stepped out to meet me. Shook my hand and fussed me back into a little anteroom. He introduced himself as some sort of a manager and we sat down.

[1894] “So how may I help you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Paul Hubble,” I said.

“May I know why?”

[1895] “He’s an old friend,” I said. “I remembered him saying he works here, so I thought I’d look him up while I’m passing through.”

The guy in the suit nodded. Dropped his gaze.

[1896] “Thing is, you see,” he said, “Mr. Hubble doesn’t work here anymore. We had to let him go, I’m afraid, about eighteen months ago.”

[1897] I just nodded blankly. Then I sat there in the clubby little office and looked at the guy in the suit and waited. A bit of silence might set him talking. If I asked him questions straight out, he might clam up. He might go all confidential, like lawyers do. But I could see he was a chatty type of a guy. A lot of those managers are. They love to impress the hell out of you, given the chance. So I sat tight and waited. Then the guy started apologizing to me because I was Hubble’s friend.

[1898] “No fault of his own, you understand,” he said. “He did an excellent job, but it was in a field we moved out of. A strategic business decision, very unfortunate for the people concerned, but there you are.”

I nodded at him like I understood.

[1899] “I haven’t been in touch for a long time,” I said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t even really know what he did here.”

[1900] I smiled at him. Tried to look amiable and ignorant. Didn’t take much effort, in a bank. I gave him my best receptive look. Guaranteed to set a chatty guy talking. It had worked for me plenty of times before.

[1901] “He was part of our retail operation,” the guy said. “We closed it down.”

I looked inquiringly at him.

“Retail?” I said.

[1902] “Over-the-counter banking,” he said. “You know, cash, checks, loans, personal customers.”

[1903] “And you closed that down?” I said. “Why?”

[1904] “Too expensive,” he said. “Big overhead, small margin. It had to go.”

[1905] “And Hubble was a part of that?” I asked him.

He nodded.

[1906] “Mr. Hubble was our currency manager,” he said. “It was an important position. He was very good.”

[1907] “So what was his exact role?” I asked him.

[1908] The guy didn’t know how to explain it. Didn’t know where to start. He made a couple of attempts and gave them up.

[1909] “Do you understand cash?” he said.

[1910] “I’ve got some,” I said. “I don’t know if I understand it, exactly.”

[1911] He got to his feet and gave me a fussy gesture. Wanted me to join him at the window. We peered out together at the people on the street, seventeen floors down. He pointed at a guy in a suit, hurrying along the sidewalk.

[1912] “Take that gentleman,” he said. “Let’s make a few guesses, shall we? Probably lives in the outer suburbs, maybe has a vacation cabin somewhere, two big mortgages, two cars, half a dozen mutual funds, IRA provision, some blue chip stock, college plans, five or six credit cards, store cards, charge cards. Net worth about a half million, shall we say?”

“OK,” I said.

[1913] “But how much cash does he have?” the guy asked me.

“No idea,” I said.

[1914] “Probably about fifty dollars,” he said. “About fifty dollars in a leather billfold which cost him a hundred and fifty dollars.”

[1915] I looked at him. I wasn’t following his drift. The guy changed gear. Became very patient with me.

[1916] “The U.S. economy is huge,” he said. “Net assets and net liabilities are incalculably large. Trillions of dollars. But almost none of it is actually represented by cash. That gentleman had a net worth of a half million dollars, but only fifty of it was in actual cash. All the rest of it is on paper or in computers. The fact is, there isn’t much actual cash around. There’s only about a hundred and thirty billion actual cash dollars inside the whole U.S.”

[1917] I shrugged at him again.

“Sounds like enough to me,” I said.

The guy looked at me severely.

[1918] “But how many people are there?” he asked me. “Nearly three hundred million. That’s only about four hundred and fifty actual cash dollars per head of population. That’s the problem a retail bank has to deal with, day by day. Four hundred and fifty dollars is a very modest cash withdrawal, but if everybody chose to make such a withdrawal, the nation’s banks would run out of cash in the blink of an eye.”

[1919] He stopped and looked at me. I nodded.

“OK,” I said. “I see that.”

[1920] “And most of that cash isn’t in banks,” he said. “It’s in Vegas or at the racetrack. It’s concentrated in what we call cash-intensive areas of the economy. So a good currency manager, and Mr. Hubble was one of the very best, has a constant battle just to keep enough paper dollars on hand in our part of the system. He has to reach out and find them. He has to know where to locate them. He has to sniff them out. It’s not easy. In the end, it was one of the factors which made retail so expensive for us. One of the reasons why we pulled out. We kept it going as long as we could, but we had to close the operation eventually. We had to let Mr. Hubble go. We were very sorry about it.”

[1921] “Any idea where he’s working now?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

“Must be working somewhere, right?” I said.

The guy shook his head again.

[1922] “Professionally, he’s dropped out of sight,” he said. “He’s not working in banking, I’m sure of that. His institute membership lapsed immediately, and we’ve never had an inquiry for a recommendation. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. If he was working anywhere in banking, I’d know it, I can assure you of that. He must be in something else now.”

[1923] I shrugged. Hubble’s trail was stone cold. And the discussion with this guy was over. His body language indicated it. He was shifting forward, ready to get up and get on. I stood up with him. Thanked him for his time. Shook his hand. Stepped through the antique gloom to the elevator. Hit the button for the street and walked out into the dull gray weather.

[1924] My assumptions had been all wrong. I had seen Hubble as a banker, doing a straight job. Maybe turning a blind eye to some peripheral con, maybe with half a finger in some dirty pie. Maybe signing off on a few bogus figures. With his arm twisted way up his back. Involved, useful, tainted, but somehow not central. But he hadn’t been a banker. Not for a year and a half. He had been a criminal. Full time. Right inside the scam. Right at the center. Not peripheral at all.