“Hello, asshole,” she says.
“Hello, shithead,” he says.
Ten minutes later they’re naked on his mattress, fucking their brains out.
Samantha Whatley wakes first, a little before seven A.M., rises from the mattress, relieves herself in the closet, and washes, as best she can, at the kitchen sink. She makes a grimace of distaste at the condition of the only towel she can find. It is clean enough, but fragile as Belgian lace. She puts up her hair, using rubber bands, pins, and two barrettes.
She dresses swiftly, then digs a heavy brogue into the ribs of the still-sleeping Timothy Cone.
“Get up, you monster,” she says loudly. “I’m going home, but I want a cup of coffee first.”
He rouses slowly, groaning, then scrubs his face with his palms. His hair sticks up like a fright wig. Cleo wanders over to sniff at his bare toes, but he kicks the cat away.
“Put the water on,” he says in a growly voice, “while I shower. I smell like a goat.”
“Tell me about it,” she says.
She puts the kettle on to boil, searches his cupboard for two cups and saucers that match, gives up in disgust.
“You live like a gypsy,” she tells him.
“I am a gypsy,” he says. “And if you keep complaining, I’ll put the curse on you.”
“I had the curse,” she says. “But not since I got spayed.”
She watches him take the enameled lid off the bathtub. There is no shower, but he has a long rubber tube and spray head that attaches to the faucet. He has to hold it in one hand while he soaps with the other, standing up in the corroded tub. Water splashes onto the linoleum floor.
He has a splintery body, all sharp bones, stretched tendons, hard muscles. His fair skin is freckled across the shoulders and on his upper arms. Stomach flat, buttocks tight. He is hung like a donkey—which is okay with Samantha.
He climbs out of the tub and picks up the towel.
“This is damp,” he says accusingly.
“Tough shitski,” she says. “If you remembered to pick up your laundry occasionally, we’d have dry towels and clean sheets. Also, we finished the vodka last night, so you need another jug. Also, you might get some white wine; I’m getting tired of red.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, knocking off a mock salute. “And how about some champagne and caviar?”
“That’ll be the day,” she says. “You’re the bologna sandwich and beer type. I knew that the first time I saw you.”
They sit at his desk and sip their steaming cups of black coffee.
“Sam,” he says, “did you go over Ed Griffon’s weekly progress reports for the past few months?”
“Give me credit for a little sense,” she says indignantly. “Of course I went over them. The first thing I did after I heard how he died. They’re strictly routine. Not a word hints of any trouble. You want to see them?”
“No,” he says. “If you say they’re clean, then they’re clean.”
She looks at him. “I get suspicious when you start acting like Mr. Nice. What do you want?”
“I may be a little late getting to the office this morning.”
“So what else is new?”
“I brought that Griffon file home with me,” he tells her.
“You took a file out of the office? You schmuck! If H. H. ever finds out, it means your ass. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, well, I’ll worry about that when it happens. Anyway, I want to go over the file without the phone ringing and the cops asking questions. I’ll be in later.”
“Tim, you’re not going to neglect your own caseload because of this, are you?”
“Yes,” he says, “I am. Any objections?”
“Would it do any good if I had?” Then she covers one of his bony hands with a warm palm. “Ed’s death really hit you hard, didn’t it?”
He swirls what’s left of his coffee around in the cup, then gulps it down. “It’s just not right,” he says stubbornly.
She gathers up her shoulder bag and trenchcoat, then leans to scratch Cleo’s ribs. The cat purrs with delight.
“Don’t forget to feed her,” she says.
“It’s not a her,” Cone says crossly. “I keep telling you: It’s a deballed he.”
“He, she, it,” Samantha says. “I couldn’t care less.”
At the door, she turns her face up to him. “Knock us a kiss,” she says.
“Sentimental slush,” he mutters. But he kisses her.
The moment she’s gone, the door locked and bolted, he rummages around frantically for a package of cigarettes. Nothing. All gone. But he finds two long butts in the ashtray, and one more in the garbage can. He salvages them all, straightens them out, lights his first of the day. He inhales deeply, closes his eyes, and coughs, coughs, coughs.
