Timothy's Game (31 page)

“Sure,” Cone says, and describes the tavern to the undercover man: the physical layout of the place, the patrons, what they drink.

“The hard guys are in the booths on your right,” he says. “Down-and-out boozers at the tables in the center. Louie, the owner, is a fat crud with old tattoos. The night I was there he was wearing a watch cap and T-shirt.”

“He’s dealing drugs?”

“He’s dealing
everything.
He offered me Boom-boom. What the hell is that?”

“Gage,” Shipkin says. “From Florida. Heavy stuff.”

“Screw the drugs,” Davenport says. “It’s the motorcycle we want.”

“I told this Louie I got a buddy looking to buy a bike,” Cone says. “He said just tell me the make and model and he’ll come up with it.”

Shipkin nods, sips brandy from his jelly jar. “I get the picture,” he says. He turns to the other detective. “How about this scenario: If I get a lead on the Kawasaki, I’ll make a dope buy from Louie with marked bills. Then we’ll have him on a drug rap and can lean on him about the cycle. How does that listen?”

“Sounds good to me. How about you, sherlock?”

“Makes sense,” Cone says. “We’re not going to get anywhere with this unless someone caves. The more clout we have, the better. The way I figure it, this Louie is the broker between David Dempster and the Westies. He arranges the deals and turns over the cash after taking his cut. And once we’ve got enough to cuff Dempster, even on some shitty charge, I can finger three or four other guys who’ll be happy to make deals to save their ass.”

Davenport looks at him curiously. “Still holding out on me, huh? Okay, play it your way. Right now, all I want is that motorcycle. Anything else Sam should know?”

“Yeah,” Cone says, turning to Shipkin. “If you spot a tall guy at the bar with a black ponytail and a bad case of acne, watch your back. You can’t miss him; someone chopped off both his little fingers.”

“What’s queer about him?” Sam asks.

“He’s stretched,” Cone says. “Carries a long switchblade and thinks he’s a hero.”

“Okay,” the undercover cop says, “I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks for the tip.” He finishes his brandy and rises. “Well, I better get to work. The more time I spend up there, the easier it’ll be.”

“The bartender’s name is Tommy,” Cone adds. “He’s got a big mustache. If that’s any help.”

“You never know,” Shipkin says. He looks around the loft. “It’s really getting to me,” he tells Cone. “If you ever decide to move, let me know first.”

“You kidding?” Davenport says. “This
scroccone
is going to die here. They’ll find him under the bathtub someday, OD’d on garlic salami.”

“There are worse ways to go,” Timothy says.

I
T TURNS OUT TO
be a real nothing morning. The summer sky is somber, and there are rumblings of thunder over New Jersey. The stuffed air smells of turps; there’s an ugly ocherous glow over everything.

Grousing, Cone shambles down to John Street, convinced that a day starting so dismally can only end in disaster. He stops at the local deli for black coffee and a bagel with a schmear. He takes his breakfast up to the office, exchanging silent glares with the ancient receptionist. It’s that kind of day.

He hasn’t slept well, but he doesn’t blame the junk food he pigged on the previous night. He’s eaten salami, anchovies, and chocolate pudding before, and the mixture never depressed him. But this morning engenders thoughts of making out a will and investing in a cemetery plot.

When his phone rings, he stares at it balefully, convinced it’s going to bring him news that he’s overdrawn at the bank or the IRS has found another flaw in their annual audit of his return. He finally picks it up.

“Yeah?”

“Tim? This is Jeremy Bigelow. Tell me something: Do you always fall in an outhouse and come up with a box lunch?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The SEC investigator is bubbling with excitement. “Those ten companies you gave me—Research says that eight of them had very,
very
high short positions on the dates you mentioned. We got a computer sharpie who loves puzzles like that, and he did some back-checking. He claims that in the month before your dates, the total of shares sold short more than tripled in all eight companies. What in God’s name is going on?”

Cone sighs. This time he
knows
he is right, but he feels no elation. “It’s a ripoff,” he tells Bigelow. “A beautiful swindle that might be funny, but people have been dusted—and there’s nothing ha-ha about that. Jerry, I think you better bring the Federal DA in on this one.”

“The SEC can handle it.”

