Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

He glanced over at the cellar window and past his rosebush at Jane’s side window. He had been right. There was a second silhouette. It looked to be about the size of the young man who had been knocking on her door yesterday.

Jane opened the cylinder of the pistol and emptied the bullets into the palm of her hand, then handed the gun back to Felker. She hesitated a second, then held out the five bullets too. He looked puzzled, and she said, "If you didn’t ask, they’re not the only ones you have."

He took the five rounds and put them in his pants pocket. "What do we do now?"

"We figure out what I can do for you," she said. "Are you married?"

"I used to be. After about three years of being a cop’s wife, she saw the future before I did."

"That would be—what—ten years ago. What about girlfriends?"

"Why are you asking these things?"

"Is there anybody in St. Louis who will already have called the cops and reported you missing?"

"No. I told my boss I couldn’t do much while the computers were down, so I would take some vacation time. I told him to leave a message on my machine when things were normal again. My family consists of my sister, Linda, who is married and has four kids and talks to me once a year on the phone, and about thirty cousins I haven’t seen in twenty years. When I told Linda about this, she said I was right to run, and good luck."

"Did she know where you were going?"

"No."

She thought hard for a minute. "I don’t suppose you speak any foreign languages well enough to fool anybody?"

"No. A little Spanish."

"Do you have anything else that would help you hide in another country?"

"The money. That’s not mine, but the passport is."

She studied him with a hint of sadness. "I know all this has happened fast, but you have to think a little bit ahead. A passport with John Felker on it isn’t going to help. You aren’t going to be able to sit at a café table in Rio reading American newspapers until you see that they’ve cleared your name. You’re not innocent."

"No," he said. "I didn’t think ..."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don’t know. They can’t be looking for me harder than people have looked for Harry. Where did you send him?"

She sat in silence for a time, then said, "I guess it’ll have to be somewhere inside the country. That’s easier, but it takes more discipline."

"What kind of discipline?"

"You might have special problems." Then she brightened. "Were you ever an undercover cop, with a different identity?"

"No," he said. "I was the regular kind. What’s the problem?"

"Unlearning old habits," she said. "If somebody hits a cop, he hits back, harder."

"I haven’t been a cop for a long time," he said.

"Some people can live with the idea that they have enemies and never try to find out who they are. Can you?"

"Why are you asking these things?"

"I need to know who you are, and I want you to know who I am. Who I am to you, anyway. If you want peace, I’ll risk my life to give you that. If you want revenge, take your gun and go back."

"I gave that up when I decided to come here."

"I’m just telling you that I don’t waste myself. Nobody finds his way to me until his old life is used up. If you come with me, John Felker is dead. You’re somebody else, who doesn’t have any enemies."

He thought for a long time. "I can do it."

"How did you get here?"

"I took a Greyhound from St. Louis to Buffalo, then a cab."

"Buses are slow and have regular schedules. Anybody who wants a copy can pick one up and read it. Did anybody follow you?"

"I don’t think so." Then he admitted, "I never looked."

"Did anybody see you come into my house?"

"Your neighbor. The old guy."

"Where’s your suitcase?"

"In your closet upstairs."

"Go get it."

Jake Reinert heard the sound of the car starting in the driveway next door. It was nearly dark already, but he couldn’t help going to the comer window to take a peek at what he could already see without using his eyes at all.

It was Jane Whitefield’s rental car, and the man was in the driver’s seat. Jake Reinert watched the man adjust the seat and the mirrors. As the car slowly moved past his window, he stared at the man hard, with the knowledge that in a week or so he might very well have to describe the face to Dave Dormont down at the police station.

8

Jane pretended to look down into her leather bag, but her eyes slipped to the side to confirm that Jake Reinert was where she had thought he would be, in his corner window.

"Where am I supposed to drive?" Felker asked.

"Go north along River Road while we talk."

"All right."

"While I was packing I noticed that you had searched my room. You went through the papers in my desk. Why?"

"I wanted to be sure that you were the woman Harry said you were. Even if you were, people move."

"What did you find?"

"You have some credit cards that aren’t in your name. Finding your bills was a big relief." He watched her closely for a moment, and she seemed satisfied. He asked, "Where are we going?"

"We’re going to change cars."

"Before we start?"

"This is a rented car. If somebody saw the company name on it already, then they’re not looking for one out of sixty million cars anymore, it’s one out of ten thousand or so. Say ten percent have New York plates. Now it’s down to one thousand. Half are this model? Five hundred. Half are this color? Two-fifty. If they have the company’s records, they’ll know where it gets turned in."

He drove in silence a couple of blocks west before he reached the river. It looked big and dark in the early evening. Across the channel, the shore of Grand Island was dark except for the bright grid of windows on a hotel. He turned right and followed the road. "Do you really think they could get the car company’s records? It used to take us a couple of days to do that, and we needed a court order."

"If they can get into your company’s records, why not any company?"

"Yeah," he said glumly. "Why not?"

"I’m not trying to ruin your morale. I’m just being as careful as I can. We don’t know who they are or why they did it to you. But we do know they probably got, or are getting, a lot of money, and they think if you die, they can keep it. So they’ll spend as much as they have to."

Felker sighed. Then he seemed to remember something. He turned toward her. "Money," he said. "It’s funny how when your life is in danger you stop thinking about it. What do you charge for this? What’s your fee?"

She looked out the side window and watched the familiar buildings going by: the pizza parlor where she and her friends used to spend about half their evenings. It was Jimmy Connolly’s skinny ankles that had made her fall in love with him. She could see them now, but somehow she had lost the ability to bring back why they had seemed so attractive. A few doors down was the big old movie house that was called the Berliner until the First World War and the Tivoli for sixty years after that. It had closed twenty years ago and been broken up into little stores. The upper stories of the building still had the elaborate scrollwork because it was carved in the stone, and she could still remember the smell of ancient popcorn and the feel of the worn velvet seats. They used to show Tarzan movies on Saturdays for a quarter, so children had watched them without complaint. She had sensed that it was always a big moment when Jane got wet, but at the time the significance was lost on her. "I don’t have a fee," she said. "Sometimes people send me presents."

"You mean you live off presents?"

"I didn’t say they were small presents." She smiled slyly.

He frowned. "Just give me some idea. I want to be fair."