Jane chose the straight-backed chair across from the table. It felt warm to her, and when she looked straight ahead she had a clear view of an array of video monitors from closed-circuit cameras mounted on the front, back, and sides of the house. She had taken the chair that belonged to Shattuck's guard. The images on the screens were now motionless, no living creature moving out there.
After a full minute in which he seemed to have forgotten Jane was there, Shattuck said, "It's been several years. I had assumed that you had been killed."
"Not yet."
He raised his eyes to look at her. "You're wise to think of it that way. I always thought that wisdom was the direction where you were heading, even when you were very young. Now that you've reached middle age, you've arrived."
"If I agree I'm wise, do I have to accept that I'm middle-aged? Or is accepting it more wisdom?"
Shattuck smiled so his glasses sent a flash of reflected light, then lowered his head to his paper again. "Of course you would see the way out of the trap. I've missed your visits."
"I only come when I've got trouble, so I don't share the feeling."
"There is that, isn't there? But most of the customers for a forger aren't pretty or wise." He sat up straight, took a look at the document he had been working on, and put it aside reluctantly, keeping his eyes on it all the way to the pile at the corner of his table. "All right. Let's hear what you need this time." He lifted a pad and changed pens.
"It's a young girl, nineteen or twenty. First she needs ID to travel. It has to be good enough to pass, but only the essentials—driver's license, Social Security card, maybe a few simple things to fill a wallet, a library card, and so on."
"What next?"
"The hard stuff—a second good, solid set of papers that will last her forever, if necessary."
He squinted and stared past Jane's shoulder, then wrote as he spoke. "Driver's license, Social Security, birth certificate. MasterCard, Visa, American Express. Passport, too?"
"If you can get all that safely."
"Of course. But passports are taking at least six weeks these days."
"I'll give you a mail-drop address to forward it to."
Shattuck said, "Is it all right if we give her an address in Syracuse to start? That way I don't have to go far to pick it up."
"Sure. She can fill out change-of-address forms when she's settled somewhere. Until then, just forward everything to the mail drop." She pointed at his pad. "May I?"
He handed her the pad and pen, and she wrote out an address and handed them back.
"Telephone?"
"Make one up."
He held out his hand. "Let's see her photograph."
"I have her with me."
"Even better. We'll take different shots for each form of ID. Anything else for you tonight?"
"Yes," she said. "When you have the first set of documents, I'd like you to put together a set of papers for a baby with the same surname. A birth certificate and a Social Security card. That ought to do it if she has to run."
"How old is the baby?"
"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.