“Then we deal,” she said. “Your choice.”
The outfielder was leaping, glove high, and the ball was dropping. The glove was higher than the fence. The trajectory of the ball was too close to call. Hobie tapped his hook on the desk. The sound was loud. Stone was staring at him. Hobie ignored him and glanced up at Tony.
“Take the bitch to the hospital,” he said sourly.
“Chester goes with them,” Marilyn said. “For verification. He needs to see her go inside to the ER, alone. I stay here, as surety.”
Hobie stopped tapping. Looked at her and smiled. “Don’t you trust me?”
“No, I don’t trust you. We don’t do it this way, you’ll just take Sheryl out of here and lock her up someplace else.”
Hobie was still smiling. “Farthest thing from my thoughts. I was going to have Tony shoot her and dump her in the sea.”
There was silence again. Marilyn was shaking inside.
“You sure you want to do this?” Hobie asked her. “She says one word to the hospital people, she gets you killed, you know that, right?”
Marilyn nodded. “She won’t say anything to anybody. Not knowing you’ve still got me here.”
“You better pray she doesn’t.”
“She won’t. This isn’t about us. It’s about her. She needs to get help.”
She stared at him, leaning back, feeling faint. She was searching his face for a sign of compassion. Some acceptance of his responsibility. He stared back at her. There was no compassion in his face. Nothing there at all, except annoyance. She swallowed and took a deep breath.
“And she needs a skirt. She can’t go out without one. It’ll look suspicious. The hospital will get the police involved. Neither of us wants that. So Tony needs to go out and buy her a new skirt: ‘
“Lend her your dress,” Hobie said. “Take it off and give it to her.”
There was a long silence.
“It wouldn’t fit her,” Marilyn said.
“That’s not the reason, is it?”
She made no reply. Silence. Hobie shrugged.
“OK,” he said.
She swallowed again. “And shoes.”
“What?”
“She needs shoes,” Marilyn said. “She can’t go without shoes.”
“Jesus,” Hobie said. “What the hell next?”
“Next, we deal. Soon as Chester is back here and tells me he saw her walk in alone and unharmed, then we deal.”
Hobie traced the curve of his hook with the fingers of his left hand.
“You’re a smart woman,” he said.
I know I am, Marilyn thought. That’s the first of your complications.
REACHER PLACED THE sports bag on the white sofa underneath the Mondrian copy. He unzipped it and turned it over and spilled out the bricks of fifties. Thirty-nine thousand, three hundred dollars in cash. He split it in half by tossing the bricks alternately left and right to opposite ends of the sofa. He finished up with two very impressive stacks.
“Four trips to the bank,” Jodie said. “Under ten thousand dollars, the reporting rules don’t apply, and we don’t want to be answering any questions about where we got this from, right? We’ll put it in my account and cut the Hobies a cashier’s check for nineteen-six-fifty. Our half, we’ll access through my gold card, OK?”
Reacher nodded. “We need airfare to St. Louis, Missouri, plus a hotel. Nineteen grand in the bank, we can stay in decent places and go business class.”
“It’s the only way to fly,” she said. She put her arms around his waist and stretched up on tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back, hard.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” she said.
“For us, maybe,” he said. “Not for the Hobies.”
They made three trips together to three separate banks and wound up at a fourth, where she made the final deposit and bought a cashier’s check made out to Mr. T. and Mrs. M. Hobie in the sum of $19,650. The bank guy put it in a creamy envelope and she zipped it into her pocketbook. Then they walked back to Broadway together, holding hands, so she could pack for the trip. She put the bank envelope in her bureau and he got on the phone and established that United from JFK was the best bet for St. Louis, that time of day.
“Cab?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We’ll drive.”
The big V-8 made a hell of a sound in the basement garage. He blipped the throttle a couple of times and grinned. The torque rocked the heavy vehicle, side to side on its springs.
“The price of their toys,” Jodie said.
He looked at her.
“You never heard that?” she said. “Difference between the men and the boys is the price of their toys?”
He blipped the motor and grinned again. “Price on this was a dollar.”
“And you just blipped away two dollars in gas,” she said.
He shoved it in drive and took off up the ramp. Worked around east to the Midtown Tunnel and took 495 to the Van Wyck and down into the sprawl of JFK.
“Park in short-term,” she said. “We can afford it now, right?”
He had to leave the Steyr and the silencer behind. No easy way to get through the airport security hoops with big metal weapons in your pocket. He hid them under the driver’s seat. They left the Lincoln in the lot right opposite the United building and five minutes later were at the counter buying two business-class one-ways to St. Louis. The expensive tickets entitled them to wait in a special lounge, where a uniformed steward served them good coffee in china cups with saucers, and where they could read The Wall Street Journal without paying for it. Then Reacher carried Jodie’s bag down the jetway into the plane. The business-class seats were two-on-a-side, the first half-dozen rows. Wide, comfortable seats. Reacher smiled.
“I never did this before,” he said.
He slid into the window seat. He had room to stretch out a little. Jodie was lost in her seat. There was room enough for three of her, side by side. The attendant brought them juice before the plane even taxied. Minutes later they were in the air, wheeling west across the southern tip of Manhattan.
TONY CAME BACK into the office with a shiny red Talbot’s bag and a brown Bally carrier hanging by their rope handles from his clenched fist. Marilyn carried them into the bathroom and five minutes later Sheryl came out. The new skirt was the right size, but the wrong color. She was smoothing it down over her hips with vague movements of her hands. The new shoes didn’t match the skirt and they were too big. Her face looked awful. Her eyes were blank and acquiescent, like Marilyn had told her they should be.
“What are you going to tell the doctors?” Hobie called to her.
Sheryl looked away and concentrated on Marilyn’s script. “I walked into a door,” she said.
Her voice was low and nasal. Dull, like she was still in shock.
“Are you going to call the cops?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not going to do that.”
Hobie nodded. “What would happen if you did?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. Blank and dull.
“Your friend Marilyn would die, in terrible pain. You understand that?”
He raised the hook and let her focus on it from across the room. Then he came out from behind the desk. Walked around and stood directly behind Marilyn. Used his left hand to lift her hair aside. His hand brushed her skin. She stiffened. He touched her cheek with the curve of the hook. Sheryl nodded, vaguely.
“Yes, I understand that,” she said.
I HAD TO be done quickly, because although Sheryl was now in her new skirt and shoes, Chester was still in his boxers and undershirt. Tony made them both wait in reception until the freight elevator arrived, and then he hustled them along the corridor and inside. He stepped out in the garage and scanned ahead. Hustled them over to the Tahoe and pushed Chester into the backseat and Sheryl into the front. He fired it up and locked the doors. Took off up the ramp and out to the street.