Timothy's Game

by Lawrence Sanders

  Timothy Cone, reading all this with enjoyment, pauses long enough to light another cigarette and call down to the local deli for a cheeseburger, an order of French fries, a kosher dill, and two cold Heinekens. He munches on his lunch as he continues reading the preliminary report provided by the client.

  After enduring the shame of what comes to be known on Wall Street as The Great Cookie Caper, and after tightening up their internal security precautions, Pistol & Burns now finds itself facing another disgrace involving insider trading.

  They’re in the last stages of finagling a leveraged buyout of a corporation that makes clothes for kiddies, including diapers with the label of a hotshot lingerie designer and little striped overalls just like gandy dancers once wore. The buyers are a group of the company’s top executives, and the transaction includes an issue of junk bonds.

  Everything is kept strictly hush-hush, and the number of people with a need to know is kept to a minimum. But during the last two weeks, the volume of trading in Wee Tot Fashions, Inc., usually minuscule, has quadrupled, with the stock up five bucks. An investigator from the SEC is already haunting the paneled corridors of Pistol & Burns, trying to discover who is leaking word of the upcoming deal.

  “This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue,” Mr. G. Fergus Twiggs concludes firmly.

  So Timothy Cone calls the phone number on the letterhead of the client’s report.

  “Pistol and Burns.” A woman’s voice: brisk and efficient.

  “Could I speak to Mr. Twiggs?”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  “Sure,” Cone says cheerfully.

  Long pause.

  “Who is calling, please,” she says faintly.

  “Timothy Cone. I’m an investigator with Haldering and Company.”

  After a wait of almost a minute, he’s put through. Twiggs has a deep, rambling voice. Cone thinks it sounds rum-soaked, aged in oak casks, but maybe that’s the way all old investment bankers talk. Cone wouldn’t know; he doesn’t play croquet.

  Their conversation is brief. G. Fergus Twiggs agrees to meet at 10:00 A.M. the following morning to discuss “this disastrous and lamentable situation.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cone says. “Okay, I’ll be at your office at ten tomorrow morning. Who’s the SEC investigator?”

  “His name is Jeremy Bigelow. Do you know him?”

  “Yeah,” Cone says, “I know Jerry. I worked a case with him earlier this month. Good man.”

  “Seems rather young to me,” Twiggs says, and then sighs. “But at my age, everyone seems rather young to me.”

  Cone smiles. The guy sounds almost human.

  It’s a close and grainy evening; when he walks home from John Street to his loft on lower Broadway, he can taste the air on his tongue. It isn’t nice. He stops at local stores to buy a large jar of spaghetti with meat sauce, a jug of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, and a link of kielbasa for Cleo, his neutered tomcat, who eats everything, including cockroaches, fish heads, chicken bones—and thrives.

  Cone notes mournfully that the outer door of his cast-iron commercial building has once again been jimmied—an almost weekly occurrence. Since it is now later than 6:00 P.M., the ancient birdcage elevator is shut down for the night, so he climbs the six flights of iron staircase to his apartment.

  Cleo is waiting for him, and gives him the ankle-rub treatment, crying piteously, until he hands over the sausage. Then the cat takes its treasure under the old claw-footed bathtub and gnaws contentedly while the Wall Street dick mixes himself a vodka and water. He works on that as he heats up the spaghetti in a battered saucepan and sets his desk that doubles as a dining table. The china and cutlery are bits and pieces of this and that. The wineglasses are empty jars of Smucker’s orange marmalade.

  Samantha Whatley shows up a little after seven o’clock. She’s picked up a container of mixed greens at a salad bar, and also has two strawberry tarts for dessert and a small chunk of halvah for Cleo.

  An hour later, they’ve got their feet up on the littered table and are drinking noggins of cheap Italian brandy with black coffee. They decide to save the tarts, but Cleo gets the halvah, mewling with delight.

  “Good dinner,” Cone says.

  “Not very,” Sam says. “Do you have to buy canned spaghetti?”

  “It wasn’t canned,” he tells her. “It came in a jar.”

  “Whatever. Is it so difficult to buy a package of pasta, boil it up, and add your own sauce?”

  “Oh-ho,” he says, beginning to steam, “now I’m supposed to be a gourmet cook, am I? Bullshit! Either eat what the kitchen provides or bring your own. And now that we got that settled, you staying the night?”

