“Are you claiming you knew nothing about Ms. Steiner’s illegal activities, Mr. Corsini?”
“Talk to my lawyers, you putz!” the other man screams and hangs up.
Smiling happily, Cone goes back to his unfinished drink, polishes it off, and then returns to the phone to call Samantha Whatley.
It takes almost twenty minutes of sweet talk to soothe Sam into a growlingly genial mood. But finally they’re calling each other “asshole” and “shithead” and planning a Saturday night dinner in the loft. Cone promises to supply pounds of barbecued ribs, a basket of extra-thick potato chips (garlic flavored), and some dill pickles as a green vegetable.
“I’ll bring the dessert,” Sam volunteers.
“Okay.”
“What would you like?”
“You,” he says.
Sally Steiner thinks of it later as Black Friday. It starts bad and gets progressively worse. On the drive into the city, some fucking cowboy cuts her off on the Long Island Expressway, and she almost rolls the Mazda onto the verge.
Then, when she gets to the office, she discovers the air conditioner has conked out, and it’s a bloody hot day. There’s a letter from the bank informing her that a check she deposited, from the guy who buys their baled paper, has been returned because of insufficient funds. There’s also a crusty letter from the IRS telling her that Steiner Waste Control owes an additional $29,871.46 on the previous year’s return, and they better come up with the funds-or else.
She’s on the phone to the IRS for a long time, and when she finally hangs up, sweating, Judy Bering conies in to tell her that Frederick Bechtold has called three times.
“He sounds like he’s got steam coming out his ears,” Judy reports. “He kept shouting in German. All I could catch was verdammt, verdammt, verdammt. It sounded like he wants to feed you into one of his high-speed presses.”
“All right,” Sally says, sighing, “I’ll give him a call.”
Bechtold immediately starts spluttering, roaring, and cursing her in German. She knows enough of the language to recognize some of the words he’s using, and they’re not nice.
“Now wait a minute,” she says, getting pissed off.
“Zo!” he shouts. “I should wait a minute, should I? You, you Dirne, you will wait five years in jail. In prison you will wait.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she demands.
“Oh, yes, oh, yes,” he says furiously. “My best customer you have cost me. And who knows how many more? Maybe all. Because you go through my trash, and you read my first proofs, and then you buy stocks, you Schlampe! You are fired, you understand that? And you will hear from my lawyers. For my loss of business, you will pay plenty, you bet.”
Sally has been listening to this tirade while standing behind her desk. Now, knees suddenly trembling, she collapses into her swivel chair.
“Who told you all that?” she asks weakly.
“Who? I tell you who. A man from the United States Government, that’s who. They know what you have been doing. Oh, yes, they know everything. And you will pay for what you have done. Thirty-six years I have been in this business, and my work is the best. The best! And you, you slut, you have destroyed-”
She hangs up softly and sits slumped forward, forehead resting on the heels of her hands. She tries to make sense of what’s happened, but her brain’s awhirl. Thoughts come, go, jostle, scream for attention, dissolve, return.
The government man he mentioned must have been that creep from the SEC. How did he find out? And if he knows about Sally’s stock trading, then maybe Paul Ramsey is in danger. What can they do to him? What can they do to her? Goddamn it, she’ll fight them! She had no inside knowledge of those deals-exactly. But will they charge her anyway? Make her return the profits and fine her? A prison term? Ridiculous! It was no big deal. How the hell did they find out?
Suddenly frightened-not at possible punishment, but at possible loss of her investments-she phones Paul Ramsey. Thank God he’s in, and she tells him to call his broker immediately and sell everything at the market price. Just unload totally.
“That’s cool,” he says.
“You’ll do it, Paul? Right away?”
“Sure,” he said, and his placidity helps calm her.
She closes the door to her office, and then calls Ivan Belzig, her attorney, and tells him everything. After he stops laughing, he gets indignant.
“And you couldn’t pass the tips along to me?” he says. “What am I-an enemy?”
“Cut the shit, Ivan,” Sally says. “Tell me, what can the SEC do to me?”
“I’ll have to research it,” he says cautiously, “but if you want a top-of-the-head opinion, they can’t do a thing to you. You had no personal contact with any of the insiders who knew about those deals. All you did was use typical American chutzpah. They might want you to return your profits, but we’ll fight that. Listen, they’ve closed down your operation, haven’t they? That should be enough. If you hear from them, don’t tell them a thing, not a thing-you understand? Just tell them to contact me; I’ll handle it. And don’t worry, honey; you’ll come out of this smelling like roses.”
“Thanks, Ivan,” Sally says gratefully, feeling a lot better.
But when she hangs up the phone, she sees Mario Corsini standing in the doorway of her office.
“Thanks for knocking,” she says angrily.
He comes close to the desk, leans forward on whitened knuckles. He stares at her with dead eyes from under the brim of a black fedora.
“Cunt!” he says venomously.
“I can explain,” she starts. “I can-”
“You can explain shit!” he says, voice cold and hard. “A boyfriend on Wall Street, huh? And all the time you’re digging through garbage. I should have known; that’s your style, you no-good bitch. Now I got the SEC on my ass, and who knows what-”
“Listen,” she interrupts desperately, “I just talked to my lawyer, and he says-”
“Fuck your lawyer,” Corsini says, “and fuck you. The SEC works hand in glove with the Federal District Attorney, and he works with the FBI and God knows who else. So now I got the whole fucking government asking questions, like where did I get the money and do I know those guys who invested in other cities, and maybe the IRS is auditing my returns. All because of you, you lousy twat. Vic Angelo warned me this could happen. I should have listened to him. I swear to Christ I could off you right now for what you did to me.
“Hey,” Sally says, “take it easy. You’re imagining a lot of things that might not happen. Maybe you’ll have to give back your profits and pay a fine. That’s no big deal for a hotshot like you.”
“No big deal, huh? And I should tell the sharks that? You got shit for brains? Oh, I’ll work my way out of this, but I’m going to have to grease a lot of people. It’s going to cost me, and guess who’s going to pay?”
She doesn’t answer.
Corsini looks around the office, goes to the window to peer out at the busy tarmac. “Nice place you got here,” he says. “Good business, real estate, trucks. Plenty of assets. The papers are ready, and I’ve got a front lined up to make you a nice offer.”
“I’ll bet,” Sally says stiffly. “But the business isn’t for sale.”
“Sure it is,” Corsini says, taking out one of his twisted black cigars. He lights it and tosses the spent match onto Sally’s desk. “This place is how I’m going to get my money back.”
“But you haven’t lost any money!” she yells at him. “You’ve made money on the tips I gave you. So why are you coming on so hard?”
He leans across the desk and blows cigar smoke in her face. “Because you tricked me,” he says, his face twisted. “You played me for a sucker, you fucking whore. Now’s my turn. You want to go on living, you sell the business; it’s that simple.”
She learned a long time ago that if you show weakness in the world she inhabits, you’re finished. Jake taught her that. “Give ’em an inch, and they’ll take a mile,” he told her. “You gotta stand up to the hardcases. They push, you push back. Otherwise you’re flat on your tuchas, and they’re walking all over you.”