Timothy's Game

by Lawrence Sanders

  Cleo growls agreement.

  Two

  THE SECRETARY IS A middle-aged woman, with a glazed ceramic complexion and wiry gray hair up in a tight bun. She gazes at the world through hard eyes. He figures it would take a helluva lot to surprise her—and nothing would shock her.

  “Timothy Cone from Haldering and Company,” he says. “To see Miss Bookerman. My appointment’s for ten-thirty.”

  She glances down at a watch pinned to her bodice. She doesn’t have to tell him he’s late; her look is accusation enough.

  “I’ll tell her you’re here, Mr. Cone. Please be seated.”

  But he remains standing, eyeballing the place. Nothing lavish, but everything crisp, airy, and looking as if it was waxed five minutes ago. The carpet has the Dempster-Torrey corporate insignia woven into it. A nice touch. Reminds Cone of the linoleum in his loft. That bears his insignia: cracked, worn, with the brown backing showing through in patches.

  “Ms. Bookerman will see you now,” the secretary says, replacing her phone. “Through that door and down the hall to your left.”

  “Right,” he says.

  “No,” she says, “left.”

  He looks at her and sees a glint of amusement in her steady eyes.

  “How about tonight?” he whispers. “Same time, same place. I’ll bring the herring.”

  That cracks her up. “I’ll be there,” she promises.

  He had called that morning from the loft. Eve Bookerman could see him at 10:30. Precisely. For a half-hour. Precisely. Cone said that was fine, and he’d also like to talk to Theodore Brodsky, Chief of Security. Bookerman said she’d arrange it. Her voice was low, throaty, stirring. Cone liked that voice.

  He figured that if he had a 10:30 appointment, there was no point in going into the office first. So he spent an hour drinking black coffee, smoking Camels, and finishing the last charlotte russe. He was a mite hung over, but nothing serious. Just that his stomach was queasy, and he was afraid of what might happen if he yawned.

  So he plodded all the way down to Wall Street. A hot July day, steamy, with a milky skim over a mild blue sky. By the time he arrived at the Dempster-Torrey Building, he was pooped; the air conditioning was plasma.

  Now, scuffing down the inside corridor to his left, he passes a succession of doors with chaste brass name plates: JOHN J. DEMPSTER, SIMON TRALE, THEODORE BRODSKY and, finally, EVE BOOKERMAN. He wonders if, having taken over the murdered man’s duties, even temporarily, she has moved into the CEO’s office. But when he raps on the gleaming pine door, he hears a shouted “Come in!” and enters slowly, leather cap in hand.

  She stands and comes forward to greet him. He is startled. From her voice and determined manner on the phone, he had expected a tigress; he sees a tabby. A short woman, almost chubby, with a great mass of frizzy strawberry-blond curls. She’s trying to smile, but it doesn’t work.

  “Glad to meet you,” she says. “Mr. Twiggs has told me so much about you.”

  “Yeah?” he says. “That’s nice.”

  She’s wearing a seersucker suit with a frilly blouse, a wide ribbon bow-tied at the neck. She looks clunky, but she moves well and there’s strength in her handshake. Her eyes are great, Cone decides: big, dark, luminous. And she’s got impressive lungs. Even with the blouse and suit he can see that.

  She gets him seated in an armchair, not alongside her desk but facing her. Then she slides into an enormous, high-backed leather swivel chair. It swallows her, makes her look like a cub.

  “Do you smoke?” she asks.

  “Thanks,” he says gratefully, reaching into his jacket pocket for his pack.

  “Please don’t,” she says sharply. “I can’t stand cigarette smoke. Atrocious!”

  “Okay,” he says equably, “I can live with that.”

  She sits on the edge of her chair, leans forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped: a position of prayer. Her fingers, Cone notes, are unexpectedly long and slender.

  “Did you read the material I left with Mr. Haldering?” she demands.

  “Yep.”

  “I hope you realize those reports are confidential. I wouldn’t care to have them leaked to the media.”

  “I don’t blab,” he tells her.

  “And do you have any questions?”

