'You were the one who made me think of it. I wanted to do it the way you would. I went to a doctor in Ann Arbor. I asked for the form people send to their old doctors to get their records forwarded. I signed it and changed the doctor's address so they would send it to me.'
'Why did you do that?' asked Jane. 'Do you have some condition that needs to be watched?'
Mary Perkins shook her head. 'It just seemed like the right thing to do - to have them. Now, before something happened. I was going to change my name on them and bring them to the new doctor on the first visit. I couldn't think of a reason why a woman my age wouldn't have records somewhere, and I knew I could never make some up. And they're confidential; they're supposed to be protected.'
Jane sighed. 'They are. The address where they're sent isn't.'
'Oh. But how did Barraclough's people get it?'
'There are a lot of ways. You pose as Mary Perkins's probation officer and ask. Or you get a person hired to work in the office so she can watch for the right piece of paper to come in the mail. They might have wanted a copy of your records anyway to see if you had a condition that meant you had to keep seeing one of fifteen specialists in the country, or needed a particular kind of surgery or something. They could even do the same thing you did: send a note from a real doctor requesting the records. The old doctor's secretary would say they'd already been sent to such and such an address. I don't know, and it doesn't matter very much. Did you get them?'
'Get what?'
'The medical records.'
'Oh. Sure.' She looked uncomfortable. 'They got burned up.'
'Good.' Jane went back to her sorting. 'It's one more avenue Barraclough had that he doesn't have anymore.'
Mary's voice began in a quiet tone that was low-pitched and tense, as though she were flexing her throat muscles to keep her vocal cords from tightening. 'They started the fire while I was asleep in the house, you know. They didn't do it so nobody would know they had been there. They made me come out to them because they were dressed like firemen who were there to save me. I couldn't see their faces, just the masks and helmets and raincoats.'
'I know,' said Jane.
'I'm not trying to tell you what happened,' said Mary Perkins. 'I'm trying to tell you what happened to me.' She said more softly, 'To me.' She stared at Jane's face for a reaction, and what she saw told her Jane was waiting. 'I'm new at this,' she said again. 'For you it's like herding cattle around. It's not just taking care of them; it's making sure they don't stampede off a cliff or eat poison or drink so much water that their stomachs rupture.'
'There's nothing to be ashamed of,' said Jane. 'They had you. It wasn't something you imagined.'
'They do that too. They talk softly to the cattle and say, 'Come on, girl. It's okay.' But it's not exactly true and it's not exactly for the cow's benefit.' Mary took a deep breath. 'I'm not used to being the only one who doesn't know things, and I'm not used to this way of looking at the world. I guess I should have had enough imagination to figure out what it was like. I once knew some people slightly who were supposed to be very tough, but I never saw any of them actually
Jane shrugged. 'You told me how it happened.'
'No,' said Mary Perkins. 'No, I didn't. I told you what happened to some savings and loan companies. Not what happened to me.'
Jane stopped sorting and began to string together credit cards and licenses with strips of adhesive tape. She did not dare look at Mary for fear there would be something in her eyes that gave Mary permission to stop talking.
'In the summer of 1981 I was twenty-two. I had just graduated from Florida State. I was good at interviews - I could tell that they liked me - but I couldn't seem to get a job. I remember coming home and closing the door to my bedroom upstairs. I would take off my outfit and hang it up carefully so my makeup wouldn't ruin it when I flopped down on the bed to cry. Then I would get newspapers from other places and write letters to answer the ads. Finally in October I got a job. Winton-Waugh Savings in Waco, Texas, wanted a management trainee. I went to work in the loan department at just about the time when things started heating up. I remember I was making two hundred and seventy-two dollars a week. Pretty soon I started noticing that a lot more money was coming into the bank, and a lot more going out as loans. That was the start.'
'What did you do?'
'I went to a party.' Her face had an ironic smile, as though she had thought about it so many times that she expected Jane to understand. 'The bank had a giant bash for its big customers, and I got introduced to some of them. There were men there who had tens of millions of dollars. And I was with them, talking futures and options with them as if I was one of them. There was one in particular who was really nice. His name was Dan Campbell. Not Daniel. When he signed papers he wrote 'Dan.' He had everything: a big house in Houston, a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, and a plane for flying back and forth. I knew all about them because the loan papers were in a filing cabinet right behind the desk where I sat every day.'
'There was this big candlelight dinner on tables set up in the bank lobby, and dancing. I'd never seen so much liquor, all the bottles lined up on this portable bar with the lights behind them so they looked pretty, like perfume bottles or something. When the formal party was over and most of the people went home, the night wasn't over. There was a small private party just for maybe twenty people like Dan Campbell in the executive suites down the hall. We all started in Mr. Waugh's office, but people wandered out into the garden outside the sliding door and into some of the other offices, carrying their drinks. Somehow Dan Campbell and I ended up in my office. After a few minutes he switched off the light and locked the door. A person would have had to be retarded not to have it occur to her that if we didn't make any noise people would never know we were in there.'
'You don't have to tell me this.'
'Yes, I do,' said Mary. Her face was set and insistent. 'So then Dan Campbell is saying, 'Come on, Lily. Just touch it. I promise it won't bite.' I was not an innocent young thing. I don't want to give you that impression or imply that I was drunk or something. I wasn't left breathless and swept off my feet by a charming older man. If I was dazzled by anything, it was by being near all that money. Also, I liked him and was impressed with him, so I did it.'
'The next day I was back at my desk as usual, feeling a little bit amazed when my eyes would happen to fall on some particular piece of furniture, and then a little depressed and foolish, and in comes a delivery guy with twenty-four long-stemmed red roses in a beautiful crystal vase and puts them on my desk. I see them, and for a second I think maybe I wasn't just this stupid girl who got talked into something. Maybe this was just what I had convinced myself it was for a few minutes last night when I forgot it was the bank that took me to dinner. Then I opened the card, and it was signed by Mr. Waugh, my boss. There was a check for a thousand dollars from the bank that said 'Employee Incentive Bonus.''
'Did you quit?'
'No,' said Mary. 'I didn't. I started to, I thought about it, but I didn't do it. You hear a lot about people doing that, but you don't see it much. People say they walked out, threw their jobs away or something, but at least they have their principles. But it's almost never like that. It almost never happens right away, just like you never think of the clever thing to say to somebody when it would have mattered. And I couldn't think of a way to tell Mr. Waugh I resented getting a check for it without coming out and announcing exactly what it was that he and I both knew I had done. I decided I wasn't about to face that conversation, and there was nothing else I could do to change things. All I could do was cash the check and go on with my life.'
'The bank was growing then, and pretty soon I'm not working in the loan department, I'm a loan officer. Mr. Waugh tells me we've got to go on a business trip to Houston. I remember the flowers and get all upset, but there just isn't a way to get out of it. By now I understand why the bank needs to move money in and out, and my job is to keep the money going out, and that means meeting with customers. And there were two other women going: Mr. Waugh's assistant and another loan officer.
The pay was getting better and better, and I was learning a lot, so I didn't try to get out of it.'
Jane could tell that Mary was not lying now. She was trying to push away the excuses. This was a confession.