Soothed, he fills Cleo’s water bowl and gives the cat a chunk of moldy cheddar and a slice of turkey salami. That beast will eat anything. Then Cone makes himself another cup of black coffee and sits down at the desk with Ed Griffon’s case file open before him.
He flips through it swiftly to see what he’s got. Mostly it’s a sheaf of documents Haldering & Co. call PIEs—Preliminary Intelligence Estimates. These are prepared by the company’s accountants and attorneys, then handed over to the detectives for further investigation into the private lives of the individuals involved, if the facts seem to warrant it.
In addition to the PIEs, there are a few rough notes by Griffon. It gives Cone a queasy feeling to see the dead man’s handwriting. Almost as bad as hearing a message left on your answering machine by someone suddenly deceased. A voice from the grave. Cone lights his second cigarette butt of the morning and starts reading the file slowly.
The case seems innocent enough. The client is Samuel Evanchat & Sons, an old and respected developer-builder of Manhattan East Side properties. The firm has the reputation of putting up elegant townhouses with a Stanford White look about them. Isaac Evanchat, the last of the clan, is now in his late sixties and has decided to retire to his Mizner-designed Palm Beach home and spend the rest of his days trying to hook a world-class sailfish.
Isaac is contemplating selling out to Clovis & Clovis, Inc., a miniconglomerate which, if you believe New York newspapers and magazines, seems to own or manage half the real estate in midtown Manhattan. The selling price is projected at $175 million. But Evanchat, proud and cautious, wants to make sure his family business will be in good hands, and the 175 mil will be forthcoming. So he has hired Haldering & Co., asking for a complete intelligence rundown on Clovis & Clovis.
Both principals in the proposed deal are privately held companies, and it’s been difficult for Haldering’s attorneys and accountants to assemble an accurate balance sheet on Clovis & Clovis. But they’ve done what they can, using the few public records that exist, confidential sources, and talking to ex-employees, particularly the disgruntled ones. They’ve produced a report in which Clovis & Clovis comes up smelling like roses.
Their summary notes that the parent company, with assets of more than one billion, owns controlling interest in four other companies involved in general contracting, plumbing and electrical supplies, foundations and underpinning, and an outfit called New World Enterprises, Inc., only fourteen months old, organized, according to its corporate charter, “for purposes of building and renovating commercial and residential real estate properties.”
It all seems cut-and-dried to Timothy Cone, lighting his third and final cigarette butt. Here’s this big real estate corporation with four subsidiaries. Nothing sinister there. Apparently all the divisions are profitable.
Cone turns to Griffon’s personal notes and reads them carefully. Mostly they’re short biogs on the owners of Clovis & Clovis. That would be Stanley Clovis, forty-three, and his sister Lucinda, forty-one, each of whom owns 50 percent of the parent company. Stanley is married and has two children. Lucinda is unmarried and has no children.
Brother and sister are very active in civic affa
irs, Manhattan politics, and charities. They are generous donors to libraries, museums, ballet groups, and symphony orchestras. They are on the society pages frequently, and recently Clovis & Clovis hosted a big bash to celebrate the opening of a park and playground in the South Bronx that they built and gave to the City of New York.
Both Stanley and Lucinda Clovis sound like fine, upstanding citizens. With their gelt, Cone reflects sourly, they can afford to be. There seems to be little in the file that indicates further investigation into Clovis & Clovis would be justified.
But then, the last item in Ed Griffon’s personal notes, there is a torn sheet of green scratch paper. On it Ed had scrawled, DUM? Cone stares at the capital letters. DUM? What the hell could that mean. Initials maybe? Department of Underwear Manufacturers? Division of Undertaker Matrons?
He closes the folder and ruminates in his stolid, methodical way. If this particular file has no connection with the death of G. Edward Griffon, then perhaps the other cases Ed was handling do—the ones that were inherited by Ernie Waters, Fred Burgess, and Sol Faber. And if those files show nothing that isn’t kosher, then maybe Ed really did fall or jump to his death.
Cone doesn’t believe it for a minute. The guy was wasted. Deliberately.
