Timothy Files

by Lawrence Sanders

  “I’m only staying a minute,” Gibby says, “but I would appreciate a small drink. It’s been a long day.”

  “I’ve got some brandy.”

  “Excellent. Just a pony, if you will.”

  Gibby seats himself at the desk and is not at all disconcerted when Cone brings him the brandy in a jelly jar.

  “Your health, ma’am,” he says. “And to your continued success.”

  “Thank you,” she says faintly.

  Gibby takes a sip. “Quite nice,” he says. “I presume that Mr. Cone has told you about his investigation of the Nu-Hope Fertility Clinic.”

  “He’s told me everything except the reason everyone was so interested in them. I mean why were the U.S. Government and International Gronier involved?”

  “The U.S. Government is no longer involved,” Gibby says, looking at Sam steadily. “As of this afternoon we have terminated all connections with Nu-Hope. And, after the arrest of his underling, I suspect Leopold Devers of International Gronier has done the same.”

  “How did you find out about Gardow’s arrest?” Cone asks curiously.

  “Oh …” Gibby says vaguely, “I have contacts.”

  “So that’s the end of it?” Cone says. “The government is dropping the whole thing?”

  “Well …” Gibby says, “I wouldn’t exactly say that, Mr. Cone. We’re certainly dropping Nu-Hope. But not the project. I’m a great believer in redundancy in scientific research. It would have been foolish to have depended on one source. Actually, we have a number of teams developing the same thing. The work will continue.”

  “Yeah,” Cone says. “That figures.”

  “Just to satisfy an old man, will you tell me how you got on to it?”

  “I read a book,” Cone says. “It was the only thing it could have been.”

  “Read a book,” Gibby repeats, nodding. “The best way.”

  “Goddammit!” Samantha Whatley explodes. “Will the two of you tell me what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “I can understand your curiosity, ma’am,” Gibby says, smiling gently, “and I see no reason why you shouldn’t know. If you decide to go public—which I doubt very much you will wish to do—I can assure you there is no evidence confirming the government’s interest.”

  “What is it?” Samantha cries desperately.

  “It’s called hybridization,” Gibby says, staring thoughtfully into his jar of brandy. “An extremely complex project to explore the possibility of combining human sperm and eggs with the sperm and eggs of certain other primates, such as rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, and others. It also involves the possibility of embryo transfer from one closely related species to another.”

  Sam turns her head slowly to stare at Timothy. “You were right,” she says. “I don’t believe it. Mate a woman with a monkey?”

  “Oh, no!” J. Roger Gibby protests. “No, no, no. Actual sexual intercourse has never been suggested. We’re concerned merely with laboratory techniques.”

  “Merely,” Whatley says. “I love that merely. And you think someday you can produce a half-human/half-chimp?”

  “Are you asking for my personal opinion?” Gibby says. “Yes, I think it’s possible. In fact, there are reports that it’s already been done by a Chinese doctor. Unfortunately, his laboratory and experiment were reportedly destroyed by terrified peasants.”

  “That I can understand,” Samantha says.

  “Look,” Cone says. “Supposing the government or someone else spends a zillion dollars on this thing, finances a lot of research teams, and eventually succeeds, producing an ape-man. What I want to know is, what the hell’s the point? Why spend so much money? Go to so much trouble?”

  “Think about it, Mr. Cone. You’re a smart man; just think about it. Envision any of these possibilities: an army composed of soldiers, vicious as baboons, with no imagination and hence no fear of death. Or intelligent semi-humans bred to fit into the tight, computerized cockpits of tomorrow’s fighter planes. Or gifted animals able to withstand the boredom and terrors of long space flights.”

  “All right,” Cone says grimly, “that’s the government’s interest. What was Mr. D.’s?”

  “International Gronier is a worldwide conglomerate with factories all over the globe, a great many in third-world countries. Leopold Devers was prescient enough to realize how hybridization might revolutionize the labor force. Imagine half-animals bred to exact specifications. The missing link between robots and humans. Why, you might develop workers with abnormally long arms, prehensile toes, superior eyesight, or any other physical quality desired for efficient and low-cost production. Brilliant animals with no desire for unions or a say in management.”

