your problem, is it?”
He shook his head.
“What is? Mae?”
He stared at her. He wasn’t sure what she meant.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need her again tomorrow, too. I’ve got a couple more men coming back from the road, and I promised them a party if they’d behave themselves while they were out there.” She chattered on, as he stood there, not quite believing what he was hearing. “I’ve got two girls out sick. They’re roommates, so it’s probably some damned thing they ate. But there’s nothing else I can do.”
“You’re using her for parties? I’ve been paying you, and you’re—”
“That’s an ugly thing to say,” Tracy snapped. “I never said that for five hundred bucks you could own her. She’s a free person, and this is America, not some sandbox country where women wear veils and stay home. I just asked her if she wanted to pick up some extra money, and she did.” She let her irate glare soften a bit, and she looked at him with bleary, mock-sympathetic eyes. “Maybe the poor thing is worried. After all, you did fall a little behind on your payments . . .” Her voice trailed off so he could finish the thought himself.
“What do I owe?”
Tracy’s eyes glowed, opening wide to let a flash of greed show through for an instant. “Let’s see. A hundred a day for two weeks for the apartment suite is fourteen hundred. Five hundred a day for Mae for a week is thirty- five. I’ll only add a hundred for the lost interest, and keep it at an even five thousand, if you’ve got it today.”
“You want me to pay interest when you’re charging me in advance?”
“Sugar,” she said in a wheedling voice, “I’m just going by the due date. If money is due on a certain date, and you’re late, you always pay interest, don’t you?”
“I thought you were doing this as a favor.”
“I am, honey, I am. I’m fronting for you, putting up my own money in advance, keeping you safe. If you have the money today, I can knock off the interest, and make it forty-nine.”
“I don’t have it on me.”
“I know you walked here, but I can drive you home to get it.”
“It’s not there.” He could see the skeptical look coming into her eyes, so he said, “I’ll have to drive someplace out of town to pick it up. It’s going to take a couple of days.” He frowned. “I want to take Mae with me.”
Tracy sighed deeply and rolled her eyes. “You don’t even have the money you already owe me—let alone poor Mae—but you want everyone else to change our plans at the last minute?” She raised a penciled-in eyebrow. “Maybe you ought to get a job.”
No sign of emotion appeared on his face. He might have been a photograph of a man looking off into the distance. When Tracy saw that, she felt relieved. She had been surprised by an instant of hot panic after she had said the part about the job, thinking maybe she had gone a tiny bit too far. Her own word “job” had reminded her of what he did for a living. As he walked out of the office, she began to feel the cool relief begin to turn into pride, then anticipation. The next time she saw him, he would be bringing more money.
25
Prescott began to work on his identity the day after he arrived in St. Louis. He rented an apartment in a building that was a new imitation of an old-style residence, designed by an architect who had not been able to resist adding ugly embellishments. He threw away his generic suitcase and began shopping. He bought an eight- year-old Corvette that had been badly rebuilt after an accident. He bought clothes from thrift stores, everything originally on the expensive side, but just a bit out-of-date. Then he went to a store that sold surplus military gear.
He wandered up and down the aisles looking for precisely the right items. He bought a navy watch cap and a black turtleneck sweater, then found a navy blue hooded sweatshirt. He found an olive-drab tool bag, and a pair of thin black leather gloves that were labeled “police-style.” He went next to a big hardware store and picked out a selection of tools that looked convincing: a battery-operated drill, a few punches and picks, a long, thin screwdriver, a pry bar. He bought a glass cutter and a suction cup with a handle on it made for carrying sheets of glass. By then the tool bag was full, so he stopped.
The second day, he drove the three hundred miles to Chicago, checked into a hotel, and slept. When he woke, he began to shop in earnest. He went to camera shops, computer stores, electronics stores, buying any item that appealed to his eye. Always, he searched for good deals on high-end merchandise that was used, but sometimes he had to settle for new. He spent most of his time looking at estate jewelry. He bought several watches—a couple of Rolexes, a Cartier tank watch, some women’s watches with diamonds, and a variety of others that had some resale value. He bought a wide assortment of women’s jewelry, being sure to include some spectacular finds and some junk. He picked up some men’s items too—a couple of sets of cuff links and studs that contained a lot of gold and semiprecious stones but weren’t in style, a stopwatch, fancy lighters, money clips, rings.
He went to a numismatics show and assembled a collection of gold coins. He went to antique shops and bought a set of ivory carvings and a silver tea set. He spent a day on the South Side searching secondhand stores, buying similar items that might be as old and didn’t look any worse but cost practically nothing. For three days, Prescott shopped. He walked through the stores pretending they were houses. If he could imagine an item as the one that would catch the eye of a thief, he bought it. He packed all of his purchases in boxes, shipped them to his apartment in St. Louis, and drove back to meet them.
He spent the next few days refining his identity by rehearsing his anecdotes, inventing and memorizing names, places, and dates, and compiling documents using the computer scanners and printers he had picked up in Chicago.
He spent a few evenings establishing himself as a regular at the Paddock Club. He would arrive there at around eight, go in, and sit at the bar. The man with glasses who had met with the two traveling couriers from Cincinnati returned from his dinner break between eight-thirty and nine, and presided at the bar.
Prescott watched him for an evening and confirmed his theory about him. There were two younger bartenders who did the heavy lifting and all the routine fetching of the endless bottles of beer. This man seldom waited on a customer except during the frantically busy period from nine to one, when all three were pouring drinks with both hands, shoving them onto the wet surface of the bar, snatching up money, and dispensing change on the way to the next customer. The rest of the time, he leaned on the wooden surface behind the bar, usually with his arms folded across his chest. Prescott could see that his eyes flitted to the cash register whenever one of the bartenders approached it, then surveyed the customers ranged around the room at small, round tables and along the bar, then focused for a moment on the front door, where he seemed to be counting the ones leaving and the ones coming in, and finally, went to the woman on the stage.
The women were the constant—hypothetically, the center of attention. But they existed on the edge of the huge room, in the world of the bar but not part of it. The place was like a water hole on a veldt, where two different species were side by side but had very little to do with each other.
The men drank and talked, sometimes laughing and then suddenly tense with anger, the sinews in their necks standing out and their faces acquiring the blank stare that wasn’t really seeing. About once a night, two of them would go outside, each accompanied by a companion or two, and then one set of men would return and the other vanish into the night. But the rest of the time, the men slouched in their chairs, now and then staring wistfully at the woman on the stage for a time, but then returning their attention to their friends, or going to join the crowd waiting at the bar for another drink.
Each of the women was alone. A number of the women seemed to have been doing this for a long time. The music would begin, and from behind a small black curtain at the side, a woman in her late thirties or early forties would appear, and she would dance. She would be preoccupied, her thoughts not on the men. When Prescott studied the faces of these women for thoughts, he imagined a compendium of the mundane. This one seemed to be thinking about the things she was going to buy on the way home: milk and bread, of course, and she was almost out of shampoo—had forgotten it the last two trips—plus some Ziploc bags, laundry detergent. Was she out of dishwashing detergent, too? Might as well get some just in case.
The woman Prescott was watching danced, completing the turns and gyrations far below the level of
