Two Women

by Brian Freemantle

  Jane’s thoughts were broken by the sound of the door opening behind her and she turned to face the two men who entered. One was the polite front-seat passenger who’d done the talking in the Mercedes, the other slightly taller, bespectacled, fair hair just beginning to recede. The eyes were unusually – upsettingly – pale, grey more than blue.

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Carver,’ said Charlie Petrie. ‘Can we get you anything? Coffee? Water?’

  Still the overwhelming courtesy. ‘No. Thank you.’ Jane sat.

  So did the two men, on chairs facing her.

  Petrie nodded sideways. ‘My colleague has spoken to you about co-operation?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a croak, dry-throated. She should have asked for water. Too late now. She shouldn’t do anything to upset them.

  ‘Are you going to co-operate, Mrs Carver?’

  ‘Yes.’ Better this time. The fear was taking the feeling from her body. She pushed herself very slightly against the chair but could scarcely feel it against her back.

  There was a smile, the teeth very even. ‘That’s good.’

  What could she do or say to protect herself, help herself? ‘I don’t know about Alice Belling! We split up! She’s going to the FBI!’

  Petrie smiled to Caputo and then at Jane. ‘No, she’s not,’ he improvised, immediately realizing how he could improvise further. ‘Alice is quite safe, with us.’

  ‘You found her in Morristown?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Petrie.

  ‘She knows more than I do! What’s she told you?’

  ‘We’re asking the questions, Mrs Carver.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She mustn’t annoy them. They were asking the questions: all the questions. And she had to get the answers right. What had Alice told them? Alice was streetwise, better able to look after herself.

  ‘Do you know what’s in your husband’s safe deposit?’

  ‘I know you want it.’

  ‘Do you know what’s in the deposit?’ persisted Petrie.

  ‘Not the details. I know it’s something that my father did for you … for your people.’ They couldn’t get it without her! Why hadn’t she realized that before! Because she was too frightened to think of anything. But now she had.

  ‘We do want what’s in the safe deposit. All of it.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘That’s what I want you to do, Mrs Carver. Understand. You and I are going to the bank, now. You are going to authorize my coming into the vault with you, along with the bank’s securities person with the duplicate key. It’ll be just the two of us after it’s been unlocked. You don’t open the box. I do. And I retrieve the material that belongs to us. Then we leave. It’s all got to be done very quickly, no hold-ups. If anyone asks about your being kidnapped you say you are all right. Safe. That it’s over and that I am your lawyer. Do you understand all that?’

  ‘What happens then?’

  Petrie smiled. ‘You go back to East 62nd Street.’

  ‘What about Alice Belling?’

  ‘There’s something else you must understand,’ said Petrie, his second improvisation perfectly thought out. ‘If you don’t do exactly what I say – exactly what I’ve spelled out – Alice Belling will die. Die very badly. You must understand that most of all.’

  ‘I do,’ said Jane. She was dry-throated again.

  ‘You’re going to do everything you’re told, aren’t you, Mrs Carver?’

  ‘Yes. Are we going now?’

  ‘Right now,’ confirmed Petrie.

  ‘Can I have a glass of water first?’

  As it always appeared to be, the Manhattan traffic was close to gridlock when they came out of the tunnel and Petrie told the driver not to turn immediately but to try the next downtown to Wall Street. He was in the passenger seat now, two different men on either side of Jane, both still giving her leg room. Petrie felt better than he had at first, when he’d finally accepted that Stanley Burcher had run and the other consigliere had insisted he take Jane Carver to the bank. But not that much better. Petrie had already initiated the search for Burcher, whose proper function this was and for which he’d been paid so much money for so many profitable, untroubled years. Burcher would be found, in whatever rat-hole he was hiding. And made to suffer for this, suffer more than the motherfucker had ever imagined in his wildest nightmares it was possible to suffer. But that was later. Petrie’s concern was now. He calculated he had only fifteen minutes to do all that he had to do at the bank. He had the benefit of surprise but someone would raise some sort of alarm after all the publicity about Jane Carver’s disappearance. Just fifteen minutes.

