Jane led Dahlman to the end of the lake, then up the hill on the sidewalk to a Victorian three-story house with a stone-and-masonry facing that had originally been the foundation and at some point had been raised to the height of a man. She climbed the steps to the wide wooden porch and stopped to beckon to Dahlman. Dahlman hesitated, then climbed the steps, stood beside her, and looked around him.
There was a security screen door with steel mesh and bars set in so that it was much stronger than it looked from a distance. Behind that was a steel fire door with wooden panels glued on to fit the decor. For the first time, Dahlman noticed that the shutters on the lower windows were closed.
The fire door swung open and a thin young man whose pale skin didn’t look entirely clean to Dahlman stared out with a bored, sullen expression. After a moment he muttered, “He said you could come in if you want to.”
“We want to,” said Jane.
The young man slipped the bolt on the screen and Jane stepped inside, then held it for Dahlman. “Come in,” she said. “If I let it close, it’ll lock.”
Dahlman stepped in behind her. The room had once been a spacious foyer. There was a straight staircase leading upward to a second-floor landing, but the railing up there seemed wrong. It was out of proportion, the spokes too short and the base too high. Then Dahlman saw a pair of eyes peering down at him between the spokes. A girl about the same age as the boy at the door sat up, and brought with her a small, square-looking piece of black metal that Dahlman didn’t recognize as an automatic weapon until she turned it away from him and he could see the short barrel in profile. She stood and sauntered off to dissolve into the shadows of the upstairs hallway.
“Well, what do you think of her?” The voice came from somewhere to the left of them, a loud baritone.
Dahlman turned his head to see that Jane was already staring in that direction, into a room beside her that looked almost as it should have. It was the library of the old house, and it was still lined with ornate oak shelves that held rows of leather-bound volumes. There was a tall, bearded, broad-shouldered man with a fat belly that showed a little between his T-shirt and his jeans sitting in a wing chair in the dimly lighted room.
Jane shrugged and walked to the entrance. “She’s way too young to be sincere. She’ll take your money and cut your throat.”
The big man laughed and shook his head. “I was referring to the backup for the door. That’s an innovation since you were here. See, they get past the door—”
“How?” she interrupted. “It would take a half hour with a battering ram.”
“But if they did—say by guile and artifice—then Cindy opens up from the balcony with the Ingram. She’s behind a layer of steel and bricks, and they’re standing down here blinking.” Dahlman saw the man’s eyes settle on him thoughtfully. He didn’t look pleased.
“What’s your name these days?” Jane seemed to be trying to break his train of thought.
“Sid Freeman.”
“Pleased to meet you, as usual,” said Jane.
Sid Freeman’s face was set and expressionless. “Who’s he?”
“I was just getting to that,” Jane said cheerfully. “He’s my runner. His name is Richard Dahlman.”
Sid Freeman stared at Dahlman for seven or eight seconds, then turned to glower at Jane. She avoided his gaze and looked around her as she said, “I don’t see any of the old faces.”
Sid Freeman snorted. “Death, plague, and conflagration on many fronts. Quinn got into the habit of wearing a Rolex and driving to unsavory parts of Chicago in a major piece of automotive extravagance. He made a stop one night while he was on the way to deliver a very big payoff, and the combination was too much for some people to resist.”
“Sorry.” Jane used the moment to inwardly celebrate the absence of Quinn. Sid was unbalanced, but Quinn had been frightening. She had once stood beside him at the window when he had the rifle pressed to his shoulder, watching an unidentified man strolling along the path by the lake. He had been gripped by a tense, aching longing to squeeze the trigger just to see the man’s body jerk and the blood flow. Jane had stared into the spotting scope and said the man’s earphone was a hearing aid, and his glasses were too thick to let him qualify as a cop. Quinn had kept the rifle to his cheek and his finger tapping eagerly on the trigger guard until Sid had taken a turn at the telescope and told Quinn not to fire.
Sid shrugged. “It’s probably better that he’s gone. He would have fallen eventually to a dirty needle or unpremeditated sex; he never considered an evening complete without both.” He looked sadder as he said, “The lovely and talented Christie got caught in a sudden reverse of the natural order. She was killed by a New York cab driver. Actually, he wasn’t a real cab driver—just stole it and spent the evening cruising hotels looking for a rich mark, when Christie was there making a delivery for me. But it makes a better story that way: CABBIES FIGHT BACK!” He laughed at the thought.
His laugh induced a sensation in Jane that wasn’t exactly revulsion. It was the absence of pleasant surprise —what she might have felt if she had looked into an empty barrel and verified that it was still empty. Christie had been Sid’s—what was the term? “Girlfriend” sounded like something playful and innocent, and their closeness had always seemed to be a fetid amalgam of eroticism and conspiracy. Christie had always been putting her lips close to his ear and whispering secrets that had to do with money. But Jane had been sure that whatever minuscule level of affection Sid was capable of, it had been reserved for Christie.
Jane said, “I assume we don’t have to worry about anybody who’s in the house right now?”
Sid Freeman shook his head so that his shaggy hair whipped against his forehead. He pushed it back. “Worry about the kids?” He gave an amused snort. “They’re my greatest possession. They’ve eased the way out of my midlife tragedy and into my reclining years. I picked the first pair up to help me do some hunting—you know, to put Christie and Quinn to rest. They turned out to be ferocious—no hesitation, unencumbered by thoughts, either first or second. And they’re sleek and beautiful to watch, like tigers. So I kept them and got some more. Four so far. I’m hoping they’ll breed. But you don’t want to climb in the cage with them, if you know what I mean: Sid Freeman doesn’t indulge in the marital arts except with blue-haired ladies of his own generation. For you, of course, I’m willing to accept false ID.”
Jane gave a little smile and shook her head slowly from side to side. “Not if you were driving the last bus out of hell and I was made of ice cream.”
Sid Freeman shrugged. “Which, incidentally, is not an inaccurate description of your present predicament.”
“That’s how I know,” said Jane. “I asked myself what I’d do for you if you got me out of this, and the answer already came back: ‘Not a thing.’ ”
“You’re not a spontaneous person,” he chuckled. “But you wouldn’t be here if something weren’t making your little heart go pitty-pat. What is it?”
“Top of the list is that I had to hot-wire a car in an airport lot in Akron, Ohio. It’s on the street with two suitcases on the back seat.”
“J.C. saw it when you got out of it. Old Chevy?”
“That’s the one,” said Jane.
Sid Freeman stood up and walked across the foyer into the kitchen. Dahlman could hear him muttering, and then two or three pairs of feet walking across the floor and a door closing. When he returned, he said, “They’ll dissolve it for you and bring in the bags.” He stared at Jane in a leisurely way. “Is that it?”
Jane nodded at Dahlman. “I take it you know about him.”
“Sure,” he said. “They said he took a hot one from a constable somewhere.” He suddenly poked his finger toward Dahlman. Although Dahlman was five feet away, the surprise made him involuntarily tighten his pectoral muscles and cringe to protect the wound, then wince at the pain it caused. “Right there.”
Jane said, “He’s been sewn up, he’s got antibiotics, but he’s going to need to stay in one place for a while and rest. While he’s healing, I go out and prepare a place for him to be somebody else, do the necessary shopping, and come back.”
“Big shopping?”
“I’ll be gone one week, two at the outside. We both stay two more weeks after that. During that time you help me cook up a first-rate identity: family pictures, school records, work history, credit record, driver’s license, the works. And I want a second identity that’s almost as good, in case he’s spotted using the first one. I could do it alone, but each step takes time and I don’t want to use time that way right now. When we leave, it’s in a good car with a clean title.”
