A String of Beads

“No, thanks,” said Jane. “I brought some with me, and we’re trying to live modestly. The best thing we can do is keep this small, quiet, and simple. Anything you can find out about people searching for Jimmy, or meaning to harm him, is important.”

 

“Is there something we should watch for?”

 

“Anything. Any strangers who seem to be interested in Jimmy or his case. I know you’re already helping Jimmy’s mother, and that will help him through this.”

 

“I’ll call you as soon as we find out anything at all. What number can I use to reach you?”

 

“If you get the answer, here’s the number.” Jane read it off the display on her phone. “But it would be best if you had someone else call from their phone. Jimmy’s case seems to be attracting attention from so many unusual sources that I’m getting nervous. Some of the police agencies who are likely to be looking for him are capable of getting phone records, so the fewer calls between us the better. I’ll get in touch with one of the other clan mothers if I have a question, so you won’t have lots of calls from one city.”

 

“We’ll be waiting,” said Ellen Dickerson. “Your clan is proud of you, Janie, and so are the others. We all wish you and Jimmy all the strength and courage you need.”

 

“I’ll tell him.”

 

“Good-bye.”

 

Jane tossed the phone on the bed and sat still for a moment, then stood and went back into the living room and on to the counter and stood beside Jimmy. “No news, really,” she said. “The mothers wish us strength and courage.”

 

He set the fish in the hot pan and it began to sizzle. “We’ll have more of both after we eat this.”

 

When they had finished their dinner, Jane said, “Nia:wen.”

 

Jimmy also said, “Nia:wen.”

 

They both looked at each other for a moment. The word nia:wen meant “thanks.” In English it sounded so small and simple, but in Seneca it conveyed something big and -fundamental—thanks to the person who obtained and cooked the food, to the plants and animals that gave up their lives to provide them with sustenance, and to the ordered universe beginning with the earth and water and moving outward into the air and sky and the things beyond the stars, and to the Creator.

 

Jane had cooked for her husband, Carey, for seven years already, and every evening after dinner, she had said it quietly to herself: “Nia:wen.” She was usually the only one who said it, alone in the kitchen, and although her husband was included among all the things she was giving thanks for, he seldom heard her say it. But she had just said it aloud in front of Jimmy, because it was the normal thing for two Seneca people to do.

 

They cleared the table and went to work loading the dishwasher and cleaning the kitchen area. Jimmy said, “I’ll bet you’re getting ready to leave for home.”

 

“You’d lose,” she said.

 

“Why? You’ve got me pretty well set up here—a comfortable long-term hotel, a car, new clothes, and everything. Nobody knows I’m here. I’ll pay you back for all that stuff as soon as I can, by the way. But I can drive you to the airport in about half an hour, and you could be in Buffalo an hour or two after that.”

 

“I’m not ready to leave,” she said. “You would have to show your face whenever you bought groceries, went to a restaurant, or answered the door. And things happen. If you made a driving mistake or somebody else did, you’d have to show your license and registration, and maybe fill out a police report.”

 

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Believe me, I’m delighted that you’re around. I just thought it was getting to be too much to ask. In fact, it was too much a while ago.”

 

“Until I figure out who’s after you, the best thing we can do is keep you out of sight. Be patient.”

 

“You sound as though you heard something bad from Ellen Dickerson that you don’t want to tell me.”

 

“No,” she said. “She’s heard nothing new. But we don’t need anything new. From the beginning, it’s seemed to me that there’s something odd that we aren’t understanding. We have one man who was willing to go to the police and lie about selling you the weapon in a homicide. Why would he be willing to take that risk? And now there are some who were getting themselves sent to jail to wait for you—who are they? The only plan they could have is to kill you. I think we need to be prepared to hold out for a while before we walk into the middle of that.”

 

“What does the delay do for us?”

 

“The same thing staying ahead of the dogs does for a rabbit. He gets to stay alive for another day.”

 

The next day Jane went out again, and returned just before noon with several more shopping bags. After she put away the food she’d bought, there were still several others.

 

“What’s that?” asked Jimmy.

 

“I’m going to teach you more about being hard to find. This is your next lesson. People looking for fugitives do it with photographs and descriptions and lists of habits. So change everything about yourself that you can change.” She took out a box with a picture of a beautiful woman flipping her shiny light brown hair.

