Runner

4

Jane drove into the small town of Blackwater as the summer night took on its deepest silence. She slowed to twenty at the town limit, opened her window, and drove even more slowly, listening. Above the steady, gentle sound of the air going past, there was nothing. It was after two, and the town was asleep. She reached the center of town where the streets were lined with old houses that had been renovated by the latest generation of a long succession of owners. The house on her right looked about the way it must have in 1880, except that the white paint on the ornate cookie-cutter trim had been brushed on this spring. The house across from it still had the original brown sandstone foundation, but it looked to Jane as though it had just been professionally cleaned.

She decided that this set of owners must be rich, probably a wave of lawyers and brokers and executives who had retired early from jobs in New York City and come here to reproduce a vision of village life they imagined existed a hundred years ago. On Jane's previous visits, there had been an impression of gray peeled paint, overgrowth of vines, and patches of weeds. Now everything was neat and fresh and orderly. The lawns were rolled and cut, and recent plantings of bleeding hearts and currant bushes had appeared near the houses. Separate beds of heirloom roses had been cut into the side yards.

The biggest houses were all ranged around the small park in the center of town, each facing an ancient bandstand. As the road led off toward either edge of town, the houses got smaller, until they were simple, neat cottages that had been converted to stores, small restaurants, the offices of doctors, opticians, and realtors. Jane turned beyond the park, and kept going until she reached the barn-sized building that used to be the town's feed and hardware store. She pulled off the road to the gravel parking lot, and backed her car up to the rear of the building. As she got out of the car, Jane saw Christine open her eyes, blink, and focus on her. Jane whispered, "It's okay. Go back to sleep."

Jane walked across the dark, quiet street, and listened. She headed back to the center of town to the park and into the shadows of the two-hundred-year-old maples and oaks. In small upstate New York towns like Blackwater, people often left their dogs out in their yards on summer nights, and Jane knew if she came too close to the houses, she would set off a proprietary bark or two, so she stayed on the path to the bandstand. When she came under the tallest of the trees she saw the broad wings of a gliding owl carry it to a high limb and flap soundlessly once to pause in midair while the talons took hold, but then she lost sight of the owl in the foliage.

She passed the bandstand and crossed the street on the other side. She walked straight to the front of the big Civil War-era redbrick house, climbed the steps, and watched the door open in front of her. The person standing inside the dim doorway was shorter than Jane and slender, but Jane could see that there was a handgun in the right hand.

"Put it away," said a voice from somewhere deeper inside the house. "I know her. Evening, Jane."

"Hello, Stewart," said Jane. Now she could just make out the distinctive shape of Stewart Shattuck, short and wide-shouldered, standing by the staircase.

"Come on to the office."

In the dim light that leaked from beneath a closed door at the end of the hallway she followed him to the door to the left of the staircase. The office was a room that must have been, at some early date, some kind of interior storage space. It was in the center of the first floor of the house, opposite the stairwell, and it had no windows. Shattuck was nocturnal, and during his business hours no ray of light escaped his workroom to raise suspicion outside.

When he had closed the door behind them, he moved the switch on a rheostat to bring up the lights. He said, "Will you sit down, please?" He settled himself on a straight-backed chair beside the eight-foot table he used as a desk, and made a few tiny marks on a piece of paper in front of him, bending so his face was within six inches of it.

Jane chose the straight-backed chair across from the table. It felt warm to her, and when she looked straight ahead she had a clear view of an array of video monitors from closed-circuit cameras mounted on the front, back, and sides of the house. She had taken the chair that belonged to Shattuck's guard. The images on the screens were now motionless, no living creature moving out there.

After a full minute in which he seemed to have forgotten Jane was there, Shattuck said, "It's been several years. I had assumed that you had been killed."

"Not yet."

He raised his eyes to look at her. "You're wise to think of it that way. I always thought that wisdom was the direction where you were heading, even when you were very young. Now that you've reached middle age, you've arrived."

"If I agree I'm wise, do I have to accept that I'm middle-aged? Or is accepting it more wisdom?"

Shattuck smiled so his glasses sent a flash of reflected light, then lowered his head to his paper again. "Of course you would see the way out of the trap. I've missed your visits."

"I only come when I've got trouble, so I don't share the feeling."

"There is that, isn't there? But most of the customers for a forger aren't pretty or wise." He sat up straight, took a look at the document he had been working on, and put it aside reluctantly, keeping his eyes on it all the way to the pile at the corner of his table. "All right. Let's hear what you need this time." He lifted a pad and changed pens.

