Timothy's game

reading of your rights?”

“Now wait a minute …”

“No, Mr. Dempster, you wait a minute. You can waste our time or you can make it easy on us and yourself and just come along quietly. Cooperate-okay?”

David Dempster manages a smarmy grin. “You don’t mind if I fill a pipe first, do you?” he asks and, without waiting for a reply, opens a side desk drawer and reaches in.

Surprisingly, it’s Davenport who reacts first. The portly detective moves so fast that Cone can’t believe it. He launches himself across the desk, grabs Dempster’s wrist in both hands, twists in opposite directions. There’s a howl of pain, and Neal plucks a nickeled pistol from Dempster’s nerveless fingers.

“Nice pipe,” the city cop says. “What’re you smoking these days-thirty-twos?”

“Cuff him,” McDonnell orders, and the marshals bend Dempster’s arms behind his back, not gently, and click the steel links on his wrists. They clamp their big mitts on his upper arms.

“Not smart, Mr. Dempster,” the ADA says. “What were you going to do, kill all five of us? Or just wave your popgun and make a run for it? It’s tough getting a cab on Fridays.”

“I wish to speak to my attorney,” Dempster says stiffly.

“You’ll get your chance,” McDonnell says. “Let’s go.”

Cone stands aside to let the entourage file by. David Dempster pauses a moment, pulling back against the marshals’ grip. He stares at Cone.

“You?” he says. “You did this?”

The Wall Street dick nods.

Dempster takes in the rumpled corduroy suit, grayed T-shirt, yellow work shoes.

“But you’re a bum!” he says in outraged tones.

“Yeah,” Cone says, “I know.”

He lets them all go ahead. He dawdles a moment in the reception room where the hennaed secretary has her back pressed against the wall, a knuckle between her teeth.

“I think you can close up now,” Cone tells her gently.

“He’s not coming back?” she asks.

“Not for a while.”

“Shit!” she says unexpectedly. “Best job I ever had.”

By the time Cone gets down to the street, the others have disappeared. He glances at the clock over the entrance and figures that if he hurries, he can get back to Haldering amp; Co. in time to pick up his paycheck. But hurrying anywhere in that heat is not a boss idea.

“Ahh, screw it,” he says aloud, causing passersby to look at him nervously and detour around him.

Stripped to their skivvies, they’re lazing around the loft on a late Saturday afternoon. The front windows are open, and Cone’s antique electric fan is doing its whirry best, but it’s still bloody hot.

“When the hell are you going to spring for an air conditioner?” Samantha Whatley demands.

“One of these days,” Cone says.

“That’s a lot of bull,” she says. “You’re such a skinflint you’d rather suffer.”

It’s the truth, and he knows it. Tightwadism is his philosophy, if not his religion, and the thought of shelling out hundreds of dollars for a decent window unit is more than he can bear.

“It’s not so bad,” he says defensively. “And they say it’s going to cool down tonight.”

“Yeah,” she says, “maybe to eighty. What are we eating?”

“I got nothing in the house. I figured I’d run out to the deli. What do you feel like?”

“Anything as long as it’s cold.”

“How about a canned ham, potato salad, some tomatoes and stuff?”

“I can live with that,” she says. “And see if they’ve got any Heavenly Hash.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Ice cream, you asshole. What world do you live in?”

They’re drinking jug chablis poured over ice cubes, and working on a can of honey-roasted peanuts. Occasionally they flip a peanut to Cleo, who’d rather cuff it and chase it than eat it.

“So?” Sam says. “How you doing on the Dempster-Torrey file?”

“Oh, that,” he says casually. “It’s over. All cleared up. Finis.”

Her feet hit the floor with a thump. She bends across the table and glares at him. “You crapping me?”

He raises a palm. “Scout’s honor. I’ll write up the final report next week.”

“Next week sucks,” she says wrathfully. “I want to know right now. Who did it-the butler?”

“Nah,” he says. “David Dempster.”

She draws a deep breath. “David Dempster? The brother?”

He nods, pours them more wine. “Listen, you know what it means when you sell short?”

“Vaguely. It means you sell something you don’t own.”

“That’s about it, kiddo. When you sell a stock short, you don’t own it. But it’s perfectly legit.”

“So how do you sell it if you don’t own it? And what’s the point?”

“Let’s say that the stock of XYZ Corporation is selling at a hundred dollars a share. You don’t own any XYZ but you think, for whatever reason, that the stock is going to take a nosedive. So you borrow a hundred shares of XYZ and sell them. You get ten thousand bucks-right? Disregarding the broker’s commission. Follow?”

“Sure. But who do you borrow the stock from?”

“Your brokerage house-or anyone else willing to lend the shares to you. Anyway, say the shares of XYZ Corporation do just what you figured and go down to eighty. Then you buy. Those hundred shares cost you eight thousand. You return the borrowed shares, and you’ve made yourself two grand.”

“Beautiful,” Sam says. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since Eve shorted the apple to Adam.”

“But what if the stock goes up?”

“Then you slit your wrists and do a swan from your penthouse terrace. Nah, I’m kidding. Selling stock short isn’t much chancier than buying it long because you expect it to go up.”

“And that’s what David Dempster was doing-selling short?”

“I doubt it,” Cone says. “He doesn’t strike me as being much of a plunger. But he figured out a handy-dandy scheme for the heavyweight short-sellers on Wall Street. I think it started about three years ago. He knew what an emotional, irrational world the Street is. It’s really a loony bin. The silliest rumor or statement by some high-muck- a-muck can send the Dow up or down. So the way I figure it, David Dempster worked out a way to depress the price of particular stocks. Maybe he began by just starting rumors. God knows he had the contacts in his PR business to do that. Or perhaps the Tylenol scare in Chicago gave him the idea. He probably reckoned he could sink the value of shares in a drug or food company just by phoning the cops and newspapers anonymously and claiming he had poisoned the product. Then there’s a lot of publicity, products are pulled off the shelves-just to be on the safe side-and the manufacturer’s stock takes a tumble.”

“Jesus,” Samantha says, “what a perverted mind to think of that.”

“Sure, but it worked. Because Dempster realized that even if the stock slid just a couple of points, you can make a bundle if you’re trading thousands of shares. A guy who sold short ten thousand shares of XYZ Corporation at a hundred simoleons a share would receive a million bucks-correct? Then, after a product-tampering scare or some other disaster to the company, the stock falls to ninety dollars a share. He buys his ten thousand shares at that price and nets a cool hundred thousand smackers. Nice? Now figure what the profit would have been if he had traded a half-million shares!”

“Disgusting,” she says. “You’re telling me that David Dempster devised ways to make certain that stocks went down?”

“You better believe it. And from anonymous phone calls and product tampering he soon began organizing real sabotage like arson and vandalism-and corrupting key personnel. Anything he could do to damage the company, depress the stock price, and benefit his short-selling clients. The Bela Lugosi of Wall Street.”

“And they paid him for the service?”

“Sure. Either a fee or percentage of the take. How do you think he rolled up a personal net worth of four