Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

She looked under the stalls and found she was alone. She was glad, because she wouldn't have to pretend that what she was doing was easy. She leaned close to the mirror and dabbed on the foundation painfully. The resuit looked tolerable, but it stung for a few seconds. She stopped until the pain subsided a little, and had just begun to work on her eyes when she heard the door open and a pair of high heels cross the floor behind her. She had a pretty vivid black eye from the big guy with the yellow tie who had piled in at the end. It was hard to cover it and make both eyes look the same with a hand that hurt.

"Can I help you with that?"

Jane didn't turn around, just moved her head a little to verify what she guessed about the woman behind her in the mirror. She wasn't surprised that the woman was attractive. Makeup was a personal issue - not quite a secret, but almost - and you had to be pretty spectacular to have the nerve to tell somebody you could do her makeup better than she could. This one was tall - almost as tall as Jane - and almost as thin, but her face had that blushing china-figurine skin that women like her somehow kept into their forties. They were always blond, or became blond, like this one. Every last one of them had switched to tennis after their cheerleading coaches had put them out to pasture, but they must have played it at night, because their skin looked as though it had never seen sunlight.

Jane said. "No, thanks. I can handle the painting. It's the repairs that are hard."

"You don't remember me, do you?" There was tension in the voice.

"No," said Jane. "If I should, then you must be good at this. Maybe I should let you do my makeup after all."

The woman whispered, "I was in the county jail when you were."

Jane turned to look at the woman more closely, this time with a sense that she ought to be watching her hands, not her face. "Well, congratulations on getting out."

Jane waited for her to leave, but the woman just smiled nervously and waited too. "Thanks."

Jane decided that she could do the finishing touches in another ladies' room or even on the plane. "Well, I've got a plane to catch."

"No, you don't. It doesn't leave for an hour. Four-nineteen to New York. I'm on it too. My name is Mary Perkins."

"Are you following me?"

"I was hoping to do better than that."

"What do you mean?"

"There's not much to talk about when you're in jail. There was a girl who had been in court when you were arrested. There was a rumor you had hidden somebody. That sounded interesting, so I asked around to find somebody who could introduce us, but sure enough, all of a sudden they were letting you go under another name. How you managed that I don't want to know."

"You don't?"

"No. I want you to do it for me."

"Why?"

"When I got arrested there were some men following me. That was thirty days ago. I just saw two of them here."

"Why do they want you?"

The woman gave her a look that was at once pleading and frustrated. "Please, I don't have time to tell you my life story and you don't have time to listen to it right now. I have to get out of Los Angeles now - today - only they're already here, and it can't be a coincidence. They're looking for me."

"But who are you?"

"The short answer is that I'm a woman who needs to disappear and has the money to pay whatever it is you usually get for your services."

Jane felt exhausted and defeated. Her head, face, hands, and wrists were throbbing and weak. She looked at the woman who called herself Mary Perkins, and the sight of her face made Jane tired. She had said almost nothing, but Jane was already picking up signs in her eyes and mouth that she had lied about something. She was genuinely afraid, so she probably wasn't just some sort of bait placed in the airport by the people Jane had fought outside the courtroom. But if men were following her at all, they were undoubtedly policemen. Jane thought, No. Not now. I'm not up to this. Aloud, she said, "Sorry."

"Please," said the woman. "How much do you want?"

"Nothing. You have the wrong person. Mistaken identity."

Mary Perkins looked into Jane's eyes, and Jane could see that she was remembering that Jane was injured. "Oh," the woman said softly. "I understand." She turned and walked toward the door.

As she opened the door, Jane said, "Good luck." Mary Perkins didn't seem to hear her.

Jane looked at her face in the mirror. The bruises were covered, but the thick makeup felt like a mask. When she put the glasses on, they reminded her that the side of her nose had been scraped by the buttons on the big guy's sleeve when he missed with the first swing.

She walked out to the concourse and strolled along it with the crowds until she was near Gate 72. She saw the woman sitting there pretending to read a magazine. If she was being hunted, it was a stupid thing to do. Jane walked closer to the television set where they posted flight information. Mary Perkins's eyes focused on Jane, and then flicked to her left. Jane appreciated not being stared at, but then the eyes came back to her, widened emphatically, and flicked again to the left. Jane stopped for a moment, opened her purse, turned her head a little as though she were looking for something and studied the two men to Mary Perkins's left. If they were hunters they were doing a fairly good job of keeping Mary Perkins penned in and panicky. The short one was sitting quietly reading a newspaper about fifty feet from Mary Perkins, and the big one was pretending to look out the big window at the activity on the dark runway. She could see he was watching the reflection instead, but that wasn't unusual. Her eyes moved down to the briefcase at his feet. It was familiar, the kind they sold in the gift shop where she had bought the makeup.

The smaller man had no carry-on luggage. He sat quietly with his newspaper, not looking directly at Mary Perkins. He had to be the cut-off man, the one she wasn't supposed to notice at all until the other man came for her and she bolted. They couldn't be cops, or they would already have her. She had already bought her ticket, and a plane ticket was proof of intent to flee.

Jane felt spent and hopeless. She admitted to herself that if she got home safely she would find herself tomorrow going to a newsstand and picking up a Los Angeles Times and the New York papers to look for a story about a woman's body being found in a field. These two were going to follow Mary Perkins until, inevitably, she found herself alone.

Jane walked back down the concourse, raising her eyes to look at the television monitors where the departing flights were posted, never raising her head and never slowing down. By the time she had passed the third monitor she had made her selection. There was a Southwestern Airlines flight leaving for Las Vegas five minutes after the flight to New York. She went down the escalator, walked to the ticket counter and paid cash for two tickets to Las Vegas for Monica Weissman and Betty Weissman. Then she returned to the gate where Mary Perkins was waiting. She sat down a few seats from her, counted to five hundred, then stood up again.

She walked close to Mary Perkins on the way to the ladies' room. As she did, she waggled her hand behind her back, away from the two watchers.

She waited inside the ladies' room in front of the mirror until Mary Perkins came in. "Did you check any luggage onto the plane for New York?"

"I don't have any," said Mary Perkins. "As soon as I got out I came here."

"Good," said Jane. "When we get out of here, stay close but don't look at me. You never saw me before. One of those guys will be standing between you and the exits. The other one will have moved to a place where he can see his buddy signal him." She handed Mary Perkins the ticket for Las Vegas.