“I’m tied up most of tomorrow, but I’ll make time if it’s important.”
“I think it might be better if we talked outside your office.”
Long pause. Then: “Oh? Well, let’s see what we can arrange. I’m working late tonight, and then I’ve got a dinner appointment. I should be home by eleven o clock. Is that too late for you?”
“I’ll still be awake.”
She laughs gaily, but it sounds tinny. “You have my home address, don’t you? Suppose you come up here at eleven. I’ll tell the concierge you’re expected. Will it take long?”
“Probably not. Maybe a half-hour.”
“Splendid! See you tonight, Mr. Cone.”
He hangs up, stares at the dead phone a moment. He figures he’ll come down hard on her. She dresses for success; she can take it.
About a week ago he bought a corned beef that weighed almost five pounds. He spent an entire evening boiling it up, spooning off the scum and changing the water to get rid of the salt. While it was cooking, he dumped in more peppercorns, bay leaves, and garlic cloves—just as the butcher had instructed.
When he could dig a fork into it, he figured it was done. By that time the loft was filled with a savory fog, and Cleo was trying to claw up his leg to get at the stove top. Cone chilled the boiled beef for twenty-four hours, then he and the cat began to demolish it. The first night he had it with boiled potatoes, but after that he just had the meat and beer.
He’s eaten it every night for almost a week now, except for that one dinner at Sam’s, but there’s still some left. It’s getting a little green and iridescent around the edges, but it tastes okay. It’s not too tender, but he’s got strong teeth, and so does Cleo.
So that’s what the two have that night, finally finishing the beef, with enough crumbs left over to see the cat through the night.
After cleaning up, Cone lies down on his mattress.
“It’s called a nappy-poo,” he tells Cleo.
He dozes fitfully, wakes about nine-thirty. Then he showers and dons a clean T-shirt that’s been laundered so many times it’s like gray gauze. He straps on the ankle holster stuffed with the short-barreled S&W .357 Magnum and sallies forth.
Eve Bookerman lives in a high-rise near Sutton Place. Her building makes Dorothy Blenke’s look like a pup tent. It seems to soar into the clouds, all glass and stainless steel, and there’s a Henry Moore sculpture on a pedestal in front of the splendid entrance.
The concierge is wearing a claw-hammer coat, starched shirt, and white bow tie. He inspects the Wall Street dick and sniffs.
“May I be of service?” he says in a fluty voice.
“Timothy Cone to see Miss Eve Bookerman.”
The twit isn’t happy about it, but he makes the call, murmuring into the phone.
“You’re expected, sir,” he reports. “Apartment B as in Benjamin on the thirty-first floor.”
“Floor as in Frederick?” Cone says.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
But Timothy is heading toward the elevator bank, wading through a rug so thick and soft he’d like to strip bare-ass and roll around on it.
No music in the elevator this time, but a lingering scent of perfume. The high-speed lift goes so fast that Cone has a scary image of the damned thing bursting through the roof and taking off for the stars.
More plush carpeting in the thirty-first-floor corridor. The door to Apartment B as in Benjamin is open a few inches, and Eve Bookerman is peering out.
“Ah,” she says, “Mr. Cone. Do come in.”
She swings the door wide, he takes off his cap and follows her into a foyer about as big as his loft, with black and white tiles set in a diagonal checkerboard pattern. She leads him into a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the East River.
Some expensive decorator has done a bang-up job. The whole place is right out of Architectural Digest, and Cleo would have a ball destroying that collection of Steuben glass. It’s all so clean and polished that Cone wonders if he should remain standing.
“Nice place,” he offers.
“Thank you,” she says lightly. “I’ve come a long way from Bensonhurst. I’m having a cognac, Mr. Cone. Would you like one?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
She brings him a snifter and places the bottle on a Lucite table between two rocking chairs. They’re in one dim corner of a room that goes on forever. Noguchi lamps are lighted, but it would take a battery of TV floodlights to chase the shadows in that cavern.
She raises her glass. “To your health,” she says.
