“Red will call you.”
Hanging up, Parker dialed McWhitney’s bar, got him, and said, “I’m on a pay phone,” and read off the number. Then he hung up.
It was five minutes before the phone here rang. Parker picked up and immediately reeled off Meany’s name and phone number, then said, “Ten grand for one. They need a sample, I’m busy, so you work out the switch. Your name is Red.” When he hung up, McWhitney hadn’t said a word.
2
Before the Massachusetts armored car job went sour, Parker had had clean documents under a couple of names, papers that were good enough to pass through any usual level of inspection. In getting out from under that job, he’d burned through all of his useful identification, and made it very tough to move around. He had to deal with that right now, make it possible to operate in the world.
How much of a problem this lack of identification meant was shown by the fact that Claire had to drive him to Maryland Friday afternoon. With no driver’s license and no credit cards, he couldn’t rent a car, and if he borrowed hers and drove it himself and something went wrong, it would kill her identity as well.
Early in the evening of Friday they checked into a motel north of Baltimore and had an early dinner, and then she drove him to Robbins’ address on Front Street in a very small town called Vista, near Gunpowder Falls State Park. They’d driven several uphill miles of winding road, but if there was a vista it was too dark to see.
The town, when they got there, wasn’t much: one crossroads, a church and firehouse, and half a dozen stores, a couple of them out of business. Robbins’ building in this commercial row, two stories high and narrow, with large plate-glass windows flanking a glass front door, still bore a wooden sign above the windows reading vista hardware. Inside, through the front windows, the interior was brightly lit, but had not been a hardware store for a long time.
Parker said, “You want to come in or wait?”
“Easier if I wait.”
She had parked at the curb in front of the place, the only car stopped along here. Getting out to the old uneven slate sidewalk, Parker saw that the interior of the building was now a kind of gallery, a high-ceilinged room with large paintings on both white-painted side walls. In the middle of the room stood a large easel with a good-size canvas on it, in profile to the windows so that the subject couldn’t be seen. In front of the canvas, stooped toward it, brush in right hand, was what had to be Robbins, a tall narrow figure dressed in black, head thrust up and forward as he peered at his work. What he most looked like, the thin angular dark figure in the brightly lit room, was a praying mantis.
Parker rapped a knuckle on the glass of the front door. The painter looked this way, tapped his forehead with the handle end of his brush in salute, put the brush down on the tray beneath the canvas, and walked over to unlock and open the door. His walk looked painful, a little crabbed and distorted, but it must have been that way a long time, because he didn’t seem to notice.
He pulled the door open, his leathery face welcoming but wary, and said, “Mr. Willis?”
“For now.”
He smiled. “Ah, very good. Come in.” Then, looking past Parker, he said, “Your companion does not wish to join us?”
“No, she doesn’t want to be a distraction.”
“Very astute. I find all beautiful women a distraction.” Closing the door, he said, “I think you would prefer to call me Robbins. Kazimierz is not easy for an American to pronounce.” He gestured toward the rear of the long room, where a couple of easy chairs and small tables made a kind of living room; or a living room set.
As they walked down the long room, on an old floor of wide pine planks, Parker said, “Why didn’t you change the first name?”
“Ego,” Robbins said, and motioned for Parker to sit. “Many are Robbins, or my original name, Rudzik, but from earliest childhood Kazimierz has been me.” Also sitting, he leaned forward onto his knees, peered at Parker, and said, “Tell me what you can.”
“I no longer have an identity,” Parker said, “that’s safe from the police.”
“Fingerprints?”
“If we’re at the point of fingerprints,” Parker said, “it’s already too late. I need papers to keep me from getting that far.”
“And how secure must these be?” He gave a little finger wave and said, “What I mean is, you want more than a simple forged driver’s license.”
“I want to survive a police computer,” Parker said. “I don’t have a passport; I want one.”
“A legitimate passport.”
“Everything legitimate.”
Robbins leaned back. “Nothing is impossible,” he said. “But everything is expensive.”
“I know that.”
“We are speaking of approximately two hundred thousand dollars.”
“I thought it might be around there.”
Robbins cocked an eyebrow, watching him. “This number does not bother you.”
“No. If you do the job, it’s worth it.”
“I would need half ahead of time. In cash, of course. All in cash. How soon could you collect it?”
“I brought it with me in the car.”
Robbins gave a surprised laugh. “You are serious!”
“I’m always serious,” Parker told him. “Now you tell me how you’re gonna do it.”
“Of course.” Robbins thought a minute, looking out over his studio. The paintings on the walls, mounted three or four high, were all portraits, some of well-known faces ranging from John Kennedy to Julia Roberts, some of unknown but interesting faces. All were slightly tinged with a kind of darkness, as though some sort of gloom were being hidden within the paint.
Finally, Robbins nodded to himself and said, “You know I come from the East.”
“Yes.”
“I did this kind of work for the authorities back there,” he said. “For many years. False identities, false papers. There was much work of that kind to be done in those days.”
“Sure.”
“I imagine there is work of that kind to be done in this country as well,” Robbins said, and spread his hands in fatalistic acceptance. “But I am a foreigner, and not that much to be trusted. And I am certain there are Americans who can do the same work.”
“Sure.”
“I still retain many contacts with my former associates, and in fact travel east two or three times a year. When a change as complete as you need is called for, my old friends are often of assistance.”
“Good.”
“Yes.” Robbins leaned forward, “When my part of the world was the proletarian paradise,” he said, “unfortunately, the infant mortality rate was higher than one would prefer. Many children, born around the same time as yourself, are memorialized by nothing more than a birth certificate and a small grave.”
“I get that.”
“We start with such a birth certificate,” Robbins told him. “To explain your lack of accent, we add documentation that your family emigrated, I think to Canada, when you would have been no more than thirteen years of age. Do you know people in Canada?”
“No.”
“Unfortunate.” Robbins shook his head at the difficulty. “What we must do,” he said, “is bring you to this country very recently, so you will be applying for a Social Security card only now.”
Parker considered that. “I was the Canadian representative of an American company,” he decided.
“You can do that?”
“Yes. I’ll have to phone the guy to tell him about it, that’s all.”
“Good. Do you have an attorney you can trust?”
“I can find one.”
“I think,” Robbins said, “you changed your name many years ago, when you were first in Canada. Because of your schoolmates, you see. But never officially. So now that you are in the US, you will first go to the court to have your name legally changed from whatever is on that birth certificate to whomever you would rather be than Mr. Willis.”