Make Me (37 page)

“Bullshit.”

“You forgot Keever’s name. You had to say the guy who was killed with the backhoe. That’s classic aphasia. You forgot a word and you worked around it. That’s not good. And before that you tripped near the bookstore. And you keep drifting off. Like daydreaming, or talking to yourself.”

“Do I?”

“Like it’s all spacey in there.”

“How is it normally?”

“You’re going to the emergency room.”

“Bullshit. Don’t need it.”

“For me, Reacher.”

“Waste of time. We should go direct to the hotel.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But do it for me.”

“I’ve never done it before.”

“There’s a first time for everything. I hope not just this.”

Reacher said nothing.

“For me, Reacher.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Go to the emergency room, man.”

Reacher looked at Westwood and said, “Help me out here.”

Westwood said, “Emergency room.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Tell them you’re a coder. No waiting time. Some of those companies make big donations.”

—

They did as
the guy said, and claimed a status Reacher did not have. And was never likely to have. Right down there in terms of probability, with quilter, or scrapbooker, or tenor in the choir. But it got him seen in ninety seconds, and ninety seconds after that he was on his way for a CT scan of his head. Which he said was bullshit, don’t need it, waste of time, but Chang hung in there, and they fired up the machine, which was nothing much, a kind of electric buzz, just X-rays, and then a wait for a doctor to look at the file. Which Reacher said was bullshit, waste of time, the same things over again, and Chang hung in again, and eventually a guy showed up with a file in his hand and a look in his eye. Chang and Westwood stayed in the room.

Reacher said, “The CT in CT scan stands for computed tomography.”

The guy with the file said, “I know.”

“I know what day of the week it is and I know who the president is. I know what I had for breakfast. Both times. I’m proving there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“You have a head injury.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You have a head. It can be injured. You have a cerebral contusion, in Latin
contusio cerebri,
in fact technically two, both coup and contre-coup, caused, quite clearly, by blunt trauma to the right side of the head.”

Reacher said, “Is that the good news or the bad news?”

The guy said, “If you’d taken that punch on the upper arm, you’d expect one hell of a bruise. Which is exactly what you got. Not on the outside. Not enough flesh. The bruise is on the inside. On your brain. With a twin across the hall, because your brain bounced from side to side in your skull like a goldfish in a test tube. What we call coup and contre-coup.”

Reacher said, “Symptoms?”

“Will vary with the severity of the injury and the individual, but to some degree will include headache, confusion, sleepiness, dizziness, loss of consciousness, nausea, vomiting, seizures, and difficulties with coordination, movement, memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking.”

“That’s a lot of symptoms.”

“It’s the brain.”

“What about mine in particular? Which symptoms will I get?”

“I can’t say.”

“You have my paperwork right there. An actual picture.”

“It can’t be interpreted exactly.”

“Case closed, right there. You’re only guessing. I’ve been hit in the head before. This is no different. No big deal.”

“It’s a head injury.”

“What’s the next part of your speech?”

“I think the scan justifies admission overnight for observation.”

“That ain’t going to happen.”

“It should.”

“If the guy hit me in the arm you’d tell me I’d be OK in a couple of days. The bruise would go down. You’d send me home. You can do the same thing with my head. It happened yesterday, so tomorrow will be a couple of days. I’ll be fine. If it is what you say it is anyway. You could have gotten that file mixed up with somebody else.”

“The brain is not the same thing as an arm.”

“I agree. An arm is not protected by a thick layer of bone.”

The guy said, “You’re a grown-up. This is not a psychiatric facility. I can’t keep you here against your will. Just sign yourself out at the desk.”

And then he turned around and headed out, ready for the next in line. Maybe a coder, maybe not. The door swung shut behind him.

Reacher said, “It’s a bruise. It’s getting better.”

Chang said, “Thank you for having it checked. Let’s go find the hotel.”

“Should have gone direct.”

“Reacher, you fell over.”

He walked carefully, all the way to the cab line.

