Killing Floor (Jack Reacher 1)

All eight victims had died the same way. Two shots to the head with a silenced automatic pistol. A. 22 caliber. Neat and clinical. Spirenza had assumed they were professional hits. He went after the shooter two ways. He called in every favor he could and shook all the trees. Professional hit men are thin on the ground. Spirenza and his buddies talked to them all. None of them knew a thing.

Spirenza's second approach was the classic approach. Figure out who is benefiting. Didn't take him long to piece it together. The textile processor up in Mississippi State looked good. He was under attack from the eight who died. Two of them were attacking him commercially. The other six were threatening to close him down. Spirenza pulled him apart. Turned him inside out. He was on his back for a year. The paperwork in my hand was a testimony to that. Spirenza had pulled in the FBI and the IRS. They'd searched every cent in every account for unexplained cash payments to the elusive shooter.

They'd searched for a year and found nothing. On the way, they turned up a lot of unsavory stuff. Spirenza was convinced the guy had killed his wife. Plain beat her to death was his verdict. The guy had married again and Spirenza had faxed the local police department with a warning. The guy's only son was a psychopath. Worse than his father, in Spirenza's view. A stone-cold psychopath. The textile processor had protected his son every step of the way. Covered for him. Paid his way out of trouble. The boy had records from a dozen different institutions.

But nothing would stick. New Orleans FBI had lost interest. Spirenza had closed the case. Forgotten all about it, until an old detective from an obscure Georgia jurisdiction had faxed him, asking for information on the Kliner family.

FINLAY CLOSED HIS FILE. SPUN HIS BARBER CHAIR TO FACE mine.

"The Kliner Foundation is bogus," he said. "Totally bogus. It's a cover for something else. It's all here. Gray bust it wide open. Audited it from top to bottom. The Foundation is spending millions every year, but its audited income is zero. Precisely zero. "

He selected a sheet from the file. Leaned over. Passed it over to me. It was a sort of balance sheet, showing the Foundation's expenditures.

"See that?" he said. "It's incredible. That's what they're spending. "

I looked at it. The sheet contained a huge figure. I nodded.

"Maybe a lot more than that," I said. "I've been down here five days, right? Prior to that I was all over the States for six months. Prior to that I was all over the world. Margrave is by far the cleanest, best maintained, most manicured place I've ever seen. It's better looked after than the Pentagon or the White House. Believe me, I've been there. Everything in Margrave is either brand-new or else perfectly renovated. It's completely perfect. It's so perfect it's frightening. That must cost an absolute fortune. "

He nodded.

"And Margrave is a very weird place," I said. "It's deserted most of the time. There's no life. There's practically no commercial activity in the whole town. Nothing ever goes on. Nobody is earning any money. "

He looked blank. Didn't follow.

"Think about it," I said. "Look at Eno's, for example. Brand-new place. Gleaming, state-of-the-art diner. But he never has any customers. I've been in there a couple of times. There were never more than a couple of people in the place. The waitresses outnumber the customers. So how is Eno paying the bills? The overhead? The mortgage? Same goes for everywhere in town. Have you ever seen lines of customers rushing in and out of any of the stores?"

Finlay thought about it. Shook his head.

"Same goes for this barbershop," I said. "I was in here Sunday morning and Tuesday morning. The old guy said they'd had no customers in between. No customers in forty-eight hours. "

I stopped talking then. I thought about what else the old guy had said. That gnarled old barber. I suddenly thought about it in a new light.

"The old barber," I said. "He told me something. It was pretty weird. I thought he was crazy. I asked him how they make a living with no customers. He said they don't need customers to make a living because of the money they get from the Kliner Foundation. So I said, what money? He said a thousand bucks. He said all the merchants get it. So I figured he meant some kind of a business grant, a thousand bucks a year, right?"

Finlay nodded. Seemed about right to him.

"I was just chatting," I said. "Like you do in the barber's chair. So I said a thousand bucks a year is OK, but it's not going to keep the wolf from the door, something like that, right? You know what he said then?"

He shook his head and waited. I concentrated on remembering the old guy's exact words. I wanted to see if he would dismiss it as easily as I had done.

"He made it sound like a big secret," I said. "Like he was way out on a limb even to mention it. He was whispering to me. He said he shouldn't tell me, but he would, becaus

e I knew his sister. "

"You know his sister?" Finlay asked. Surprised.

"No, I don't," I said. "He was acting very confused. On Sunday, I'd been asking him about Blind Blake, you know, the old guitar player, and he said his sister had known the guy, sixty years ago. From that, he'd got mixed up, must have thought I'd said I knew his sister. "

"So what was the big secret?" he said.

"He said it wasn't a thousand dollars a year," I said. "He said it was a thousand dollars a week. "

"A thousand dollars a week?" Finlay said. "A week? Is that possible?"

"I don't know," I said. "At the time, I assumed the old guy was crazy. But now, I think he was just telling the truth. "

"A thousand a week?" he said again. "That's a hell of a business grant. That's fifty-two thousand bucks a year. That's a hell of a lot of money, Reacher. "

I thought about it. Pointed at the total on Gray's audit.

"They'd need figures like that," I said. "If this is how much they're spending, they'd need figures like that just to get rid of it all. "

Finlay was pensive. Thinking it through.

"They've bought the whole town," he said. "Very slowly, very quietly. They've bought the whole town for a grand a week, here and there. "

"Right," I said. "The Kliner Foundation has become the golden goose. Nobody will run the risk of killing it. They all keep their mouths shut and look away from whatever needs looking away from. "

"Right," he said. "The Kliners could get away with murder. "

I looked at him.

"They have got away with murder," I said.

"So what do we do about it?" Finlay said.

