Timothy Files

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Right.”

  “So it was the job that took him to Union Square. Joe, drop Constance Figlia for the time being. I’d like you to concentrate on the Fourteenth Street area. Check all the banks around there. Try to find out about applications for new accounts in the last couple of months. Especially if Clovis and Clovis or New World Enterprises, Inc., tried to open one.”

  “Holy Christ,” Joe Washington says, “how do I do that? A black walks in, flashes the ivories, and says, ‘May I look at your new account applications, please?’ They’ll call the blues. You know that, Tim.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you’re right. But try it anyway. Show them your credentials and come on strong. If that doesn’t work, here’s another possibility: Go to Sid Apicella and get him to tell you the names of his contacts at all the big credit agencies. You know banks use those outfits just like department stores. Maybe you can find out if some bank in the Union Square area asked for a credit check on Clovis or New World.”

  Washington considers that. “It might work,” he says, “but I doubt it.”

  “Maybe. But then, on the other hand, we could be doing something right. Do you believe in Divine Retribution?”

  “Oh, hell yes,” Joe Washington says. “My wife.”

  Timothy doesn’t laugh. “Well, I think we got a kind of retribution going here. These are not nice people. They got money and reputation and social status—and all that shit. But they don’t play by the rules.”

  “You believe in the rules, Tim?”

  “Sure, I believe in the rules. If you don’t, then you’ve got no game at all, do you? It’s just a mess. I spent three years of my life with no rules, and I didn’t like it. I want rules. Standards. If you can’t measure up, get off the world. That’s what we’re dealing with: people who won’t follow the rules. Fuck ’em!”

  “If you say so,” Washington says, looking at him queerly.

  After Joe leaves, Cone wanders down the corridor to the office of Louis Kiernan. Cone lounges in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, until the paralegal looks up from the papers he’s working on.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Lou,” Cone says, “what exactly is a dummy corporation?”

  Kiernan sits back and peers at the Wall Street dick over the tops of his reading glasses. “A dummy corporation? A legal entity, usually chartered by a state. But it’s a fake corporation. It doesn’t do any legitimate business.”

  “Why do people set them up?”

  “A lot of reasons. To avoid personal liability. For tax purposes. Maybe even to register a name.”

  “But they’re legal?”

  “They’re legal as long as the proper fees and taxes are paid, and the proper reports filed. That’s all the state and federal government are interested in.”

  “When do they become illegal?”

  “When they’re caught. There are innocent dummy corporations, I suppose, but generally they’re set up for fast wheeling and dealing, like hiding profits from the IRS or claiming a tax loss—stuff like that.”

  “But if a dummy corporation shows a profit, it has to pay taxes, doesn’t it?”

  “You better believe it. Unless the owners want to go to the clink.”

  “And anyone can set up a dummy corporation?” Cone persists.

  “Anyone,” Kiernan assures him. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but you don’t even need a lawyer. If you get the proper applications and all the other bumf, you can do it yourself. Thinking of setting up one?”

  “Not today. Thanks, Lou.”

  The whole thing exploded so suddenly that, thinking it over later, Cone decides there was no way he could have avoided the confrontation. It’s true he’s a guy with a short fuse and a radioactive temper, but in this case he was goaded into it, he tells himself.

  Like all experienced cops and private investigators, he knows that when you have multiple suspects, you zero in on the one with the criminal record. Christian charity has nothing to do with it; the recidivist rate does. The guy with the sheet is odds-on to be the perpetrator because that’s all he knows how to do.

  So Timothy sticks to Anthony Bonadventure like a leech, picking him up at his brownstone late in the morning, tailing him to lunch with Grace, following him to the banks with Constance Figlia, and then shadowing him in the evening when he meets with his coven of bentnoses who, for all Cone knows, might be plotting to kidnap the Statue of Liberty and hold her for ransom.