  “Half the night,” she says. “Maybe till midnight or so.”

  “Okay,” he says equably. “I’ll put you in a cab.”

  “My hero,” she says. “You talk to Pistol and Burns?”

  “Yep. I’m seeing G. Fergus Twiggs tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll be in late.”

  “So what else is new?” She looks at the mattress on the linoleum floor of the loft. It’s been spread with clean sheets. “I feel horny,” she says.

  “So what else is new?” he says.

  Timothy Cone is a scrawny, hawkish man who’s never learned to shave close enough. Samantha Whatley is a tall drink of water with the lean body of a fashion model and the muscles of a woman at home on a balance beam. He is taller, but stooped, with a shambling gait. She is sharp-featured: coffin jaw and blue-green eyes. His spiky hair is gingery; her long auburn hair is usually worn up, tightly coiled. His nose is a hatchet, and his big ears flop. Her back is hard and elegant. His skin is pale, freckled. She is dark, with a ropy body that holds secret curves and warm shadows. He is all splinters, with the look of a worn farmer: pulled tendons, used muscles.

  They have nothing in common except …

  Naked on the floor mattress they have another skirmish. Not combat so much as guerrilla warfare with no winners and no losers. They will not surrender, either of them, but assault each other with whimpers and yelps, awaiting the end of the world. They think capitulation shameful, and their passion is fed by their pride.

  They recognize something of this. Their relationship is sexual chess that must inevitably end in a draw. Still, the sweat and grunts are pleasure enough for two closed-in people who would rather slit their wrists than admit their vulnerability.

  Shortly after midnight, he conducts her downstairs and stops an empty cab.

  “Take care,” she says lightly.

  “Yeah,” Cone says. “You, too.”

  Then he goes back up to his desolate loft, eats both strawberry tarts, drinks a jar of vodka, and wonders what the hell it’s all about.

  The offices of Pistol & Burns, Investment Bankers, on Wall Street, look like a genteel but slightly frowsty gentlemen’s club. The paneled walls display antique hunting prints in brass frames. The carpeting seems ankle-deep. Employees tiptoe rather than walk, and speak in hushed whispers. Even the ring of telephones is muted to a polite buzz. The atmosphere bespeaks old wealth, and Timothy Cone is impressed—not for the first time—by the comfortable serenity that avarice can create.

  He is kept waiting only ten minutes, which he endures stoically, and then is ushered into the private office of G. Fergus Twiggs, P&B’s Chief of Internal Security. This chamber, as large as Cone’s loft, is more of the same. But on the floor is an enormous, worn Persian prayer rug, and on the beige walls are oak-framed watercolors of sailing yachts, most with spinnakers set.

  G. Fergus Twiggs is a veritable toby jug of a man: short, squat, plump, with a smile and manner so beneficent that the Wall Street dick can see him with a pewter tankard of ale in one fist and a clay pipe in the other.

  He is clad in a three-piece, dove gray flannel suit of such surpassing softness that it could have been woven from the webs of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant spiders. But the pale blue eyes are not soft, nor do they twinkle. They are the unblinking, basilisk eyes of an inv
estment banker.

  “Thank you for coming by,” Twiggs says genially, shaking hands. He gets Cone seated in a leather chair alongside his mastodonic desk. “I needn’t tell you how upsetting this entire matter has become; the whole house is disturbed.”

  “Look, Mr. Twiggs,” Cone says, “there’s not much I can do about the Wee Tot Fashions deal. The cat is out of the bag on that one. You’ll just have to take your lumps.”

  “I realize that. The problem is how to prevent it from happening again.”

  “You can’t,” Timothy says. “Unless you figure a way to repeal human greed—and I doubt if you can do that. Listen, how do you define insider trading?”

  “Define it?” Twiggs says, looking at him curiously. “Why, it’s the illegal use of confidential information about planned or impending financial activities for the purpose of making a personal profit.”