 

“Hair dye?”

 

“Afraid so,” Jane said. “I picked a shade that’s not ridiculously light, but it’s lighter than your hair or mine. Our black hair is on one end of the spectrum, and platinum blond is on the other. If you’re trying to blend into the crowd, the place you want to be is the middle. This is something I’ve had lots of runners do, because it’s easy. The best way to use dye is to do it right away, so you don’t meet people while your hair is black and then switch to light brown. It makes them wonder about you, and wondering is the worst response you’re likely to get. They’ll think about you and talk about you.” She set the box aside. “Whether you do it or not is up to you. You have time to think about it, and if you want to, I can apply it for you. I’m pretty good.”

 

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m persuaded.”

 

“While we’re at it, I should warn you that anytime you use something like hair dye, make sure that there’s nothing left of the packaging, or the chemicals, or the receipt from the store. I’ve already bought the coloring this time and paid for it in cash, so you don’t have to worry about the security cameras in the store. But you don’t want to leave anything that will tip off the chasers about changes to your appearance.”

 

The next thing she brought out was a pair of glasses. “Try these on.”

 

“My eyes are two of the few things I have that are perfect.” He took the glasses.

 

“As you can see, the lenses are just clear plastic. I also got aviator sunglasses and photosensitive glasses that darken in sunlight, and some with a dark brown tint. Sunglasses are a good thing to wear whenever you’re outdoors.”

 

He put on the glasses, went to the bathroom mirror, and studied himself, turning his head from side to side. “It’s a different feeling.”

 

“It’s better than I’d hoped,” said Jane. “You look good, but what’s especially good is you don’t look like you.”

 

“I guess I can get used to them.” He took them off and set them on the coffee table.

 

“That’s the right idea,” Jane said. “Everything you can change should be changed. If you were fat, I’d try to get you to lose weight. If you were thin, I’d try to get you into body building. You’re muscular, so I’m weaning you away from T-shirts and into business casual clothes. If you were illiterate I’d try to get you to carry a book with you. These mechanical changes are easy and they’re quick. But they’re only the start.”

 

He studied her for a moment. “Are you sure you didn’t hear something bad from Ellen that you’re not telling me?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“Then this is about the guy who’s framing me. He’s probably the one who did the shooting, and there’s a record of him buying the right kind of rifle, so he decided that saying he sold it to me would get him off.”

 

“All very good thinking, except that he didn’t do the shooting. He will have an absolutely ironclad alibi, which is why he could put himself forward like that. I think he’s doing a favor for whoever really did it, and so are the men who went to jail to kill you. Is any of this normal? No.”

 

“But you’re starting to sound as though I’m going to have to stay away from home for a really long time.”

 

“I’m not sure,” said Jane. “Maybe you won’t have to. I’m teaching you how to stay free for a short time, but the principles are the same, if you have to keep it up.”

 

Jane handed him the next bag. “Now that I’m sure about your sizes, I bought you more clothes. I’m aiming for the look I told you about before—upscale and professional. You have to be able to walk in a crowd on the street and never be one of the first men a cop looks at. Clothes can help accomplish that. From now on, you don’t wear sneakers unless you’re jogging. No knit caps unless you’re in the woods or it’s snowing. No sweatshirts unless they have the name of some university. You get the idea?”

 

“Sure.” He looked into the bag and pulled out some of the clothes. “Pretty nice. Maybe I should start dressing like this anyway.”

 

“That should be enough to think about for now,” she said. “If things ever got really awful and we had to give you a permanent new identity, there would be a lot more to learn. We can do a little more later. Right now, I’m tired. I think I’ll go take an afternoon nap.”

 

“Thanks, Jane,” he said. “I haven’t spent any time with you for at least twenty years, but you’ve turned out to be about the best friend I have.”

 

“I’m trying to be,” she said. She went across the room to avoid his stare, but still felt that he hadn’t looked away. She said, “See you later,” went into her bedroom, and closed the door.

 

They didn’t start again until after dinner that night and the kitchen was clean. Jane said, “Time for the next lesson.” They went to sit on the living room couch.

 

“What’s this lesson about?”

