to New York with you. Talk
Without responding, Jenna put on her coat and picked up her purse. As she walked toward the staircase, her husband called, “Multibillion-dollar deal, Jen. Admit it. You don’t want it messed up either.”
Lou Knox, Cal ’s longtime chauffeur and aide-de-camp, jumped out of the car when he saw Jenna emerge from the house. He held the car door open, closed it behind her, and was back behind the wheel in seconds.
“Good morning, Ms. Whitehall. Looks as if we’re cutting it close today. Well, I can always drive you in if we miss the train.”
“No, Cal wants the car, and I don’t want the traffic,” Jenna said sharply. Sometimes Lou’s cheery observations grated on her, but he had come with the territory. He had been a classmate of Cal ’s at the godforsaken high school they’d attended, and Cal had brought him with him when he arrived in Greenwich fifteen years ago.
Jenna was the only one who knew about the beginning of their relationship. “Needless to say, Lou understands that it need not be general knowledge that we sang school songs together,” was the way Cal put it.
She had to give Lou credit. He responded to her moods. He immediately sensed that she did not want to talk and quickly tuned the radio to her favorite classical music station, keeping the volume low. That was her standard request, unless for some reason she wanted to listen to the all-news station.
Lou was Cal ’s age, forty-six, and even though he was in good physical shape, Jenna had always felt there was something unhealthy about him. He was a little too subservient for her taste, a little too anxious to please. She didn’t trust him. Even now, during the short ride to the station, she had the feeling that his eyes were studying her in the rearview mirror, gauging her mood.
I did my best, she told herself, thinking about her discussion with her husband. There’s no way Cal will help Molly locate Annamarie Scalli. Instead of feeling anger, however, she realized that underneath her resentment at his tone, her usual grudging admiration for him was setting in.
Cal was a powerful man, and he had the charisma that went with it. He had built himself up from that first computer company, which he referred to as a mom-and-pop-candy-store operation, to a man whose name commanded respect. Unlike the showy entrepreneurs who grabbed headlines as they made and lost fortunes, Cal preferred to remain essentially in the background, though known and respected as a major figure of the financial world, and feared by anyone who got in his way.
Power-it was what had attracted Jenna to him in the first place. It also was what continued to enthrall her. She enjoyed her job as a partner in a prestigious law firm. It was something she had achieved on her own. If Cal had never come along, she still would have had a successful career, and that knowledge gave her a feeling of having her private territory. “Jenna’s little acre,” Cal called it, but she knew he respected her for it.
At the same time, however, she loved being Mrs. Calvin Whitehall, with all the prestige that continued to accumulate around that name. Unlike Molly, she had never yearned for children or the elitist suburban life her mother and Molly’s mother had always enjoyed.
They were approaching the station. The train was sounding its horn. “Just in time,” Lou said pleasantly as he stopped, jumped out, and opened her door. “Shall I pick you up this evening, Ms. Whitehall?”
Jenna hesitated, then said, “Yes, I’ll be in at the regular time. You can tell my husband to expect me.”
21
“Good morning, Doctor.”
Peter Black looked up from his desk. The uncertainty on his secretary’s face warned him that whatever she was about to say would not be welcome. As a person, Louise Unger was timid, but as a secretary she was extremely efficient. Her timidity annoyed him; her efficiency, he valued. His eyes flickered to the clock on the wall. It was only 8:30. She had arrived at work early, as she often did.
He murmured a greeting and waited.
“Mr. Whitehall was on the phone, Doctor. He had to take another call but asks you to be available.” Louise Unger hesitated. “I think he’s very upset.”
Peter Black had long ago learned to control his facial muscles so that his emotions were not reflected in his expression. With a faint smile, he said, “Thanks for the warning, Louise. Mr. Whitehall is often upset. We know that, don’t we?”
The woman nodded eagerly, her birdlike eyes shining as she bobbed her head. “Just wanted to give you advance warning, Doctor.”
For her, this was a bold statement. Peter Black chose to ignore it. “Thank you, Louise,” he said smoothly.
The phone on his desk rang. He nodded, indicating that she should pick up the receiver.
She began to say, “Dr. Black’s office,” but got no further than “Doctor-” “It’s Mr. Whitehall, Doctor,” she said, putting the phone on hold. She knew enough to scurry out and close the door.
Peter Black knew that to show weakness to Calvin Whitehall was to be doomed. He had taught himself to ignore Cal ’s references to his drinking and was convinced that the only reason Whitehall restricted himself to one glass of wine was to prove his superiority of will.
He picked up the phone and spoke immediately.
“ Cal, how goes the empire?” Peter Black enjoyed asking that question. He knew it irritated Whitehall.
“It would go a lot better if Molly Lasch weren’t out there making waves.”
Peter Black felt as though the resonant tone of Calvin Whitehall’s voice was making the receiver tingle. Holding the phone with his left hand, Black deliberately stretched the fingers of his right hand, a trick he had picked up to relieve tension. “I thought we’d already established that she was making waves,” he responded.
“Yes, after Jenna saw her night before last. Molly wants me to locate Annamarie Scalli. She insists she has to see her, and obviously she doesn’t intend to be put off. Jenna was hammering at me about it again this morning. I told her I had no idea where Scalli is.”
“Nor do I.” Black knew his tone was even, his words precise. He remembered the panic in Gary Lasch’s voice:
I didn’t know at the time she was involved with Gary, Peter Black thought. What if Molly
He became aware that Cal was still talking. What was he asking?
“… is there anyone at the hospital who might have stayed in touch with her?”
“I have no idea.”
After he put the receiver down a minute later, Dr. Peter Black spoke into the intercom. “Hold my calls, Louise.” He put his elbows on the desk and pressed his forehead with his palms.
The tightrope was fraying. How could he stop it from breaking and sending him hurtling to the ground?
22
“She didn’t want to worry you, Billy.”
Billy Gallo stared across his mother’s bed at his father as they stood in the intensive care unit at Lasch Hospital. Tony Gallo’s eyes were welling with tears. His sparse gray hair was disheveled, and the hand that patted his wife’s arm was trembling.
There was no mistaking the kinship of the two men. They had strikingly similar features-dark brown eyes, full lips, square jaw lines.
Sixty-six-year-old semiretired Tony Gallo, a former corporate security officer, was a school crossing guard in the town of Cos Cob, a stern and trusted fixture at the intersection of Willow and Pine. His son, Billy, thirty-five, a trombonist in the orchestra of the road company of a Broadway musical, had flown in from Detroit.
“It wasn’t Mom who didn’t want to worry me,” Billy said, his tone angry. “You wouldn’t
