Three days after the robbery, Patch reaches Washington, D.C., and has dinner with Sammy in an expensive steakhouse. Sammy orders costly wine, jokes about the wealthy buyers who now pay huge sums for Patch’s paintings of missing girls, and reminds Patch that the money is still being split between victims’ families and missing-persons charities. As they eat, Sammy emphasizes that Patch’s work has become important enough to merit another exhibition, because the paintings bring attention to the girls as well as money.

The conversation turns personal. Sammy asks how Patch plans to keep traveling when he is still paying taxes on a house he does not live in, and suggests selling "Grace Number One," but Patch refuses because the house was his mother’s dream. Sammy says he still sees Saint and then needles Patch by mentioning that Saint is dating Jimmy Walters, a man Sammy despises for criticizing Patch’s painting of Callie Montrose as immodest.

Sammy, increasingly drunk, rambles through gossip and confessions, including news that Misty Meyer is at Harvard and also tending bar at the Boatman. During dinner, Patch briefly fixates on a waitress because she reminds him of someone he is missing, but the feeling vanishes as soon as he hears her speak; later, when she slips him her number, Patch throws it away. That moment shows that Patch is still measuring strangers against the woman he has lost and cannot truly move on.

Instead of letting Patch sleep in his car, Sammy takes him to his lavish penthouse. Seeing the scale of Sammy’s wealth, Patch asks how Sammy got so much, and Sammy explains that it began with buying a Rothko when he was young; he also hints that he once "sold [his] soul to a rich man" and says wealthy people use money to erase their problems. After Sammy falls asleep, Patch stands at the window, thinking about how far his life has stretched from where it began. Looking out under the full moon, Patch calls his lost love’s answering machine, leaves a fragmented message, and renews his private vow that he will find her or die before giving up.