False Impression

“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.