Conspiracy

120

Chief Ball had a cover story all ready, but the clerk at the car rental counter didn’t even bother looking at the name as Amanda Rauci’s credit card cleared the scan. He was too busy selling the optional insurance.

“I guess I’ll take it,” said Ball as soon as the man glanced at the card. “The insurance.”

“Can’t be too careful,” said the clerk happily. He slapped the card through the reader and handed it back to Ball without checking the name.

In the old days, the days when he was back from Vietnam, Ball would have immediately driven down to the worst ghetto in the city and sold the car for cash and, with luck, a new ID.

He’d quickly acquire a whole set of phony identification—

license, credit cards, Social Security number, anything and everything he needed.

But he was too old for that, and not “hip” to the local scene. He didn’t know where the chop shops were, and certainly wouldn’t have known who to trust. He didn’t even know if you could make money doing that anymore.

Looking tough when you were sixty wasn’t nearly as easy as when you were twenty. If he looked like anything now, it was probably a cop: an old, has-been cop.

He’d fallen down a rat hole. Plunged down.

He’d never felt like this, not even in Vietnam.

He thought of Amanda Rauci, and his hands started to tremble.

Just drive, he told himself. Just drive.