  “A lot of them,” he says. “Here’s one for starters: What’s the difference between a Chief Executive Officer—that was Dempster—and a Chief Operating Officer—that’s you?”

  “It varies from company to company,” she says. “At Dempster-Torrey, J.J. made the big decisions and I made the small ones. He got the ulcers and I got the headaches.”

  “He had ulcers?”

  “Of course not. It was just a figure of speech. What I’m trying to say is that he set policy and I carried it out. Expedited things. Found the people he needed and liaised with bankers, attorneys, accountants.”

  Cone stares at her. “Made his dreams come true?” he suggests.

  “Yes,” she says with that forced smile, “something like that. But the dreams were his.”

  “You’ve been with Dempster-Torrey—how long?”

  “Almost eight years.”

  “Started out as Chief Operating Officer?”

  “God, no! I was an MBA fresh out of Harvard. I started in the Planning Section, practically a gofer. I didn’t get to be Operating Officer until three years ago.”

  “And then you worked closely with Mr. Dempster?”

  “Yes.”

  “He made a lot of enemies?”

  “Not a lot, but some, certainly. Any man in his position would.”

  “Any hot-blooded enemies? The type that’ll say, ‘I’ll get you, you dirty dog. No matter how long it takes, I’ll ruin you’?”

  “None like that I know of. You think it’s an old enemy who’s engineering all our trouble?”

  “I don’t think much of anything,” Cone says. “I’m just getting started. Trying to collect stuff. Maybe it would help if you could tell me what kind of a man he was.”

  “Very strong,” she says promptly. “He couldn’t stand to be denied anything he wanted for the company. Couldn’t endure defeat. A very forceful personality. Goal oriented. An overachiever. He knew what he wanted and went after it.”

  “For himself? Or for Dempster-Torrey?”

  “Mr. Cone, he was Dempster-Torrey. You cannot separate the man from the company he built. They were one. It wasn’t just an ego trip. He wanted to make us an international conglomerate, bigger than IBM, General Motors, or the Vatican. And if he had lived, he would have done it. Absolutely!”

  “Doesn’t sound like the easiest guy in the world to work for.”

  She slumps back in her big swivel chair, begins curling a strand of hair around a slim forefinger. Those dark eyes glimmer, and Cone wonders if she’s trying not to cry. For the first time he sees a wad of cotton batting stuck in her right ear.

  “Got a bad ear?” he asks, trying to get her mind off Dempster’s death.

  She shakes her head impatiently. “A mild infection,” she says. “I think I picked it up in the pool at the health club I go to. It’s getting better. Look, Mr. Cone, I’ve tried to describe J.J.’s business personality. Yes, in his business dealings he was hard, demanding, occasionally even ruthless. He believed that was the way he had to be to build Dempster-Torrey. But away from the office, when he could temporarily forget about takeovers and mergers, he was the kindest, sweetest man who ever lived. He was tender, sympathetic, understanding. That’s the John J. Dempster you never read about in The Wall Street Journal or Fortune. The press was just interested in the tycoon. But the man himself was more than just a money and power-grubber; he was a mensch. You know what a mensch is, Mr. Cone?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, J.J. was a mensch. In his personal life, a man of honor and integrity. I’m trying to be as cooperative as I can. I’m sure that as you get deeper into this thing and talk to more people, you’ll hear a lot of bad things about Mr. Demps
ter. I just want to make sure you understand how I felt about him. I thought he was a marvelous man. Marvelous!”

  “Uh-huh,” Cone says. “I appreciate that. And how are things going since he died?”

  “Lousy,” she says with a short, bitter laugh. “It’s disaster time, folks. You saw what happened to our stock?”

  “I saw.”

  “All the way down. Because Wall Street knew J.J. was Dempster-Torrey. And with him gone, what’s going to happen? The market hates uncertainty more than anything else, so the heavy investors and big institutions are dumping shares. Can’t say I blame them, but it hurts.”

  “Sure,” Cone says, “it would. But you’ve still got the factories, the farms, the warehouses, the railroad, the airline, the work force, the management organization. The assets are still there.”

  “But he’s dead,” she says darkly. “He was our biggest asset. And the Street knows it.”

