“I heard that,”
Seaver lied. It occurred to him that maybe Hatcher wasn’t
planning to resurface after all – that maybe this was all a
waste of time. But it was way too late for that kind of thinking. It
just weakened him, distracted him. The partners had made their
decision, and they were waiting. “Where do you go?”
“You mean where does she
take you?”
Seaver spoke patiently, almost
respectfully. “No. You’re on the run. You collect a pile
of money for her fee. Where do you take it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who did you hear all this
from?”
“I heard it a few times,
and I can’t sort out which part I heard which time. The first
one was seven or eight years ago, in Alameda County Jail. It was an
old guy, and he was telling a kid. See, the kid was in for the first
time. They had a running tab on him. It started out as some kid thing
– vandalism or something. He tried to run: resisting arrest. He
hot-wired a car to get away: grand theft auto. He drove it fast until
a police car crashed into him to run him off the road, so it was
attempted vehicular manslaughter. He struggled, so it was assaulting
a police officer. On and on. He tried to hang himself, but the old
man cut him down with a shank he carried. He said to the kid, ‘You
got to get yourself in shape so the guards don’t know about
this. On the day of your arraignment, you’re going to get out
on bail for a month or so while they dream up more charges. That’s
your chance. But if they know you did this, they can keep you here
and watch you.’ He helped the kid get rid of the homemade rope
and cover the welts, and then told him about the woman.”
“In front of you?”
“No. The old guy never
talked to me at all. He didn’t like me from the minute he laid
eyes on me. The kid came to me later and asked me if the old man was
crazy – just jerking him around, or what.”
“How did he tell the kid
to get in touch with this woman?”
“That was one of the
things that made me think it was bullshit. He wouldn’t tell the
kid the address, because the kid was too green to make it that far.
The kid had to wait until he was out and write her a letter, then let
her say where to meet her.”
“Do you remember where the
letter was supposed to go?”
“A post office box in L.A.
The next time I heard it, there was a house somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who mentioned the house?”
“Some counterfeiter. Just
what they do is so stupid that you can’t believe what they say.
They all get caught, then go out and do it again.”
Seaver sighed and looked at
Stillman. He had seen Still-man’s record. The man had been in
jails for twelve of his thirty-one years, and there was something
he’d done before the adult record had begun that had put him in
youth camp. If he ever got out again, he’d be a three-time
loser before he even did anything.
Stillman went on. “He
wouldn’t tell me where the house was. He said the only reason
he had the address was because his girlfriend gave it to him just
before he got arrested. She didn’t get arrested, though. She
got away, and never got caught.”
“Is that true?”
“I once saw a thing on TV
where they said nobody ever saw a U.F.O. until somebody said he saw
one in 1947. Once he said it, everybody and his brother started
seeing them. Maybe that’s the year when the U.F.O.’s got
here. Maybe it’s just that once somebody makes something up,
then it’s everybody’s. It gets to be another way to seem
important, to have something to tell, because nothing that’s
true about you is worth listening to. Big-foot, the Loch Ness
monster, God, all that.”
“Do you think I could get
to any of these guys – the old man, for instance?”
“The old man was here for
a while, but he’s been dead a couple of years. The
counterfeiter, name is Bill Ortega, I heard he was in federal prison
back east someplace. I don’t know his girlfriend’s name.
If you’ve got a lot of connections in the correctional system,
maybe you can track him down.”
“What about the kid?”
Seaver’s hands moved unseen from his lap to grip the support
under the table.
Stillman squinted up into the
air and smiled. “Now, him I don’t know about. I just
don’t know. For years I’ve been wondering. Once in a
while, I ask around with the guys who have been in a lot of joints
all over. His name was Phil O’Meara. Nobody’s seen him,
or seen his name on the count, or knows anybody who’s met him.”
He smirked mysteriously. “Maybe he figured out to get the knot
behind his ear and hung himself right.”
Seaver’s feet kicked out
under the table and pushed Still-man’s chair over backward onto
the floor. Seaver sprang up, used one arm to vault over the table,
and came down with his knee on Stillman’s chest.
He spoke quietly, through
clenched teeth. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?