  They turned on Broadway and Petrie twisted round and said to Jane: ‘You got it right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said. She was sure she had.

  ‘You worried about your daddy’s firm?’

  ‘That’s the only thing there’s left to worry about, isn’t it?’ Jane hoped she hadn’t sounded too challenging.

  ‘It’s over now. The moment I get what I want, it’s all over. The firm’s safe, your daddy’s reputation is safe. Everything’s all over.’

  ‘I’d like to think so.’

  ‘Think so.’

  She was riding downtown with people who cut out other people’s tongues, Jane thought. Did God knows what else. People who held Alice hostage. How much more convoluted – who was hostage to whom or for what – could this kidnap be! ‘You – the people you work for – entrapped my father, didn’t you? Blackmailed him into doing what he did?’

  ‘I wasn’t involved in the beginning,’ denied Petrie, who hadn’t been.

  The traffic was, strangely, easier going downtown. They joined Wall Street and Jane thought how familiar – how safe – it all seemed. How many times had she come this way, past these buildings, with her father? This was her father’s place, her father’s territory. Everyone on Wall Street knew her father, respected her father: George W. Northcote, the king, the Colossus. Jane saw the Northcote building, the far-away monument, the Citibank closer. Petrie, in the front seat, said something to the driver she didn’t hear before turning to her. He said: ‘You tell them I’m your lawyer, coming into the vault with you.’

  Jane said: ‘I know what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘You know what happens, you get anything wrong.’ For the first time, ever, Petrie was frightened. He wanted to be there, watching, when they found Burcher.

  The car stopped directly outside Citibank. The unspeaking man to her left got out to open the door to Jane, even offering his hand, which she didn’t need. Petrie was already on the sidewalk, coming in close beside her. He said: ‘Remember!’

  Jane didn’t reply.

  It was an expansive, crowded lobby, the teller area beyond, the securities area even further back, deep inside the building. Until that moment Jane had forgotten her crumpled, slept-in appearance and the television coverage of her supposed kidnap and actually looked around to be recognized. She wasn’t, not until they got to the floor managers’ desks and even there, initially, the man at the one they approached frowned up at the way she was dressed, not identifying her.

  She said: ‘I’m Jane Carver. Get me the securities manager please.’ She was aware of Petrie, so close beside her she could feel his tension.

  He said: ‘Don’t forget what will happen to Alice.’

  She said: ‘No.’

  ‘Or what to say.’

  ‘No.’

  The door behind the desk flurried open and a prematurely balding man hurried out. He said: ‘Mrs Carver! What …?’

  Jane said: ‘Don’t let this man get out of the building! He’s kidnapped me! He’s going to kill me.’

  For the briefest moment no one moved. Spoke. Petrie appeared frozen. Then, instinctively, he turned to run. The man at whose desk they were standing pressed the attack button. The alarms screamed out, the tellers’ shutters slammed down and the metal gates slid closed in front of all the exit doors. Petrie zigzagged in total panic, going first in the direction of the
main, already sealed door, then to a side exit, then back towards the way out into Wall Street. It was at that door he was seized by the uniformed security guards. One, unnecessarily, had his weapon out. Petrie didn’t struggle.

  Jane actually walked from where she was standing, towards the arresting group. Very quietly she said to Petrie: ‘She will die, won’t she?’

  With only two blocks to cover, the combined FBI and NYPD task force arrived from the Northcote building within minutes. Geoffrey Davis was with them. As soon as he saw Jane he said: ‘Thank God you’re both safe!’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘Alice Belling gave herself up to the FBI maybe three hours ago.’

  Twenty-Nine

  It was Jane Carver’s adamant insistence that they retrace the two blocks to the Northcote building, where symbolically she took over the office of her dead father over which officially she had no right or authority. There she spent almost an hour – refusing Hanlan’s repeated telephone calls and then the FBI man’s demand to see him upon his arrival with Detective Lieutenant Barbara Donnelly – while she talked through with Geoffrey Davis and Burt Elliott everything Alice Belling had warned her might be found in her husband’s personal security facilities.

