The Third Twin - Ken Follett [134]
It was so unfair. What right did they have? She was a good scientist, and they had ruined her career. They were willing to see Steve sent to jail for the rape of Lisa. They were threatening to kill her. She began to feel angry. Who did they think they were? She was not going to have her fife ruined by these arrogant creeps who thought they could manipulate everything for their own benefit and to hell with everyone else. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. I won’t let them win, she thought. I have the power to hurt them—I must have, or they wouldn’t feel the need to warn me off and threaten to kill me. I’m going to use that power. I don’t care what happens to me so long as I can mess things up for them. I’m smart, and I’m determined, and I’m Jeannie Fucking Ferrami, so look out, you bastards, here I come.
41
JEANNIE’S FATHER WAS SITTING ON THE COUCH IN PATTY’S untidy living room, with a cup of coffee in his lap, watching General Hospital and eating a slice of carrot cake.
When she walked in and saw him, Jeannie lost it. “How could you do it?” she screamed. “How could you rob your own daughter?”
He jumped to his feet, spilling his coffee and dropping his cake.
Patty followed Jeannie in. “Please, don’t make a scene,” she said. “Zip will be home soon.”
Daddy said: “I’m sorry, Jeannie, I’m ashamed.”
Patty got down on her knees and started mopping the spilled coffee with a clutch of Kleenex. On the screen, a handsome doctor in surgeon’s scrubs was kissing a pretty woman.
“You know I’m broke,” Jeannie yelled. “You know I’m trying to raise enough money to pay for a decent nursing home for my mother—your wife! And still you could steal my fucking TV!”
“You shouldn’t swear—”
“Jesus, give me strength.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jeannie said: “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”
Patty said: “Leave him alone, Jeannie.”
“But I have to know. How could you do such a thing?”
“All right, I’ll tell you,” Daddy said with a sudden access of force that surprised her. “I’ll tell you why I did it. Because I’ve lost my goddamn nerve.” Tears came to his eyes. “I robbed my own daughter because I’m too old and scared to rob anyone else, so now you know the truth.”
He was so pathetic that Jeannie’s anger evaporated in a moment. “Oh, Daddy, I’m sorry,” she said. “Sit down, I’ll get the Dustbuster.”
She picked up the overturned cup and took it into the kitchen. She came back with the Dustbuster and vacuumed up the cake crumbs. Patty finished mopping up the coffee.
“I don’t deserve you girls, I know that,” Daddy said as he sat down again.
Patty said: “I’ll get you another cup of coffee.”
The TV surgeon said, “Let’s go away together, just the two of us, somewhere wonderful,” and the woman said, “But what about your wife?” and the doctor looked sulky. Jeannie turned the set off and sat beside her father.
“What do you mean, you’ve lost your nerve?” she asked, curious. “What happened?”
He sighed. “When I got out of jail I cased a building in Georgetown. It was a small business, an architecture partnership that had just reequipped the entire staff with fifteen or twenty personal computers and some other stuff, printers and fax machines. The guy who supplied the equipment to the company tipped me off: he was going to buy it from me and sell it back to them when they got the insurance money. I would have got ten thousand dollars.”
Patty said: “I don’t want my boys to hear this.” She checked they were not in the hallway then closed the door.
Jeannie said to Daddy: “So what went wrong?”
“I reversed the van up to the back of the building, disarmed the burglar alarm, and opened the loading bay door. Then I started to think about what would happen if a cop came along. I never used to give a damn, in the old days, but I guess it’s ten years since I did something like that. Anyway, I was so scared I started to shake. I went inside, unplugged one computer,