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 farther 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 labour 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 now 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 colour 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.