Tripwire

a gallon, and since the Belgian was a small whippy guy half his size, he should make it two gallons a day. Ten full-size bottles. Since arriving in the heat of the Keys, he had followed that regimen. It was working for him. He had never felt better. Every day at four o’clock he sat at this dark table and drank three bottles of still water, room temperature. Now he was as addicted to the water as he had once been to coffee.
    The old guy was side-on to the bar, busy with his beer. Scanning the room. Reacher was the only person in it, apart from the bartender. The old guy pushed off with his hip and stepped over. Waved his beer in a vague gesture that said may I? Reacher nodded to the opposite chair and broke the plastic seal on his third bottle. The guy sat heavily. He overwhelmed the chair. He was the sort of guy who keeps keys and money and handerkerchiefs in his pants pockets so that the natural width of his hips is way exaggerated.
    “Are you Jack Reacher?” he asked across the table.
    Not Chicago or Boston. New York, for sure. The voice sounded exactly like a guy Reacher had known, spent the first twenty years of his life never more than a hundred yards from Fulton Street.
    “Jack Reacher?” the old guy asked again.
    Up close, he had small wise eyes under an overhanging brow. Reacher drank and glanced across at him through the clear water in his bottle.
    “Are you Jack Reacher?” the guy asked for the third time.
    Reacher set his bottle on the table and shook his head.
    “No,” he lied.
    The old guy’s shoulders slumped a fraction in disappointment. He shot his cuff and checked his watch. Moved his bulk forward on the chair like he was about to get up, but then he sat back, like suddenly there was time to spare.
    “Five after four,” he said.
    Reacher nodded. The guy waved his empty beer bottle at the bartender who ducked around with a fresh one.
    “Heat,” he said. “Gets to me.”
    Reacher nodded again and sipped water.
    “You know a Jack Reacher around here?” the guy asked.
    Reacher shrugged.
    “You got a description?” he asked back.
    The guy was into a long pull on the second bottle. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and used the gesture to hide a second discreet belch.
    “Not really,” he said. “Big guy, is all I know. That’s why I asked you.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “There are lots of big guys here,” he said. “Lots of big guys everywhere.”
    “But you don’t know the name?”
    “Should I?” Reacher asked. “And who wants to know?”
    The guy grinned and nodded, like an apology for a lapse in manners.
    “Costello,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
    Reacher nodded back, and raised his bottle a fraction in response.
    “Skip tracer?” he asked.
    “Private detective,” Costello said.
    “Looking for a guy called Reacher?” Reacher asked. “What’s he done?”
    Costello shrugged. “Nothing, far as I know. I just got asked to find him.”
    “And you figure he’s down here?”
    “Last week he was,” Costello said. “He’s got a bank account in Virginia and he’s been wiring money to it.”
    “From down here in Key West?”
    Costello nodded.
    “Every week,” he said. “For three months.”
    “So?”
    “So he’s working down here,” Costello said. “Has been, for three months. You’d think somebody would know him.”
    “But nobody does,” Reacher said.
    Costello shook his head. “I asked all up and down Duval, which seems to be where the action is in this town. Nearest I got was a titty bar upstairs someplace, girl in there said there was a big guy been here exactly three months, drinks water every day at four o’clock in here.”
    He lapsed into silence, looking hard at Reacher, like he was issuing a direct challenge. Reacher sipped water and shrugged back at him.
    “Coincidence,” he said.
    Costello nodded.
    “I guess,” he said quietly.
    He raised the beer bottle to his lips and drank, keeping his wise old eyes focused tight on Reacher’s face.
    “Big transient population here,” Reacher said to him. “People drift in and out, all the 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 any such person.
    “OK, if I see him around, I’ll tell