  ‘We’re into damage limitation, if that’s possible,’ was Davis’s opinion.

  Elliott said: ‘I agree. But I don’t know how. What I do know is that it’s out of my league. We need a major, big-time trial lawyer.’

  ‘Find one. The best,’ instructed Jane.

  ‘We can explore, though,’ suggested Elliott. ‘Find out what we might be up against.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do,’ said Jane. ‘What’s first?’

  ‘Establishing the awareness, if any, of each and every one of the senior partners,’ said Davis, at once. ‘God knows – I certainly don’t – if it’s possible to save the firm. It certainly won’t be if even just one other partner was involved. If so, we’ve got criminal conspiracy. And that’s before we know what’s in the deposit box. Which we need to find out right now.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to it where it is,’ calmed Jane. ‘I want to work to an order of priority and that’s not my first priority.’

  Jane much later reflected, as she much later reflected on many things, that there was inherited proof of her father’s total autocratic control in how, still without challenge, she was able to summon the senior partners, for which she had even less authority. There was no objection, either, to Burt Elliott accompanying Geoffrey Davis. Her kidnap, Jane insisted, was not the point or focus of her gathering them all together. It was, instead and inadequately – because she could not compromise them – to advise of a situation that could have serious repercussions upon the firm and therefore logically upon their careers.

  The concentration upon Jane Carver was absolute and she liked it, totally in control and totally in charge, which she hadn’t been for far too long. Her only discomfort was looking like a bag lady without a cart but from her command of the meeting she didn’t think that was a disadvantage. She was going to recite the names of five companies, she told them. If any of them, before this moment, had any awareness of the firm’s involvement with those companies, they were to tell her. They would be asked again, very soon, the same question she was posing. And more. If any lied – to her questions, not to subsequent ones – they would be abandoned to legal process. Their professional integrity, their very future, depended upon their replies.

  Spacing the presentation, allowing silently echoing gaps between each, Jane recounted the names of the incriminating companies – even spelling them out, letter by letter – and then let further space into the demand.

  Finally she said: ‘I am going around this room, person by person, for your individual answers.’

  Which she did, even more adamantly insisting upon a positive, verbal denial, not a head shake. Bewildered denials came from every one of them and when she received the final refusal Jane warned: ‘You are, in the coming days, going to be questioned by the FBI. I believe my father failed you. I believe he failed me …’ She had to stop, to recover from the admission. ‘… and he failed John,’ she managed to continue. ‘It won’t matter a damn to any of you, after what might happen in the next weeks and months, but I personally want to apologize.’ Jane looked nostalgically around the heavy room. ‘This can’t be a time for questions because at this precise moment I don’t have any answers. I hope to have, very soon …’ The emotion surged up again, blocking any more words, and Jane was angry at the breakdown, believing she had steeled herself against it.

  ‘No!’ refused a heavy-bodied, heavy-featured man directly in front of her. ‘This is ridiculous! Nothing you’ve said is acceptable. What the hell is this all about?’

  She still didn’t properly know, Jane accepted. ‘A situation I never imagined myself ever being in. All I can ask you to do – hope you will do – is to trust me over the next few days.’ No one was culpable if no one had known! So they were personally, individually, safe even if the firm was not. She no longer had any feelings about her father’s reputation.

  ‘Where does that leave us?’ demanded another accountant, a designer-suited black man whom Jane remembered her father describing as brilliant and wished she could recall his name.

  ‘Uninvolved. Exonerated,’ responded Jane, looking invitingly at Geoffrey Davis.

  ‘I know this is bizarre,’ came in the firm’s lawyer, at once. ‘That’s exactly what it is, totally and utterly bizarre. You must believe me that all you can do – all any of us can do – is hang in there with Jane.’

