Two Women

by Brian Freemantle

  He strode purposefully out on to Wall Street, with more than sufficient time before noon to walk the two blocks to his office, his mind switching back to Jane. Your choice, Newton had said. So he’d make it. He’d call the doctor and tell him he wanted a second, psychiatric opinion: the best available. He wanted Jane well – properly, completely well – as soon as possible.

  ‘Good to know that everything’s going as it should, sensibly,’ said a voice Carver recognized at once, on his left. He was conscious of a close presence at his right, too. And behind.

  ‘Here’s the car,’ said Burcher and before there was a moment for Carver to resist – cry out even – the inexorable pressure of the three surrounding men turned him towards – and then into – the open door of the vehicle that pulled up.

  ‘There!’ patronized Burcher. ‘Now’s the time to talk properly.’

  Sixteen

  ‘Heads up,’ demanded Gene Hanlan. ‘What have we got?’ ‘A crazy,’ dismissed Ginette Smallwood, disillusioned from wasting the past four months investigating tip-offs from Federal Plaza walk-ins who’d turned out to be exactly that, initially convincing crazies who’d evolved good-sounding stories to get their fifteen minutes of fame. And to get her the reputation of someone who couldn’t differentiate fact from phoney if she’d had Pinocchio on her shoulder.

  ‘Doesn’t sit right,’ dismissed Hanlan. He twisted to the permanently displayed street map of Manhattan on the board behind his desk, upon which red marker flags were already displayed. ‘We start at the Port Authority terminal … maybe she’s an out-of-towner …’

  ‘Or maybe she’s an in-town, uptown girl who chose the terminal for good reason,’ interrupted Patrick McKinnon, the rotund, retirement-planning third field agent.

  ‘Maybe an in-town girl indeed,’ accepted Hanlan, still at the wall map. He tracked his finger along the electronically traced route that Alice Belling had taken. ‘Sure as hell knew the city’s transport system, according to the timings …’ He turned away from the wall chart, gesturing to the separately marked tapes: the only incomplete one was Alice’s first, before they’d been ready. ‘We need to get the official opinion from the mumbo-jumbo thumb-suckers at Quantico but I don’t hear any of that as a crazy. Stressed, sure. If I didn’t think that, I would mark her as a crazy and we wouldn’t be sitting around here now, talking about it.’

  ‘Let’s hold for a moment on Quantico,’ suggested Ginette. Among its several disciplines, Quantico was the FBI’s Maryland installation for offender profiling, where most of the psychological ancillaries were concentrated, including voice-print analysts.

  ‘We’re holding on everything for the moment,’ assured Hanlan. ‘But I’ve got a gut feeling. The Litchfield shit-kicking sheriff admits George Northcote’s death is odd, despite what the coroner says. The house gets invaded like Baghdad on open day. And anyone here remember a hanging suicide breaking so many arms and legs from a two-foot fall?’

  Neither of the other two answered the question. The querulous woman said: ‘If mysterious Martha knows so much, how come she doesn’t have a Family name?’

  ‘Because she doesn’t have a Family name!’ threw back McKinnon, irritably. ‘You heard what she said. I read it that she knows some but not all. Which I also read as meaning we need to get involved here …’ He paused, for the effect. ‘Organized crime … murder … money laundering … You really need me to spell out the career advantages of having our names at the top of the list of this sort of investigation?’ His pension increased by $150 a month if he got promoted one more grade.

  ‘Not for a moment,’ grinned Hanlan, whose mind had begun to calculate that as early as Alice’s second telephone contact.

  ‘What’s the essential for the perfect con?’ challenged Ginette.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ exploded McKinnon, who’d spent an unconsummated month hitting on the girl – and his ex-wife’s entire month’s alimony on dinners and Broadway theatres – before she’d told him she was gay. ‘You’ve struck out three times in a row. Shit happens. This could be how you get off the bench and up to bat.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ accepted Ginette, reluctantly. She needed an impressive recovery.

