Timothy's game

“What’s your take?”

“A neuter.”

“How did John Dempster feel about him?”

“Ignored him. He thought David was a joke.”

“Did David try to get the Dempster-Torrey PR account?”

“My God, how have you found out these things? Yes, David made a pitch-but that was years ago. Jack turned him down, of course. We set up an in-house publicity and corporate advertising division, and it’s worked out very well.”

“So there was hostility between the brothers?”

“Not hostility. Just nothing.”

“I’ve talked to Dorothy Blenke, David’s ex-wife.”

“Have you? I’ve never met the lady.”

“I got the feeling-though she never said yes or no, either way-that maybe John Dempster had a fling with her while she was married to his brother. You know anything about that?”

Eve Bookerman struggles out of the armchair and stands stiffly erect. “Get out!” she yells at him.

“Okay,” Timothy says equably. He rises, reaches for his cap.

“No,” the woman says, holding up a palm. “Wait a minute. Sit down and finish your drink. I apologize.”

They both sit again, stare at each other warily.

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know for sure. But from little things Jack said, it could have been that way.”

“There are a lot of ‘coulds’ and ‘maybes’ in this file,” Cone says. “All right, let’s say John and Dorothy had an affair. That was before his thing with you-right?”

She nods.

“And maybe, just maybe, that affair led to David Dempster’s divorce. Do you think that’s possible?”

“Anything is possible,” she says.

“Thank you,” he says, “but I knew that when I was four years old.” He finishes his drink, rises, takes up his cap. “I appreciate your seeing me.”

“I talked too much,” she says dully.

“Nah,” Cone says. “You really didn’t tell me much I hadn’t already guessed. Besides, I’m not wired, so who’s to know what you did or didn’t say. Get a good night’s sleep, Miss Bookerman.”

“Fat chance,” she says bitterly.

Cone rides down in that same scented elevator, flips a hand at the tailcoated gink behind the desk, and exits into a night that’s all moon and grazing breeze. He feels loose and restless, and considers his options. He could go directly home. He could drop in at the nearest bar for a nightcap or two. He could call Samantha and see if she’s in the mood to entertain a visitor at that hour.

So fifteen minutes later he finds himself double-parked on East 38th Street, scoping the townhouse where David Dempster lives. The third-floor lights are on, front windows opened but screened. Cone can’t see anyone moving behind the gauzy curtains.

He sits there for almost a half-hour, smoking two cigarettes to make up for his abstinence in Bookerman’s apartment. Finally the third-floor lights go out. Now for the moment of truth: Did the guy sack out or is he planning an excursion? Cone waits patiently for another twenty minutes, but no one comes out of the townhouse.

“What the hell am I doing?” the Wall Street dick asks aloud, and then wonders if he’s losing his marbles because he hasn’t even got a cat there to listen to him.

Five

It’s a Saturday, and usually he and Samantha spend the day together-and sometimes the night. But she has shopping to do in the afternoon and then, in the evening, she must attend a bridal shower for one of the secretaries at Haldering amp; Co.

“Gonna miss me?” she asks.

“Nah,” he says. “I got a lot of things to do.”

“Oh, sure. Like smoking up a storm, slopping vodka, and kicking the cat.”

“I wouldn’t kick Cleo. Strangle maybe, but not kick.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Let me take a look at my appointment book.”

“Keep talking like that, buster, and you’ll be singing soprano. Listen, we haven’t had pizza for a long time- maybe a week or so. How’s about you pick up a big one-half pepperoni for you, half anchovies for me-and bring it over here tomorrow. I’ve got some salad stuff.”

“Sounds good,” he says. “Around noon?”

“Make it later,” she says. “I’ve got to read the Sunday Times. Unless you were planning a matinee. Were you?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“What mind? How about threeish or fourish?”

“How about twoish?”

“Okay,” she says agreeably. “We can read the Real Estate Section in bed together.”

“Whoopee!” he cries.

He really does have things to do-not a lot, but some. He changes Cleo’s litter and damp-mops the linoleum. He takes in his laundry and decides the corduroy suit will do for another week without drycleaning. He goes shopping for beer, vodka, wine, brandy. And he buys a loaf of Jewish rye (without seeds) and a whole garlic salami. It’s about two feet long and looks like an elephant’s schlong.

Back in the loft, he and Cleo have salami sandwiches, two for him, one for the cat. Cone’s sandwiches have hot English mustard smeared on them. Cleo prefers mayonnaise.

He reads Barron’s as he eats, marveling at all the reports of chicanery on Wall Street. Most of them involve inside trading, stock manipulation, or fraudulent misrepresentation on a company’s balance sheet. The Street has its share of gonnifs, and the fact that they wear three-piece pinstripes and carry alligator attache cases doesn’t mitigate their corruption.

What never ceases to amaze Cone is how few of these moneyed crooks are stand-up guys. Once they’ve been nabbed by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal DA, they sing like canaries, happy to squeal on their larcenous associates, willing to be wired or have their phones tapped so old school chums can share the blame. Cone knows that when you drive a BMW and summer on the Cape, you’d be eager to cooperate with the fuzz if it means probation rather than a year in the slammer. But Timothy has known cheap boosters, purse- snatchers, and yeggs with more honor than that.

“It’s money,” he tells a snoozing Cleo. “Everyone quotes ‘Money is the root of all evil,’ but that’s not what the Good Book says. It says, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’ Big difference.”

Cleo is not impressed.

Cone finishes his reading and then falls asleep at the table, bent forward with his head on folded arms. He wakes early in the evening, feeling stiff from his awkward position, with pins and needles in both hands. He stalks up and down the loft, jangling arms and legs to get jazzed up again.

There’s a greasy spoon around the corner, run by a Greek who can do nothing right but double-cheeseburgers and home fries with a lot of onions. So that’s what Timothy has, sitting at the counter and wondering if this is the way he’s going to die someday, toppling off the stool, OD’d on cholesterol.

He returns to the loft and mooches around for almost an hour, smoking two Camels and buying himself another robust drink. He knows what he’s going to do that night, but the prospect is so depressing he puts it off as long as possible. Finally he can postpone it no longer and calls David Dempster.

“Hello?” Dempster says. Cone recognizes that spoony voice.

“Sam?” the Wall Street dick asks.

“No, you’ve got the wrong number,” Dempster says, and hangs up.

So now Cone knows the guy is home, and he has no excuse for stalling. He makes his preparations swiftly: a