But what the hell does DUM? mean?
Sighing, he rises, slips the Clovis & Clovis folder back into the shabby manila envelope, prepares to go to the office. He’s still wearing his sleazy corduroy suit, yellow work shoes, the black leather cap. As he goes out the door, he pauses to raise an admonishing forefinger at the watching Cleo.
“Guard!” he orders the astonished cat. Then locks up and clatters down the iron stairs.
He stops first to buy two packs of Camels, then continues his amble downtown. The air has cleared, there’s a sun up there, and the streets are bustling. Guys are tearing up Broadway, dancing around the steelwork on new buildings, and sidewalk vendors are heating up their franks and sauerkraut. Everyone hustling to make a buck.
When he gets to his office, he finds a NYPD dick waiting outside, sitting on a folding chair and placidly chewing on a wad of something. The detective is big and overweight. He doesn’t exactly spring to his feet; he levers himself slowly upward as if he isn’t sure he’ll make it. The conversation goes like this:
“You Timothy Cone?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re an investigator here?”
“Yep.”
“You were told to stick around last night. How come you took off?”
“My cat was sick. The vet wasn’t sure he could save her.”
“That’s a new one. Usually it’s a wife in Intensive Care. Let’s talk.”
“Sure.”
In Cone’s minuscule office, the detective shows his ID. Neal K. Davenport. He’s a ruddy-faced man with plump hands and a habit of cocking his head to one side while waiting for his questions to be answered. Cone isn’t fooled by the laid-back manner. This guy, he decides, is one shrewd apple.
“You want a cigarette?” he asks.
“No, thanks. I swore off. Now I chew Juicy Fruit.” He takes out a package, extracts a stick, shoves it into his mouth. He crumples the wrapper, stuffs it into his jacket pocket. “You and the deceased buddy-buddy?” he asks Cone.
“Not really.”
“No, I guess not. From what I hear you’re a loner.”
“That’s right.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Davenport says, shifting his bulk in the uncomfortable chair, “if it gets results.” He chews his gum steadily. “You know anything about Griffon’s private life?”
“Very little. I know he lived with his mother and sister. Somewhere in the Gramercy Park area.”
“Yeah. He ever talk about any girlfriends?”
“No.”
“Friends? Enemies?”
“No, nothing like that. I told you, we weren’t close.”
“Yeah,” the fat detective says, sighing. “I understand you think he was pushed.”
“I think so. He’d never jump, and he was too smart to fall. Maybe it was a crazy who gave him a shove.”
“Maybe.” The gumshoe climbs laboriously to his feet. “He was carrying an empty attaché case. You know why he’d do that?”
“No.”
“You got the file on one of his cases?”
Cone nods.
“Anything interesting in it?”
“Strictly routine.”
The detective slides a personal card across the desk. “If you come up with anything,” he says, “give me a call.”
“I’ll do that,” Cone says.
“Sure you will,” Davenport says with a bleak smile. “We’re both on the same side—right?”
After he’s gone, Cone walks around the corridors to the section inhabited by accountants and attorneys. He stops at an office twice as large as his, with a rug on the floor and two windows. The brass sign on the desk reads: MR. SIDNEY APICELLA. Cone likes the “Mr.”
Apicella is a sweet man, but the poor fellow suffers from rosacea of the proboscis. Although a nondrinker, he’s got the schnoz of an alcoholic moose. The big, lumpy nose is the first thing you see when you look at him, and even the politest visitor has trouble tearing his fascinated stare away from that rosy balloon.
He looks up when Cone enters. “I haven’t got time,” he says.
“Sure you do, Sid,” Cone says, slumping into the chair alongside Apicella’s desk.
The chief accountant sighs. “I’m sorry about Ed,” he says.
“Yeah, he was an okay guy. Listen, Sid, you signed that PIE on the proposed buyout of Samuel Evanchat and Sons by Clovis and Clovis.”
“That’s right, I did. Anything wrong with it?”
“Not that I can see, but I’ve got a question. Clovis and Clovis is in the business of brokering or developing properties. So why did they start a subsidiary, New World Enterprises, Inc., to do exactly the same thing?”
