by Child, Lee
“Black Chevrolet Tahoe,” the clerk told her. “Registered to Cayman Corporate Trust with an address in the World Trade Center.”
O’Hallinan shrugged to herself and wrote it all down in her notebook. She was debating whether to put the form back in the typewriter and add the information to it when the DMV clerk came back on the line.
“I’ve got another tag here,” he said. “Same registered owner abandoned a black Chevrolet Suburban on lower Broadway yesterday. Three-vehicle moving traffic incident. Fifteenth Precinct towed the wreck.”
“Who’s dealing with it? You got a name at Fifteenth?”
“Sorry, no.”
O’Hallinan hung up and called traffic in the Fifteenth Precinct, but it was shift change at the end of the day and she got no further with it. She scrawled a reminder to herself and dropped it in her in-tray. Then the clock ticked around to the top of the hour and Sark stood up opposite her.
“And we’re out of here,” he said. “All work and no play makes us dull people, right?”
“Right,” she said. “You want to get a beer?”
“At least a beer,” Sark said. “Maybe two beers.”
“Steady,” she said.
THEY TOOK A long shower together in the honeymoon suite’s spacious bathroom. Then Reacher sprawled in his towel on a sofa and watched her get ready. She went into her bag and came out with a dress. It was the same line as the yellow linen shift she’d worn to the office, but it was midnight blue and silk. She slipped it over her head and wriggled it down into place. It had a simple scoop neck and came just above the knee. She wore it with the same blue loafers. She patted her hair dry with the towel and combed it back. Then she went into the bag again and came out with the necklace he’d bought her in Manila.
“Help me with this?”
She lifted her hair away from her neck and he bent to fasten the clasp. The necklace was a heavy gold rope. Probably not real gold, not at the price he’d paid, although anything was possible in the Philippines. His fingers were wide and his nails were scuffed and broken from the physical labor with the shovel. He held his breath and needed two attempts to close the catch. Then he kissed her neck and she let her hair fall back into place. It was heavy and damp and smelled like summer.
“Well, I’m ready at least,” she said.
She grinned and tossed him his clothes from the floor and he put them on, with the cotton dragging against his damp skin. He borrowed her comb and ran it through his hair. In the mirror he caught a glimpse of her behind him. She looked like a princess about to go out to dinner with her gardener.
“They might not let me in,” he said.
She stretched up and smoothed the back of his collar down over the new exaggerated bulk of his deltoid muscle.
“How would they keep you out? Call the National Guard?”
It was a four-block walk to the restaurant. A June evening in Missouri, near the river. The air was soft and damp. The stars were out above them, in an inky sky the color of her dress. The chestnut trees rustled in a slight, warm breeze. The streets got busier. There were the same trees, but cars were moving and parking under them. Some of the buildings were still hotels, but some of them were smaller and lower, with painted signs showing restaurant names in French. The signs were lit with aimed spotlights. No neon anywhere. The place she’d picked was called La Prefecture. He smiled and wondered if lovers in a minor city in France were eating in a place called “the Municipal Offices,” which was the literal translation, as far as he recalled.
But it was a pleasant enough place. A boy from somewhere in the Midwest trying a French accent greeted them warmly and showed them to a table in a candlelit porch overlooking the rear garden. There was a fountain with underwater lighting playing softly and the trees were lit with spotlamps fastened to their trunks. The tablecloth was linen and the silverware was silver. Reacher ordered American beer and Jodie ordered Pernod and water.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” she said.
He nodded. The night was warm and still, and calm.
“Tell me how you feel,” he said.
She looked at him, surprised. “I feel good.”
“Good how?”
She smiled, shyly. “Reacher, you’re fishing.”
He smiled back. “No, I’m just thinking about something. You feel relaxed?”
She nodded.
“Safe?”
She nodded again.
“Me too,” he said. “Safe and relaxed. So what does that mean?”
The boy arrived with the drinks on a silver tray. The Pernod was in a tall glass and he served it with an authentic French water jug. The beer was in a frosted mug. No long-neck bottles in a place like this.
“So what does it mean?” Jodie asked.
She splashed water into the amber liquid and it turned milky. She swirled the glass to mix it. He caught the strong aniseed smell.
“It means whatever is happening is small,” he said. “A small operation, based in New York. We felt nervous there, but we feel safe here.”
He took a long sip of the beer.
“That’s just a feeling,” she said. “Doesn’t prove anything.”
He nodded. “No, but feelings are persuasive. And there’s some hard evidence. We were chased and attacked there, but nobody out here is paying any attention to us.”
“You been checking?” she asked, alarmed.
“I’m always checking,” he said. “We’ve been walking around, slow and obvious. Nobody’s been after us.”
“No manpower?”
He nodded again. “They had the two guys who went to the Keys and up to Garrison, and the guy driving the Suburban. My guess is that’s all they’ve got, or they’d be out here looking for us. So it’s a small unit, based in New York.”
She nodded.
“I think it’s Victor Hobie,” she said.
