very recently, so you will be applying for a Social Security card only now.”
Parker considered that. “I was the Canadian representative of an American company,” he decided.
“You can do that?”
“Yes. I’ll have to phone the guy to tell him about it, that’s all.”
“Good. Do you have an attorney you can trust?”
“I can find one.”
“I think,” Robbins said, “you changed your name many years ago, when you were first in Canada. Because of your schoolmates, you see. But never officially. So now that you are in the US, you will first go to the court to have your name legally changed from whatever is on that birth certificate to whomever you would rather be than Mr. Willis.”
“Go through the court,” Parker said.
“If we are going to legitimize you,” Robbins said, “we must use as many legitimate means as possible. What state do you live in?”
“New Jersey.”
“They process many name changes there,” Robbins assured him. “It will not be a problem. So with your birth certificate and your court order for the name change, you will apply for and receive your Social Security card. After that, there is no question. You are who you say you are.”
“You make it sound pretty easy,” Parker told him.
“And yet, it is not.” Robbins’ smile, when he showed it, was wintery. Reaching for a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen on the table beside himself, he said, “Your employer while you lived in Canada?”
“Cosmopolitan Beverages. They’re based in Bayonne, New Jersey.”
“And the man there I would talk to? To get some employment documents, you see.”
“Frank Meany.”
“You have his e-mail address?”
“No, I have his phone number.”
“Ah, well, that will do.”
Parker gave him the number and, as he wrote it down, Robbins said, “E-mail has the advantage, you see, that it has no accent. The only three things left for right now are the money, and I must take a photograph of you, and you must tell me your choice of a name.”
“I’ll bring the money in,” Parker said, and went outside, where Claire lowered the passenger window so he could lean in and say, “It’s gonna be all right. We’re still happy with the name?”
“I am. You want the money from the trunk?”
“Yes.”
Opening the trunk, he brought out the duffel bag he’d brought down with him from upstate New York and carried it into Vista Hardware, where Robbins had moved to stand beside a refectory table along the right wall, beneath portraits of Kofi Annan and Clint Eastwood. In all the pictures, the eyes were as wary as Robbins’ own.
He seemed amused by the duffel bag. “Usually,” he said, “people who traffic in large quantities of cash carry briefcases.”
“The money’s just as good in this.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is.”
Robbins picked up from the floor under the table a cardboard carton that had originally contained a New Zealand white wine. “it will be just as good in this as well,” he said.
Parker started lifting stacks of currency from the duffel bag. They were both silent as they counted.
3
Driving east across New Jersey on Interstate 80 Monday afternoon, Parker passed a car with the bumper sticker drive it like you stole it, which was exactly what he was doing. On long hauls like last weekend’s trip down to Maryland, it would be too risky for him to drive, but for the sixty-mile run across the state from Claire’s place to Bayonne there shouldn’t be a problem. He held himself at two miles above the speed limit, let most of the other traffic hurry by— including drive it like you stole it— and stayed literally under the radar.
To get to Cosmopolitan Beverages, he had to drop south of the interstates just before the Holland Tunnel, and drive down into what was still called the Port of New York, even though years ago, with the changeover from longshoremen to containers, just about all the port’s activity had moved over to the Jersey side of the bay: Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, and Bayonne.
Bayonne, being at the southeast edge of northern New Jersey, with Staten Island so close to its southern shore there was a bridge across, was protected from the worst of the Atlantic weather and out of the way of the heaviest of the shipping lanes. This was the home of the legitimate part of Cosmopolitan Beverages, in an area totally industrial, surrounded by piers, warehouses, gasoline storage towers, freight tracks, chain-link fences, and guard shacks. Most of the traffic here was big semi trailers, and most of those were towing the large metal containers that had made this port possible.
In the middle of all this, standing alone on an island of frost-heaved concrete spottily patched with asphalt, stood a broad three-story brick building long ago painted a dull gray. On its roof, in gaudy contrast, a gleaming red-and- gold neon sign proclaimed cosmopolitan in flowing script and, beneath that, beverages in smaller red block letters.
A chain-link fence stretched across the concrete-and-asphalt area in front of the building, extending back on both sides toward the piers and Upper New York Bay. Gates in both front corners of the fence stood open and unguarded, the one on the left leading to a mostly full parking lot beside the building, the one on the right opening to a smaller space with only two cars in it at the moment, and with a sign on the fence near the gate reading visitor parking.
Parker turned in there, left the Toyota with the other visiting cars, and followed a concrete walk across the front of the building to the revolving-door entrance. Inside was a broad empty reception area, containing nothing but a wide low black desk on a shiny black floor. Mobbed-up businesses do try to look like normal businesses, but not very hard. It hadn’t occurred to anybody there to put visitor seating in the reception area because they really didn’t care.
The wall behind the desk was curved and silver, giving a spaceship effect. Mounted on that wall were bottles of the different liquors the company imported, each in its own clear plastic box, with that brand’s Christmas gift box next to it.
The man seated at the desk was different from the last time Parker’d been here, a few years ago, but from the same mold; thirties, indolent, uninvolved. The only thing professional about him was his company blazer, maroon with cb in ornate gold letters on the pocket. He was reading a
Parker waited, looking down at him, then rapped a knuckle on the shiny black surface of the desk. The guy slowly looked up, as though from sleep. “Yeah?”
“Frank Meany. Tell him Parker’s here.”
“He isn’t in today,” the guy said, and looked back at his magazine.
Parker plucked
The guy’s first instinct was to jump up and start a fight, but his second instinct, more useful, was to be cautious. He didn’t know this jerk who’d just come in and flipped his magazine out of his hands, so he didn’t know where in the pecking order he was positioned. The deskman knew he himself was only a peon in the grand scheme of things, somebody’s nephew holding down a “job” until his parole was done. So maybe his best move was not to take
