by Thomas Perry
She moved quietly into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Then she sat and listened to Mary waking up and remembering and making her way toward the smell of the brewing coffee. The door opened and Mary walked out into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and stood at the sink to drink it. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’ve been on my own most of my life and I think I can stay out of Barraclough’s way if I don’t do anything stupid.” It was a question.
“It can be done.” Jane sat still. It was time already. She would have to work up to it gradually, tell Mary what she knew and let her draw her own conclusion. “You just have to avoid doing anything stupid.”
“Like getting my picture in the papers,” Mary offered.
“Right,” said Jane. “You might want to keep it off things like credit cards and driver’s licenses too. Barraclough is the regional head of a very big detective agency, so he can probably find a way to have your picture circulated. You know, a reward for a missing person.”
“I guess I can,” Mary said. “And keep from getting arrested.”
“Or fingerprinted.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’ve got to keep from being a victim too. If your house is burglarized or your car is stolen, they fingerprint the owner so they can identify prints that aren’t supposed to be there. Some states take your prints for a driver’s license. And a lot of employers require it; if you need to be bonded or licensed or need a security clearance, it’s hard to avoid. Most companies hire a security service to handle the details and report the results—a service like Intercontinental.”
Mary Perkins glared at her. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“Yes,” said Jane. “It’s better. I don’t want to hear you sometime saying, ‘Why me?’ ”
“All right,” said Mary. “What else?”
Jane stared at the wall. “Well, they’re not just passively waiting for you to turn up. They’re searching. I know that because I talked to somebody who was hired to help. But the easiest way is to get you to come to them. You know—an announcement in the paper says some rich aunt of yours died and the following eighty people are named in the will. Or the help-wanted section says there’s a job for a blue-eyed woman age thirty-four and a half and five feet four and seven eighths who’s good at arithmetic. Or a personal ad says a wealthy widow with a large secluded mansion wants a roommate: a quiet female nonsmoker from the South who plays cribbage, or whatever else you do but not everyone does. Barraclough is perfectly capable of renting houses in the ten most likely places and having ten women sit there for a month waiting for you to show up.”
“He’d do that?”
“Sure,” said Jane. “It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s cheaper than the alternatives.”
“What are those?”
“Well, you have a history. There are people you were close to. They’ll go see them. Maybe watch to see if you come for a visit, or maybe bully them into telling what they know. If you ever left clothes anywhere when you started running, they’ll have translated the labels into places where you might buy the next batch. The more expensive they were, the fewer places to buy them, and they know you’ll need spring clothes or risk standing out. They’ll also use them to construct a projection of how you’re likely to look now, so they don’t miss you in a public place: exact height, weight, style, and color preference. Then there’s chemical analysis.”
“What do they have to analyze?”
“If you wore perfume or cosmetics when you wore the clothes, they’ll identify them and add them to your profile. If you love Thai food or going to the zoo, they’ll know that too.”
“That’s crazy.”
Jane shrugged. “No crazier than having people meet us in airports all over the western half of the country. Intercontinental is an enormous detective agency, much bigger than most police departments. There isn’t a city in the country that doesn’t have a crime lab with a trace-analysis section. There’s a machine called a gas chromatograph that vaporizes whatever substance they find and identifies it. There’s no question intercontinental has one, and probably an emission spectrometer and an electron microscope. If you’re in the business of tracking people for money, that stuff pays for itself quickly.”
“You’re making it sound hopeless.”
“Not hopeless. It just takes some thought.”
Mary protested. “But there are thousands of people in this country nobody can find.”
“Millions,” said Jane.
“Well, who are they? You can’t tell me they all get caught.”
“It depends on who’s looking for them and how hard. A lot of them are divorce fugitives: the man who doesn’t want to pay alimony or the parent who loses custody and takes the child out of state. Somebody else runs up a debt or embezzles a few bucks. Unless the person is foaming at the mouth and shooting people at freeway rest stops, the only ones who are very interested are the local police back home. Then there are a few million illegal aliens. There’s not much reason to look for them because nobody gets any benefit from finding them. There are also personal cases: some woman breaks up with her boyfriend and he threatens her. There’s practically no place where the police will do anything to help her, so she moves away and changes her name. There are millions of people hiding under assumed identities, and the reason most of them don’t get found is that nobody’s looking.”
“What you’re saying is that if anybody tried, they would.”
“No,” said Jane. “What I said is that it depends on who’s looking and how hard.”
“You think I’m going to get caught, don’t you?”
Jane hesitated. “You can take that chance, or you can choose to take other chances.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s not going to give up. He has lots of trained people at his disposal in offices all over the country, and he can probably dream up a charge to get the police looking for you too, if he wants to. If you learn fast and never make a mistake, he might not find you.” Jane looked at her closely. “Or you could make a mistake—intentionally.”
Mary’s eyes widened and the color seemed to drain from her face. “You want to use me for—”
“Bait. Yes. What he’s doing isn’t just evil; it’s also illegal.”
