A String of Beads

8

 

 

 

Jane bought a Cleveland Plain Dealer at a vending machine and then walked with Jimmy to a coffee shop a couple of blocks up from the lake. She scanned a page of ads. “Here,” she said. “Here’s the kind of thing we want. ‘Suites by the day, week, or month. One or two bedroom, kitchen-slash-sitting room.’” She circled the ad with her pencil, then three others. “Any of these in this column would work. Apartments can require a background investigation, deposits, and sometimes references. Hotels only require a credit card that isn’t rejected when they test run it for a hundred bucks to be sure it’s valid. And once you’re there, everybody’s a stranger.” She turned a page, then another.

 

“That’s not enough?”

 

“We’ll also need a car.” She started circling ads again. “It has to be used, for sale by owner. A person sells his car because he wants to get more than he can get on a trade-in. He knows he might get a bad check, so what he really wants is cash, and that’s good for us.” She crossed off a few ads. “No antiques, no convertibles, no conversation pieces. When you’re doing this, look for low-end models from good manufacturers. You want the car that nobody remembers, the kind you’d find easy to lose in a parking lot. You’re not going to try to drive it for a hundred thousand miles. It just has to run okay, and have some working life left.”

 

“What about leasing a car, or renting one?”

 

“Neither option is good for you right now. Rentals are fine if you have a credit card in another name, need a car for a day or two, and can return it to the same place—or get someone else to. It’s expensive after a few days, and the company can locate the car if they feel the need. A lease is a bank loan, and it triggers a credit check.”

 

“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.

 

When she arrived in her cab, she paid the driver and said thanks. She watched him drive off, and then she went to the door of the house and rang the bell.

 

The door opened and a young, trim black woman wearing the pants and blouse from a business suit and an apron stood in the doorway. When she saw Jane she took off the apron, tossed it onto the table by the door, and came out. “I’ll bet you’re Diane Kazanian.”

 

“Yes,” said Jane. They shook hands.

 

“I’m Tyler Winters.”

 

“I hope I’m not interrupting dinner.”

 

“No,” she said. “I just got home from work a little while ago, and I thought I’d get it into the oven before my husband comes home. I’m free for a while. Ready to see the car?” She reached onto the table and pressed a remote control unit, so the garage door rolled upward.

 

“Sure,” said Jane. As they walked to the garage she said, “Is the car yours?”

 

“Not exactly,” Tyler Winters said. “It’s my mom’s. I’m just selling it for her.”

 

Jane smiled. “I thought not. You seem more like the BMW type.”

 

The woman laughed. “You got me. I have a Three Series, but I’ve been driving mom’s car for a few days so I could leave it in the company lot with a sign on it. How do you do that—guess the car?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jane said. “It’s just a knack I guess.”

 

“Well, you don’t strike me as the type for a six-year-old Chevy Malibu either.”

 

“Normally I wouldn’t seek it out,” said Jane. “But right now for work I need a small, reliable car that doesn’t catch the eye. I don’t want the car somebody would pick out in a parking lot to rob. I’m in pharmaceutical sales, and it’s much safer not to drive that car.”

 

“Then I think you’ve come to the right place.” She led Jane to the garage. The Chevy Malibu was a nondescript gray with cloth seats and the standard interior, but it was clean and shiny, without any nicks or dents, and the tires looked nearly new. Jane leaned close to the window. The interior was spotless. She said, “What’s the mileage?”

 

Tyler handed her the key. “You have to turn it on to read it.”

 

Jane sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key, then said, “One hundred and two thousand, two oh three.”

 

“Would you like to drive it?”

 

“Love to.”

 

Jane waited for her to get into the passenger seat, and then tested the headlights while it was still in the garage and she could see the two bright spots on the garage wall, backed out, and drove it up the street. “Your mother took great care of it.”

 

“Yes,” said Tyler. “My husband helped her, but she’s always been careful with things. This is just like the car I learned to drive on, and she kept that one for twelve years. We couldn’t talk her into letting us buy her a new one until I volunteered to sell the old one for her.”

 

“She drives a hard bargain,” said Jane.

 

“She sure does. But she’s getting old, and I’d just feel better if she had something new instead of waiting for some part to go.”

 

“Your ad said four thousand.”

 

“I’m willing to bargain a little, but that’s what my husband thinks is fair.”

 

“I’ll take it.”

 

“Really?”

 

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