‘Which mob?’ came in Barbara. ‘Give us names!’
‘I don’t have any names,’ admitted Alice. ‘John started to hold back, thinking that the more I knew the greater danger I would be in.’
‘But there are names in the safe deposit?’ persisted the detective lieutenant.
‘Yes,’ guessed Alice. She had the right to a lawyer. It didn’t matter that she’d waived her Miranda rights by agreeing to talk on the record. She had to have an attorney to negotiate for her, get her the protection she deserved. And without which she – and John’s baby – would die. ‘I’m not going to say any more. Not without a lawyer.’
‘What more have you got to say?’ asked Hanlan.
‘I’m not going to say any more. Not without a lawyer,’ doggedly repeated Alice. She hesitated, looking at the recording apparatus. ‘Except that I think you’re a bastard son of a bitch!’
As Ginette Smallwood led Alice away to another room, to make her lawyer’s call in private, Barbara Donnelly said: ‘I agree with her. You’re a bastard son of a bitch. She’s shown you the way, legal or not. And you know damned well the Bureau and the IRS will take it.’
Hanlan said: ‘Do you think we got it all?’
‘We got enough.’
‘I want it all.’ It was, Hanlan thought, about time.
It was the courtesy that frightened Jane Carver the most. The threat to cut off part of her tongue, which she hadn’t the slightest doubt the man had meant, had been made politely and during what little conversation there’d been during the journey the one who did the talking had always addressed her as Mrs Carver. The two men sitting either side of her in the rear of the car did so without crowding her and the one who’d winded her had apologized. Unasked, the man in the front had said she was being taken to meet someone who would tell her what they wanted and that if she co-operated there wouldn’t be what he called unpleasantness. No one wanted unpleasantness.
Jane could see the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson river from the top-floor window of the warehouse office in which they’d locked her, thirty minutes before. It was bare, clearly unused – a blank desk without a telephone, three upright chairs and a cabinet – but there was an adjoining toilet, for which she was grateful. Having sat for so long, she was ignoring the chairs, standing at the window gazing down at the car park. There were a lot of lorries bearing the BHYF logo.
What was she going to do? Co-operate, obviously. Tell them whatever they wanted to know, but she didn’t know anything more than Alice had told her. Would they hurt her? Do something like maiming her, if they asked something she couldn’t answer? Of course they would. It had to be the safe deposit. If they…
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.’
