Two Women (29 page)

Jane anticipated the sitting down, without prompting. A man she didn't know, from the firm, she thought, but wasn't sure, ascended the pulpit and mouthed words she didn't hear because she didn't want to hear. She knew how wonderful John had been. She didn't need the contrived platitudes and hypocritical insincerity. She knew John. Fully and completely knew John, which no one else did. He would have made the most wonderfully attentive, adoring father. Which he could still be, from beyond the grave. Not physically attentive or adoring. But a father. A father for their child. She didn't care how many or what operations she had to undergo, what discomfort – pain – she had to endure: if John had left a sperm sample, she'd become pregnant by it. Was Rosemary Pritchard here: would she be at the wake? Urged by her own question Jane half turned, actually to look around the vast building, but didn't see anyone properly. Good today, if they could talk. Not essential, though. She could definitely make contact tomorrow. Begin everything tomorrow. If it was a boy – it
had
to be a boy – she'd obviously call it John. Create an archive of photographs and anecdotes and whatever had been written in the obituaries, so that John jr would know what a very special, unique father he'd had. She hoped so much to meet Rosemary today.

There was another ebb and flow of awareness but Jane didn't need Hilda's supporting hand to rise for another unheard hymn or sit for another unheard reading or another unheard sermon about the cruel mysteries of God's will beyond mere mortal understanding. She wished she'd seen John's body: properly said goodbye. She wouldn't have been persuaded against doing so if it hadn't been for the goddamned drugs they'd fed her like candy, take this madam, take that madam. She wouldn't take anything, when she had John's baby. She wanted to feel everything, know everything. Like she knew how completely John had loved her, as she'd loved him. It wouldn't be an empty life, from now on. She'd have John's baby. Make him so proud of the father he'd never know. John Carver junior. It sounded good, strong, as John had been strong.

‘It's over,' whispered the attentive Hilda, at her elbow.

‘No, it's not,' smiled Jane, rising to follow the coffin from the cathedral.

Where was Martha, wondered Gene Hanlan, watching the procession from the back of the cathedral. She had to be here somewhere, among all these people. He'd spent the entire service studying the crowd without knowing what he was looking for, a woman crying, a woman furtive, a woman fitting his mental image of Martha, for whom he didn't have any proper mental image, which made his being there a waste of time. He'd still go on to the wake, Hanlan determined. It didn't make any more sense to do so than it had to come here but you never knew. There might just be something that would instinctively jar, although he couldn't imagine what it might be. He was curious at the faint smile on Jane Carver's face, as she passed. And wondered, too, why she was looking so intently from side to side of the nave, as if she were looking for someone. Probably the effect of tranquillizers. She'd need something to get her through the double whammy of losing a father and a husband like she had.

People rarely pluck a phoney name out of the blue: the psychological-profile training at Quantico was that somewhere there always had to be a subconscious connection, like people nine times out of ten choosing phoney names that began with their own initials. Would Jane Carver know who might call herself Martha? A long shot, among all the other shots so long they were virtually beyond the horizon. Certainly one he wasn't going to resolve today.

Hanlan moved as his pew turned to empty, emerging into the aisle at virtually the same time as Stanley Burcher, from the other side of the nave. Burcher hadn't seen anyone resembling the inadequate thumbnail picture of Alice Belling, although the crowd was too great for any proper examination or comparison. Not everyone in the cathedral would be going back to the wake at the Plaza. He hadn't bothered with Northcote's but there were a lot more pressing reasons for his going this time. Maybe he'd find Alice Belling there.

‘Bearfort Mountains are New Jersey. Cavalcante territory,' identified Bobby Gallo. They were again in the hotel penthouse with the view over Central Park.

‘They've used the system a lot,' said Charlie Petrie. ‘Know its importance.'

‘We should bring them in,' suggested the Luchese
consigliere
, Gino LaRocca. ‘We get a better lead, they may have useful people on the payroll.'

‘I think so too,' said Petrie. ‘I'll fix it.'

‘We've agreed the Northcote organization is finished,' said Vito Craxi, the Bonanno voice at the meeting. ‘Who's going to take over?'

