Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

"And Mary was for him?"

"Yes. It's straightforward, short, and unpretentious. It's not a nickname. It's not a boy's name that was supposed to be cute on a girl. A lot of women in businesses use initials: M. H. Perkins, or M. Hall Perkins. They think it makes them serious. They're wrong. It does not endear them to that man in the back office, and that is the only game being played."

"It is?"

"You must impress the man who has the power to say yes. He doesn't want to be fooled, or to be in business with any person of either sex who is insecure enough to hide things. The only thing worse is a hyphenated name - the woman is married, which is a fact that has very big pluses and minuses that have to be managed carefully. But the hyphenation implies some kind of nonconformist convictions about men and women that she wants to advertise. The man in the back office is not interested in thinking about that. He's interested in getting more money. He wants to deal with somebody who is going to get lots of money and pay him some of it."

"Okay, so Mary Perkins makes it in the door, and M. H. Perkins doesn't."

"Right. She's at the door now. She's energetic and cheerful and well scrubbed, and she has hair that's a bit on the long side and high heels and subtle makeup, but not so subtle that he can't tell she bothered. She wears good jewelry, but very little of it, and it's small. If Mary is married for this meeting, it's a solitaire diamond that's just a little bigger than an honest banker can afford, and that's all. If she's not, maybe a lapel pin. Why? Because that's the way the women who end up with the most money look. The most common way to get it is still to marry it, so Mary is feminine."

"It doesn't sound as though he's thinking about Mary Perkins as a business partner."

"I'm not talking about the deal. I'm talking about the first impression - unconscious, probably - the five seconds from the door to the chair. Finance is a tough business. The guy is smart, and above all he's patient. He's seen a lot on the way to the corner office. In order to automatically get back ten percent of his loan each year, he has to lend the money to somebody who will win - who will use his money to make fifteen percent. What I'm describing for you is the sort of woman he can be made to believe will win."

"How did Mary Perkins get to the point where people are hunting for her?"

Mary Perkins shook her head as though she were marveling at it. "There was a lot of wild stuff in the papers when I went to trial. My lawyer told me that if I went for the plea bargain, it didn't matter how much I agreed to admit I took, because I was already broke. The prosecutor could use a ridiculous number to help her look good, and I would declare bankruptcy and never have to pay a dime. It didn't work that way. Now people think I was one of the ones who ended up with the big money. They want it. I don't have it."

"Who are these people?"

"That's part of the problem. It could be anybody."

Jane looked at her for a moment. Mary was slouching in the passenger seat, looking out the window at the darkness. When she turned to meet Jane's gaze her eyes were wide with wonder and a touch of injury. What she was saying coincided with the truth in one spot: there was no way of limiting the number of people who might be interested in robbing a woman who had stolen millions of dollars. But this did not alter the fact that Mary Perkins knew who was after her tonight, and that she insisted she didn't. Jane said, "Why were you in county jail?"

Mary Perkins shrugged. "Parole violation. I saw those men and tried to leave town."

Jane stifled the annoyed response that rose to her tongue. Mary obviously was experienced enough to know that the best lies were short and simple. Where did the lie begin? She might have noticed that men were following her, but she had not tried to leave town because of that.

Something else must have happened first - something that told her what they wanted. All of the hours Jane had spent hustling this woman around the country settled on her chest like a weight. "Where do you think you could go where there would be the smallest chance you'd be recognized?"

"Smallest chance?"

"That's what I said."

"Let's see. We just left California, so that's out. Texas is also out."

Jane concentrated on the mechanical details for the next few minutes. At Ann Arbor she took the Huron Street exit. She said, "When was the last time you slept?"

"I slept maybe four hours last night. Jails never seem to quiet down until you start to smell breakfast."

"We'll sleep now."

There was a motel just after the exit. Jane pulled into the lot and walked into the office by herself to rent a room. She opened the door with the key, locked the door, checked each of the windows, tossed the key on the table by the door, undressed, and lay down on the nearest bed without speaking. Mary Perkins had no choice but to imitate her. When she awoke, the sun was glaring through a crack between the curtains and Jane was sitting on the other bed reading a newspaper. Mary sat up and said, "What time is it?"

"Ten. Checkout is twelve. We've got a lot to do."

Mary Perkins rubbed her eyes. "I guess we'll make it." She smiled. "It's not as though we had to pack, is it?"

"No."

Mary Perkins swung her feet to the floor and stood up. She had been surprised to see that Jane was dressed, but the newspaper suddenly caught her attention. "You've been out."

"Yes," said Jane, not looking up. Mary Perkins could see that she had circled some little boxes in the want ads. Jane also had set a medium-sized grocery bag on the table beside the key.

"I never heard you," said Mary on the way to the bathroom. "You must be the quietest person I ever met in my life."

"I figured you needed to sleep."

Mary examined the shower and found that the knobs were hot and the tub was wet. She thought about the woman in the other room. A lot of people could tiptoe around pretty well, just like little cats. But how did this one get everything else to be quiet - appliances and fixtures and things?

Mary Perkins got the water to run warm and stepped under the spray. She felt good, she had to admit. Here she was in a clean room with a clear head a couple of thousand miles away from danger, and taking a shower. Once again whatever it was that had always kept the luck coming had not failed.

But now that she was alert and not particularly frightened, she had time to think about that woman out there on the bed. What she sensed about Jane Whitefield was not comforting. No, the animal wasn't a cat. Just because it looked like it had soft fur and the eyes were big and liquid and it didn't make any noise at all didn't mean it was cuddly and gentle. Mary was not the sort of person who lost fingers at zoos. Whatever this one was, it had that look because it happened to be the female of its species, not because it was something you wanted around the house.

The person who had recognized Jane Whitefield in jail was a short black woman named Ellery Robinson. The word on Ellery Robinson was that she had been pulled in on a parole violation. That didn't make her seem interesting until Mary learned that the conviction was for having killed a man in bed with an old-fashioned straight razor. She had served six or seven years of a life sentence in the California Institution for Women at Frontera, one of those places in the endless desert east of Los Angeles. She was in her fifties now, small and compact with a short, athletic body like a leathery teenager. She never spoke to anyone, having long ago lost interest in whatever other people gained from listening, and having gotten used to whatever it was they expelled by talking. But sometimes she still answered questions if they weren't personal.

Mary was in the mess hall one morning when another woman pointed out Jane Whitefield and asked Ellery Robinson if she knew anything about her. Ellery Robinson had actually turned her whole body around in the chow line to stare at her before she said, "She makes people disappear." Then the conversation was over. Ellery Robinson turned back to eye the food on the warming tables. When a young woman down the line on her first day inside saw the same food and started crying, she looked at her too for a second, not revealing either sympathy or contempt, but as though she just wanted to see where the noise was coming from.