by Thomas Perry
“But aren’t you ever afraid the banks will figure out there’s something wrong with this new customer and call the police?”
“Banks have the biggest apparatus for detecting fraud, but they’re only interested in protecting their profits, not enforcing laws. What they want is for you to deposit money so they can use it, and borrow money, so they can charge you interest. They sincerely don’t care if you’re an ax murderer. If you are, they don’t want to know about it, and make an effort not to find out. Go online sometime and look at the list of banks with branches in the Cayman Islands. There has never been a reason for any foreigner to put money in the Cayman Islands except to hide it from their home governments. But every single major bank in the US or Europe that you can name has branches there. If your bank isn’t on the list, then it’s an error in the list. They’re not there for the convenience of vacationers withdrawing a little cash for a dinner on the beach. It’s big-time tax evasion, money laundering, profits from drugs, extortion, embezzling, kidnapping. Give banks a way to mind their own business, and they will.”
Jimmy said, “Okay, so if I don’t have to worry about banks, who do I have to worry about?”
“Remember that guy who was chasing us on foot?”
“How could I forget him? Sergeant Isaac Lloyd, New York State police.”
“That’s who you worry about—a dedicated police officer who has reason to believe you’ve committed a serious crime. This one went after us alone and on foot because he realized that was the way we were traveling, so it was probably the only way to follow us. He’s trouble. Anybody like him is trouble.”
“Let’s hope there aren’t any others.”
“Let’s do everything the right way, so he has no trail to follow.”
She stood up and walked across the room to pick up her backpack. “Right now I’m going to get cleaned up and then leave you alone to do the same while I go out for a while.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find us a car. It’s just like renting this suite. You stay invisible.” Jane disappeared into the bathroom and in a moment he heard the water running in the shower.
Twenty minutes later, Jane emerged from the bathroom wearing fresh, clean clothes—a black blouse, a pair of gray pants, and flat shoes—and carrying a small black purse. Her hair was shiny and clean, and she wore makeup. Jimmy looked up from the television set. “You still clean up nice.”
“Thank you,” she said. “When I go out the door, lock it. If there’s a knock, don’t open it. It’ll probably be housekeeping, and all they can want is to turn down the sheets. We can do that ourselves. Just stay where you are, be nice and quiet, and don’t talk to anyone. And this may take a while. I have the other key, so don’t worry about letting me in.” She picked up the newspaper classified ads, took the single page of used car ads out, folded it, and put it in her purse.
“Okay. Good luck.”
She went downstairs and through the lobby. It was still midafternoon, so she used a pay phone to call three of the numbers in the car ads to make appointments to see the cars. As she stepped out of the hotel she looked to her left and saw that there were three cabs waiting down the drive for passengers, so she raised her hand and one pulled to the curb to pick her up. She gave the driver the address of the first and most likely car for sale, and sat quietly while he drove there.
When she arrived in her cab, she paid the driver and said thanks. She watched him drive off, and then she went to the door of the house and rang the bell.
The door opened and a young, trim black woman wearing the pants and blouse from a business suit and an apron stood in the doorway. When she saw Jane she took off the apron, tossed it onto the table by the door, and came out. “I’ll bet you’re Diane Kazanian.”
“Yes,” said Jane. They shook hands.
“I’m Tyler Winters.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting dinner.”
“No,” she said. “I just got home from work a little while ago, and I thought I’d get it into the oven before my husband comes home. I’m free for a while. Ready to see the car?” She reached onto the table and pressed a remote control unit, so the garage door rolled upward.
“Sure,” said Jane. As they walked to the garage she said, “Is the car yours?”
“Not exactly,” Tyler Winters said. “It’s my mom’s. I’m just selling it for her.”
Jane smiled. “I thought not. You seem more like the BMW type.”
The woman laughed. “You got me. I have a Three Series, but I’ve been driving mom’s car for a few days so I could leave it in the company lot with a sign on it. How do you do that—guess the car?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “It’s just a knack I guess.”
“Well, you don’t strike me as the type for a six-year-old Chevy Malibu either.”
“Normally I wouldn’t seek it out,” said Jane. “But right now for work I need a small, reliable car that doesn’t catch the eye. I don’t want the car somebody would pick out in a parking lot to rob. I’m in pharmaceutical sales, and it’s much safer not to drive that car.”
“Then I think you’ve come to the right place.” She led Jane to the garage. The Chevy Malibu was a nondescript gray with cloth seats and the standard interior, but it was clean and shiny, without any nicks or dents, and the tires looked nearly new. Jane leaned close to the window. The interior was spotless. She said, “What’s the mileage?”
Tyler handed her the key. “You have to turn it on to read it.”
Jane sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key, then said, “One hundred and two thousand, two oh three.”
“Would you like to drive it?”
“Love to.”
Jane waited for her to get into the passenger seat, and then tested the headlights while it was still in the garage and she could see the two bright spots on the garage wall, backed out, and drove it up the street. “Your mother took great care of it.”
