“You’re talking shit,” Angelo says, smothering his French toast with butter and syrup and beginning to wolf it down. He talks with his mouth full. “How long do you think it would take Fat Lonny to find out what’s going on? He’s no dope. Then he’ll want to know why we didn’t cut him in, and our ass is in a sling. Just forget about it, will ya, and let me finish my breakfast in peace. No more stock deals with Sally Steiner. As soon as the papers are ready, we’re moving in on her. And that’s final.”
“If you say so, Vic. You’re the boss.”
They finish their food in silence, then light up cigars from Mario’s gold Dunhill. When they get up to leave, Corsini stays behind a moment to inspect the check. He leaves enough cash on the table to cover it, with a generous tip.
They exit from the hotel together. Their Cadillac is still parked in front of the marquee.
Corsini slaps his jacket pocket. “Shit,” he says, “I must have left my lighter on the table. I’ll be right back.”
He reenters the hotel. Vic Angelo gets into the front seat on the passenger side. He has closed the door when a young man comes out from between parked cars behind the limousine. He’s wearing a black raincoat with the collar turned up and a black slouch hat with the brim pulled down.
He walks swiftly to the Cadillac. He pulls an automatic pistol from the pocket of his raincoat. He sticks his arm through the open window and fires four rapid shots into the startled face of Vic Angelo.
Then he walks quickly to a car double-parked north of the hotel. He gets in. The car pulls away.
The doorman, hearing the shots, comes running from the lobby. Mario Corsini comes running from the hotel. Pedestrians come running from all directions. They peer into the front seat of the limousine where Vic Angelo lies sprawled in a fountain of blood, still spouting. His face and half his head are blown away.
“Oh, my God,” the doorman cries.
“I saw who done it,” someone shouts. “It was a guy in a black raincoat.”
“Call the police,” someone yells.
“There’s never a cop around when you need one,” says Mario Corsini.
Sally Steiner wasn’t born yesterday; after watching TV reports and reading newspaper accounts of the assassination at the Hotel Bedlington, she makes a shrewd guess at what actually went on and who’s responsible. It’s no skin off her teeth. Let the bastards kill each other; she couldn’t care less.
The only thing that concerns her is how the death of Angelo is going to affect the future of Steiner Waste Control. She doesn’t have to wait long to find out. Three days after the murder, she gets a call at the office from Mario Corsini.
“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.