A String of Beads (18 page)

13

T
hey were in Cleveland,” said Mr. Malconi.

“They?” said Salamone. “I thought he was alone.”

“No. He made a phone call to his mother that came from the hotel district just outside
of Cleveland. Some men went to check whether the guy was staying in one of them. He
had come with a girlfriend, and she had done the registering, so it took a while to
find the right room. By the time the guys got there, he and his girlfriend had slipped
out.”

“So they got away?”

“I know,” said Mr. Malconi. “I was a little surprised myself. It sounded to me like
the Indian drove fast, and none of them had the balls to drive as fast as he did.
It stands to reason that Teddy’s guys weren’t anxious to die to please me, but I like
to see men who don’t give up that easy.”

“Should I be getting my crew to start looking?”

“No, no,” said Malconi. “Teddy says the guy and his girlfriend were heading south
out of Ohio toward West Virginia or Maryland, and I called some friends of ours down
there just before you called me. I think we’ll hear some good news before too long.
They can operate better than we can on their own ground, and we won’t waste our guys’
time on the Indian when they could be up here earning money.”

“I understand. Thank you for doing me the honor of telling me this. We’ll just sit
tight until you tell us different.”

“You know,” said Mr. Malconi. “There is one thing you can do for me while you’re waiting.
This guy Crane considers you his partner, right?”

“A silent partner,” said Salamone. “I get ten percent.”

“I’d like you to get a storage unit for me. Make that two, but not next to each other.
Put them in names like Smith and Brown. Not the same name. And make sure that I have
the only keys to the locks.”

“Of course, Mr. Malconi. I’ll do that today.”

“Good,” said Malconi. “When you bring me the keys, maybe I’ll know more about your
problem.” He hung up.

Salamone stood for a moment looking at his cell phone’s display to be sure the call
had ended, and he hadn’t just lost the signal for a moment. He didn’t want the old
man listening to his conversations for the rest of the day.

He shook his head. It was always risky to call Mr. Malconi. And expensive. Every time
the old man talked to anybody about anything, he exacted some kind of payment, like
a tax. If Mr. Malconi knew you had the owner of a prosthetics factory on the hook,
he would want a free leg or something. Salamone thought about the two storage bays.
He could only hope the old man didn’t do anything strange with them. Salamone didn’t
want to have a bunch of drugs in them, or a cache of explosives. Malconi’s business
dealings could include anything.

JANE AND JIMMY HAD BEEN
driving eastward all day through the rural countryside of Upstate New York on Route
20. They passed through small towns where traffic signals impeded their progress,
and they ate in small diners. Between towns they stopped at roadside stands and bought
fruit and snacks. They avoided taverns, because they all had television sets mounted
in the corners and above the bar, where people intending to watch some game might
instead see a mug shot of the man being sought for the murder of Nick Bauermeister.
Their progress was slow, but a car following them on Route 20 would be easy to spot.

Once when Jimmy was taking his turn to drive, he said, “I’m getting a little tired
of small-town America. Can we switch to the thruway for a couple of hours?”

“It’s better to stay off any road with tolls,” Jane said.

“Are we out of money?”

“No. It’s not the tolls that bother me. It’s the booths. They all have cameras mounted
on them, and the police have been using them more and more often to see if a car with
a license plate they’re looking for has gone through.”

“Do you think they know this car or its license number?”

Jane shrugged. “Can’t tell. The people who chased us out of Cleveland saw it. If all
they need to do is get you into a jail, they might pass that information to the New
York State police through some innocent-looking intermediary.”

“Slow back roads it is, then,” said Jimmy. “I’m always shocked by how far you think
ahead.”

“It’s not clairvoyance. It’s avoiding situations that might increase the risks. If
you don’t want to be found, you stay away from cameras, particularly ones operated
by police agencies. You try to be sure as few people see your face as possible. None
of these precautions is hard. They’re just inconvenient.”

“The hard things are more than inconvenient. It’s hard not to be able to go home,
and not to be able to check up on my mother, to be sure she has what she needs. Half
the time her car isn’t working right.”

