Thomas Perry - Blood Money

Jane interrupted. “You decided. I guess that’s all anyone has to hear. I showed you your best chance to survive, and that’s all I could do. You never pretended that it was what you wanted, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.”

“I’m sorry,” Rita said firmly, “but—”

“No, you’re not,” Jane said quietly. “Not yet, anyway. But things are in motion now, and I can’t stop to drag you back across two states and make you stay there. I hope that at the end of this, you still think you made the right choice. Either way, you’re in.”

Rita stepped forward and grasped Jane’s hands. “Thank you. I’ll help you, honest. I’ll—”

“Where is it?” Jane interrupted.

“Where’s what?”

“The gun.”

Rita gaped at her, but said nothing.

“I plan to be here after the lights are out, and I don’t feel like tripping over a shotgun. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”

Rita opened the small broom cupboard behind her. Between the mop and the broom was a short-barreled Winchester Defender. She started to close the door again, but Jane stepped past her and held it open. She bent down to the trigger guard of the shotgun and pushed on the safety so the red line went in. “Is there a shell in the chamber? I didn’t hear you pump it.”

Rita said, “I don’t know. I never saw one close up before. Bernie made me take him to garage sales until he found one.”

She sighed. He had done the smart thing, of course. Being smart was what had gotten him into trouble and kept him there.

She stepped back toward the door and turned the dead bolt. “I’m going out to bring in a guest, so be on your best behavior, whatever that is.”

Rita’s face was a mask of fright. “A guest? Oh, God. Look at me.” She gestured in despair at her tank top, shorts, and bare feet. She began to run her fingers through her recently dyed brown hair to straighten it. “What kind of guest? Who?”

Jane said, “You look fine. Your hair looks great. I still like that color, by the way. His name is Henry Ziegler. He already knows about Bernie.”

“What’s he doing here?” she asked suspiciously.

“We can’t get rid of ten billion dollars by sitting here writing thousand-dollar checks. We could do it until our arms dropped off, and we’d attract attention in time to die with nearly all of it still in the accounts. We need help, and he’s a specialist.”

“I just wish you could have … like, warned me.”

“I didn’t know you were here.”

“Oh … yeah,” said Rita.

Jane slipped out past her, then returned a minute later with Henry Ziegler. Jane watched the man and the girl assess each other from a distance of eight feet, like two strange dogs. After three seconds, the short, dapper Ziegler suddenly grinned, stepped up to Rita, gave her hand a quick shake, and said, “I’m Henry.”

“Rita,” said the girl, looking at his hand instead of his face.

“Very good,” said Ziegler. He looked around brightly. “Nice place. I was afraid it would be more of a hideout, and less of a house.” As he walked around the kitchen, Rita was two steps behind him, watching him suspiciously. But Jane could see that Ziegler was counting electrical outlets. He seemed to be pleased. He turned to Rita. “Can you type?”

Rita gaped at him, dumbfounded.

Jane stepped closer and volunteered, “I can.”

Rita seemed to recover from a reverie. “I can type.” She addressed Jane. “I took a computer class in school.”

“Excellent,” said Ziegler. He turned to Jane. “We’ll need to get to a computer store first thing in the morning.” He began to pace. “We’ll need two PCs, two laser printers. A fax machine, some supplies. High-quality paper to print our own letterheads, envelopes, a hell of a lot of stamps. I’ll write everything down tonight.” He stopped and looked at Jane. “When do I get to meet Bernie?”

“I guess it’s now,” said Jane. “Bernie?”

The old man stepped into the doorway from the dining room. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s hard to sneak around much when you’re hard of hearing. Who are you?”

“This is Henry Ziegler,” said Jane. “I asked him to help us move the money.”

Henry Ziegler stepped forward and held out his hand. Bernie gave it a perfunctory shake and dropped it. He spoke to Jane. “Are you keeping us safe, or just collecting more of us to kill?”

Rita said, “She’s doing the right thing, Bernie. If you never heard of him, it’s got to be the best thing about him. And if he’s done anything like this once, it’s one more time than we have.”

Jane noticed Bernie’s expression and decided it must be a mirror of her own.

Bernie shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He said to Ziegler, “You know what happens if you screw it up?”

“There’s not much point in worrying about it,” Ziegler answered. “If we didn’t all think it could be done, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

“I would, but you could look at it that way if you want,” Bernie said. “I’m just putting everything up front.” He gestured toward Jane. “A woman like that comes to talk to you, and pretty soon you think you’re better than you are, and the crocodiles have lost all their teeth. I can tell you they haven’t.”

“I’m just hoping we can keep them from waking up until after we’ve drained the swamp.”

“Sleep,” said Bernie. “That’s a good idea. I’ll see you in the morning.” He walked out of the kitchen, and Jane heard his footsteps going slowly and deliberately up the staircase.

“Take me to the Eldorado Hotel on West San Francisco Street,” said Ziegler. “I’ve got to do some faxes and E-mail tonight.”

A few minutes later, Jane brought Ziegler to the lighted front of the big hotel and cut the engine. “You don’t have to stop,” he said. “They’re expecting me. Can you pick me up at seven?”

“I’ll be here,” said Jane. As he took his leather suitcase from the back of the car, Jane added, “See if you can lose the fancy clothes. You’re not in New York.”

At seven the next morning he was standing outside with a cup of coffee in one hand and an attaché case in the other. He got into the car beside her. “Drive to Albuquerque. We’ll do our shopping now.”

Jane looked at him, then pulled out into the street. He appeared exactly the way she had hoped he would, like a man who was used to wearing tailored suits but had come to New Mexico on a vacation. The jeans and comfortable khaki shirt looked as new as they were. She had known he had no choice but to buy everything in the hotel shop, and the effect was perfect. He looked like a man who might walk into a store and buy a lot of computer gear on impulse.

As they approached the outskirts of Albuquerque, she said, “Do we know where we’re going?”

Ziegler handed her a list of stores and addresses. “I went through the Albuquerque Yellow Pages last night, so we can make this quick.” Jane drove from store to store, and watched Ziegler move up and down the aisles with another of his lists. He bought computers, modems, printers, reams of business stationery that was thick and textured, boxes of envelopes: so many purchases that he and Jane had trouble fitting them in the trunk of the car and had to pile them in the back seat. When the car was full, Jane stopped at a Dumpster behind an office building that had a huge FOR LEASE sign. She said, “We’ve got to make some space.” They took the computer equipment out of the enormous boxes and styrofoam padding and threw the packaging away to make more room.

They drove back to Santa Fe at one, and Ziegler went to work converting the dining room of the house to an office. He appeared to have thought of everything. He had included surge suppressors on extension cords that he ran into electrical outlets in the living room and kitchen. As he worked, he talked to Jane. “We’re going to have things on the hard disks while we work, and that’s a risk. If anything happens, don’t think you can smash the computer with a hammer and that’s going to do it. A computer is just a plastic box. You have to take the disk out and destroy it—put it in a fire, or break it in pieces. There are people who make a living retrieving data from disks that supposedly got erased. See? Undo these screws and slip it out with the drive.”