To Save a Son

by Brian Freemantle

  “They’re near panic, right?” said Franks, gesturing to the bulging file from England that lay between them on Rosenberg’s desk.

  “Looks like that,” agreed the lawyer.

  “So what effect would a letter from me create, saying I can’t maintain the undertaking? I’m maintaining confidence; it’s an essential principle of business.”

  “So what happens in six months’ time? Or rather five and a half months’ time, when they’ll be pressing for dates?”

  “I’ll answer that in five and a half months’ time,” said Franks. “By then the trial will be over and the hotel pollution may be cleared up.” Franks stopped as the idea occurred to him. “For Christ’s sake, why haven’t they thought about it in England!” he erupted angrily. “Tell Podmore to stop pissing about with Italian fumigation and cleaning experts. Tell him to get the best company in Britain to create a team and fly them out to Italy to cleanse every hotel. Tell him to send a photographer and a writer from the publicity department to record every step of the cleaning and when it’s successful—but only when it’s successful, because if it isn’t then it’ll backfire—issue a complete release on how a baffling infection was beaten. Tell them to send hygiene specialists and doctors as well, if necessary. It’ll cost a lot, but it’ll be worth every penny if the publicity is sufficiently widespread to restore the confidence that Podmore is so worried about.”

  Rosenberg made the required note on his pad and said, “Six months is still too soon, Eddie.”

  “I’m fed up talking about it,” refused Franks. Running again, he thought.

  Ronan said he wanted Franks in a secure hotel in Manhattan throughout the trial, as he had been for the grand jury hearings, and estimated it could last as long as a month. Maria made a particular effort the night before he left, cooking the beef which she’d learned was his favorite. He told her it was very good, which it was, but he found it difficult to eat, just as she appeared to do.

  “You going to be all right by yourself?” he asked.

  “Of course. And I won’t exactly be by myself, will I?”

  Hadn’t Tina said something like that, some time? He couldn’t remember. He said, “I’ll be glad to get the trial over. Then we can get away. Thought where you’d like to go?”

  “I’ll leave you to decide that.”

  “Think about it while I’m gone.”

  “It’s going to feel strange without you,” said Maria. “I’ve got used to your being around all the time.”

  “Maybe it won’t last for a month.”

  “Phone?”

  “Every day.”

  “This will be the first time you’ve confronted them since the dissolution meeting, won’t it?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Franks. It seemed a lifetime ago, he thought, and then realized it was: Nicky’s lifetime.

  “Be careful.”

  “There’s hardly anything they can do in a court, is there?”

  “There doesn’t seem much they can’t do.”

  “They’re going to go to jail and then it will all be over,” said Franks.

  They exhausted themselves that night with love and Maria, always the demanding one, awoke him before it was properly light and they made love again. She sat, unspeaking, while he packed his cases, and remained silent while he carried them downstairs into the hallway.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” she said at last.

  “Just coffee.”

  They drank it in the kitchen, sitting opposite one another. She said, “There seemed something final about the way you were packing.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Do everything they tell you,” she said. “The FBI, I mean. Don’t take any chances.”

  “You know I won’t.”

  “I don’t ever remember being so happy as I have been here with you. Despite everything outside.”

  “Or me,” said Franks. Was that strictly true? He’d been very contented and settled with Tina when he evolved the long-weekend working routine in England. He must remember to ask Rosenberg how the sale of the Henley house was progressing. He said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “Yes.”

  They stood facing each other, neither moving. Then Franks went to her and kissed her, and she gripped him, and said, her voice muffled into his shoulder, “Hurry back.”

  There was a tight escort into Manhattan, one car in front and two behind and another man joining Tomkiss and Sheridan actually inside their own vehicle. There was a lot of radio traffic. From the front Franks heard Tomkiss say, “Shit!” The FBI man looked back and said, “Outside the court it’s like the Fourth of July, apparently. Photographers and television cameras everywhere. They think it’s too dangerous to go in the front; they’re going to set up a decoy arrival and we’re going to go in through the back.”

  Which is what they did, Franks huddled in the middle of a complete circle of guards, head bent, hurrying into the building, and up in an elevator to the fifth floor. Once, remembered Franks, he’d been embarrassed by the procedure. He wasn’t anymore. He was jostled into an anteroom similar to that he’d used at the grand jury hearings, surprised to see Tina already there. She was apart from the other witnesses. Waldo and Schultz were at the far end of the room, talking to Knap, and there were a number of other men whom Franks had not met before. Franks hesitated and then went over to his wife.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello.”

  “How’s your father?”

  “He’s out of bed now. We can get him around in a wheelchair. There’s some speech difficulty, but he’s being helped by a therapist.”

  “I wanted to keep in touch,” said Franks defensively. “The lawyers said everything should go through them.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “How’s David? Gabby?”

  “David still swears, and Gabby wet the bed three times last week.”

  “What have you told them about us?”

