by Thomas Perry
Jane wandered through the house turning on lights and searching for other signs. The five drawers she had left slightly open had not been opened and reclosed. None of the carpets she had vacuumed to raise the pile had been pushed down by shoes. She went to the front door and stood in the lighted space for a moment, waved the others in, then closed the door to keep the light from illuminating them.
When Rita and Bernie came inside, they found Jane spreading a blanket on a couch in the living room. She said, “The upstairs is yours. There are two bedrooms up there, each with its own bath.”
“This is nicer than I thought it would be,” said Rita. That didn’t sound good to her, so she amended it. “It’s really nice.” She looked at Bernie.
Bernie had been gazing at the stairs, but he seemed to take the cue. “Yeah, nice,” he said. “You shouldn’t sleep down here. Take my room.”
Rita looked at Jane and decided she must have made another mistake. “We could share a bed. I don’t snore or anything.”
“No thanks,” Jane answered. “I want to be down here, and I want Bernie to get settled and begin getting used to the place.”
Rita started up the stairs, but Bernie stood and glared down at Jane for a moment. “You’re keeping watch, aren’t you?”
Jane sighed wearily. “If you hear a loud noise, don’t come looking for me. Turn off the light on your way up.”
9
In the morning, Rita tried out the shower, and found it much better than she had hoped. For the past few days she had been in bad hotels, where the shower always produced a misty trickle, and that made her feel big and dumb, like a cow standing in the rain. She dressed and ventured to the top of the stairs to look down.
Jane was sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee. She didn’t look up and notice Rita: her eyes had been fixed on the spot where Rita stood before she arrived to fill it.
“Good morning,” said Rita.
“Good morning. The coffee is on the counter, and the cups are in the cupboard above it.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” said Rita. Her tone made it sound as though she suspected she should.
“There’s orange juice, if you like that, cereal, milk, eggs, bacon, and a few other things.”
Rita walked into the kitchen. A short time later Jane heard Bernie upstairs, then waited until he was downstairs before she repeated the instructions. He mumbled, “Thanks,” and went into the kitchen.
After twenty minutes, Rita and Bernie came into the living room looking more alert. Bernie glanced around him. “I was expecting this place to be empty. Where did all this furniture and food and stuff come from?”
“Everything in the house is here because I picked it and brought it here. I went to the real estate office that was handling the place and got the key. I looked it over and signed a three-year lease. I drove down to Albuquerque and spent an afternoon picking out furniture from a used-furniture store so it would look as though it had been moved from somewhere, then had it delivered to a storage warehouse. The next day I had a moving company truck it all up here and put it into the house. The appliances came from three different stores down there. The pots and pans, dishes, sheets, and blankets I bought here. Nothing I did should raise any eyebrows.”
“Whose name is the lease in?”
“Renee Moore and Peter Moore. I’m Renee. You’re Peter.” She walked into the coat closet, turned around, and reached above the door. She took down a large manila envelope that had been taped there. She brought it into the kitchen, emptied it on the table, and sat down.
“What’s that?” asked Rita.
“Bernie’s birth certificate.”
“I suppose you went out reading gravestones for this one?” asked Bernie, as he studied the paper.
“The police figured that one out a while ago, so it doesn’t work very well anymore. This one’s not a forgery. A man I knew used to work in the county clerk’s office in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. He added about fifty names to the records and sold me their birth certificates a few years ago. I couldn’t get the age perfect—I don’t have that many left—but your birth is officially registered. You’re sixty-seven.”
Bernie nodded and set the certificate aside.
“Here is your driver’s license,” said Jane. “It’s real too. I had a man use the birth certificate to apply and take the driving test. It’s from New Jersey, because they don’t require a photograph. You can take it to the Motor Vehicles office in town and trade it in for a New Mexico one.”
“Today?” asked Rita.
Jane shook her head. “We have other things to do first. This one will be good for a long time, and the longer he waits, the less dangerous it will be.” She set an American Express card, a Visa, and a MasterCard on the table in front of Bernie. “Over the years, I grew Mr. Moore some credit. The limits aren’t high, but you won’t need much.”
Bernie said, “Anything else?”
Jane said, “Social Security card. That’s fake.”
“Who gives a—”
“Bernie … ” Rita cautioned.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Is that it?”
“Not quite,” said Jane. “Here’s your DD-214.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an honorable discharge from the army. It’s a fake. There’s a company that advertises in magazines. If you lost your discharge papers, they’ll sell you what they call a ‘Deluxe Memento Replica, Suitable for Framing.’ This doesn’t do anything for you except help build a deeper cover.” She was coming close to the bottom of the pile. “I have other things like that too. They don’t have any legal status, but everybody has a few: auto club membership, library card, and so on. You carry them around in your wallet, and it helps make Peter Moore a person, not a flat picture of a person.”
She left the rest of the cards and papers on the table and stood up. She swung the refrigerator door open. “There’s enough food in this house to live on for a week or two. The freezer is stuffed, and the cupboards are full of canned goods.”