“You’re luckier than most people in that way. Your mother is surrounded by people
who care about her. There are probably four hundred people on the reservation who
would love to drive her wherever she wants—one a day for a year and a month.”

“But none of them is me.”

“I think you’ll be back before long.”

He smiled. “Where are we going?”

“I’ll know when we get there. We’re just passing through New York State on the way,
because as soon as you cross a state line, you’re no longer at the top of the list
of fugitives. You’re somebody else’s problem.”

In the evening Jane rented a motel room near Saratoga Springs, and the next morning
after breakfast they crossed into Vermont. In the afternoon they drove through miles
of hills covered with thick, old-growth forests, and then crossed the Connecticut
river into Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Jane drove north through Lebanon. There were restaurants, a couple of plazas full
of huge discount stores, a few hotels, a sign for a hospital that was back from the
road at the end of a driveway that wound out of sight among the trees. Next the road
narrowed again and they passed rows of clapboard houses, most of them white, built
with steep, smooth gray roofs designed to make the deep snows of the winter slide
off them. And then they were in Hanover. As they drove past small stores selling clothing,
food, furniture, and housewares, they reached the center of the small town and were
surrounded by the lawns and the white spires and redbrick buildings of Dartmouth College.

“Dartmouth,” said Jimmy. “We’d better get out of here before somebody notices I don’t
fit in.”

“We look perfect,” Jane said. “The place was started as a school for Indians. Thayendanegea’s
sons were among their first graduates. It must have been in the seventeen seventies
or so.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot you went to Cornell. You and Thayendanegea are Ivy Leaguers. Is
this where they taught him to call himself Joseph Brant?”

“No,” said Jane. “After his father died, his mother married a Mohawk named Brant.
She had the same clan name as I was given—Owandah. That’s why I was curious about
her when I was a kid. What do you think of the town?”

“It’s pretty nice. Not big, but nice. I’ll bet it’s a bear in the winter, though.”

“Is there some part of Haudenosaunee country that’s not a bear in the winter? Some
tropical island in the middle of Lake Ontario?”

“Not that I know of, but I can dream.”

“You remember I said I’d know the right place when I saw it?”

“Sure. Is this it?”

“I think so. It’s hundreds of miles from the last place anybody saw you, and it’s
not on any of the usual routes people use to get anywhere. It’s a college town, so
maybe half the town is made up of strangers from all over the world. Most of them
won’t even arrive until early fall. It’s got everything necessary for a comfortable
life, but it’s too small to attract creeps. It’s hard to rob somebody you’ll see again
in the next week.” Jane turned onto Wheelock Street and kept going slowly, looking
at the buildings and the people walking on the sidewalks.

Jimmy said, “It seems pleasant enough. How long do you want to stay here?”

“That’s the next thing I have to tell you,” said Jane. “Not long. I’m leaving you
here on your own for a while.”

“You are?”

“Somebody has to go back and find out why people you don’t know are chasing you. There
isn’t any way for you to go with me. You’d be recognized.”

Jimmy said, “No. Please don’t do that. At least one of the guys in Avon killed Nick
Bauermeister. And one of the guys in Cleveland fired two rounds into our car.”

“You see the problem?” she said. “The number seems to be growing. I don’t know why.
And one of these times they’re going to succeed in killing us.”

They stayed at a Marriott hotel in Lebanon near the hospital for the next two nights
while Jane found an apartment to rent. She picked one that was on the lower floor
of a house near the downtown section of Hanover on Chambers Street and rented it as
Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Kaplan. She filled out the application, paid the deposit and a
month’s rent with her Melissa Kaplan credit card. She listed her husband’s profession
as “disabled veteran” so nobody would wonder why he never went out to work, and hers
as “sales” to explain why she was going to be away most of the time. It took less
than a half hour before she received the call telling her that the application had
been approved. She bought a bed, a dresser, a couch, and a laptop computer. Then she
set up an Internet account under Melissa Kaplan’s name. The next day she bought a
set of dishes, a table and chairs, filled the refrigerator with groceries, and spent
the night on the new couch.

