Bennett got out of the chair and accepted his partner’s non-explanation. Over the years he’d learned not to question Joe too closely. For in spite of his partner’s gregariousness, Cardone was a private man. He brought large amounts of capital into the firm and never asked for more than a proper business share. That was good enough for Bennett.
Sam walked to the door, laughing softly. «When are you going to stop running from the phantom of South Philadelphia?»
Cardone returned his partner’s smile. «When it stops chasing me into the Bankers’ Club with a hot lasagna.»
Bennett closed the door behind him, and Joe returned to the ten-day accumulation of mail and messages. There was nothing. Nothing that could be related to a Mediterranean problem. Nothing that even hinted at a Mafia conflict. Yet something had happened during those ten days; something that concerned Tanner.
He picked up his telephone and pushed the button for his secretary. «Is this everything? There weren’t any other messages?»
«None you have to return. I told everyone you wouldn’t be back until the end of the week. Some said they’d call then, the others will phone you Monday.»
«Keep it like that. Any calls, I’ll be back Monday.»
He replaced the phone and unlocked the second drawer of his desk, in which he kept an index file of three-by-five cards. The Mediterranean clients.
He put the small metal box in front of him and started fingering through the cards. Perhaps a name would trigger a memory, a forgotten fact which might have relevance.
His private telephone rang. Only Betty called him on that line; no one else had the number. Joe loved his wife, but she had a positive genius for irritating him with trivial matters when he wished no interruptions.
«Yes, dear?»
Silence.
«What is it, honey? I’m jammed up.»
Still his wife didn’t answer.
Cardone was suddenly afraid. No one but Betty had that number!
«Betty? Answer me!»
The voice, when it came, was slow, deep and precise.
«John Tanner flew to Washington yesterday. Mr. Da Vinci is very concerned. Perhaps your friends in California betrayed you. They’ve been in contact with Tanner.»
Joe Cardone heard the click of the disconnected telephone.
Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Oh, Christ! It was the Ostermans! They’d turned!
But why? It didn’t make sense! What possible connection could there be between Zurich and anything remotely Mafia? They were light-years apart!
Or were they? Or was one using the other?
Cardone tried to steady himself but it was impossible. He found himself crushing the small metal box.
What could he do? Who could he talk to?
Tanner himself? Oh, God, of course not!
The Ostermans? Bernie Osterman? Christ, no! Not now.
Tremayne. Dick Tremayne.
8
Tuesday—10:10 A.M.
Too shaken to sit in a commuter’s seat on the Saddle Valley express, Tremayne decided to drive into New York.
As he sped east on Route Five toward the George Washington Bridge, he noticed a light blue Cadillac in his rearview mirror. When he pulled to the left, racing ahead of the other cars, the Cadillac did the same. When he returned to the right, squeezing into the slower flow, so did the Cadillac—always several automobiles behind him.
At the bridge he neared a tollbooth and saw that the Cadillac, in a faster adjacent lane, came parallel. He tried to see who the driver was.
It was a woman. She turned her face away; he could only see the back of her head. Yet she looked vaguely familiar.
The Cadillac sped off before he could reflect further. Traffic blocked any chance he had to follow. He was certain the Cadillac had followed him, but just as surely, the driver did not want to be recognized.
Why? Who was she?
Was this woman «Blackstone»?
He found it impossible to accomplish anything in his office. He canceled the few appointments he had made, and, instead, reexamined the files of recent corporate mergers he had favorably gotten through the courts. One folder in particular interested him: The Cameron Woolens. Three factories in a small Massachusetts town owned for generations by the Cameron family. Raided from the inside by the oldest son. Blackmail had forced him to sell his share of the company to a New York clothing chain who claimed to want the Cameron label.
They got the label, and closed the factories; the town went bankrupt. Tremayne had represented the clothing chain in the Boston courts. The Cameron family had a daughter. An unmarried woman in her early thirties. Headstrong, angry.
The driver of the Cadillac was a woman. About the right age.
Yet to select one was to dismiss so many other possibilities. The merger builders knew whom to call when legal matters got sticky. Tremayne! He was the expert. A forty-four year old magician wielding the new legal machinery, sweeping aside old legal concepts in the exploding economy of the conglomerates.
Was it the Cameron daughter in the light blue Cadillac?
How could he know? There were so many. The Camerons. The Smythes of Atlanta. The Boyntons of Chicago. The Fergusons of Rochester. The corporate raiders preyed upon old families, the moneyed families. The old moneyed families pampered themselves, they were targets. Who among them might be Blackstone?
Tremayne got out of his chair and walked aimlessly around his office. He couldn’t stand the confinement any longer; he had to go out.
He wondered what Tanner would say if he called him and suggested a casual lunch. How would Tanner react? Would he accept casually? Would be put him off? Would it be possible—if Tanner accepted—to learn anything related to Blackstone’s warning?
Tremayne picked up the phone and dialed. His eyelid twitched, almost painfully.
Tanner was tied up in a meeting. Tremayne was relieved; it had been a foolish thing to do. He left no message and hurried out of his office.
On Fifth Avenue, a Checker cab pulled up directly in front of him, blocking his path at the corner crossing.
«Hey, mister!» The driver put his head out the window.
Tremayne wondered whom he was calling—so did several other pedestrians. They all looked at one another.
«You, mister! Your name Tremayne?»
«Me? Yes…»
«I got a message for you.»
«For me? How did you?…»
«I gotta hurry, the light’s gonna change and I got twenty bucks for this. I’m to tell you to walk east on Fifty-fourth Street. Just keep walking and a Mr. Blackstone will contact you.»
Tremayne put his hand on the driver’s shoulder. «Who told you? Who gave you …»
«What do I know? Some wack sits in my cab since nine-thirty this morning with the meter on. He’s got a pair of binoculars and smokes thin cigars.»
The «Don’t Walk» sign began to blink.
«What did he say!… Here!» Tremayne reached into his pocket and withdrew some bills. He gave the driver a ten. «Here. Now, tell me, please!»
«Just what I said, mister. He got out a few seconds ago, gave me twenty bucks to tell you to walk east on Fifty-fourth. That’s all.»
«That’s not all!» Tremayne grabbed the driver’s shirt.
«Thanks for the ten.» The driver pushed Tremayne’s hand away, honked his horn to disperse the jaywalkers in front of him, and drove off.
Tremayne controlled his panic. He stepped back onto the curb and retreated under the awning of the storefront behind him, looking at the men walking north, trying to find a man with a pair of binoculars or a thin cigar.
Finding nobody, he began to edge his way from store entrance to store entrance, towards Fifty-fourth Street. He walked slowly, staring at the passersby. Several collided against him going in the same direction but walking much faster. Several others, heading south, noticed the strange behavior of the blond man in his expensively cut clothes, and smiled.