Timothy's game

“Oh, he knows about it, but I didn’t want to be the one to tell him.”

“Sure,” Cone says.

“About your investigation,” Lee goes on. He plucks a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabs at his forehead. “Hot day.”

“Yeah,” Cone says. “Usually is in summer.”

Lee ignores that. “About your investigation,” he continues. “Have you been getting anywhere?”

“Not really,” Cone says. “I had a couple of other files I had to work on.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find it’s just the way I explained at Ah Sing’s: normal market activity, a flight to quality.”

“Could be,” Cone says. “I see where White Lotus was up another seven-eighths yesterday. Heavy volume for a stock with your capitalization.”

“Just a blip,” Edward says. “Nothing to it.”

The Wall Street dick makes no reply, waiting for this Nervous Nellie to speak his piece.

“Actually,” Lee says, swabbing his brow again, “what I wanted to talk to you about has nothing to do with White Lotus. It’s more of, ah, a personal matter.”

“Oh?” Cone says, wondering when he was ordained and became a father confessor. “What’s that?”

“It’s silly, really,” the man says with a shaky smile. “Probably nothing to it.”

Cone waits silently, giving him no help at all. If this guy, he thinks, tells me he once worked at the Pleasure Dome, I’m going to toss his ass out of here.

“As you probably know,” Lee plunges ahead, “I live in my father’s apartment. But I have my own suite with a private entrance. I also have my own phone, an unlisted number. Last Friday night, at about eleven o’clock, I was reading when the phone rang. A man’s voice asked, ‘Edward Tung Lee?’ I said yes, and he said, ‘We know about the Bedlington.’ And then he hung up. Well, naturally I thought it was just a crank call. But it did worry me that he had my unlisted number and called me by my full name.”

“Recognize the voice?” Cone asks.

“No,” Lee says. “A BBC English accent, but beneath that I thought I heard something else. Perhaps a Chinese educated in England. A singsong quality you learn to recognize.”

“I get it,” Cone says. “Instead of emphasizing a syllable, you change the pitch of your voice.”

Lee looks at him in astonishment. “How on earth did you know that?”

“I remember a lot of useless stuff,” Cone says. “So the guy said, ‘We know about the Bedlington.’ Then he hung up. Right?”

“Yes, that’s correct. Then, last night, he called again. Same voice. He said, as nearly as I can recall, ‘About the Bedlington, you’ll be hearing from us.’”

“You’re sure he said ‘us’ and not ‘you’ll be hearing from me.’?”

“No, he said ‘us.’ And on the first call, he said, ‘We know about the Bedlington.’”

“Uh-huh,” Cone says.

“Does the name Bedlington mean anything to you?” Edward asks.

“Sure,” Cone says, all wide-eyed innocence. “It’s a dog, a terrier.”

Lee gives a short honk of laughter. “True,” he says. “It also happens to be a hotel on Madison Avenue. About three blocks from my apartment. From my father’s apartment.”

“So?”

“Well, ah, as you probably know, I am not married. But, hah! — that doesn’t mean I must live like a monk- right? So, on occasion, I have taken a woman to the Hotel Bedlington. You’ve shacked up with women in a hotel or motel, haven’t you?”

“Not recently,” Cone says.

“Well, I do. I have an understanding with the desk clerk at the Bedlington. Everything is handled very discreetly. I mean, I have no wild parties or anything like that. I’ve had absolutely no problems until I got those stupid phone calls.”

“How long you been using the Bedlington for fun and games?”

“Oh, about two years now.”

“You trust the desk clerk?”

“Completely. He’d never try to blackmail me.”

“What makes you think it’s blackmail? You’re over twenty-one. So you’re having a toss in the hay with a consenting adult. Big deal. Your playmates were adults, weren’t they?”

“Of course,” Edward says, offended.

“Well, then? How can anyone blackmail you? What are you worried about?”

Lee shifts uncomfortably in the creaky armchair. “It’s my father, d’ya see,” he says. “He’s from the old school. Very straitlaced. I know that if he found out, there’d be hell to pay.”

Cone shrugs. “Sounds thin to me,” he tells Lee. “You’ve got a right to live your own life. If those phone calls are driving you bananas, why don’t you go to your father, confess all, ask for his forgiveness, and promise to be a good little boy in the future. He impresses me as being a very shrewd, intelligent man. He’s lived a long life, and I’d guess he’s seen everything and probably done more than you realize. I just can’t see him making a federal case out of your occasional bangs at the Bedlington.”

“You just don’t know him,” Lee says in a low voice. “He can be a very vindictive man when he’s angered.”

“Well,” Cone says, “I don’t see that there’s a helluva lot you can do about it. You could have your private number changed, but they’d just call you at the office.”

“And there’s nothing you can do about it?”

“Like what?”

“Find out who’s behind it.”

Cone shakes his head. “Not on the basis of what you’ve told me. I could get someone to put a tap on your phone and record the calls-but what good would that do? If the guy only talks for a minute or two, the chances of tracing the call are zero. The only thing I can suggest is this: If it is blackmail, sooner or later your mystery caller is going to tell you how much he wants and how it’s to be delivered. If it’s a person-to- person payoff, I can handle it for you and maybe collar the guy or at least get a line on him. If the payoff is to be made by drop or by mail, it’ll still give a possible lead. Right now we’ve got nothing.”

“Then if I do get another call and I let you know, can I depend on your help?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you!” Edward Tung Lee cries fervently. He rises and leans across the desk to pump Cone’s hand. “I can’t tell you what a load you’ve taken off my mind. Thank you!”

After he’s gone, Cone lights another Camel, leans back, parks his feet on the desk. That had to be, he reflects, one of the sleaziest stories he’s ever heard in his life. It’s got more holes than a wheel of Emmentaler. The only reason he’s giving it a second thought is that the guy who called Edward Lee said, “We know about the Bedlington.” And the guy who sent the letter to Claire Lee wrote: “We have the photographs.”

That’s interesting.

Four

On Thursday evening Timothy Cone ambles up Broadway at a leisurely pace, stopping in bars twice en route to have a beer and smoke a cigarette. He can’t get Edward Lee’s fish story out of his mind. It may have elements of truth in it, but it also has gaps big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

For instance, if Edward wants to make nice-nice with a tootsie, why doesn’t he invite her up to his apartment? He’s got a private entrance, hasn’t he?

And that business of dreading his father’s wrath is so much kaka. Chin Tung Lee may be old and straitlaced, but Cone can’t believe he’d go into an Oriental snit upon discovering that his Number One son likes to get his ashes