She flops into her swivel chair, drains her drink, peers into the empty cup. “All right,” she says, “but you didn’t come here just to tell me the story of my life and brag how smart you are. You want something. What is it?”
He looks at her admiringly. “You’ve got the brains of the family,” he says. “I want you to turn and blow the whistle on Corsini. Go to the cops and tell them about the shakedowns.”
“And get my ass shot off,” she says with a sour grin.
“No,” Cone says, shaking his head. “The cops will give you and your family protection. Corsini and his bullyboys won’t dare try anything. No way! They’re shrewd enough to know that any rough stuff would raise a stink strong enough to convict them without a trial.”
“You don’t know them,” Sally says. “They may be smart, but when someone crosses them or plays them for saps, they stop thinking. Then it’s just their stupid pride, machismo, and hot blood. Then all they know is revenge.”
“Bullshit!” Cone says. “Maybe ten years ago, but the new breed are weasels. They’ll rat on their mothers to keep out of the clink. Listen, these guys aren’t like they were in the Untouchables. It just takes one person like you to stand up to them. Then maybe a lot of other people in your business will say enough’s enough, and help the cops put the shtarkers away.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You want to go on the way you’ve been going? Paying a lot to bentnoses just to make a living? What makes you think you’d still have a business?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I told you that the SEC probably won’t bring criminal charges. But what if the SEC and the Federal DA decide you’re not being cooperative? You know what they can do if they want to? Just give the story to the newspapers and TV. It’ll be the talk of Wall Street for at least eight hours. Long enough for a lot of people to decide to bring civil cases against you. Maybe even class-action suits. They’ll say you manipulated the stocks-and there’s something to that. Suppose a guy sold short in Trimbley and Diggs. He lost his stake because you drove the stock up on the basis of what he’ll claim was inside information. The people trying to take over Trimbley and Diggs will probably have to pay a higher price because of what you did. Ditto the ones who bought Wee Tot Fashions. They can all sue if they want to. I’m not saying they’ll collect, but your legal fees to fight those suits could bleed you dry.”
“Oh-ho,” Sally says. “First the carrot and now the stick.”
“I’m just telling you what your situation is,” Cone says. “You may be home free as far as the SEC is concerned, but you’re not out of the woods yet. Those civil suits could demolish you. But if you become the Joan of Arc of the garbage business, I think the cops and the Manhattan DA will pass the word, and those civil cases will be quietly dropped. No one wants to sue the city’s star witness who’s performing a noble civic duty. Think it over. If you decide to play along, give me a call. Haldering and Company on John Street. I know a couple of New York’s Finest. Like all cops they’re hard-ons, but these guys you can trust. Say the word, and I’ll set up a meet.”
Sally makes no reply.
The Wall Street dick rises, pulls on his cap. “Thanks for the belts,” he says. “Take my advice and go to the cops. Do yourself a favor.”
After he’s gone, she sits behind her desk a long time, swinging slowly back and forth in her swivel chair. What Cone said makes a lot of sense-to him. But, smart as he is, he doesn’t know everything. He’s got half the equation. Sally has the whole thing, all the pluses and minuses. And, at the moment, not a glimmer of how to solve it.
She rises, wanders over to the window. Truck No. 2 has just pulled up at the shed to unload. Anthony Ricci swings down from the cab. Sally stares at him a moment, then hurries out of the office.
“Tony!” she yells, and when he looks up, she beckons. He walks toward her smiling and wiping his face and neck with a red bandanna.
“It’s a hot mother,” he says as he comes up to her.
“Yeah,” Sally says, “a killer. Listen, what about that dinner you were going to buy me.”
He looks at her, startled. “You wanna go? Hey, that’s great! How about tomorrow night?”
“Suits me.”
“The joint is Brolio’s on Mulberry just below Grand Street.”
“I know a girl who got screwed on Delancey Street and thought it was Grand. All right, I’ll meet you at Brolio’s tomorrow night. What time?”
“About eight. Is that okay?”
“I’ll be there,” Sally says.
She sleeps late on Saturday morning. It’s almost ten o’clock before she rises and pads naked to the window to peer out. Everything is swaddled in pearly fog, and Sally can’t even see the garage. The house is silent, and the stillness is everywhere: no traffic noises, no bird calls, no distant thrum of airliners. She feels isolated, wrapped in cotton batting, and yearns for a shout or a whistle.
She pulls on jeans and a T-shirt and goes downstairs barefoot to the kitchen. She has a glass of V-8, an English muffin with orange marmalade, a cup of black coffee. She may be awake, but her brain isn’t; she’s moving senseless through a muffled world, unable to concentrate; the fog is in her.
She picks up the Times from the stoop, but can’t read it. She pours herself another coffee, but can’t taste it. She stubs her toe, but can’t feel the pain.
“Zombie,” she says aloud.
It angers her, this dazed feeling of being out of control, and it frightens her. She goes back upstairs to her bedroom and takes a shower as cold as she can endure. She stands under the water for almost twenty minutes, letting the needle spray bounce off her skull, face, shoulders, back, breasts, stomach, thatch, thighs-and start all her corpuscles dancing.
Gradually consciousness returns, confidence is reborn, resolve swells. She dresses again, goes down to the den, sits at her desk. She pulls a pen and scratch pad close and starts doodling, making scribbles: arrows, flowerpots, a radiant sun, stick figures running. She ponders what to do, how to do it, when.
Timothy Cone offered one option: go to the cops and spill the beans. That way she’d be able to hang on to Steiner Waste Control. Maybe she could get her mother and brother out of the city to reduce the danger to them. She has a queasy faith in her ability to protect herself.
A second option is to play along with Mario Corsini, put out for that devil until she can figure a way to fix his wagon for good. She actually considers letting that slob have his way, but then realizes it’s impossible; the first time he tried, she’d vomit all over him; she knows it.
What it comes down to is that both options represent surrender, and that she cannot tolerate. She considers herself capable of coping with a raw, turbulent world. It’s a matter of pride. If she gives up now, then her life is make-believe, and she is pretending to be someone she is not.
What would her father have done? Jake would never run to the cops for help; she is certain of that. Nor would he sacrifice his personal dignity to Mario Corsini or anyone like him. Making payoffs to the mob was distasteful to Jake, but just another business expense. If they had demanded something more, something that would diminish Jake as a mensch, Sally knows what her father’s reaction would have been: He would have died fighting.
It’s an ego thing, Sally decides, and there’s no use denying it. She has bragged (to herself) that she is a woman with the brains and will to succeed in the violent, dog-eat-dog world of savage, scrambling men. If she is defeated now, her self-esteem shattered, she doesn’t want to imagine what her future will be like. No future. None at all.
She draws the number 1 on her pad and strikes it out. Sketches the number 2 and crosses that out also. Then makes a big 3, and stares at it. A third option that did not suddenly occur to her, but has been growing in her mind like some kind of malignant tumor ever since she learned that her Big Chance was down the drain.