False Impression

44

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

With this, 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 two P.M. 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 six A.M. 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 around Central Park was on the morning of the eleventh. The dark gray cloud may 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 the pond.

“No,” he replied, once he’d caught up. “I’ve already been around 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 even 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 often 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.

“Romania would be my bet,” said Anna, the words puffing out intermittently

“You should have joined the FBI,” said Jack, slowing down.

“You’d worked it out already,” said Anna.

“No,” admitted Jack. “A guy called Abe worked it out for me.”

“And?”

“And both of you were right.”

“So where is the Romanian Club?”

“In a run-down neighborhood in Queens,” replied Jack.

“And what did you find when you opened the box?”

“I can’t be absolutely certain,” replied Jack.

“Don’t play games, Stalker, just tell me what was in the box.”

“About two million dollars.”

“Two million?” repeated Anna in disbelief.

“Well, it might not be quite that much, but it certainly was enough for my boss to drop everything, stake out the building, and cancel my leave.”

“What sort of person keeps two million in cash hidden in a safety deposit box in Queens?” asked Anna.

“A person who can’t risk opening a bank account anywhere in the world.”

“Krantz,” said Anna.

“So now it’s your turn. Did anything come out of your dinner with Tina?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” replied Anna, and covered another hundred yards before she said, “Fenston thinks the latest addition to his collection is magnificent. But, more important, when Tina took in his morning coffee, there was a copy of The New York Times on his desk, and it was open at page seventeen.”

“Obviously not the sports section,” said Jack.

“No, international,” said Anna, as she extracted the article from her pocket and passed it over to Jack.

“Is this a ploy to see if I can keep up with you while I read?”

“No, it’s a ploy to find out if you can read, Stalker, and I can always slow down, because I know you haven’t been able to keep up with me in the past,” said Anna.

Jack read the headline and almost came to a halt as they ran past the lake. It was some time before he spoke again. “Sharp girl, your friend Tina.”

“And she gets sharper,” said Anna. “She interrupted a conversation Fenston was having with Leapman, and overheard him say, ‘Do you still have the second key?’ She didn’t understand the significance of it at the time, but—”

“I take back everything I said about her,” said Jack. “She’s on our team.”

“No, Stalker, she’s on my team,” said Anna, accelerating through Strawberry Fields as she always did for the last half mile, with Jack striding by her side.

“This is where I leave you,” said Anna, once they reached Artists’ Gate. She checked her watch and smiled: Eleven minutes, forty-eight seconds.

“Brunch?”

“Can’t, sadly,” said Anna. “Meeting up with an old friend from Christie’s, trying to find out if they’ve got any openings.”

“Dinner?”

“I’ve got tickets for the Rauschenberg at the Whitney. If you want to join me, I’ll be there around six, Stalker.”

She ran away before he could reply.

45

Leapman had selected a Sunday because it was the one day of the week Fenston didn’t go into the office, although he’d already called him three times that day.

He sat alone in his apartment eating a TV dinner, and going over his plan, until he was certain nothing could go wrong. Tomorrow, and all the rest of his tomorrows, he would dine in a restaurant, without having to wait for Fenston.

When he’d eaten every last scrap, he returned to his bedroom and stripped down to his underpants. He pulled open a drawer that contained the sports gear he needed for this particular exercise. He put on a T-shirt, shorts, and a baggy, gray tracksuit that teenagers wouldn’t even have believed their parents once wore, and finally donned a pair of white socks and white gym shoes. Leapman didn’t look at himself in the mirror. He walked back across the room, fell on his knees, and reached under the bed to pull out a large gym bag that had the handle of a squash racket poking out of it. He was now dressed and ready for his irregular exercise. All he needed was the key and a packet of cigarettes.

He strolled through to the kitchen, opened a drawer that contained a large carton of duty-free Marlboros, and extracted a packet of twenty. He never smoked. His final act in this agnostic ritual was to place his hand under the drawer and remove a key that was taped to the base. He was now fully equipped.