You think maybe, just maybe, they’ll forget who you are one day
and let you unload the grocery truck so you can strangle the driver.
Let me tell you something. It isn’t going to happen. And even
if it did, and you got to her, she’d take one look at you and
shut the door. You’re an evolutionary dead end, a throwback.
She can smell it on you as well as I can. She can’t predict
what you’re going to do next, because even you can’t.
You’re a bad risk. Don’t hold out on me, because it’s
nothing you’re ever going to use.”
Stillman seemed to be immune to
surprise. His race seemed to slacken, to go blank in the prisoner’s
stare. He looked past Seaver at the ceiling and said, “Two
packs of cigarettes a week. A job in the library.”
“Done.”
“The box wasn’t in
Los Angeles, it was in New York City. It’s Box 345, 7902
Elizabeth Street, in New York. There’s some fake name attached
to it – a man’s name.”
Hours later, Seaver sat staring
out through the scratched plastic pane of the window at the baggage
carts and fuel trucks slipping past him backward as his airplane was
pushed away from the terminal by a tractor with a tow bar. He thought
about Earl and Linda again. When he had hired them, he had known a
lot about Hatcher, but nothing about the woman. It was just as well,
because this way he didn’t have to worry about bumping into
them on this trip. With nothing to go on, they wouldn’t have
seen her as the way to rind Hatcher.
Now he had a few bits of
information, and soon he would have enough. He stared at his watch
for a moment, then carefully pulled the stem and set it three hours
ahead. When he got to New York, he would still have time for some
sleep. The hotel reservation was guaranteed, so the room would be
waiting for him. The overnight package from Nevada would probably be
there when he awoke. He could assemble the pieces of the gun after
breakfast.
The
telephone directory said that the 996 exchange meant that the
telephone answering machine was in Deganawida. The road atlas said
that the population of Deganawida was only 22,000 souls.
Linda Thompson sat at the desk
in the little suite she had rented on the south side of Buffalo, her
face illuminated by the computer screen. When Earl had initiated her
ten years ago, tracking a person still meant going to counters in
below-ground floors of old county office buildings and turning the
pages of bound books of records while some sour-faced old clerk
watched her out of the corner of her eye. Then she would fill out
some form with a ballpoint pen with a chain on it, pay a fee in some
strange number like three dollars, or six, but never five, and wait
weeks for the copy to come in the mail.
Now all she had to do was put
herself into a screen-trance, tap in the secret numbers and symbols,
and then conjure what she wanted out of the air. She watched the
lighted screen as she put in the mixture of upper- and lowercase
letters, periods, slashes, pound signs in their correct order. The
screen exploded into life with the company’s greeting, “Welcome
to Probar Commercial Information Systems, Santa Ana, California.”
There was a graphic of the front of a building with a big closed door
like the vault of a bank. “User number?” said the screen.
Linda typed in the Northridge
Detectives account number, the door appeared to swing open, and the
doorway expanded beyond the borders of the screen as though she were
stepping inside. The door was replaced by the menu. It was longer
than it had been a month ago. PCIS had been collecting for seven or
eight years now, and it had thousands of public records databases.
She scrolled down the list quickly.
She moved her cursor to select
“Tax Assessor’s Rolls.” She selected New York
State. She selected Erie County. She selected City of Deganawida. The
menu disappeared and the screen said, “Access charge five
dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).”
Linda tapped Y. She was guessing
that this Jane woman did not live in an apartment building. The
business of making people disappear did not lend itself to renting.
It was almost inevitable that from time to time a client might show
up in person, and renters on the same floor would wonder about it.
Any clandestine business was best conducted from a freestanding
building without a landlord who might drop in, and the address had to
remain the same.
This Jane had apparently
operated in Las Vegas as though she were good at it, and the people
who needed to disappear badly enough to hire help doing it probably
didn’t care what they paid. She could afford a house,
especially in a backwater like Deganawida. Linda looked at the list
that appeared on the screen. Now that she was in, she could
manipulate the list. She asked it how many entries were on the list,
and it said 5,864. Linda felt power begin to flow into her. The
number was tiny. She ordered her computer to search for the word
“Jane.”
