Dance for the Dead (28 page)

“By fighting.”

“No,” said Mary. “I
mean fight like that.”

“This isn’t exactly
about fighting. It’s about not fighting. Your opponent is
fighting, but you’re watching. He attacks, but you’ve
already begun to yield the space. He strikes, but you’re not
really there. You only passed through there on your way to somewhere
else. You bring his force around in a circle, add yours to it, and
let him hurt himself.”

“The mystic wisdom of the
mysterious East.”

“It’s practical. I’m
a very strong woman, but no matter what I do, I’m going to be
smaller than any man who’s likely to try to hurt me. If I fight
him for the space between us, I’ll get hammered. He’s
using one arm and maybe his back foot to throw the punch. I’m
bringing my whole body into one motion to add force to his punch and
alter its direction just a little. For that fraction of a second I
have him outnumbered.”

Mary put on her coat, walked
toward the door, opened it, turned, and said. “You should have
let your ass get flabby. It might have made you more human.”
She went out and closed the door. That night she came home late and
tiptoed past Jane on the couch.

Two hours later Jane opened her
eyes and acknowledged that she had heard Mary come out of her room
again. It was three a.m. and she was sitting in the big easy chair
staring at Jane.

Mary said, “You’re
trying to wear me down. You’re staying in the corner of my room
and not saying anything to convince me, just putting yourself in
front of my eyes wherever I look so I’ll have to think about
it.”

Jane said, “You’ve
spent time with people who take what they want.”

“I was one of them.”

“Then you can predict what
Barraclough is thinking as well as I can. You don’t need any
arguments from me.”

Mary sat back in the big chair
with her hands resting on the arms. “Why haven’t you
mentioned the little boy?”

“Why should I?”

“I’ve lived by
convincing people to do stupid things they didn’t want to do,
so I know how it’s done. The little boy is an overlooked
resource. Here I am, unmarried and alone, and anybody who is alive
can feel her biological clock ticking away. I’ve reached the
age where women start getting too many cats. The little boy is alone
and probably scared. Barraclough has already robbed him, and now
he’ll kill him.”

“Will he?”

“You know he will, and
that’s why you’re here. If the kid’s dead, the cops
will run around bumping into each other for a couple of months and
then forget him. If he’s alive, there’s always the chance
that Barraclough will wind up sitting in a courtroom across the aisle
from an innocent ten-year-old.”

“Not much chance.”

“But as long as the kid is
alive, there’s also the chance that he’ll live another
ten or fifteen years and find out who killed his four best friends
and left him broke. Barraclough will be thinking he doesn’t
want to wake up some night and find a young man who looks vaguely
familiar holding a gun against his head.” Mary waited a few
seconds. “So why didn’t you mention him again?”

Jane sat up and stared at her.
“People are killed every day. Why would I imagine you would
pick him out of all the thousands and say, ‘You’re the
one I’ve chosen. I’ve trained myself since I was a baby
to ignore the screams of the dying because if I let even a little of
the sound in I couldn’t hear or think of anything else. But for
you I’ll risk my own life.’”

“You’re right, I
wouldn’t.” She leaned forward. “But not saying it
is the argument, isn’t it? I’m supposed to think of doing
it, and if I think of it, I have to admit a second later that I’m
not the kind of person who does that, and wonder why not.”

“I apologize for telling
you about him.”

“But he’s the reason
why you’re doing this, isn’t he?”

“There’s not much
more I can do for him. I was in a fight, and all of the people on my
side except Timmy are dead. That’s all.”

“I don’t suppose the
money has anything to do with it.”

“For me? Not this time.”

“You’re above that
kind of consideration.”

“Hardly,” said Jane.
“I have enormous expenses. But money is not a pressing problem.
Once you have what you need, it’s hard to get yourself to lean
over a cliff to reach for more. And I can’t even spend what I
have. A fancier house or a lot of expensive jewelry raises my profile
and maybe gets me killed.”

“Then why does this kid’s
money matter to you?”

“Or your money either?
It’s important only because it’s what Barraciough wants.
He uses it to grow stronger. I don’t want him to succeed. I
don’t want to feed him.”

