The Face-Changers (35 page)

Jane turned on her heel and stepped to the pole lamp by the couch, unplugged it, and began to dismantle it. She removed the shade, unscrewed the bulb and socket from the pole, and disconnected the insulated wires from the switch. She pulled the cord all the way out of the long wooden pole, unscrewed the heavy metal base of the lamp, and removed it. She looked around the apartment. There were no extension cords. She ran to the closet and found a vacuum cleaner. She pulled the cord out all the way, then cut it and brought it across the room. It was at least twenty feet long. She listened at the window for a moment. There was tension in the voices now, but she still couldn’t make out any words.

She knelt on the floor and worked faster. She ran the vacuum cleaner cord all the way up the hollow wooden pole of the lamp. She reconnected the ten-inch loop frame that went around the bulb to hold the shade in place. She pulled the two sides apart so they were two prongs, then connected the two bare wires at the end of the cord to them.

As Jane worked, she was acutely aware of the sounds of the two voices in the next room. They were louder, more rapid.

The woman’s voice had a cry in it now. She was scared, maybe hurt. Jane ran into the hall, then plugged the cord into the wall outlet beside her. She put her ear to Janet McNamara’s door and heard her say, much louder, “Don’t.

You don’t need a gun.”

Jane rapped on the door, ducked back, and waited. The footsteps were heavy: the man. She held the pole in both hands. The door handle turned, the door opened an inch, then stopped.

Jane said, “I was going by outside and heard someone yell.

Is everything okay?”

Her tentative, apologetic female voice made the man sure it wasn’t the police or armed men who had heard, so there was no tension in his voice. “Oh, sure. We’re fine. Just a little family discuss – ”

Jane hurled her shoulder against the door. She felt no resistance as the door swung freely six inches inward, then hit something solid. Then it swung inward again and she fell into the room. The man was staggering backward, his hands cupped together covering his nose and mouth.

As Jane regained her balance, the man’s eyes opened and he reached under his coat, groping for what could only be a weapon. Jane shouted, “No guns!” and jabbed the prongs of her pole lamp against his elbow. A line of blue lightning flashed between the prongs.

The jolt stung the man into a reflex like a spasm. His left hand chopped down from his bleeding nose and lip, his right hand shot out of his coat, and both lunged for the pole. Jane yanked it backward, but he was too quick.

His hands missed the wooden pole, but the metal prongs wouldn’t come away from him. His body jumped, froze, then gave a convulsive jerk, and the lights in the hall went out. The man collapsed to the floor.

Jane poked at him with the pole, and heard the woman scream, “Stop it!”

Jane kept her eyes on him as she said quietly, “The electricity’s off. The circuit breaker popped.” She opened his coat with the pole, quickly crouched to snatch the pistol out of the shoulder holster, then retreated two paces and aimed it at his chest. She waited a few seconds, then cautiously knelt and put her hand on his chest. She moved the hand up to his carotid artery, then took it away.

She stood and glanced across the room at Janet McNamara.

She was leaning against the wall. Her hands were at the sides of her face like claws clutching at nothing, and her teeth were bared as though a scream had been caught in her throat. She was wearing a flannel nightshirt that had been unbuttoned in front from the neck to the thigh.

“Put on some clothes,” said Jane. “This place doesn’t seem to have worked out.”

Jane drove out of the quiet neighborhood, down Colfax Avenue, east on Ventura Boulevard, and up the entrance to the Hollywood Freeway. Finally she looked at Janet McNamara.

“Are you up to having a serious talk?”

“I don’t think so.” After a few seconds, she said, “But if I won’t, I’m in worse trouble, aren’t I? I’m lost, just as though I were floating on some dark ocean. Nothing in any direction –

left, right, above, below.”

Jane reached out and touched the woman’s shoulder, but the woman cringed and shrank back. Jane said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Is that man dead? Did you – did we – just kill him?”

“If he’s dead, I killed him. I’m not interested in sharing the blame,” said Jane. She looked at the woman. “Did he rape you?”

The woman glared at her, but said nothing.

