“Two years ago.”

“You married? This baby got a father?”

“That any business of yours?”

“Sounds like a no,” Merker said, tsk-tsking. “That’s not good, bringing up a baby without a father. I know a little something about that.”

“Yeah, well, he was a son of a bitch and I’m better off without him.”

Merker slid the fake Marilyn Winter ID, which happened to be a driver’s license, toward her. “You see the signature there? When you get into the bank, you have to be able to sign it like that. They’ve already got a signature on file, and they’re going to compare. That’s how they do things.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know if I can do that,” she said.

“Just practice a few times, you’ll be fine. You got some paper and a pen?”

Annette reached over to a table by the phone, found a scratch pad and a pen. Merker was twitching his nose, wanted to touch it, but kept his hands on the table. “Okay,” Annette said, looking at the ID and taking the pen in her left hand.

“Jesus, you’re left-handed?” Merker said.

“Yeah. That some sort of crime?”

Merker looked at me. “What’s Trixie?”

I tried to picture her with a pen in her hand, doing anything. “I’d guess right-handed,” I said.

Merker shook it off. “Doesn’t matter. Long as the signature matches, doesn’t matter which hand it’s written with. Go ahead, try it.”

Annette had already written “Marilyn Winter” three times on the notepad. Even looking at it from where I sat, across the table, the signatures bore no resemblance to the Trixie version.

“Is this a joke?” Merker said, yanking the pad away from her. “This looks like it was written with a fucking stump.”

“It’s hard,” Annette whined.

“Look at your M. It’s all roundy. It’s supposed to be pointy at the tops. Jesus.”

“Let me try again.” She really concentrated this time, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, and carefully mimicked the original signature, as if she were tracing it.

“Oh, that’s good,” Merker said. “That won’t arouse any suspicion. Taking fifteen minutes to sign your goddamn name.”

“You’re making me nervous,” Annette said. “Maybe if you was paying me two grand instead of one, I’d be motivated to do it better.”

“I could be giving you Donald fucking Trump’s platinum card and you still wouldn’t be able to do it,” Merker said. “Okay, just calm down and try again.”

“It’s just that my fingers are delicate,” Annette said. “It’s hard for me to make them go another way.” In the living room, with the Finding Nemo soundtrack playing in the background, the baby started crying. “Hold on!” Annette snapped.