Two Women Read online

  ‘And John tried to face them down … believing as he did that Dad and Janice had been murdered he still tried to face them down …?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice, knowing the other woman’s need. ‘That’s how brave John was.’

  ‘But he told you, not me,’ remembered Jane, stronger-voiced.

  ‘How could he have told you?’ pleaded Alice.

  ‘I didn’t believe you, not any of it, before. I actually thought you might be mad, although I didn’t think you were going to harm me. But I believe you now. All of it …’ Jane stopped, her voice catching. ‘I cried for Dad but I didn’t cry for John, not properly. The drugs. And now I don’t think I can cry, for either of them …’

  She did though, so suddenly that Alice jumped at the wail and came forward in her ugly chair, watching helplessly as the sobs racked through Jane as they had racked through her, and finally Alice got up and went to the other woman. At the first touch Jane stiffened and went to pull away but didn’t and then she let herself come into Alice’s embracing arm and Alice began crying, too, and both women sat on the hard bed, holding each other, both weeping for the same man.

  Initially there was an embarrassment at their holding each other, supporting each other, a few moments, once they recovered and stopped crying, of moving awkwardly around the room, neither knowing what to say, how to say it. So neither at first said anything.

  Alice broke the impasse. ‘They’ll say I kidnapped you.’

  ‘You did.’

  They both sniggered a laugh, although still awkwardly.

  Alice said: ‘Don’t hate me.’

  Jane said: ‘I don’t know what to feel – how to feel – right now. I don’t feel anything, about anyone. I don’t think I know how to hate.’

  ‘We both loved John. He loved both of us.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say to that, either. I don’t understand it. Maybe I never will.’

  ‘That’s how it is,’ Alice insisted, wishing it hadn’t sounded so flip.

  ‘I suppose I know that’s how it was. I still don’t understand it.’

  ‘Do you understand – accept – that we could both be killed, if we don’t get protection?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Jane, you can’t suppose so. You know so, surely!’

  ‘I …’ Jane began, then corrected herself. ‘Yes, I know.’

  She had to get back to the cabin: get John’s picture, remembered Alice. ‘Why did you drive away like that?’

  ‘I told you. I didn’t believe what you were saying: thought you were mad. These days have been mad. I don’t know why I did it, at that moment. I just did. I don’t like being manipulated. Everyone was manipulating me, telling me what to do, what pills to take, like I was a child.’

  ‘We’ve got to go back. Get safe.’

  ‘They can come for us here.’

  ‘There are things I want.’ Only one thing, the thing she couldn’t do – wouldn’t do – without. Her only physical, tangible memory.

  ‘We drove for hours! I don’t even know where the hell we are!’

  ‘We’ll go back tomorrow.’

  ‘You want to stay here?’

  ‘No one knows we’re here. That’s what you said.’

  ‘It’s filthy! Disgusting!’ said Jane.

  ‘No one knows we’re here,’ repeated Alice. ‘No one would expect us to be in a place like this. So no one will look for us in a place like this.’

  Jane looked around the stained, night-darkening room. ‘No. No one would,’ she agreed and sniggered again, this time in head-shaking disbelief.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ prompted Alice.

  ‘To what, after that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Alice. ‘Some sort of life.’

  They were still vaguely red-eyed but they’d washed their faces and combed their hair and touched up their lipstick, which was the only make-up either carried in their bags. They were the instant focus of the truckers in the suddenly hushed adjoining diner and to avoid it they took a booth and shrugged off the two direct, leering approaches to their table. When the waitress with drooping breasts, who clearly regarded them as competition, tried to deliver two unordered whiskies from a third hopeful, Alice said: ‘Take them back and say thanks. My friend and I don’t need anyone else but each other, OK?’

  ‘They’ll want to save you from yourselves,’ predicted the waitress, relieved.

  ‘Tell them to go fuck themselves. It’s fun,’ said Alice.

  Jane looked down to cover the smile. As the girl left Jane said: ‘You know your way around this sort of place?’