"First we figure out exactly what the hell they're doing," I said.

He looked at me like I was crazy.

"We know what they're doing, right?" he said. "They're printing a shitload of funny money up in that warehouse. "

I shook my head at him.

"No, they're not," I said. "There's no serious manufacture of counterfeit money in the U. S. Joe put a stop to all that. The only place it happens is abroad. "

"So what's going on?" Finlay asked. "I thought this was all about counterfeit money. Why else would Joe be involved?"

Roscoe looked over at us from the bench in the window.

"It is all about counterfeit money," she said. "I know exactly what it's all about. Every last little detail. "

She held up Gray's file in one hand.

"Part of the answer is in here," she said.

Then she picked up the barbers' daily newspaper with the other hand.

"And the rest of the answer is in here," she said.

Finlay and I joined her on the bench. Studied the file she'd been reading. It was a surveillance report. Gray had hidden out under the highway cloverleaf and watched the truck traffic in and out of the warehouses. Thirty-two separate days. The results were carefully listed, in three parts. On the first eleven occasions, he'd seen one truck a day incoming from the south, arriving early in the morning. He'd seen outgoing trucks all day long, heading north and west. He'd listed the outgoing trucks by destination, according to their license plates. He must have been using field glasses. The list of destinations was all over the place. A complete spread, from California all the way up and over to Massachusetts. Those first eleven days, he'd logged eleven incoming trucks and sixty-seven outgoing. An average of one truck a day coming in, six going out, small trucks, maybe a ton of cargo in a week.

The first section of Gray's log covered the first calendar year. The second section covered the second calendar year. He'd hid out on nine separate occasions. He'd seen fifty-three outgoing trucks, the same six a day as before, with a similar list of destinations. But the log of incoming trucks was different. In the first half of the year, one truck a day was coming in, like normal. But in the second half of the year, the deliveries picked up. They built up to two trucks a day incoming.

The final twelve days of his surveillance were different again. They were all from the final five months of his life. Between last fall and February, he was still logging about six trucks a day going out to the same wide spread of destinations. But there were no incoming trucks listed at all. None at all. From last fall, stuff was being moved out, but it wasn't coming in.

"So?" Finlay asked Roscoe.

She sat back and smiled. She had it all figured.

"It's obvious, right?" she said. "They're bringing counterfeit money into the country. It's printed in Venezuela, some place Kliner set up alongside his new chemical place there. It comes in by boat and they're hauling it up from Florida to the warehouse in Margrave. Then they're trucking it north and west, up to the big cities, L. A. , Chicago, Detroit, New York, Boston. They're feeding it into the cash flows in the big cities. It's an international counterfeit money distribution network. It's obvious, Finlay. "

"Is it?" he said.

"Of course it is," she said again. "Think of Sherman Stoller. He drove up and down to Florida to meet the boat coming in from the sea, at Jacksonville Beach. He was on his way out there to meet the boat when he got picked up for speeding on the bridge, right? That's why he was so agitated. That's why he got the fancy lawyer out so fast, right?"

Finlay nodded.

"It all fits," she said. "Think of a map of the States. The money is printed in South America, comes here by sea. Lands in Florida. Flows up the southeast, and then sort of branches out from Margrave. Flows on out to L. A. in the west, up to Chicago in the middle, New York and Boston in the east. Separate branches, right? It looks like a candelabra or a menorah. You know what a menorah is?"

"Sure," Finlay said. "It's that candlestick Jewish people use. "

"Right," she said. "That's how it looks on a map. Florida to Margrave is the stem. Then the individual arms lead out and up to the big cities, L. A. across to Chicago across to Boston. It's an import network, Finlay. "

She was giving him plenty of help. Her hands were tracing menorah shapes in the air. The geography sounded OK to me. It made sense. An import flow, rolling north in trucks, up from Florida. It would need to use that knot of highways around Atlanta to branch itself out and head for the big cities in the north and west. The menorah idea was good. The left-hand arm of the candlestick would have to be bent out horizontally, to reach L. A. Like somebody had dropped the thing and somebody else had accidentally stepped on it. But the idea made sense. Almost certainly Margrave itself was the pivot. Almost certainly that warehouse was the actual distribution center. The geography was right. Using a sleepy nowhere place like Margrave as the distribution center would be smart. And they would have a huge amount of available cash. That was for sure. Forged cash, but it would spend just the same. And there was a lot of it. They were shipping a ton a week. It was an industrial-scale operation. Huge. It would explain the Kliner Foundation's massive spending. If they ever ran short, they could just print some more. But Finlay still wasn't convinced.

"What about the last twelve months?" he said. "There's been no import flow at all. Look at Gray's list. The incoming deliveries didn't happen. They stopped exactly a year ago. Sherman Stoller got laid off, right? There's been nothing coming up for a year. But they're still distributing something. There were still six trucks a day going out. Nothing coming in, but six trucks a day going out? What does that mean? What kind of an import flow is that?"

Roscoe just grinned at him and picked up the newspaper.

"The answer's in here," she said. "It's been in the papers since Friday. The Coast Guard. Last September, they started their big operation against smuggling, right? There was a lot of advance publicity. Kliner must have known it was coming. So he built up a stockpile ahead of time. See Gray's list? For the six months before last September, he doubled the incoming deliveries. He was building up a stockpile in the warehouse. He's kept on distributing it all year. That's why they've been panicking about exposure. They've been sitting there on top of a massive s

tockpile of counterfeit money for a year. Now the Coast Guard is going to abandon its operation, right? So they can start importing again as usual. That's what's going to happen on Sunday. That's what poor Molly meant when she said we have to get in before Sunday. We have to get in the warehouse while the last of the stockpile is still in there. "