by Thomas Perry
“You’re not an expert,” she said softly. “An expert is somebody who wins.”
Harry nodded. “I won a lot and lost a lot. By the time I came to you I didn’t look like much, but I felt the same. I felt young, like I had plenty of life left.” He sighed. “You gave me a few extra years. Nobody else would do anything.”
“And?”
“You’re about to lose your ass.”
“How?”
“That old man is six feet two, thin and craggy, and sixty-seven. You disguise him, he ain’t getting any shorter, younger, or less craggy. How long is this man going to stay invisible?”
“I don’t know,” Jane admitted. “Who’s going to find him?”
Harry shook his head sympathetically. “All the horses cross the finish line eventually. Who cares which one is first?”
“I do. I finally have a life of my own, Harry. I love my husband. I wanted a future—kids, an old age maybe.”
Harry threw up his hands in despair. “That’s why I’m scared for you, honey. A perfect example.”
“Of what?”
“You don’t even know what game you’re playing. Your personal life is not on the table tonight.” He sighed mightily, then gave a little shiver to shake off the topic. “Somebody’s in a business you happen to know a lot about. They got a client’s face changed. They killed all the people who saw both the old face and the new face except one. They got the murders blamed on the one that’s left.”
“How do I stop them?”
“You don’t stop them. Their guy is vanished, resettled somewhere. Yours is a murder suspect. The hand’s over. Hear that clicking noise? It’s the sound of them raking all the chips over to their side of the table.”
“If it’s over, why are you coming into my dream?”
“Me?” said Harry. “I’ll be with you forever. I’m your mistake.”
“And now Dahlman too.”
“Don’t count him until it’s over.”
“But you said it was over.”
“I said that hand was over,” Harry corrected her. “It’s not you and Dahlman against them and their client. Dahlman and the client are just stakes. The game is between players, not chips.”
Harry walked toward the other side of the bandstand, and as he approached the steps, she reached out toward him.
“Wait, Harry,” she said. “Don’t go.”
Harry stopped and turned to her. “I never really was much use to anybody. I should have left your sleep alone.”
“What do I do?”
“You win, and Hawenneyu, the Right-Handed Twin, gets a point. Or you lose, and Hanegoategeh, the Left-Handed Twin, gets a point, and the brothers grow another player to take your place.”
“How do I keep Dahlman alive?”
Harry’s brow furrowed, as though he were trying to formulate a way to divulge a secret he wasn’t supposed to. “Why can’t just any yokel fan the deck face-down and pick out the king of spades?”
Jane awoke, trying to answer, but Harry was gone. She sat up. “They’re all the same.” She got out of bed and began to pack Dahlman’s suitcase.
It was nine-thirty in the morning three days later when Jane walked Richard Dahlman into the front entrance of the complex in Carlsbad, California, for their appointment. The architecture of the place was an artifact of a Spanish California that had sprung spontaneously from the imagination of an architect sometime during the 1920s and had taken hold. Certain parts of the state looked as though the Spanish colonists had left behind not just a few missions, but an array of shopping malls, restaurants, and office buildings.
The stylized script embedded in the far wall of the lobby said “Senior Rancho,” and Jane remembered that what Los Angeles County called its big prison in the sparse hills above the city was Honor Rancho. She whispered to Dahlman, “How does it look so far?”
“It looks comfortable, like a campus … if a bit impersonal.”
She used the time as they walked. “Remember. You’re Alan Weems. You’re not a doctor. You know nothing. I’ll tell all the necessary lies. I’m your daughter Julia Kieler. And don’t keep looking at your hair in the reflections of the windows. White hair makes you look distinguished.”
The receptionist directed Julia Kieler and Alan Weems into the office for the appointment with the “intake counselor,” who introduced herself as Mrs. Paxton but called Dahlman “Alan” from the instant she saw him. After a few seconds she had the receptionist usher Alan through the lobby into a large garden. Mrs. Paxton told him, “We want to be sure this is a place where you’ll feel at home. Why don’t you make contact with the other guests while Mrs. Kieler and I talk some girl talk?”
Jane sat at a table in a small office while Mrs. Paxton went out and returned with some forms. It was the sort of office where customers answered questions and the counselor interpreted and compressed their answers to fit on lines.
“Tell me about your father,” said Mrs. Paxton. “What sort of medical care does he need?”
“None that we know of,” said Jane. “He’s pretty healthy.”
“I could see he’s ambulatory; no obvious problems. Is he forgetful?”
“No more than I am. Here’s our situation. He retired three years ago. Since my mother died about ten years ago he’s lived alone in the old house. He’s cooked and cleaned for himself, shopped, and so on. But he knows that might not always be possible, and right now he doesn’t especially want to. He’s still physically active—likes to walk and swim. But he had a bad experience a few months ago, and he doesn’t want to live alone anymore.”
“What sort of bad experience?”
“I guess you could call it a carjacking. The man wanted his car, and when my father resisted, he shot him. He’s okay now, but it’s been hard for him.”
Mrs. Paxton’s eyes were wide with exactly the right mixture of shock and sympathy, as though she had a recipe. “I should say so. The poor man.”