  He’s sitting in his rented Honda outside a snazzy French restaurant on East Fifty-second Street. Inside, Bonadventure and Grace Clovis are probably lunching on snails and brains and sipping a fine chablis. Cone is eating a Coney Island red-hot piled high with mustard, relish, sauerkraut, and peppers. He bought it from a sidewalk vendor, along with a can of cherry cola.

  He’s finished this repast and is trying to get the mess off his fingers and the stains off his lap with a paper napkin, when his two targets come out of the restaurant. Cone is double-parked across the street and watches. He sees immediately that there’s trouble in paradise.

  Grace is staggering, flopping around like a marionette with broken strings. Bonadventure is trying to support her, practically dragging her toward his silver Chrysler, standing in a No Parking zone. But Mrs. Clovis will have none of it. She struggles, twists away, breaks free, starts wobbling down the street. Anthony catches up with her, swings her around, and slaps her jaw, a heavy blow with all his shoulder behind it. She almost falls, but he grabs her.

  Cone gets out of the car and runs across the street. When he comes up to them, they’re waltzing around like a couple of drunken sumo wrestlers. By this time a dozen pedestrians have stopped to watch the action—from a distance. No one is interfering.

  “May I be of help?” Cone asks pleasantly.

  “Fuck off,” Bonadventure snarls at him. “It’s none of your goddamn business.”

  “But it is my business, sir. I am a paid-up member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Women, and if you attempt to strike this lady again, I shall have to restrain you.”

  “What?” Anthony says, astonished. “You some kind of a nut or something? This is a private matter, so butt out. She’s had a little too much to drink, that’s all.”

  Meanwhile he is holding on to Grace tightly, both arms wrapped around her. Cone sees her eyes are dulled, her head lolling on a limp neck.

  “Ma’am,” Timothy says in a loud voice, “would you like to get away from this man? I can drive you home.”

  “Yes,” she says in a faint voice. “Please.”

  “Turn her loose,” Cone orders Bonadventure. “I’ll take her home.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Anthony demands loudly. “Let’s see your credentials.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Cone says. He pulls up his right trouser leg, showing the ankle holster with the short-barreled Magnum. “Will that be satisfactory?”

  Bonadventure looks down. His eyes widen. Slowly he loosens his grasp on Grace. Cone steps in quickly, puts an arm about the woman’s waist, begins to move her gently toward the Honda.

  “I’ll get you, you prick,” Bonadventure yells after him. “I’ll find out who you are and demolish you, you no-good shit.”

  Cone stops and turns back. “Want to start now?” he asks. “You think you can take me? Be my guest.”

  The two men stare at each other, eyes locked. Then Anthony turns away.

  “He’s crazy!” he yells at the small mob of rubbernecks who have gathered to watch this incident. “The guy’s a weirdo! Someone call the cops.”

  Then he runs to his LeBaron. Cone gets Grace across the street and into the Honda. She is dopey but functioning, remembers her home address, mumbles her thanks.

  By the time he gets to the tower on Third Avenue near Eighty-fifth Street, she’s revived enough to sit up straight, look at her face in the rearview mirror, feel cautiously along the line of her chin.

  “He clipped you a good one,” Cone says. “It’ll probably be discol
ored tomorrow. You can cover the bruise with makeup.”

  She turns sideways on the passenger seat to stare at him. “Who are you?” she asks.

  “Sir Galahad,” he says. “Looking for the Holy Grail. Why don’t you dump that miserable crud?”

  “I’ve got no one else,” she says dully. “Thanks for the lift.”

  She leans forward suddenly to give him a peck on the cheek, then gets out of the car and clacks across the street on her high heels. Cone watches her go, thinking that if he ever smacked Samantha on the jaw, she’d cut his balls off. But Sam isn’t a victim and never will be.

  He figures that little set-to with Bonadventure ends his, Cone’s, effectiveness as a shadow. With Joe Washington canvassing banks in the Union Square area, Timothy reckons his best bet is to concentrate on Constance Figlia and Stanley and Lucinda Clovis, and try to discover what those tykes are up to.

