Two Women (24 page)

‘Sit down,' ordered Burcher, contemptuously, not looking at Carver, who did as he was told. Burcher and Delioci went to the desk and unloaded on to it everything from the briefcase. From the top right-hand door of the desk Burcher took two sheets of paper, handing them to the other man, and together they compared every document against their list. Carver couldn't hear the mumbled conversation. It must have been fifteen minutes before they both straightened, turning at last to Carver. Delioci took the seat behind the desk and Carver wondered if his authority was greater than that of the lawyer.

It was Burcher, though, who did the talking. He said: ‘You did good, John. We're pleased. Now the few things we've got to sort out … get right.' He made a hand gesture to the papers still lying on the desk before him. ‘They're complete but there's something missing, isn't there?'

‘That's everything I found, at Litchfield and at George's apartment, in town. And in his safe deposit at the Chase.'

‘That's not what I'm talking about,' said the softly spoken lawyer. ‘I told you my clients discovered there were a lot of attempts to hack into their computers. Some attempts that might have been successful.'

He had to protect Alice! Whatever happened – whatever threats were made – he couldn't disclose her name. Or her involvement. ‘And I told you I knew nothing about that.'

‘I know what you told me. My clients find that difficult to believe.'

Carver shook his head. ‘I don't have anything to say to that, beyond what I've already told you, that I don't know anything about it.'

Burcher said: ‘If we're going to work together, there's got to be trust between us. If we find you've lied, we're going to be very upset. And we will find out who did it. It's very important for us that we do.'

Carver no longer had the unreal impression of being suspended in mid-air because of all his conflicting feelings but the fear was stronger now, although not for himself. He hadn't expected the hacking demand: hadn't prepared answers, which he accepted he should have done. There was only one answer, if Alice were to be protected. Total denial. Which he'd already made. To repeat it could give the impression that he had some knowledge. ‘I've also made it clear that we're not going to work together.'

There was another sigh from Brescia, who was sitting slightly behind Carver, between him and the door. Burcher said: ‘John, you don't have a choice. That was made, years ago, by George Northcote. You've inherited his firm and you've inherited his responsibilities. Which you'll fulfil. This is the end of the discussion. There's nothing more to talk about. Except who got into the computer systems.'

The personal fear at last surged through Carver, at what he was about to do and say, the familiar skin-tingling, stomach-hollowing sensation. ‘You haven't heard the tape.'

The two men at the desk stared, initially unspeaking, at Carver. Without breaking his gaze Delioci told Brescia: ‘Go get a player.'

Burcher said: ‘You stupid man. You idiotically stupid little man.' He still didn't raise his voice, just sounding each sound like a bell's funeral toll.

Brescia re-entered within minutes with a small cassette player and, unasked, fitted in the tape and pressed the start button. Burcher's voice echoed into the silent room.
It's good of you to see me at such short notice
. And then Carver's.
Particularly as you weren't able to leave a name
.

The recording apparatus throughout the Northcote building had been professionally fitted and the quality was perfect. Still no one spoke or moved, the lawyer and Delioci looking fixedly at Carver as the tape unwound with the identification of the companies and the quietly spoken and intentionally ambiguous innuendoes from Burcher. It was at Carver's denial of any knowledge of the computer hacking that Delioci stopped the tape with an impatient finger flick.

The roared shout – ‘You're the total fucking idiot!' – at the lawyer and the fist crashing against the desktop was so unexpected that everyone physically jumped. Delioci rose, leaning towards Burcher, raging on. ‘Like a fucking amateur you let yourself get wired like this …'

Burcher was ashen and there was a tremor in his hands, the middle finger on his left tapping against his thigh as if he were sending a signal. How could it have gone this wrong? How could everything – his coup, his dismissal of the Deliocis – go so wrong?

Delioci's head came around to Carver. ‘So you've got a copy of the tape, which means you've got a copy of everything you've given back today and you're going to tell me that if we don't let go, you're going to turn it all over to the Feds, right?'