Chapter
48

People said that on a
map San Francisco looked like a thumb sticking up south to north, shielding the Bay from the Pacific, but Reacher thought it curved more like a raised middle finger. Although why the city should be mad at the ocean, he didn’t know. The fog, maybe. But either way, the hotel Westwood had chosen was at the tip, where either the thumbnail or the fingernail would be. Right on the waterfront. It was dark, so the view was a void, apart from the Golden Gate Bridge, which was all lit up, on the left, and then further out on the right was the distant twinkle of Sausalito and Tiburon.

They checked in and washed up and met in the restaurant for dinner. It was a pretty room, with plenty of crisp white linen. There were couples and foursomes in there. They were the only threesome. Trysts and deals were going on all around them. Westwood got the internet on his phone and said, “Forty thousand suicides every year in America. One every thirteen minutes. Statistically we’re more likely to kill ourselves than each other. Who knew?”

Chang said, “If five of them every nine days use the Mother’s Rest concierge service, that’s a couple hundred a year. Like Keever’s note. We already saw two.”

Reacher said, “What would you pay for that?”

“I wouldn’t, I hope.”

“If it’s nine hundred bucks to do it yourself in bed, then what would be reasonable? Five times as much? Say five grand?”

“Maybe. For the pampering. Like going to the spa instead of filing your nails at home.”

“That would be a million dollars a year. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

“But?”

“Their proposed hit list this week alone was Keever, McCann, you, me, and the Lair family. Seven people. Which is not a problem, apparently, because they rent a Ukrainian tough guy to do the heavy lifting. That’s a big reaction for a million bucks.”

“People get killed for a dollar.”

“On the street in a panic. Not as a strategic imperative. I think there’s more in this than a million bucks. But I don’t see how. Folks wouldn’t pay ten or twenty grand. Or more. Would they? They could buy their own 1970s Chevy. They could buy a garden shed and drill a hole.”

“This is not necessarily a rational decision. And it’s totally based on not buying your own Chevy. That’s the point. Full service.”

“So what would they pay?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to picture it. Imagine you’re a rich guy, and you want out. One final luxury. Discreet people in the background, making sure it all goes OK. Care and concern, and hands to hold. It’s a major event in your life, obviously. You might pay what you paid for your car. Which is probably a Mercedes or a BMW. Fifty grand, maybe. Or even eighty. Or more. I mean, why not? You can’t take it with you.”

Westwood said, “When are we going there?”

Reacher said, “When we’ve made a plan. It’s a tactical challenge. Like approaching a small island across an open sea. It’s as flat as a pool table there. The grain elevators are the tallest things in the county. I’m sure they have all kinds of ladders and catwalks. For maintenance. They’ll post lookouts. They’ll see us coming ten minutes away. And if we come by train, they’ll be lined up on the ramp, just waiting for us.”

“We could drive in by night.”

“They would see the headlights a hundred miles away.”

“We could switch them off.”

“We wouldn’t see our way. It’s pitch black at night. It’s the countryside.”

“The roads are straight.”

“Plus at the moment we’re unarmed.”

Westwood said nothing.

—

After dinner Westwood
went to his room and Reacher and Chang took a stroll outside, on the Embarcadero. Near the water. The night was cool. Literally half of the Phoenix temperature. Chang had nothing but her T-shirt. She walked pressed up hard against him, for warmth. It made them clumsy, like a three-legged creature.

Reacher said, “Are you holding me upright?”

She said, “How do you feel now?”

“Still got a headache.”

“I don’t want to go back to Mother’s Rest until you feel better.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“I wouldn’t go back there at all if it wasn’t for Keever. Who am I to judge? They’re meeting a need. Maybe Westwood is right. Maybe we’ll all be doing it in a hundred years.”

Reacher said nothing.

She said, “What?”

