"Nice," Jodie said. "Pharmacy next."
"Then coffee," he said.
He bought a razor and a can of foam and a toothbrush and toothpaste. And a small tube of burn ointment. Paid for it all himself and carried it in a brown paper bag. The walk to the pharmacy had taken them near a food court. He could see a rib place that smelled good.
"Let's have dinner," he said. "Not just coffee. My treat."
"OK," she said, and linked her arm through his again.
The dinner for two cost him the price of the new shirt, which he thought was not outrageous. They had dessert and coffee, and then some of the smaller stores were closing up for the day.
"OK, home," he said. "And we play it real cautious from here."
They walked through the department store, through the displays in reverse, first the pastel summer cottons and then the fierce smell of the cosmetics. He stopped her inside the brass-and-glass doors and scanned ahead out in the garage, where the air was warm and damp. A million-to-one possibility, but worth taking into account. Nobody there, just people hustling back to their cars with bulging bags. They walked together to the Bravada and she slid into the driver's seat. He got in beside her.
"Which way would you normally go?"
"From here? FDR Drive, I guess."
"OK," he said. "Head out for LaGuardia, and we'll come in down through Brooklyn. Over the Brooklyn Bridge."
She looked at him. "You sure? You want to do the tourist thing, there are better places to go than the Bronx and Brooklyn."
"First rule," he said. "Predictability is unsafe. If you've got a route you'd normally take, today we take a different one."
"You serious?"
"You bet your ass. I used to do VIP protection for a living."
"I'm a VIP now?"
"You bet your ass," he said again.
AN HOUR LATER it was dark, which is the best condition for using the Brooklyn Bridge. Reacher felt like a tourist as they swooped around the ramp and up over the hump of the span and lower Manhattan was suddenly there in front of them with a billion bright lights everywhere. One of the world's great sights, he thought, and he had inspected most of the competition.
"Go a few blocks north," he said. "We'll come in from a distance. They'll be expecting us to come straight home."
She swung wide to the right and headed north on Lafayette. Hung a tight left and another and came back traveling south on Broadway. The light at Leonard was red. Reacher scanned ahead in the neon wash.
"Three blocks," Jodie said.
"Where do you park?"
"Garage under the building."
"OK, turn off a block short," he said. "I'll check it out. Come around again and pick me up. If I'm not waiting on the sidewalk, go to the cops."
She made the right on Thomas. Stopped and let him out. He slapped lightly on the roof and she took off again. He walked around the comer and found her building. It was a big square place, renovated lobby with heavy glass doors, big lock, a vertical row of fifteen buzzers with names printed behind little plastic windows. Apartment twelve had Jacob/ Garber, like there were two people living there. There were people on the street, some of them loitering in knots, some of them walking, but none of them interesting. The parking garage entrance was farther on down the sidewalk. It was an abrupt slope into darkness. He walked down. It was quiet and badly lit. There were two rows of eight spaces, fifteen altogether because the ramp up to the street was where the sixteenth would be. Eleven cars parked up. He checked the full length of the place. Nobody hiding out. He came back up the ramp and ran back to Thomas. Dodged the traffic and crossed the street and waited. She was coming south through the light toward him. She saw him and pulled over and he got back in alongside her.
"All clear," he said.
She made it back out into the traffic and then pulled right and bumped down the ramp. Her headlights bounced and swung. She stopped in the center aisle and backed into her space. Killed the motor and the lights.
"How do we get upstairs?" he asked.
She pointed. "Door to the lobby."
There was a flight of metal steps up to a big industrial door, which had a steel sheet riveted over it. The door had a big lock, same as on the glass doors to the street. They got out and locked the car. He carried her garment bag. They walked to the steps and up to the door. She worked the lock and he swung it open. The lobby was empty. A single elevator opposite them.
"I'm on four," she said.
He pressed five.
"We'll come down the stairs from above," he said. "Just in case."
They used the fire stairs and came back down to four. He had her wait on the landing and peered out. A deserted hallway. Tall and narrow. Apartment ten to the left, eleven to the right, and twelve straight ahead.
