Two Women Read online

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ said Jane, obscurely.

  ‘I know it will be,’ said Alice, who didn’t.

  The lobby was empty. The man at the reception desk smiled and said something Alice didn’t hear. Jane smiled back at him but didn’t say anything. Outside, Alice said: ‘I’ve got a car,’ and quickly turned Jane away from the direction from which vehicles would approach. Alice wanted to move faster but Jane was unsteady, scuffing her feet, needing a supporting arm. Alice could see the Volkswagen tantalizingly ahead, like a mirage, and for a moment, like a mirage, it didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. But then it did and she bustled Jane into the passenger seat and tightened the safety belt around her. As she did so, close to the other woman, Alice saw Jane’s eyes droop, then blink open, her head jerking back. Then it fell again.

  Alice drove initially without thought, grateful she’d been facing east, making the right on Second Avenue and staying on it through four intersections before making the cross-town turn, wanting to avoid going close to the Plaza. She’d done it! She’d got Jane – poor, momentarily bewildered and confused Jane – and through Jane the FBI could get what George Northcote was murdered for and what Janice Snow was murdered for and what John had finally – too late – been so desperately running to the police to preserve. Which they could get now. Alice couldn’t think, didn’t want to think, beyond that. Whatever the uncertainties ahead, things were going to happen and when they did she had to face them, adjust to them.

  It was when Alice was actually making the cross-town turn that Jane slumped heavily against her and when she was fully halted by the jam at the Fifth Avenue junction Alice turned to see Jane’s head sunk deeply on to her chest, bubbling faint snores.

  Loudly she said: ‘Jane!’ but Jane didn’t stir.

  ‘Jane!’

  There was still no response.

  It would be whatever Jane had been given, to get her through the funeral. That and the trauma of it all. Total exhaustion, as well. Alice felt close to total exhaustion herself. She wouldn’t get what she wanted the acceptance she wanted – taking a completely incomprehensible woman to the FBI. They’d most likely hospitalize Jane, separating them before there was any chance of even attempting to explain, which would make everything impossible.

  Alice didn’t turn downtown on Broadway but continued on straight across to Twelfth Avenue to go north, on to West Side Highway. She hoped Jane would sleep until they got to the cabin. She’d run into the first of her uncertainties, Alice realized. And still wasn’t safe.

  Gene Hanlan and the FBI became involved so quickly through a coincidental sequence of events. Geoffrey Davis didn’t raise the alarm by dialling 911 but called Sergeant P. David Hopper direct, with a lawyer’s recall that the man had been in charge of John Carver’s accident investigation. And Hopper remembered Hanlan’s unusual visit to the precinct house and called Federal Plaza after alerting his own detective division. Kidnapping is a federal offence and kidnapping had been the word Davis had used, in their conversation. And because it was the word Hopper continued to use, the NYPD detectives were led by a lieutenant, a short-cropped, trouser-suited woman whose ID badge said Barbara Donnelly. From the way in which they were trying to assemble people, with no interviews started, Hanlan guessed he was only five minutes behind the detectives.

  ‘I didn’t call you,’ the woman greeted Hanlan, walking away from her team, physically separating him from everyone.

  ‘So we’re saving time,’ said Hanlan. Sergeant Hopper had indeed been a rarity. This was the sort of instant and instinctive resentment to which he was accustomed.

  ‘How’d you find out so quick?’ The voice had a smoker’s hoarseness.

  The Bureau already has an interest.’ Hanlan felt he was due the exaggeration. If Jane Carver had indeed been kidnapped there should be a lot of people in the J. Edgar Hoover building eating crow within the next twenty-four hours.

  ‘You want to explain that?’

  Hanlan looked at the people now waiting on the far side of the apartment, close to the balcony window, and wondered if they could detect the antagonism between him and the woman in the exchange. It would worsen if he reminded her he didn’t have to explain anything. Lowering his voice and putting his back towards them, Hanlan said: ‘You know about the death of George Northcote, Carver’s father-in-law, up in Litchfield? And of Northcote’s personal assistant, out in Brooklyn?’

