Lawrence Sanders - Timothy's game

“I’m driving out to your place tonight,” he states. “About twelve. You’ll be there?”

“Sure,” she says. “Sorry about Angelo.”

“Yeah,” Corsini says. “He was an okay guy.”

The prospect of being alone with that mobster at midnight is not a prospect that fills her with glee. She puts her loaded pistol in the top drawer of the desk. She doesn’t think he’ll try any rough stuff, but still. …

It’s a balmy night, and she’s strolling around the front lawn when the silver gray Cadillac pulls into the driveway a little after twelve. Sally goes back to the lighted porch and waits for Corsini to come up.

“Still got the same car,” she observes.

“Yeah,” he says. “I had to have the front seats re-covered.”

In the den, she offers him a drink, and this time he accepts. She hasn’t any Chivas Regal, but he takes a snifter of Remy Martin. That was Jake’s favorite, and no one has touched the bottle since he died.

“I’m taking over from Vic,” Corsini announces. “It’s been cleared. I don’t want you coming to Ozone Park, so from now on you’ll make your monthly payments to Tony Ricci, and he’ll deliver. I’m bringing him along slowly. He’ll be my driver one of these days.”

“My monthly payments?” Sally says. “Does that mean I keep the dump?”

“For the time being,” he says coldly. “Just keep running it the way you have, and we’ll see. You got another stock for me?”

“No. Not yet.”

He takes a sip of his cognac. “You better be extra nice to that boyfriend of yours,” he advises. “Figure it this way: As long as you keep coming up with inside tips that pay off, that’s how long you’ll own Steiner Waste Control. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Yeah, sure; it isn’t all that complicated.”

“Well, now you know where you stand. I like everything open and aboveboard.”

“Uh-huh,” Sally says.

He sits back in the armchair, beginning to relax. He crosses his knees, inhales the aroma from his glass of brandy.

“Now about that Trimbley and Diggs stock,” he says, watching to catch her reaction. “Right now I’m holding about a hundred thousand shares.”

“What!”

“You heard me. A hundred thousand. But don’t get your balls in an uproar. I only bought nine thousand in my own name. The other buys were made by friends of mine around the country. They’ll get a cut of the profits. And none of them bought more than nine thousand shares each, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I hope you’re right,” Sally says nervously, biting at her thumbnail. “Jesus, you must have well over half a million tied up in that stock.”

“About,” he says carelessly. “I had to borrow to get up the kale. And the people I borrowed from wouldn’t like it if I stiffed them. So I’m going to start taking some profits.”

“Oh, my God!” Sally says despairingly. “Don’t tell me you’re going to dump a hundred thousand shares all at once? It’ll kill the market.”

“Whaddya think-I’m a klutz? Of course I’m not going to dump it all. I’m selling off little by little. It won’t hurt the stock price. But I want to see some money. Enough to pay off the sharks. How much you in for?”

“As much as I can afford,” Sally says. Then she figures she better prove her confidence in T amp;D. “I had eighteen thousand shares,” she tells him, “and bought another nine this morning. Through a friend.”

“That’s smart,” he says, nodding. “You really think it’ll go to twelve bucks a share?”

“Now I think it may go to fifteen. It’s a leveraged takeover, and from what my boyfriend tells me, it’s going through.”

He finishes his drink, sets the crystal snifter carefully on the desk. He stands up to go.

“Just remember what I told you,” he says. “Your family keeps the business as long as you keep coming up with cash cows. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

“Oh, sure,” Sally says, “that’s really fair.”

At the front door, he pauses and turns to her. He reaches out to stroke her cheek, but she jerks angrily away, and he gives her a mirthless smile.

“You’re some woman,” he says. “You’ve got guts. I’d teach you how to be nice, but I don’t want to ruin what you’ve got going with your Wall Street guy. That’s where our loot’s coming from, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t answer. Just glares at him. She watches until he gets in the Caddy and drives away. She goes back into the den and stares at his empty brandy glass. Enraged, she backhands it off the desk, hoping it will shatter into a hundred pieces. But it bounces harmlessly on the shag rug, and she leaves it there.

She sits stiffly in the swivel chair, thinking of what happened. After a while she cools, and the fact that he came on to her seems small potatoes compared to the fact that the stupid prick has sunk over a half-mil on a stock tip. Suddenly she strikes her forehead with a palm and groans.

Feverishly she digs out the most recent issue of Standard amp; Poor’s Stock Guide. She looks up Trimbley amp; Diggs, Inc., and follows the numbers across to the column headed Capitalization. As she feared, T amp;D is very thinly capitalized. There is no preferred stock and only about 800,000 shares of common stock outstanding.

Then she begins laughing. It’s possible that there’s an insider leak at Snellig Firsten Holbrook, and it’s possible that arbitrageurs have learned of the leveraged takeover and are buying T amp;D for a quick profit. But it now seems obvious that the run-up of the stock’s price is mostly due to Sally buying 27,000 shares and Mario Corsini buying almost 100,000 shares.

Unknowingly, the two of them have been manipulating the goddamn stock! She can’t stop laughing, but eventually sobers long enough to realize that their manipulation can work both ways. If Corsini is liquidating his holdings, she better do the same. Take the money and run-before the whole thing blows away like a house of cards in a sudden belch.

So she unloads her first purchase of 9,000 shares the next morning, making a profit of about $36,000. She gives Paul Ramsey his 5 percent, and he looks at the cash in bemusement.

“Cool,” he says.

“I told you my sister is a financial genius,” Eddie tells him. “She’s a lousy cook, but she knows money.”

So everything’s coming up roses, and looking even better on Tuesday night when Sally, digging through the latest delivery of Bechtold Printing trash, finds smeared proofs on the letterhead of Pistol amp; Burns. There’s a merger in the works between two food processing companies, one small, one big and cash-rich.

Sally smiles grimly. That should keep Corsini happy until she can figure a way to get that murdering punk out of her life-permanently.

Timothy Cone looks up the telephone number of Edward Steiner, West 47th Street, in the Manhattan directory and calls from the loft.

“Mr. Steiner?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Our name is Silas Farthingale. We are the director of client data for the Carlton Insurance Company. A Miss Sally Steiner has applied for a single-premium annuity policy with Carlton. It pays a death benefit, of course, and Miss Steiner has listed you as one of her beneficiaries, giving us your name and address. Unfortunately, she neglected to fill out the space in which the relationship should be stated. We have attempted to contact Miss Steiner, but she seems to be out. We wonder if you’d be willing to state your relationship to Miss Steiner so her application can be processed as expeditiously as possible.”

“Sure,” Eddie says, laughing. “I’m her brother.”

“We thank you very much, Mr. Steiner.”