A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(29)

“What else do we need?”

“The rest are incidentals. If we get a place to stay and a car, everything else is easy.”

They caught a cab at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and took it to the most promising of the extended-stay -hotels. Jane rented a two-bedroom suite and came outside to bring Jimmy in. He walked around in the suite, looked in the bedrooms, and examined the main room, which was a living room with a one-wall kitchen consisting of a counter, sink, refrigerator, and stove. “How did you rent it?”

“A credit card.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.” She held it up so he could read it.

“Who’s Diane Kazanian?”

“She’s me. Years ago two women I had helped decided to send me a present. They worked in the county clerk’s office in Cook County, Illinois. They added fifty birth certificates to the files there, and sent fifty certified copies to me. They were for men, women, and children, aged from about five years to seventy. One of them said Diane Kazanian and was about my age. I used the birth certificate to apply for a driver’s license, took the tests, and got one. Then I used the license and the birth certificate as ID to start a small bank account. I bought some magazine subscriptions with checks, sent away for some things from big stores and paid for them, and then started getting offers for credit cards. I bought things with the cards, and paid the bills. The address is a mailbox rental in Chicago, which I pay to forward every-thing to another one nearer to home that’s in the name of a corporation I formed. After a few years, Diane had a good credit record, a passport, a library card, and a few other things.”

“Have you done that a lot?”

“Enough. For about ten years, I’d receive a batch of birth certificates every year. Most of them I’ve never used. But I keep growing identities, and use them in rotation so they all stay fresh.”

“I can’t believe you do this stuff,” said Jimmy. “Where did you even learn how?”

“Some of it came from that first summer job skip tracing. I studied the methods that you can use to follow trails of people who don’t want to be found. If you’re the one who’s running, you have to understand the risk that each thing you do carries with it.”

“But aren’t you ever afraid the banks will figure out there’s something wrong with this new customer and call the police?”

“Banks have the biggest apparatus for detecting fraud, but they’re only interested in protecting their profits, not enforcing laws. What they want is for you to deposit money so they can use it, and borrow money, so they can charge you interest. They sincerely don’t care if you’re an ax murderer. If you are, they don’t want to know about it, and make an effort not to find out. Go online sometime and look at the list of banks with branches in the Cayman Islands. There has never been a reason for any foreigner to put money in the Cayman Islands except to hide it from their home governments. But every single major bank in the US or Europe that you can name has branches there. If your bank isn’t on the list, then it’s an error in the list. They’re not there for the convenience of vacationers withdrawing a little cash for a dinner on the beach. It’s big-time tax evasion, money laundering, profits from drugs, extortion, embezzling, kidnapping. Give banks a way to mind their own business, and they will.”

Jimmy said, “Okay, so if I don’t have to worry about banks, who do I have to worry about?”

“Remember that guy who was chasing us on foot?”

“How could I forget him? Sergeant Isaac Lloyd, New York State police.”

“That’s who you worry about—a dedicated police officer who has reason to believe you’ve committed a serious crime. This one went after us alone and on foot because he realized that was the way we were traveling, so it was probably the only way to follow us. He’s trouble. Anybody like him is trouble.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t any others.”

“Let’s do everything the right way, so he has no trail to follow.”

She stood up and walked across the room to pick up her backpack. “Right now I’m going to get cleaned up and then leave you alone to do the same while I go out for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find us a car. It’s just like renting this suite. You stay invisible.” Jane disappeared into the bathroom and in a moment he heard the water running in the shower.

Twenty minutes later, Jane emerged from the bathroom wearing fresh, clean clothes—a black blouse, a pair of gray pants, and flat shoes—and carrying a small black purse. Her hair was shiny and clean, and she wore makeup. Jimmy looked up from the television set. “You still clean up nice.”

“Thank you,” she said. “When I go out the door, lock it. If there’s a knock, don’t open it. It’ll probably be housekeeping, and all they can want is to turn down the sheets. We can do that ourselves. Just stay where you are, be nice and quiet, and don’t talk to anyone. And this may take a while. I have the other key, so don’t worry about letting me in.” She picked up the newspaper classified ads, took the single page of used car ads out, folded it, and put it in her purse.

“Okay. Good luck.”

She went downstairs and through the lobby. It was still midafternoon, so she used a pay phone to call three of the numbers in the car ads to make appointments to see the cars. As she stepped out of the hotel she looked to her left and saw that there were three cabs waiting down the drive for passengers, so she raised her hand and one pulled to the curb to pick her up. She gave the driver the address of the first and most likely car for sale, and sat quietly while he drove there.