Dance for the Dead (40 page)

“Bank of Sanford, corner
of Commerce and Field. Turn left here.”

“It must be almost closing
time,” said Jane. “But we may be able to catch your
friend coming out.”

“We don’t want to
catch him coming out,” said Mary. Her voice was still even and
low, as though it were an enormous effort to talk. “We’ll
catch him on the way in. Everything happens at night.”

They waited in the bank lobby
until Jane saw that each customer who approached the wide glass doors
hurried to give the nearest handle a tentative tug to be sure they
weren’t locked, then stepped inside with a small sigh of
relief, and then during the walk to the tellers’ windows,
looked up at the clock built into the wall.

At one minute before four a man
about forty years old with hair that was combed straight back to
emphasize the gray hair at his temples entered the bank. He wore a
lightweight suit that had a slight sheen to it, and on his feet were
a pair of brightly shined shoes that it took Jane a second to
recognize as cowboy boots.

“There he is,” said
Mary Perkins. She stood up quickly, but the barely audible groan she
gave showed that it had cost her something. She stepped in front of
the man. “Hello, Gene,” she said. “It’s me –
Mary Perkins.”

The man looked at her, puzzled,
while he inhaled once, and then puffed the breath out when he
remembered. His eyes shot around him in a reflex, as though he were
checking to see who was watching. He said uncomfortably, “Well,
now, Mary. How are you these days? I heard you had some problems a
while back.”

“Yes, I’ve been
away,” said Mary. “I can see that you’re thinking I
don’t look like the experience did me any good. You’re
absolutely right.”

The man’s brow wrinkled a
little to tilt his eyebrows in sympathy, and his mouth forced itself
into a sad smile. “Well, I can see it’s behind you now,
and that’s the main thing.”

Mary said, “Do you still
have an office? I’d like to talk to you about some business.”

The man reflexively leaned back
away from her. “Mary, you have to understand that things don’t
work the way they once did. It’s nice to see you, but – ”

Mary turned and nodded to Jane,
who was still sitting in the overstuffed chair next to the marble
table where the pens were chained. She stepped forward to join them,
but she didn’t smile. Mary said, “This is Katherine
Webster from the Treasury Department. This is Gene Hiller, my old
friend.”

The man looked from one to the
other. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “What’s
going on?”

“Don’t worry,”
said Mary. “If your time is coming, I don’t know about
it. Let’s talk.”

Jane began to open her purse and
fiddle with the little black wallet, as though she were about to pull
out a badge.

Gene Hiller looked around him
again, then said quickly, “This way.”

His office was small, a place
where he could hang his coat while he was out in the computer room.
As soon as they were inside, Mary closed the door and stood in a
place that made it impossible for him to sit behind his desk where he
felt safe. Jane could see that Mary had once been very good at this.

“Here it is, Gene,”
she said. “I’ve made a deal with Katherine here. I’m
going to give the money back voluntarily.” She seemed to notice
the sweat forming on his pale forehead. “I’m not –
confirm this for me, Katherine – not expected to testify
against anyone who may have had anything to do with any of the
illegal activities in which I was once engaged.”

The muscles in his shoulders
seemed to relax so that his neck actually got longer. “What…
brings you here?”

“It seems I can’t go
to Zurich, pick up a check with a lot of zeros on it, and fly back
here to hand it over.” She gave Jane a sarcastic smile.
“There’s very little trust left in the world.”

“I see,” said Gene,
but all he could see was that in Mary’s mind Jane represented
what was stopping her.

“My attorney tells me that
in order to get past the judge a week from now, it has to be
voluntary, and apparently spontaneous, as evidence that I feel
remorse and have been rehabilitated sincerely. I can’t appear
to have bought my way out with the Treasury Department. This puts me
in a serious bind. Consequently I have to ask old friends for help.”

The threat was not wasted on
him. If for some reason she could not give them the money, there was
something else she could give them. “What do you want me to
do?”

