steel vise, and it was tightened until his skull cracked open like a ripe melon.”
“Beautiful. Have some more fries before I eat them all.”
They start on their second burgers.
“These onions are hot,” Davenport says. “Just the way I like them. But I’ll be grepsing all day. Anyway, about three years ago the Department organized a strike force-us and state and federal people. It worked out real good. About a dozen of the Westies were sent up, including some of the bosses, and the rest laid low. Paddy’s Pig was closed down for a while, but it reopened with a new owner. And lately our snitches have claimed the gang is back in business again. Now you tell me there’s a tie-up between Paddy’s Pig and the Dempster homicide. In the first place, what were you doing in that joint?”
Cone wipes his mouth with a paper napkin and opens another beer. “I tailed David Dempster up there.”
The NYPD man turns to stare at him. “You shittin’ me again?”
“I shit you not,” Cone says. “That’s where he went, and had a confab with the owner, a fat slob named Louie. Listen, when the Dempster investigation began, did you run everyone involved through Records?”
“Whaddya think? Of course we checked them out. David Dempster’s got a sheet-but not much of one. A charge of battery for beating up a drunk driver in Central Park who, Dempster said, killed his dog. And two arrests for assault. Nothing ever came to trial.”
“My, my,” Cone says. “So the wimp’s got a streak of the crude, has he? That figures.”
Davenport rattles the windows with a reverberant belch, then unwraps a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit. “It doesn’t figure to me,” he says. “So David Dempster went slumming and was observed talking to the owner of Paddy’s Pig. What does that prove?”
“When I talked to Louie after Dempster left, he tried to push dope. When I wasn’t interested, he switched to merchandise that fell off the truck. I told him a buddy of mine was looking to buy a motorcycle. He said sure, send him around.”
The two detectives stare at each other.
“Thin stuff,” Davenport says.
“You got anything thicker?”
“No,” Davenport admits. “We got a lot of doughnuts that are all hole. Look, could you go back to this Louie and see if he can get you a black Kawasaki, Model 650?”
“Well, ah, that might be a problem. To tell you the truth, I got in a slight disagreement with a guy who may be hanging out there.”
“A
“Neal,” Cone says gently, “don’t do that. They’ll make you for a cop the minute you walk in the place.”
Davenport looks down at his stained, off-the-rack brown suit, his belly, plump hands. “You really think so?” he asks.
“Definitely. Why don’t you get an undercover guy who can act a scuzz. Bring him around and I’ll prep him. He can spend time at Paddy’s Pig until he’s accepted as just another barfly. Then he can move in on Louie and see if he can get a line on the cycle. I’m betting they didn’t drop it in the Hudson or send it to a chop shop. It’s too valuable.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. If it works out, it’ll put David Dempster in the crapper. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I know it.”
“Well, what the hell was his motive? Jealousy? Sibling rivalry?”
“Sibling rivalry? That’s fancy talk for a gumshoe.”
“I read books,” Davenport protests. “Come on-what’s the motive?”
“I’m working on that.”
“Jesus,” the detective says disgustedly, “you always hold back, don’t you?”
“You handle Paddy’s Pig,” Cone says, “and let me go after David Dempster. A guy shouldn’t chill his own brother. That’s not right.”
“You got a brother?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell are you talking about?”
“I got my standards,” Timothy says.
He carries the two remaining beers up to his office in a brown paper bag. There’s a scrawny guy in a seersucker suit waiting in the reception room. He’s wearing wire-rimmed cheaters, and there’s a straw boater balanced on his knee. He’s got the face of a pale hawk, with a droopy nose and a mouth so tight it looks like a lipless slit.
“Man to see you,” the antique receptionist snaps at Cone.
The visitor stands and tries a smile that doesn’t work.
“Mr. Timothy Cone?”
“Yeah. Who you?”
The guy whips out a business card and proffers it. “Bernard Staley from International Insurance-”
“Whoa,” Cone interrupts, holding up a hand. “I’m not buying.”
“And I’m not selling. It’s International Insurance Investigators. The Triple-I. Have you ever heard of us?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” the guy says, and this time the smile works. “We like it that way. This concerns Dempster-Torrey. Can we talk?”
“Sure,” Timothy says, taking the business card. “This way.”
Staley follows him down the corridor and into Cone’s littered cubbyhole office.
“This looks like my place,” the insurance man says, “but it’s bigger.”
“Bigger? My God, you must work out of a coffin. Listen, I’ve got a couple of beers here. They’re not too cold, but they’re wet. You want one?”
He has the guy figured for a stiff, but Staley surprises him. “Sure,” he says. “That’d be good.”
They open the cans, take a gulp, stare at each other with cautious interest.
“This Triple-I you work for-” Cone says. “What is it?”
“Claims investigations. Most insurance companies have their own claims department. But some of the smaller ones can’t handle anything that’s complicated or suspicious. And sometimes the big boys get backed up with a lot of claims at once and need temporary outside help. That’s where we come in.”
“I follow,” Cone says. “But what’s your interest in Dempster-Torrey?”
Staley drums his fingertips on the top of his sailor. “The way I get it,” he says, “you were hired to investigate their industrial sabotage. Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“So you call Dempster-Torrey. They call their insurance broker. The broker calls the Central Insurance Association. And they call us.”
“There’s a helluva lot of phoning going on today,” Cone says. “Maybe I should buy some Nynex stock. But how does your company come in on this?”
“About three years ago the computers at the CIA-that’s a great name, isn’t it-picked up a big increase in property and casualty claims by large corporations. It was a jump that couldn’t be explained by normal growth, so the Triple-I was hired to take a look-see.”
“So you’ve been looking into property and casualty losses for the past three years.”
“Just for a year. The eye who had the file before me retired, and I inherited it. He got nowhere with it, and that’s exactly where I’ve got.”
“Did you investigate this stuff personally?”
“You better believe it,” Bernard Staley says. “Traveled all over the country. Spent a lot of the CIA’s money- and delivered zilch. And I usually got there a day or two after it happened. Sometimes within hours. Not only torching factories, but sabotage, and vandalism, product tampering, bribery of union leaders, consumer lawsuits, and hiring away or corrupting key personnel-in other words, a complete program to ruin the reputation and profits of the targeted company.”
