“I think it works,” Edie said, taking in their outfits. “I think we will blend in just fine with half the senior women in America.”
“Just one last thing,” Joan said. She reached into a small bag she carried and withdrew what looked like a credit card. She held out to Edie. “Welcome to girl gang 2.0, Blanche Neverseaux.”
“What the hell?” Edie took the card and looked at it. She looked up at Joan. “You did this?”
“Say hello to Wilma Thinstone and Holly Gomighty. I am Mariah Berry.”
“But if anyone sees these, they will immediately know they are fake.”
“You’d be surprised,” Frances said dryly. “I’ve already had to present myself as Wilma Thinstone and no one batted an eye.”
“It’s a digital world, Edie,” Joan said. “The only thing anyone looks at an ID for is the picture. Trust me when I say no one is memorizing the details.”
Edie looked at the license. A smile began to turn up the corners of her mouth. “You’ve still got it, you old broad.”
“Thank you,” Joan said, and curtsied. “But I figured one of you would object to the names, so I made different ones.” She tossed three cards onto the bed.
Frances picked hers up. “This says Bonnie Parker. Bonnie and Clyde, right?”
“Yep,” Joan said.
“Mine says Belle Starr,” Edie said. “Likewise a famous criminal.”
“A thief who died a violent death,” Joan said with a smile.
“Ooh, youarepissed at me.” Edie laughed. “Who are you, Irene?”
She picked up her ID. “Cheng Ping.”
“Notorious smuggler of Chinese people,” Joan said.
“I’m not Chinese,” Irene protested.
“I’m sorry, babe, but there weren’t a lot to choose from in your race category.”
“That hurts, coming from you. Who are you?” she asked, indicating with her chin the ID Joan still held.
“Stephanie St. Clair. She ran a highly profitable numbers racket in Harlem.” She smiled. “And in the event we get some nerdy little kid who happens to be up on female criminals of the past one hundred years, I made more IDs with very generic names.” She tossed them out on the bed.
“Check this out,” Irene said. She had stumbled on several granny nightgowns, neatly folded, all the same pattern cloth, but different colors. It was as if someone cleaned off a shelf of them in an estate sale and donated them to charity.
An hour later, the four of them were dressed in granny gowns, wearing the facial masks Irene insisted upon—“You will look ten years younger, trust me”—and were dining on McDonald’s burgers. Edie had protested the burgers, and Frances had felt a little queasy looking at them, but Irene insisted it was just next door and there was no need to use the car.
“This will be a disaster,” Edie said as Irene handed burgers around. “Do you think any of us, at our age, can properly digest this? Speaking of which, we need to plan our route based on bathroom availability.”
“Already on it,” Irene said. “And you better get used to eating like this, Fancy Pants. It’s not like we’ll be doing any fine dining in Vegas.”
“You know what I’ve been thinking of?” Joan asked. She’d selected a neon green facial mask tonight and looked a bit like an alien. “That jewelry heist we did in New York. The one where that bastard ripped me off.”
“I remember,” Frances said. “Well, I remember the fashion show. You looked stunning, Joan.”
Joan had scored a modeling job during Fashion Week, and in the course of it had discovered that models would be wearing various pieces of expensive jewelry. She’d worn a hammered gold neck collar that had practically glowed against her dark skin.
“Thank you,” Joan said, smiling through her neon green facial mask. “Too bad the jeweler didn’t think so.”
“Racist asshole,” Irene added.
“Fran almost had me arrested.”