“I caught that and asked Stanley Clovis himself. He says the parent company handles megabuck deals: skyscrapers and luxury co-ops and industrial parks. Stuff like that. New World was organized to develop smaller parcels, like renovating old brownstones or abandoned tenements.”
“Yeah,” Cone says. “It makes sense.” He gets up to leave, then pauses at the doorway. “One more thing, Sid: In your business does DUM mean something special?”
“Sure: ‘stupid.’”
“Not d-u-m-b,” Cone says patiently. “This is spelled d-u-m, all in capital letters followed by a question mark.”
“You mean like in dum-di-dum-dum? Nope, it doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“Me neither.”
Cone’s next stop is Samantha’s office.
“So glad you could make it,” she says, glaring at him.
He ignores the sarcasm. “Did you talk to the other guys about Griffon’s cases?”
She slams a palm down on her desk top in frustration. “When the hell are you going to give me credit for having brains? Of course I talked to them. They all say they found nothing suspicious.”
“Okay,” he says equably. “Just asking. See you around.”
He waves, goes back to his office to pick up his cap, and starts out. He takes an uptown bus, knowing it’s going to be a long trip, but relishing the opportunity to look out the windows at the crazy city he loves, for reasons he cannot define. Also, the ride will give him time to think.
Cone knows very well there are cubbyhole offices on Wall Street where one honest man sits alone and shuffles billions of dollars in pension funds by telephone. There are also glitzy offices, with ankle-deep rugs and abstract and impressionist paintings on the walls, that are no better than bucket shops and will be down the tube as soon as the SEC gets wise to their shenanigans.
Despite all that, he still believes in making on-the-site inspections when working a case. Appearances may be deceiving—but not always. Sometimes you can get an accurate impression of a company’s probity just by seeing where the
y’re headquartered.
After getting off the bus at Fifty-seventh Street, Cone walks over to the main offices of Clovis & Clovis, just west of Lexington Avenue. They’re in a building that seems to be all glass, sloping inward with a graceful swoop. You hit that façade in the right place, Cone figures, and the whole thing will come tumbling down, filling the street with broken glass, like a gigantic shattered windshield.
Clovis & Clovis occupies nine floors, and the reception room seems just a little smaller than Grand Central Terminal. There are plenty of people sitting and standing around, waiting, so Cone has no worries about wandering about to inspect the big blowups of color photographs, propped on easels, showing Clovis & Clovis properties.
He stands before one labeled HEADQUARTERS OF NEW WORLD ENTERPRISES, INC. It looks like a waterfront warehouse, two stories high, and appears to be the size of a football field. No address is given on the photo label, but Cone reckons that won’t be hard to find.
“May I be of service, sir?” a chirpy voice says at his elbow.
He turns. A flashy blonde is giving him a beamy smile. She’s wearing an office uniform of purple jacket and heliotrope skirt. Cone takes off his leather cap.
“Why, I hope so, ma’am,” he says. “I’ve got a brownstone on West Seventy-third I want to sell, and I was hoping to talk to someone here about making a deal.”
“Oh, my,” she says in her girlish voice, “I do think you’d do better to write us a letter. Or go through a broker.”
He nods gravely. “Very good advice, ma’am. I guess I’ll do just that.”
“’Bye now,” she says, and sashays away.
He stops at the receptionist’s desk on the way out. It is occupied by another flashy blonde in purple and heliotrope.
“Ma’am,” he says, “do you have a business card for New World Enterprises? I’d like to write them a letter.”
“Certainly, sir,” she chirps, handing him one. “It’s in Brooklyn. That’s across the river, you know.”
“Yes’m,” he says. “Always has been.”
He takes a final look around. If the reception room is any indication, the offices of Clovis & Clovis are nothing less than sumptuous. The place is all buttery rugs, vanilla Swedish furniture, soft lighting, and wallpaper music. It could serve as a stage set for “Corporate America 1980s style.” Cone wonders if the whole thing is struck at nightfall and carted off to a theatrical warehouse.
Timothy Files Page 2