He double-locked the front door of his apartment and took the stairs down to the basement. He opened the back door and walked up one flight, emerging onto the street.

To any casual passerby, he looked like a man on the way to his squash club. Leapman had never played a game of squash in his life. He walked one block before hailing a yellow cab. The routine never varied. He gave the driver an address that didn’t have a squash club within five miles. He sat in the back of the cab, relieved to find the driver wasn’t talkative because he needed to concentrate. Today, he would make one change from his normal routine, a change he’d been planning for the past ten years. This would be the last time he carried out this particular chore for Fenston, a man who had taken advantage of him every day for the last decade. Not today. Never again. He glanced out of the cab window. He made this journey once, sometimes twice a year, when he would deposit large sums of cash at NYRC, always within days of Krantz completing one of her assignments. During that time, Leapman had deposited over five million dollars into box 13 at the guesthouse on Lincoln Street, and he knew it would always be a one-way journey — until she made a mistake.

When he’d read in the Times that Krantz had been captured after being shot in the shoulder — he would have preferred that she’d been killed — he knew this must be his one chance. What Fenston would describe as a window of opportunity. After all, Krantz was the only person who knew how much cash was in that box, while he remained the only other person with a key.

“Where is it exactly?” asked the driver.

Leapman looked out of the window. “A couple more blocks,” he said, “and then you can drop me on the corner.” Leapman took the squash racket out of the bag and placed it on the backseat.

“Twenty-three dollars,” the driver mumbled, as he came to a halt outside a liquor store.

Leapman passed three tens through the grille. “I’ll be back in five minutes. If you’re still around, you’ll get another fifty.”

“I’ll be around,” came back the immediate reply.

Leapman grabbed the empty gym bag and stepped out of the cab, leaving the squash racket on the backseat. He crossed the road, pleased to find that the sidewalk was crowded with locals out shopping. One of the reasons he always chose a Sunday afternoon. He would never risk such an outing at night. In Queens, they’d be happy to mug him for an empty bag.

Leapman quickened his pace until he reached number 61. He stopped for a moment to check that no one was taking any interest in him. Why would they? He descended the steps toward the NYRC sign and pushed open a door that was never locked.

The caretaker looked up from his sedentary position and, when he saw who it was, nodded — the most energetic thing he’d done all day — then turned his attention back to the racing page. Leapman placed the packet of Marlboros on the counter, knowing they would disappear before he turned around. Every man has his price.

He peered into the gloom of a corridor lit only by a naked forty-watt bulb. He sometimes wondered if he was the only person who advanced beyond the counter.

Despite the darkness of the corridor, he knew exactly where her box was located. Not that you could read the number on the door — like everything else, it had faded over the years. He looked back up the corridor; one of his cigarettes was already glowing in the darkness.

He took the key out of his tracksuit pocket, placed it in the lock, turned it, and pulled open the door. He unzipped the bag before looking back in the direction of the old man. No interest. It took him less than a minute to empty the contents of the box, fill the bag, and zip it back up.

Leapman closed the door and locked it for the last time. He picked up the bag, momentarily surprised by how heavy it was, and walked back down the corridor. He placed the key on the counter. “I won’t be needing it again,” he told the old man, who didn’t allow this sudden break in routine to distract him from his study of the odds for the four o’clock at Belmont. He’d been fifty feet from a racing certainty for the past twelve years and hadn’t even checked the odds.

Leapman walked out of the door, climbed back up the steps and into the light of Lincoln Street. At the top of the steps, he once again glanced up and down the road. He felt safe. He began to walk quickly down the street, gripping the handle of the bag tightly, relieved to see the cab was still waiting for him on the corner.

He had covered about twenty yards when, out of nowhere, he was surrounded by a dozen men dressed in jeans and blue-nylon windbreakers, FBI printed in bold yellow letters on their backs. They came running toward him from every direction. A moment later, two cars entered Lincoln, one from each end — despite its being a one-way street — and came to a screeching halt in a semicircle around the suspect. This time passersby did stop to stare at the tracksuited man carrying a sports bag. The taxi sped away, minus fifty dollars, plus one squash racket.

