Timothy's Game

by Lawrence Sanders

  “You’re right; it doesn’t.”

  Brodsky holds up a hand, middle finger tightly crossed over forefinger. “Dempster and Bookerman,” he says with a lickerish grin. “That’s Dempster on top.”

  “Thanks,” Timothy Cone says.

  He figures plodding back to John Street in that heat will totally wipe him out. So he cabs uptown, but before he goes to the office he stops at the local deli and buys a cream cheese and lox on bagel, with a thick slice of Bermuda onion atop the smoked salmon. He also gets a kosher dill and two cans of cold Bud.

  Sitting at his desk, scoffing his lunch while still wearing his leather cap, he reflects that there is no way he can separate an investigation of the industrial sabotage at Dempster-Torrey plants from an inquiry into the assassination of John J.

  Despite what Hiram Haldering said, and regardless of what he himself told Neal Davenport, Bookerman, and Brodsky, Cone suspects the sabotage and homicide are connected. Also, there’s a practical matter involved. To limit his detecting to the sabotage, he’d have to travel to eighteen different localities and try to pick up cold trails on cases that had been thoroughly investigated when fresh by local cops and Brodsky’s security people, with no results.

  All Cone’s got to work with is the murdered man’s family and friends, his acquaintances, employees, and business associates. Cone pulls out that list of personae that Eve Bookerman provided, from his inside jacket pocket. He looks up the address and phone number of the widow, Teresa Dempster, and dials.

  It rings seven times at the other end before it’s picked up.

  “The Dempster residence.” A woman’s voice. Chirpy.

  “Could I speak to Mrs. Teresa Dempster, please.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Long wait. Then:

  “This is David Dempster. To whom am I speaking?”

  “John J. Dempster was your brother?”

  “He was.”

  “Well, this is Timothy Cone. I’m with Haldering and Company. We’re investigating a series of industrial accidents at Dempster-Torrey plants, and I was hoping to talk to Mrs. Dempster for a few minutes. And you’re on my list, too.”

  “Eve Bookerman informed us you’d probably be calling. I must tell you in all honesty, Mr. Cone, that neither Teresa nor I know the slightest thing about Dempster-Torrey operations. But naturally we’ll be happy to cooperate in any way we can.”

  He shouldn’t have said “in all honesty.” Every time Cone hears that, he gets itchy. Also, Dempster has the plummy voice of a priest who’s been unfrocked for waving his dork out a vestry window. Cone wonders what the guy does for a living. His business address on the list is David Dempster Associates, Inc., on Cedar Street.

  “Can I see Mrs. Dempster?” he asks.

  “As long as you’re not a reporter or policeman,” the other man says. “I rather think she’s had her fill of those.”

  “I could be up there in a half-hour.”

  “Come ahead then; I’ll tell her to expect you. I’m afraid I’ll be gone by the time you arrive, but you’ll be able to reach me at my office whenever you wish to see me. You have the address and phone number?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got them. I’ll probably get to you tomorrow if that’s okay with you.”

  “Of course. And, Mr. Cone, please make your meeting with Teresa as brief as possible. She’s been through a great deal in the past week. She’s bearing up well, but we don’t want her unduly disturbed, do we?”

  “I won’t disturb her,” Cone promises. “Just a few questions. Won’t take long.”

  But before he starts out, he stops at the office of Sidney Apicella, chief of Haldering’s CPAs. As usual, Sid is massaging his nose. The poor guy suffers from rosacea of the beezer. It’s big, magenta, and swollen, and he can’t leave it alone.

  He looks up as Cone enters. “Whatever you want,” he says, “I can’t do it. I’m too busy.”

  “Come on, Sid; this’ll only take one phone call.”

  “The last time you told me that it took four days’ work.”

  “One phone call, I swear. I’d do it myself, but you’ve got the contacts. There’s this guy named David Dempster. He’s the brother of that pooh-bah who got blasted on Wall Street last week. Anyway, this brother has a business, David Dempster Associates, on Cedar Street. All I want to know is what kind of a business it is, assets, liabilities, cash flow, and all that financial shit.”

  Apicella groans. “And you think I can get that with one phone call? You’re demented!”