“Why do you care?”

“I’m the rabbit,
he’s the dog. I run, he chases. He’s good at it, and he’s
getting better. He’s using Intercontinental to recruit young
guys with nothing much to do and criminal records that make it
unlikely that anybody else will ever pay them to do anything. He’s
picking out the ones with a certified history of violence and
training them to hunt.”

“We’re finally
getting down to a reason that means something. You’re afraid he
might get to be a problem, aren’t you? Not just to people like
me, but to you.”

“He already is. If I let
him get stronger, eventually he’ll kill me.”

Mary slumped back in her chair
and breathed a deep, windy sigh. “At last. Thank you.”

“You haven’t changed
your mind, have you?”

“No, but now maybe I can
sleep. You’re no better than I am.”

When Mary came out into the
living room again it was nearly noon. She looked at Jane and her face
seemed to deflate. “You
^'
re still here.”

“Even if you won’t
help me get Barraclough, it’s still to my advantage to make
sure he doesn’t get you.”

“How long do I have to
live like this?”

“After we get you working,
it will be easier,” said Jane. “We’ll study the
other women here – shop where they shop and buy what they buy.
Everything you do has to keep your head down where there are lots of
other heads.”

Mary looked as though she were
considering it. “How long do I have to do this?”

Jane shrugged. “The longer
you do it, the safer you’ll be. Most women live quiet, private
lives, and most women are basically happy. It helps to make new
friends and be part of a community. If you look at the way your
friends live, you’ll feel better, and that will keep you from
getting lazy.”

“Lazy?”

“The average person sets
an alarm to get up early, goes to work, has a little leisure time,
sets the alarm, and goes to bed. The weeks get long, and people don’t
get paid what they deserve. There will come a day when you can’t
get your mind off some fantasy – a week in the Bahamas, or
maybe only a dress you saw in a magazine. It doesn’t matter
what it is. Live within your means. I mean your visible means.”

Mary’s face turned hard
and her eyes glittered. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Don’t touch the
money that’s in Zurich or Singapore.”

“I told you: there is no
money.” She stared at Jane for a long time, waiting for the
contradiction.

Jane sat motionless and returned
her stare evenly. Finally Mary angrily jumped to her feet, threw on
her coat, and walked out the door. When Jane heard the dull thump of
the door at the bottom of the stairs, she stood up, put on her coat,
and prepared to go out too. She had a lot of work to do.

The
Detroit-Wayne County airport was only twenty-six miles east of Mary
Perkins’s apartment on Route 94. The flight was not even three
hundred miles, so when Jane Whitefield emerged from the gate at
O’Hare, the clock on the wall said 3:10. The taxi took her to
the State Street mall and she walked two blocks along East Madison
Street. On another day she might have had the taxi driver leave her
farther away, but last night’s snow had reached Chicago by
morning, and today the wind was picking it up and moving it along
between the big buildings in horizontal sheets. Most pedestrians were
just scurrying across the open to get from one building to another,
and she saw none who might have followed her.

She reached the Bank of Illinois
before four o’clock and was behind the counter in a quiet
cubicle opening her safe-deposit box within five minutes. Months ago
she had come to Chicago to pay the bill for the Furnace corporation’s
post office box, shop for clothes, and store Catherine Snowdon’s
papers. She took them out and studied them. Catherine Snowdon had a
birth certificate, a driver’s license, a Social Security card,
a Visa card, and an ATM card from the Bank of America in case she
needed cash. Jane examined the other papers in the box.

That left only Wendy Lewis,
Karen Gottlieb, and Anne Bronstein. She examined their papers to
reassure herself that she had not let any of the expiration dates go
by. Then she put them back under the savings passbook and the
nine-millimeter Beretta pistol, closed the box, and rang for the lady
who would go with her to return it to its slot in the vault.

A guide needed more insurance
policies than any of her clients, but she could spare Catherine
Snowdon for Mary Perkins. She would hide the Catherine Snowdon papers
with ten thousand dollars in cash somewhere within walking distance
of Mary’s apartment in case she had to bail out.

