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“He was the second homicide.”
“Who was the first?”
“Let’s order food,” Turner said. “What’s good here?”
“I eat here because it’s cheap,” Tow said. “Whether it’s good is for you to judge.”
“What did you order?”
“I didn’t yet. Usually I get bacon and eggs.”
“With coffee?”
“Black.”
“Let’s all get the same,” Turner said.
She didn’t get up. Elwood took the hint and went to the counter to order. She waited until he got back and sat down, and then she said, “Mr. Tow, what we really need at this point is to know more about the EEF Corporation.”
“Wait, what?”
“Everything Everywhere Forever.”
“Are those guys involved in something bad?”
“We need to know who they are and what they do. The CliffsNotes version.”
“Are you saying EEF is mixed up with homicide?”
“We’ll tell you what we know, after you tell us what you know.”
“When can I use it?”
Turner looked at Elwood, who looked at Reacher.
“Three days from now,” Reacher said. “Feel free to leave us out of it completely. Feel free to make out you got the story all by yourself.”
Tow nodded. Irresistible. A guy in a white T-shirt brought their coffee on a tray. Same huge shallow cups as before, same thick heavy saucers. Reacher’s least favorite type of receptacle, but the coffee in it was excellent. Life was full of compromises.
“EEF is the classic tech story,” Tow said. “Two postgrads dropped out of Stanford and started a company in their garage.”
“When was this?” Elwood asked.
“Nine months ago.”
“And they’re a big deal already? That’s fast.”
“They’re in artificial intelligence. The time scale is insane. This is something you need to understand. Today you look at your phone, and you wonder what phones are going to be like next year. Or in ten years. You don’t say that with A.I. You wonder what it’s going to be like next week. Or in ten weeks. Right now A.I. is making progress literally fifty times faster than your phone ever will.”
Elwood said, “We heard the name Axel Brill.”
Tow nodded.
“It was the classic combination of personalities,” he said. “One kid with big ideas, and one with a big brain. Brill is the ideas guy, and the brains behind him is a kid named Cameron. Brill runs his mouth, Cameron runs the code. They’re superstars now. The two of them against the world. Venture capital loves them.”
“And gives them a lot of money, apparently.”
Tow nodded again. “Nine months ago my dog could have founded an A.I. start-up in the morning and gotten a billion dollars by lunchtime. Then things changed a little. Everyone was obviously years away from turning an actual dime of profit. Investors got a little more selective. EEF made the cut because they were moving faster than anyone else. Their progress was measured in days, not weeks. It was like betting on the horses. Market sentiment made them the odds-on favorite to win the race. Everyone piled in. Now they’re drowning in cash.”
