Sidney Sheldon 3-Book Collection: If Tomorrow Comes, Nothing Lasts Forever, The Best Laid Plans

Chapter Two (#ulink_609f7c74-a1ef-54db-8ef7-7aa718071afc)

PhiladelphiaFriday, 21 February – 8:00 A.M.

Tracy Whitney stepped out of the lobby of her block of flats into a grey, sleety rain that fell impartially on sleek limousines driven down Market Street by uniformed chauffeurs, and on the abandoned and boarded-up houses huddled together in the slums of North Philadelphia. The rain washed the limousines clean and made sodden messes of the rubbish piled high in front of the neglected row of houses. Tracy Whitney was on her way to work. Her pace was brisk as she walked east on Chestnut Street towards the bank, and it was all she could do to keep from singing aloud. She wore a bright-yellow raincoat, boots, and a yellow rain hat that barely contained a mass of shining chestnut hair. She was in her mid-twenties, with a lively, intelligent face, a full, sensuous mouth, sparkling eyes that could change from a soft moss green to a dark jade in moments, and a trim, athletic figure. Her skin ran the gamut from a translucent white to a deep rose, depending on whether she was angry, tired, or excited. Her mother had once told her, ‘Honestly, child, sometimes I don’t recognize you. You’ve got all the colours of the wind in you.’

Now, as Tracy walked down the street, people turned to smile, envying the happiness that shone on her face. She smiled back at them.

It’s indecent for anyone to be this happy, Tracy Whitney thought. I’m marrying the man I love, and I’m going to have his baby. What more could anyone ask?

As Tracy approached the bank, she glanced at her watch. Eight-twenty. The doors of the Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank would not be open to employees for another ten minutes, but Clarence Desmond, the bank’s senior vice-president in charge of the international department, was already turning off the outside alarm and opening the door. Tracy enjoyed watching the morning ritual. She stood in the rain, waiting, as Desmond entered the bank and locked the door behind him.

Banks the world over have arcane safety procedures, and the Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank was no exception. The routine never varied, except for the security signal, which was changed every week. The signal that week was a half-lowered venetian blind, indicating to the employees waiting outside that a search was in progress to make certain that no intruders were concealed on the premises, waiting to hold the employees hostage. Clarence Desmond was checking the lavatories, storeroom, vault and safe-deposit area. Only when he was fully satisfied that he was alone would the venetian blind be raised as a sign that all was well.

The senior bookkeeper was always the first of the employees to be admitted. He would take his place next to the emergency alarm until the other employees were inside, then lock the door behind them.

Promptly at 8:30, Tracy Whitney entered the ornate lobby with her fellow workers, took off her raincoat, hat and boots, and listened with secret amusement to the others complaining about the rainy weather.

‘The damned wind carried away my umbrella,’ a teller complained. ‘I’m soaked.’

‘I passed two ducks swimming down Market Street,’ the head cashier joked.

‘The weatherman says we can expect another week of this. I wish I was in Florida.’

Tracy smiled and went to work. She was in charge of the cable-transfer department. Until recently, the transfer of money from one bank to another and from one country to another had been a slow, laborious process, requiring multiple forms to be filled out and dependent on national and international postal services. With the advent of computers, the situation had changed dramatically, and enormous amounts of money could be transferred instantaneously. It was Tracy’s job to extract overnight transfers from the computer and to make computer transfers to other banks. All transactions were in code, changed regularly to prevent unauthorized access. Each day, millions of electronic dollars passed through Tracy’s hands. It was fascinating work, the life-blood that fed the arteries of business all over the globe, and until Charles Stanhope III had come into Tracy’s life, banking had been the most exciting thing in the world for her. The Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank had a large international division, and at lunch Tracy and her fellow workers would discuss each morning’s activities. It was heady conversation.

Deborah, the head bookkeeper, announced, ‘We just closed the hundred-million-dollar syndicated loan to Turkey …’

Mae Trenton, secretary to the vice-president of the bank, said in a confidential tone, ‘At the board meeting this morning they decided to join the new money facility to Peru. The up-front fee is over five million dollars …’

Jon Creighton, the bank bigot, added, ‘I understand we’re going in on the Mexican rescue package for fifty million. Those wetbacks don’t deserve a damned cent …’

‘It’s interesting,’ Tracy said thoughtfully, ‘that the countries that attack America for being too money-oriented are always the first to beg us for loans.’

It was the subject on which she and Charles had had their first argument.

Tracy had met Charles Stanhope III at a financial symposium where Charles was the guest speaker. He ran the investment house founded by his greatgrandfather, and his company did a good deal of business with the bank Tracy worked for. After Charles’s lecture, Tracy had gone up to disagree with his analysis of the ability of third-world nations to repay the staggering sums of money they had borrowed from commercial banks worldwide and western governments. Charles at first had been amused, then intrigued by the impassioned arguments of the beautiful young woman before him. Their discussion had continued through dinner at the old Bookbinder’s restaurant.

In the beginning, Tracy had not been impressed with Charles Stanhope III, even though she was aware that he was considered Philadelphia’s prize catch. Charles was thirty-five and a rich and successful member of one of the oldest families in Philadelphia. Five feet ten inches, with thinning sandy hair, brown eyes, and an earnest, pedantic manner, he was, Tracy thought, one of the boring rich.

As though reading her mind, Charles had leaned across the table and said, ‘My father is convinced they gave him the wrong baby at the hospital.’

‘What?’

‘I’m a throwback. I don’t happen to think money is the end-all and be-all of life. But please don’t ever tell my father I said so.’

