Two Women (4 page)

Carver completed his own non-eating carousel, despising himself for matching the earlier verbal mockery. Then he said: ‘They've had you, George, haven't they? For most of your career they've had you, just like this …?' Carver closed his hand, as if crushing something.

‘I could handle it then: can still handle it now,' insisted the other man, pushing his plate aside.

Carver said: ‘How's about this? How's about a stomach-against-his-spine hungry guy who got initially caught, but who then went with the flow? Paddled the boat, even? You had the choice, all those years ago, of blowing the whistle. But you stayed with the system: their system, your system. Same system. Everyone gets rich. And you, additionally, got protected. Wasn't that how it ran, George: you their willing guy, all the way along the line?'

Northcote's face flushed redder than the previous night. ‘I didn't have a choice!' The voice – the anger – was cracked.

Carver waved for their untouched meal to be taken away, waiting until it was. ‘You did a Faust on everyone, George. You sold out to the Devil …' He sniggered a laugh. ‘How about that! You sold out to the underworld! Isn't that how it was … how it is … you got the joys of this life, leaving those who inherit to pay your dues …?'

Northcote shook his head against the new approach from the waiter. To Carver he said: ‘What the fuck would you have done, dirt poor, knowing you could climb the mountain, but not knowing
how:
which way to go? Not knowing, then, even which way you were going? You want to tell me that?'

‘No, I can't tell you that,' admitted Carver, totally honest. ‘I'd have certainly been frightened. Tempted, too … maybe even have been eager. But mostly tempted, I guess. I don't know.'

‘So that's how it is,' said Northcote.

‘No,' refused Carver. ‘That's how it
was
. Now is how it
is
. Tell me about last night.'

‘I told you about last night.'

‘George!'

‘I won't let them win … beat me …'

They'd won. Made this man their own mob-backed Wall Street colossus, Carver accepted, his numbness growing into a tingling feeling of total unreality. ‘They've owned you, George. Owned the firm – owned all of us – from the word go!' How could he be talking like this, in an ordinary manner – conversationally – like everyone else around him in this safe, protected, uninvadible bastion of total, privileged security!

‘There's a way,' declared Northcote.

‘What way? Which way?'

‘I kept some records … the records you – no one – was ever supposed to find … I … they …'

Carver seized the stumble. ‘Janice! What does Janice know?' Janice Snow was Northcote's black, permanently weight-watching but constantly failing personal assistant who averaged 190lbs when she followed the regime and ballooned way above when she didn't, which was most of the time. She'd been with Northcote before Carver had entered the firm. It had been Janice who'd earlier insisted Northcote hadn't arrived in the office, when he clearly had.

‘Absolutely nothing: only that they're my personal accounts.'

‘How many are “they”?' demanded Carver, determined to discover as much as he could from a man who was clearly as determined not to volunteer anything. ‘How many more companies are there than Mulder, Encomp and Innsflow?'

‘None.'

‘I have your word on that?' What the fuck use was the word of a man who'd been a Mafia puppet … Yet again, Carver's mind stopped at a conclusion he didn't want to reach but had to, because it was the only one possible. They
were
talking – conversationally, quiet-voiced, how-was-the-weekend? where's-this-year's-vacation? – about the
Mafia!

‘You have my word,' recited Northcote, in immediate reply.

He despised this man, Carver abruptly decided. It was as much a shock as all the other revelations of the last thirty-six hours. Maybe even greater. Until now he had been in awe – in trepidation – of this lion of a man with a lion's mane (but a bull's shoulders) who had dominated his life and Jane's life and so many other lives but whom he was now coming to regard as nothing more than a clay effigy – a hollow clay effigy at that – of the supposed Colossus who could not have stood guard, legs astride, over any empire. Most certainly – and provably – not over his own, which wasn't his at all but which had been allowed and granted him, in return for his usefulness.

‘You're going to give them all the records?' Itself a criminal – certainly a professional – offence but that no longer seemed a consideration.

‘Yes.'

‘But you're making copies?'

‘Yes.'

‘Over so long you're talking in tons!'

‘Things went back, after the statutory limitation. It's just what's in my personal section of the vault.'

‘Where are the copies?' Carver repeated.

‘Safe,' insisted Northcote.

‘Where are the copies?' persisted Carver.

‘Not all together yet. You'll know, when they are. And where they are.'

‘Don't you think they'll expect – suspect at least – you'll do this?'

‘There's no reason why they should. Everything's amicable.'

Both men shook their heads to the offered humidor but both ordered brandy, Carver deciding he genuinely needed it. He said: ‘Only for as long as they choose to let it be amicable.'

‘I told you, you watch too much television.'

Carver had to push the calmness into his voice. ‘George. Don't you have any idea how serious … dangerously serious … all this is!'

‘This is not Chicago in the twenties, Al Capone and machine guns. I know these people. Have done, over a lot of years.'

He was wasting his time, Carver realized, incredulously. ‘I'll need more than the location.'

‘What?'

‘Names.'

‘It'll involve you.'

‘I
am
involved, for Christ's sake!' said Carver, in continued exasperation.

‘Let me think on it.' Northcote smiled abruptly over his brandy snifter. ‘I'm driving up with Jane this afternoon.'

‘I know. What about Friday?'

‘It'll all be settled by then. You got everything in hand?'

Carver didn't answer, looking across the table at his father-in-law, who stared back. Finally Northcote said: ‘I'll make the formal retirement announcement in the keynote speech. Everything will be confirmed by Friday.'

Carver acknowledged that he'd condoned a crime: crime after crime after crime, more crimes than could be counted. Which had – astonishingly – been easy. All so logical. All so acceptable. All – all and every aspect of it – so illegal. Was he prepared to go with that? Was he ready, prepared, to be Superman in the red shorts? Or Eliot Ness? Or John Carver, trying to preserve an empire from crumbling? He said: ‘You were my icon. You were Jane's icon. Everyone's icon. God.'

‘Grow up, John.'

‘I just have,' said Carver. ‘I didn't enjoy it.'

Alice was already at their table, at their place – the place in the Village he couldn't remember choosing for those early lunches but which had become
their
place since. Everyone called everyone by their first names, the moment they were regulars. A very different club from the Harvard: a preferred club even. In which he felt comfortable. Easy. Here – despite the suit in which he definitely felt
un
comfortable – he was John: anonymous John, no one John. In the Harvard Club he was Mr Carver. Or more often, sir. Rich son-in-law of richer father-in-law, both of whom could order, as they had carelessly ordered, $250 lunches and not eat anything, nor drink more than a token sip of their matchingly expensive wine. Alice was drinking beer.

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.

Four

J
ohn 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.