Jane shrugged philosophically. “He wants to sell the house, and go live somewhere where he can spend time with people his own age.” She added, “He won’t live with me. To tell you the truth, I think my friends and I bore him.”
Mrs. Paxton nodded. “He’s definitely a fit for our Level One,” she said. “We have many people in similar circumstances. Each person lives in what amounts to a condominium right here on our grounds. There’s a swimming pool, golf course, square dances and social dancing, exercise groups, all supervised by our professional staff.” She looked conspiratorial as she said, “Many of our guests feel agitated and depressed if they spend too much time watching the news and reading unpleasant stories in the papers: they want to forget those things. So we try to keep them busy.”
“What’s Level Two?”
“Two?”
“Yes, you said he was Level One. What’s Level Two?”
“Those are people who need some nursing care or who need a helper because they’re not capable of living on their own. Level Three would be people who need a greater degree of attention. Some are no longer ambulatory, and some need constant supervision.”
“Where are they?”
“The fourth building over.” Mrs. Paxton spun in her chair and pointed out the window with her pen. “The one that looks like a hospital.”
Jane picked out the building. It looked modern and well-designed, and she could see a few white-coated attendants pushing white-haired people in wheelchairs onto a lawn. The whole operation looked clean, efficient, and humane, but seeing it gave her chills. She told herself it was the air-conditioning.
“We’ll tour the whole facility in a few minutes, but I want to wait for your father.” Mrs. Paxton gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Old people detest being rushed. Do you have any questions about the fee schedule?”
Jane said, “Let me see if I have it right. The fee is a fixed monthly charge.”
“Yes. For your father that would be this figure.” She held up a glossy brochure and pointed to a number with her pen
. “It will remain the same as long as he’s at Level One. If he were to move to Level Two, he would incur an additional charge.” She pointed to a second figure. “That pays for a companion. At Level Three, the charge is the same. It won’t increase during his stay.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You see, our typical guest is on a fixed income. He wants to know that the Rancho isn’t going to pull the rug out from under him.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how can you do that?”
“I’m just talking about our fees. You have to remember that a patient who reaches Level Three probably would have high medical bills also. Some is paid by Medicare, and the rest by the patient himself or his private insurance carrier. But our costs don’t go up much, so the fees don’t either. You also should know that for the first few years, your father will be overcharged. As he ages and needs more care, the surplus he paid will have gone into the trust and been invested.”
“That works?”
Mrs. Paxton grinned. “So far. We’ve been here since 1948.”
Jane tried to communicate a low-level worry. “If my father decided to stay, would he be free to leave?”
“Of course.”
“I mean, suppose one day he decides he wants to hop on a plane and visit me, or go to Europe. What would he have to do?”
“Call a travel agent, I suppose. Our regular shuttle bus would take him to the terminal and pick him up.”
“There’s no way he could be prevented?”
“No. If you wanted to do that you would have to go to court and have yourself granted a conservatorship of his person. But you haven’t said anything that would indicate—”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Jane. “I just want to be sure he can do as he likes.” She said, “What about crime?”
“Crime?” Mrs. Paxton seemed confused.
“I saw private security guards, gates, and fences.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Paxton, suddenly sympathetic. “This is a small, quiet seaside community. He wouldn’t have to worry about that sort of thing. Of course, there’s no place in California that’s very far from a freeway, so we can’t let strangers come onto the complex. If you came to see him, you would give your name at the gate, and they would find it on a list, so you’d be admitted immediately.”
Jane kept at Mrs. Paxton, asking the questions she thought a daughter would ask, and Mrs. Paxton seemed to have prepared for all of them. When Dahlman returned from his walk, Mrs. Paxton went off to get an electric golf cart for their ride around the grounds.
“Well?” said Jane.
“Not bad. It’s not the way I had hoped to spend my old age, but the people I met seem happy. It must be incredibly expensive.”
“I’ve seen the price tag,” said Jane. “It’s outrageous, but it would be a bargain at ten times that much. You can move around freely and do as you please, and if you want to leave, they’ll drive you in a shuttle with five or six other people your age. Outsiders can’t come in except to deliver groceries and cut the lawn. With any luck we won’t have to pay for long.”
“What about the other campers?”
“Guests. She says a lot of them come here to forget things like newspapers and television, and the staff tries to keep everybody too busy for them. That should help. The hair should help. The more you behave like Alan Weems and the less like … anyone else, the better.”
He considered for a moment. “I suppose it’s not on the list of places I’d go to look for a fugitive.”
“Why can’t just anybody spread a deck of cards face-down on a table and pick out the king of spades?”
Dahlman looked at her impatiently. “Why?”
“It’s not a trick question.”
“Well, to begin with, they’re all the same. The king of spades doesn’t look any different from …” He paused, then nodded.
Five days later, Alan Weems was installed in a condominium at the Carlsbad Senior Rancho. His belongings were said to be “in storage” in Michigan. He arrived with only a few suitcases full of clothing that was as new as the suitcases, a large box of recently purchased books, and a valise that contained “personal papers.” He said good-bye to his daughter privately, and she was recorded as leaving the gate at midnight.