  “The truth, which you didn’t seem able to.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That we’ve broken up,” she said. “Is Maria with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is she?”

  “Fine,” said Franks. Awkwardly he added, “Thank you.”

  “I asked the FBI people up at the house where you were. They wouldn’t tell me.”

  “There’s no reason you shouldn’t know,” said Franks. “There’s a house, near Kingston. Belongs to the CIA. Lot of electronic surveillance and stuff like that.”

  “I seem to be getting used to it,” said the woman.

  “How are you?”

  “Okay, I guess,” she said, looking directly at him. “You?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “David asked last week if he could see you.”

  “We’ll have to arrange something,” said Franks. “I want to see him, too. And Gabby, of course. I’ll talk to Tomkiss about it.”

  “I suppose we’d better involve the lawyers, too?”

  “Yes,” said Franks. “It all seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

  “It has for a long time.”

  “There’ve been a lot of attacks on the companies in Europe,” he said.

  “As well as the liner explosion?”

  “Some hotels in Italy and France were poisoned. And there are a lot of labor problems in Spain.”

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “There’s nothing I can do at the moment.”

  “Worried about it?”

  “Naturally,” said Franks. “Podmore and the others don’t seem able to handle it.”

  “You going to go back?”

  “That was always the plan.”

  “Thank you for giving me the Scarsdale house. My lawyer says you’re being very generous.”

  He smiled briefly. “That’s what Rosenberg says, too.”

  “I don’t want us to fall out over any settlement,” said Tina. “I’ve always thought it terrible that people who
once loved each other should end up hating each other when it comes to dividing things.”

  “I don’t want that, either,” said Franks. It was good to be able to talk to Tina without arguing. He thought she looked pale but very pretty.

  “I’m determined it won’t happen,” she said.

  “You booked into a hotel here?”

  She nodded. “The Plaza, like last time.”

  “Me, too,” said Franks.

  “Did Maria come with you?”

  “No.”

  Ronan hurried into the room, interrupting them. The district attorney paused briefly at Waldo and the other men and then continued across the room toward them. Ronan smiled and shook hands, and said, “All set?”

  “You tell us,” said Franks.

  “They’ve got impressive counsel,” said Ronan. “It’s going to be a fight.”

  “Wasn’t it always?”

  “This time we’re going to get them,” said the district attorney. “I’m sure of it.”

  “You’d better be, after what it’s entailed,” said Franks.

  Ronan looked between them, as if he’d forgotten the breakup. To Tina he said, “Thank you for agreeing to testify.”

  “I don’t want to spend too much time away from the children.”

  “I’ll call you as quickly as I can.”

  Which wasn’t that day or several days after, because there was a lengthy opening and then professional, investigative evidence to call, before them. The first night Franks said it was ridiculous for them to eat alone as they were being kept in the same hotel, and Tina agreed and came to his suite for dinner. She said that until the trial was over she didn’t know what to do about the children’s interrupted education, and for the time being was relying upon FBI-approved tutors who were coming into Scars-dale every day. She asked what he thought about their future schooling and Franks said he’d always thought it would be in England, but if she wanted to remain in America then he didn’t mind it being there.

  Directly after the meal was finished, Tina said she thought she’d better get back to her own rooms because she had calls to make, and Franks said of course, because he still had to telephone Maria. He walked with Tina to the door, unsure whether there should any parting kiss or a handshake and decided that both would be wrong so he did nothing. Maria said she’d expected him to call earlier. Franks hesitated at telling her about the meal with Tina, and said instead that he’d been tied up. She asked how the case was going and he said he didn’t know, because until he was called he wasn’t allowed in court, but that Ronan appeared confident. She asked if he’d seen Tina at the court and he said yes: they’d talked about the children and the settlement. Maria asked how she’d looked and Franks said tired but okay. Maria said she loved him and made him promise to call—earlier—the following night, and Franks said he loved her too and promised he would. After he replaced the receiver Franks sat nursing his brandy, asking himself why he’d ducked telling her about Tina. He seemed to duck so much when it came to making personal decisions. Maria had never indicated any doubt or jealousy—in fact had steadfastly refused to put herself between them in any way since the separation—so why couldn’t he have told her about the dinner? There was nothing wrong with having eaten with Tina, for God’s sake!

  A pattern developed between Franks and Tina through the next days. They went separately each day to the courtroom—scurrying through various doors but not always avoiding the photographers and newsmen—and remained together in the waiting room. His rooms at the Plaza became the regular eating place but later than the first night, so that they could make their calls first. In addition to the nightly contact with Maria, Franks kept in touch with Podmore in London, increasingly anxious at the way the businesses were slipping. The English hygiene experts had gone to Italy as he instructed and cleaned the hotels, but four days after their return, there had been fresh outbreaks at five of the premises. Franks talked the problems through with Tina, glad there was someone to whom he could talk. She asked him what he could do about it and Franks said he didn’t know, and Tina said—not argumentatively—that she’d never known him unsure about anything before. Franks wasn’t annoyed at the observation, recognizing it to be true. There was a lot about the time they spent together that reminded Franks of how it had been before with him and Tina. He was content and he was relaxed at Kingston with Maria, but there was still an edge to their relationship, a need for him to impress her. He supposed it was because of the newness of everything with her. With Tina, he didn’t feel the need to do anything. Was that because he knew her so completely, or because whatever there had been between them was over and it didn’t matter to him anymore whether she admired him? Another unanswered question, to join the long list.