“An electronic transfer,”
she said. “Receive the money, then send it on a second later.
Write this down, and get it right. Credit Suisse, 08950569237. If
they need a transfer request, I’ll sign one and you can fax it.
If they ask for verification tell them I’ve furnished
identification. The name I used was James Barraclough.”

Gene looked at her for a moment.
“Want to tell me why you put a false name on a numbered account
in a Swiss bank?”

Mary said, “I’m
rehabilitating myself these days, not giving anybody lessons.”

His eyebrows slowly began to
rise. He smelled something. “Where exactly do you want these
funds sent?”

Mary took a deep breath and blew
it out. “Turn on your payroll computer and punch up the account
number where you send the money for federal tax withholding. Can you
do that?”

“Sure. What then?”

“Transfer all of the money
from the Swiss bank into that account without ever having it appear
on your computers as a transaction received by this bank. Give it to
the I.R.S.”

She looked at Jane Whitefield.
Her eyes were wet and red and hot. “You think that will do it?”

Jane nodded solemnly.

Gene Hiller took the paper and
walked into the computer room. There was a screen with a long list of
transactions he was supposed to monitor – money the Federal
Reserve was lending the bank overnight, money the bank was moving
into accounts all over the world to cover investments it had made
during the day, adjustments to the accounts of the various branches,
like water being poured from a pitcher to even out the levels of a
hundred little cups.

Gene ignored these and went to
another terminal, typed in the name of the Swiss bank and waited
while their machine signified that it had heard and recognized his
machine. Then he told it he had authorization to close a numbered
account and transfer the money. He typed in the number and waited.
After a moment he said, “You sure this number is right? It
doesn’t usually take this long.”

“It’s right,”
said Mary firmly. “Tell them again.”

As he prepared to do it,
something happened. Letters and numbers appeared on the screen to
fill in blanks. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Mary.
“Jesus, Mary, two hundred and six million dollars? You stole
two hundred and six million?”

Mary almost smiled. “No,
Gene. I only stole fifty-two. The rest I inherited. Send it now.”

Gene typed in the number of the
Internal Revenue Service account and tapped his return key. Before
his fingers rebounded from the keyboard, the money was gone. He
stared at the screen as though he were having trouble believing what
he had seen, and certainly couldn’t believe what he had done.

Mary said, “Probably
nobody is ever going to ask you about this, but if they do, you don’t
know a thing. You didn’t do it. That’s part of the deal I
made. There can’t be any way in the world for anyone to get a
penny of it back.” She patted his shoulder. “That means
you too, Gene.”

“I’m not that
stupid,” he said. “Anybody who asks the I.R.S. to refund
his two hundred and six million dollars is going to get a lot of
things, but none of them will be a check.”

“Right,” said Mary.
She leaned down and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks,
baby. Now I’ll leave you alone for the rest of your life.”

She walked out of the computer
room with her head high and her shoulders back. Jane could tell that
she was in pain, but she stood erect until Hiller had let them out
the fire door and they were around the corner getting into the car.
As soon as she sat down the strength seemed to go out of her, and her
head rested on the seat.

“Mary?” said Jane.
“You okay?”

“It was better than I ever
dreamed. All the time I was in that house I was so scared, so hurt,
that I thought he had opened an account just to take my money. But
you have to open a numbered account in person. How could he do it
that fast? He had me, but he had no place to put my money except in
the account where he kept all the money he had stolen for years. I
got to take every penny he had and pour it all into a sewer.”

Jane
drove fast across the flat plains of northern Texas. The night was
just beginning, and she knew that she would need to use this time
well. The trip from California to the Texas bank had taken them all
day.

She tried to imagine what
Barraclough was doing now. She was convinced that Mary knew enough
about money to be reliable in her guess that Barraclough had driven
to a bank in San Francisco that morning. He and Farrell could not
have returned before about noon to find Mary gone and his two
trainees dead.