“Yes,” said Tyler. “My husband helped her, but she’s always been careful with things. This is just like the car I learned to drive on, and she kept that one for twelve years. We couldn’t talk her into letting us buy her a new one until I volunteered to sell the old one for her.”
“She drives a hard bargain,” said Jane.
“She sure does. But she’s getting old, and I’d just feel better if she had something new instead of waiting for some part to go.”
“Your ad said four thousand.”
“I’m willing to bargain a little, but that’s what my husband thinks is fair.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Really?”
“I like it,” said Jane. “And I think your husband is probably right about the price. Now what? Should we go see your mother to have her sign it over?”
Tyler said, “Uh, this is kind of awkward, but—”
“You want cash?”
“I’m sorry,” Tyler said. “But we don’t know you, and—”
“I brought cash. I assumed nobody wants to take a personal check from somebody who just arrived in town and answered an ad.”
“Great,” said Tyler. “My mother has already signed the pink slip, and a bill of sale. I just have to fill in the amount and hand it over. You can take the car right away.”
Ten minutes later, Jane had a car with the appropriate papers, traceable with great difficulty to a woman named Kazanian, whose last address was in Illinois, but who had no physical residence on earth. Jane drove her car out onto the street again, and made a few stops at stores. By the time she returned to the hotel she was very pleased with her purchases.
When she opened the door of the hotel suite, Jimmy stood and went outside to help her bring in four grocery bags and a few bags from clothing stores. They loaded the food i
nto the refrigerator, and then opened the clothing bags.
Jimmy looked at the clothes she had bought him. He held up a sport jacket, and then looked at a pair of shoes, a pair of dress slacks, and a pile of shirts in their packages. “Thanks so much. These are really nice, but you know, I don’t usually wear stuff like this.”
“I can’t think of a better reason to start,” Jane said. “So now you do.”
“Why?”
“For a lot of reasons,” she said. “One I just told you. The people who are searching for you are looking for a guy who wears T-shirts in the summer, sweat shirts and puffy jackets in the winter, hoodies in the spring and fall. He goes to places where that’s what everybody is wearing.”
“I guess that makes sense, sort of.”
“Yes. So now you stay out of those places. You’re a guy who goes to a job every day and comes home to his wife and kids in the evening. Maybe you’re a lawyer or businessman. You’re local. That’s important. And when you travel, you dress the way that kind of guy dresses for travel. Think polo shirts, light sport jackets, khaki pants, walking shoes.”
“I don’t know if I can carry that off.”
“You’ll learn.”
“Aren’t these clothes kind of expensive?”
“Not as much as you’d expect, but they do look that way. What that accomplishes is that people who see you will make a series of assumptions, based on very little evidence. They’ll think you’re financially solvent. You probably don’t steal hubcaps off cars for a living. You’re probably not physically dangerous. You’re not crazy in any way that matters to anybody. The police, who are the ones we’re concerned about right now, are not looking for a man dressed like you. Most of the time they’re only looking at people dressed the way you used to. And in these clothes you’ll be easily accepted into the kinds of places where the police aren’t looking anyway.”
“A safe car, a safe place to sleep, clothes that will help us hide. That’s a lot to accomplish in one shopping trip. Thank you.”
“You’re forgetting the food,” she said. “I did that too. Let’s make some dinner.”
9
Dan Crane knocked on the door of Chelsea’s house. Knocking on her door always struck him as a stupid formality, a bit of the past blocking his progress in the present. He was a believer in the present. He was busy, in a hurry much of the time, scrambling to get things done. When he’d already come off the highway and driven up a hundred-yard gravel driveway with his Range Rover kicking up dust to get here, then stepped up on the creaking wooden porch, she should know he was here and have the door open by now.
As he thought it, the door swung open. Chelsea stood behind the closed screen door and smiled. “Hi, Dan. I didn’t know you were coming. I look awful.”
Crane detected a hint of a complaint. She didn’t look awful. She looked amazing. She was suggesting that he should have called her ahead of time to ask her permission to come and see her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I happened to be driving past, so I thought I’d see how you were.” Crane swung his arm around his body from behind his back and held out the small bouquet of flowers. “I’d better leave these with you. I look like a sissy carrying them around.”
Her bright blue eyes widened, and her smile placed two dimples in the smooth white skin of her cheeks. “Are those for me?”
“I happened to be driving by a florist’s shop that was having a sale.”
“Really,” she said as she unhooked the hook-and-eye on the screen door to open it. “You happened to be in a florist’s shop and they fell into your hands. Then, when you drove off you happened to be going by here.”
He stepped inside and she kissed him on the cheek. It was only after that half second that he felt in retrospect the damp, pillowy lips on his cheek and a slight brush of her skin, but she had already withdrawn. His cheek was bereft, feeling where her lips had been.
She was moving away through the little dining room into the kitchen. He followed at a distance, watching the movement of her body in the shorts and the halter top, and hearing the whisper of her bare feet on the floor. She opened a kitchen cupboard, leaned forward over the counter, and stretched upward as far as she could to reach a vase on the top shelf, and he could see a few inches of bare back and the thin white elastic band at the top of the pink imitation silk of her panties. She snagged the vase, a blue-and-yellow glass vessel that nearly matched the small bunch of blue lilies and yellow daffodils. He retreated a few paces.
