False Impression (37 page)

‘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, wasn’t I?’ he explained.

Jack smiled at
Abe, and nodded. ‘Some place in Queens, I think, but I don’t recall exactly
where.’

Jack put the key
back in his pocket, thanked Abe and turned to leave before he gave him the
chance to share any more reminiscences.

Tina sat at her
desk, typing out the speech. He hadn’t even thanked her for coming in on a
Saturday.

Bankers must at
all times be willing to set standards that far exceed their legal requirements.

The New York
Bankers’ Association had invited Fenston to deliver the keynote speech at their
annual dinner, to be held at the Sherry Netherland.

Fenston was both
surprised and delighted by the invitation, although he had been angling for it
for some time.

The committee
had been divided.

Fenston was
determined to make a good impression on his colleagues in the banking fraternity,
and had already dictated several drafts of the speech.

Customers must
always be able to rely on our independent judgement, confident that we will act
in their best interests, rather than our own.

Tina began to
wonder if she was writing a script for a bankers’ sit-com, with Fenston
auditioning for the lead. What part would Leapman play in this moral tale?
she
wondered. For how many episodes would Victoria Wentworth
survive?

We must, at all
times, look upon ourselves as the guardians of our customers’ assets –
especially if they own a Van Gogh, Tina wanted to insert – while never
neglecting their commercial aspirations.

Tina’s thoughts
drifted to Anna, as she continued to type out Fenston’s shameless homily. She
had spoken to her on the phone just before leaving for the office that morning.
Anna wanted to tell her about the new man in her life, whom she had met in the
most unusual circumstances. They had agreed to get together for supper that
evening, as Tina also had something she wanted to share.

And let’s never
forget that it only takes one of us to lower our standards, and then the rest
of us will suffer as a consequence.

As Tina turned
another page, she wondered just how much longer she could hope to survive as
Fenston’s personal assistant.

Since she’d
thrown Leapman out of her office, a civil word had not passed between them.
Would he have her fired only days before she had gathered enough proof to make
sure Fenston spent the rest of his life in a smaller room in a larger
institution?

And may I conclude
by saying that my single purpose in life has always been to serve and give back
to the community that has allowed me to share the American dream.

This was one
document Tina would not bother to retain a copy of.

The light on
Tina’s phone was flashing and she quickly picked up the receiver.

‘Yes, chairman?’

‘Have you
finished my speech for the bankers’ dinner?’

‘Yes, chairman,’
repeated Tina.

‘It’s good,
isn’t it?’ said Fenston.

‘It’s
remarkable,’ responded Tina.

--

Jack hailed a cab
and told him Lincoln Street, Queens. The driver left the meter running while he
looked up the address in his much thumbed directory. Jack was halfway back to
the airport before he was dropped off on the comer of Lincoln and Harris. He
looked up and down the street, aware that the suit he’d carefully selected for
Park Avenue was somewhat incongruous in Queens. He stepped into a liquor store
on the corner.

‘I’m looking for
the Romanian Club,’ he told the elderly woman behind the counter.

‘Closed years
ago,’ she said. ‘It’s now a guest house,’ she added, looking him up and down,
‘but I don’t think you’ll wanna stay there.’

‘Any idea of the
number?’ asked Jack.

‘No, but it’s
‘bout halfway down, on the other side of the street.’

Jack thanked the
woman, walked back out onto Lincoln and crossed the road. He tried to judge
where the halfway mark might be, when he spotted
a faded
Rooms
for rent sign. He stopped and looked down a short flight of steps
to see an even more faded sign painted above the entrance. The letters NYRC,
founded 1919 were almost indecipherable.

Jack descended
the steps and pushed open the creaking door.

He stepped into
a dingy, unlit hallway, to be greeted with the pungent smell of stale tobacco.
There was a small, dusty reception desk straight ahead of him, and behind it,
almost hidden from
view,
Jack caught a glimpse of an
old man reading the New York Post, enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

‘I need a room
for the night,’ said Jack, trying to sound as if he meant it.

The old man’s
eyes narrowed as he gave Jack a disbelieving look. Did he have a girl waiting
outside? ‘That’ll be seven dollars,’ he said, before adding, ‘in advance.’

‘And I’ll also
need somewhere to lock’my valuables,’ said Jack.

‘That’ll be
another dollar – in advance,’ repeated the man, the cigarette bobbing up and
down.

Jack handed over
eight dollars, in return for a key.

‘Second floor,
number three, and the safety deposit boxes are at the end of the corridor,’ the
man said, passing him a second key.

He then returned
his attention to the New York Post, the cigarette having never left his mouth.

Jack walked
slowly down the corridor until he reached a wall lined with safety deposit
boxes, which, despite their age, looked solid and not that easy to break into,
even if anyone might have considered the exercise worthwhile. He opened his own
box and peered inside. It must have been about eight inches wide, and a couple
of feet deep. Jack glanced back towards the front counter.

The desk clerk
had managed to turn the page, but the cigarette still hadn’t left his mouth.

Jack moved
further down the corridor, removed the replica key from an inside pocket and,
after one more glance towards the front desk, opened box 13. He stared inside
and tried to remain calm, although his heart was pounding. He extracted one
bill from the box and placed it in his wallet. Jack locked the box and put the
key back in his pocket.

The old man
turned another page and began to study the racing odds as Jack walked back onto
the street.