Jane caught a cab from the
Dirksen Building on West Adams and flew back to Detroit to do some
shopping. At a Toys “R” Us she found a toy called Musical
Moves. If the child stepped in the right places on a brightly colored
mat, he could play a tune electronically. Jane would redirect the
wire so that instead the pressure on the mat would send current to a
small lightbulb. Two would be better – one mounted inside the
apartment and one somewhere outside – maybe in the mailbox, if
it could be done without alarming the letter carrier. If the bulb was
lit, Mary Perkins would know that somebody was in her apartment
waiting for her.

At a hardware store she bought
the tools, wires, electrical tape, and a rope ladder designed for
getting out a second-floor window in an emergency. She decided these
purchases would be enough for the present. Mary had a lot to get used
to in a short time, and she would be less likely to make mistakes in
a crisis if she wasn’t distracted by complexity.

Jane stopped at a pay telephone
and dialed her own number. She heard the telephone ring four times
and then heard her own voice. “Hello. Please leave a message at
– ” Jane quickly punched in her two-digit code, then
heard the machine rewind. It seemed to be taking a long time. Then
there were a couple of clicks and Carey McKinnon’s voice.

“Jane? It’s Carey. I
know you’re probably calling in for messages, and this is the
only way I have to reach you. I’m sorry I had to go back to the
hospital the other night. Give me a call when you can – at home
or the hospital or my office. If I’m in surgery or something,
leave me a number where I can reach you.” The machine’s
computer voice said, “Tuesday, ten-fifteen a.m.”

Carey’s voice came on
again. “Hi, Jane. Just me again. It’s been a few days and
you still haven’t called me. Am I imagining that you said you
would? I’m in my usual haunts.”

“Saturday,” said the
machine, “two thirty-six p.m.”

The next one said, “I’m
beginning to think you’re mad at me or something. If you are,
please call me up and yell at me. Two weeks is a long time to sit
around wondering.”

“Friday, six fifty-two
p.m.”

Jane hung up the telephone and
then dialed Carey’s number. When his machine came on, she said,
“Hi, Carey. It’s me. I’m sorry I couldn’t get
back to you. This job has turned out to be just awful. I’m
trying to help a woman make her business profitable, and her business
is promoting products all over the country. I’ve been in more
airports than… a couple more than my suitcase has, anyway. I
always seem to be strapped into an airplane seat when you’re
home, and then we have to sit down and run figures for the next
meeting the minute we’re in a hotel, and get to the meeting by
breakfast time. Enough whining. I’m not mad at you. I’ll
call you when I’m home.” She caught herself before she
said “I love you” because he had never said it to her,
but then she felt foolish for being petty. She changed it into “I
miss you,” then hung up. She tested the sound of it in her mind
and decided it was true, as far as it went. She did miss him.

There had been two or three
friends in college who had known that she had a knack for hiding
people, but Carey McKinnon had not been one of them. Each year
thereafter it would have been harder to tell him, but that was not
why she had avoided it. She had been saving him for herself. She
needed to keep home a safe place where she could talk to people who
cared about her and forget that the next day she might have to take a
fugitive out of the world. But she had planted a lie that had grown
thick enough to choke her. Now that he had asked her to marry him,
she could barely stand to talk to his answering machine.

As she stepped off the curb, she
realized that the only solution she had thought of was to perpetuate
the lie – tell him the profession she was quitting was the
consulting business – and not admit to him that she was not the
person he thought he knew. She would only be doing what she had
taught dozens of other people to do – pick the life you want
and lie fifty times a day to get it – so she felt ashamed that
the prospect seemed so empty and hopeless to her.

Then she recognized that she was
thinking about it as though she had decided to marry Carey. She had
not decided. The time to decide about marriage was when you had
reason to assume you would be alive on your wedding day.

Jane took a bus back to Ann
Arbor and got off at the university. She did not begin the walk down
Huron Street back to the apartment until after midnight. She had
taken a longer time than necessary to give Mary Perkins a day alone.
The more time Mary had to think, the better she would be.