“And yours. How’s the ear?”
“My,” she says, “you do remember things. It’s much better, thank you.”
“Any news on who takes over as CEO?”
“No,” she says shortly. “The Board appointed a special subcommittee to come up with recommendations, but they haven’t reported yet.”
He looks at her closely. “Lots of luck,” he says.
She giggles like a schoolgirl. “I haven’t a prayer.”
“Sure you have,” he tells her. “You were the person closest to John Dempster, weren’t you?”
She stiffens. “What do you mean by that?”
“Listen, Miss Bookerman,” he says, “thanks for the brandy, but let’s not play games. Okay? I’ll ask you questions and you answer. If you don’t want to, that’s your choice. But it means I’ll have to get the answers from someone else. I’m hoping you’ll save me time.”
“I fail to see what my relationship to John Dempster has to do with your investigation of industrial sabotage.”
He sighs. “Look, you have your own way of working—right? And I have mine. You’ve got to give me wiggle room. All those attacks on Dempster-Torrey property—what do you want me to do: go to eighteen different places around the country and investigate cases that have already been tossed by the local cops and your own security people with no results? I’d just be spinning my wheels. Does that make sense to you?”
She nods dumbly, takes a sip of her cognac.
“So I figure the solution—if there is one—is right here in New York. I also think Dempster’s death is tied in with the assaults against your property. His murder was the final act of sabotage.”
“But why?” she cries. “For what reason?”
He shrugs. “My first idea about a corporate shark on the prowl got shot down, so now I’m looking for another motive. And all I’ve got to work with are the people involved—like you. That’s why I’m putting it to you straight: Did you have a thing going with Dempster?”
She raises her chin defiantly. “You really go for the jugular, don’t you? Incredible!”
“You going to answer my question or not?”
“Yes, I had a thing going with John J. Dempster—if that’s what you want to call it.”
“Okay,” he says mildly, “that clears the air a little. You knew he was a womanizer?”
She pokes fingers into her blond curls, then tugs them in a gesture of anger. “You have been busy, haven’t you? Of course I knew he played around. I worked closely with the man for years, and we had what you call a thing for the past three. He cheated on his wife from the moment he was married. But don’t get the wrong idea, Mr. Cone. My balling J.J. had nothing to do with my keeping my job or moving up at Dempster-Torrey. I happen to be damned good at what I do. Besides, that wasn’t the way Jack worked. If I had said no, I’d still be Chief Operating Officer because he knew I had earned the title. Also, he could have had any other woman he wanted—younger, prettier, skinnier than I.”
“You do all right,” he says, and she gives him a faint smile. “Tell me something, Miss Bookerman—and this is just curiosity—how come he was such a hotshot with the ladies? His money? Power?”
She shakes her head. “He could have been a cabdriver or a ditchdigger and he’d still be a winning stud. He had energy and drive and—and a forcefulness I’ve never seen in anyone before and will probably never see again. Physically he wasn’t al
l that handsome. I mean he was hardly a matinee idol. But when he zeroed in, I don’t think there’s a woman in the world who could have resisted him. And when he wanted to, he could be kind, considerate, generous, loving.”
Suddenly she begins weeping, tears spilling from those big, luminous eyes and down her cheeks. She makes no effort to wipe them away. She reaches out with a trembling hand to pour herself more cognac, but Cone takes the bottle, fills her glass, and helps himself to another belt.
“Sorry about that,” she says finally, taking a deep breath. “I thought I was all cried out, but I guess I wasn’t.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “You’re entitled.”
She sits back, takes a gulp of her drink. Tonight she’s wearing another suit: glossy black gabardine, with a pale pink man-tailored shirt and a ribboned bow at the neck. She looks weary, and there are lines in her face that Cone didn’t spot at their first meeting.
He wonders if she’s just a nice girl from Bensonhurst who’s suddenly found herself in over her head, her mentor gone, her lover dead, and a lot of business pressures she can’t handle. But her next comment disabuses him of that notion; she has spunk to spare.
