“I hope not,” Susan said. “Would it be too much to ask you to put your shorts on?”
“Don’t trust yourself, eh?”
“Oh, God!”
“What did you do, sneak out?”
He went to the chest of drawers, found a pair of Jockey shorts, and pulled them on.
“Okay?”
“Thank you.”
“Under the circumstances, I suppose a blow—”
“I’ve heard that before, Matt—my God, you can be vulgar!—and I don’t think it’s funny.”
“Why do I have this unpleasant feeling that we are about to have a very serious conversation?”
“Because we are,” Susan said. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Pure, asexual thoughts only, obviously.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said at lunch.”
“I said a lot of things at lunch,” Matt replied. “You mean about letting me arrest Jennifer?”
Susan nodded. “Would that work?”
“It’s iffy, honey,” Matt said now serious. “Starting with the first premise, that she can get away from Chenowith.”
“She met me alone the last time. Behind a restaurant in Doylestown. And she had their baby with her.”
“And if she doesn’t bring the baby this time?”
“Matt, this was your idea in the first place.”
“I’m trying to think of all the things that can—and probably will—go wrong.”
“Tell me what will happen from the moment you arrest her.”
“Well, I put the cuffs on her—and there’s problem one, because I don’t have any handcuffs.”
“Excuse me?”
“My handcuffs are in Philadelphia. When you first go on the job, you carry your handcuffs with you all the time. After a while, you realize (a) that not only aren’t you using them very much—in my case, never—and (b) that they’re uncomfortable to carry around, so you start leaving them at home, which is where mine are.”
“Is that important?”
“Yeah, it’s important. From what you tell me, Jennifer is not going to go to the slammer willingly. I’m going to have to immobilize her.”
“Can you buy a pair of them here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to do something.”
“And then what?”
“Well, I could put her arm behind her back, and physically restrain her—which isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies—until I can get on the radio and call for the local cops. I’m not sure, problem two, if the