The waiter was back, with a pad and a pencil. Jodie ordered pate and lamb, and Reacher ordered soup and porc aux pruneaux, which had always been his Sunday lunch as a kid, anytime his mother could find pork and prunes in the distant places they were stationed. It was a regional dish from the Loire, and although his mother was from Paris she liked to make it for her sons because she felt it was a kind of shorthand introduction to her native culture.
“I don’t think it’s Victor Hobie,” he said.
“I think it is,” she said. “I think he survived the war somehow, and I think he’s been hiding out somewhere ever since, and I think he doesn’t want to be found.”
He shook his head. “I thought about that, too, right from the start. But the psychology is all wrong. You read his record. His letters. I told you what his old buddy Ed Steven said. This was a straight-arrow kid, Jodie. Totally dull, totally normal. I can’t believe he’d leave his folks hanging like that. For thirty years? Why would he? It just doesn’t jibe with what we know about him.”
“Maybe he changed,” Jodie said. “Dad always used to say Vietnam changed people. Usually for the worse.”
Reacher shook his head.
“He died,” he said. “Four miles west of An Khe, thirty years ago.”
“He’s in New York,” Jodie said. “Right now, trying to stay hidden.”
HE WAS ON his terrace, thirty floors up, leaning on the railing with his back to the park. He had a cordless phone pressed to his ear, and he was selling Chester Stone’s Mercedes to the guy out in Queens.
“There’s a BMW, too,” he was saying. “Eight-series coupe. It’s up in Pound Ridge right now. I’ll take fifty cents on the dollar for cash in a bag, tomorrow.”
He stopped and listened to the guy sucking in air through his teeth, like car guys always do when you talk to them about money.
“Call it thirty grand for the both of them, cash in a bag, tomorrow.”
The guy grunted a yes, and Hobie moved on down his mental list.
“There’s a Tahoe and a Cadillac. Call it forty grand, you can add either one of them to the deal. Your choice.”
The guy paused and picked the Tahoe. More resale in a four-wheel-drive, especially some way south, which is where Hobie knew he was going to move it. He clicked the phone off and went inside through the sliders to the living room. He used his left hand to open his little leather diary and kept it open by flattening it down with the hook. He clicked the button again and dialed a real estate broker who owed him serious money.
“I’m calling the loan,” he said.
He listened to the swallowing sounds as the guy started panicking. There was desperate silence for a long time. Then he heard the guy sit down, heavily.
“Can you pay me?”
There was no reply.
“You know what happens to people who can’t pay me?”
More silence. More swallowing.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We can work something out. I got two properties to sell. A mansion up in Pound Ridge, and my apartment on Fifth. I want two million for the house, and three-point-five for the apartment. You get me that and I’ll write off the loan against your commission, OK?”
The guy had no choice but to agree. Hobie had him copy down the bank details in the Caymans and told him to wire the proceeds within a month.
“A month is pretty optimistic,” the guy said.
“How are your kids?” Hobie asked.
More swallowing.
“OK, a month,” the guy said.
Hobie clicked the phone off and wrote five million five hundred forty thousand dollars on the page where he had scored out three automobiles and two residences. Then he called the airline and inquired about flights to the coast, evening of the day after tomorrow. There was plenty of availability. He smiled. The ball was soaring right over the fence, heading for the fifth row of the bleachers. The outfielder was leaping like crazy, but he was absolutely nowhere near it.
WITH HOBIE GONE. Marilyn felt safe enough to take a shower. She wouldn’t have done it with him out there in the office. There was too much in his leer. She would have felt he could see right through the bathroom door. But the one called Tony was not such a problem. He was anxious and obedient. Hobie had told him to make sure they didn’t come out of the bathroom. He would do that, for sure, but nothing more. He wouldn’t come in and hassle them. He would leave them alone. She was confident of that. And the other guy, the thickset one who had brought the coffee, he was doing what Tony told him. So she felt safe enough, but she still had Chester stand by the door with his hand on the handle.
She leaned in and set the shower running hot and stripped off her dress and her shoes. She folded the dress neatly over the curtain rail, out of the water stream, but near enough for the steam to take the creases out. Then she stepped into the stall and washed her hair and soaped herself from head to foot. It felt good. It was relaxing. It took away the tension. She stood faceup and soaked for a long time. Then she left the water running and stepped out and took a towel and changed places with Chester.
“Go ahead,” she said. “It’ll do you good.”
He was numb. He just nodded and let the door handle go. Stood for a second and stripped off his undershirt and his boxers. Sat naked on the floor and took off his shoes and socks. She saw the yellow bruise on his side.
“They hit you?” she whispered.
He nodded again. Stood up and stepped into the stall. He stood under the torrent with his eyes closed and his mouth open. Then the water seemed to revive him. He found the soap and the shampoo and washed himself all over.
“Leave the water running,” she said. “It’s warming the place up.”
It was true. The hot water was making the room comfortable. He stepped out and took a towel. Dabbed his face with it and wrapped it around his waist.
“And the noise means they can’t hear us talking,” she said. “And we need to talk, right?”
He shrugged, like there wasn’t much to talk about. “I don’t understand what you’re doing. There are no trustees. He’s going to find that out, and then he’ll just get mad.”
