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 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 brother, Tim?”
“Oh, yes, he did it.”
“But why? Just for the money?”
“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 from Column A
One
It never occurs to Cone that Samantha Whatley doesn’t want to be seen w
ith 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.
Which is providential because the visitor, who rises when Cone enters, is wearing a black three-piece suit that looks heavy enough to be woven of yak hair. He’s a tall, cadaverous gink with a smile so pained it surely seems his drawers must be binding. The hand he gives to Cone when they’re introduced is a clump of very soft, very shriveled bananas.
“This is Timothy Cone,” intones Hiram Haldering. “He is one-and I repeat one-of our experienced investigators. Cone, this gentleman is Mr. Omar Jeffreys.”
“Of Blains, Kibes and Thrush,” Jeffreys adds. “Attorneys-at-law.”
Everyone gets seated, and H.H. turns to the lawyer.
“Mr. Jeffreys,” he says, “will you explain to Cone what it is you want.”
“It is not what we want,” the other man says. “Oh, dear me, no. Our desires are of no import. We merely wish to present, to the best of our abilities, the wishes of our client.”
“Yeah, well,” Cone says, “who’s the client?”
“For a number of years Blains, Kibes and Thrush, P.A., has provided legal counsel to an Oriental gentleman, Mr. Chin Tung Lee. He is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of a corporation that processes and markets a variety of Chinese foods under the White Lotus label. You are, perhaps, familiar with the products?”
“Oh, hell yes,” Cone says. “Lousy grub.”
“Cone!” Haldering shouts indignantly.
“Well, it is,” he insists. “Take their chicken chow mein, for instance. My God, you can hardly find the meat in it. They must be using the same chicken for ten years. So what I do is buy a small can of boned chicken and add it to the chow mein. That makes it okay. Even my cat loves it.”
He ends triumphantly, and the other two men stare at him glassily.
“Very interesting, I’m sure,” the attorney finally says. “But I do not believe the ingredients in White Lotus chicken chow mein are germane to this discussion. Mr. Chin Tung Lee is presently faced with a financial problem outside the expertise of Blains, Kibes and Thrush. He wishes to employ the services of Haldering and Company, and I am authorized to conclude an oral agreement, prior to the execution of a written contract that will finalize the terms of the aforementioned employment.”
“Why didn’t he just pick up the phone and call us?” Cone wants to know. “Or come over here himself?”
“Mr. Lee is an elderly gentleman who, unfortunately, has been confined to a wheelchair for several years and is not as physically active as he would like to be. He specifically asked for your services, Mr. Cone.”
“Yeah? How come? I never met the guy.”
“He is a close personal friend of Mr. Simon Trale of Dempster-Torrey, and I believe it was Mr. Trale’s recommendation that led to Mr. Lee’s decision to employ Haldering and Company, and you in particular.”
“And I’m sure he’ll be happy with our services,” Haldering booms. “We guarantee results-right, Cone?”
“Nah,” the Wall Street dick says. “No one can do that. Mr. Jeffreys, you said that Lee has a financial problem. What is it?”
“I’m afraid I am not at liberty to reveal that at this particular time. Our client wishes to discuss the matter with you personally.”
“Okay,” Cone says equably. “If he wants to play it cozy, that’s fine with me. How do I get hold of him?”
The attorney proffers a business card. “This is the address on Exchange Place. It is the corporate headquarters of White Lotus. On the back of the card you will find a handwritten telephone number. That is Mr. Chin Tung Lee’s private line. Calls to that number will not go through the company’s switchboard.”
Cone takes the card and stands. “All right,” he says, “I’ll give him a call and find out what his problem is. I also want to tell him to put more chicken in his chow mein.”
He shambles back to his office, digs through the mess in his desk (what’s a stale package of Twinkies doing in there?), and finally roots out an old copy of Standard and Poor’s Stock Guide. He looks up White Lotus.
The corporation, listed on the OTC exchange, sells packaged Chinese foods to consumers, restaurants, and institutions. It is capitalized for slightly over two million shares of common stock, no preferred. It has no long-term debt. It has paid a cash dividend every year since 1949. What is of particular interest to Cone is that the price range of the stock for the past fifteen years has varied from 31 to 34, never below, never above.
Similarly, there has been little change in the annual dividend rate. White Lotus stock is currently yielding slightly over 5 percent. Its financial position appears exemplary: high assets, low liabilities, and a hefty bundle of surplus cash and cash equivalents.
All in all, it seems to be a solid, conservative outfit, but maybe a bit stodgy. It sounds like the kind of stock Chinese widows and orphans would love to own: a nice 5-percent return come wars, inflation, or financial foofarows. No one’s going to get rich trading White Lotus, but no one’s going down the drain either. So what could their financial problem be?
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“Ah so,” Cone says aloud in a frightful Charlie Chan accent. “It is written that when icicles drip on the mulch bed, the wise man hides his peanut butter.”
He then dials the direct line to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of White Lotus. But when Mr. Chin Tung Lee comes on the phone, he sounds nothing like Charlie Chan. And nothing like an invalid confined to a wheelchair. His voice is strong, vibrant, with good resonance.
He says he will be happy to see Mr. Timothy Cone in an hour, and thanks him for his courtesy. A very polite gent.
Cone plods down Broadway to Exchange Place. It’s a spiffy day with lots of sunshine, washed sky, and a smacking breeze. Streets of the financial district are crowded; everyone scurries, the pursuit of the Great Simoleon continuing with vigor and determination.
But as he well knows, Wall Street is usually a zero-sum game: If someone wins, someone loses. That’s okay; if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And thinking that makes him smile because once, not too long ago, Samantha was bitching about how difficult it was for women to rise to positions of power on the Street. To which Cone replied, “If you can’t stand the heat, go back in the kitchen.” She kicked his shin.
The corporate offices of White Lotus are in a lumpish building that looks in need of steam cleaning. The frowsy lobby is vaguely Art Deco, but the old elevators still have operators-which has become as rare as finding a shoeshine boy or paperboy on the streets of Manhattan.
Timothy, a fast man with a stereotype, figures the offices of any outfit that sells canned chop suey are going to look like a joss house: carved teak furniture, brass statues, and paneled silk screens. But the offices of White Lotus are done in Swedish modern with bright graphics on the walls and, on the floor, a zigzag patterned carpet that bedazzles the eye.
The receptionist-female, Caucasian, young-phones and says Mr. Lee will see Cone in a few minutes. The Wall Street dick spends the time inspecting a lighted showcase in the reception room. It contains packages of all the White Lotus products: noodles, fried rice, chop suey, chow mein, pea pods, water chestnuts, soy sauce, fortune cookies, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots. Cleo would approve.
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