by Thomas Perry
The bus driver began taking tickets. “Thank you, welcome aboard,” he said as each person handed him a ticket. “Thank you, welcome aboard.”
Jane handed him her two tickets. “One is for my husband, asleep in the back of the bus.”
“Thank you, welcome aboard.”
Jane climbed the steps, made her way down the aisle to the seat where Jimmy waited, and sat down. In a very short time, the driver had admitted the line of passengers and come in to sit down behind the wheel. The bus backed up, then turned and drove out again. As it made the first turn toward the Niagara section of the thruway, she put her face close to Jimmy’s and whispered.
“Did you see her?”
“Yes,” he said. “At first I thought it must be a hallucination from getting bopped on the head, but I could tell you were seeing her too.”
“She was there to warn us to keep going.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. There were three guys sitting in the station watching for something—I think she thought they were there for you.”
“Police?”
“They didn’t look like police to me, and I don’t think Alma thought so either.”
“How did she even know we were coming in on a bus, or when?”
Jane shrugged. “I can’t guess what they know or how they know it. Maybe they’ve been waiting at the airport, the bus station, the train station, and your mother’s house for days, watching to be sure you make it back safely. Maybe they know people so well they can predict what we’re going to do.”
“What do you think we should do now?” he asked.
“We’re doing it,” she said. “We’ve got another three-hour ride. Sleep as much as you can to get your strength back.”
Jimmy sat back and closed his eyes, and the sound of the bus rolling through the night lulled him back to sleep.
When they reached Erie a little after three, Jane got off the bus, went to the ticket booth, and then returned. “We’ll have to wait for a few hours to catch the next bus to Cleveland. It leaves at eight.” They bought snacks and water from vending machines. Jane whispered, “We can relax a little bit. Just crossing a state line still makes your face a bit less familiar, unless you were a movie star before your troubles started. Just look normal.”
“How do I do that?”
“Make up a little story and live it. You and I are from Rochester. We live in an apartment on Maplewood Avenue, near the Genesee River. We’ve been married for, say, eight years. We’re comfortable together, but we’re past the stage where we have our hands all over each other in public. We took the bus because it’s a cheap, easy way to visit my mother in Cleveland. You also want to see the Indians play while we’re there.”
Jimmy sat for a few seconds. “You’re right. When I think about how that guy feels, I forget to be nervous, and I don’t wonder what to do, because I know what he’d do. Right now he’d go get a newspaper and read it while you take a turn sleeping.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open until you get back with your paper.”
When he came back from the newspaper vending machine, he sat down on one of the long, pew-like benches, and Jane fell asleep beside him with her head on her backpack. They stayed that way until it was time to catch their next bus.
They got off the bus in Cleveland at around nine thirty in the morning. The station was a 1930s futuristic building, all rounded corners with a tall vertical sign like the marquee on a theater. They walked along Chester Street for a couple of blocks and came to a street with a sign that had an arrow and the words ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME.
Jimmy looked at it, then looked at Jane.
She shrugged. “It gives us a destination. And it raises the odds that there will be food in the area.”
They followed the arrows and walked a few blocks before they saw it. There were rows of man-high guitars painted in bright colors, and then a plaza up a wide set of steps. The building itself was a glass pyramid with concrete boxlike structures beside and above it. But what caught Jane’s attention was a roofed area at the margin with a pay phone. “Wait for me,” she said, and walked to it.
She put in a coin and dialed Carey’s cell number, then put in more coins when the operator told her to.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Doctor McKinnon,” she said. “I love you.”
“Hold on.” She could hear him walking from a place where there were noises in the background to a smaller, quieter space, then closing the door. “Hi. I’ve been worried.”
“Sorry. You got my message about ditching my cell phone, right?”
“Yes.”
“I had started to suspect somebody was using the GPS to follow me. What’s going on there?”
Carey said, “Ellen Dickerson called. She’s been trying to reach you, but couldn’t, of course. She has something to tell you, and I’ve got her number here.”
Jane took out her pencil and the bus ticket stub. “Okay, go ahead.”
He read the number and she wrote it down and repeated it back to him. Then she said, “How are you holding up?”
“If I complain, is there anything you can do to make it better?”
“At the moment, honestly, no. Maybe before too long.” Jane stared ahead at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, behind its sculptures of enormous guitars.
“Look, I don’t want to fight with you about it. Just do what you have to and get back here,” he said.
“I love you.”
“That’s twice. It just reminds me of how stupid it is to be apart.”
“I know it’s stupid,” she said. “But if you understood what I’m doing, you would know that anyone would do the same. Even logical, sensible you. When it’s done, we can have a nice, dull time. I promise.”
He laughed. “Actually, that sounds really good.”
“It does to me, too. I’ve got to go. Be good.”
“You too.”