  “Give it the old college try, Sid. I’ll make sure you get special mention in my final report.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” the CPA says. “When are you going to buy yourself a new suit?”

  “What’s wrong with this one? Sleaze is in this year—didn’t you know?”

  Figuring an outfit as big as Dempster-Torrey isn’t going to quibble about expenses, he takes a taxi up to the Dempster residence on East 64th between Third and Lex. The place is practically a mansion and, scoping it from across the street, Cone figures it was probably originally two five-story brownstones. But now, with an expensive face-lift, it’s red brick with wide plate glass windows.

  The old stoops have been removed, and entrance is via a street-level doorway protected with a wrought-iron gate. There’s a uniformed policeman leaning against the gate, eye-balling all the young ginch passing by.

  Cone crosses over and gives the cop what he thinks is an innocent smile. It doesn’t work. The blue takes a long look at his black leather cap, cruddy corduroy suit, and yellow work shoes, and says, “Beat it, bum.”

  “Hey,” Cone says, hurt, “watch your language. I’m Timothy Cone from Haldering and Company. I’ve got an appointment with Mrs. Dempster.”

  “Yeah? Let’s see your ID.”

  Cone digs out his Haldering & Co. card with his picture attached. Samantha Whatley claims that photo should be on a post office wall with the warning: This man wanted for molesting children.

  The officer takes the card, steps inside, and calls on the intercom. Then he opens the gate, returns the ID to Cone, and unlocks the heavy oak door.

  “Sorry about that,” he says.

  “No sweat,” Cone says. “You guys on twenty-four hours?”

  “Yeah,” the cop says. “About as exciting as watching paint dry.”

  There’s a young, uniformed maid waiting for him in the foyer, and he follows her up a wide marble staircase to the second floor. Cone tries to keep his eyes on the stairs, with scant success. Down a carpeted hallway to the rear of the townhouse he gets a quick impression of high ceilings, light, airy rooms, plenty of bright graphics, polished wood, and green plants everywhere.

  He is ushered into a greenhouse extending from the back of the building. Wide panes of glass are set in a verdigrised copper framework. The whole faces south and east, and sunlight floods in through glass walls and domed roof. A system of bamboo shades has been designed to mute the bright light, but air conditioning keeps the place comfortable.

  The greenhouse is crowded with rough wooden tables, bags of potting soil, fertilizer, crushed shell, sand, and gardening tools. On the waist-high tables, in neat rows, is arranged an impressive assortment of bonsai, each dwarf tree in a splendidly proportioned pot of brown, cream, or dark blue glaze. Other pots are decorated, and a few are set on lacquered wood pedestals.

  The woman who comes forward, brass watering can in her hands, is tall, reedy, and wearing a long, flowing dress that billows as she moves. The gown is voluminous, made of some thin, diaphanous stuff the color of vanilla ice cream. But no paler than the woman herself.

  “Mrs. Teresa Dempster?” Cone asks.

  She nods vaguely, looking around at her plants. “And you’re Mr. Timothy?”

  “Cone,” he says. “Timothy Cone.”

  “Of course,” she says.

  “Thank you for seeing me. I hate to intrude in your time of trial.”

  At last she looks at him directly. “‘Time of t
rial,’” she repeats. “What a nice, old-fashioned expression. Are you an old-fashioned man, Mr. Timothy?”

  He gives up on the name. “I guess I am,” he says uncomfortably. “About some things. Beautiful plants you have here, Mrs. Dempster.”

  “Trees,” she corrects him. “All my babies. But such old babies. This one, for instance, is said to be forty-five years old. It’s a Japanese red maple. Do you like it?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Real pretty.”

  She puts down the watering can, picks up the little red maple and thrusts it at him. “Then take it,” she says. “It’s yours.”

  He moves a startled step backward. “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he protests. “It’s probably valuable.”

  “No, no,” she says. “If you promise to love it, I want you to have it.”

  Getting a glimmer of what he’s up against here, he says earnestly, “Look, Mrs. Dempster, I appreciate your offer. It’s very kind of you. But where I live, there’s no sunlight at all. And I’ve got a nasty cat who’d demolish that thing in two seconds flat. It really wouldn’t be fair to the tree for me to take it.”