She walked to the kitchen door. “Keep the doors locked and bolted, of course,” she said. “I put an extra dead bolt into the floor, so you have to bend over to free it. That way nobody can just break the glass and let himself in.”
They followed her back into the living room. She stopped at the couch where she had slept, and lifted the telephone so they could hear the dial tone. “I ordered phone service because everybody has a phone. Obviously you won’t get much use out of it for now.”
She led the way up the stairs. “I put all the clothes and things into this room.” She opened the top drawer of the dresser. “I bought clip-on sunglasses to go over your glasses if you have to go out.”
Bernie slipped them over his glasses and glanced in the mirror. “Not much of a disguise.”
Jane said, “They’re not looking for you. You’re dead. If you get spotted, it will be because the wrong person happens to be here and gets a very good look at you close up. You can’t completely avoid that possibility, but you can make it a bit less likely.” She reached into the drawer again. “Hats. People here wear hats in the summer because the sun is fierce, and in the winter because it’s cold.”
She opened two more drawers. “Clothes. I got them in stores in Santa Fe, so you’ll fade in a little better.”
“You know what size I am?” asked Bernie.
“I searched your luggage in Niagara Falls,” said Jane. She moved into the bathroom. “I see you found the toothbrushes and things.”
Jane left the bathroom and went down the stairs. “Now for your money.”
“What about it?” asked Bernie.
Jane walked back into the kitchen and opened a drawer. “I’ve opened a joint checking account. The names are Peter James Moore and Renee Moore. You do have to keep the checking account supplied. You can deposit up to a thousand or so in cash now and then without anyone noticing. You can convert a few thousand in cash into traveler’s checks, or money orders, and deposi
t those. Just don’t transfer any money from any old accounts, or write yourself any checks. That will be one of the things they’re looking for.”
Rita looked at the checkbook. “There’s already ten thousand in the account. How did you do that?”
“By check.”
“Whose check?”
“None of your business. Just use checks when you need to, for mailing in bills and things. You can buy almost anything small with cash.”
“I understand all of this stuff,” said Bernie. “I knew it before you were born.”
“Sorry,” Jane said. “The last thing is the car. You get the one in the garage. I had already signed the pink slip, so I signed the other half and transferred it to myself—Renee Moore—so I could get New Mexico plates. You just sign the line below as Peter Moore.”
“What happened to our deal?” asked Bernie. “When are we going to get started?”
“Soon.”
“I just want to remind you, we’ve got a little time problem,” said Bernie. “At a lousy six and a half percent, we’d be making two million a day. We’re making more. It’s like crabgrass. If you want to get rid of it, the sooner you get started, the less there is.”
Jane felt the beginning of a headache. “I know that,” she said patiently.
“We’re safe, right? You did it already. This place is great. It’s comfortable, but nothing about it says ‘money.’ The town is not too big, not too small. I don’t think God knows where we are. Now what’s the holdup?”
Jane sighed. Her eyes rested on Rita for a moment.
“No,” said Rita.
“I’m afraid it’s time,” Jane said. She turned to Bernie. “Get used to the place. If you’re up to it, begin writing down the information we’ll need to retrieve the money. When I get back, we’ll need all of it.”
Jane picked up her purse and walked to the kitchen door. “Come on, Rita,” she said.
Rita hesitated. She looked at Jane, then looked at Bernie, her eyes desperate and pleading. “I haven’t been a problem, have I?”
“No,” said Jane. “That isn’t the—”
“And you shouldn’t leave Bernie here alone,” she interrupted. “People need company. What if he falls down and breaks his hip or something?”
“Then I’ll crawl outside so the vultures can clean my carcass beyond recognition,” Bernie snapped. “Look, kid. You’re wasting our time.”
Rita sighed. “I’ll go get my stuff.” She turned and walked heavily up the stairs.
Jane and Bernie sat in the kitchen, their eyes fixed on each other. “Well?” asked Jane. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I didn’t say a word,” said Bernie. “I can be sorry to see her go without letting her do something stupid, can’t I?”
They heard Rita’s footsteps on the stairs, and fell silent. When she came into the kitchen she was carrying her thin blue jacket with the bulging pockets. She went to Bernie, put her arms around him, released him, and stepped back. “I have to ask just one more—”
Bernie put his finger over her lips. “Don’t bother, kid. Anybody who stays in this house with me is probably going to die. So what’s the right thing to do? Get out of it.”
In a moment, Rita was in the rental car sitting beside Jane, watching the clumps of dry, spiky desert plants slide past her window. Here and there a tree—or what passed for a tree in this part of the country—jutted upward in the distance. Jane drove her into the city, then south on the big highway toward the interstate.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Rita. “Why do you want to ditch me?”
Jane considered for a moment, trying to find the way that she could say it that would mean anything to this girl, a person who knew so little but had seen so much so young. “It’s the only thing I know how to accomplish that makes any sense. A person like you—someone who hasn’t done anything to deserve it—is in danger. I know how to take her to a place where nobody wants to hurt her.”
“You’re just dumping me,” said Rita. “You want to get back to Bernie and his money.”
