When Lawrence Hannafin keeps his two-o’clock appointment with Randall Larkin, he expects to find the secretary, Ellen, at her desk, where she has always been previously on his arrival. Instead the reception lounge is unstaffed. The door to Larkin’s suite stands open, and the rooms beyond lay quiet and shadowed.
Puzzled, he sits beside a corner magazine table and chooses an issue of Vanity Fair, which had some years earlier published a long excerpt from one of his books. He flips through pages, preferring not to begin an article that he will surely be unable to finish.
He is enjoying a photo spread of a young actress who knows the value of baring a generous amount of skin in the right publications, when Carter Woodbine enters the lounge. Tall, white-haired, American but as aristocratic in demeanor as any member of the British royal family, Woodbine does not venture down from the fourth floor except by elevator to the garage at the end of the day.
Hannafin puts down the magazine and rises to his feet and says, “Mr. Woodbine,” as the senior partner closes the door to the hall.
“Mr. Hannafin, will you join me in Randall’s office? I have some troubling news.”
Troubling is an understatement. In the privacy of Larkin’s office, Hannafin learns that Larkin is dead, abducted by Jane Hawk and almost surely shot by her after she flushed his Mercedes into a river swollen with recent rains.
“The fire was so intense, it will have left precious little of Randall,” says Woodbine, “and it’s not likely that the remains in the abandoned factory will soon be identified as his, if they ever are. In fact, we will ensure that they are never identified as his.”
“But the Mercedes—”
“Was his, of course. We are in the process of inventing a story that we will coordinate with Mrs. Larkin. You may know Diamanta.”
“Not well.”
“Then you will want to spend a few hours in her company, to get the flavor of her personality. We want you to craft the story we invent into a major newspaper piece.”
“But…what story?”
“Right now, we think he will have attempted to fake his suicide by sending his S600 into the river. As a firm, we will reluctantly comment on the possibility that he stole millions from us.”
“He stole millions from you?”
With a warm smile and a wave of his hand, Woodbine says, “Good heavens, no. We’ve financial controls that make that impossible. But Randall did have a Grand Cayman account that he thought no one knew about, in the name of Ormond Heimdall, with a current balance of twenty million. Eventually it will be learned that, on this coming Monday, just three days after his disappearance, eighteen million of that twenty was transferred into even murkier banking jurisdictions elsewhere in the world. You’ll be given the details for your story.”
Lawrence Hannafin knows that he is in rarefied company with Carter Woodbine, that his role here is to do what it has been said he will do, as if Woodbine is an oracle describing to him a future that the fates have set in stone. Yet he can’t help asking, “Why not go with the truth, hang it on this damn Jane Hawk, where the blame belongs?”
This smile of Woodbine’s is different from the other, more like that of a patient adult answering the question of a slow and naïve child. “Miss Hawk has had quite a run of luck, but where it will soon run is out. We do not take her seriously. Meanwhile, we don’t want this firm to be associated with her in the public’s mind. We don’t wish anyone to be wondering why a rogue FBI agent and a threat to national security should kidnap, torture, and murder one of the partners of Woodbine, Kravitz, Larkin, and Benedetto.”
“She tortured him?”
Woodbine shrugs. “One can only assume.”
Suddenly Hannafin realizes that perhaps he is slow and naïve, for it just then occurs to him that he might have somehow led the Hawk bitch to Randall.
Woodbine favors him with another smile that Hannafin can’t interpret, though it chills him.
“As soon as you know what you want me to write, I’ll be on it. You won’t be unhappy with the finished piece.”
“I know I won’t,” Woodbine agrees. “We have your numbers. Stand by for a call.”
“I will,” Hannafin promises. “I’ll stand by.”
Woodbine graciously escorts him to the elevators and sends him to the garage, where he is parked in a stall marked CLIENT. He is somewhat surprised—but relieved—that no one is waiting for him.
Although he had intended to have dinner out, Hannafin drives straight home, so that he can be standing by.
In the kitchen, he makes a large Scotch on the rocks. As he carries it to his study, the ice clinks and the Scotch repeatedly slops to the lip of the tumbler, but he manages not to spill any.
Sitting at his desk, after taking a long pull on the drink, as he puts the glass down, he does spill Scotch when he realizes that six silver-framed photographs of him and Sakura are arranged there. A few months after her death—a decent interval—he stored her damn collection of happy-couple photographs in the living-room sideboard.
He thrusts to his feet and hurries to the living room. Other photographs have been distributed there in thoughtful arrangements on end tables, across the fireplace mantel.
His gun is in his bedroom, in a nightstand drawer. He rushes to the stairs. Halts. Stands there. Looks toward the second floor.
He almost calls out her name. Jane Hawk?
But he does not do so, because he fears that she will answer.