  ‘I go to the movies a lot.’

  ‘You would, I suppose, with time on your hands.’

  ‘Jane, you’re allowed any sort of shot you want. I can’t think of anything more to say than I’ve already said. Let’s just get through tonight, tomorrow, until we get back to where they’re waiting. Then you’ll never have to see me, ever again.’

  ‘It’ll ruin the firm, won’t it?’ suddenly demanded Jane. ‘Ruin my father’s reputation. That’s what both of them, Dad and John, were trying to prevent. That’s what you said.’

  ‘I know what I said,’ acknowledged Alice, concerned at the conversation. ‘I also told you John was convinced your father was murdered. And Janice. There’s no way other than going to the Bureau.’

  ‘We should call them.’

  ‘We should,’ agreed Alice, relaxing.

  ‘Not now, not right away. I want to think.’

  ‘Jane, there really is nothing to think about.’

  ‘Later,’ insisted the woman.

  The now friendly waitress returned, with iced water and place settings. She said: ‘I got nothing against guys like you, OK?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alice.

  The woman said: ‘Take the meat loaf. It’s fresh. I wouldn’t risk anything else.’

  ‘I’ll have meat loaf,’ said Alice.

  As Jane nodded acceptance too, she said: ‘John didn’t like meat loaf.’

  Which was why she’d never made it for him, remembered Alice.

  ‘When?’ demanded Gene Hanlan.

  ‘Two or three hours ago,’ admitted Geoffrey Davis.

  ‘Two or three hours! What the hell …?’

  ‘Things happened,’ said the Northcote lawyer. ‘Maybe it wasn’t even two or three hours …’

  ‘She’s under threat,’ stopped Hanlan. ‘Serious, physical threat. People got to the cabin where she was before us. Wrecked it like they wrecked Litchfield. We don’t get her soon, like immediately, she’s dead. So where is she?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Hear me out …’

  ‘I don’t want to hear you out. I want you to hear me out. You’re a lawyer, doesn’t matter criminal or civil. You know what I’m saying? We’ve got a big-time, major investigation here. We lose getting Jane back – lose Jane – I’m going to charge you with wilful obstruction of justice and anything else I can think of and I’m going to recommend the Bureau move for your disbarment. You hear what I’m saying?’

  There was a pause from the other end before Davis said, calmly: ‘Now you’re going to hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s instructed me to file against any Bureau application for access to John Carver’s estate or private affairs.’

  ‘She told me she would do that.’

  ‘She’s instructed the family lawyer, Burt Elliott, too.’

  ‘I’m still listening.’

  ‘I had another call,’ continued Davis. ‘Guy said he was a lawyer, representing clients for whom George Northcote worked exclusively but to whom John had written severance letters. I asked around, among the partners. No one knew anything about it …’

  ‘You got names?’ interrupted Hanlan, anxiously.

  ‘I finally asked Hilda Bennett, John’s PA. She wrote the letters and kept file copies, obviously. We’ve got the names of all five,
all registered in Grand Cayman. It was doing that which took the time.’

  ‘Who’s the guy who called?’

  ‘Wouldn’t give a name. Told me I’d understand when we met.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Ten thirty tomorrow morning. I put it back until then because I thought you’d want to know. Be here, waiting.’

  Hanlan didn’t respond for several moments. ‘I think I owe you an apology.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Davis. ‘I think you do.’

  It was late, past nine, before Charlie Pedtrie got back from Trenton, believing he had made all the arrangements possible with the Cavalcante consigliere and anxious to meet those of the other four New York Families within the hour. But Stanley Burcher had to come first. There had been telephone conversations with the other consiglieri from Trenton and none of them were happy with what Petrie was going to order but no one had been able to come up with an alternative that was better to get back what was in Citibank.

  The slight, self-effacing lawyer was waiting patiently in the familiar Algonquin lounge, the brandy snifter beside the coffee the only thing out of the ordinary for this most ordinary-looking of men.