  “Yeah, well, that sounds very neat, but it’s not that simple. Insider trading has never been exactly defined, even by the Supreme Court. Let me give you a for-instance. Suppose one of your guys is working every night on a megabuck deal. His wife is furious because he’s continually late for dinner. So, to explain his long hours, he tells her he’s slaving on this big buyout of the ABC Corporation by the XYZ Corporation. His wife mentions it to her hairdresser. He mentions it to another customer. She tells her husband. The husband mentions it to his car dealer, and the dealer runs out and buys ABC Corporation stock and winds up making a bundle. Now who’s guilty there? The original investment banker didn’t profit from his inside knowledge; he just had a big mouth. And the guy who did profit, the car dealer, was just betting on a stock tip. He didn’t have any inside knowledge. How do you stop that kind of thing?”

  “Yes,” Twiggs says slowly, “I see what you mean.”

  “Also,” Cone goes on, “the leak on the Wee Tot Fashions deal may not have been in your house at all. The arbitrageurs have a zillion ways of sniffing out a deal in the making while it’s still in the talking stage. They pick up one little hint, hear one little rumor, that XYZ is going to make an offer for ABC, and they go to work. They try to track the whereabouts of the chairman, president, and CEO of both corporations. They’ll even check the takeoffs, flight plans, and landings of corporate jets. They’ll bribe secretaries, porters, pilots, chauffeurs, office cleaning ladies, security guards—anyone who can possibly add to their poop on who is meeting whom and what’s going on. There’s a lot of money to be made on advance knowledge of deals in the works, and the arbs want some of it. But I wouldn’t call that insider trading—would you? It’s just shrewd investigative work by guys who want a piece of the action.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” the little man says, rubbing his forehead wearily. “Very depressing. That men would go to such lengths to make a profit. It wasn’t like that in the old days.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Cone says. “In the old days there was only a handful of people who knew about a deal in the making—just the principals and a few lawyers—so it was relatively easy to spot the gonnif if someone leaked or made an illegal profit on his own. But now, in any big-money deal, there are hundreds of people with inside knowledge: corporate officers and their staffs, the investment bankers and their staffs, attorneys and their staffs, accountants and their staffs. Then you’ve got secretaries, telephone operators, and messengers. Any one of them could spill or make a dirty buck.”

  “Ah, me,” Twiggs says, sighing. “So you believe it’s impossible to stop insider trading?”

  “Sure it is,” Cone says cheerily. “As long as people’s itch for a dollar overrides their ethics or morals or whatever the hell you want to call them.”

  “I should think that heavier penalties might be effective.”

  “Yeah?” Cone says. “Ever hear of the ‘hangup gimmick’?”

  “The hangup gimmick? What on earth is that?”

  “An arbitrageur hears a rumor that ABC Corporation may be bought out by the XYZ Corporation. The arb has a drinking buddy with the legal firm that handles ABC. He calls his lawyer buddy and says, ‘I hear XYZ has made an offer for ABC. If the rumor is true, don’t say a word. I’ll stay on the phone. But if you’re silent and then hang up after ten seconds, I’ll know which way to jump, and you’ll get your share.’ So the ten seconds pass in silence, the lawyer hangs up, and the arb rushes to buy ABC stock. Who do you prosecute? The attorney, the insider, hasn’t leaked a word, and can swear to it in a court of law. How do you prosecute him? There are a hundred scams like that. So when you talk about heavier punishment for insider trading, you’ve got to realize how tough it is to get a conviction.”

  G. Fergus Twiggs gives him a quirky smile. “Are you trying to talk yourself out of a job, Mr. Cone?”

  “Nah. I just want you to understand the problems involved. And I’d like to know what you expect Haldering and Company to do about them.”

  The investment banker takes a handsome pipe from his top desk drawer. He looks down at it, fondles it, then strokes the bowl slowly between his fleshy nose and cheek, inspecting it as skin oil brings out the grain of the brier.

  “Being Chief of Internal Security at Pistol and Burns,” he says ruefully, “is not a task I sought or relish. I have had no experience in this rather distasteful field. I suppose I was selected for the job because, though it may be difficult for you to believe, I am the youngest of the senior partners. In any event, what’d I’d like you to do is spend as much time in our offices as you feel is necessary and review all the security precautions I have instituted. Be as critical as you like. Make any suggestions you wish that will make insider trading at Pistol and Burns, if not impossible, then at least more difficult.”