In the morning while they were having breakfast she said to Jimmy, “Today is the day.”

“Are you—”

“Sure? Yes.”

“What time is your flight?”

“No time. I’m taking the Greyhound bus to Boston. The bus stop is at Wheelock and
Main, within walking distance from here. Then I’ll fly from Boston to Buffalo, and
arrive tonight.”

“I could drive you to the Boston airport. In fact, I could drive you to Buffalo.”

“Not a good idea. I’ve got everything worked out.”

“What’s everything?”

She opened her purse and began taking things out. “Here’s some cash. It’s nearly five
thousand dollars. Pay for things with it—food and so on.” She put a thick pile of
hundred dollar bills on the table. “The rent, electricity, water, and gas are all
paid for a month. If a bill comes due, write in the number of this credit card and
sign Melissa Kaplan’s name. Try to keep your fingerprints off things like that. There’s
a box of thin disposable rubber gloves in that drawer, and you can use them for handling
mail. That reminds me. Don’t write letters to anyone, or use your phone to call any
number but my cell.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I’m stupid, but I learn.”

“Just remember all the things I’ve taught you about staying invisible. If you have
to go out, do it mostly at night in the car. I’ve filled the tank with gas so you’ll
be able to wait awhile before it’s empty again. Keep the tank at least half full in
case you have to get out quickly. Don’t start conversations with people, but if they
speak to you, smile and answer in a friendly way. After that, don’t linger. Have your
fake life story ready, and rehearse it when you’re alone. You know what it has to
be—dull, average-guy stuff. Nothing anybody can use as an interesting story about
a guy she met at the Laundromat. Wear the clothes I bought you when you go out. Look
clean and neat. Before you leave, take a look out the window to see what other men
have on that day. Right now the men I saw on the street are wearing polo shirts, shorts,
sneakers, baseball caps. Keep the other stuff for evenings or cooler weather.”

Jane looked up at the ceiling. “What else? Be observant, but don’t seem to be staring
at people. There’s no reason to believe anybody knows you’re here, so you don’t need
to look too hard. The main thing is to remember that every contact is a risk. Minimize
risk. Anything I’m forgetting to say? Any questions for me?”

“You know I feel terrible about this, right? The idea that you’re doing something
dangerous for me makes me sick.”

“I know that,” she said. “If it helps, I’m not going back to fight any battles. I’m
going because if I can find out what we’re running from it will give me a way keep
us both safe.” She patted his shoulder and lifted her backpack as she headed for the
door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you have to get out in the meantime, do it
fast, and then call me later.” The door opened and closed, and Jane was gone

IT WAS AFTER NINE AT
night when Dr. Carey McKinnon drove along the highway toward home. Even after dark
he would be able to see the house in the next mile, he knew, because he’d been using
this route since he was a small child. The McKinnon house was an old one, built along
the side of a minor Seneca trail. In 1726 the French had built Fort Niagara about
twenty miles from here to control the place where the river flowed into Lake Ontario,
and when the British and Iroquois took it in 1759, a McKinnon had been at the nineteen-day
siege.

A few months later the former soldier built his two-story log-and-mortar house and
began to farm and trade with the Senecas. Later he sheathed the house in fieldstones,
and expanded the structure beyond the simple rectangle it had been. The house today
still stood on a remnant of his farm, and it had been expanded periodically over the
next two centuries. Most of the trees in the ten acres around the house had been alive
at the time the house was built, all of them now three or four feet thick and very
tall—white oak, black walnut, sycamore, bitternut hickory, sugar maple, chestnut.
The next few generations of McKinnons had been doctors, and the farming they did on
the side became less and less important. If Carey had been the sort of fool whose
pride in his family depended on their long tenure in the area, marrying a Seneca woman
was the perfect cure for that folly. How long had Jane’s family been here? Ten thousand
years? Twenty? He missed her, and it seemed that almost any thought he had led him
back to her. Worse than missing her was thinking about the way they had parted. Worse
than that was the worry.