Thomas Perry - Blood Money

In the morning, Jane bought the local newspapers from the gift shop in the hotel lobby and went back to her room to read them. There were no articles that indicated the sudden growth of generosity in the country had come to the attention of the Sentinel or the Journal . There were no wire-service reports of murders in Santa Fe, New Mexico, or stories about the East Coast that she could interpret as harm coming to Henry Ziegler. The meteorological reports even confirmed that he was having clear weather. It was not until she turned to the want ads that she saw something of interest.

“Public Auto Auction, Rain or Shine,” ran the banner above the huge advertisement. “You Inspect the Vehicles Before the Auction!” As though to prove it, the smaller letters said, “Inspection, 10:00, Auction, Noon.” Jane looked at the long list of car models, years, and prices, then realized that they were simply examples of past bargains: it was an auction, after all. Along the bottom, the ad said, “If you don’t have cash we accept all major credit cards for purchase or as a down payment! EZ financing available. Serving Milwaukee since 1993.”

Jane took a taxi to the address at the bottom of the page. She found herself on the edge of a big lot, where a few dozen customers, nearly all of them men, walked up and down staring at rows of cars of all makes and sizes. A few of the men had pads or pieces of paper on which they made notes. Jane concluded that they were involved in some aspect of the used-car business, because anybody who just wanted a cheap car probably wouldn’t need to write anything down to remember the one he liked.

Jane picked one man out and watched him stalk the rows. His hands were clean, but they had a few stubborn black stains on them that he had not been able to scrub off, and the knuckles of the right hand had an angry red look she decided had come from rapping them on something while turning a wrench in a confined space. She made a point of being nearby each time he looked up from his pad. Finally, he said, “You looking for a car?”

“What else have they got?” said Jane with a smile.

“For yourself?”

“Uh-huh.”

He pointed at a black rectangle that rose higher than the line of cars in the next row. “If you like SUVs, there’s a ‘97 Ford Explorer over there with about eight thousand miles on it. She’s a couple of years old, and the finish has a few scratches, so she won’t go for what she’s worth.” He turned and pointed in the other direction at two gray shapes that Jane could barely see. “If you want to go fancy, they have a couple of Mercedes down there. One of them has a dent that you could fix for two hundred, and it’ll knock a thousand or more off the price.”

“I just need to get from point A to point B. Where do the cars come from?”

He shrugged. “Some get confiscated, some are regular repos.”

Jane said, “I don’t know if I want to end up with a car that belonged to a drug dealer or an axe murderer or something. What if he wants it back?”

The man smiled. “They’re not usually that exciting. Usually it’s just the plain old IRS.”

“Thanks,” she said, and walked off to look at the cars he had pointed out.

When the auction began, Jane joined the gaggle of people who followed the auctioneer along the rows. She watched the bidding while the first few cars were sold. There was a tall, thin man who stood a bit to the side of the auctioneer and watched the bidders. If the auctioneer was getting nowhere, he would turn toward the tall, thin man. He would give a bid, the auctioneer would say, “Sold,” and walk on. Jane decided the man must be the loss stopper, who made sure that nothing went too low.

When the auctioneer reached the Ford Explorer, Jane waited to see the other bidders. There were a few ridiculously low bids, and then her new friend appeared at her shoulder and whispered, “Offer eight.” Jane said, “Eight thousand.” There were bids of eighty-one and eighty-two hundred. Jane waited until the auctioneer turned to the stop-loss man, then yelled, “Nine thousand.” The auctioneer looked at the other bidders, then declared the car sold and walked on.

Before Jane’s friend followed, he whispered, “Good deal.”

Jane grinned, then went off to pay for her car. She gave the man in the little building her Diane Fierstein credit card, received her bill of sale, and drove her car off the lot to register it in the name Diane Fierstein.

The hair was much more complicated than buying a mere car. It took time to find the right salon, then to call for an appointment on short notice. She had to improvise a story about how she was flying to Houston for her sister’s wedding tomorrow, and her regular hairdresser had solemnly promised an appointment, and then gotten into an accident and hurt her hand, and could you please, please.… After her performance, Jane went to a bookstore to leaf through magazines to find the right picture. At four-thirty, Jane was in a shop near the university handing the magazine to the stylist.

Jane knew that the way she felt in the stylist’s chair was idiotic, and found that knowing didn’t help at all. She had always liked her long black hair. It was a peculiar, personal link with who she really was. She liked it because when she looked at it, she could remember her father’s voice telling her it was beautiful, and her mother brushing it, then holding her own auburn hair beside it and smiling. “To think I would ever have a little girl with this thick, gorgeous black hair,” she would say. Jane had kept it long and made the effort to care for it, even in times of her life when she could make no argument for its practicality. Since she and Carey had been together, it had seemed to her to be mingled in some complicated way into their relationship. He had talked about it and run his fingers through it in a way that stood for all of the differences between men and women that made each mysterious and fascinating to the other.

The first long tresses fell on the sheet the stylist had pinned around her neck, and she had to fight the tears—to keep her eyes from closing because that would squeeze them out. But then, after a few minutes, the cutting was over. She still had to endure the hair dye and the wave, but those things had no meaning for her now, because the long black hair was not hers anymore.

Two hours later, she was staring at a woman in the mirror, reminding herself that this woman was the one she had chosen to be. She had short brown hair with a slight curl. The stylist had treated her eyebrows to match the hair, and they made the blue eyes she had inherited from her mother look bigger, but somehow less startling than they had been this morning. She looked like a mildly attractive thirty-year-old who was probably married, probably worked in some kind of office, but lived in the suburbs.

Jane quickly turned away from the mirror. She kept her body turned toward the front of the shop to give the stylist a huge tip while she detested her for her skill, then turned with feigned cheerfulness to go out the back door without looking in the mirrors again. She drove her new Ford Explorer to a big mall, and spent the late afternoon shopping.

In a department store, Jane bought a pair of plain gray soft-sided suitcases that matched the interior of the Explorer, then a supply of makeup, beginning with a foundation that was a shade or two lighter than her skin. Next she selected clothes. When she had been seen in the airport she had been wearing a skirt and jacket she had bought in Beverly Hills and a silk blouse, so she worked to get away from that image. She bought clothes that a married suburban woman might wear while she was doing errands: lots of slacks, comfortable shoes, and oversized tops. She also bought jeans and running shoes, a baseball cap, a pair of designer sunglasses, and a couple of light summer jackets.