‘I'm proposing a firm in Philadelphia,' said Petrie. ‘We got pressure on the president and four directors. It's worked like clockwork for the past five years.'

‘You want to use Burcher?' asked Gallo.

‘I don't think we should,' said LaRocca. ‘I've apologized for the Deliocis but Burcher lost the handle on it, too. Let him work his usefulness out here but when it's sorted out I think Stan's time is up.'

‘More than used up,' said Carlo Brookier, offering the Colombo opinion. ‘This should have been settled – properly – a long time ago.'

‘Anyone disagree?' invited Petrie.

No one spoke.

Twenty-One

J
ane hadn't seen Rosemary Pritchard on her way out of the cathedral but there had been too many women in the congregation to isolate every one and a lot wore hats, some with veils like her own, although Jane didn't imagine the gynaecologist to be a hat-and-veil person. Hilda told her, when she asked in the car, that there wasn't an attendance list but they'd know later who had been at the service from the condolence books. Peter Mortimer and Paul Newton were among the first to arrive after her at the Plaza. Mortimer asked how she felt and Jane said OK, which she was. There had only been two ebb-and-flow sensations in the cathedral, both when she was sitting down, and none since. She was hearing and thinking quite clearly, knowing what she had to do, eager for everyone to arrive so she could find Rosemary. It wouldn't be possible for them to talk properly at the receiving line but she'd be able to tell Rosemary she wanted to see her later and that it was important. It was good to be able to think like this, not losing the thread halfway through. She told Hilda she didn't want anything to drink or to go to the bathroom. Why was it taking so long for everyone to arrive? Geoffrey Davis and the senior partner took their places beside her and Jane nodded to the parroted question about how she felt.

Hilda said: ‘People are getting here now,' which they were.

Mortimer, standing drink in hand with Newton where they had an unbroken view of Jane, said: ‘She's going to be just fine. The chlorpromazine didn't hit her as hard as it could have done.'

Jack Jennings was close enough, with the rest of the now dispersed Litchfield staff, to hear the remark and hoped the psychiatrist was right. He thought Jane Carver looked shaky.

Alice held back, wanting the concealment of the crowd that she'd had at the cathedral, desperately, anxiously, wishing she'd been able to think of a better approach to Jane. It hardly amounted to an idea at all but it might just get her to Jane, alone, which was as far as Alice had taken her thoughts. Get to Jane alone, today. Talk about documents she'd been promised by Northcote and then by John for the biography of Northcote she'd agreed to write. How was she going to persuade Jane – convince Jane – to open the safe deposit? She didn't know, not yet: hadn't worked it out. Just get them protected, that was all she had to do. Keep them both alive.

Stanley Burcher was using the concealment of the crowd, too, entering the room as part of the line but sidling away almost at once, not wanting officially to meet Jane Carver. Not yet anyway. If he determined upon the proposal taking shape in his mind it might be necessary only once, she being the only person with legal access to Carver's security facility. Could he turn that into a mere formality? Carver's severance letters would be on record in the Northcote building: the Families had the originals Carver had written to their registered Grand Cayman addresses. There was every reason for his officially approaching the Northcote firm, acknowledging the termination, and demanding the return of all documentation referring to the five companies, arguing that he knew they were being stored privately and not in the firm's vaults. The danger was that Northcote lawyers would examine what was in the box, once Jane had retrieved it. Could he extend client confidentiality and insist the contents be returned unexamined? They knew, from what Carver had produced in the NOXT building, what was duplicated in the Citibank vaults and Burcher doubted the woman would understand any of it. The Northcote lawyers would, though, when they went through it, as they inevitably would. Which way would they jump when they realized the significance? Like lemmings, over the self-exposing, self-destructive cliff, to the FBI? Or more practicably, and strictly within the law, gratefully accepting they were no longer professionally involved and even more gratefully thrusting upon him Carver's incriminating box? It was an impossible bet to call. But the sensibly practical route – the route Burcher would have expected any sensible, practical lawyer to take – would be the latter. Where in this milling reception room was the Northcote lawyer? Logically he – or she – had to be close to Jane Carver. Reluctantly, as he was always reluctant to enter any focus of attention, Burcher moved towards the receiving group. So, finally, although from a different direction, did Alice.