  ‘Read something about it, after Carver got killed,’ allowed the woman. ‘So?’

  ‘We’ve got an informant talking organized crime, money laundering and murder.’

  ‘Shit!’ she said, the hostility going from the manner in which she was confronting him.

  ‘It’s federal,’ he pointed out.

  ‘We’ve got pretty effective murder divisions here in the city.’

  ‘If they were murdered – they’ve been officially accepted as accidents: Carver’s most certainly was – they’re out of NYPD jurisdiction.’

  ‘We going to work together?’ The woman was retreating further.

  ‘I don’t see any benefit in working against each other. Never did,’ said Hanlan.

  The detectives with Barbara Donnelly were shifting impatiently, knowing what was going on. There was some uncertain movement from near the window, too. She said: ‘Let’s just run through it, see how it goes.’

  Hanlan turned to the waiting group, recognizing the two men and the woman who had stood in the receiving line with Jane Carver. There was one other woman, in a severely tailored suit, and three other men, one with a heavy moustache, another in the sort of black suit that staff often wore, and the third in a red blazer that also looked like a uniform. Hanlan introduced himself and asked for the general picture and at once Geoffrey Davis identified himself by name and position, taking control of the group as Hanlan hoped he was going to be able to take control of the law enforcement.

  ‘Jane became very tired by the end of the reception: under a lot of stress. She asked to come back, so Hilda brought her. Arrangement was that we’d give her time to settle down, get rested, and then we’d come by to see she was OK. There’s a few things I’ve got to see to. Will-readings, firm insurances and pensions that automatically revert to her …’

  ‘I’m not getting a clear picture here,’ protested Barbara, looking to one of the women. ‘You Hilda?’

  Carver’s PA nodded.

  ‘If you came back with her, how come you didn’t stay until the others arrived?’

  Hilda said: ‘Jane told me she wanted to rest. That there was something she had to do later. She’d asked several times earlier about Rosemary Pritchard …’ She hesitated, smiling towards the severely suited woman. ‘This is Dr Pritchard. Jane wanted to know whether she’d been at the funeral. I told her that while she was resting I’d go back to the cathedral and pick up the condolences books …’ She nodded to two bound volumes on a coffee table. ‘We’re going to need them, for the letters. When I got back, she’d gone.’

  ‘With someone who pretended to be Dr Pritchard,’ supplied a man in a blazer. ‘Tom Reynolds, downstairs security. The woman said she was Rosemary Pritchard and when I called up, Manuel told me to let her on past.’

  ‘But I was …’ began the swarthy man in the black suit but Hanlan cut him off. ‘OK, let’s hold it there. Everyone can make their own contributions later but for the moment, let’s get some continuity into this. You,’ he insisted, pointing to Davis.

  It came with a lawyer’s precision and only took minutes. Davis finished by gesturing towards the gynaecologist and saying: ‘Dr Pritchard was obviously the first person I called when I heard what had happened …’

  ‘And I felt I should come straight over,’ said the woman.

  ‘We appreciate that very much. Thank you,’ said Barbara. ‘You had no appointment with Jane this afternoon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor arranged to be at the funeral: see her there?’

  ‘No,’ repeated the docto
r.

  ‘Were you treating her, for anything specific?’

  ‘We’re into patient confidentiality here,’ refused the other woman.

  ‘Dr Pritchard,’ said the detective lieutenant, level-voiced. ‘The way it looks, someone who knows you – or knows that Jane is a patient of yours – impersonated you and kidnapped her. We’re not asking you to break any patient confidentiality. What we are asking is that you do all you can to help us find her and get her back safely.’

  ‘I understand that: that’s why I came as soon as I got the call.’

  ‘Jane knew you: the woman couldn’t have impersonated you,’ said Hanlan.

  ‘I asked her if she was Rosemary Pritchard,’ intruded Manuel. ‘She said she was a friend.’

  ‘A friend of mine? Or of Jane?’ demanded the gynaecologist.

  Manuel shrugged and shook his head, unknowing.

  ‘How was she?’ asked Hanlan. ‘She look frightened, as if this other woman was threatening her?’

