Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“Right here.” Dahlman pointed at the road map. “It looks like eight or ten miles, straight ahead. It’s the Akron airport.”

Ten minutes later Jane took a ticket from the machine at the entrance to the long-term parking lot, drove in, and began to search for the right car. When she found it, it was a nine-year-old Chevrolet Impala that had good tires and would not have been as shiny if the engine didn’t run. She could see it had no mechanical locking device across the steering wheel, and there were no glowing lights inside that could be an alarm. She parked beside it and studied it. It wasn’t in mint condition, so it wasn’t somebody’s old friend. More likely someone who traveled a lot had bought an old car he didn’t mind leaving in airport parking lots so he could keep his fancy car locked in the garage at home.

“Get out with me,” she said. “Open your suitcase, and keep your head down, as though you were checking to be sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Warn me if anybody drives into the lot.”

Dahlman opened the trunk and leaned into it to fiddle with his suitcase while Jane moved to the other car. He watched her while she slipped the long, flat strip of sheet metal into the space between the Chevrolet’s window and door, and wiggled it a bit.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a slim-jim,” she said. “Tow-truck drivers sometimes carry them because people lock their keys in their cars.” She tugged upward and the lock button on the door popped up. “Keep looking for cars.”

She sat in the driver’s seat, used the hammer to drive the screwdriver into the space between the ignition switch and the steering column. She pried the ignition switch out of its receptacle with the screwdriver, yanked the wires out of it, and stripped back the insulation a bit. “Bring the roll of adhesive tape from the suitcase.”

Dahlman carried it to her and watched. She taped the ignition wires together. Then she pumped the gas pedal once, and held the two starter wires together. The engine turned over. When it caught, she pulled the starter wires apart and listened. “Fairly smooth for a cold engine. It’ll do.”

She put their suitcases in the back seat, then walked down the aisle of cars until she saw the one she wanted. She popped up the lock button, took the parking ticket from the floor under the driver’s seat, then locked the car again and went to find another one with a ticket in it.

When she returned to Dahlman she said, “You’ll drive the Chevy. Follow me. I’m going into the lot at the terminal.” She handed him one of the two stolen tickets.

Dahlman was agitated. “But we have a ticket.”

“It says we came in the lot five minutes ago.”

He was even more frustrated. “Why are we doing any of this?”

She looked around her impatiently, but no sign of headlights could be seen. “We can’t drive the rented one any farther because the kid at the gas station saw it. If we leave it in this lot, the Youngstown office where we got it reports it missing. If we return it to their rental agency here, nobody reports anything.”

Dahlman got into the car and did as he was told. When Jane had gotten them both out of the long-term parking lot, returned the rental car to the agency lot, and dropped the key in the lockbox, she climbed into the stolen Chevrolet with Dahlman and drove back onto the highway.

“How long can we go before the owner of this car reports it missing?” asked Dahlman.

“Maybe a day, maybe a month,” said Jane. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You mean we’re not going to keep it even a day?”

“No,” said Jane. “It’s time to get some help.”

13

Jane guided the car up the quiet street above the little lake and stopped. The moment that the breeze through the open windows died, she could feel the weight of the humidity settle on her and make her arms heavy. She turned around to face Dahlman on the back seat. “Time to get up.” She leaned closer to the steering column, pulled the two wires apart, and the engine was silent.

Dahlman slowly unbent himself, sat up, and looked around him. “Where are we?”

“Minneapolis. You slept most of the day. The sun will be down in a few minutes. How do you feel?”

“I’m a little stiff, but I don’t feel as though the wound is inflamed, and that could be a wonderful sign.”

He had not used a word like “wonderful” before, thought Jane. Maybe all it meant was that he really was getting better, but maybe it meant that last night’s discussion about justice had made him decide to stop telling her the truth. “We’ve got to go for a walk now.”

Dahlman ran his hands through his hair, made an attempt to straighten his clothes, then got out of the car. Jane locked the doors, then set off along the crest of the grassy slope above the lake. There were mallards bobbing on the darkening water, then lifting their heads to the sky to clap their bills in a shivering, jittery little movement to sift bits of food.

A car glided past on the road around the lake, and Dahlman moved a little lower down the slope, but Jane didn’t join him. She stopped walking. “Don’t hide yourself,” said Jane. “The way is along the ridge.”

“But it’s the same direction.”

“No. Come back up.” She waited while he joined her. “I’ll explain this as well as I can. There’s a house a little higher up the hill at the end of the lake. There’s a man in that house I want to see. In order to get into that house, you have to go a certain way. It shows another man that we’re okay. This one is a very unpredictable, suspicious man—the sort of person who hits back first—and he’s studying us through a spotting scope.”

“A spotting scope?”

“You’ll probably see it. It’s a sixty-power telescope on a tripod at an upper window. In the day it is, anyway. When the sun goes down, they switch to a nightscope with infrared to pick up your body heat. You have to walk along the crest so they have time to get a good look at who you are and what you’re carrying, and who else is nearby who might be following you.”

“What happens if you’re the wrong person?”

Jane shrugged. “It depends. If you’re just enjoying the scenery, nothing. When I was here before they always had cars waiting with the keys in them, and beside the spotting scope there was another tripod with a Heckler & Koch G7 rifle on it. They have lots of options.”

“Exactly who is this man we’re going to see?”

“Just a man who knows how to get things accomplished.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, exactly. It doesn’t matter.”

Dahlman let his frustration show. “That’s not a possible statement of fact. You can’t not know exactly. Either you know or you don’t. You can’t know a name approximately.”

Jane frowned, and there was an edge in her voice. “I need to say a few things, so listen carefully. As long as I could, I’ve kept you in the part of the world that you’re familiar with. People aren’t entirely rational in that world, but they behave as though they were, and they make sure that their actions have to do with attaining reasonable goals—that is, things that they’re allowed to want. Their way of getting them is by a logical series of causes and effects: you work, you get paid. You’re patient, you get rewarded. You’re pleasant, people like you. I kept you in that world for several reasons. You’re a success in that world, so you know how it works and can move around in it without raising eyebrows. Something as simple as speaking grammatical English and holding a fork correctly makes you almost invisible. You also feel comfortable there, and that makes you look innocent. But the main reason I kept you in that world is that it’s safer.”