  ‘Put everything else on hold, for today at lease,’ ordered Hanlan. ‘Go through the case notes of Litchfield and Brooklyn if they’re wired soon enough, which was the promise from both …’

  ‘When’s the last time a local force – certainly a local force who’ve already made up their minds and closed the case – cooperated with the Bureau?’ demanded Ginette, who was thirty, model-thin, blonde and not gay, just resentful of the automatic chauvinistic expectation of office affairs.

  ‘Northcote was high profile,’ picked up Hanlan, ignoring the interruption. ‘Let’s see what’s in the public domain.’

  ‘That route,’ said McKinnon, nodding to the map behind the agent-in-charge, ‘goes in a square circle.’

  ‘You want to help me with that?’ invited Hanlan.

  ‘Starts on the west side, crosses east, goes downtown, back west, always using phone boxes. And obviously public transport. She’s definitely a local, seen too many James Bond movies. But that’s where she lives, somewhere downtown. She was hurrying home.’

  ‘Should be easy to find someone calling herself Martha who admits it’s not her real name,’ said Ginette.

  ‘Downtown’s financial,’ said McKinnon. ‘Northcote’s office is on Wall Street. Martha could be a Northcote employee, stumbles upon where the secrets are hidden.’

  ‘And the dead bodies,’ agreed Ginette, less resistant. ‘Janice Snow was an employee: maybe she shared what she knew with Martha.’

  ‘Martha doesn’t come back to us today, as promised, we call on George W. Northcote International tomorrow,’ decided Hanlan.

  ‘And ask what?’ questioned McKinnon.

  ‘To look at their client base?’ suggested Hanlan.

  ‘Northcote’s top of the big-time pyramid,’ warned Ginette. ‘They got something to hide, they’re not going to take kindly to us asking rude questions unless we’ve got due cause. Which so far we ain’t.’

  Hanlan reached over his desk for the third recording, fast-forwarding to where he wanted. The excerpt began with his own voice. Handed over by whom?

  Then Alice’s. Someone who’s totally innocent. Who thinks he can handle it all by himself.

  Hanlan said: ‘It’s someone in the firm: maybe two. Martha, our whistle-blower, and Mr Hard Guy, thinks he can face down the bad guys all by himself. Why’s he doing that? The best guess, in my book, is to keep the firm squeaky clean. So he’s high, a major player, maybe even a partner. Has to be, to have discovered whatever he has. We go in and we say we’re not sure about Mr Northcote’s death or that of his personal assistant, Ms Snow. Ask the partners, one by one, how they feel about it: if they’ve got anything they’d like to tell us. And watch the body language.’

  ‘It’s a way to start,’ allowed Ginette, doubtfully.

  ‘It’s our best shot, we don’t hear back from Martha,’ insisted McKinnon.

  Hanlan looked at his watch. ‘Twelve. Whatever Martha’s expecting to happen has got to be lunch time.’

  ‘We hope,’ agreed McKinnon.

  ‘Shall I get the sandwiches?’ offered Ginette.

  ‘No,’ said Hanlan. ‘Like the lady asked, we stay ready to go the moment we get her call.’

  Enrico Delioci, on his left, took the briefcase from Carver, without speaking, and handed it to Stanley Burcher in the front passenger seat. Burcher immediately opened it and started fingering through the contents. Paolo Brescia, on Carver’s right, rode with his hand casually holding the courtesy loop, gazing out at the passing streets. He said to the driver: ‘The Manhattan would probably be better than the Brooklyn Bridge.’

  ‘Why pay a toll?’ demanded the driver.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Carver, glad his voice was steady. He wasn’t sure if he was physically shaking from the fear pumping through him b
ut hoped he wasn’t. The men between whom he was too closely hemmed would feel it, if he were. They did wear dark suits but not shaded glasses. Like Burcher, they were inconspicuous, walk-by people.

  No one replied.

  ‘I asked where we were going,’ Carver repeated.

  ‘Somewhere quiet,’ said Burcher, head bowed over the briefcase.

  ‘Enjoy the ride,’ said Brescia. He had an effeminate lisp.