She hung up and stood still for a few breaths, looking out past the museum at the lake. Then she fished in her pack for more coins, put one into the phone, and dialed Ellen Dickerson’s number.
Ellen’s voice said, “Sge-no.”
Jane answered in Seneca. “Does everybody who calls you speak Onondawaga?”
“I thought it would be you,” Ellen said.
“I heard there was a problem.”
“We’ve been worried. You can’t bring him in yet. There are men who are getting themselves into the jails around here—minor infractions, the kind that will get them thirty days or sixty days. A couple of Haudenosaunee boys were in jail this week. They’re good boys, a Mohawk and a Tuscarora, who were picked up after a burglary. They had nothing to do with it, so they were let go. But they said some men are waiting in jail for Jimmy when he comes in.”
“Do the police know?” Jane said.
“We’re having some people go talk to them, but even if the police believe them, fixing it isn’t easy and will take time. For now, you’re going to have to keep him away from here.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Jane.
“We know you will,” said Ellen. “Alma said you looked thin. Are you getting enough to eat?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ve just been getting a lot of exercise.”
“To be honest, she said you looked like a stray cat. Go have lunch. And call me again when you can.”
“I will.”
Jane heard Ellen Dickerson hang up. She put the receiver back on the hook and walked over to sit on the steps in front of the museum with Jimmy.
“You look as though you got bad news. Is your husband mad?”
“Yes. He knows this has to be done, but he’s not clear on why I should be the one to do it, and he worries.” She
knew she had made things sound better than they were.
“So what’s wrong?”
“There are men getting themselves arrested and put into the Erie County jail system, so they’ll be there when you arrive.”
“Are you sure?”
“The story came from some Haudenosaunee boys who were in jail. Rumors go around in jails quickly because people don’t have much to do, and gossip gives them relief from thinking about their own problems. It’s always hard to tell what’s true—the place is full of liars—but I think we should give people time to check this one out. If it were true, who would these men be—friends or relatives of Nick Bauermeister?”
“I don’t know anything about him, so I don’t have a theory. He was just a nasty drunk, a bully that I ran into one night.” Jimmy sat for a moment, looking out toward the city. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“Just stick with me for a while, until it’s safe to go back. I’ll keep you out of sight until they give us the word.”
Jimmy leaned forward and turned to look into her face. “Janie, last night I asked you a question, and you brushed me off. You know you can trust me. Whatever you tell me, I’ll never tell anybody else.”
Jane looked down at her feet for a few seconds, then sighed. “I’m an old friend of yours, somebody you played with as a kid. And how many of us are there? Maybe ten thousand Senecas, in five reservations in New York and Ontario, or near them, and maybe a couple thousand left in Oklahoma and Ohio and Missouri. We’re about the size of one small town. You and I are probably related to each other in a hundred ways by now. You can trust me too.”
“I’m not questioning that you care about what happens to me. You’ve already done more for me than I’ve ever done for anybody. But if you’ll be open with me, it will help. What’s going on? I got in trouble and ran, and within two days the clan mothers went straight to you. Last night three men clubbed me to the ground, and you nearly killed them, but there isn’t a mark on you. Now you tell me how it feels to be in jail, and say you’ll make me invisible for a while. So who are you?”
She put her hands between her knees, and shrugged. “Right now I’m exactly what I seem to be—Mrs. Carey McKinnon, the wife of a Buffalo surgeon, who lives a quiet life in a nice old house in Amherst. But for a long time, maybe fifteen years, I was a guide.”
“What kind of guide?”
“People came to me who had pretty much used up their lives. They had good reason to believe that they were going to be murdered, and had no way out. I took them to other places where nobody knew them, made them into new people, and taught them how to be those new people.”
He stared at her in shock for a few seconds. Finally he said, “How did you get involved in that?”
“I didn’t exactly get involved. When somebody is in danger and you know how to help him, you do, that’s all. When I was in college I spent three summers working for a skip tracer, so I learned how to find people. Then one night I was at a party and learned a friend of mine was in trouble. When I thought about it, I realized that I didn’t just know how to find people. I knew how to lose people too. So I helped him disappear that night. But a number of our friends were at the party too, and knew what I’d done. A year later, one of them knew somebody else who needed that kind of help, and brought her to me. Then there were others, and the ones I helped told others. Pretty soon it was strangers. Over the next fifteen years I invented a lot of people.”
“You were in jail. So I guess you got caught.”
She shook her head. “No. Not for that reason, and not under my name. I just got myself sent to jail a couple of times because there were women in there that I had to get to.”
“How did you learn to fight like that?”
“It’s not about fighting. It’s about running. If I’m cornered I fight dirty. Strike first without warning, use any weapon I have, hurt them as badly as I can, and then run.”
“There’s more to it than that. You have some kind of training.”