 

She said, “When professionals are searching for a fugitive, one of the most effective ways they do it is to keep his family and friends under surveillance—if necessary, for long periods of time. They check the mail before it’s delivered, record and trace their phone calls, and watch their houses. Sometimes there are private detective types searching, and they’ll do the illegal stuff—install hidden microphones, hack into their e-mail, and so on. The minute a runner contacts a relative or a friend, he’s given up his location. So the best advice is to let those relationships go.”

 

“Let them go? You mean give up your family?”

 

“Yes,” said Jane. “If you go back to the past, the ones waiting for you there are the chasers.”

 

“What kind of choice is that?”

 

“Not a very good one,” she said. “The only things it’s an improvement on are going to jail and dying.”

 

“How can anybody give up his family?”

 

“It’s all part of one process. You learn to forget every-thing about the past, and concentrate on inventing a future for yourself. Changing identities is an interesting opportunity for some people, like being reborn a new person. Once you’ve lived to about our age, the idea of making some different choices has its attractions. Did you always want to be something different—an artist, a musician, a teacher? Once your old life is obliterated or becomes too dangerous to live, you’ve got to be somebody, so why not that?”

 

“I suppose,” he said. “If you can’t be who you are, you have to be somebody else. I’m not in that position.”

 

“No,” said Jane. “But play along. It’s an exercise.”

 

“Okay,” Jimmy said. “If I had to give up my regular life, I suppose I’d like to try being an architect. I’ve been doing construction for years, and I’ve got some ideas I’d like to try out.”

 

“Usually I would recommend a profession that’s not even remotely related to your last one, but for the moment, architecture is fine,” she said. “First thing we’d have to do is get you into architecture school. School is a good choice. The people who look for fugitives don’t usually have a good ready-made way of searching campuses for people living under new names. School also takes time, so your trail gets cold.”

 

“How would I get into architecture school?”

 

“Fraud and chicanery,” she said. “Also some forgery. I’m experienced at getting people into places where they wouldn’t normally belong, and I have good relationships with some people who can produce just about anything on paper. But you really would have to get through the school yourself and learn how to be an architect. You can’t fake that.”

 

“Of course,” he said. “I would want to be a real architect.”

 

She smiled. “Great. You’re getting it already. Being a successful runner isn’t about pretending to be somebody. It’s about really becoming somebody. You don’t assume an identity because it hides your real identity. The new person becomes your only identity, and you live the life of that person.”

 

“Interesting,” he said. “But right now I’m not at that stage yet.”

 

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s do an exercise that could help in your present situation. You ought to start thinking about possible problems.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Suppose I’ve gone back to my house in Amherst to get something. You’re still here at this hotel in Cleveland. Think about what you do if everything suddenly goes wrong. You hear and feel heavy male footsteps coming up the hallway. There’s a loud knock on the door. You know that there’s no reason why five men would come to your door unless they were after you. What are your plans? Do you plan to fight, or run? If you run, what do you have time to take with you, and where are you heading? When you get there, who will you be? The same person you’ve always been, or a new person? What’s his name?”

 

“I haven’t thought about any of that.”

 

“That’s what we’re doing now. There’s the knock. What do you do?”

 

“Go out the window, I guess.”

 

“We’re on the second floor, about thirty feet from the ground. If you jump, you’ll probably break a leg. Want to go back in time and do something first?”

 

“I’d like to have a rope, a nylon rope hidden close to the window, so I could just go out the window and down.”

 

“Good idea. Let’s think about the rope some more. How long does it take to tie a knot?”

 

“I could tie a slip knot ahead of time and just loop it over something solid like the bed frame, and then go.”

 

“Fine. Once you’re out and on the ground, what next?”

 

“I check to see if there are police cars near my car, or blocking the exit from the parking lot.”

 

“Smart. This time it’s clear. Somebody recognized you and called the police, so the police don’t even know you have a car. Did you remember to bring the key?”

 

“I sure hope so.”

 

“Let’s assume you did. You drive off. Do you have some cash? Do you have a name or anything memorized that you could say to anyone who asks who you are?”

 

“Not at the moment.”

 

“Exactly,” Jane said. “Think about all of the things you’d like to have with you if you went out that window. We can collect them. But where would you put them?”