20
At 3:35 A.M. Violet Peterson awoke to the sound of many feet walking through the high grass outside her motel room. She silently eased herself off the bed, stepped into her jeans, pulled a clean sweatshirt over her head, and then sat down on the bed to tie her sneakers.
By the time the door burst open, she was sitting at the small table by the window, her purse across the table from her where they would see it immediately, and her hands palm-down on the tabletop.
Before the door swung far enough for the knob to bang the wall, the first man in had barreled across the room to her left like a football player, knelt behind the bed, and rested his elbow on it so his rifle would stay trained on her chest. But the second was already in place by that time, since all he did was sidestep through the doorway to his left. The third crouched in the doorway and swept the room with his eyes, his rifle turning wherever he looked. The fourth stepped past him and turned on the glaring light.
Violet watched the proceedings with intense interest. It was good that Jane had explained how to receive such visitors. She spent the next few moments thinking about her daughter and her son, and marveling at how having them had changed her. At one time she had been very impressed by her own physical beauty—even awed by it, since it was unearned and had come unasked for—and she would, at a time like this, have been terribly afraid that something would happen to shatter it. But having her children—not just bearing them, which had distorted that body temporarily and proved for the rest of time that it was not delicate or fragile, but watching the children grow and devoting her life to them—had moved her beyond little fears.
The moment when the first one, Victoria, had begun to walk and talk, Violet and even Billy had in some subtle way become the old generation, superseded by the next. She was very afraid of these men because they might make some mistake and obliterate her children’s mama. She knew that reason dictated that she be afraid for herself, and she told herself that she would be; she had only put it off until she had time to think.
The fourth man through the door advanced close to her cautiously, taking little side steps. She could tell that much of his caution was devoted to staying out of the gun sights of his friends. He snatched her purse off the table and then said, not in the brutal shout she had been expecting, but in a quiet, normal voice, “Listen carefully. I want you to keep both hands in sight at all times, and away from your body. Now slowly stand up and turn to the wall.”
Violet stood up with her hands out like a tightrope walker and stepped to the wall. Before she expected it, big, strong hands pushed her forward so her hands had to lean against the wall, then quickly moved up and down her body, but the touch was not personal. It was like a strong wind riffling her clothes. Then other hands grasped her wrists and brought them around behind her. She felt the handcuffs click shut and she began to feel better.
Jane had told her that this was the time she should eagerly await, because it meant the real danger was over. Once the handcuffs were on, the men would begin to relax and there would be little chance that they would make some mistake and hurt her.
The men kept her standing there for a long time, her face a few inches from the wall. She could hear men going through her purse, shuffling through the money Jane had given her, like a bank teller counting it. She could hear the little slap as each piece of plastic was placed on the table—her driver’s license, her credit cards. She heard the click and snap as they opened her suitcase, and the quiet rustle as they examined the clothes. Somewhere beyond the bed, men were systematically opening drawers and moving furniture.
It was the man who had taken her purse who grasped her shoulders and turned her around. “Sit down, please.”
Violet obeyed. A new m
an was standing outside the doorway talking quietly with one of the raiders, their backs turned away. This one wore a dark gray suit, and he seemed to be in charge, because he couldn’t dress like that and do all these acrobatics, breaking down doors and diving onto floors with a rifle.
The new man was a person to whom other people brought things. One man showed him the contents of her purse, then brought them back and returned them to the table. Others, one at a time, would go to him and whisper the way the first one had.
Finally, the man turned and looked in at her. He was big, not athletic-looking exactly, but the way that soldiers looked. He nodded at something one of his men whispered to him, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. They were brown, but light brown, not the brown that most of the people she trusted had. They looked thoughtful and tired. He walked in the door past two men in dark blue golf shirts and khaki pants that Violet hadn’t noticed before, who were sprinkling black fingerprint dust on the furniture.
He sat down at the table across from her and stared into her eyes for a moment. “I’m Special Agent Marshall,” he said.
“Hi,” she answered in a small voice.
“You know that you’ve got a serious problem?”
“No,” said Vi. “I don’t.”
He pushed a few of the cards closer to her on the table. “You boarded an airplane under a false identity. You used these cards to rent a car, a hotel room, meals. That’s fraud. Forgery. Now, I know that you planned to pay the bills. Otherwise you would have no hope of fading back into being a law-abiding citizen when this was over. That was one of the reasons why my boss got tired of having people follow you around the country, and decided that I should have this talk with you.” He waited.
Violet watched with curiosity. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something important. If he knew she was going to deny it, then what was all of this about? No, he must be expecting her to admit it and say she was sorry.
She detected a subtle change in his eyes. She had been waiting for a change, but this wasn’t the one she had been expecting. She had assumed he would turn cold and cruel and contemptuous. Instead, he was like a man listening to a small, faraway sound. He knew something was wrong, the way Billy knew when he listened to the hum of their car’s engine. He must be very intelligent. For the first time, Violet was a little afraid of him.