She was toweling her hair. She stopped and looked at him through the gathering cloud of steam. “We need a witness. Don’t you see that?”
“A witness to what?”
“To what happens,” she said. “David Forster will send some private detective over here, and what can Hobie do? We’ll just admit there is no trust, and then we’ll all of us go down to your bank, and we’ll hand Hobie the stock. In a public place, with a witness. A witness, and a sort of bodyguard. Then we can just walk away.”
“Will that work?”
“I think so,” she said. “He’s in some kind of a hurry. Can’t you see that? He’s got some kind of a deadline. He’s panicking. Our best bet is to delay as long as we can, and then just slip away, with a witness watching the whole thing and guarding us. Hobie will be too uptight about time to react.”
“I don’t understand,” he said again. “You mean this private dick will testify we were acting under duress? You mean so we can sue Hobie to get the stock back?”
She was quiet for a beat. Amazed. “No, Chester, we’re not going to sue anybody. Hobie gets the stock, and we forget all about it.”
He stared at her through the steam. “But that’s no good. That won’t save the company. Not if it means Hobie gets the stock and we’ve got no comeback.”
She stared back at him. “God’s sake, Chester, don’t you understand anything? The company is gone. The company is history, and you better face it. This is not about saving the damn company. This is about saving our lives.”
THE SOUP WAS wonderful and the pork was even better. His mother would have been proud of it. They shared a half bottle of Californian wine and ate in contented silence. The restaurant was the sort of place that gave you a long pause between the entree and the dessert. No rush to get you out and reclaim the table. Reacher was enjoying the luxury. Not something he was used to. He sprawled back in his chair and stretched his legs out. His ankles were rubbing against Jodie’s, under the table.
“Think about his parents,” he said. “Think about him, as a kid. Open up the encyclopedia to N for ‘normal American family’ and you’re going to see a picture of the Hobies, all three of them, staring right out at you. I accept that ‘Nam changed people. I can see it kind of expanding his horizons a little. They knew that, too. They knew he wasn’t going to come back and work for some dumb little print shop in Brighton. They saw him going down to the rigs, flying around the gulf for the oil companies. But he would have kept in touch, right? To some extent? He wouldn’t have just abandoned them. That’s real cruelty, cold and consistent for thirty straight years. You see anything in his record that makes him that kind of a guy?”
“Maybe he did something,” she said. “Something shameful. Maybe something like My Lai, you know, a massacre or something? Maybe he was ashamed to go home. Maybe he’s hiding a guilty secret.”
He shook his head impatiently. “It would be in his record. And he didn’t have the opportunity, anyway. He was a helicopter pilot, not an infantryman. He never saw the enemy close up.”
The waiter came back with his pad and pencil.
“Dessert?” he asked. “Coffee?”
They ordered raspberry sorbet and black coffee. Jodie drained the last of her wine. It shone dull red in the glass in the candlelight.
“So what do we do?”
“He died,” Reacher said. “We’ll get the definitive evidence, sooner or later. Then we’ll go back and tell the old folks they’ve wasted thirty years fretting about it.”
“And what do we tell ourselves? We were attacked by a ghost?”
He shrugged and made no reply to that. The sorbet arrived and they ate it in silence. Then the coffee came, and the check in a padded leather folder bearing the restaurant logo printed in gold. Jodie laid her credit card on it without looking at the total. Then she smiled.
“Great dinner,” she said.
He smiled back. “Great company.”
“Let’s forget all about Victor H
obie for a while,” she said.
“Who?” he asked, and she laughed.
“So what shall we think about instead?” she said.
He smiled. “I was thinking about your dress.”
“You like it?”
“I think it’s great,” he said.
“What?”
“But it could look better. You know, maybe thrown in a heap on the floor.”
“You think so?”
“I’m pretty sure,” he said. “But that’s just a guess, right now. I’d need some experimental data. You know, a before-and-after comparison.”
She sighed in mock exhaustion. “Reacher, we need to be up at seven. Early flights, right?”
“You’re young,” he said. “If I can take it, you sure as hell can.”
She smiled. Scraped her chair back and stood up. Stepped away from the table and turned a slow turn in the aisle. The dress moved with her. It looked wonderful from the back. Her hair was gold against it in the candlelight. She stepped close and bent down and whispered in his ear.
“OK, that’s the before part. Let’s go before you forget the comparison.”
SEVEN O’CLOCK IN the morning in New York happened an hour before seven o’clock in the morning in St. Louis, and O’Hallinan and Sark spent that hour in the squad room planning their shift. The overnight messages were stacked deep in the in-trays. There were calls from the hospitals, and reports from night-shift beat cops who had gone out to domestic disturbances. They all needed sifting and evaluating, and an itinerary had to be worked out, based on geography and urgency. It had been an average night in New York City, which meant O’Hallinan and Sark compiled a list of twenty-eight brand-new cases that required their attention, which meant the call to the Fifteenth Precinct traffic squad got delayed until ten minutes to eight in the morning. O’Hallinan dialed the number and reached the desk sergeant on the tenth ring.
“You towed a black Suburban,” she said. “It got wrecked on lower Broadway couple of days ago. You doing anything about it?”