“I was going to say I would save the money and choose the shotgun. But that would be tough on whoever found me. There would be a lot of mess. Same with the handgun. Same with hanging myself, or jumping off the roof. Stepping in front of a train isn’t fair to the engineer. Even drinking the Kool-Aid in a motel room isn’t fair to the maid. Maybe that’s why people choose the concierge service. Easier on the folks they leave behind. That’s worth a premium, I guess. But I still don’t see how it adds up to Merchenko money.”

“I don’t see how we get back there. It’s like they have a ten-mile-high razor-wire fence. Except laid down flat.”

“We should start out in Oklahoma City.”

“You want to take the train?”

“I want to keep our options open. We’ll figure out the fine print later. Tell Westwood to book the flights.”

—

Reacher woke very
early the next morning, before Chang, and he slid out of bed and shut himself in the bathroom. He had given up on his previous theory. Forever. It had been proven categorically wrong. Repeatedly. There was no ceiling. There was no upper limit. There was no reason why it should ever stop.

Which was good to know.

He stood in front of the mirror and twisted and turned and checked himself over. He had new bruises from falling down. The old bruise on his back where Hackett had hit him was vivid yellow and the size of a dinner plate. But he wasn’t pissing blood, and the ache was going away, and the stiffness was easing. The side of his head was still tender, and a little soft, but not exactly swollen. Not enough flesh, like the doctor had said. His headache was moderate. He wasn’t sleepy. He wasn’t dizzy. He stood on one leg and closed his eyes, and didn’t sway. He was conscious. No nausea. He hadn’t thrown up. No seizures. He walked a line of tiles, from the tub to the toilet, and back again with his eyes closed, and he didn’t stray. He touched his nose with his fingertip, and then rubbed his stomach while patting his head. No problems with coordination or movement, beyond his innate and inevitable slight clumsiness. He was no ballet dancer. Neat and deft and dexterous were adjectives that had never applied.

The door opened behind him and Chang stepped in. He saw her in the mirror. She looked soft and sleepy. She yawned and said, “Good morning.”

He said, “To you, too.”

“What are you doing?”

“Checking my symptoms. The doctor gave me a hell of a list.”

“How far did you get?”

“I still have to do memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking.”

“You already passed managing emotion. I’ve been quite impressed. For a guy. Who was in the army. Now tell me three famous Oklahomans, since that’s where we’re going.”

“Mickey Mantle, obviously. Johnny Bench. Jim Thorpe. Bonus points for Woody Guthrie and Ralph Ellison.”

“Your memory is fine.” She retreated to the tub and held up two fingers. “How many?”

“Two.”

“Your vision is fine.”

“Not a very stringent test.”

“OK, stay where you are and tell me who made the bathtub.”

He looked. There was small faint writing near the overflow hole.

“American Standard,” he said, because he already knew.

“Your vision is fine,” she said again.

She whispered something very softly.

“On the plane?” he said. “I’m totally up for that.”

“Your hearing is fine. That’s for sure. What’s the longest word in the Gettysburg Address?”

“Which symptom is that?”

“Thinking.”

He thought. “There are three. All with eleven letters. Proposition, battlefield, and consecrated.”

“Now recite the first sentence. Like you were an actor on a stage.”

“Lincoln was coming down with smallpox at the time. Did you know that?”

“That’s not it.”

“I know. That was for extra credit on memory.”

“We already did memory. Remember? Now we’re doing speech. The first sentence.”

“The guy who founded Getty Oil was descended from the guy the town of Gettysburg was named for.”

“That’s not it either.”

“That was general knowledge.”

“Which is not even a symptom.”

“It relates to memory.”

“We did memory ages ago.”

He said, loud like an actor, “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

It sounded good in a bathroom. The marble gave it echo and resonance.

He said, louder, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”

She said, “Has your headache gone?”

He said, “More or less.”

“Which means it hasn’t yet.”

“It’s on its way out. It was never a big deal.”

“The doctor thought it was.”

“The medical profession has gotten very timid. Very cautious. No sense of adventure. I lived through the night. I didn’t need observation.”

Chang said, “I’m glad he was cautious.”