Jane said, “No matter what he did, it’s over. I’m not going back there to kill him again.”

“So he is dead.”

“I’m asking about you. I need to know if I’m looking for a doctor or an airport.”

“He didn’t. I’m sure you know exactly what happened.

You set this up.”

Jane held her breath for a few seconds, then let it out. It had to be now. “I don’t actually work for the people who hid you. I didn’t set this up. I took you there because I wanted to see them without having them see me. When I realized they had arranged to meet you in an empty building, I got worried.”

“What are you saying? You don’t work for them? You said you did. You said – ”

“I lied.”

The admission stopped the woman, made all of the evidence she was arranging in her mind irrelevant. Or maybe it didn’t: maybe this was the lie. “Why should I believe you’re telling the truth now?”

Jane looked into her eyes for a moment. “I’m not telling you the truth because I’ve suddenly become a sweet person.” She turned to look at the highway ahead. “I’m doing it because I think it’s to my advantage right now, and I don’t think it will cost me anything in the future. Listen carefully, because the truth doesn’t come trippingly to my tongue, and I use it only as a last resort. I’ve been trying to spy on those people to learn who they are and where they are so I’ll be able to destroy them. I was waiting for them in Minneapolis, and saw one of them taking you to the airport. I had two or three seconds to decide whether to follow him or to divert you. I picked you.”

“Why?”

“I thought you might tell me things. I knew the man driving you to the airport wouldn’t.”

“What are you – some kind of policewoman?”

“No. I’m Jane.”

“You’re… I don’t understand.”

“For thirteen years I was a guide. I took people who were in danger and moved them to places where they weren’t in danger. I gave them forged papers, taught them how to stay hidden, and left. Sound familiar? It was quiet, it was private. It wasn’t a business. But people heard about it. Now the ones you met seem to be using my name.”

The woman’s eyes flashed. “You used me to get revenge because they stole your trade name?”

“No,” said Jane. “These people have become a danger – to people I hid over the years, to people I love who have nothing to do with the disappearing business, and to me. I did use you.” Jane stared at her, unblinking. “But here you are.”

“You mean you put me in a fire and pulled me out before I got burned?” She was angry and Jane could tell that her vision was narrowing – she was literally seeing red. “Well, it wasn’t in time.”

“You said nothing happened.”

“Something happened. Not that, but something.” Jane kept the emotions she felt from slipping into her voice. “What happened?”

Janet McNamara’s body began to shake. It was a slow movement of her head, the tears hidden as though she were refusing to give in to them. Then she sobbed, and gasped in a breath. The next sob was loud, as though she were angry at Jane for causing it and was defiant. But she didn’t sob aloud again. Her shoulders shook harder for a minute or two, and then she lifted her head and spoke just above a whisper. “I found out that I’m not smart, and I’m not strong, and I’m not brave.”

Jane’s tone was gentle, reasonable. “He was a man who hurt people for a living. He had a loaded gun. You had nothing. Smart is being able to walk away at the end of it.

You’re smart. He’s not.”

The woman seemed to let Jane’s words go past her, because she had something to tell. “I went to bed, and when I woke up he was standing there in the bedroom doorway. It was like one of those dreams where there’s something big and awful that you can’t quite see. I sat up so fast I was dizzy. He said he was there to check on me.” She glared at Jane. “Just as you said he would.”

Jane didn’t answer. The woman needed to get something said, so she didn’t try to interrupt her with some disclaimer that would have to be a lie.

The woman looked out the windshield. “I pulled myself together a little bit after that. I remember actually laughing – a nervous little laugh – because finally something was happening the way somebody had said it would, and that meant everything was on track again. But it wasn’t. He said,

‘Get up.’ and switched on the light. He turned away, so I thought it was some clumsy attempt to be polite, because I was only wearing my nightgown. But when I got up I saw he was going through my stuff: my suitcase and my bag. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he said he was collecting the money I owed.”

“Did you owe them money?” asked Jane.

“No,” said the woman. “I paid all the expenses, and gave them fifty thousand dollars. That was supposed to be it. But he said I was mistaken.” She looked down at her hands in her lap.