  The prospect doesn’t set his blood atingle. He’s depressed at how small all these people are, despite the big money involved. They have no quality. The cash is strong, but the people are weak. The guy out at Vincent Figlia’s home backed off. Anthony Bonadventure backed off. Grace Clovis said helplessly, “I’ve got no one else.”

  Stanley and Lucinda Clovis seem to be prisoners of their own selfish wants, and who the hell knows what drives Constance Figlia? Greed, probably. What disturbs Timothy Cone most is that none of these characters have any spine. He’d prefer staunch opponents willing to stake their lives on their sins, go down in a blaze of gunfire because no matter how rotten they might be, their pride demands they stand up for their evil.

  The cheapness, the flimsiness of these people diminishes his own role. It’s one thing to have the job of defusing a horrendous bomb, when the slightest, tiniest miscalculation could be your last. It’s another thing to be required to quench a wee firecracker. Even if it went off, it would go “Pop.”

  Sometimes Cone feels like an old-fashioned whitewing, sweeping up the world’s garbage and droppings. Nothing exciting, glamorous, or rewarding there. But still, it’s a job that must be done—by someone. Why it should be him, and how he got to where he is now, he cannot understand.

  Brought low by these mournful reflections, he still has the self-discipline to drive down to Clovis headquarters on East Fifty-seventh, hoping to get a line on Constance Figlia or Stanley and Lucinda. They may be worthless people, but he’s convinced they’re breaking the rules, and that’s sufficient reason for this essentially puritan man to keep working.

  “You didn’t!” Samantha Whatley wails.

  “I did,” Cone says, after telling her of his run-in with Anthony Bonadventure. “First of all, I didn’t want to sit there and watch the woman get bounced around. And also, I wanted to try the guy, to see what I’m up against. I found out. He’s got no moxie. All mouth.”

  “And if he hadn’t backed down?”

  “Then I probably would have.”

  “Oh, sure,” Sam says, staring at him. “You really are an asshole—you know that? Anyway, I’m glad it went no farther than it did.”

  “Well,” Cone says uncomfortably, “we may have a little problem there.”

  They’re drinking dark Michelob in Samantha’s chintzed and ruffled apartment after a dinner of beef stew—to which Sam added a strong dose of chili.

  “All right,” she says, sighing, “let’s have it. What’s our little problem?”

  “After Bonadventure made a dash for his car, I’d bet he grabbed a pen and made a note of the Honda’s license number. No trick at all to see it’s a rental car, and with his bucks and contacts he can bribe the right people to find out that it’s rented to Haldering and Company.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Sam says despairingly.

  “Not to worry,” Cone reassures her. “If Clovis complains, Hiram can fuzz it over by saying the employee who was driving the car was not authorized to be in that area, and he’s been reprimanded or canned. No problem.”

  “That’s what you say,” Sam says bitterly. “You’re really a world-class troublemaker.”

  “But you love me,” he says with his quirky smile.

  “Yeah,” she says, “like a cobra loves a mongoose. What other nasty surprises have you got for me?”

  He tells her what he’s learned from Davenport, and how Sid is checking the out-of-state banks used by Clovis & Clovis subsidiaries.

  “And what has Joe Washington found out?” Sam asks, looking at him narrowly.

  “Oh,” he says, flummoxed, “you know Joe’s been working with me?”

  “Will you give me credit for some brains?” she yells. “Of course I know it. Don’t ever get the idea that I don’t know what’s going on in that office, buster, because I do. But I can’t keep covering your ass if you don’t play straight with me. So no more secrets—okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Liar,” she says. “Tell me something—honestly now: Why did you try that High Noon face off with Bonadventure? He could have pounded you to a pulp. You never would have drawn your gun on him.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Listen, I just don’t like people who think they own the world. Bonadventure, the Clovises—they all figure their money entitles them to shoulder everyone else out of the way. All their ego comes from things: bucks, new cars, expensive homes. But I tell you they’re hollow people. Breathe on them hard and they blow away. Like Bonadventure. That lad will have a few scars before I get through with him, I promise you that.”