"It's a young girl, nineteen or twenty. First she needs ID to travel. It has to be good enough to pass, but only the essentials—driver's license, Social Security card, maybe a few simple things to fill a wallet, a library card, and so on."

"What next?"

"The hard stuff—a second good, solid set of papers that will last her forever, if necessary."

He squinted and stared past Jane's shoulder, then wrote as he spoke. "Driver's license, Social Security, birth certificate. MasterCard, Visa, American Express. Passport, too?"

"If you can get all that safely."

"Of course. But passports are taking at least six weeks these days."

"I'll give you a mail-drop address to forward it to."

Shattuck said, "Is it all right if we give her an address in Syracuse to start? That way I don't have to go far to pick it up."

"Sure. She can fill out change-of-address forms when she's settled somewhere. Until then, just forward everything to the mail drop." She pointed at his pad. "May I?"

He handed her the pad and pen, and she wrote out an address and handed them back.

"Telephone?"

"Make one up."

He held out his hand. "Let's see her photograph."

"I have her with me."

"Even better. We'll take different shots for each form of ID. Anything else for you tonight?"

"Yes," she said. "When you have the first set of documents, I'd like you to put together a set of papers for a baby with the same surname. A birth certificate and a Social Security card. That ought to do it if she has to run."

"How old is the baby?"

"Make it two to five months from now."

Shattuck's head turned only a half-inch. "She's pregnant?"

"Yes." She watched him closely. "I guess the real birth date will be September or October." She could see he had stopped writing.

Shattuck said, "It's been a while since you've been here. I should warn you that the prices of all of these items have gone up. Increased security and new electronics."

"I had assumed something like that would have happened."

"Everything has to survive electronic scanners. It's got to be real."

"I'm not surprised."

"In order to get a driver's license, I have to send somebody with a birth certificate to some other city, and have her apply for the license and take the tests. The credit has to be grown over time."

"That was always the best way to do things," said Jane. "I expected it."

"Well, the good news is that once an identity is planted, it grows more quickly. That's much better than it used to be. Once anything is verified by anyone anywhere, it proliferates—moves from one data bank to another. That's one of the methods I've been refining since the last time I saw you. I plant articles about imaginary people on Web sites and blogs so that Google will pick them up when anybody searches. I'm constantly updating and expanding. That's all cheap and easy. But the planting of first-rate identities still works best if you can get someone on the inside to create a real record. People who get caught selling things like birth certificates and driver's licenses go away for a long, long time."

"Oh, one more thing," Jane said. "I'd like a simple set, maybe just a California driver's license, with my picture, in the name Delia Monahan."

"Delia Monahan. I take it we're talking about a real, living person?"

"Yes."

"Then I can get a duplicate and doctor it."

"Good. How much are we talking about for everything I want?"

"I'd say we're probably in the vicinity of..." He put a dot beside each item he had written, mouthing "Ten, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four," then said aloud, "Forty thousand. Could go as high as sixty."

"Can I pay you ten right now, and send the rest later?"

He looked regretful. "Janie, your word is the word of the saints. But the saints are dead. You could die, too."

"Someone has already been looking for this girl, haven't they, Stewart?"

Shattuck pursed his lips and stared at her for a second. "There could be other pregnant twenty-year-olds. I'll let you see if it's the same one." He walked across the room to a second table, woke up a laptop computer that was attached to a printer, and brought up an e-mail message. "Read."

Jane stepped to the computer. The screen read, "Christine Monahan, Female, age twenty, is worth one hundred thousand. Open attachment to see photo gallery." Then it gave an 800 telephone number, but no name or address. Jane said, "Did you open the attachment?"

"No. If I took money for turning in people on the run, how long would I live?"

"May I?"

"Go ahead."

Jane downloaded the attachment and opened it. There were a dozen small pictures on the page. In a couple of them Christine was sitting at a desk that was set on a shiny slate floor in a room that seemed to be all glass with tropical plants behind it, like an atrium. In a few, Christine's hair was long and blond, and in others dark and shorter, pinned behind her head. They seemed to have been taken over a period of years. Jane said, "This isn't good news."

"I expect not."

"But it doesn't change our deal. I still need the ID for her. Can you charge a credit card for the price?"

"How much?"

"All of it—forty thousand."

He looked at the pictures on the screen, then back at Jane. "You barely know her. Are you sure you want to spend that much?"