The computer found sixteen
Janes, a Janeway, and fifty-two houses on a Jane Street. She made a
copy of each of the Janes. She was feeling more and more excitement
as she went along. She had been in western New York for only a day,
and already she had the list down to sixteen.
Linda relinquished her hold on
the tax assessor’s rolls and returned to the main menu. She
contemplated Jane. She was twenty-five to thirty-five years old,
probably about thirty if Linda could trust Seaver’s
description. She was tall, thin, dark-haired. She operated a very
strange little business from one of these sixteen free-standing
buildings in Deganawida. Would she have the office disguised as some
kind of business? Linda could not decide. Was Jane one of the seven
married women, someone like Ronald and Jane Schwartzkopf, Tenants in
Common? Or was she one of the nine sole owners listed – Jane
Hanlon, Jane Whitefield, Jane Carmen Rossi? Most of the women listed
alone were probably widows or divorcees. Some would be too old.
Jane the woman who made people
disappear would have a driver’s license. The driver’s
license carried date of birth, height, weight, hair and eye color.
Linda selected the Department of Motor Vehicles records: “Access
fee ten dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).” She began with
the first of the sixteen names and scanned the information that had
been printed on the license: Jane Anne Hanlon, DOB 08-09-29. Jane
Pildrasky was HT 5-02, WT 160, HAIR BLD, EYES BLU. Jane Rossi’s
license was RSTR: CORR LENS, DAYLIGHT ONLY. The Jane who had helped
Pete Hatcher would never have picked a darkened room and a night
escape if she could see only in bright light.
Before she relinquished the
Department of Motor Vehicles records, Linda had eliminated all but
four of the Janes who owned houses in Deganawida. All were HT 5-06 or
better, HAIR BRN, DOB after 1960. She returned to the telephone
directory and looked up the four names. She eliminated first Jane
Sheridan and then Jane Whitefield because neither had the right
telephone number. But then she discovered that none of the other
Janes had it either. Of course. The Jane she wanted had to live a
visible life in a small town. She would have a listed number in the
book. It was the business phone that would be unlisted. Linda put
Sheridan and Whitefield back in contention.
Linda stared at the main menu
and let her reverie deepen. She picked up Jane and turned her around
and around, looking at her closely, trying to feel her surfaces. Jane
was a tall, lean, dark-haired, youngish woman who owned a house in
Deganawida but was gone from it for periods of time. She probably
operated much the way Linda and Earl did. She would get a telephone
call, drop everything, and go to meet a client. Then she would come
home and lie around for weeks, getting used to the time zone and
letting her aches and pains go away. Linda felt herself coming closer
and closer to Jane.
She selected the credit check:
“Access fee, thirty-five dollars. Do you wish to proceed?
(Y/N).” Y, of course. Now for the federal privacy law. “Please
indicate your legitimate legal grounds for requesting the
information. You are a Prospective: (a) Lender, (b) Employer, (c)
Insurer, (d) Other. Please specify.” Linda loved that part of
it. They gave you a selection of lies to choose from. She chose
insurer. Insurance companies could do virtually any kind of
investigation they wanted on anybody, and they often hired detective
agencies to help.
When the four credit reports
came out of her printer, Linda studied them. Jane Sheridan was
employed by the Deganawida School District. She was a teacher. She
couldn’t leave town every time the phone rang. Jane Finley was
listed as a “home-maker,” which was more promising, but
her record was full of late payments, credit extended by appliance
stores and car dealers, and interest paid to credit-card companies.
It didn’t make sense for the Jane that Linda was looking for to
live that way. She didn’t need to, and it made too many people
interested in her. Jane Colossi was promising for thirty seconds. She
was an attorney. She seemed to spend a lot of money, but the most
recent big charges listed for each credit card were for the month of
June in France and Italy, when the right Jane was in Las Vegas. Jane
Whitefield was the last one in the alphabet. She worked as a “career
consultant.” She had the right kind of credit rating –
excellent. Then Linda found it. Jane Whitefield had two telephone
numbers. She probably didn’t know the telephone company’s
computer had spit out the unlisted one when the credit bureau’s
computer had asked. She was Jane.