  She sighs. “Tim, you scare me when you talk like that.”

  “Look,” he says earnestly, “as far as I’m concerned, those people are evil. The only way to beat them is to prove to them that they can feel pain like ordinary mortals, maybe even die if they don’t straighten up and fly right.”

  “Who the hell are you—an avenging angel?”

  “No, I’m just an ex-grunt who’s eaten enough dirt to last me a lifetime. Dying isn’t so bad; everyone’s got to do it. And once you realize that, it gives you a big edge on those scumbags, because they think they’re going to live forever.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “You bet your sweet ass I do. And speaking of your sweet ass … ?”

  “What if I say no?”

  “I’ll accept that. Are you going to?”

  “Are you out of your mind? Let’s go!”

  She’s in a wild mood, and he takes his cue from her frenzy. It’s a fight to a draw: no winner, no loser, but both satisfied with their private combat, convinced it’s something special that neither will ever find again with anyone else.

  After, he becomes suddenly subdued and tender, kissing her ribs, stroking her hard thighs.

  “Christ!” she gasps. “I swear to God you’re mellowing out.”

  “Maybe I am,” he admits. “Want me to stop?”

  “Hell, no! But after all that shit you were giving me, this is a new Timothy Cone I’m seeing. Just keep it up, kiddo; I love it.”

  So they lie quietly, not speaking, just touching, feeling, embracing sweetly: a new kind of intimacy for them, and something both find wondrous, though neither would admit it.

  He imagines what his life would be like if he spent the rest of his days with this splenetic woman. She ponders if she might dare a lifetime with this violent, crabbed man who may be a loner—but not entirely from choice.

  Finally, ignited again, they come together in a different mood: all murmurings and soft twistings. They couple in a drugged tempo, slow and lazy, as if this night might last forever.

  Later, drowsy and satiated, they lie entwined, peering at each other with dazed eyes. They say nothing of what has happened, not wanting the moment to slip away—as it inevitably does.

  “It’s late,” he says. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I suppose,” she says. “I’ve got something for you. I wasn’t sure I should give it to you, but I think I will. It may help on the Clovis-Evanchat case.”

  “What is it?”

  “I told you that you
should read the society pages occasionally. You know what a house tour is? Well, every now and then a charity will arrange a tour of rich people’s homes, usually on the East Side. You buy a ticket and the money goes to the charity. In the Times today, it listed a tour that included the Clovis triplex. Wanna go?”

  “Why not? Give me a chance to see how the other half lives.”

  “I’ll get a ticket for you.”

  She pulls on a flannel robe and they each have another beer while he dresses. She watches him strap the holster to his shin.

  “You really need that thing?” she says.

  “It’s just for show. Besides, I’d feel naked without it.”

  “You ever use it?” she asks.

  “It impressed Bonadventure,” he says, not answering her question.

  Their farewell is strained. Something has changed, but neither can define it nor understand. So they keep their parting short and light. A quick kiss. A hurried embrace.

  He drives home through deserted streets to his empty loft. Cleo comes growling up to rub against his legs, but it doesn’t help.

  Wakes up with a hacking cough. Decides, for the 1974th time, that he’ll cut down on the coffin nails. Gives Cleo fresh water and the remains of a can of tomato herring. Has a cup of instant coffee and his first cigarette of the day, proud of himself for waiting so long.

  Gets to work on time—a miracle. Joe Washington, waiting in his office, is amazed.

  “What happened?” he asks. “Insomnia?”

  “Very funny,” Cone growls. “What have you got?”

  “Nada,” Joe says. “I braced every bank within ten blocks of Union Square. They all kicked my ebony ass onto the street. Applications for new accounts are confidential, and I can’t get a look at them without a court order. That’s the way I thought it would go.”

  “Yeah,” Cone says, “you’re right, but it had to be done.”

  “So I figured to try Sid. To get the names of his contacts at the credit agencies, like you said. But he was busy. I’ll hit him again, but I don’t think this is going to work, Tim. We just don’t have the muscle to get that kind of information.”