  Manuel considered the question. ‘Not really.’

  ‘What’s not really mean?’

  ‘She got angry, when I asked her not to leave until Dr Mortimer and the others got here. She didn’t usually get angry.’

  ‘Was Jane Carver under treatment by you, Dr Pritchard?’ asked Barbara.

  Rosemary Pritchard hesitated. ‘I had recently seen her. And John.’

  ‘How recently?’ demanded Hanlan.

  ‘A few days ago.’

  ‘Let’s try to get around this confidentiality problem by how I phrase my question,’ suggested the detective. ‘Because I’ve got a problem with Jane Carver coming home to rest after the ordeal of her husband’s funeral then suddenly getting up and leaving, if she wasn’t under any obvious pressure. Could whatever you were treating Jane for make her vulnerable? Behave in a way out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Chlorpromazine could,’ declared Peter Mortimer.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘What she was being given – wrongly given – to help her over the shock of her father’s death,’ said Mortimer. ‘It can have bad side effects on certain people and in my professional judgement Jane was one such person. It had been stopped but there was clearly a residue.’

  ‘What sort of bad side effects?’ asked Hanlan.

  The psychiatrist shrugged. ‘Vulnerability, to repeat an already used word. Emotional dependency upon others. Fixation …’

  ‘I think you’re solving my problem,’ said Barbara. ‘All we need now is to know where she is.’

  ‘And who she’s with,’ added Hanlan. He looked at the policewoman. ‘You think your guys could get the initial statements?’

  ‘Sure,’ nodded Barbara. To her waiting squad she said: ‘OK guys,’ and followed Hanlan towards the window view, making room for the other detectives to start work. She said to Hanlan: ‘You going to bring in a big team?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ admitted Hanlan. ‘What I don’t want are any media leaks. If she’s being held, we’ve got to avoid spooking whoever’s got her into doing something in a panic to get rid of her. You warn your guys?’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed the woman again. ‘But a thing like this, it nearly always gets out.’

  ‘Let’s just do our best. If it is a kidnap, there’ll be ransom demands. We’ll need to get this place wired: people here permanently. And the Northcote building, as well. Have negotiators there, too.’

  Barbara Donnelly looked at him sceptically. ‘And you want to keep it under wraps!’

  ‘Let’s just do our best,’ Hanlan repeated. ‘And …’ He stopped, abruptly, looking back into the apartment. ‘And at the moment we’re a hell of a long way short of doing that.’ He called out: ‘Mr Reynolds? Dr Pritchard …?’

  The security guard and the gynaecologist crossed the room together.

  Hanlan said: ‘Downstairs, in the lobby. There’s got to be CCTV?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ agreed the guard.

  ‘And a viewing room?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You mind coming with us, Dr Pritchard?’

  No one spoke in the descending lift, but Barbara Donnelly was smiling faintly and when she glanced in his direction Hanlan smiled back, hopefully. There were four monitors in the viewing room but Alice was only on the loop of the primary camera, directed at the main door. The film showed her turning away immediately after her first exchange with Reynolds and Barbara said: ‘She’s trying to cover herself: seen there’s a camera.’

  Jane was between Alice and the camera as they left and the detective said: ‘Here she’s using Jane as a shield. And look, she’s holding her arm, forcing her along!’

  ‘Supporting, not forcing her,’ qualified Hanlan. To the gynaecologist he said: ‘Well? Do you know her?’

  ‘I think I do,’ said Rosemary Pritchard, although with doubtful slowness.

  ‘Who?’ demanded Barbara, eagerly. ‘Give us her name!’

  The gynaecologist shook her head. ‘I don’t have one. I’m fairly sure that I know her, that I’ve seen her or met her. But I can’t recognize her: give her a name. There’s something …’ She shrugged. ‘… something, but I don’t know what.’

  On the second re-run Hanlan realized that he’d seen her, too. That morning, at John Carver’s wake at the Plaza Hotel.