There was such a charming unpretentiousness about him that Tracy found herself warming to him. I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone like him – one of the establishment.

It had taken Tracy’s father most of his life to build up a business that the Stanhopes would have sneered at as insignificant. The Stanhopes and the Whitneys would never mix, Tracy thought. Oil and water. And the Stanhopes are the oil. And what am I going on about like an idiot? Talk about ego. A man asks me out to dinner and I’m deciding whether I want to marry him. We’ll probably never even see each other again.

Charles was saying, ‘I hope you’re free for dinner tomorrow … ?’

Philadelphia was a dazzling cornucopia of things to see and do. On Saturday nights Tracy and Charles went to the ballet or watched Riccardo Muti conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra. During the week they explored New Market and the unique collection of shops in Society Hill. They ate cheese steaks at a pavement table at Geno’s and dined at the Café Royal, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Philadelphia. They shopped at Head House Square and wandered through the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum.

Tracy paused in front of the statue of The Thinker. She glanced at Charles and grinned. ‘It’s you!’

Charles was not interested in exercise, but Tracy enjoyed it, so on Sunday mornings she jogged along the West River Drive or on the promenade skirting the Schuylkill River. She joined a Saturday afternoon t’ai chi ch’uan class, and after an hour’s workout, exhausted but exhilarated, she would meet Charles at his apartment. He was a gourmet cook, and he liked preparing esoteric dishes such as Moroccan bistilla and guo bu li, the dumplings of northern China, and tahine de poulet au citron for Tracy and himself.

Charles was the most punctilious person Tracy had ever known. She had once been fifteen minutes late for a dinner appointment with him, and his displeasure had spoiled the evening for her. After that, she had vowed to be on time for him.

Tracy had had little sexual experience, but it seemed to her that Charles made love the same way he lived his life: meticulously and very properly. Once, Tracy had decided to be daring and unconventional in bed, and had so shocked Charles that she began secretly to wonder if she were some kind of sex maniac.

The pregnancy had been unexpected, and when it happened, Tracy was filled with uncertainty. Charles had not brought up the subject of marriage, and she did not want him to feel he had to marry her because of the baby. She was not certain whether she could go through with an abortion, but the alternative was an equally painful choice. Could she raise a child without the help of its father, and would it be fair to the baby?

She decided to break the news to Charles after dinner one evening. She had prepared a cassoulet for him in her apartment, and in her nervousness she had burned it. As she set the scorched meat and beans in front of him, she forgot her carefully rehearsed speech and wildly blurted out, ‘I’m so sorry, Charles. I’m – pregnant.’

There was an unbearably long silence, and as Tracy was about to break it, Charles said, ‘We’ll get married, of course.’

Tracy was filled with a sense of enormous relief. ‘I don’t want you to think I – You don’t have to marry me, you know.’

He raised a hand to stop her. ‘I want to marry you, Tracy. You’ll make a wonderful wife.’ He added, slowly, ‘Of course, my mother and father will be a bit surprised.’ And he smiled and kissed her.

Tracy quietly asked, ‘Why will they be surprised?’

Charles sighed. ‘Darling, I’m afraid you don’t quite realize what you’re letting yourself in for. The Stanhopes always marry – mind you, I’m using quotation marks – “their own kind”. Mainline Philadelphia.’

‘And they’ve already selected your wife,’ Tracy guessed.

Charles took her in his arms. ‘That doesn’t matter a damn. It’s whom I’ve selected that counts. We’ll have dinner with Mother and Father next Friday. It’s time you met them.’

At five minutes to 9:00 Tracy became aware of a difference in the noise level in the bank. The employees were beginning to speak a little faster, move a little quicker. The bank doors would open in five minutes and everything had to be in readiness. Through the front window, Tracy could see customers lined up on the pavement outside, waiting in the cold rain.

Tracy watched as the bank guard finished distributing fresh blank deposit and withdrawal slips into the metal trays on the six tables lined up along the centre aisle of the bank. Regular customers were issued deposit slips with a personal magnetized code at the bottom so that each time a deposit was made, the computer automatically credited it to the proper account. But often customers came in without their deposit slips and would fill out blank ones.

The guard glanced up at the clock on the wall, and as the hour hand moved to 9:00, he walked over to the door and ceremoniously unlocked it.

The banking day had begun.

For the next few hours Tracy was too busy at the computer to think about anything else. Every wire transfer had to be double-checked to make sure it had the correct code. When an account was to be debited, she entered the account number, the amount, and the bank to which the money was to be transferred. Each bank had its own code number, the numbers listed in a confidential directory that contained the codes for every major bank in the world.

The morning flew by swiftly. Tracy was planning to use her lunchtime to have her hair done and had made an appointment with Larry Stella Botte. He was expensive, but it would be worth it, for she wanted Charles’s parents to see her at her best. I’ve got to make them like me. I don’t care whom they chose for him, Tracy thought. No one can make Charles as happy as I will.

At 1:00, as Tracy was getting into her raincoat, Clarence Desmond summoned her to his office. Desmond was the image of an important executive. If the bank had used television commercials, he would have been the perfect spokesman. Dressed conservatively, with an air of solid, old-fashioned authority about him, he looked like a person one could trust.

‘Sit down, Tracy,’ he said. He prided himself on knowing every employee’s first name. ‘Nasty outside, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, well. People still have to do their banking.’ Desmond had used up his small talk. He leaned across his desk. ‘I understand that you and Charles Stanhope are engaged to be married.’