  Ronan warned them the day before he intended calling them and said Tina would be first. That last night they made their calls, and they ate, as they always did, in his rooms.

  “I’ll go back to Scarsdale directly after I’ve given evidence,” she said. “I want to get back to the children.”

  “Of course,” said Franks. “Will you tell them you’ve seen me?”

  “Naturally,” said Tina, surprised by the question. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t.”

  “Give them my love,” said Franks. “And tell them I’ll see them soon.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to make promises you can’t be sure of.”

  “I don’t intend it to be a promise I can’t keep,” said Franks. He paused and said, “It’s all been a bit unnatural—more than a bit—but it’s been good to see you again.”

  “You, too,” said Tina. She looked down into her wineglass and then said, “I’m sorry that it had to happen. The breakup, I mean. I’ve thought about it a lot, since you’ve gone. Much of it was my fault; most of it.…” She smiled up at him sadly, and said, “It was a pity I wasn’t able to be stronger.”

  “I’m sorry it happened, too,” said Franks. “I’ve thought about it as well. Maybe I should have done what Nicky and Poppa wanted.”

  “No,” she said at once. “You did the right thing; are doing the right thing. I still think you’re very brave. I hope the bastards go down for life for what they’ve done. And are doing.”

  “I hope to God it’ll stop, if they do go to jail,” said Franks with deep feeling.

  “I hope so, too. For your sake,” said Tina. “I know that there’ll still be people around at Scarsdale, but really I expect it to be over for me after I’ve given evidence tomorrow. It’s not going to be for you, is it?”

  “I’m expecting it to be,” said Franks. “Not at once, but soon.”

  “Poor darling,” she said, “I don’t think it’s going to be.”

  Franks looked directly at her, caught more by her use of the word than by her opinion. She appeared to become aware of it too and colored slightly. To help her he said, “You sound like all the rest.”

  “I know I keep saying it, so that it sounds practically like a recorded message, but you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Give Maria a message from me. Tell her I don’t hate her for what happened. I don’t want to see her or imagine we could be friends like we were before. But I don’t hate her.”

  “Thank you,” said Franks. “That’ll mean a lot to her.”

  “It’s been good to be with you again.”

  “We said that,” reminded Franks.

  “Yes, we did, didn’t we,” she said.

  No! thought Franks. He could see and certainly feel what was happening, but he wouldn’t let it. He’d made too many personal mistakes—as well as business mistakes—and he wasn’t going to allow any more. Although he wanted to. The second awareness alarmed him more than the first. His emotions were becoming more entangled and knotted than a wool ball dropped in a kitten’s nest; he’d lost the beginning and didn’t know where the end was to be found, but he certa
inly didn’t intend to tangle the strands any more than they were already. He said, “You’re on the witness stand tomorrow.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Things aren’t normal, darling, so don’t—” he managed before he realized the word and stopped. “Shit!” he said.

  “I don’t want us to break up, Eddie,” she said intently. “I fucked up, badly. I made all the mistakes, and I know I don’t have any right to expect any sort of forgiveness, but that’s what I’m asking for. I didn’t know what it was going to be like, seeing you like this. I was frightened to hell. When you walked into the witnesses’ room that first day I creamed in my pants just at the sight of you. I love you and the children love you. I’m asking you to come back. Come back to us however and whenever, and I promise I won’t be stupid anymore. That I’ll do all I can to help, which I realize that I didn’t do before. I want—”

  “Stop it, Tina!” cut off Franks.

  She did and Franks didn’t say anything more; they remained looking at each other across the table. To create some movement, more than for any other reason, he gestured with the brandy bottle, and she nodded acceptance, each waiting for the other to say something first.

  Tina broke the silence. “Lucky Maria,” she said.

  “I don’t know!” said Franks. “I just don’t know!”

  “You do, about me,” said Tina.

  Around and around goes the ball of wool, thought Franks. He said, “That doesn’t make anything any easier.”

  Tina looked toward the door leading in to the bedroom. “I want to stay tonight,” she said.

  “Tina, please!” said Franks. No! he thought again. Definitely no.

  She played with her brandy glass, not drinking from it. “Short of taking off all my clothes, putting on sackcloth and pouring ashes over my head, I don’t know what else I can do,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do any more,” he said.

  “Which brings it back to you,” she said.

  “You’re pushing me,” protested Franks, hating his own ineffectiveness.

  “I set out to push you,” Tina admitted.