  Could she remain in charge, for – and of – everything she wanted to do? Had to do? She should feel drained, traumatized, from what she’d already gone through that day, but unaccountably she didn’t. Even more unaccountably she felt energized, sure she could go on and resolve everything. At last she was in a position, in a role, in which she knew how to perform. She was in charge. In charge of herself and her surroundings and of what was going to happen today. She wished she knew about tomorrow. And the day after that.

  The full-featured man said: ‘What do we do?’

  Jane said: ‘Wait! Say nothing, to anybody outside the office. Certainly not the media. But tell the FBI what you’ve told me. Open all your accounts to them. Co-operate in every way. You’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Well?’ demanded Jane, when the door closed after the last departing partner.

  ‘I know them all,’ said Davis. ‘I believe them all.’

  ‘They sounded convincingly honest to me,’ endorsed Elliott.

  ‘They would, wouldn’t they?’ said Jane.

  ‘You gave them their chance,’ said Davis.

  ‘If one’s lying, they all go down,’ said Jane.

  ‘You can’t do any more than you’ve already done, on a personal level,’ encouraged Elliott.

  She could, thought Jane. But not here and not yet with these two men. She said briskly: ‘Now let’s meet the FBI.’

  Gene Hanlan was less able to hide his irritation at being kept waiting than Barbara Donnelly, visibly red-faced. He was cursory with the introductions to the two lawyers and said: ‘It’s good of you to see us at last!’

  ‘I told your people at the bank I wanted to talk to lawyers before I talked to you.’ Jane knew she was treading the slenderest of tightropes, not giving in to any bullying but at the same time not completely alienating the man or his organization. In the opinion of both Davis and Elliott, she was going to need the FBI as much – maybe even more – than they needed her.

  There was a slight relaxation from the agent. He said to Jane: ‘You OK?’

  Jane nodded. ‘Who were they, the people who had me?’

  ‘Big-time organized crime,’ predicted Barbara. ‘The man in the bank is refusing to talk without an attorney. The car that was outside the bank took off in too much of a hurry when the alarm sounded, right into the side of another car. The driver was still unconscious when our traffic guys got to him.
The other one snapped an ankle and couldn’t run. There are witnesses to one guy running, though. The two we got are muscle: gofers. They’ll break.’

  ‘You with them against your will?’ asked Hanlan.

  ‘Damned right I was!’ Jane said, indignantly. ‘They threatened to cut off part of my tongue if I didn’t do what they wanted.’

  ‘Kidnap, prima facie,’ declared Hanlan, now totally relaxed, all irritation gone. He had a millionaire kidnap and a major Mafia investigation under wraps and life looked sweet, with the sun on his face.

  ‘And what did they want?’ asked the other woman.

  ‘I thought you knew,’ said Jane. She had to get more than she volunteered. Everything depended on it.

  ‘We need to hear it from you,’ said Hanlan.

  ‘This is not a formal deposition,’ broke in Burt Elliott. ‘Nothing said in this room, about anything, constitutes a basis of evidence. It’s all privileged.’

  Hanlan sighed. ‘We’re asking for help, not for a formal deposition, not yet.’

  ‘What happened to Alice Belling?’ asked Jane. It was time.

  ‘We’re going to need a deposition on that, too,’ said Hanlan.

  ‘What happened to her?’ insisted Jane. ‘What has she told you?’

  ‘That you wouldn’t come in, without lawyers, when she decided to. So you took the car and she got a cab into Morristown from the truck stop and simply caught a train here. Some of it doesn’t square, though.’

  ‘Like what?’ They were telling her, which she’d feared they wouldn’t!

  ‘How you came to be in Morristown, where the Mafia picked you up, when she says you drove off in the opposite direction,’ said Barbara.

  ‘What more does she say?’ pressed Jane.

  It was Hanlan who provided the summary and when he finished Jane said: ‘She told you all about the hacking?’

  ‘She acknowledges that it’s illegal but said it was the only way to get the proof she and …’ Barbara hesitated, then plunged on. ‘She and your husband needed.’

  Jane smiled, humourlessly. ‘I know all about that.’