  Jane had remained asleep, only occasionally stirring, during the drive up to the cabin and was very confused when Alice tried to rouse her, needing all Alice’s support to get her into the cabin, so unsteady and still so half asleep that Alice continued straight on into the bedroom and laid Jane under the comforter, only bothering to take off her shoes. Jane snuffled and shifted for a position, but slept on.

  During the drive Alice had tried to put some sort of reason into what she’d done and justified most of it, but not all, and the part she couldn’t justify was the most important. But the major concern was Jane herself. However exhausted Jane might have been by the funeral it was surely unnatural, maybe dangerously so, to have slept for so long in a jolting car and to go on sleeping now, although the bed was far more comfortable than the Volkswagen’s passenger seat. Jane should be seen by a doctor. Who would ask questions about medication which Alice couldn’t answer. Want to know what Jane was doing there and maybe why. Alice reached out and felt Jane’s forehead. Jane stirred at the touch but didn’t wake up. She wasn’t running a fever and was breathing quite normally. She’d wait, Alice decided. Sit where she was, here in the bedroom, alert for any discernible change in Jane. She’d definitely get a doctor if Jane became obviously ill but at the moment she wasn’t obviously ill. Just deeply asleep. Which made Alice’s other difficulty the most important thing.

  She’d kept the radio on low, throughout the drive, tuned to breaking news for the first flash on Jane’s disappearance, surprised she hadn’t heard it. There’d be a panic, though, police and FBI: Gene Hanlan involved, almost inevitably. It would be a hell of a risk, calling from here, but she had to do it to stop the panic. Stop them thinking something bad might have happened to Jane. It would only take a minute, maybe two: it would be all right to leave Jane alone for just two minutes.

  But Alice hesitated at the telephone, the Federal Plaza number beside it, and had to force herself to lift up the receiver. The moment she said ‘Martha’ into the mouthpiece Hanlan was on the line.

  ‘You got her?’

  The lobby camera, Alice knew. ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘You know what you’ve done?’ Hanlan certainly knew what he’d done, risking his entire career putting everything on hold in expectation of getting this call after seeing the CCTV film.

  ‘Of course I know!’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘To get the evidence you said I needed.’

  ‘She got it?’

  ‘She can get it.’

  ‘Now here’s what you’re going to do, Martha. You’re going to come in, like I’ve been asking you to all along. Come in, and we’re going to sort it all out. And n
ow I want you to bring Jane to the phone so I can talk to her, hear that she’s OK.’

  ‘You can’t talk to her. She’s asleep.’

  ‘Martha! You could be in a whole lot of trouble. Serious, criminal trouble. I’m keeping a very tight lid on everything to protect you but …’

  ‘That’s what I want, protection!’

  ‘I know. And I promise I’ll give it to you. All you’ve got to do is come in. Or tell us where you are and we’ll come and get you.’

  She’d held on the phone too long. ‘I’ll call again, later. I want to think.’

  ‘Martha! Don’t hang up!’

  But Alice did.

  The Bonanno’s Vito Craxi said: ‘I want to put things on notice here. We’re looking at a fucking disaster.’

  ‘A major fucking disaster,’ endorsed Carlo Brookier.

  No one was admiring the Central Park view or helping themselves to drinks.

  Bobby Gallo, the Gambino consigliere, said: ‘That’s my Family’s feeling, too. How we going to get what’s in Carver’s Citibank box? We don’t get it, the system’s bust. It’s a collapse we don’t want and can’t have.’

  Charlie Petrie knew clearly enough it wasn’t general conversation. He, in particular, and the Genovese by unarguable association, were being held responsible. ‘What about Burcher’s idea, going to the firm direct, get back what belongs to us after Carver wrote his letters?’

  ‘We can’t be sure we know of everything Northcote held back. Who might be identified,’ warned Gino LaRocca. ‘We’re over a barrel here.’

  ‘We gotta shift something,’ insisted Gallo.

  ‘I’ll speak to Burcher about a strictly legal approach,’ undertook Petrie.

  ‘I think it’s dangerous,’ protested Craxi.

  ‘Let’s vote on it,’ suggested Petrie.

  Craxi was the only objector.

  Petrie said: ‘I’ll speak to him.’