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They walked to the door and went inside. There was a receptionist behind an antique desk. The rest of the place was quiet as a library. Maybe all the brokers were out at showings or closings. The receptionist was a glamorous woman somewhere between twenty-five and fifty. It was impossible to be more specific.
She said, “Good morning.”
Turner returned the greeting.
The receptionist asked, “How may I help you?”
Turner said, “Long story short, I need to call my office. Right now I’m two steps ahead of a stab in the back. Board of directors, corporate bullshit. You know how it is. I need to get out with my equity intact so I can buy a place here and start something new.”
“I see,” the glamorous lady said, although Reacher was pretty sure she didn’t, because he didn’t either, not yet.
Turner said, “But I can’t use my own phone, or my husband’s, because then they would know who’s starting the rumor, which would mean it wouldn’t work.”
“I see.”
“May I use your phone? It would be long distance to the East Coast. I would be happy to give you ten bucks.”
“Might we be engaged in your search for a new home?”
“I like people who make a good first impression.”
“What might be your budget?”
“I’ll need most of my stash for the start-up. So a max of twenty, I would think. But I’ll be bringing three others with me, who would be looking at ten or twelve each. Obviously we’ll all need a place to live.”
“You can use my cell,” the receptionist said. “I have an unlimited plan.”
Turner took the phone from her and stepped away, near a display of houses for sale. The four closest to her were worth thirty million dollars combined. They were no bigger than the family quarters Reacher had grown up in, on bases around the world. Turner dialed a number, fast and fluent. Clearly a number she had dialed before. The call was answered. She asked questions, and she got replies. She clicked off, came back to the desk, and handed the phone back to the woman.
“Thank you very much,” she said to her. “All is well. And right now you’re top of my broker list.”
Then outside on the path she said, “Elwood took off twenty minutes ago. They confirmed it on the FAA system. He has four more hours in the air.”
Reacher said, “Husband?”
“Brokers worry about divorce. It could make my twenty mil a bit theoretical. I might have to pay alimony.”
“Do you own a house?”
“No, I rent. An O7 gets a pretty good housing allowance. I found a nice place. Your tax dollars at work.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Where now?”
“We need one of those suite hotels where you rent for a week. With a kitchen and a desk. People use them as a base for working on the road. We need to make it plausible we could be in the room all day. They wasted time and money up at the Four Seasons this morning. They might not want to do that again. A false negative would screw up the experiment.”
“How do we tell the difference between a false negative and a real negative?”
“We make it irresistible. If we build it, they will come.”
Chapter 15
They walked back to where the taxi let them out, near the shopping mall on California Avenue. It seemed that nowhere in Palo Alto could be called downmarket, but that neighborhood was the nearest thing to it. Half the stores were chains. There were hotels and motels, most pretty good, but none to the standard of the fantasy confections further west on El Camino Real. A block north they saw a sign on a pole that said Sequoia Suites. It offered fast free wifi and a business center with printing and copying. It looked clean and well maintained but its decor was plain and to the point. It didn’t pretend to be from a remote foreign region. It was a straightforward American proposition.
Across the avenue on a diagonal was a storefront deli. A long front-to-back counter on the right, a long front-to-back line of tables on the left.
“Perfect,” Reacher said.