“No, you can’t,” Cone says. “This isn’t just a civil matter. If it pans out, there are going to be criminal indictments. You got a pet in the DA’s office?”

“A pet?”

“A contact. Someone you’ve worked with before. Preferably someone who owes you.”

“There’s an ADA named Hamish McDonnell. I’ve had some dealings with him.”

“Hamish McDonnell? Italian, of course.”

“No,” Bigelow says seriously, “I think he’s a Scotsman. He’s a hardnose, but he gets things done. You think I should call him?”

“It would be the smart thing to do. Cover your ass. Tell him what I gave you and what your computers came up with. Give him my number. If he wants more skinny, he can give me a call.”

“Well, all right,” the SEC man says hesitantly. “I’ll do it, but don’t cut me out of this, Tim.”

“Don’t worry,” Cone says. “You’ll see your name in print again.”

He hangs up and waits, smoking a cigarette, feet up on his desk. Samantha Whatley, coming along the corridor, stops and looks in.

“Working?” she asks.

“Yes, I’m working,” he says irritably. “What the hell do you think I’m doing—fluffing my duff?”

“What a lovely mood you’re in,” she says. “No wonder the whole office calls you Mr. Congeniality.”

“The whole office can go hump,” he says angrily. “You think I—”

But she walks away, leaving him with his sour thoughts. He hears the grumble of thunder outside—“The angels are bowling,” his mother used to say—and he supposes it’ll start pouring any minute now. Or maybe it’ll hold off until he goes out for lunch. That’ll be nice. When his corduroy suit gets wet, it smells like a Percheron’s jockstrap.

His phone shrills, and he lets it ring seven times before he picks it up. Sheer perversity.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Timothy Cone?” A man’s voice: sharp, brisk, demanding.

“That’s right.”

“This is Hamish McDonnell, Assistant DA, Federal. Jeremy Bigelow called, said you had something to talk about.”

“He told you about the short sales?”

“He told me,” McDonnell says, “but I have to know more about it before I set the wheels in motion. I’ve got a very busy schedule today, but if you can be at my office at three-thirty this afternoon, I’ll give you a half-hour.”

That’s all Cone needs. “Forget it,” he says.

“What?”

“Forget it. Unless you want to drag your ass over to my office within an hour, I’ll take it to the FBI. I’ve got a pal there who loves headlines.”

“Now wait just a—”

But Cone hangs up. He gives the guy three minutes to get back to him, but the phone rings again in less than a minute.

“Yeah?”

“Hamish McDonnell here. Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

“Not me,” Cone says, “I know the drill: hay foot, straw foot, hay foot, straw foot.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not important. You interested or aren’t you?”

“You really think something is going down with those short sales?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s frigging in the rigging.”

“All right,” the ADA says, “I’ll get someone to fill in for me over here, and I’ll be at your place in an hour. Now are you happy?”

“Creaming,” Cone says.

He’s there in a little more than an hour, his rubberized raincoat streaming and his red hair plastered to his skull. “Aw,” Cone says, “did you get caught in the rain?” McDonnell stares at him. “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?”

He’s a young guy, broad and beefy. He looks as if he might have been a hotshot in college football but didn’t have the moves or speed to make pro. But he’s still in good shape: flat belly, hard shoulders, a jaw like a knee, and hands just slightly smaller than picnic hams.

“Where can I hang my raincoat?” he asks.

“Throw it on the floor,” Cone says. “That’s what I do.”

But the ADA sits down in the armchair in his wet coat. He pulls out a clean white handkerchief and swabs his dripping hair. “All right,” he says, “let’s stop playing games. What’ve you got?”

Cone takes him through the whole thing: How Haldering was hired to investigate sabotage at Dempster-Torrey factories; how he, Cone, decided the motive was to bring down the price of the common stock so short-sellers could profit; how he suspects that David Dempster might be the knave behind the manipulation.

“David Dempster?” McDonnell says sharply. “The brother of the guy who got scragged?”

“That’s right.”

“You think he had anything to do with John Dempster’s death?”

“How the hell would I know?” Cone says. “I’m just a lousy private eye interested in industrial sabotage.”

“What have you got on David Dempster?”

“He runs a two-bit PR operation from a small office on Cedar Street, but his net worth is like four mil. That’s got to tell you something—right?”

“Unless he inherited it.”