“I can’t. I don’t have the money. You’re wrong. He’s wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter. He thinks you do, and he wants it. That makes him predictable, and that can be turned into a weakness. Your chance of trapping him and getting him convicted might be better than your chance of hiding from him.”
“No. I won’t do it.” Mary looked at Jane defiantly.
“Suit yourself.”
“Are you leaving this morning?”
“I said I’d help you get settled.”
“But I told you I wouldn’t do it. You can’t use me as bait.”
“I heard you.”
For the next six days, Jane Whitefield waited. When Mary woke up she would find the quilt folded neatly and stowed beside the couch. Jane would be in the middle of the only open space in the small living room going through the slow, floating movements of Tai Chi.
On the sixth day, Mary Perkins said, “Why do you do that?”
“It keeps my waist thin and my ass from getting flabby.”
Mary repeated, “Why do you do that?”
“It helps me feel good. It keeps me flexible. It helps me think clearly and concentrate.”
“Don’t worry,” said Mary. “I’ll shut up.”
“You don’t have to,” said Jane. “Part of the idea is that after a while the body makes the movements flow into each other without consulting the conscious mind much.”
“What’s that one?”
“What do you mean?”
“They all have names, right?”
“Oh. ‘Cloud Hands.’ ” Then her body was in a radically different position without much apparent movement. “ ‘Golden Cock Stands on Leg.’ ” Her body continued
to drift into a changing pattern of positions.
Mary watched for a long time. “Where did you learn to fight?”
“By fighting.”
“No,” said Mary. “I mean fight like that.”
“This isn’t exactly about fighting. It’s about not fighting. Your opponent is fighting, but you’re watching. He attacks, but you’ve already begun to yield the space. He strikes, but you’re not really there. You only passed through there on your way to somewhere else. You bring his force around in a circle, add yours to it, and let him hurt himself.”
“The mystic wisdom of the mysterious East.”
“It’s practical. I’m a very strong woman, but no matter what I do, I’m going to be smaller than any man who’s likely to try to hurt me. If I fight him for the space between us, I’ll get hammered. He’s using one arm and maybe his back foot to throw the punch. I’m bringing my whole body into one motion to add force to his punch and alter its direction just a little. For that fraction of a second I have him outnumbered.”
Mary put on her coat, walked toward the door, opened it, turned, and said, “You should have let your ass get flabby. It might have made you more human.” She went out and closed the door. That night she came home late and tiptoed past Jane on the couch.
Two hours later Jane opened her eyes and acknowledged that she had heard Mary come out of her room again. It was three A.M. and she was sitting in the big easy chair staring at Jane.
Mary said, “You’re trying to wear me down. You’re staying in the corner of my room and not saying anything to convince me, just putting yourself in front of my eyes wherever I look so I’ll have to think about it.”
Jane said, “You’ve spent time with people who take what they want.”
“I was one of them.”
“Then you can predict what Barraclough is thinking as well as I can. You don’t need any arguments from me.”
Mary sat back in the big chair with her hands resting on the arms. “Why haven’t you mentioned the little boy?”
“Why should I?”
“I’ve lived by convincing people to do stupid things they didn’t want to do, so I know how it’s done. The little boy is an overlooked resource. Here I am, unmarried and alone, and anybody who is alive can feel her biological clock ticking away. I’ve reached the age where women start getting too many cats. The little boy is alone and probably scared. Barraclough has already robbed him, and now he’ll kill him.”
“Will he?”
“You know he will, and that’s why you’re here. If the kid’s dead, the cops will run around bumping into each other for a couple of months and then forget him. If he’s alive, there’s always the chance that Barraclough will wind up sitting in a courtroom across the aisle from an innocent ten-year-old.”
“Not much chance.”
“But as long as the kid is alive, there’s also the chance that he’ll live another ten or fifteen years and find out who killed his four best friends and left him broke. Barraclough will be thinking he doesn’t want to wake up some night and find a young man who looks vaguely familiar holding a gun against his head.” Mary waited a few seconds. “So why didn’t you mention him again?”
Jane sat up and stared at her. “People are killed every day. Why would I imagine you would pick him out of all the thousands and say, ‘You’re the one I’ve chosen. I’ve trained myself since I was a baby to ignore the screams of the dying because if I let even a little of the sound in I couldn’t hear or think of anything else. But for you I’ll risk my own life.’ ”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” She leaned forward. “But not saying it is the argument, isn’t it? I’m supposed to think of doing it, and if I think of it, I have to admit a second later that I’m not the kind of person who does that, and wonder why not.”
“But he’s the reason why you’re doing this, isn’t he?”
“There’s not much more I can do for him. I was in a fight, and all of the people on my side except Timmy are dead. That’s all.”
“I don’t suppose the money has anything to do with it.”
“For me? Not this time.”
“You’re above that kind of consideration.”
