'Make it two to five months from now.'
Shattuck's head turned only a half-inch. 'She's pregnant?'
'Yes.' She watched him closely. 'I guess the real birth date will be September or October.' She could see he had stopped writing.
Shattuck said, 'It's been a while since you've been here. I should warn you that the prices of all of these items have gone up. Increased security and new electronics.'
'I had assumed something like that would have happened.'
'Everything has to survive electronic scanners. It's got to be real.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'In order to get a driver's license, I have to send somebody with a birth certificate to some other city, and have her apply for the license and take the tests. The credit has to be grown over time.'
'That was always the best way to do things,' said Jane. 'I expected it.'
'Well, the good news is that once an identity is planted, it grows more quickly. That's much better than it used to be. Once anything is verified by anyone anywhere, it proliferates—moves from one data bank to another. That's one of the methods I've been refining since the last time I saw you. I plant articles about imaginary people on Web sites and blogs so that Google will pick them up when anybody searches. I'm constantly updating and expanding. That's all cheap and easy. But the planting of first-rate identities still works best if you can get someone on the inside to create a real record. People who get caught selling things like birth certificates and driver's licenses go away for a long, long time.'
'Oh, one more thing,' Jane said. 'I'd like a simple set, maybe just a California driver's license, with my picture, in the name Delia Monahan.'
'Delia Monahan. I take it we're talking about a real, living person?'
'Yes.'
'Then I can get a duplicate and doctor it.'
'Good. How much are we talking about for everything I want?'
'I'd say we're probably in the vicinity of...' He put a dot beside each item he had written, mouthing 'Ten, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four,' then said aloud, 'Forty thousand. Could go as high as sixty.'
'Can I pay you ten right now, and send the rest later?'
He looked regretful. 'Janie, your word is the word of the saints. But the saints are dead. You could die, too.'
'Someone has already been looking for this girl, haven't they, Stewart?'
Shattuck pursed his lips and stared at her for a second. 'There could be other pregnant twenty-year-olds. I'll let you see if it's the same one.' He walked across the room to a second table, woke up a laptop computer that was attached to a printer, and brought up an e-mail message. 'Read.'
Jane stepped to the computer. The screen read, 'Christine Monahan, Female, age twenty, is worth one hundred thousand. Open attachment to see photo gallery.' Then it gave an 800 telephone number, but no name or address. Jane said, 'Did you open the attachment?'
'No. If I took money for turning in people on the run, how long would I live?'
'May I?'
'Go ahead.'
Jane downloaded the attachment and opened it. There were a dozen small pictures on the page. In a couple of them Christine was sitting at a desk that was set on a shiny slate floor in a room that seemed to be all glass with tropical plants behind it, like an atrium. In a few, Christine's hair was long and blond, and in others dark and shorter, pinned behind her head. They seemed to have been taken over a period of years. Jane said, 'This isn't good news.'
'I expect not.'
'But it doesn't change our deal. I still need the ID for her. Can you charge a credit card for the price?'
'How much?'
'All of it—forty thousand.'
He looked at the pictures on the screen, then back at Jane. 'You barely know her. Are you sure you want to spend that much?'
'Think of the air miles I'll earn.'
'That kind of charge usually triggers a phone call. Will you be available to take it and tell the Visa people that it's really you?'
'No, but I'll call them before I drop out of sight, and authorize it.'
'That works for me. You can bring her in.'
When Jane opened the door, the thin, silent figure was standing on the other side, as she had expected. In the light, she saw it was a pretty woman about thirty, not a teenager. She was wearing a pair of tight black satin pants and an indigo pullover that made her look very slender.
Jane said, 'I've got to go outside for a few minutes, and bring someone back.'
'I know. You can park closer to the house if you want.' The woman opened the front door, and Jane stepped outside.
The night air felt even warmer now that Jane was out of the air-conditioned house. She could see that the streets around the park were still deserted, but she stopped after she was away from the house and listened for engines. There was still the same silence. As she made her way across the park and she could see the Volvo, she strained her eyes to see Christine, but she couldn't. She must have gotten into the back seat to sleep.
Jane kept her eyes moving, but they returned to the Volvo. She had driven the car for a couple of years, so she had a practiced intuitive feel for the shape, the weight, the steering, and the way the car looked when it was parked. Something felt wrong. She stopped beside the nearest tree trunk, stayed in its shadow for a moment, and looked at the car. It was sitting too high. That's what it was. When Jane had gotten out of the car, she had looked back. The car had rested very slightly lower on its springs than it did now. It was empty. Jane trotted along the side of the park, crossed the street, and came back around the big old feed store slowly, listening for the sounds of movement. On her second turn she came up beside the Dumpster, and she could see Christine crouching behind it.
Jane said quietly, 'Christine, it's me.'
Christine's body jerked and she spun to see Jane. 'Oh, you scared me so much. I didn't hear you.'
Jane crouched, too. 'Why are you out here?'
'I woke up and you were gone.'
'I told you I was going.'
'You did?'
'Yes.'
'I must have been asleep. I woke up and I got worried. Where were you?'
'Come on. I'll tell you while we drive over there.' They got back into the car and she pulled forward. 'I was at that big brick house across the park. See it?'
'Yeah.'
'It belongs to a man I know who sells identification, and that's something you're likely to need.'
'Tonight?'
'Tonight is the time when we're here. Later we might be near other people who do this kind of work, but most of them aren't as good at it, and some of the others might sell us out if somebody waves enough money around. This man probably won't.'
'Probably?'
'He hasn't in the past. That's all you really know about what anyone will do.' Jane drove slowly around the park toward the house. 'When he talks to you, listen carefully and answer him honestly and politely.'
'I'm not a child.'
'I'm sorry. I don't know you well, so I can't guess what you know. These transactions are tricky. We're all taking risks. He can sell us out, but we can sell him out, too. We're forming a temporary alliance. He and I are still alive because so far, in all of our temporary alliances, we've been selective about the people we trust, and we've been trustworthy. We've chosen the right ones and sent the wrong ones away.'
'You're saying he's going to judge me.'