  “Just toss them a banana,” Cone says.

  “Yes,” Gibby says quite seriously. “That’s the bottom line. Profit. Greed. That’s what motivated Mr. D.”

  “I don’t like this conversation,” Sam says.

  Gibby finishes his brandy, rebuttons his chesterfield, reclaims his bowler and gloves. He looks at Samantha with his kindly smile. “Religion, morality, ethics?” he says. “Is that what you’re thinking about? I must tell you that science and technology have a momentum all their own. It makes no allowance for religion, morality, ethics. It’s a different world. I am fond of remarking that if it can be done, it will be done. You cannot put a cap on man’s creativity. It is hopeless to try by threat or edict.”

  “What you mean,” Timothy Cone says, “is that science is your religion.”

  Gibby thinks about that for a moment. “Yes,” he says finally, “I suppose that is what I mean: Science is my faith.”

  He thanks them for their hospitality, shakes hands, and flaps his gloves at Cleo, who is standing in the center of the floor, regarding him with hard, shining eyes. Then Gibby departs, and Cone locks, bolts, and chains the door behind him.

  “Salami and eggs?” he asks Sam.

  “Yes,” she says, “that’s what I need.”

  They speak very little that night, both burdened with secret thoughts, oppressed by nameless fears. They eat, drink, smile at Cleo’s crazy antics. But it is a subdued evening, the whirligig finally stopped, music dead, lights dimmed.

  It has seemed so before, and now once again that bedraggled loft becomes a cave, a refuge. Cleo is certainly not their child, but that dilapidated cat—in a manner they cannot comprehend—completes a family huddling in shelter, safe from the dark forces gathering outside.

  Aloneness silences them, and it seems more a time for reflection than joy. They ponder existence and question their roles in the universe: leaves, grains of sand, dying stars. All their hopes, dreams, ambitions brought low. Evanescent things. Doomed to perish.

  “What a drag,” Whatley says.

  “Yeah,” Cone says.

  They come out of it, as they inevitably must if they are to survive. They look at each other with glassy grins, tickle Cleo’s ribs, stack the dishes, have another drink, embrace in a quick, clumsy dance step to no tune, fling off their clothes, have a vertical hug, flop onto the floor mattress, have a horizontal hug, nibble, yelp with laughter, stroke, the warmth and fever of living coming back now.

  He stares entranced at her small, elegant breasts.

  “Thank God,” he says, “they’re still there.”

  “Tim, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just talking,” he says, bending to kiss.

  BOOK THREE

  A Covey of Cousins

  1

  WALL STREET, AS EVERYONE knows, is a short, narrow, bustling thoroughfare that runs from a river to a graveyard. But it is more than a passage from deep water to deeper earth.

  It is not a street at all, but a community whose backroom workers might toil in Queens, Hackensack, or Peoria. Indeed, Wall Street encompasses the world via a bewildering array of speedy electronic communication equipment: telephones, cables, satellites, facsimile reproduction, television and, faster than all of these, rumors.

  Wall Str
eet is fueled by greed and oiled by cupidity. It is a state of mind, a culture, a never-never land with all the hopeful romance of the Roseland Ballroom and the grungy despair of a Bowery flophouse. Men have soared on Wall Street—and not all of them through the nearest window because they guessed wrong.

  It is a mystery, even to experienced insiders. It is a rigorous mathematical puzzle and simultaneously the most emotional and irrational of human institutions. Dealers come and go, customers come and go, but Wall Street endures, a series of nesting boxes so enormous, so artfully contrived and frustrating, that no one has ever uncovered the final secret.

  Players on Wall Street, addicted to the madness, have coined a number of pithy aphorisms to serve as guides to financial adventures:

  “If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.”

  “Never panic—but if you do, make sure you’re the first to panic.”

  “Happiness can’t buy money.”