“Read him his rights,” said Joe, as another officer clamped Leapman’s arms firmly behind his back and handcuffed him, while a third relieved him of his gym bag.

“You have the right to remain silent...,” which Leapman did.

Once his Miranda rights had been recited to him — not for the first time — Leapman was led off to one of the cars and unceremoniously dumped in the back, where Agent Delaney was waiting for him.

Anna was at the Whitney Museum, standing in front of a Rauschenberg canvas entitled Satellite, when her cell phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She glanced at the screen to see that Stalker was trying to contact her.

“Hey,” said Anna.

“I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” asked Anna.

“It was more than two million.”

The clock on a nearby church struck four times.

Krantz heard one of the guards say, “We’re off for our supper. We’ll be back in about twenty minutes.” The chain smoker coughed but didn’t respond. Krantz lay still in her bed until she could no longer hear their departing footsteps. She pressed the buzzer by the side of her bed and a key turned in the lock immediately. Krantz didn’t have to guess which one of them would be standing in the doorway, eager to accompany her to the washroom.

“Where’s your mate?” Krantz asked.

“He’s having a drag,” said the guard. “Don’t worry, I’ll see that he gets his share.”

She rubbed her eyes, climbed slowly out of bed, and joined him in the corridor. Another guard was lolling in a chair, half asleep, at the other end of the corridor. The smoker and the philanderer were nowhere to be seen.

The guard held on to her elbow as he led her quickly down the passage. He accompanied her into the bathroom, but remained outside while she disappeared into the cubicle. Krantz sat on the toilet, extracted the condom, peeled off two more twenty-dollar bills, folded them, and hid them in the palm of her right hand. She then slowly pushed the condom back into a place even the least squeamish guards didn’t care to search.

Once she’d pulled the chain, her guard unlocked the door. He smiled in anticipation as she walked back out into the corridor. The guard seated at the far end didn’t stir, and her personal minder seemed as pleased as she was to discover that there was no one else around.

Krantz nodded toward the linen closet. He pulled open the door and they both slipped inside. Krantz immediately opened the palm of her hand to reveal the two twenty-dollar bills. She passed them over to the guard. Just as he went to grab them, she dropped one on the floor. He bent down to pick it up — only a matter of a second — but long enough for him to feel the full force of her knee as it came crashing up into his groin. As he fell forward, grasping his crotch, Krantz grabbed him by the hair and in one swift movement sliced open his throat with the doctor’s scissors. Not the most efficient of instruments, but the only thing she could lay her hands on. She let go of his hair, grabbed him by the collar, and, with all the strength she could muster, bundled him into the laundry chute. With a heave she helped him on his way, then dived in behind him.

They both bounced down the spacious metal tube, and a few seconds later landed with a thud on a pile of sheets, pillowcases, and towels in the laundry room. Krantz leapt up, grabbed the smallest overall from a peg on the wall, pulled it on, and ran across to the door. She opened it slowly and peered out through the crack into the corridor. The only person in sight was a cleaner, on her knees polishing the floor. Krantz walked quickly past her and pushed open the fire-exit door to be greeted by the word Subsol on the wall in front of her. She ran up one flight of steps, pulled up a window on the ground floor, and climbed out onto a flower bed. It was pouring with rain.

She looked around, expecting at any moment to hear the raucous sound of a siren followed by floodlights illuminating every inch of the hospital grounds.

Krantz had covered nearly two miles by the time the philanderer required the privacy of the linen closet for a second time that night. The nurse screamed when she saw the blood all over the white walls. The guard ran back into the corridor and charged toward the prisoner’s room. The chair-bound guard at the end of the passage leaped up from his seat as the smoker came rushing in from the fire escape. The philanderer reached her room first. He pulled open the door, switched on the light, and let out a tirade of expletives, while the smoker smashed the glass covering the alarm and pressed the red button.