million? He probably had a small list of very greedy customers. Mostly guys who managed OPM-Other People’s Money-in pensions and trusts. They’d get together in his townhouse, decide on a victim, and Dempster would get to work. He didn’t do the dirty stuff himself, of course; he paid a gang of hoods called the Westies to do that.”
“My God,” Sam says, “the things people will do for the almighty buck. You think David Dempster arranged his brother’s murder?”
“Hell, yes,” Timothy says. “He engineered it, even to the extent of using Teresa Dempster to find out when her husband was leaving on a trip so he could set up that Wall Street ambush. And just like he figured, after his brother died the price of Dempster-Torrey stock took a bath, and all his short-selling clients made a bundle.”
They sit silently then, sipping their chilled wine and watching Cleo stalk a peanut across the linoleum. Maybe it really is cooling off, a little, but they have no desire for an aerobics session-at least not the vertical variety.
“Tim,” Samantha says in a low voice, “he really had his brother put down? His
“Oh, yes, he did it.”
“But
“That was part of it, sure. But I told you that none of us acts from a single motive. People aren’t that simple. Yeah, David killed his brother for money. But also he did it because John put the horns on him by enjoying fun and games with Dorothy, David’s wife. And you’ve got to figure there was a lot of sibling rivalry as Neal Davenport, of all people, suggested. Listen, just because two guys are brothers doesn’t mean they think alike or have the same personalities and temperaments. Ask any horse trainer. Or even people who breed dogs or cats. They’ll tell you that every animal in a litter is different, with its own traits and characteristics. John J. Dempster may have played hardball in his business and personal life, but he was genuine. David Dempster is a small, mean, hypocritical bastard.”
Sam holds up her palms in protest. “Enough already!” she pleads. “I’ll read all about it in your report. Right now I don’t want to hear any more about money, greed, and fratricide. It’s all too depressing. I just want to think nice thoughts. Give me a couple of more ice cubes and pour me some wine.”
The loft is dimming, and a blessed breeze comes sneaking in the front windows. Cone turns off the fan, and that helps. The traffic noises seem muted and far away.
“How you coming with your nice thoughts?” Cone asks.
“Getting there,” Samantha says.
“You be nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”
“Best offer I’ve had all day. Did you change the sheets?”
“Of course. It’s the last Saturday of the month, isn’t it?”
“My hero,” she says. She stands, ambles over to the mattress. She peels off bra and panties. Still standing, a pale wraith in the darkling, she begins unpinning her long, auburn hair.
“Maybe I should go get the ham first,” Timothy says.
“Screw the ham!” she says, then pauses, arms still raised, tresses half unbound. She looks at him thoughtfully. “You know who I feel sorry for in that whole Dempster mess?”
“Who?”
“Teresa. She sounds like such a nice, nutty lady. But she was married to a rakehell. And then he gets killed, and it turns out her brother-in-law, who’s been a real pal, was involved in the murder. My God, what that woman’s been through.”
“Yeah, well, she’s coping. I went up to see her this morning. She’s thinking of going to Japan for a while.”
“What for?”
“To study Zen. Says she wants to be closer to the cosmos-whatever that means. She told me she thinks everything happens for the best.”
Hair swinging free, Sam comes over to stand close in front of him. He bows his head to kiss her pipik.
“But not you,” she says, stroking his bristly hair. “You think everything happens for the worst.”
“Not everything,” Cone says.
BOOK III
One
It never occurs to Cone that Samantha Whatley doesn’t want to be seen with him in public because he dresses like a refugee from Lower Slobbovia. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to run the risk of being spotted by an employee of Haldering amp; Co., and then their rare liaison will be trivialized by office gossip.
So their trysts are limited to her gentrified apartment in the East Village or his scuzzy loft in a cast-iron commercial building on lower Broadway. That’s okay with Timothy; he’s a hermitlike creature by nature, and perfectly willing to play the game according to her rules.
So there they are in her flossy apartment on Sunday night, August 8th, gnawing on barbecued ribs and nattering of this and that.
“When are you going to take your two weeks?” she asks him.
“What two weeks?”
“Your vacation, you yuck. When do you want to take it?”
He shrugs. “Makes no nevermind to me. Anytime.”
“Well, I’m taking off on Friday. I’m going home.”
He ponders a moment. Then: “You’re flying on Friday the thirteenth?”
“Best time. The plane will be practically empty. I don’t want you tomcatting around while I’m gone.”
“Not me.”
“And try to cut down on the booze.”
“Yes, mother. Who’s going to fill in for you at work while you’re gone?”
“Hiram himself.”
“Oh, Jesus!” he says, dropping his rib bone. “Don’t tell me that while I’m eating.”
On Monday morning after Sam leaves, Cone wanders to work an hour late, as usual. He finds two file folders on his desk: assignments to new investigations. He flips through them listlessly; they look like dullsville to him. One concerns a client who’s invested a nice chunk of cash in a scheme to breed miniature horses. Now, with his money gone and the phones of the boiler shop operation disconnected, he wants Haldering amp; Co. to locate the con men and get his investment back. Lots of luck, Charlie.
The second case concerns a proposed merger between two companies that make plastic cocoons for scores of consumer products-the kind of packaging that breaks your fingernails and drives you to stabbing with a sharp paring knife to open the damned stuff. One of the principals wants a complete credit check on the other. Instant ennui.
Cone tosses the folders aside and finishes his breakfast: black coffee and a buttered bialy. He’s on his second cigarette when his phone rings. He picks it up expecting a calamity. That’s always safe because then a mere misfortune arrives as good news.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Cone? Hiram Haldering. Come here at once, please.”
He was right the first time. It’s usually a calamity when H.H. says, “Please.”
He slouches down the corridor to the boss’s office, the only one with two windows. The bright summer sunlight is bouncing off fatso’s balding pate, and he’s beaming and nodding like one of those bobbing dolls in the back windows of cars driven by morons. But at least his two air conditioners are wheezing away, so the room is comfortably cool.
