‘I’m sorry, about that compromise shit. I’m not compromised.’
‘You are. But thank you.’
‘You told me everything?’
‘Everything that I so far know. I still don’t understand what the scam is: just that there is one, very, very big-time indeed. Or why are the figures being massaged like they are if the companies aren’t being floated!’
‘I want to know whether George W. Northcote was an entrapped innocent, like he says. Or is long- established Mafia big-time.’
‘I can’t decide that, either,’ said Carver. He would though. He’d understand it all and resolve it all and keep the firm he was destined to inherit safe from whatever Northcote had involved it in.
In New York the Mafia, despite some investigative setbacks, remains a pyramid structure, the five predominant Families of Bonanno, Luchese, Gambino, Genovese and Colombo at the pinnacle with minor although named Families permitted to exist and operate beneath them, sometimes paying tributes and sometimes providing services. The Delioci clan were the most entrepreneurial and successful of those minor groups, largely because it was Emilio Delioci who had all those years ago enmeshed George Northcote and originally sold his money- laundering services to all of the five. Although, because of the accountant’s importance to the five, Northcote’s individual control had passed to Burcher, Mafia protocol decreed that any working difficulty had first to be raised with the Delioci Family before any reference to New York’s ruling Mafia Commission and that was why Burcher that day drove over the East River to Queens to meet the elderly, white-haired Emilio Delioci.
Burcher didn’t like operating with minor groups. They were unpredictable, nearly always imagining they were more important than they were, and there had been no attempt to hide the Delioci resentment when, at the superior Families’ insistence, he became liaison between them and Northcote. Nor was there now when he was ushered into the inevitable back room of the Delioci headquarters in the inevitable restaurant on Thomson Avenue.
‘To what do we owe this rare honour,’ wheezed the asthmatic don.
‘A problem that at first has to be discussed with you,’ said Burcher. He was glad he had advised the consiglieri of all five New York Families of the visit and was able to indicate at once that the resolve could easily be taken away from the Deliocis.
Four
John Carver had cleared his diary to give himself a final review before the scheduled arrival of their overseas chief executives. The head of the Tokyo office was arriving that night, all the others some time during the following day. Carver strictly, determinedly, maintained his already planned agenda, obviously unable to forget his one overpowering concern but managing – mostly – to relegate it sufficiently to concentrate upon the annual international conference.
With the financial director he went through the country-by-country performance of each of their overseas divisions before analysing their own twelve-month growth and underscoring New York’s 15 per cent increase over the previous year – 5 per cent higher than any of the subsidiaries – for particular mention in his speech, which was to be the expanded global overview immediately following George Northcote’s now limited farewell keynote address. Carver physically shifted in flushed discomfort at the director’s urging him to include instructions to all their overseas divisions to take particular care – essentially with new clients – against inadvertently becoming caught up, even by accident or inference, in the sort of financial manipulation that had so disastrously tainted Wall Street, hurriedly insisting it was already his intention, which it hadn’t been until that moment, to close the discussion with that imperative warning.
Carver personally checked the boardroom seating arrangements – which put Northcote for the last time in the ultimate position of authority – and had the technician test the projection equipment for the visual presentation to accompany what he had to say, which he still only had in draft form but which was already fairly well established in his mind. Corporate and accountancy fraud warning was the only addition and he made a mental note to alert Northcote in advance, to avoid any wrong interpretation – but more importantly wrong reaction – from the other man.
His personal assistant, a grey-haired spinster named Hilda Bennett whose English accent had survived thirty years in Manhattan, as had her demeanour of a public-school matron, met him there, clipboard and itineraries in hand. All the hotel suite reservations had already been doubly checked and confirmed: the floral displays were predominantly roses. She had already established there were no cultural difficulties in the choice of flowers for the Tokyo manager’s Japanese wife, for whom floral tributes might have had unintended connotations: roses were good flowers. Also doubly checked were the already approved seating plans – as well as the special dietary requests – for Thursday’s welcoming dinner and Friday’s formal gala. The gold gift pins for the wives and cufflinks for the men – the cufflinks in the shape of the Northcote logo – were being delivered from Tiffany’s that afternoon. She’d personally gone through every detail of the Sunday brunch party at Mr Northcote’s Litchfield estate with Janice Snow. Helicopters had been laid on from the East 34th Street helipad. Every guest had guaranteed they had no difficulty with helicopter travel. Both she and Janice would be on hand throughout to handle any unexpected problems. She had made up a personalized dossier, with details of every arrangement, for Mrs Carver when she got back from the country the following day to host the arrival cocktail party. Seven limousines were on permanent standby to chauffeur wives on shopping expeditions while their husbands were in conference.
It took Carver an hour to dictate the speech he’d imagined he had fixed in his mind and less than fifteen minutes to realize, when it was typed, that it wasn’t fixed at all. His difficulty, unsurprisingly, was the corporate scandal warning, which didn’t seem to fit logically wherever he tried to introduce it. After once removing it altogether he reinserted it where he’d slotted it in the first place.
Jane came on to his private, direct line just after lunch – which he hadn’t bothered to eat – to say she’d just heard she’d been unanimously elected the charity-fund organizer.
Carver said: ‘Congratulations.’
‘That was hardly effusive!’
‘It was pretty much a shoo-in, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ve just told Dad. He said it’s going to be great, our working together. He seemed very excited coming up yesterday: said you and he had talked and he was definitely going to quit. So thank you, darling. I didn’t think persuading him was going to be that easy.’
‘What about getting him to see Dr Jamieson?’
‘Another surprise. He went, this morning. Said he had a lot of tests and there should be some results next week.’
‘That’s good.’
‘What did you do last night?’
‘Worked on my speech, for Friday,’ lied Carver. That was certainly what he would have to do tonight. What he had at the moment wasn’t an address from the head of an international accountancy conglomerate. His first Harvard attempt at Keynesian philosophy – which had been rejected with the demand to try again – had been better than this. And this wasn’t Keynesian philosophy.
‘I’m coming down with Dad, obviously.’
‘Hilda’s got you a bunch of stuff.’
‘I could be in Manhattan by lunch time.’
‘Call me from the car. We could eat.’
‘Maybe I should look over what Hilda’s done first.’
‘I’ll leave it up to you.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
Carver tried to rework his speech but wasn’t any better satisfied and decided he really would have to work on it that night, at home. There were enough excuses to call his father-in-law but Carver held back from telephoning, confronting another doubt. The conference organizing was his responsibility so there was absolutely no reason why Northcote shouldn’t have gone up to Litchfield. But Carver couldn’t remember the man ever doing so before with
