Die Trying

time.”
    “I guess,” Costello said again.
    “But I’ll keep my ears open,” Reacher said.
    Costello nodded.
    “I’d appreciate it,” he said, ambiguously.
    “Who wants him?” Reacher asked.
    “My client,” Costello said. “Lady called Mrs. Jacob.”
    Reacher sipped water. The name meant nothing to him. Jacob? Never heard of such a person.
    “OK, if I see him around, I’ll tell him, but don’t hold your breath. I don’t see too many people.”
    “You working?”
    Reacher nodded.
    “I dig swimming pools,” he said.
    Costello pondered, like he knew what swimming pools were, but like he had never considered how they got there.
    “Backhoe operator?”
    Reacher smiled and shook his head.
    “Not down here,” he said. “We dig them by hand.”
    “By hand?” Costello repeated. “What, like with shovels?”
    “The lots are too small for machinery,” Reacher said. “Streets are too narrow, trees are too low. Get off Duval, and you’ll see for yourself.”
    Costello nodded again. Suddenly looked very satisfied.
    “Then you probably won’t know this Reacher guy,” he said. “According to Mrs. Jacob, he was an Army officer. So I checked, and she was right. He was a major. Medals and all. Military police bigshot, is what they said. Guy like that, you won’t find him digging swimming pools with a damn shovel.”
    Reacher took a long pull on his water, to hide his expression.
    “So what would you find him doing?”
    “Down here?” Costello said. “I’m not sure. Hotel security? Running some kind of a business? Maybe he’s got a cruiser, charters it out.”
    “Why would he be down here at all?”
    Costello nodded, like he was agreeing with an opinion.
    “Right,” he said. “Hell of a place. But he’s here, that’s for certain. He left the Army two years ago, put his money in the nearest bank to the Pentagon and disappeared. Bank account shows money wiring out all over the damn place, then for three months money wiring back in from here. So he drifted for a spell, then he settled down here, making some dough. I’ll find him.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “You still want me to ask around?”
    Costello shook his head. Already planning his next move.
    “Don’t you worry about it,” he said.
    He eased his bulk up out of the chair and pulled a crumpled roll from his pants pocket. Dropped a five on the table and moved away.
    “Nice meeting you,” he called, without looking back.
    He walked out through the missing wall into the glare of the afternoon. Reacher drained the last of his water and watched him go. Ten after four in the afternoon.

    AN HOUR LATER Reacher was drifting down Duval Street, thinking about new banking arrangements, choosing a place to eat an early dinner, and wondering why he had lied to Costello. His first conclusion was that he would cash up and use a roll of bills in his pants pocket. His second conclusion was that he would follow his Belgian friend’s advice and eat a big steak and ice cream with another two bottles of water. His third conclusion was that he had lied because there had been no reason not to.
    There was no reason why a private investigator from New York should have been looking for him. He had never lived in New York. Or any big northern city. He had never really lived anywhere. That was the defining feature of his life. It made him what he was. He had been born the son of a serving Marine Corps officer, and he had been dragged all over the world from the very day his mother carried him out of the maternity ward of a Berlin infirmary. He had lived nowhere except in an endless blur of different military bases, most of them in distant and inhospitable parts of the globe. Then he had joined the Army himself, military police investigator, and lived and served in those same bases all over again until the peace dividend had closed his unit down and cut him loose. Then he had come home to the United States and drifted around like a cheap tourist until he had washed up on the extreme tip of the nation with his savings running out. He had taken a couple of days’ work digging holes in the ground, and the couple of days had stretched into a couple of weeks, and the weeks had stretched into months, and he was still there.
    He had no living relatives anywhere capable of leaving him a fortune in a will. He owed no money. He had never stolen anything, never cheated anybody. Never fathered any children. He was on as few pieces of paper as it was possible for a human