 

“What do you think?” he asked.

 

“What we’re talking about is a bug out kit. If you were a woman, I would tell you to put together a kit in a purse that you use for nothing else. For a man, the best thing is not to have a briefcase or backpack or anything. Instead, you want to look as though you’re carrying nothing. There are sports jackets designed for travel. They’re lightweight and have five or six hidden zippered pockets to foil a pickpocket. You buy one, not too snug. In the hidden pockets you put cash, some form of identification you can use if you have to lie to someone, a duplicate car key, and whatever else would be useful. Then you hang the coat in the closet, always in the same spot, where you can reach it in the dark if you’re sleepy, distracted, or looking in the other direction. Practice finding and putting it on a hundred times or so. Keep thinking about ways to improve or update it.”

 

“And that’s all I take when I go?”

 

Jane nodded. “It’s a way. There are other ways. Some people have a second kit in another location so they just have to get out and go to it. You might even want one in another town.”

 

“Do you do this?”

 

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

 

“You told me that for years you made people disappear. There must be a lot more people after you than there are after me.”

 

She hesitated. “Yes. I do things like this. I was at it for years. It wasn’t very long before what I worried about wasn’t just that the police would arrest me for carrying false identification or something. There were people who would do anything to catch me alive and make me tell them where runners had gone and what their new names were. There were others who would be satisfied to just kill me on sight. Many of those people are still out there, so I’ve had to keep making arrangements and contingency plans.”

 

“What about your husband?”

 

“I make arrangements for him too.”

 

“I mean he’s all established, and he’s a doctor and everything. After all those years of work, would he just run off with you and live in hiding like this forever?”

 

Jane looked at Jimmy, feeling stung, and thought about how disastrous it would be if she allowed her anger to fill the air between them. She took a couple of deep breaths, then said, “If the danger were only to me, I wouldn’t ask him to run. I would just go, and hope we could get back in touch later. I believe in preparing for the worst, and what I consider the worst is something that would hit him, too.”

 

“But would he go with you, and give up the life he built?”

 

“That would be up to him.”

 

“You’re ducking my question.”

 

Jane controlled her irritation. “I’m answering as well as I can. He’s always been a very bright and sensible man. He loves me, and he wouldn’t want to lose me. If I said we needed to go, I think by now he’d believe me. So I think he would go if I asked. But nobody knows how anyone will react. There are moments when saving your life means immediately doing the same things that you would do if you had an hour to think about them first. So nobody knows how it will go until it happens.”

 

“Okay,” said Jimmy. “I just wondered.”

 

“That’s fine,” said Jane. “I guess the bigger answer to your question is that I believe the things I’m telling you will make you safer. Some are things I’ve taught other runners to do, and those people are nearly all well and living new lives. I do the same things for myself.” She stood and picked up her coat on the way to the door. “Now I’ll give you a chance to think about what we’ve said so far. I’ve got to go out for a bit, but I’ll be back.” She had talked her way out the door before he had a chance to reply.

 

She went down the back stairs, along the lower hall, and out the side door of the hotel. As she walked she came close to the car and glanced at the windows and tires as she passed, then continued out to the street. She walked past a row of fast-food restaurants and an open field, and on for about a mile. The night air and the solitude gave her a chance to cool down and think.

 

There must be a reason she had been stung by Jimmy’s questions. Maybe it was that he had discovered the uncertainty she had always lived with and hidden from everyone. It was humiliating to admit that the uncertainty existed, and maybe more so because Jimmy was an old acquaintance, almost a member of the family. She had wanted him to think of her as invulnerable rather than weak and plagued with marital problems. She hadn’t been able to ignore him or throw him off the scent. He was wondering what she had always wondered, and he had a relative’s prying persistence. His sincerity was disarming, and it had made her try to answer questions she would have cut off if anyone else had asked. Tonight was a bad time for her to have this conversation, because Carey was angry with her, and she had already been in a bad mood about it.

 

She had never admitted it aloud to anybody, but being married to somebody who wasn’t Seneca was difficult. She loved Carey and knew him well, and she thought hard about everything she heard him say or saw him do. She believed that he loved her just as much, and thought as hard about her. But over the past year something disturbing had come to her.

 

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