  She peers at a man’s digital watch strapped to her wrist.

  “Your time’s up,” she announces. “I’ve got Ted Brodsky standing by. You want me to bring him in here?”

  “No,” Cone says. “I’ll go to his office.”

  “Whatever you want,” she says, shrugging. “I know you’re going to be talking to a lot of people. Just don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “I never do,” he assures her. “Thanks for your time. I may be back with more questions.”

  “Of course. Whenever you like. Just call first. I’m up to my eyeballs until the Board elects another CEO. But I want to help you any way I can.”

  “Sure,” the Wall Street dick says.

  Theodore Brodsky’s office is small, cramped, and jumbled with file folders, reports, and manuals. There’s a national map framed on the wall, studded with pushpins. An American flag on a wooden staff is held erect in a cast-iron base. The room reeks of cigar smoke.

  The Chief of Security clears off a two-cushion leather couch, and that’s where they sit, half-turned to face each other.

  “She wouldn’t let you smoke, would she?” Brodsky says with a knowing grin.

  “Eve Bookerman? Nah, but that’s okay; she’s entitled.”

  “Go ahead, light up. That’s why I chain-smoke stogies—to keep her out of here. She can’t stand the stink. Says it gets in her hair.”

  Cone lights a Camel, watching as the other man puts a kitchen match to what’s left of a half-smoked and chomped cigar.

  “I gotta tell you right out,” Brodsky says, “I wasn’t in favor of Dempster bringing in outside people to investigate what’s been happening at our plants. It’s a reflection on me. Right?”

  Cone shrugs. “Sometimes it helps to get a fresh angle.”

  “I don’t need any fresh angle. When Dempster said he was going to Haldering, I raised holy hell—for all the good it did me. That guy got an idea in his head, you couldn’t blast it out with nitro. Anyway, I checked you out with Neal Davenport, and he says you’re okay, so I guess we can get along.”

  “Oh? You and Neal are friends?”

  “Haven’t seen much of him lately, but him and me go back a long way. Did a tour together in the Two-one Precinct. Then I took early retirement and got this job. Listen, I don’t figure you’re out to cut my balls off. I mean, you’ve got a job to do; I can understand that.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cone says. “And I’m not out to make the evening news on TV.”

  “Sure,” Brodsky says. “And if you fall into anything, you’ll let me know first—am I right?”

  “Absolutely,” says Timothy, an old hand at skillful lying.

  “Then we can work together,” Brodsky says, sitting back and chewing on his cigar. “Like they say, one hand washes the other.”

  “That’s what they say. Suits me fine.”

  “As I get it, you’re just assigned to the industrial accidents—am I right? No interest in the homicide?”

  “Nope. I’ll leave that to the uniforms.”

  “Yeah, that’s the best thing to do.”

  Mention of Dempster’s murder makes him scowl. He leans forward to drop his cigar in a smeared glass ashtray that already contains three dead butts. Then he rises, begins to pace around the room, jacket open, hands in his pants pockets. He’s got a gut, and his belt is buckled low, under the bulge.

  If you had called Central Casting, Cone thinks, and said you wanted a middle-aged flatfoot, they’d have sent Theodore Brodsky, and he’d have gotten the part. A big-headed guy with heavy shoulders and that pillowy pot. A trundling gait and a truculent way of thrusting out his face. It’s a boozer’s face, puffy and florid, with a nose like a fat knuckle.

  “My name is shit around here as it is,” Brodsky says morosely. “After all, I’m supposed to be Chief of Security, and my A-Number-One job was to protect the boss—am I right? Look, I did what he let me do. I’m the one who talked him into hiring a bodyguard. Tim was an ex-Green Beret, and he’d never dog it. Ditto the chauffeur, Bernie. He used to be a deputy sheriff out in Kansas or someplace. Both those guys were carrying and would have drawn their pieces if they had a chance. But what can you do against a couple of nuts with an Uzi?”

  “Not much,” Cone says. “And you can’t stop a guy with a long gun on a roof across the street. It was just bad luck, so don’t worry it.”

  “I gotta worry it,” Brodsky says angrily. “It may mean my ass. I know that Bookerman dame would like me out.”