  Petrie ordered brandy for himself, needing it, and said: ‘Well?’

  ‘Fixed, for tomorrow morning.’ Burcher was frightened, of too many things to know precisely about what. Of the man sitting opposite and what the people he represented could and would do to him. Also, for the first time in his life, of openly putting himself forward as an emissary of such people. The urge to run, to escape from them and from what might happen to him, had grown since he’d spoken to the Northcote lawyer until now it was a knot, something he could feel, deep inside him.

  ‘Why couldn’t you go today?’ demanded Petrie.

  ‘He couldn’t make today. I’m approaching him, remember?’

  Petrie hesitated. He didn’t want to frighten further the obviously already frightened man but it would be ridiculous sending him in unprepared. He said: ‘There’s a complication.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Burcher, brandy bowl suspended in front of him.

  ‘Alice Belling somehow snatched Jane Carver … got the Carver woman to go with her. I don’t know how. They’re together, somewhere in the Catskills.’

  For several moments Burcher’s mind refused to assimilate what he was being told and what the consequences were. Then he said: ‘But there’s no point … no purpose in my seeing the Northcote lawyer. Even if he accepted my argument about returning property no longer theirs to keep, Jane Carver is the only person who could legally get it out of her husband’s personal deposit box.’

  ‘I want you to make the meeting,’ insisted Petrie. ‘We’ve got to be ready.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We didn’t know there was a relationship between the two women,’ said Petrie. ‘There obviously is and they obviously know what’s in the box. The FBI are looking for them, but for kidnap, according to conversations we’ve intercepted. We’ve got some inside tracks. We’re going to end this Thelma and Louise shit by tomorrow. Maybe even tonight. We know the car they’re driving, the plate number even. We get them, we hold Alice while Jane co-operates, meets the lawyer you’re going to meet and gets our stuff back.’

  ‘What about the FBI?’

  ‘Alice Belling is our insurance the FBI don’t get told, by anyone, that Jane’s back until we’ve got our stuff. When we’ve got that, all the Feds have is a kidnap that’s nothing to do with us. No proof of anything else.’

  ‘What’s Alice Belling going to tell them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Petrie. ‘Alice Belling isn’t going to tell anyone anything. She won’t be able to. Neither will Jane Carver, after she’s done what she’s told.’

  It was madness, Burcher decided. He didn’t want to get involved in madness.

  Neither of them undressed nor got beneath the covers, reluctant to have the sheets anywhere around them. Both spread their jackets over their pillows to keep their faces away from the physical contact and there wasn’t much talk after the near argument that erupted when they’d got back to the cabin, Alice now demanding that they go at once against Jane’s insistence that they were staying.

  ‘I need time to think … to think about everything,’ was Jane’s repeated refusal.

  ‘Please, Jane! We’ve had this conversation!’

  ‘The morning will be soon enough. I’m the one with the car keys, remember?’

  Now, in the darkness, Alice’s feelings switchbacked again. There was, she conceded, a peculiar, womb-like comfort in being in a place even as disgusting as this instead of outside in the unknown blackness of the night, hunted by the law and the lawless. The morning would be soon enough. And she was exhausted, not just from this day but from all the days – how many days? – that had gone before. In a surprising self-revelation, Alice admitted to herself that she was content for Jane to make the decisions, for the moment at least. Maybe, even, that Jane was the stronger, more forceful personality. There was only one thing she wanted to do now, was determined to do now, and tired though she was she was going to do it now, although she was sure she already knew. She wanted to feel the excitement, the euphoria. And to be equal with Jane? The question intruded abruptly, surprising Alice. That was a jealous question. And she wasn’t jealous of Jane.

  Alice lay for a long time, waiting for Jane to go to sleep before telling herself there was no need for Jane to be asleep. Why shouldn’t Jane be awake when she went to the bathroom? Alice didn’t put the bedroom light on, though, feeling her way to where she knew the door to be, closing and bolting it behind her. There was more black scurrying when she turned the bathroom light on and she flinched away, shuddering. She’d never imagined such filthy places existed: were allowed to exist by sanitation authorities. Not much longer: just a few hours.