He would have found Farreirs
white station wagon by one o’clock and figured out that Jane
and Mary had gotten into another car. Then he and Farrell would have
spent more time disposing of the two bodies, cleaning the farmhouse
of evidence that a woman had been held there, and removing any
objects or prints that connected him with the property. That still
left him with a van and two cars, with only Farrell to help him
drive. He needed at least one person, perhaps two more people, he
could trust to drive the vehicles back to Los Angeles. The most
likely candidates would have to come all the way up from Enterprise
Development in L.A.

She guessed that Barraclough
would have been finished with all of this by nine or ten in the
evening, about five hours after the time when all of his stolen money
had disappeared. She said, “Is there some way Barraclough would
know his account in Switzerland was gutted?”

Mary didn’t answer. Jane
glanced over her shoulder and saw that she was curled up like a
child, asleep on the back seat. The question would have to wait.
Probably the bank would send him some kind of written closing
statement.

Jane couldn’t risk going
back to the airport and flying Mary out of Dallas tonight. If
Barraclough had the presence of mind to ask for confirmation that the
gigantic deposit he had made was credited to his account, he would be
told that his account was closed. Even if the Swiss bank didn’t
know that the transfer to the Internal Revenue Service had been
initiated in Dallas, there would probably be a way to find out. She
had to assume Barraclough would have people searching Dallas before
the sun came up.

She looked at Mary again, then
returned her eyes to the road. She had been holding down the feelings
for days, but now she let them surface. What she had done was
unforgivable. She had used this woman for bait and let the beast have
her. All she could do now was try to preserve what was left. Whatever
had been holding Mary together – the delay of physical
sensation that came from shock, or maybe merely the energy of sheer
hatred – had apparently drained out of her now. Before she had
fallen asleep she had been weak and vague enough to make traveling a
risk. Jane would have to get her indoors before morning. She used the
last eight hours of darkness to run north out of Texas and up the
short side of Oklahoma.

It was still dark when Jane
bumped up off the road onto the smooth asphalt surface of a gas
station and turned off the car’s engine. She heard Mary sit up
in the back seat, so she turned around to watch her squinting and
blinking at the lighted island, then reach up to run her fingers
through her hair. Jane watched her slowly begin to remember. She was
suddenly agitated. “Where are we? Why are we stopping?”

Jane chose to answer the first
question. “Miami, Oklahoma.”

“Where are we going?”

Jane was glad to hear the
annoyance in Mary’s voice. It was a vital sign, like a pulse or
a heartbeat. “This is it for now. It’s safe here.”

At a little past nine a.m. they
walked into the gift shop in the Inter-Tribal Council Building. The
young woman who was cleaning the display case turned and smiled, then
went back to her work. Jane waited until the woman sensed that she
wanted to talk. She looked up from her work, let her eyes rest on
Jane for a second, then said, “I’ll bet you’re here
visiting relatives.”

Mary smiled involuntarily.

“Yes,” said Jane.
She saw Mary’s face turn to hers in surprise. “I was
hoping to catch Martha McCutcheon here.”

“Oh, Seneca,” said
the woman.

“That’s right,”
said Jane. She held out her hand. “Jane Whitefield.”

The woman took it and smiled.
“Rowena Cloud. Ottawa.”

“I’m very pleased to
meet you,” said Jane. “Is Martha in the back?”

“Martha hasn’t been
well this week,” said Rowena Cloud. “She has arthritis
bad in the winter, and it’s been bitter cold for a couple of
days, so she might be in bed. She didn’t mention anything about
going anyplace. If she’s not home, though, come on back. You
can stay at our house. I can give you directions, and the key is over
the door.”

“Well, thank you,”
said Jane warmly. “We’ll go see if she’s up to
visitors.”

As they walked down the street,
Mary asked softly, “Are you really an Indian, or is that some
kind of assumed identity too?”

Jane looked at her, amused.
“Think I could fool her?” She opened the car door and
waited while Mary eased into the seat, then started the car and
pulled out onto the road.

“How did she know? You
have blue eyes.”

“This is Indian country.
She’s seen about every kind of Indian there is, so she’s
an expert. There are reservations all around us.”