‘I want the separation of my firm,' rasped Carver, hoarsely.

‘Let me tell you what you're going to do,' said the man, controlled again. ‘You're going to drive back into Manhattan, to the bank …' He nodded towards the finger-tapping lawyer. ‘You're going to take him with you, right into the safe-deposit room and completely clear your box. I want everything …' He turned towards Burcher. ‘You hear that? I said everything.'

‘Yes,' said Burcher, almost a whisper.

The man came back to Carver. ‘And when you get back here I'm going to tell you how you're going to work for us for the rest of your goddamn fucking life. But here's the thing I'm going to tell you right now, give you all the time you need to understand. You ever try – think of trying – another half-assed move like this and you'll get a choice. The choice will be who gets killed, your wife or your girlfriend. Yours to pick …' He switched to Burcher. ‘And when you get back I'll have spoken to a lot of people who'll sure as hell want to speak to you …'

With only two of them in the rear of the car there was room for Carver to sit apart from Brescia and Carver did, as far as he could. Burcher hunched forward next to the driver, rocking very slightly back and forth.

Brescia said: ‘You fucked up big time, Stan. Good job we're around to look after you.'

It was payback time, Burcher accepted. They were going to make him pay for every insult, real or imagined. ‘It's going to be all right.'

‘You'd better believe it,' said the other man.

Burcher stopped rocking, swivelling almost completely around in his seat to face Carver. ‘Is everything in the box?'

Carver nodded, not speaking, his mind too jumbled to even think of words except those that echoed again and again in his head.
You're going to work for us for the rest of your goddamn fucking life
. And then:
The choice will be who gets killed, your wife or your girlfriend. You pick
… The car swept up on to the expressway and began going over the bridge, back into Manhattan.

‘Everything that was hacked?' persisted Burcher.

‘Everything I copied,' managed Carver. But the printouts were in the box! He'd have to say he did it, to save Alice. But they'd ask him how and he didn't know. Didn't know what Alice had meant about using English cut-outs – what a cut-out was, even – and they'd find out it was Alice and they'd kill her, because she had knowledge that could destroy them. And because they'd imagine it to be a fitting punishment for him.

‘I suffer, you suffer, asshole,' confirmed Burcher. ‘It all gets settled today. All of it.'

He had to fight, determined Carver. And then at once the questions. How? With what? The bank. That was the chance. His only chance. Last chance. Get Burcher into the vault with the security man, for the two-key opening procedure. Jump the lawyer there. Hold him and yell for the security man to help. Subdue Burcher and call the police, the Bureau, whoever. Get these other two in the car arrested. Then the shouting man back in the warehouse. Get protection. Alice had been right. The only way.

They turned into Wall Street. Carver could see the bank. He felt sick. He'd never fought anyone before. Not punched a man, wanting to hurt him. He wanted to hurt Burcher: hurt him as much and as badly as he could. And he could do it. He knew he could do it. He was physically bigger, stronger, than Burcher. It would help that he'd seen the security people, less than three hours ago. They knew who he was. Would react, when he called for help.

‘You ready, asshole?' demanded Burcher.

Carver nodded. He was definitely ready.

The driver said: ‘We get moved on, I'll go round the block.'

Carver saw the blue and white of the police car as he began to get out of theirs. It was coming in the opposite direction, slowed by other traffic. The decision was instant, unthinking, panic-spurred. He thrust the waiting Burcher as hard as he could out of his way, sending the man sprawling on to the pavement, and ran around the front of the car waving his arms and shouting, seeing the police driver and the observer turn in his direction, their lips moving, both frowning. Then Carver heard the bellow of the air horn behind him and twisted to see the truck for the briefest second before it hit him, knocking him beneath its tandem-mounted front wheels, which ran completely over his chest, crushing it far worse than George Northcote's had been crushed.

The frantically waiting Alice Belling saw the coverage on
Live at Five
, the story angled on the astonishing coincidence of the fatalities. She ran – literally – grabbing a case already packed. She didn't know how they'd done it to look like yet another accident: all she could think of was that they knew her name and that she would be next on the list.

