Brian Freemantle: Two Women

He said: ‘Sorry I’m late.’

She shrugged. ‘Not a problem.’

How many more times was that phrase going to jar through his mind. ‘Beer?’

‘I was thirsty, OK?’

‘OK. You look fantastic.’ She did, wearing blue jeans, a white shirt and with a blue sweater as a wrap around her shoulders.

‘You don’t. You look like shit on a stick. What’s up…?’

The waiter, who’d had a walk-on part in a movie that no one could remember but who called himself an actor said: ‘Hi John. You wanna cocktail?’

‘Straight up gin Martini. A twist.’

‘Please,’ added Alice, before the man left. To Carver she said: ‘There’s bad days and there’s bad days. This was a very bad day, right?’

‘The baddest day in the history of bad days.’ That sounded flip, like a joke, and the last thing in which he imagined himself was a flip, one-liner joke scenario.

‘So, yet again, do you want to talk about it?’

He did, decided Carver. He couldn’t, to Jane, because he would be talking about her father. And he shouldn’t, to Alice, who was a financial – even an investigative – journalist. But he needed – had – to talk to someone. And he trusted Alice as much as he trusted Jane: just as he trusted Jane as much as he trusted Alice. It would not occur to Alice to use anything he told her professionally: doing so would risk exposing their relationship. His Martini arrived and he said: ‘Thanks. And sorry, about before,’ and the waiter smiled and shook his head. To Alice, Carver said: ‘I’m going to tell you something you won’t believe. That I don’t want to believe. But which has happened… I…’ He shook his head, a lost man not knowing his direction. ‘Just listen.’

Which Alice Belling did, through two nodded-for replacement drinks and head-shaking against menu offers and when Carver finished, Alice, who’d held back her impatience, said: ‘This is absolutely fucking unbelievable!’

‘I thought I’d said that already. More than once.’

‘It needed saying again.’

Carver said: ‘You’re the guy on the white horse, wielding the sword of truth. What would you have done?’

‘I’m not going to become your conscience, darling. Or your reassurance. You’re old enough to go to the bathroom by yourself. You decide which way to piss.’

‘I’ve decided.’ It hadn’t ever seemed like a decision. Nothing more than a natural progression. He raised and dropped his arms, the stupidity of the gesture heightening his embarrassment. ‘It was like… like… the obvious thing to do.’

‘You know you’ve compromised me!’

‘Yes.’

‘Bastard!’

Their passing waiter said: ‘Nothing’s terminal, guys.’

Picking up the remark, Alice said: ‘This could be.’

‘It was the only way I could go. Is the only way I can go.’

Briefly they enclosed themselves in their own silence.

Alice said: ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘Trusting me, so completely.’

‘Didn’t you think I did?’

‘Not this much.’

‘I do.’

‘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.

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.