  She looks so hurt that he’s afraid she might start weeping.

  “Tell you what,” he says. “Why don’t I accept the gift in the spirit in which it’s given. But you keep it for me and take care of it. But it’ll be my tree.”

  She gives him a smile as simple and charming as a child’s. “I think that’s a wonderful idea!” she says. “I’ll tell everyone it’s Mr. Timothy’s tree, and you can visit it whenever you like. Do you want to name it?”

  “Name it?”

  “Of course. Most of my trees have names. This juniper is Ralph. That Norfolk pine is Matilda. Would you like your Japanese red maple to have a name?”

  “How about Irving?” he suggests, willing to play her game—if game it is.

  “How lovely,” she says with such evident enjoyment that he stares at her, wary and perplexed.

  Everything about her is long: face, limbs, hands, feet. She looks like a tree herself, but not a bonsai. More like a full-grown willow, soft and drooping. There is an ineffable languor, she seems to float, her gestures are flutters. The big azure eyes are more innocent than any eyes have a right to be, and the unbound hair streaming down her back is flaxen and wispy.

  Something ethereal there, something unworldly, and Cone has a vision of her galloping through the heather and caroling, “Heathcliff! Heathcliff!” He shakes his head to clear his mind of such nonsense and, to see if she is completely bonkers, asks:

  “And what are the names of your boys?”

  She looks up into the air as if striving to recall. “Edward,” she says. “He’s the oldest. And then there’s Robert, and then Duane.”

  “They live here with you?”

  “Usually they’re away at school. But this summer they’re all on a bicycle tour through Europe. They’re having tons of fun.”

  “Did they come back for their father’s funeral?”

  “No,” she says, “they didn’t. By the time we got in touch with them, it was too late. Besides, there was no point in their returning, was there?”

  Cone has his own idea about that, but doesn’t voice it. “Your husband’s death must have been a tremendous shock to you, Mrs. Dempster.”

  “Oh, Jack didn’t die,” she says, almost gaily. “He just passed over. Nobody and nothing ever dies, Mr. Timothy. Just assumes another form. But everything is immortal: you, me, these trees, the world about us.”

  Oh, God, he thinks despairingly, she’s one of those. And he resolves to wind up this interview as speedily as possible, figuring it a total loss. But suddenly Teresa Dempster becomes talkative. He thinks at first she’s swaying as she speaks, but then realizes she’s standing in the blast of an air-conditioning vent set into the interior brick wall, and the draft is moving her insubstantial gown.

  “David, my brother-in-law, was such a help,” she says. “He just took care of everything. I know people wanted to be kind, but why did they have to cut down all those flowers? Jack was buried near Schroon Lake. We have a summer home up there, you know, and a family plot in the dearest, sweetest cemetery you ever did see. Mom and daddy are there, and now Jack, and there’s a place for me.”

  The idea seems to enchant her, and she pauses to smile fondly.

  “Of course,” she goes on, “he’s not really there; just the envelope he temporarily inhabited. Because he came to me last night. Yes, he did. ‘Terry,’ he said. He always called me that. ‘Terry, I’m very happy here. I’ve crossed over, and it’s beautiful. I’m waiting for you, Terry.’ That’s what he said to me last night.”

  The Wall Street dick can’t take much more of this.

  “Mrs. Dempster,” he says sternly, “did your husband ever mention any enemies he had? Anyone who had threatened him or sworn revenge for one reason or another?”

  “So many people have asked me that,” she says, and seems genuinely puzzled. “Of course Jack didn’t have any enemies. How could he—he was such a good man. I’ve been so fortunate, Mr. Timothy. He was certainly the best husband in the whole wide world. He was away so much—traveling, you know—doing whatever it was he did, but I could understand that; men are so busy. But when he returned, he always brought me a gift. Always! Sometimes it was just a funny little thing like a hand puppet. But he never forgot to bring me something. Never!”

  “My sympathy on your loss,” Cone mumbles. Then, louder: “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Dempster. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re going away now?” she says, sounding disappointed.