  Burcher turned at last, grimacing his version of a smile. ‘I need to go through it in detail – talk about one thing in particular with you – but it seems OK. I knew we could work together.’ He held up the tape cassette. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Something for us to talk about.’ He’d made a mistake, Carver realized. A terrible, terrible mistake. Alice had been right. He couldn’t face them down. But he had to now. The terrible mistake was also his only hope.

  The curtain closed on Burcher’s smile. ‘So let’s talk about it.’

  ‘You’re among friends. We don’t have any secrets,’ said Brescia.

  Carver felt too threatened, squashed as he was by even harmless-seeming men in the back of the car. That impression brought the awareness that he was, in fact, physically bigger than any of the other four with whom he was incarcerated. Which didn’t mean anything because he knew what they were capable of: what they had done to Northcote and Janice. He was going to feel threatened – be threatened – wherever he was with them, but he didn’t want them this close – their bodies touching his – when he disclosed their entrapment. ‘This ends your association with my firm, right?’

  ‘That’s something we need to talk about,’ agreed Burcher. ‘My people are extremely happy the way things are: how they’ve been – and worked – for such a very long time …’ He patted the still-open briefcase, on the car floor at his feet. ‘Even before you showed how well you understood priorities they asked me to tell you they didn’t want things to end: that they saw every advantage for all of us in the arrangement continuing exactly as it’s always been, to everyone’s advantage.’ Except, Burcher thought, the Delioci Family.

  ‘I made it clear to you that that’s precisely what I did not want. And wouldn’t have.’

  Enrico Delioci sniggered a laugh that emerged as a derisive snort. They were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge now, the pale sun dappling them with the shadowed patterns of the suspending superstructure.

  Burcher said: ‘John, this is the way it is. The way it’s got to be. Look what George achieved: think about it. Think what you can achieve. All the respect and honour that George attained. More. You’re set up, for a happy, contented life. Forever. People don’t get things made the way you’ve got it made. Enjoy.’

  They joined the expressway, made the left exit and almost at once took the turn-off towards the ferry terminal and turned once more into the lattice of narrow streets on the Brooklyn and Queens side of the East River. Once they’ve got you, they never let you go, thought Carver. There wasn’t a definition – words that he could find – to describe how Carver felt. Frightened, certainly: acknowledging, finally, that he was out of his depth with these insignificant but supremely confident people who believed they owned the world. Which, Carver supposed, they did: their world, at their all-embracing level. But strangely – despite the definition and the words he couldn’t find – Carver felt suspended above all those mixed impressions, beyond these people and beyond their danger. Making the tape hadn’t been a terrible mistake. It was going to be his salvation because they couldn’t hurt him – cause him any physical harm – while it existed: it was the connection – the provable link Northcote hadn’t had – with the documentation at that moment lying beyond their grasp in the Citibank safe-deposit vault. ‘We made a deal.’

  ‘I promised to discuss it with my clients. Which I did. Now I’m telling you their decision,’ lied Burcher.

  ‘Which isn’t my decision.’

  They were in a car-abandoned, boarded-windowed labyrinth of rubbish-strewn alleys and streets, empty of life apart from an occasional scavenging dog or cat. Brescia sighed and said: ‘Why don’t we cut the crap! You’re signed up, John, whether you like it or not. As Stan’s told you, learn to like it.’

  Did that mean that Burcher really had given his real name? It made it so much better if he had. ‘And as I’ve told Stan, I don’t like it.’

  ‘We’re here,’ announced Burcher. ‘We’ll talk about it inside.’

  The car made an abrupt left, then a right, and the street into which they emerged was suddenly clean, no longer an urban garbage dump. To their left was a high, chain-link fence sealing off a storage yard for dozens, maybe hundreds, of ship containers. A lot – the majority, as far as Carver could see – were marked with the names of the Mulder, Encomp or Innsflow companies. Beyond them, over the river, Carver could see the snag-toothed skyline of Manhattan. The car threw up a dust plume as it accelerated across the open strip towards warehouses, to which, as they got closer, Carver saw was attached a low office block. The sign on the side read NOXT Inc. Export Specialists. Cars were in tight formation in front but Carver couldn’t see any people working outside. He did, through office windows, when he got out of the car. There was no obvious interest in their arrival. Carver was relieved to be free from the body contact of the men on either side of him. Burcher led. They went in through a door at the side and immediately up a flight of stairs into rooms fitted out as secretarial suites without secretaries or office staff. Burcher continued to lead, into a more expansive set of rooms, with leather furniture and decorative plants. The largest room was dominated by an impressive desk but everything looked sterile and unused, a stage set.