  “How come Dempster’s limousine didn’t have bulletproof glass?”

  “You think I didn’t think of that? I been after him for months to spring for a custom BMW. It goes for about three hundred Gs, and it’s got bulletproof glass, armored body steel and gas tank, remote control ignition, bomb detectors—the whole schmear. He finally agreed, and that car’s on order. But it’ll take a couple of months to get it. Too late. But the new CEO can use it.”

  “Who’s that going to be—Eve Bookerman?”

  “Bite your tongue,” Brodsky cries. “If she gets the job, I’m long gone. That lady and me just don’t see eye-to-eye.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Chemistry,” the other man says, and Cone lets it go at that.

  “Look, Brodsky,” he says, “when we first started talking, you said you didn’t need any fresh angles on the sabotage. Does that mean you’ve got an idea of who’s behind it?”

  “That’s exactly what it means.”

  “There was nothing in your reports even hinting at who’s been pulling this stuff and what their motive is.”

  “Because I didn’t have any proof,” the Chief of Security says grimly. “But I’m getting it, I’m getting it.” He pauses to consider a moment. Then: “I guess there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. It’s the labor unions.”

  Timothy stares at him.

  “Yep,” Brodsky says, nodding, “that’s who it is. The unions that Dempster-Torrey deals with have got together and are causing all the trouble as bargaining chips to get better terms when their contracts come up for renewal.”

  “I gotta level with you,” Cone says. “I think that idea sucks.”

  Brodsky flares up. “What are you,” he demands, “a wisenheimer? What the fuck do you know about it?”

  Cone stands, walks over to the framed map on the wall. He jerks a thumb at it. “All those pins show the location of Dempster-Torrey facilities in this country—correct? There’s gotta be over a hundred of them.”

  “Hundred and fifty-nine.”

  “So how many local and national unions does Dempster-Torrey deal with? Ten? Twenty? Probably more like fifty, at least. And you’re trying to tell me all those unions have joined in some grand conspiracy to damage the company they work for so they’ll get better terms on their next contract? Bullshit! It just doesn’t listen. First of all, you’d never get that many unions to agree on anything. Second of all, I’d guess that their contracts come up for renewal at different times. Maybe some next month, some in three years. And finally, what the hell’s the point in
burning down the place where you work? Manufacturing jobs are too hard to come by these days. No union in its right mind is going to trash a factory where its members earn a living. It’s not labor that’s causing all the trouble.”

  “Then who the hell is it?” Brodsky yells.

  Cone spreads his hands. “Hey, give me a break. This is my first day on the job. I can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

  “I still think it’s the unions,” Brodsky says stubbornly. “Who else could it be? Some of those labor guys are out-and-out Commies. Maybe they’re doing it for political reasons.”

  “To destroy American capitalism? I don’t know what kind of cigars you smoke, but you better change your brand. You’re way off in the wild blue yonder.”

  “Yeah? Well, you go your way, and I’ll go mine. I’m still going to work the union angle.”

  Cone shrugs. Then, figuring he’s gone as far as he can, he collects his cap and starts for the door. But he pauses.

  “It might help,” he says, “if you could tell me what kind of a man this John J. Dempster was.”

  Brodsky finds a fresh cigar in the mess on his desk. He bites off the tip, spits it into the overflowing ashtray. He moves the cigar around in his mouth to juice it up.

  “They say you should only speak good of the dead,” he says, “but in his case I’ll make an exception. The guy was a dyed-in-the-wool bastard. A real ball-breaker. When Wall Street heard someone had offed him, the list of suspects was narrowed to ten thousand. He didn’t let anyone get in his way, and if you tried, he squashed you. He was just a mean bugger. And he didn’t have to be; he had all the money in the world—am I right?”

  “You ever have any run-ins with him?”

  “Plenty. And so did practically everyone else who works here. His Bible was the riot act. Used to read it all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Cone says, “I know what you mean.”

  He starts out again, but Brodsky calls, “Hey, Cone,” and he turns back.

  “I bet what I told you about Dempster doesn’t jibe with what Eve Bookerman told you.”