Jane let the jab go past her, then diverted it a little. “That’s not precisely what’s happening,” she said. “When you came to me you asked for something reasonable. You wanted to stay alive. It’s something I thought I could give you, so I agreed. But you have to stick with what you asked for.”
“Things have changed since then. Bernie being alive changed everything. You act like I’m a child. People my age have kids, fight wars.”
“Sorry,” said Jane. “I’m not much in favor of them doing either.”
“I’m not afraid, you know.”
“I noticed that, and it worries me. A little bit of the self-preservation instinct wouldn’t be out of place in a girl your age.”
“I can help. I can shop and do whatever else has to be done outside, so you and Bernie can be invisible. I can cook and clean and do chores, so you and Bernie don’t have to. I’m really good at not being noticed.”
“Good,” said Jane. “Then you’ll be even safer in San Diego, where nobody’s even looking.”
“San Diego?” asked Rita in distaste. “I don’t know anything about San Diego.”
“It’s pleasant, and it’s big. It’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, so there are lots of newcomers, particularly young ones. It has no winter, which is something you’ve never experienced and would certainly hate, and it’s on the ocean, which is what you’re used to.”
“Please,” said Rita. “Don’t do this to me again.”
Jane watched her eyes fill with tears. “Again?”
Rita said, “It’s what people always do to me. For as long as I can remember, my mother was always doing this. She would get me into the car by telling me we were going someplace nice. Then, when we got there, I’d find out it was just me that was going there. She would stop just long enough to go into some other room alone with the woman who lived there—some friend of hers—and talk her into keeping me for a day, and she would leave. Sometimes she would be gone longer than she’d expected, or at least longer than she’d told the woman, and I could tell. The woman would start to look at me funny, like it was me that lied to her. When I got older, my mother couldn’t do that anymore. I would just get home from school and find that she was gone. Usually a couple of days later she would be back. On the good times, she would just be nervous and depressed and nasty. But about once a year, she’d bring home a new boyfriend. I would come home and see the front door open and the windows, and I’d be so happy. But then I’d come up the walk and I’d hear her voice inside, and I would know that she couldn’t be talking to herself.”
“That’s … I’m sorry,” said Jane. “But this isn’t the same. That’s over.”
“No,” said Rita. “It’s not over. It’s always like this. The world just goes on, and everybody’s so busy, doing things together, and I’m always the one that’s alone on the outside, wondering about it. I can’t ever get in, and I can’t do anything to get included. I used to look at the people my mother spent her time with—laughing at what they said—and I’d think, ‘I’m funnier than that.’ I’d watch her look at them and smile, and I’d think, ‘But they’re all ugly, and this one’s mean, and that one stole from you. Why don’t you want to be with me?’ ”
Jane said carefully, “I’m sure she did want to. Your mother had a drug problem, and that seems to be a full-time occupation. It doesn’t leave much time or energy for things like raising children. But you’ve made it this far, and you’ve done some difficult things since then, and that proves to me that you survived it. There’s no reason you can’t have a terrific life from now on, if you’ll just let it happen.”
“It’s not going to happen,” said Rita. “There’s something about me—something missing. I didn’t tell you everything, because I wanted to make myself sound better than I was. When I went to Tampa, it wasn’t some brave new start. I went because I knew a boy from school who was there. I didn’t find myself a job.
He asked them to hire me. I didn’t even find my own place to live. He just took me in, because he had an old couch in his apartment.”
“I take it he wasn’t a boyfriend?”
Rita looked down at her lap. “I thought it meant something, like he wanted to be with me. I kind of worked myself up and got all nervous wondering when something was going to happen. But he never felt that way at all. It was just that he was a busboy, and the rent cost so much that he couldn’t afford a car, so he needed a roommate to help pay. After a couple of months he had enough for a down payment on an old car, and he found a girlfriend. I came home from the hotel one day, and he had already moved her in. Her stuff was all over the place so you could barely walk, and she was in the bathroom, using my hair dryer.”
“Did you get annoyed?” Jane realized that Rita wasn’t interested in indirection. “Jealous?”
“I just felt lost. I didn’t know what to do, or where to go. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t leave. It was awful. I knew they wanted me to go, but I didn’t know how. It was like being a ghost. They were alive, but I wasn’t. They would look at each other, talk to each other, but hardly ever to me. It wasn’t even like they were being mean. It was like I wasn’t even there. It started to affect me. Every day, I felt a little weaker, a little less real. They were always … touching each other, and I hated that the most, because they wouldn’t do that in front of anyone.”
“How did it end?”
“Danny offered me the job in the Keys.”
Jane’s mind was jerked back into practical matters. “Did you tell them where you were going?”
“Sort of, but not exactly,” said Rita. Then she added, “I lied. What I did was, I bought some stuff from the grocery store while they were at work. It took most of the money I had left from my paycheck. I made this really nice dinner, with a cake. I bought a card—a blank one with a picture of a red Lamborghini on it, because I knew he liked cars. Inside I wrote this thank-you note, you know, for letting me stay here, and helping me get a job and everything? Then I left and met Danny at the parking garage near the hotel.”