Seventeen

T
he uniformed sergeant frowned up at Hanlan's entry, gesturing to a chair already set out, and said: ‘The Bureau doing traffic accidents these days?'

‘All kinds of things,' said Hanlan.

‘Coffee?' The nameplate on the desk said Sergeant P. David Hopper. He was a small man bulged from sitting too long behind a desk and living even longer off relish-filled torpedo sandwiches.

‘Coffee's good,' accepted Hanlan. It was like the hundred other police offices in the hundred other police precincts he'd ever been in, a scuffed, chipped, overused cell without bars in which people like P. David Hopper filled the drawers and cabinets with the stuff they brought from the previous scuffed, chipped, overused cell before moving on to the next. Hopper didn't have sufficient citations or plaques or souvenirs to cover all the clean patches left by previous occupants, leaving the wall pockmarked white. The coffee, from a percolator on top of a filing cabinet, came in an
I Love NY
mug.

‘So what's all kinds mean?'

The apparent friendliness and immediate readiness to see him – rare from police to Bureau and vice versa – would be from curiosity, Hanlan knew. There'd been a lot of attention as he passed through the front hall and he guessed his presence would already be known about on the top floor. ‘John Carver.'

Hopper shrugged. ‘What can I tell you? Total mystery, why it happened, how it happened.'

‘That's what I want to talk about, the mystery.'

The frown came back. ‘I meant why a guy like Carver suddenly runs in front of a thirty-five-ton truck.'

‘Doesn't it seem an odd coincidence that his father-in-law died in such a similar accident so very recently?'

Hopper shook his head. ‘I don't know anything more about Litchfield than I've read in the paper and seen on the news. But I know about Carver because I've got the reports right here in front of me …' He patted some papers on the right of his desk. ‘Which you're welcome to see and have a copy. I've got eight reliable witnesses – two trained squad-car cops from this very precinct whom I know and whose judgement I trust completely – all telling roughly the same story. For no reason, Carver suddenly runs off the sidewalk in front of a car, yelling and shouting, in the direction of the police car. The truck driver doesn't stand a chance. Can't be anything but an accident.'

‘Roughly
the same story?' pressed Hanlan.

‘Couple of the witnesses thought they saw Carver push by some guy, knock him over.'

‘The squad-car guys?'

There was another head shake. ‘They only saw him when he started coming towards them. The two who saw the guy go over heard the first shout.'

Hanlan hoped that Ginette up in Litchfield and McKinnon, out in Brooklyn, were doing better than he was. ‘What was the shout … the words?'

Hopper got up to refill his mug. Hanlan held up his hand against the gestured offer. Hopper said: ‘No words. Just the noise.'

‘What about the guy who might have got pushed over. Is he one of your witnesses?'

‘No,' conceded Hopper. ‘On balance I don't think there was such a guy. You know how it is, situation like this. Guy gets squashed into the ground, everyone screaming and shouting, people's memories play tricks.'

‘What about the car?'

‘Car?'

‘You said Carver ran in front of a car before he went under the truck. How come he didn't get hit by the car?'

There was the familiar head shake. ‘Haven't thought about it. Had time to get by, I guess. But not the truck.'

‘I don't see the sequence,' protested Hanlan. ‘The truck has to be following the car, right? So if he gets clear in front of the car, how come he's hit by the following truck? Unless, that is, the car's stopped and the truck's overtaking. Any of your witnesses make that clear?'

‘Gene, I'm trying to do all I can to help here. I truly am. So how about a little in return. You want to tell me why the Bureau's here, making traffic reports?'

Hanlan recognized the beginning of the usual resentment. ‘We got a tip, sounded good. Big-time money laundering. The Northcote firm was referred to. We didn't get the promised call back, with more information, but the new head gets killed not a month after Northcote himself …'

‘What workable evidence you got?' broke in Hopper.