He had to cover
eleven blocks before he found an empty cab, but he didn’t attempt to call Dick
Macy until he’d been dropped back at his apartment. He unlocked the front door,
ran through to the kitchen and placed the hundred-dollar bill on the table. He
then recalled how deep and how wide the empty box had been, before attempting
to calculate how many hundred-dollar bills must have been stuffed into box 13.
By the time he called
Macy,
he’d measured a space out
on the kitchen table and used several fivehundred-page paperbacks to assist him
in his calculation.

‘I thought I
told you to take the rest of the weekend off,’ said Macy.

I’ve found the
box that NYRC 13 opens.’

“What was
inside?’

‘Hard to be
certain,’ replied Jack, ‘but I’d say around two million dollars.’

‘Your leave is
cancelled,’ said Macy.

‘
Good news,’
declared the doctor on the morning of the third day. Tour wound is nearly
healed, and I shall be recommending to the authorities that you can be moved to
Jilava penitentiary tomorrow.’

With that, the doctor
had determined her timetable. After he had changed her dressing and departed
without another word,

Krantz lay in
bed going over her plan again and again. She only asked to visit the bathroom
at 2 pm. She slept soundly between three and nine.

‘She’s been no
trouble all day,’ Krantz heard one of the guards report when he handed over his
keys to the night shift at ten o’clock.

Krantz didn’t
stir for the next two hours, aware that two of the guards would be waiting
impatiently to accompany her to the bathroom and collect their nightly stipend.
But the timing had to suit her. She would cater for their needs at four minutes
past four, not before, when one would receive forty dollars, and he would make
sure that the other got a packet of Benson & Hedges.

Disproportionate,
but then one had a far more important role to play. She spent the next two
hours wide awake.

Anna left her
apartment to set out on her morning run just before 6 am. Sam rushed from
behind his desk to open the door for her a Cheshire cat grin hadn’t left his
face from the moment she’d arrived back.

Anna wondered at
what point Jack would catch up with her.

She had to
admit, he’d been in her thoughts a lot since they had parted yesterday, and she
already hoped their relationship might stray beyond a professional interest.

‘Beware/ Tina
had warned her over supper. ‘Once he’s got what he wants, he’ll move on, and it
isn’t necessarily sex that he’s after.’

Pity, she
remembered thinking.

‘Fenston loves
the Van Gogh,’ Tina assured her. ‘He’s given the painting pride of place on the
wall behind his desk.’

In fact, Tina
had been forthcoming about everything Fenston and Leapman had been up to during
the past ten days. However, despite gentle probing, hints and well-placed
questions, by the time they left the restaurant a couple of hours later Anna
was no nearer to finding out why Fenston had such a hold over her.

Anna couldn’t
help remembering that the last time she’d run round Central Park was on the
morning of the eleventh. The dark grey cloud might have finally dispersed, but
there were several other reminders of that dreadful day, not least the two
words on everyone’s lips, Ground Zero. She put aside the horrors of that day
when she spotted Jack jogging on the spot under Artists’ Gate.

‘Been waiting
long, Stalker?’ Anna asked as she strode past him and up around die pond.

‘No,’ he replied
once he’d caught up. ‘I’ve already been round twice, so I’m treating this as a
cooling-down session.’

‘Cooling down
already, are we?” said Anna, as she accelerated away. She knew she wouldn’t be
able to maintain that pace for long and it was only a few seconds before he was
back striding by her side.

‘Not bad,’ said
Jack, ‘but how long can you keep it up?’

‘I thought that
was a male problem,’ Anna said, still trying to set the pace. She decided that
her only hope would be to distract him.

She waited until
the Frick came in sight.

‘Name five
artists on display in that museum,’ she demanded, hoping his lack of knowledge
would compensate for her lack of speed.

‘Bellini,
Mary Cassatt, Renoir, Rembrandt and two Holbeins More and Cromwell.’

‘Yes, but which
Cromwell?’ asked Anna, panting.

“Thomas, not
Oliver,’ said Jack.

‘Not bad,
Stalker,’ admitted Anna.

‘You can blame
it on my father/ said Jack. ‘Whenever he was out on patrol on a Sunday, my
mother would take me to a gallery or a museum. I thought it was a waste of
time, until I fell in love.’

‘Who did you
fall in love with?’ asked Anna as they jogged up Pilgrim’s Hill.

‘Rossetti,
or, to be more accurate, his mistress Jane Burden.’

‘Scholars are
divided on whether he ever slept with her,’ said Anna. ‘And her husband –
William Morris – admired Rossetti so much that they don’t even think he would
have objected.’

‘Foolish man,’
said Jack.

‘Are you still
in love with Jane?’ asked Anna.

‘No, I’ve moved
on since then. I gave up the
pre-Raphaelites
for the
real thing, and started falling for women whose breasts ofteri end up behind
their ears.’

‘So you must
have been spending a lot of your time in MoMA.’

‘Several blind
dates,’ admitted Jack, ‘but my mother doesn’t approve.’

‘Who does she
think you should be dating?’

‘She’s
old-fashioned, so anyone called Mary who’s a virgin, but I’m working on her.’

‘Are you working
on anything else?’

‘Like what?’
asked
Jack.

‘Like what R
stands for,’ said Anna, almost out of breath.

‘You tell me,’
said Jack.