What the fuck was he doing here, Hanlan asked himself. Had he expected name tags,
Martha
in big letters? Imagined, in this babble, that he'd hear the voice he'd recognize when he wasn't sure he'd recognize it anyway? Stupidly – unprofessionally – he'd let this get to him: let instinct – gut instinct – cloud hard-assed reality. Ginette was right and McKinnon was right and Washington was right. Keep the door – or more literally, the telephone lines – open but don't invest this off-the-wall situation with importance or priorities it didn't have. OK, after this he wouldn't. Any more than he'd tell anyone else at Federal Plaza where he'd been or what he'd been doing. Just keep things in order of priority. File this at the back of the list. Hanlan still didn't move from where he'd established himself after also slipping out of the receiving line, token champagne in hand but undrunk, watching. Martha would be here, crazy or not. She'd have to be, according to every Quantico rule of psychological profiling. A big crowd. Rich crowd. No one – certainly no woman – looking out of place, particularly unusual or attracting attention. Most likely one of this sort of crowd then. But which side? The honestly rich side, who would have needed Northcote and Carver to keep them that way? Or the dirty organized-crime side, who according to Martha had found some way to make Northcote and Carver work for them? No way these days of guessing. Telling. Everyone – at this level – looked the same, behaved the same. Rich. Successful. Honest. A quiet voice said: ‘Excuse me,' and Hanlan moved aside for Burcher to continue on towards where Jane Carver and her group were standing.

Jane let her mind freefall from everything immediately around her but intentionally, not from any legacy of the drug, her sole concentration upon finding one person, one face, which so far she hadn't seen. That's all she had to concentrate upon, only Mary … no, Rosemary … Pritchard. That's the only person she wanted to see: to talk to. Rosemary. Talk to Rosemary. Everything else was unimportant, banal. Trite words, trite responses.
So sorry
…
a wonderful man … tragic loss
…
we must keep in touch … lunch … Thank you … very kind … yes, keep in touch
. Where was Rosemary? Why hadn't she come? Jane felt tired, from standing, from shaking hands. Her back and legs ached and her hand, her fingers, hurt from being squeezed: people thinking the harder they pressed, the more sincere they appeared.
So sorry … a brilliant man … Thank you … very kind …

‘Jane?'

‘Rosemary!' exclaimed Jane, then at once: ‘No, not Rosemary.' She tried to focus but it wasn't easy to see a veiled face through her own veil and then abruptly the woman's image faded for the briefest of seconds. ‘You're not Rosemary …? Who …?' Why wasn't it Rosemary? It had sounded like Rosemary.

‘We have to talk,' urged Alice, conscious of the pressure from people behind. ‘It's very important. About your father. And John. Both of them.'

‘I thought you were Rosemary.'

‘Can we talk? Can I come to see you, to talk? It's urgent.'

‘Do you know Rosemary? Rosemary Pritchard?'

The pressure, the intervention, was now from the woman whom Alice knew to be Hilda Bennett. The woman said to Jane: ‘Are you all right …? Do you want to stop …?'

‘No,' refused Jane, fully bringing herself back to where she was, what she was doing. ‘What was it you said?' she asked Alice.

‘We need to meet. About your father. And John.'

‘Yes. Of course. Thank you. Very kind.'

Stanley Burcher was merged into another wall, studying Geoffrey Davis, who had been pointed out to him as the Northcote lawyer by a hovering hotel manager. Uncharacteristically Burcher was tempted to make a direct, personal approach, quickly dismissing the thought as unprofessional and in entirely the wrong circumstances. He thought Davis looked a practical, level-headed sort of man. But outward appearances were meaningless. He hadn't seen anyone resembling the magazine photograph of Alice Belling, who at that moment passed just twenty feet away as she left the reception.

Alice knew who Rosemary Pritchard was: John had recommended the gynaecologist to her. Why, at this moment in time and in these circumstances, was Rosemary Pritchard so important to Jane?