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.