“Years ago, there was a man I had to keep hidden for a very long time—more than eight months. Every day I taught him and tested him, making him learn to be a new person and forget the old person’s tastes, habits, and attitudes. You can only do that for seven or eight hours a day. In return, he spent another seven or eight hours a day teaching me what he knew—aikido. Over the years, I learned more, and I practice. And I stay in the best physical condition I can: I do tai chi to maintain my flexibility, balance, and tone, and I run every day.” She paused, and thought about the long months of recovery after she was captured. “Unless I’m really sick, and can’t get out of bed.”
Jimmy said, “The clan mothers knew about all this?”
“I have no idea how they found out—who would have told them, or how long ago it was. They knew about me in the way they know other secrets. They keep things to themselves until they decide it’s time not to.”
Jimmy was silent, looking down at the white pavement in front of the steps.
Jane said, “What I’ve told you would get some very nice people, including me, into terrible trouble—jail for a few of them, death for nearly all of the others—if the wrong person found out and made the right connections. These are people who had someone really scary after them at the beginning. They’re okay now, but that kind of trouble doesn’t ever really go away. It just waits. I’m trusting you with our secret because your knowing will make it easier for me to help you.”
“I’ll never tell anybody,” he said. “I promise.”
“Then you can be one of my runners.”
“Runners?”
“My clients. What I do is help people stay alive. I don’t help them get revenge, or bring them justice, or something. I teach them to run and hide. Are you interested in that?”
“I’ve tried fighting, and that hasn’t worked out too well.”
“Then we’d better get started.”
8
Jane bought a Cleveland Plain Dealer at a vending machine and then walked with Jimmy to a coffee shop a couple of blocks up from the lake. She scanned a page of ads. “Here,” she said. “Here’s the kind of thing we want. ‘Suites by the day, week, or month. One or two bedroom, kitchen-slash-sitting room.’” She circled the ad with her pencil, then three others. “Any of these in this column would work. Apartments can require a background investigation, deposits, and sometimes references. Hotels only require a credit card that isn’t rejected when they test run it for a hundred bucks to be sure it’s valid. And once you’re there, everybody’s a stranger.” She turned a page, then another.
“That’s not enough?”
“We’ll also need a car.” She started circling ads again. “It has to be used, for sale by owner. A person sells his car because he wants to get more than he can get on a trade-in. He knows he might get a bad check, so what he really wants is cash, and that’s good for us.” She crossed off a few ads. “No antiques, no convertibles, no conversation pieces. When you’re doing this, look for low-end models from good manufacturers. You want the car that nobody remembers, the kind you’d find easy to lose in a parking lot. You’re not going to try to drive it for a hundred thousand miles. It just has to run okay, and have some working life left.”
“What about leasing a car, or renting one?”
“Neither option is good for you right now. Rentals are fine if you have a credit card in another name, need a car for a day or two, and can return it to the same place—or get someone else to. It’s expensive after a few days, and the company can locate the car if they feel the need. A lease is a bank loan, and it triggers a credit check.”
“What else do we need?”
“The rest are incidentals. If we get a place to stay and a car, everything else is easy.”
They caught a cab at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and took it t
o the most promising of the extended-stay hotels. Jane rented a two-bedroom suite and came outside to bring Jimmy in. He walked around in the suite, looked in the bedrooms, and examined the main room, which was a living room with a one-wall kitchen consisting of a counter, sink, refrigerator, and stove. “How did you rent it?”
“A credit card.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.” She held it up so he could read it.
“Who’s Diane Kazanian?”
“She’s me. Years ago two women I had helped decided to send me a present. They worked in the county clerk’s office in Cook County, Illinois. They added fifty birth certificates to the files there, and sent fifty certified copies to me. They were for men, women, and children, aged from about five years to seventy. One of them said Diane Kazanian and was about my age. I used the birth certificate to apply for a driver’s license, took the tests, and got one. Then I used the license and the birth certificate as ID to start a small bank account. I bought some magazine subscriptions with checks, sent away for some things from big stores and paid for them, and then started getting offers for credit cards. I bought things with the cards, and paid the bills. The address is a mailbox rental in Chicago, which I pay to forward everything to another one nearer to home that’s in the name of a corporation I formed. After a few years, Diane had a good credit record, a passport, a library card, and a few other things.”
“Have you done that a lot?”
“Enough. For about ten years, I’d receive a batch of birth certificates every year. Most of them I’ve never used. But I keep growing identities, and use them in rotation so they all stay fresh.”
“I can’t believe you do this stuff,” said Jimmy. “Where did you even learn how?”
“Some of it came from that first summer job skip tracing. I studied the methods that you can use to follow trails of people who don’t want to be found. If you’re the one who’s running, you have to understand the risk that each thing you do carries with it.”
