Jeffrey Archer - False Impression

“Will you be coming home for supper tonight?” she asked sharply. He could almost smell the meat stewing in the background.

“Would I miss it, Ma?”

“You did last week.”

“Ah, yes, I meant to call you,” said Jack, “but something came up.”

“Will you be bringing this something with you tonight?” Jack hesitated, a foolish mistake. “Is she a good Catholic girl?” was his mother’s next question.

“No, Mother,” Jack replied. “She’s a divorcée, three ex-husbands, two of whom died in mysterious circumstances. Oh, and she has five children, not all of them by the three husbands, but you’ll be glad to know only four of the kids are on hard drugs — the other one’s currently serving a jail sentence.”

“Does she have a regular job?”

“Oh yes, Ma, it’s a cash business. She services most of her customers on the weekends, but she assures me that she can always take an hour off for a bowl of Irish stew.”

“So what does she really do?” asked his mother.

“She’s an art thief,” said Jack, “specializes in Van Gogh and Picasso. Makes a huge profit on each assignment.”

“Then she’ll be an improvement on the last one,” said his mother, “who specialized in losing your money.”

“Good-bye, Mother,” said Jack. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He ended the call, to find there was a text from Anna, using her ID for Jack:

Switch your brain on, Stalker. Got the obvious R. U R 2 slow 4 me .

“Damn the woman,” said Jack. His next call was to Tom in London, but all he got was an answering machine saying, “Tom Crasanti, I’m out at the moment, but will be back shortly, please leave a message.”

Jack didn’t, as the cab was pulling up outside his apartment.

“That’ll be thirty-two dollars.”

Jack handed the driver four tens and didn’t ask for any change and didn’t get a thank you .

Things were back to normal in New York.

The night shift reported for duty at ten o’clock. The six new guards spent their first two hours marching up and down the corridor, making their presence felt. Every few minutes, one of them would unlock her door, switch on the bare bulb that hung above her bed, and check that she was “present” before he turned off the light and locked the door. This exercise was repeated at regular intervals for the first two hours, but after that it lapsed to every half an hour.

At five minutes past four, when two of the guards went off for their meal break, Krantz pressed the buzzer by her bed. Two more guards appeared, the grumbler with money problems and the chain smoker. They both accompanied her to the bathroom, each holding an elbow. When she entered the lavatory, one remained in the corridor, while the other stood guard outside the cubicle. Krantz extracted two more notes from her rectum, folded them up in her hands and then pulled the lavatory chain. The guard opened the door. She smiled and slipped the notes into his hand. He looked at them and quickly put them in his pocket before rejoining his colleague in the corridor. They both accompanied Krantz back to her room and locked her in.

Twenty minutes later, the other two guards returned from their meal break. One of them unlocked her door, switched on the light, and, because she was so slight, had to go up to the side of the bed to make sure she was actually there. The ritual completed, he walked back into the corridor, locked the door, and joined his colleague for a game of backgammon.

Krantz concluded that her one chance of escaping would be between four and four twenty in the morning, when the two older guards always took their meal break — the philanderer, the smoker, and the dozer would be otherwise occupied, and her unwitting accomplice would be only too happy to accompany her to the bathroom.

Even before Jack had showered and changed, he began to scour the New York telephone directory in search of NYRC. Other than the three Jack had already come up with, he couldn’t spot Anna’s “obvious one.” He switched on his laptop and Googled the words “new york racquet club.” He was able to retrieve a potted history of the NYRC, several photographs of an elegant building on Park Avenue, and a picture of the present chairman, Darius T. Mablethorpe III. Jack was in no doubt that the only way he was going to get past the front door was if he looked like a member. Never embarrass the Bureau.

Once Jack had unpacked and showered, he selected a dark suit with a faint stripe, a blue shirt, and a Columbia tie for this particular outing. He left his apartment and took a cab to 370 Park Avenue. He stepped onto the sidewalk and stood staring at the building for some time. He admired the magnificent four-story Renaissance revival architecture that reminded him of a palazzo, so popular with the Italians in New York at the turn of the century. He walked up the steps toward an entrance with the letters NYRC discreetly etched into the glass.

The doorman greeted Jack with, “Good afternoon, sir,” holding the door open, as if Jack was a lifelong member. He strolled into an elegant lobby with massive paintings on every available space of suitably attired former chairmen dressed in long white pants and blue blazers, sporting the inevitable racquet. Jack glanced up at the wide, sweeping staircase to see even more past chairmen, even more ancient; only the racquet didn’t seem to have changed. He strolled up to the reception desk.

“May I help you, sir?” asked a young man.

“I’m not sure if you can,” Jack admitted.

“Try me,” he offered.

Jack took the replica key out of his pocket and placed it on the countertop. “Ever seen one of these?” he asked.

The young man picked up the key and turned it over, staring at the lettering for some time, before he replied, “No, sir, can’t say I have. It could well be a safety deposit box key, but not one of ours.” He turned and removed a heavy bronze key from the board behind him. A member’s name was etched on the handle, and NYRC in red along the shaft.

“Any suggestions?” asked Jack, trying to keep any sign of desperation out of his voice.

“No, sir,” he replied. “Not unless it was before my time,” he added. “I’ve only been here for eleven years, but perhaps Abe might be able to help. He was here in the days when more people played racquets than tennis.”

“And the gentlemen only played racquets,” said an older man who appeared from an office at the back to join his colleague. “And what is it that I might be able to help with?”

“A key,” said the young man. “This gentleman wants to know if you’ve ever seen one like it,” he added as he passed the key to Abe.

Abe turned the key over in his hands. “It’s certainly not one of ours,” he confirmed, “and never has been, but I know what the R stands for,” he added triumphantly. “Because it must have been, oh, nearly twenty years ago, when Dinkins was mayor.” He paused and looked up at Jack. “A young man came in who could hardly speak a word of English and asked if this was the Romanian Club.”

“Of course,” murmured Jack, “how stupid of me.”

“I remember how disappointed he was,” continued Abe, ignoring Jack’s muttered chastisement, “to find the R stood for Racquet . Not that I think he knew what a racquet was. You see, he couldn’t read English, so I had to look up the address for him. The only reason I remember anything after all this time is because the club was situated somewhere on Lincoln ,” he said, emphasizing the name of the street. He glanced at Jack, who decided not to interrupt a second time. “Named after him,” he explained. Jack smiled at Abe and nodded. “Some place in Queens, I think, but I don’t recall exactly where.”