“That I doubt. But you can check it out.”

McDonnell looks at him a long time, eyes like wet coal. “It stinks,” he says finally.

“Sure it does,” Cone agrees. “A dirty way of making a buck.”

“That’s not what I mean,” the ADA says. “I mean your story stinks.”

The Wall Street dick jerks a thumb toward the door. “Then take a walk,” he says. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

“Jesus, what a hard-on you are! Can you blame me for doubting you? What the hell have you given me? A lot of numbers on a computer tape. Those short sales could have been lucky guesses and you know it. All you’ve said is that you ‘suspect’ David Dempster might be finagling it. Where’s your hard evidence?”

Cone shrugs. “Take it for what you think it’s worth. It’s your decision.”

McDonnell leans forward to slam a meaty palm down on the desk. “Goddamn it!” he cries. “You’re holding out on me and I know it. You want to be charged with obstruction of justice?”

“Be my guest,” Cone says. “I’ll be delighted to see you make a fucking idiot out of yourself—if you’re not one already.”

They lock eyeballs, both infuriated. It’s Hamish McDonnell who blinks first. “Can’t you give me anything to go on?” he says hotly. “Anything at all that will make me think you’re just not blowing smoke.”

“Yeah,” Cone says, “I can give you something. Three names. Two guys and a company. They’re all hotshot financial advisers, with pension and trust funds to diddle. They’re the weasels who are financing this scam. There may be others, but these three are in it up to their pipiks.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. You want the names or not?”

The ADA groans. “Give me the goddamned names,” he says.

It turns out that Cone’s ballpoint pen has run dry and he can’t find a clean piece of paper to write on. So his triumph is somewhat diminished by having to borrow McDonnell’s pen and a sheet torn from his pocket notebook.

“You’re a winner, you are,” the ADA says. “How do you get across the street—with a Boy Scout?”

Cone jots down the three names provided by Neal Davenport. “You won’t have any trouble getting addresses,” he tells McDonnell. “They’re all well-known operators on Wall Street. And listen, do me a favor and do yourself a favor, get moving on this fast. These bums are planning another trick. It’s going down right now.”

“Yeah? And how do you know that?”

“You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“Seems to me I’m taking your word for a helluva lot.”

“What do you want—a list of personal references?”

“This is going to take a lot of work, and if—”

“Bull
shit
,” Cone says. “You pick up these chiselers, sweat them a little, tell them you’ve got all the facts and figures on their smelly deals with David Dempster, and I guarantee at least one of them is going to crack. He’ll spill his guts to wangle a lesser charge. Wall Street villains are not stand-up guys; you know that.”

“If you’re scamming me on all this, Cone, I’m going to come back to this shithouse and personally take you apart. And believe me, I can do it.”

“Maybe,” Timothy says.

Hamish McDonnell rises and buttons his raincoat. He makes no effort to shake hands, and neither does Cone.

“And don’t call me,” the ADA says. “I’ll call you when and if I’ve got something.”

Cone leans back and lights a cigarette. He figures McDonnell for a tough nut who’s not afraid to use the muscle of his office to get the job done. That’s okay; the pinstriped types will find themselves confronted by a heavyweight with none of the deference of their golf club pros or private nutritionists.

He pulls on his leather cap and leaves the office. He discovers the rain has stopped. But the sky is still leaden with drizzle. He curses his stupidity for not having driven to work that morning. He tries to find an empty cab and fails. Damning the weepy day, he starts the long hike back to his loft, convinced there’s no productive work to be done in the office.

It’s true that he persuades other people to do his job for him. Neal Davenport, Jeremy Bigelow, and now Hamish McDonnell—all cooperate, but only because they believe it’s to their own profit. Everyone acts out of self-interest—right? Because self-interest is the First Law of Nature. You could even make out a case that a guy who devotes his whole life to unselfish service—like spooning mulligatawny into hopeless derelicts or converting the heathen—is doing it for the virtuous high it gives him.

But even assuming that no one acts without an ego boost, there’s a very practical problem Cone has in farming out his investigative chores. Once he’s done it, all that’s left for him is twiddling his thumbs—or anything else within reach. No use leaning on his helpers; that would just make them sore and earn him static. So there’s nothing for him to do but be quietly patient—which is akin to asking a cannibal to become a vegetarian.