“Did he explain what he meant?”

“I didn’t really listen carefully to the rest. There was something about extra expenses because I wasn’t on the plane, and mat meant they had to look for me. And fees for other things. Once I knew where this was all leading, it hardly mattered what he called it.”

“Did you argue with him?”

“Sure. I wasn’t trying to run away from things I’d done and live in luxury or something. He was taking the money I was going to need to stay hidden and get started again. I was desperate. I started to yell at him.”

“And then what?”

“And then I stopped.”

Jane looked at her closely. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said the woman. “I did. It was one of those surprises that come, and when they do, the biggest part is wondering how you could be so stupid that you didn’t know before. All you had to do was step out of your own skull and look at yourself from anywhere but your own eyes. I saw him looking at me, and saw that the shouting didn’t make him nervous. He raised his voice too, but he wasn’t mad. He was just showing me he wasn’t afraid of being heard. He could make all the noise he wanted.”

“And you couldn’t.”

“No. I couldn’t. I saw it in his eyes. They were… amused. I don’t mean he thought I was funny. I mean that he was watching my face while it all occurred to me, and he was enjoying each step.”

“Each step?”

“I’m thinking, ‘Why am I yelling?’ The reason you yell is to bring other people – neighbors, passersby, police. If that happens, I’m going to be caught and shipped back to Washington and put in jail. Or maybe it’s more basic, less civilized. I’m angry, like an animal. My throat tightens and my mouth opens wider. But what does my animal anger mean to this other animal? He’s much bigger and stronger and faster than I am, and he knows how to fight – has fought. So yelling is not only pointless, it’s actually self-destructive. Yelling and fighting were out.”

“You said he was watching you figure that out. Did he say anything?”

“He said, ‘The maintenance fee will be five thousand a month.’”

“What’s a maintenance fee?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know. Or maybe you do, and you want me to say it. He said they’d continue to check on me to be sure I was okay, and if I needed things, they would get them for me.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Renew my licenses and cards and things. Even that had never occurred to me. I had a wallet full of fake cards, but what happens in a year when they’ve expired? What if I needed a college transcript or a reference for a job?”

“Did you agree to it?”

She shrugged. “I told him I didn’t have enough money.

When I ran away I had two hundred and five thousand dollars.

I paid them fifty to help me. I put up another twenty-five for expenses: that Sid Freeman guy, plane tickets, hotels, cars, hair, clothes, and I don’t remember what else. He was taking another twenty-five right then. So if I never spent anything at all – never even bought any food – I could only pay for twenty-one months. Then I thought, ‘Well, okay. Maybe I can find a job quickly, and that will buy me more time.’ Isn’t that amazing?”

“It sounds fairly sensible.”

“No, it doesn’t. What I’m telling you is that it took me maybe five seconds to hear it, and accept it, and get used to it, just like the yelling.”

“You didn’t have much choice, and you had already figured out that arguing with him tonight wasn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“I didn’t have any choice at all. I was being robbed and I couldn’t fight or yell for help. I was getting scared. I thought about running. I was in a strange city across the continent from anything or anybody I knew. I had no credit cards or licenses or identification except the ones they had given me, in a name they chose, and no hope of getting any others. How far would I get? But the big, big surprise was that it took me maybe five more seconds to see everything that had happened the way it really was.”

Jane wondered if she did. “How was it, really?”

“They had promised to make me disappear. I had thought of it as hiding, but it wasn’t. They made me cease to exist, and what was left was this woman that they had invented.

Whatever they decided was all right with me, because it had to be. They owned me. I was already not really evaluating what he was telling me, because I knew it was settled. But I was listening, because I had to know what he wanted so I could do it.”

Jane guided the car onto the circular interchange for the San Diego Freeway and accelerated up the long hill to the south toward the airport. “It’s over now. Don’t blame yourself.

If anybody is to blame, I guess it’s me.” The woman looked at her with glazed eyes. “I should hate you, but I don’t seem to be able to bring back enough of myself to feel it. I think it, but it’s just something I know is appropriate, not an emotion.”