  There are many fine buildings channeling the Street. Some house prestigious trading firms whose probity cannot be questioned. And then there are concrete barns with stalls for cash cows and others for spavined beasts not worth the feed to keep them alive, although they continue to exist until fatally stricken by Chapter Seven.

  It is in one of the thriving establishments just east of Nassau Street, on a nippy Monday morning in mid-December, that the passion, the fervor of Wall Street may be glimpsed in all its crass, exciting glory. For there, on the premises of Laboris Investments, Inc., a throng of the covetous are attempting to follow the dictum of Sophie Tucker: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and believe me, rich is better.”

  The outer office is plain enough: plywood walls, plastic plants, and furniture that looks as if it has been rented from an outfit that supplies political campaign headquarters. The air is gummy with smoke, and the two begrimed windows look out on a shadowed airshaft that plunges to a concrete courtyard, bare and cold.

  But the people coming through the door in a constant stream care nothing for the surroundings. The light of avarice is in their eyes. Many carry ads torn from newspapers, magazines, and direct-mail solicitations.

  There to greet them are three personable employees of Laboris Investments, Inc. The two young men and one young woman wear large badges inscribed: ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE. And below: HI! and their names.

  Each new arrival is handed a flier that, in four pages, describes the Laboris investment philosophy and technique. The thin brochure is mercifully free of the usual legal gobbledygook that fills thicker and more impressive Wall Street prospectuses. It also has the grace to state that “This is a high-risk investment, neither approved nor disapproved by the SEC, and investors should be prepared to lose the total sums invested.”

  But even this chilling disclaimer cannot cool the passion of the mob. They arrive with checkbooks at the ready, with money orders, even with wrinkled bills stuffed into Bloomies’ shopping bags. The account executives are frantically active, answering questions, passing out applications, writing out receipts for cash received.

  There is fever in the air, and all are infected. Some of those arriving are already Laboris clients come to make an additional contribution, and they happily tell strangers of a 30-percent return on their money. “Monthly checks—regular as clockwork!” And so the contagion spreads, many angry because the account executives cannot accept their money quickly enough.

  For every exultant customer who departs, two nervous hopefuls appear. There is apparently no end to the enthusiasts. The crowd importuning Laboris to take their life savings grows and grows. And all share a common affliction: the something-for-nothing syndrome for which modern medical science can offer no cure.

  “Here’s a crazy one,” Samantha Whatley says. “Right up your old kazoo.”

  “How come I get all the nut cases?” Timothy Cone says grumpily. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Well, if you want to know, the customer asked for you, so just shut up and listen.” She opens a folder and starts reading. “A private client. Mrs. Martha T. Hepplewaite. A widow. Lives in her own brownstone on East Thirty-eighth. With her only child, a daughter named Lucinda. Mrs. Hepplewaite wants us to investigate an outfit called Laboris Investments. The guy running it is Ingmar Laboris.”

  “Ingmar Laboris? What’s that—a Swedish mouthwash?”

  “Funny,” Sam says without changing expression. “The legal and accounting sections already have their marching orders. You go see this Mrs. Hepplewaite and find out what the hell she wants. H. H. says she was very vague on the phone.”

  “How come she latched onto us?”

  “Says we were recommended by Ernest Pingle, who mentioned your name. Hiram checked with Pingle, and he says the lady’s got all the money in the world. Her husband was a Kansas City meat packer who dropped dead on the eighth green at St. Andrew’s.”

  “What happened—did he miss a six-inch putt?”

  Samantha shoves the file across her desk. “It’s all yours. Go see the lady, and for God’s sake this time keep me up to speed on what’s going on.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “Get lost,” she tells him.

  He takes the folder back to his office, parks his scuffed yellow work shoes on the desk, and scans the file. It doesn’t tell him much more. But it does include address and phone number. So he calls.

  “Hello?” A woman’s voice. Cautious.

  “Mrs. Martha T. Hepplewaite?”

  “No, this is Lucinda Hepplewaite. May I ask who’s calling, please?”

  Cone tells her.

