Timothy's game

“Any homicides?” Cone asks.

Staley gives him a strange look. “Funny you should ask,” he says. “The chief researcher for a biomedical outfit got wiped out in a car crash. Clear night. He wasn’t drunk or stoned. The official verdict was that he lost control of his car and drove into a concrete abutment. But the guy was some kind of a genius, and there was talk he was working on a cure for baldness. After he died, the stock of the company went way down, and the new product never did hit the market.”

“You think the guy’s accident wasn’t kosher?”

Staley shrugs. “Just a feeling,” he says. “No hard evidence at all. But I keep remembering it. He left a pretty wife and three young kids.”

“Yeah,” Cone says, “that’s hard to forget. And you’ve gotten nothing from all your digging?”

The other man blinks behind his specs. “Nothing you can take to the bank. Just a crazy notion that all these jobs-different companies, different places-were pulled by the same guy, or the same mob. A lot of similarities. In several of the arson cases, the MO was practically identical. But don’t ask me who’s behind it or what the motive might be-I haven’t a clue. Anyway, I won’t bore you with my tale of woe any longer. You wanted a list of the ten companies that had the biggest property and casualty losses. Here it is, with their total claims.”

He fishes into his inside jacket pocket, comes out with a folded sheet of typing paper, hands it over.

“You’ll notice that Dempster-Torrey is at the top as far as dollar losses go.”

Cone scans the list quickly. “I recognize most of the names,” he says. “Not all, but most. What do these dates mean?”

“That’s when the accidents happened,” the Triple-I man says. “I thought it might possibly help. You’ll notice some of the dates go back more than a year. I know you asked for losses in the past year, but this thing has been growing for three years now, so I decided to include the biggest losers.”

Cone looks at him admiringly. “You know your job,” he says.

“No, I don’t,” Bernard Staley says. “If I did, I’d have closed this file a year ago. I hope you have better luck. I’ve got a lot more on my plate besides this, but it keeps bothering me.

“Yeah. The pretty wife and three young kids.”

The insurance investigator nods, rises, extends his hand. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Cone. I hope that list is what you wanted. I swear to God that something is going down, but what the hell it is, I have no idea.”

“Thanks for your help,” Cone says, shaking his hand.

“And if you come up with anything you’ll let me know?”

“Absolutely. We’re both working the same side of the street.”

Staley gives him a wan smile. “Some street,” he says sadly.

After he’s gone, Cone reads over the list again. This sabotage is not piddling stuff; the claims are heavy: millions of dollars of losses. Which means if someone has deliberately planned the damage, he’s a professional or, more probably, has hired professionals. Two of the companies on the list suffered arsonous fires on the same day, and they’re half a country apart. No one torch could have managed that.

Cone ruminates a moment, searching through the mess in his top desk drawer for the phone number of his contact at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He calls.

“Jeremy Bigelow, please. Timothy Cone calling.”

“He’s on the phone at the moment, Mr. Cone. Would you care to wait?”

“Yeah, I’ll wait.”

He waits, and waits, and waits. Finally Bigelow comes on.

“Hiya, Tim,” he says.

“What were you doing on the phone so long-trying to explain to your wife why you take off your wedding ring the moment you leave the house?”

“My God,” the SEC man says with an empty laugh, “you never forget anything, do you. What’s happening?”

“The usual bullshit. Jerry, I need a small favor.”

“Well, uh, I’m awfully busy right now.”

Bigelow is a nice guy but not too swift. Cone has had to strong-arm him more than once.

“Look,” he says in a hard voice, “don’t get snotty with me. In the first place, you owe me one for that Sally Steiner scam. Don’t think I didn’t see your name in The Wall Street Journal. But that’s okay; I told you to grab the glory. In the second place, if you stiff me on this, you’ll be passing up something that could be bigger than the Boesky affair. If you and the SEC don’t want a piece of the action, just say so and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Bigger than the Boesky affair?” Jeremy repeats. “You just said the magic words. What have you got?”

“A list of ten companies. I need to know the amount of short sales in each company’s stock on the dates I’ll give you.”

“My God,” Bigelow says, “it’ll take a month of Sundays to dig that out.”

“Jerry, stop trying to jerk me around. You’ve got it all on your computers and you know it. The New York Times runs a list of big-board short positions every month. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour or two to come up with what I need.”

“Well, all right,” the other man says grudgingly. “Mail me the list and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Mail shit!” Cone says wrathfully. “I haven’t got the time, and if you’d like maybe to see your name in Business Week, you’ll want to get on this as fast as you can. Have you got a bug on your phone wired to a tape recorder?”

“Well … yeah,” the SEC man says hesitantly. “For when informers call.”

“I’m the best informer you’ll ever have. Switch it on and I’ll dictate the names of the companies and the dates.”

He hears fumbling, clicking, and then Bigelow says, “Okay, go ahead.”

Cone reads aloud the list from Triple-I. He concludes by saying, “That’s all for now, folks. Keep those letters and postcards coming.”

Jerry gets back on the phone again. “All right,” he says, “I’ll get it to Research right away. You’re sure this is a biggie?”

“Makes the Teapot Dome Scandal look like the Gypsy Handkerchief Switch,” Cone assures him. “I’ll expect to hear from you tomorrow. If not, look for me at your office with a cast-iron shillelagh. Have a nice day.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy Bigelow says faintly. “You, too.”

Cone disconnects, convinced the pace of the investigation is picking up. He lights a Camel, lifts his work shoes on top of his battered desk, and considers. Where are the flaws? If not flaws, where are the gaps? He spots one, and reaches for the phone again. He calls Mrs. Teresa Dempster.

She answers the phone herself, and he wonders, sorrowfully, if the nubile maid has been canned.

“Hello, there!” she says cheerily. “This is Teresa Dempster speaking.”

“How are you, Mrs. Dempster? This is Timothy Cone.”

“Mr. Timothy!” she carols. “How nice to hear from you again.”

“I was wondering how my bonsai is doing. The Japanese red maple you gave me-remember?”

“Irving! Of course I remember. Well, Irving is doing just wonderfully. Growing enormously. I think we’ll have to repot him.”

“I was wondering if I might stop by-just for a few minutes-to take a look.”

“Of course you may,” she says gaily. “Irving will be so happy to see you.”

“Be there in a half-hour,” he says.

He grabs his cap and starts out. He meets Samantha Whatley in the corridor.

“Where are you going now?” she demands.

“Nutsville,” he tells her.

She’s wearing a long denim apron over a white linen jumpsuit, but no costume could conceal her feyness. The big azure eyes are widened in constant wonder, and the webby wheaten hair drifts down her back. She greets him at the door and seems genuinely delighted to see him.

“You’re the first visitor I’ve had today,” she says breathlessly, taking his hand and drawing him inside. “It’s Jeanette’s day off, so I’ve been all by my lonesome-except for my friends, of course.”

“Of course,” Cone says, figuring she’s talking about her trees and plants. “No police guard outside?”