relief at the mall to her right, the K-Mart and JC Penny and Safeway neons blinking invitingly at her, the car park already more than half full, the build-up greater conveniently close to the stores. Jane found the perfect gap, between a high-sided U-Haul van and a station wagon, a separating wall in front of her concealing the vehicle from three directions.
She went into the complex through the JC Penny entrance, remembering to keep her head down, and found the toilets on the ground floor. She chose the washbasin in the corner, with a wall to her right, and felt more relief at how she looked. She remembered the photograph that had been shown on TV being taken, in a professionally lighted studio, her make-up and hair – longer then than it was now – flawless for a portrait for her father’s sixtieth birthday. She was sure she didn’t now look anything like she did in the photograph. What was visible in the mirror of her borrowed shirt and jacket really did look as if it had been slept in and her hair was squashed under Alice’s woollen cap. Her face was shiny, without even lipstick, and Jane decided that all she needed was a stolen supermarket trolley to be the perfect bag lady. Good for moving around a crowded store. She hoped it wasn’t so bag-lady convincing as to get her refused refuge at the Marriott she’d isolated a little more than two blocks away. She had Alice’s $300 flash – deposit – if a problem arose.
The telephone bank was open pods but there was no one else in the line. It had to be her own name for the collect call but the operator gave no audible reaction to it, although there was from the switchboard girl who immediately accepted at the Northcote building on Wall Street.
‘Is that you, Mrs Carver?’
‘Get me Geoff Davis, right away,’ said Jane. ‘It’s me and I’m OK.’
‘Where are you?’ demanded the Northcote lawyer. ‘What’s happening? The FBI…’
‘Be quiet. Just listen,’ halted Jane. ‘Listen, OK?’ There was still no other caller anywhere along the line of telephones.
Jane talked as quickly as she could while remaining comprehensible. She insisted she was physically all right and gave Davis the name of the town and said she was going to book into a Marriott and wait for him: she’d call with the address within fifteen minutes. He and Burt Elliott were to get to her as fast as possible. Hilda Bennett had the name of a helicopter company.
‘The FBI are here,’ declared Davis, when Jane finally stopped, breathless.
‘Why?’
‘Someone’s coming, about some companies your father handled.’
‘Don’t co-operate, not yet!’
‘Jane. I don’t have a choice!’
‘We’ve got to talk first. The firm could be in trouble.’
‘All right,’ the lawyer placated her, emptily. ‘I’ll come to get you. Call me, from the Marriott. Where’s Alice Belling?’
‘Not with me any more. Let’s stop talking and get moving. I want you and Burt here, now!’
Jane retraced her steps to leave by the same door through which she’d entered. She was still in the approach corridor when she saw the police car, its lamp bar still flashing, blocking the Volkswagen in its space, the Highway Patrol car doubling the barricade. As she watched, two more police cars, their lights flashing too, swept into the lot.
Jane hurried back inside, but at once cut left for the next exit, guessing the reinforcements were to close the store: search it, certainly. She emerged directly out on to the street, without being stopped, without seeing a policeman even, although she could hear a far-away siren. Jane kept walking, using the crossing further to distance herself from the car park before turning to go back towards the junction where she’d first seen the policemen, who had obviously seen her – or rather the Volkswagen and its plate number – after all. The Marriott could only be 50 yards after she took a right at the junction.
The dark-suited man seemed to come out of the rear of the Mercedes with the same movement of the door opening, completely blocking her path. The blow, low in her stomach, was not hard but professionally expert, winding her, preventing any protesting shout and doubling her up at the same time, so that she was easily thrust into the car with the man tight behind, virtually lifting her. The Mercedes was at the lights before Jane could straighten.
Tony Caputo, the Cavalcante consigliere, looked back from the front seat and said: ‘If you try to scream now you’ve got your breath back we’ll cut off your tongue, Mrs Carver. Not completely, just about half an inch from its tip. You’ll still be able to speak but you’ll sound like a retard. You’re not going to scream, are you, Mrs Carver?’
‘No,’ said Jane.
‘He won’t show,’ declared Barbara Donnelly. ‘We all know he won’t show. He shows, he’s pussy-face of this or any other year. And I didn’t think we were dealing with pussies.’
Hanlan hadn’t heard pussy-face before. He liked it. He said: ‘We gotta go with it, everything as planned. It’s all we’ve got.’
They were in the CCTV viewing room of the Northcote building, the FBI installations doubling the number of cameras and monitors. The lobby reception staff were doubled too, the additions all police. The elevators were staffed, which they weren’t normally, both with FBI agents. There were FBI and police in every office on the floor on which the nervously waiting Geoffrey Davis had his office.
With philosophical acceptance, Hanlan said: ‘OK, what’s our recovery going to be?’
‘What makes you think there’s going to be one?’
‘Thanks for that great encouragement!’
‘Tell lies, spread lies,’ suggested the woman. ‘Lure them out of their dark places.’
‘My people will never go with it,’ rejected Hanlan. ‘Their escape is entrapment.’
‘My people will,’ insisted Barbara, who’d lit a cigarette without protest. ‘The prosecution’s yours, federal. NYPD isn’t federal. You don’t entrap anyone. You even say you don’t. Your spokesperson says you’ve no idea what the claim is all about.’
‘That puts us not co-operating.’
‘We don’t, most times. Everyone knows that.’
‘So what’s your entrapment?’
‘Defection, from a major New York Family. That’s using the Daily News invention. The investigation’s concentrated on certain specified companies. Which it is. They won’t know who the defector is but mentioning companies will convince them there is one. We don’t get some playback whispers, life ain’t fair.’
‘It was your leak, to the Daily News,’ accused Hanlan.
‘I could be offended by a question like that.’
‘Are you?’
‘It could rattle the cages.’
‘We got two women out there, one miscalculation and they’re dead.’
‘Big-time advantage of the idea,’ argued Barbara. ‘Our Family – or Families – think there’s an internal source, it deflects the attention from Jane and Alice. Diffuses it, too. Maybe even redirects resources, although I think that’s being optimistic.’
‘You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?’ It was better than anything that had occurred to him since the two women had run.
‘Talking as the ideas come to me,’ insisted Barbara Donnelly, straight-faced.
They both turned, as the door burst open. Davis said: ‘I’ve just spoken to Jane: I know where she is!’
Before anyone could speak the telephone rang and the lawyer said: ‘That’ll be her, with the address of her hotel!’
But it wasn’t.
When Hanlan took the call from Federal Plaza, Ginette Smallwood said: ‘Alice Belling’s just walked in. Says she’s got things for us.’
Charlie Petrie’s first call to the Algonquin was just after nine, directly after hearing from Caputo that their Highway Patrol source had come good with the location of the Volkswagen and that they’d picked up Jane Carver and were on their way into Manhattan. There was no way that Stanley Burcher would have already left for his meeting with the Northcote lawyer that early. Petrie kept calling, every five minutes, right up to ten o’clock, finally slamming the receiver down and saying aloud: ‘Where the fuck are you, Stanley?’
At that precise moment, in fact, Stanley Burcher was getting off the early New York shuttle to Washington’s