  “Yeah, I’ve got to. Another appointment.”

  “I suppose I should have offered you a drink or something.”

  “That’s okay. You gave me a tree. Irving.”

  “And you’ll come visit him, Mr. Timothy?”

  “I certainly will,” he says, and then tries one last time. “The name is Cone. Timothy Cone.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Well, it’s not important, is it?”

  “Not important at all,” he assures her.

  He’s hoping the lissome maid is lurking around to show him out, but there’s no one in sight. He makes his way along the hallway, down the staircase, and out into the hot afternoon sunlight. The same uniformed officer is still on duty at the gate. Cone pauses to light a cigarette.

  “You ever talk to Mrs. Dempster?” he asks.

  “No,” the cop says, “I never have.”

  “You’re lucky,” Cone tells him.

  “Maybe it was her husband’s death that made her flip out,” Samantha Whatley suggests. “Maybe she was a perfectly normal woman, but then that awful, bloody murder pushed her over the edge.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cone says. “I’m guessing she’s been that way all her life. She’s not a wetbrain, you understand, but her gears have slipped a little; they don’t quite mesh. Not bad enough to have her committed, but the lady is balmy, no doubt about it.”

  They’re sprawled on an oval rag rug in Sam’s tiny apartment in the East Village. She’s prepared a mess of chicken wings cooked in an Italian sauce with onions and small potatoes thrown in. The big cast-iron pot rests on a trivet between them, and they fill their plates with a ladle. There is also a salad of Bibb lettuce and cherry tomatoes.

  “Good grub,” Cone says, sucking the meat from a wing. “Maybe a little more pepper and garlic next time.”

  “Now you’re a cordon-bleu? If you stopped smoking, you’d be able to taste food the way it’s supposed to taste. So you got nothing from the widow?”

  “Nah, nothing important. Except that I’m immortal. That makes me feel swell. Maybe I’ll do better with David Dempster, the brother. I called him and set up a meet for tomorrow. I’m also seeing Simon Trale, the Chief Financial Officer of Dempster-Torrey.”

  “What do you expect to get from him?”

  “Nothing, really. I’m just fishing.”

  She looks at him suspiciously. “When you get that
dopey look on your puss I know there’s something going on in that tiny, tiny brain of yours. What are you up to, buster?”

  “Me?” he says innocently. “I’m not up to anything, boss. Except maybe illicit sex. But I better tell you: I don’t think you can separate the industrial sabotage from the murder. I think they’re connected. Scratching the Chairman and CEO was just the ultimate act of sabotage. To damage Dempster-Torrey.”

  “Why? What for?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. What’s for dessert?”

  “Tapioca pudding.”

  “I’ll pass,” he says. “You eat the fish eyes and I’ll take my portion home to Cleo. That cat’ll eat anything.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. Coffee?”

  “Sure,” he says. “And I brought a bottle of Spanish brandy. How about a noggin of that?”

  “I’m game,” she says. “And later do you intend to work your evil way with me?”

  “It had occurred to me,” he admits.

  They watch the nth return of The Honeymooners on TV while still lounging on the floor, sipping their brandies. It’s a nice, lazy evening, but when the show is over, Timothy stirs restlessly.

  “What’s with you?” Sam demands.

  “I don’t know,” he says fretfully. “I think I’m mellowing out. Look at us: curled up on a rug, watching TV and inhaling brandy. It’s all so domestic and comfy I can’t stand it.”

  “The trouble with you is—” she starts, then stops.

  “Go ahead,” he says, “finish it. What’s the trouble with me?”

  “You can’t endure being happy,” she tells him. “You don’t know how to handle joy. The moment you start feeling good, you pull back and ask, ‘What’s the catch?’ You just can’t believe that occasionally—not always, but now and then—it’s perfectly normal to be content.”

  “Yeah, well, you may be right. I know I don’t go around grinning. So I admit I get a little antsy when things seem to be okay, but only because I haven’t had the experience. Being happy is like a foreign language. I can’t understand it, so naturally I get itchy and think someone is setting me up for a fall.”

  “You think I’m playing you for a patsy?”

  “Oh, Christ, no. I’m talking about God.”