“What the hell has J.J.’s sexual habits got to do with the sabotage and his murder?” she wants to know.
“Listen, I told you I had more questions than answers. When I work a case, I try to collect as much stuff as I can. Ninety percent of it turns out to be junk, but how do you know what’s meaningful when you start? So far you’ve been very cooperative, and I appreciate that. I hope you’ll keep it up. You’ve got a big stake in this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one who hired Haldering and Company. If I can figure out who pulled the sabotage jobs, and maybe who iced your boss, you’ll get brownie points with the Board of Directors, won’t you? That should help if they’re considering you for the CEO job.”
She looks at him in amazement. “You’re something, you are,” she says. “You think of everything. Fantastic! Well, for your information, Mr. Cone, making CEO comes pretty far down on my anxiety list.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Now can we get back to the Q and A for a few more minutes?”
“Sure. Fire away.”
“You’ve met his brother, David Dempster?”
“I’ve met him.”
“What’s your take?”
“A neuter.”
“How did John Dempster feel about him?”
“Ignored him. He thought David was a joke.”
“Did David try to get the Dempster-Torrey PR account?”
“My God, how have you found out these things? Yes, David made a pitch—but that was years ago. Jack turned him down, of course. We set up an in-house publicity and corporate advertising division, and it’s worked out very well.”
“So there was hostility between the brothers?”
“Not hostility. Just nothing.”
“I’ve talked to Dorothy Blenke, David’s ex-wife.”
“Have you? I’ve never met the lady.”
“I got the feeling—though she never said yes or no, either way—that maybe John Dempster had a fling with her while she was married to his brother. You know anything about that?”
Eve Bookerman struggles out of the armchair and stands stiffly erect. “Get out!” she yells at him.
“Okay,” Timothy says equably. He rises, reaches for his cap.
“No,” the woman says, holding up a palm. “Wait a minute. Sit down and finish your drink. I apologize.”
They both sit again, stare at each other warily.
“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know for sure. But from little things Jack said, it could have been that way.”
“There are a lot of ‘coulds’ and ‘maybes’ in this file,” Cone says. “All right, let’s say John and Dorothy had an affair. That was before his thing with you—right?”
She nods.
“And maybe, just maybe, that affair led to David Dempster’s divorce. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Anything is possible,” she says.
“Thank you,” he says, “but I knew that when I was four years old.” He finishes his drink, rises, takes up his cap. “I appreciate your seeing me.”
“I talked too much,” she says dully.
“Nah,” Cone says. “You really didn’t tell me much I hadn’t already guessed. Besides, I’m not wired, so who’s to know what you did or didn’t say. Get a good night’s sleep, Miss Bookerman.”
“Fat chance,” she says bitterly.
Cone rides down in that same scented elevator, flips a hand at the tailcoated gink behind the desk, and exits into a night that’s all moon and grazing breeze. He feels loose and restless, and considers his options. He could go directly home. He could drop in at the nearest bar for a nightcap or two. He could call Samantha and see if she’s in the mood to entertain a visitor at that hour.
So fifteen minutes later he finds himself double-parked on East 38th Street, scoping the townhouse where David Dempster lives. The third-floor lights are on, front windows opened but screened. Cone can’t see anyone moving behind the gauzy curtains.
He sits there for almost a half-hour, smoking two cigarettes to make up for his abstinence in Bookerman’s apartment. Finally the third-floor lights go out. Now for the moment of truth: Did the guy sack out or is he planning an excursion? Cone waits patiently for another twenty minutes, but no one comes out of the townhouse.
“What the hell am I doing?” the Wall Street dick asks aloud, and then wonders if he’s losing his marbles because he hasn’t even got a cat there to listen to him.
Five
IT’S A SATURDAY, AND usually he and Samantha spend the day together—and sometimes the night. But she has shopping to do in the afternoon and then, in the evening, she must attend a bridal shower for one of the secretaries at Haldering & Co.
“Gonna miss me?” she asks.