  “Just a moment, please,” she says, and the Wall Street dick reflects she’s got a lot of “please” in her.

  That’s daughter Lucinda. When mother Martha comes on, she sounds like a drill instructor. No “please” at all.

  “You’re Timothy Cone of Haldering and Company?” she demands.

  “That’s correct, ma’am. I was hoping you’d have time to see me today.”

  “You have my address?”

  “Yes.”

  “Five o’clock this afternoon. Precisely.”

  Slam!

  Cone sits looking at the dead phone.

  “And I love you, too,” he says aloud.

  He gets up to East Thirty-eighth Street ahead of time, to give himself a chance to scope the building. It snowed early that morning, a couple of inches, and it’s cold enough to keep the white stuff crunching underfoot, like a beach of crusty sand. He stomps back and forth, hands in the fleece-lined pockets of his anorak.

  The brownstone looks well-maintained, windows shiny and the sidewalk swept. Five stories high with bow windows and a mansard roof. Maybe seventy-five years old, he figures, and at today’s prices worth a mil. At least. In the gloomy December twilight, there are lights burning in rooms on the first two floors.

  The young woman who answers the door is tall, bony, and has a few too many teeth for her mouth. She’s wearing an old-fashioned sweater set, a flannel skirt, and brogues almost as heavy as Cone’s work shoes. A tentative smile lights her horsey face.

  “Mr. Cone?”

  “That’s right. Miss Lucinda Hepplewaite?”

  “Yes. This way, please.”

  He follows her down a narrow corridor and into a parlor that appears to have been untouched since World War I. Everything heavy, dark, carved, and embellished, with dried flowers under bell jars, crocheted antimacassars, needlepoint footstools, faded photographs framed in wood, an old wind-up Victrola, and whatnots and curios without end.

  It’s all so dated and evocative that Cone has a strong desire to cry: “Great heavens! The Boche have invaded Belgium!”

  “Please take off your coat and, uh, cap,” she says, “and make yourself comfortable. Mama will be with you in a moment.”

  She clumps away, and Cone takes off his parka and, uh, cap. But he can’t see anyplace to put them. There’s already something on every flat surface in the room, and the chairs and couches are so prec
isely arranged that he’s afraid to desecrate them. So he stands there, holding both.

  Lucinda doesn’t return, but Mama comes stumping in, leaning on a cane as thick as a mizzenmast.

  “I’m Mrs. Martha Hepplewaite,” she declares, halfway between a bark and a snarl. “You’re Timothy Cone from Haldering?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Would you care to see my identification?”

  “Not necessary. Ernest Pingle described you.”

  She makes no effort to shake hands, but plumps down in an armchair and looks up at him. He wonders if she intends to keep him standing during this interview.

  “Sit down, man,” she says testily.

  He looks about warily and finally perches on the edge of a couch that looks deep and soft enough to swallow him.

  “You’re not much to look at,” she says, “but I hear you know your job.”

  Cone remains silent, wondering whether he’ll turn to stone if he stares at her long enough.

  She’s a massive woman, with enough wattles and dewlaps to make a bloodhound jealous. Timothy guesses a lot of good beef and bourbon went into that raddled face. Like her daughter, she’s wearing two sweaters. But her broad hips are wrapped in a tweed skirt as heavy as a horse blanket. And she’s also sporting a string of pearls that looks like the real thing.

  “Would you like a glass of water?” she asks suddenly.

  “No, thank you,” he says. “But it’s very kind of you to ask.”

  She looks at him suspiciously, but his expression is grave and attentive.

  “Very well,” she says gruffly. “I suppose you want to know what this is all about.”

  He nods.

  “What do you do with your money?” she demands.

  He decides it’s time to clamp down. “None of your business,” he says. “What do you do with yours?”

  “None of your business,” she replies. “But you do know something about investing, don’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “I know a lot,” she says flatly. “My husband left me well-off, and I had to learn how to manage it. It wasn’t easy, but I succeeded. One of the things I discovered along the way is how many crooks there are in the world.”