  ‘Sit down,’ ordered Burcher, contemptuously, not looking at Carver, who did as he was told. Burcher and Delioci went to the desk and unloaded on to it everything from the briefcase. From the top right-hand door of the desk Burcher took two sheets of paper, handing them to the other man, and together they compared every document against their list. Carver couldn’t hear the mumbled conversation. It must have been fifteen minutes before they both straightened, turning at last to Carver. Delioci took the seat behind the desk and Carver wondered if his authority was greater than that of the lawyer.

  It was Burcher, though, who did the talking. He said: ‘You did good, John. We’re pleased. Now the few things we’ve got to sort out … get right.’ He made a hand gesture to the papers still lying on the desk before him. ‘They’re complete but there’s something missing, isn’t there?’

  ‘That’s everything I found, at Litchfield and at George’s apartment, in town. And in his safe deposit at the Chase.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ said the softly spoken lawyer. ‘I told you my clients discovered there were a lot of attempts to hack into their computers. Some attempts that might have been successful.’

  He had to protect Alice! Whatever happened – whatever threats were made – he couldn’t disclose her name. Or her involvement. ‘And I told you I knew nothing about that.’

  ‘I know what you told me. My clients find that difficult to believe.’

  Carver shook his head. ‘I don’t have anything to say to that, beyond what I’ve already told you, that I don’t know anything about it.’

  Burcher said: ‘If we’re going to work together, there’s got to be trust between us. If we find you’ve lied, we’re going to be very upset. And we will find out who did it. It’s very important for us that we do.’

  Carver no longer had the unreal impression of being suspended in mid-air because of all his conflicting feelings but the fear was stronger now, although not for himself. He hadn’t expected the hacking demand: hadn’t prepared answers, which he accepted he should have done. There was only one answer, if Alice were to be protected. Total denial. Which he’d already made. To repeat it could give the impression that he had some knowledge. ‘I’ve also made it clear that we’re not going to work together.’

  There was another sigh from Brescia, who was sitting sli
ghtly behind Carver, between him and the door. Burcher said: ‘John, you don’t have a choice. That was made, years ago, by George Northcote. You’ve inherited his firm and you’ve inherited his responsibilities. Which you’ll fulfil. This is the end of the discussion. There’s nothing more to talk about. Except who got into the computer systems.’

  The personal fear at last surged through Carver, at what he was about to do and say, the familiar skin-tingling, stomach-hollowing sensation. ‘You haven’t heard the tape.’

  The two men at the desk stared, initially unspeaking, at Carver. Without breaking his gaze Delioci told Brescia: ‘Go get a player.’

  Burcher said: ‘You stupid man. You idiotically stupid little man.’ He still didn’t raise his voice, just sounding each sound like a bell’s funeral toll.

  Brescia re-entered within minutes with a small cassette player and, unasked, fitted in the tape and pressed the start button. Burcher’s voice echoed into the silent room. It’s good of you to see me at such short notice. And then Carver’s. Particularly as you weren’t able to leave a name.

  The recording apparatus throughout the Northcote building had been professionally fitted and the quality was perfect. Still no one spoke or moved, the lawyer and Delioci looking fixedly at Carver as the tape unwound with the identification of the companies and the quietly spoken and intentionally ambiguous innuendoes from Burcher. It was at Carver’s denial of any knowledge of the computer hacking that Delioci stopped the tape with an impatient finger flick.

  The roared shout – ‘You’re the total fucking idiot!’ – at the lawyer and the fist crashing against the desktop was so unexpected that everyone physically jumped. Delioci rose, leaning towards Burcher, raging on. ‘Like a fucking amateur you let yourself get wired like this …’