"Think of the air miles I'll earn."

"That kind of charge usually triggers a phone call. Will you be available to take it and tell the Visa people that it's really you?"

"No, but I'll call them before I drop out of sight, and authorize it."

"That works for me. You can bring her in."

When Jane opened the door, the thin, silent figure was standing on the other side, as she had expected. In the light, she saw it was a pretty woman about thirty, not a teenager. She was wearing a pair of tight black satin pants and an indigo pullover that made her look very slender.

Jane said, "I've got to go outside for a few minutes, and bring someone back."

"I know. You can park closer to the house if you want." The woman opened the front door, and Jane stepped outside.

The night air felt even warmer now that Jane was out of the air-conditioned house. She could see that the streets around the park were still deserted, but she stopped after she was away from the house and listened for engines. There was still the same silence. As she made her way across the park and she could see the Volvo, she strained her eyes to see Christine, but she couldn't. She must have gotten into the back seat to sleep.

Jane kept her eyes moving, but they returned to the Volvo. She had driven the car for a couple of years, so she had a practiced intuitive feel for the shape, the weight, the steering, and the way the car looked when it was parked. Something felt wrong. She stopped beside the nearest tree trunk, stayed in its shadow for a moment, and looked at the car. It was sitting too high. That's what it was. When Jane had gotten out of the car, she had looked back. The car had rested very slightly lower on its springs than it did now. It was empty. Jane trotted along the side of the park, crossed the street, and came back around the big old feed store slowly, listening for the sounds of movement. On her second turn she came up beside the Dumpster, and she could see Christine crouching behind it.

Jane said quietly, "Christine, it's me."

Christine's body jerked and she spun to see Jane. "Oh, you scared me so much. I didn't hear you."

Jane crouched, too. "Why are you out here?"

"I woke up and you were gone."

"I told you I was going."

"You did?"

"Yes."

"I must have been asleep. I woke up and I got worried. Where were you?"

"Come on. I'll tell you while we drive over there." They got back into the car and she pulled forward. "I was at that big brick house across the park. See it?"

"Yeah."

"It belongs to a man I know who sells identification, and that's something you're likely to need."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight is the time when we're here. Later we might be near other people who do this kind of work, but most of them aren't as good at it, and some of the others might sell us out if somebody waves enough money around. This man probably won't."

"Probably?"

"He hasn't in the past. That's all you really know about what anyone will do." Jane drove slowly around the park toward the house. "When he talks to you, listen carefully and answer him honestly and politely."

"I'm not a child."

"I'm sorry. I don't know you well, so I can't guess what you know. These transactions are tricky. We're all taking risks. He can sell us out, but we can sell him out, too. We're forming a temporary alliance. He and I are still alive because so far, in all of our temporary alliances, we've been selective about the people we trust, and we've been trustworthy. We've chosen the right ones and sent the wrong ones away."

"You're saying he's going to judge me."

"Exactly. He's got a soft spot for runners, but don't make it hard for him to believe in you." She pulled the car to the curb.

They got out and walked up the steps. The door opened again, and Jane nodded to the woman in the doorway, studying her without seeming to. She had a very pretty face, but her only expression was watchfulness. Now that the woman was comfortable with Jane she stared once into Christine's eyes, then devoted all of her attention to scanning the street, the park, and the other houses before she locked and bolted the door. "Go in."

Jane took Christine into Shattuck's office. He was working on another piece of paper like the one Jane had seen before. This time, because she was standing, she could see that the type in the center of its filigreed pattern said CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH.

Shattuck looked up. "You're Christine Monahan."

"Yes, sir." The sir was a surprise to Jane, but said in Christine's small voice it seemed not to be ironic.

"Is that your given name?"

"Yes, it is. Christine Ellen Monahan."

"And your actual birth date is...?"

"August 24."

"How old?"

"I'm twenty."

He wrote down the information, and said, "It's good to make these things a little bit off, so nobody notices you have the same birthday as the missing Christine Monahan, or takes your picture and shows it to someone in the right high school class. Can you live with being twenty-one?"

"Yes, sir. Being older might help get people over the fact that I'm pregnant."

"And when would you like your birthday?"

"Uh, I don't care. How about April first?"

"April Fool's Day. Is that a joke?"

"No, sir. I just thought I'd be sure to remember it if it was the first of the month, and my baby should be born in September, so I wanted to save that part of the year for him or her."