  The booklet instructions were very simple – illustrated even – and there was a specimen cup, the need for which was obvious but which she had difficulty filling, so she had thoroughly to wash her contaminated hands afterwards. Alice’s fingers were shaking as she immersed the double-windowed, absorbent tester tube, brown for no, blue for yes. The blue was very bright, much brighter than she’d expected, and at once she thought of the symbolism and thought how fitting – how right – it would be if John’s baby was a son, the heir he would have wanted.

  Alice flushed away what could be dispersed and returned what couldn’t to the pharmacy bag and carefully carried it back into the darkened room to put beneath her jacket on the pillow. And then, even more carefully, lay on her back with her arms wrapped around herself, low and protectively around herself because she had so much to protect now. She was going to have John’s baby! John’s own, real, biological baby! To take with her, to love and to guard and to raise to be the most perfect child there was ever likely to be and whom one day she’d tell all there was to tell about its most perfect father.

  Alice became aware of Jane’s heavy breathing from the adjoining bed, reminding her of her concern at Jane’s delaying insistences. Jane was going to do something stupid: try to protect her father’s name and John’s name and the Northcote firm’s future and risk ending up dead. And not just risk herself. Her baby now.

  She couldn’t risk ending up dead, Alice told herself. She wasn’t simply saving herself any more, either. She had to save – protect forever – the baby she was having by John. She’d done all that she could, all that was humanly possible, to help Jane. Protect Jane. From now on Jane was on her own. Whatever Jane announced tomorrow didn’t matter, because she wouldn’t be part of it, part of anything. She had to go with the best she had, some criminally incriminating printouts, and bargain as best she could. And she had a satchel full of money, more than sufficient to pay for a cab or a hire car from here – wherever here was back to Manhattan if Jane insisted upon taking the Volkswagen. To which she was welcome, as she was welcome to whatever else. Alice had more than she’d ever wanted, ever dreamed of. She thought she felt a movement
, although she knew it was far too early, but she smiled, enjoying the phantom sensation. What name would John have wanted? That was very important, to get right the name that John might have wanted. Everything was important, getting it right for John.

  Since the case began being taken seriously Gene Hanlan had slept in a mess-room cot at Federal Plaza, Barbara Donnelly behind an inadequate separating screen, which was totally unimportant to both, all thoughts of gender discarded. The advantage was that they were both together, able to move at once after Geoffrey Davis made his call.

  The now permanently assigned Bureau plane ferried duplicate originals of the documents on the five companies for the financial directorate to investigate and returned to Manhattan with additional agents. Because at last there was a positive development within NYPD jurisdiction Barbara Donnelly and her team shared in every aspect of the planning. Together the two of them personally toured the Northcote building on Wall Street, with Davis their guide, ending totally satisfied that once the mystery emissary crossed the threshold escape would be impossible. Davis provided complete plans of the premises, from which Hanlan and Barbara jointly briefed their combined squads, and by midnight additional CCTV and audio equipment had been installed and tested in Davis’s office, where the meeting was to take place.

  Barbara said Scotch was fine, which was fortunate because that was all Hanlan had in his office at that time of night. He touched Barbara’s glass and said: ‘At last, something positive! This time tomorrow, we’re going to be properly in charge of the whole damned thing.’

  The first edition of the following morning’s New York Daily News hit the streets around 12.30 a.m. The front page was dominated by a stock photograph of Jane Carver and the headline used the word kidnapped. There were also references to unnamed Mafia Families and organized crime and to a mystery woman, inevitably described as beautiful, who was identified as the intermediary who initiated the kidnap. Just as inevitably she was called the Mafia Madam. There were individual sidebar stories of all three deaths, now under FBI reinvestigation. An anonymous police spokesman predicted the biggest Mafia sensation of the decade.