She came back into the living room, the smile still glowing. “This is just so thoughtful, Dan.”
“It’s nothing. Pretty flowers seem to need a pretty lady to make them complete.”
Chelsea looked up and studied him for the hundredth time. He was kind of handsome, if you were a little ways off or the light was dim. He was tall, with square shoulders and a slim waist, and she liked that. He had a grown-up haircut without any hair over his collar or greased and sticking up straight in bristles or anything like that. But up close, he seemed a little bit more ordinary. He was quite a bit older, at least forty, and you could see the difference in the texture of his skin. You could notice things, like when he said something he thought was clever there was a thing with his mouth that wasn’t quite right. It looked a little like a sneer. She wished, if only for his own sake, that he would stop that. She was ashamed of herself for having such shallow thoughts about a man who was always kind to her.
She overcompensated for what she’d been thinking about him. “Thanks so much, Dan. Since Nick died, you’ve been just great. You’ve turned out to be practically the only one of his friends who didn’t disappear as soon as the funeral was over.”
“Nick was a good guy,” Crane said. “But he’s gone now. We’ve lost him forever. The person who deserves the attention is you.”
He watched her closely. Her eyes lowered, and she seemed to blush. He had never believed that women actually did that. In his life he had never seen any evidence that women were any more delicate or sensitive than, say, dogs or cows. But here it was. She was a princess who wore cutoff shorts and bare feet.
Chelsea set the vase on the table in the dining room, then frowned and moved it to the mantel, where the mirror doubled the colorful petals of the flowers. “Do you like it better there?”
He started to answer, but only got in “Sure” before she spoke over him. “I do too. The mantel is a good place to see them when you come in. It’s sort of the center of the house—at least visually.”
Crane said, “I was just thinking. It’s eleven thirty. Maybe you and I could go to an early lunch, and get in somewhere before everybody else shows up and there’s a big wait.”
She held her hands out from her sides in a gesture that seemed to say, “Can’t you see the way I’m dressed?” What she said aloud was, “That’s so sweet. But I’ve got so many chores to do that I really don’t have time for anything today.”
She saw his face go dead, as though something living behind the face had been injured and contracted. “Okay,” he said. “Another time.” His voice was hollow and emotionless. He took two steps toward the door.
“Dan,” she said carefully. “It’s only been a short time. A few weeks. And it isn’t as though he had some long disease so I had time to get used to the idea. Or even that he died in some accident, the kind that happens all the time. A guy stood out there in front of this house and shot him right here. When I came out of the bedroom he was lying just about where you’re standing now, and his head looked like it had exploded. I’m just not ready yet to do things for fun.”
Crane became solicitous. “I understand. Believe me. It was just a thought. When you feel ready, you should start going out again and seeing people. When you do, if you want company I’ll be here.”
“I know you will,” Chelsea said. She took another step in his directio
n and then stopped. She had wanted to herd him out the door by occupying the space as he gave it up, so he couldn’t come back into the center of the room. But she also didn’t want him to think that she was coming closer to hug him.
He waited.
“Well,” she said. “I’d better get back to work.”
He relented. “Me too. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye.” She sensed that she had said it too soon. It would have been more graceful if she had waited until he was out the door, and then she could have said it and shut the door. This way she had to stand in silence while he left.
He opened the door, went out to the porch, and closed the screen door gently so its spring wouldn’t snap it back and slam it, the way they always did—the way they were supposed to. Slamming shut kept out the flies. As he went down the porch steps, she thought it was just like him. He had to control everything, including things that were none of his business and took care of themselves.
Chelsea stepped backward to stand far back in the living room where he couldn’t see her to watch him climb into his Range Rover, back it up a couple of times to turn it around, and lumber down the gravel driveway to the highway. That car was a mistake too. It was a big, fat boxy thing. She had looked the model up on the computer and seen that it had cost him more than a hundred thousand dollars. For a lot less money he could have bought something a woman could enjoy riding up to a restaurant or a fancy party in—a normal car she could get into without climbing steps in heels, or having them catch on something and make her fall flat. He acted as though he was thoughtful, but he just wasn’t. When he turned onto the highway and sped away toward the west, she felt the tension go out of her neck and shoulders.
DANIEL CRANE DROVE ALONG THE flat, straight highway past a sign that said BUFFALO 20 MILES. All along here the older homes were set far back from the road at the ends of long gravel driveways like Chelsea’s. They had been farms a generation ago, with crops between the road and the house. Usually there were vegetables planted there because they were easier to hoe, weed, watch, and pick if they were close to the house. A lot of these houses had even had rough, heavy wooden tables that stayed at the ends of their driveways all year, some with roofs over them so they could be used as roadside vegetable stands. But the big tractor-cultivated cash crops and the dairy pastures were all on the back hundred acres. Most of those back hundreds had been sold off long ago and turned into suburban tracts, with new streets running through them.