“Hardly,” said Jane. “I have enormous expenses. But money is not a pressing problem. Once you have what you need, it’s hard to get yourself to lean over a cliff to reach for more. And I can’t even spend what I have. A fancier house or a lot of expensive jewelry raises my profile and maybe gets me killed.”
“Then why does this kid’s money matter to you?”
“Or your money either? It’s important only because it’s what Barraclough wants. He uses it to grow stronger. I don’t want him to succeed. I don’t want to feed him.”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m the rabbit, he’s the dog. I run, he chases. He’s good at it, and he’s getting better. He’s using Intercontinental to recruit young guys with nothing much to do and criminal records that make it unlikely that anybody else will ever pay them to do anything. He’s picking out the ones with a certified history of violence and training them to hunt.”
“We’re finally getting down to a reason that means something. You’re afraid he might get to be a problem, aren’t you? Not just to people like me, but to you.”
“He already is. If I let him get stronger, eventually he’ll kill me.”
Mary slumped back in her chair and breathed a deep, windy sigh. “At last. Thank you.”
“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“No, but now maybe I can sleep. You’re no better than lam.”
When Mary came out into the living room again it was nearly noon. She looked at Jane and her face seemed to deflate. “You’re still here.”
“Even if you won’t help me get Barraclough, it’s still to my advantage to make sure he doesn’t get you.”
“How long do I have to live like this?”
“After we get you working, it will be easier,” said Jane. “We’ll study the other women here—shop where they shop and buy what they buy. Everything you do has to keep your head down where there are lots of other heads.”
Mary looked as though she were considering it. “How long do I have to do this?”
Jane shrugged. “The longer you do it, the safer you’ll be. Most women live quiet, private lives, and most women are basically happy. It helps to make new friends and be part of a community. If you look at the way your friends live, you’ll feel better, and that will keep you from getting lazy.”
“Lazy?”
“The average person sets an alarm to get up early, goes to work, has a little leisure time, sets the alarm, and goes to bed. The weeks get long, and people don’t get paid what they deserve. There will come a day when you can’t get your mind off some fantasy—a week in the Bahamas, or maybe only a dress you saw in a magazine. It doesn’t matter what it is. Live within your means. I mean your visible means.”
Mary’s face turned hard and her eyes glittered. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Don’t touch the money that’s in Zurich or Singapore.”
“I told you: there is no money.” She stared at Jane for a long time, waiting for the contradiction.
Jane sat motionless and returned her stare evenly. Finally Mary angrily jumped to her feet, threw on her coat, and walked out the door. When Jane heard the dull thump of the door at the bottom of the stairs, she stood up, put on her coat, and prepared to go out too. She had a lot of work to do.
The Detroit-Wayne County airport was only twenty-six miles east of Mary Perkins’s apartment on Route 94. The flight was not even three hundred miles, so when Jane Whitefield emerged from the gate at O’Hare, the clock on the wall said 3:10. The taxi took her to the State Street mall and she walked two blocks along East Madison Street. On another day she might have had the taxi driver leave her farther away, but last night’s snow had reached Chicago by morning, and today the wind was picking it up and moving it along between the big buildings
in horizontal sheets. Most pedestrians were just scurrying across the open to get from one building to another, and she saw none who might have followed her.
She reached the Bank of Illinois before four o’clock and was behind the counter in a quiet cubicle opening her safe-deposit box within five minutes. Months ago she had come to Chicago to pay the bill for the Furnace corporation’s post office box, shop for clothes, and store Catherine Snowdon’s papers. She took them out and studied them. Catherine Snowdon had a birth certificate, a driver’s license, a Social Security card, a Visa card, and an ATM card from the Bank of America in case she needed cash. Jane examined the other papers in the box. That left only Wendy Lewis, Karen Gottlieb, and Anne Bronstein. She examined their papers to reassure herself that she had not let any of the expiration dates go by. Then she put them back under the savings passbook and the nine-millimeter Beretta pistol, closed the box, and rang for the lady who would go with her to return it to its slot in the vault.
A guide needed more insurance policies than any of her clients, but she could spare Catherine Snowdon for Mary Perkins. She would hide the Catherine Snowdon papers with ten thousand dollars in cash somewhere within walking distance of Mary’s apartment in case she had to bail out.
Jane caught a cab from the Dirksen Building on West Adams and flew back to Detroit to do some shopping. At a Toys “R” Us she found a toy called Musical Moves. If the child stepped in the right places on a brightly colored mat, he could play a tune electronically. Jane would redirect the wire so that instead the pressure on the mat would send current to a small lightbulb. Two would be better—one mounted inside the apartment and one somewhere outside—maybe in the mailbox, if it could be done without alarming the letter carrier. If the bulb was lit, Mary Perkins would know that somebody was in her apartment waiting for her.
At a hardware store she bought the tools, wires, electrical tape, and a rope ladder designed for getting out a second-floor window in an emergency. She decided these purchases would be enough for the present. Mary had a lot to get used to in a short time, and she would be less likely to make mistakes in a crisis if she wasn’t distracted by complexity.