  “Yeah,” Cone says, “I can do that. As long as you understand I can’t make the place airtight. No one can. I’ll tackle your setup like I was an employee, out to make a dishonest buck from trading on inside secrets. That should be easy; I’ve got a criminal mind.”

  Mr. Twiggs smiles again and rises. “I think you’re exactly the man for the job,” he says. “When do you plan to start?”

  “How about tomorrow? Could you spread the word to guards and secretaries and such that I’ll be wandering around the place and have no intention of boosting women’s purses or swiping a typewriter?”

  “Certainly. Is there anything else you need?”

  “I don’t think so, thanks. I’d start today, but first I want to compare notes with Jeremy Bigelow, the SEC investigator. Maybe he’s got some ideas on how the Wee Tot Fashions deal was leaked.”

  He walks back to John Street. It’s a warm, springy day, but the wind is boisterous, and Cone isn’t sweating in his ratty olive drab parka and black leather cap. He shambles up Broadway, thinking of the interview and wondering if Twiggs himself might not be making a quick, illicit buck on Pistol & Burns’ deals. The guy looks like Santa Claus, but maybe his bag is stuffed with illegal greenbacks.

  The Wall Street dick ponders how much gelt it would take for him, Cone, to turn sour. Half a mil? A mil? Five mil? But that kind of thinking is strictly wet dreams; no one is going to offer him that much loot to go rancid. Besides, what’s the point of being rich? Right now he’s got a job, a place to sleep, a rotten cat, and enough pocket money to buy beer and ham hocks. He even has Samantha—sort of. What more could a growing boy want?

  Back in his cubbyhole office, he takes off cap and anorak and lets them drop to the floor because some office thief has snaffled his coat tree. He lights his fourth or fifth cigarette of the day and sits down behind his scarred desk. He calls Jeremy Bigelow at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  “Jerry?”

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “Timothy Cone at Haldering and Company.”

  “Hey, old buddy! I was thinking of giving you a call. I hear you guys got the Pistol and Burns account.”

  “Bad news travels fast. Listen, Jerry, you looked into a possible leak on the Wee Tot Fashions deal, didn’t you?”

  “That�
�s right.” Bigelow’s voice turns cautious. “I’ve been working it. You got something for me?”

  “Not a jot or tittle, or tot or jittle, whichever the hell it is. Anyway, it adds up to zilch. But I’d like to buy you lunch and pick your brains.”

  “Lunch? Today?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why not,” the SEC investigator says. “Where?”

  “I feel like eating street food. Okay by you?”

  Bigelow sighs. “The last of the big-time spenders,” he says. “All right, I’ll eat street. I’ll even come over to your place. Meet you outside at, say, twelve-thirty. How does that sound?”

  “Just right. There’s a new stand near Trinity that’s selling hot roti goat. How does that grab you?”

  “Instant ulcers—but I’ll give it a go. See you.”

  They meet outside the Haldering & Co. office and start ambling down Broadway. The day has thickened, with clotted clouds blocking out the sun. There’s a smell of rain in the air, but it hasn’t stopped the lunch-hour throngs from flocking to the street for their falafel fix.

  Manhattan is the biggest outdoor buffet in the world. Especially in the financial district, the umbrella carts, vans, trucks, and knockdown booths are all over the place. Foul weather or fair, the street vendors are out hustling and probably dreaming of the day they can build their taco stand into The Four Seasons or maybe sell franchises.

  What do you feel like eating? Not falafel? Not hot roti goat? Not tacos? Then how about fried chicken with jalapeño sauce, seeded rolls with cold cuts, sausage heroes, gyros, foot-long franks, turkey hamburgers, pizza, soups hot and cold, Acapulco salads, shish kebab, Philadelphia steak sandwiches, burritos, shrimp parmesan, tortillas, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, chocolate-covered Oreos, coffee, tea, milk, colas, cakes, pies, pastries, nuts, fresh fruit? Sound okay? And you never have to leave a tip!

  Cone and Jeremy Bigelow begin their peripatetic luncheon. The first stop is for barley and mushroom soup. They throw away the plastic spoons and drink the rich sludge directly from the foam containers. They try the hot roti goat. Not bad. Then they stop at a Chinese booth for slivers of bamboo stuck through chunks of barbecued pork and kiwi slices. Then cans of cola and ice cream bars covered with a quarter-inch of dark Belgian chocolate.