in his mouth. So he did what tens of thousands of fathers all over Europe had been doing with boys like that since 1492, and got him on a ship to America.
Now that Jake had grown up, he suspected there had probably been a bit of self-interest in the decision, since there were advantages to being able to ship a juvenile delinquent to the other side of the world. But Jake knew there was sincerity, too. It was just about at the point in history when men riding full-speed on horseback waving swords were pretty sure to run into artillery and machine guns, even in that part of the world. No man would want his son in on that.
Jake’s father must have learned a lot in his apprenticeship. He had come over at sixteen and never had much trouble finding work. He had made fine furniture, done the interior woodwork of the fancy cabin cruisers they built down at the boatworks even carved some of the beautiful, fanciful animals they mounted on the merry-go-rounds at the Mitchell-Bauer carousel plant.
Jake was at the stage of life where he had come down here enough times to find his brushes hardened into paddles, so he soaked them for an hour or two in fresh turpentine after the visual evidence said they were clean. He also could look out the cellar window from here and see the light in the side window of Jane Whitefield’s house. The lights would come on shortly, and then he would be able to see shadows on the ceiling and, sometimes, silhouettes in the window.
The world was old now. Most of the unexplored territory left was in the space between people’s ears. Jane Whitefield’s mother had comported herself with dignity and modesty during her marriage to Henry Whitefield. But Jake’s wife, Margaret, had once regretfully implied that she had quite a past. Jake had asked a few questions, to see if he had glimpsed a side of Margaret that he hadn’t suspected—jealousy or some need to put any strange woman who showed up in her bailiwick under suspicion—but he hadn’t.
Her hint had been based on certain knowledge, some woman-to-woman confidence, and it was what it had sounded like. Jane’s mother had been left without resources in New York City at the age of twenty. There was a myth that said that there was a time in our society when a twenty-year-old girl could not be left without resources, even in a big city. Somebody would pick her up and let her belong, just as a lost fingerling swims into a school of fish and disappears. Jake was always willing to admit the possibility that such a thing might once have been real, but even in those days it wasn’t true to the experience of anyone then living. He supposed that was what small towns were for. Jane’s mother hadn’t been in a small town. Instead, she found herself a succession of boyfriends who periodically vacationed in places like Elmira and Attica.
Margaret had never been one to be critical of anyone for having had a lot of sex. That would have been completely alien to her nature. The way she always said it was 'People have a right to try to be happy. It’s in the Declaration of Independence.' But she implied that Jane’s mother had tried harder than most before she was finally able to bring it off. Margaret had a genuine sympathy for that, because sympathy was the thing that came easiest to her.
On the whole, Jake was a nurture-over-nature man, but he could not rule out any possibility that science hadn’t ruled out first. When Jane was younger, he had sometimes watched her behavior for the sort of sweet tooth that her mother had. Whatever else had been true of Jane’s mother, she had never turned it into a business.
Young women, even young women of considerable intelligence and self-reliance, had been known to get themselves into trouble with this sort of activity. They had even been known to be found dead. Because no matter what sort of caution a young woman had, once she was in a private place, out of earshot of trusted friends and in any of the positions necessary for what the polite called consummation, there wasn’t much she could do to alter the course of events. It was best to accomplish whatever checking of credentials needed to be done well before that stage.
He glanced over at the cellar window and past his rosebush at Jane’s side window. He had been right. There was a second silhouette. It looked to be about the size of the young man who had been knocking on her door yesterday.
Jane opened the cylinder of the pistol and emptied the bullets into the palm of her hand, then handed the gun back to Felker. She hesitated a second, then held out the five bullets too. He looked puzzled, and she said, 'If you didn’t ask, they’re not the only ones you have.'
He took the five rounds and put them in his pants pocket. 'What do we do now?'
'We figure out what I can do for you,' she said. 'Are you married?'
'I used to be. After about three years of being a cop’s wife, she saw the future before I did.'
'That would be—what—ten years ago. What about girlfriends?'
'Why are you asking these things?'
'Is there anybody in St. Louis who will already have called the cops and reported you missing?'
'No. I told my boss I couldn’t do much while the computers were down, so I would take some vacation time. I told him to leave a message on my machine when things were normal again. My family consists of my sister, Linda, who is married and has four kids and talks to me once a year on the phone, and about thirty cousins I haven’t seen in twenty years. When I told Linda about this, she said I was right to run, and good luck.'
'Did she know where you were going?'
'No.'
She thought hard for a minute. 'I don’t suppose you speak any foreign languages well enough to fool anybody?'
'No. A little Spanish.'
'Do you have anything else that would help you hide in another country?'
'The money. That’s not mine, but the passport is.'
She studied him with a hint of sadness. 'I know all this has happened fast, but you have to think a little bit ahead. A passport with John Felker on it isn’t going to help. You aren’t going to be able to sit at a cafe table in Rio reading American newspapers until you see that they’ve cleared your name. You’re not innocent.'
'No,' he said. 'I didn’t think ...'
'Where do you want to go?'
'I don’t know. They can’t be looking for me harder than people have looked for Harry. Where did you send him?'
She sat in silence for a time, then said, 'I guess it’ll have to be somewhere inside the country. That’s easier, but it takes more discipline.'
'What kind of discipline?'
'You might have special problems.' Then she brightened. 'Were you ever an undercover cop, with a different identity?'
'No,' he said. 'I was the regular kind. What’s the problem?'
'Unlearning old habits,' she said. 'If somebody hits a cop, he hits back, harder.'
'I haven’t been a cop for a long time,' he said.
'Some people can live with the idea that they have enemies and never try to find out who they are. Can you?'
'Why are you asking these things?'
'I need to know who you are, and I want you to know who I am. Who I am to you, anyway. If you want peace, I’ll risk my life to give you that. If you want revenge, take your gun and go back.'
'I gave that up when I decided to come here.'
'I’m just telling you that I don’t waste myself. Nobody finds his way to me until his old life is used up. If you come with me, John Felker is dead. You’re somebody else, who doesn’t have any enemies.'
He thought for a long time. 'I can do it.'
'How did you get here?'
'I took a Greyhound from St. Louis to Buffalo, then a cab.'
'Buses are slow and have regular schedules. Anybody who wants a copy can pick one up and read it. Did anybody follow you?'
'I don’t think so.' Then he admitted, 'I never looked.'
'Did anybody see you come into my house?'
'Your neighbor. The old guy.'
'Where’s your suitcase?'
'In your closet upstairs.'
