Persuader

and forty and was thickset and dark and a little bald and had a smile that looked friendly in the picture and even better in person. The woman was listed as Susan Duffy. Susan Duffy was a little younger than Steven Eliot. She was a little taller than him, too. She was pale and slender and attractive and had changed her hair since her photograph was taken.
    "Go ahead," I said. "Search the room. It's a long time since I had anything worth hiding from you guys." I handed back their IDs and they put them away in their inside pockets and made sure they moved their jackets enough to let me see their weapons. They had them in neat shoulder rigs. I recognized the ribbed grip of a Glock 17 under Eliot's armpit. Duffy had a 19, which is the same thing only a little smaller. It was snug against her right breast.
    She must have been left-handed.
    "We don't want to search the room," she said.
    "We want to talk about a license plate," Eliot said.
    "I don't own a car," I said.
    We were all still standing in a neat little triangle just inside the door. Eliot still had the briefcase in his hand. I was trying to figure out who was the boss. Maybe neither one of them. Maybe they were equals. And fairly senior. They were well dressed but looked tired. Maybe they had worked most of the night and flown in from somewhere. From Washington D.C., maybe.
    "Can we sit down?" Duffy asked.
    "Sure," I said. But a cheap hotel room made that awkward. There was only one chair. It was shoved under a small desk crammed between a wall and the cabinet that held the television set. Duffy pulled it out and turned it around so it faced the bed. I sat on the bed, up near the pillows. Eliot perched on the foot of the bed and laid his briefcase down on it.
    He was still giving me the friendly smile and I couldn't find anything phony about it.
    Duffy looked great on the chair. The seat height was exactly right for her. Her skirt was short and she was wearing dark nylons that went light where her knees bent.
    "You're Reacher, right?" Eliot asked.
    I took my eyes off Duffy's legs and nodded. I felt I could count on them to know that much.
    "This room is registered to somebody called Calhoun," Eliot said. "Paid for with cash, one night only."
    "Habit," I said.
    "You leaving today?"
    "I take it one day at a time."
    "Who's Calhoun?"
    "John Quincy Adams's vice president," I said. "It seemed appropriate for this location. I used up the presidents long ago. Now I'm doing vice presidents. Calhoun was unusual.
    He resigned to run for the Senate."
    "Did he get in?"
    "I don't know."
    "Why the phony name?"
    "Habit," I said again.
    Susan Duffy was looking straight at me. Not like I was nuts. Like she was interested in me. She probably found it to be a valuable interrogation technique. Back when I interrogated people I did the same thing. Ninety percent of asking questions is about listening to answers.
    "We spoke to a military cop called Powell," she said. "You asked him to trace a plate." Her voice was low and warm and a little husky. I said nothing.
    "We have traps and flags in the computers against that plate," she said. "Soon as Powell's inquiry hit the wires we knew all about it. We called him and asked him what his interest was. He told us the interest came from you."
    "Reluctantly, I hope," I said.
    She smiled. "He recovered fast enough to give us a phony phone number for you. So you needn't worry about old unit loyalties."
    "But in the end he gave you the right number."
    "We threatened him," she said.
    "Then MPs have changed since my day," I said.
    "It's important to us," Eliot said. "He saw that."
    "So now you're important to us," Duffy said.
    I looked away. I've been around the block more times than I care to count but the sound of her voice saying that still gave me a little thrill. I began to think maybe she was the boss. And a hell of an interrogator.
    "A member of the public calls in a plate," Eliot said. "Why would he do that? Maybe he got in a fender bender with the car the plate was on. Maybe it was a hit-and-run. But wouldn't he go to the cops for that? And you just told us you don't have a car anyway."
    "So maybe you saw somebody in the car," Duffy said.
    She let the rest of it hang. It was a neat Catch-22. If the person in the car was my friend, then I was probably her enemy. If the person in the car was my enemy, then she was ready to be my friend.
    "You guys had breakfast?" I asked.
    "Yes," she said.
    "So have I," I said.
    "We know," she said. "Room