He nodded. "Good thinking. Kids like to feel special, and people are born every day of the year." He gave her a half-smile that Jane interpreted as reassuring. "You'd be surprised at how many of them are born right here."

"Yes, sir."

"All right," he said. "Now I'm going to take your picture. There will have to be several shots that look like they were taken at different times. They'll look like you, but don't expect them to be flattering. Try to look attractive—no deer in the headlights or anything—but don't try too hard. No real photograph on a driver's license is pretty. There are a few that are all right on passports, because people get to pick, so we'll take more time with those."

He took her across the room to a plain wall that looked a bit whiter than the others. "Put your toes on the yellow tape." He moved a lamp on a stand to a spot where there was a blue tape strip, then took a digital camera out of a drawer and began to take pictures. He would snap one, then look at the display on the camera, and do it again. Finally he said, "That's good. Okay. New outfit. Francine?"

The woman opened the door and leaned in. "What?"

"Have you got anything different that she can wear as a top?"

"How about a sweater, like it's winter?"

"Great. Maybe after that a jacket, like for a suit."

"I'll be right back." She disappeared.

Shattuck sat at his table and began to make marks on a certificate, as though his drawing were automatic. "You might want to fool around with your hair, too. Anything that doesn't look like all the pictures were taken on the same day."

Jane opened her purse, took out a brush, and brushed out Christine's hair, then pulled it into a ponytail and held it with an elastic band. She produced a pair of earrings, and handed them to her. "Put on these earrings, and some eyeliner."

When they were finished with the photographs, Shattuck set his camera beside his computer and said, "Okay, ladies. Give me three hours, and I'll have the first set ready. The other set will be in your mailbox within six or seven weeks."

Francine said, "Come this way." She led them out of the room into the hallway and then to a large red sitting room with overstuffed Victorian furniture and a grand piano. She said, "I'm sure you're exhausted. I remember what this was like. Those two couches on that side of the room are the most comfortable for sleeping."

But Christine had stopped near the door. She was staring at the wall, where the paintings were hung five high. They were all nudes—standing in a bath, sitting in a garden, reclining on a couch. Christine said, "That's you on this couch," and pointed. She looked at Francine again. "They're all you." Then she looked flustered, as though she had no idea of the appropriate thing to say. "You're beautiful."

"Thanks."

"He painted them?"

Francine nodded. "Of course."

"He's so good. He should..." She had hit the barrier. There was no way to finish the sentence, so she didn't.

"He does," said Francine. "Get some sleep. Before daylight comes, you have to be gone." She turned off the lamp near the door, walked out, and closed the door, so the room was nearly dark.

Christine said, "I'm sorry. I should have kept my mouth shut."

"It's all right," said Jane. "This time, anyway. She seems to be benevolent. But Stewart is an artist. He couldn't do what he does without talent, but he also has training. It's what got him in trouble."

"Trouble? You mean he's already in trouble?"

"He was studying in Europe. He was nearly broke, and got desperate. He got involved with a gallery owner who sold things to col-lectors—mostly visiting Americans—who thought they knew more than they did. He hired Stewart to paint copies."

"Of paintings?"

"Yes. He told me he started with a few small Dutch paintings that weren't terribly well known. The owner presented them as seventeenth-century copies by apprentices in the studios of the masters. They did so well that the owner started thinking bigger. In those days there was still a lot of talk about art that the Nazis had taken to Germany during the war and the Russians had taken to Russia afterward. The Russians had some in the Hermitage Museum—mostly French Impressionists—but they never would release a list of what they had. What that did was help create a market for paintings that looked exactly like Renoirs or Cézannes but didn't have any provenance. The gallery owner sold them to specially selected customers as what they would have had to be—stolen paintings that had probably belonged to murder victims. That way no buyer would hang them in public or have them appraised. It worked until one of the buyers died, and his granddaughter found a Monet hanging in a closet. After a quick look at the buyer's canceled checks, the police visited the gallery. Stewart had to leave the country quickly."

"It makes me sad," said Christine.

"Take a closer look at Francine, and at those paintings you found on the wall. Life is good to Stewart." She lay down on one of the couches. "And I'm tired." She arranged herself so she would be comfortable and closed her eyes. After a few minutes she pretended to sleep. Soon she heard Christine's breathing slow and deepen. While Christine slept, Jane lay with her eyes closed, thinking about a few men she had met at other times who might be looking at their computer screens tonight and learning that they could make a hundred thousand dollars just for finding a pregnant twenty-year-old.