"Let's go," he said.
Her door was black and thick. Spy hole at eye level, two locks. She used the keys and they went inside. She locked up again and dropped an old hinged bar into place, right across the whole doorway. Reacher pressed it down in its brackets. It was iron, and as long as it was there, nobody else was going to get in. He put her garment bag against a wall. She flicked switches and the lights came on. She waited by the door while Reacher walked ahead. Hallway, living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, bathroom, closets. Big rooms, very high. Nobody in them. He came back to the living room and shrugged off his new jacket and threw it on a chair and turned back to her and relaxed.
But she wasn't relaxed. He could see that. She was looking directly away from him, more tense than she'd been all day. She was just standing there with her sweatshirt cuffs way down over her hands, in the doorway to her living room, fidgeting. He had no idea what was wrong with her.
"You OK?" he asked.
She ducked her head forward and back in a figure eight to drop her hair behind her shoulders.
"I guess I'll take a shower," she said. "You know, hit the sack."
"Hell of a day, right?"
"Unbelievable."
She crabbed right around him on her way through the room, keeping her distance. She gave him a sort of shy wave, just her fingers peeping out from the sweatshirt sleeve.
"What time tomorrow?" he asked.
"Seven-thirty will do it," she said.
"OK," he said. "Good night, Jodie."
She nodded and disappeared down the inner hallway. He heard her bedroom door open and close. He stared after her for a long moment, surprised. Then he sat on the sofa and took off his shoes. Too restless to sleep right away. He padded around in his new socks, looking at the apartment.
It wasn't really a loft, as such. It was an old building with very high ceilings, was all. The shell was original. It had probably been industrial. The outside walls were sandblasted brick, and the inner walls were smooth, clean plaster. The windows were huge. Probably put there to illuminate the sewing machine operation or whatever was there a hundred years ago.
The parts of the walls that were brick were a warm natural brick color, but everything else was white, except for the floor, which was pale maple strips. The decor was cool and neutral, like a gallery. There was no sign that more than one person had ever lived there. No sign of two tastes competing. The whole place was very unified. White sofas, white chairs, bookshelves built in simple cubic sections, painted with the same white paint that had been used on the walls. Big steam pipes and ugly radiators, all painted white. The only definite color in the living room was a life-size Mondrian copy on the wall above the largest sofa. It was a proper copy, done by hand in oil on canvas, with the proper colors. Not garish reds and blues and yellows, but the correct dulled tones, with authentic little cracks and crazings in the white, which was nearer a gray. He stood and looked at it for long time, totally astonished. Piet Mondrian was his favorite painter of all time, and this exact picture was his favorite work of all time. The title was Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue. Mondrian had painted the original in 1930 and Reacher had seen it in Zurich, Switzerland.
There was a tall cabinet opposite the smallest sofa, painted the same white as everything else. There was a small TV in it, a video, a cable box, a CD player with a pair of large headphones plugged into the jack. A small stack of CDs, mostly fifties jazz, stuff he liked without really being crazy about.
The windows gave out over lower Broadway. There was a constant wash of traffic hum, neon blaze from up and down the street, an occasional siren wailing and booping and blasting loud as it came out through the gaps between blocks. He tilted the blind with a clear plastic wand and looked down at the sidewalk. There were still the same knots of people hanging around. Nothing to make him nervous. He tilted the blind back and closed it up tight.
The kitchen was huge and tall. All the cupboards were wood, painted white, and the appliances were industrial sizes in stainless steel, like pizza ovens. He had lived in places smaller than the refrigerator. He pulled it open and saw a dozen bottles of his favorite water, the same stuff he had grown to love in the Keys. He took the seal off one of them and carried it into the guest bedroom.
The bedroom was white, like everything else. The furniture was wood, which had started out with a different finish, but which was now white like the walls. He put the water on the night table and used the bathroom. White tiles, white sink, white tub, all old enamel and tiling. He closed the blinds and stripped and folded his new clothes onto the closet shelf. Threw back the cover and slid into bed and fell to thinking.