The hunters obviously had funding and access to serious tech. If they could get into hospital information systems and started looking for June’s name, they’d come running. He mentioned his concerns to June.
“The emergency room doctors have to treat us,” she said. “It’s a federal law. We can give them false names and addresses. They can’t even demand payment.”
Peter could understand taking free medical care if he was broke and homeless, but he wasn’t. Or at least he wasn’t broke. And he’d always pulled his own weight. He’d pay the hospital, but at least he didn’t have to worry about June getting on some medical database. “Who do you want to be?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Debbie Harry.”
“Who?”
June rolled her eyes. “The lead singer of Blondie? Some people have no culture. You should be, oh, let’s see.” She put one hand to her chin and contemplated him. “Clint Eastwood. Definitely.”
“You’re trying too hard at this,” he said. “The goal is to be forgettable.”
“For you, maybe.” She flashed a brilliant grin. “For me, not possible.”
“You are a piece of work,” he said. But he knew she was just messing with him, trying to distract him from another, more significant problem.
The static wasn’t going to like being inside a hospital.
His phone rang. It was Lewis.
“I got three Fast Money stores in Eugene where I can get you up to twenty thousand without approval from corporate. That work?”
“Yeah, that works. Make it five in cash and five each on three different cards.” That would be enough to pay for an ER visit, Peter hoped, with some left over for walking-around money.
“Got it. I’ll put it in the name of Peter Smith. But they close at nine. How far are you?”
Peter frowned. “I don’t think we’ll make it.”
“They charge a pretty fat fee, something like five percent of the total. They might stay open late for that. You want to add a sweetener?”
“Sure, add another five hundred cash to the manager to keep the doors open until nine-thirty.”
“If that don’t work, we’ll find something else. I’ll tweak the numbers to include the commission and max your payout. They’ll prob’ly want some kind of ID number. I’ll use the first four digits of your Social.”
Peter didn’t want to know how Lewis got his Social Security number.
He said, “If your financial empire doesn’t work out, you could always get a job as a personal assistant.”
“I ain’t wearin’ no French-maid costume,” said Lewis. “Call me tomorrow and I’ll tell you what I dug up on that other thing.” June’s mom and whoever might be connected to her.
“Thanks, Lewis. Seriously.”
“Damn, Jarhead. What else I got to do?”
Peter hung up and turned to look at June, who had her eyes firmly on the road ahead. But he was sure she’d heard every word.
? ? ?
IT WAS HARD FOR PETER to get a sense of Eugene at night, but in general, he liked college towns. Smart people, good cheap food, plenty of oddballs. There was always this weird undercurrent, too, of people who fed off the college crowd, which was simultaneously na?ve, demanding, and easy pickings. Dope dealers, sex providers, professional gamblers, thieves.
Fast Money was a payday loan and check-cashing place, a vacuum cleaner into the pockets of the working poor and immigrants both legal and illegal, taking a significant percentage of every transaction. The commission for accepting an electronic money transfer and disbursing the funds was astonishing but not unusual. Peter was willing to pay the premium for speed.
Their location on West Seventh was a newer stand-alone building on a busy commercial strip like any other in the American West. Maybe nicer than most, with the buildings in decent repair and mature trees lining the streets, but still a testament to the creative destruction that was American Capitalism.
He didn’t want to go inside, but it wasn’t negotiable.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, pulled on a baseball hat, and climbed out of the car. June shut off the engine and got out after him. She wore her new fleece, zipped up. Peter looked at her across the front of the van.
“What?” she said. “Of course I’m coming. You’re sweating already, and you’re still outside. They’re going to think you’re here to clean out the register. The cops will be here in three minutes.”
Peter thought about the inevitable security cameras. Every contact June made with the modern world was problematic. Dealing with hard cash in quantity, Fast Money would be a magnet for armed robbers and likely had state-of-the-art technology. High-res cameras archived off-site for weeks or months. And it was corporate, so that video was likely easily accessed by law enforcement, and maybe also by professional hunters in black Explorers. Any picture of June could be used to track them.
He didn’t even want to think about security in the hospital.
But she was right about how he looked. He’d be automatically less suspicious with June beside him. “Do you have a hat in any of those bags?”