“Nah,” he says. “I got a lot of things to do.”
“Oh, sure. Like smoking up a storm, slopping vodka, and kicking the cat.”
“I wouldn’t kick Cleo. Strangle maybe, but not kick.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Let me take a look at my appointment book.”
“Keep talking like that, buster, and you’ll be singing soprano. Listen, we haven’t had pizza for a long time—maybe a week or so. How’s about you pick up a big one—half pepperoni for you, half anchovies for me—and bring it over here tomorrow. I’ve got some salad stuff.”
“Sounds good,” he says. “Around noon?”
“Make it later,” she says. “I’ve got to read the Sunday Times. Unless you were planning a matinee. Were you?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“What mind? How about threeish or fourish?”
“How about twoish?”
“Okay,” she says agreeably. “We can read the Real Estate Section in bed together.”
“Whoopee!” he cries.
He really does have things to do—not a lot, but some. He changes Cleo’s litter and damp-mops the linoleum. He takes in his laundry and decides the corduroy suit will do for another week without drycleaning. He goes shopping for beer, vodka, wine, brandy. And he buys a loaf of Jewish rye (without seeds) and a whole garlic salami. It’s about two feet long and looks like an elephant’s schlong.
Back in the loft, he and Cleo have salami sandwiches, two for him, one for the cat. Cone’s sandwiches have hot English mustard smeared on them. Cleo prefers mayonnaise.
He reads Barron’s as he eats, marveling at all the reports of chicanery on Wall Street. Most of them involve inside trading, stock manipulation, or fraudulent misrepresentation on a company’s balance sheet. The Street has its share of gonnifs, and the fact that they wear three-piece pinstripes and carry alligator attaché cases doesn’t mitigate their corruption.
What never ceases to amaze Cone is how few of these moneyed crooks are stand-up guys. Once they’ve
been nabbed by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal DA, they sing like canaries, happy to squeal on their larcenous associates, willing to be wired or have their phones tapped so old school chums can share the blame. Cone knows that when you drive a BMW and summer on the Cape, you’d be eager to cooperate with the fuzz if it means probation rather than a year in the slammer. But Timothy has known cheap boosters, purse-snatchers, and yeggs with more honor than that.
“It’s money,” he tells a snoozing Cleo. “Everyone quotes ‘Money is the root of all evil,’ but that’s not what the Good Book says. It says, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’ Big difference.”
Cleo is not impressed.
Cone finishes his reading and then falls asleep at the table, bent forward with his head on folded arms. He wakes early in the evening, feeling stiff from his awkward position, with pins and needles in both hands. He stalks up and down the loft, jangling arms and legs to get jazzed up again.
There’s a greasy spoon around the corner, run by a Greek who can do nothing right but double-cheeseburgers and home fries with a lot of onions. So that’s what Timothy has, sitting at the counter and wondering if this is the way he’s going to die someday, toppling off the stool, OD’d on cholesterol.
He returns to the loft and mooches around for almost an hour, smoking two Camels and buying himself another robust drink. He knows what he’s going to do that night, but the prospect is so depressing he puts it off as long as possible. Finally he can postpone it no longer and calls David Dempster.
“Hello?” Dempster says. Cone recognizes that spoony voice.
“Sam?” the Wall Street dick asks.
“No, you’ve got the wrong number,” Dempster says, and hangs up.
So now Cone knows the guy is home, and he has no excuse for stalling. He makes his preparations swiftly: a jelly jar filled with vodka, the lid screwed on tightly; a plastic bag of ice cubes, closed with a metal tie; a fresh pack of cigarettes; a book of matches; a pencil stub; an empty milk carton in case he has to relieve himself.
He gets up to East 38th Street about 8:30 and double-parks across from the limestone townhouse. There’s a streetlight right in front of the building, so Cone backs up the Escort to get out of the glare. He still has a good view, and is happy to see the third floor is lighted. In fact, a couple of times David Dempster comes to the front window, pulls the curtains aside, and peers down into the street.
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