Dempster laughs, flashing the fangs again. “Of course he did! But he rarely got caught. And when he did, he would admit it, grin, and people would forgive him. Because he had so much charm. He was the most charming man I’ve ever known. And I’m not saying that just because he was my brother.”
“And his opponents in business deals-did they forgive him when he cut corners?”
“That I doubt. I told you he made enemies. But of course I can’t speak firsthand. I never had any business dealings with Jack. We went our separate ways.”
“What kind of business are you in, Mr. Dempster?”
“You didn’t know?” the other man says, surprised. “Corporate public relations. Not a great number of clients because I prefer to keep this a one-man operation. I am not an empire builder the way Jack was. None of my clients are what you might call giants of industry, but they stick with me and pay their bills promptly. That’s all I ask.”
“What sort of things do you do?” Cone asks. “Turn out press releases? Plant photos and bios of clients? Sit in on planning sessions for new products?”
“Ah,” Dempster says, relighting his pipe, “I see you know the business. Yes, I do all that, but I suppose my most important function is keeping my clients’ names out of the newspapers after they’ve pulled some exceptionally stupid stunt or gotten fouled up in their personal lives.”
“Yeah,” Cone says, “there’s a lot of that going around these days. How well did you and your brother get along?”
Dempster sets his pipe down carefully. “We weren’t as close as we might have been, I suppose. We had such a small family. Our parents are dead, and our few aunts, uncles, and cousins are all out in South Dakota. We should have been closer. And now Jack is gone. I’d say our relationship was cordial but cool. We didn’t socialize much. An occasional dinner when he could make it; he was an extremely busy man. And I’d spend a weekend up at their summer place now and then.”
“You ever do any public relations for Dempster-Torrey?”
“No, and I never made a pitch for that account. I didn’t want anyone accusing Jack of nepotism. And besides, Dempster-Torrey has a very effective in-house PR department. So it was better all around if I stayed away from my brother’s business.”
“Uh-huh,” Cone says. “Well, you promised to cooperate, and you have. Thanks for your time.”
“If there’s anything else I can do to help, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”
“I’ll do that. Nice dog you’ve got there.”
Dempster turns to stare at the picture on the wall. “Had,” he says in a stony voice. “He was hit and killed last year by a drunken driver who came over the curb while I was walking King along Central Park South.”
“Jesus,” Cone says, “that’s tough.”
“I dragged the guy out of his car,” David Dempster goes on, “and kicked the shit out of the bastard.”
Again that bonecrushing handshake, and Cone gets out of there. He goes down to the icy lobby, takes off his jacket, and steps out into the steam bath. The heat is a slap in the face, and he starts slogging back to John Street wondering if he’ll survive in the office where Haldering amp; Co. air conditioners, all antique window units, wheeze and clank, fighting a losing battle against the simmer.
He has an hour to kill before his appointment with Simon Trale, Chief Financial Officer of Dempster-Torrey, and he knows there are things he should be doing: checking with Davenport on the homicide investigation; goosing Sid Apicella to get skinny on the balance sheet of David Dempster Associates, Inc.; gathering evidence to back up his grand theory on who’s responsible for the campaign of sabotage.
He starts by reviewing his recent conversation with David Dempster. Timothy knows very well that he himself is a mess of prejudices. For instance, he’ll never believe a man who wears a pinkie ring, never lend money to anyone who claims to have finished reading Silas Marner, never letch after a woman who, on a bright day, wears sunglasses pushed up in her hair.
Silly bigotries, he acknowledges, and he’s got a lot of them. And the morning meeting with David Dempster has added a few more. The orotund voice and precise diction. The fanged smile with all the warmth of a wolf snarl. The showy way he loaded his pipe, as if he was filling a chalice with sacramental wine. Wearing a vest on the hottest day of the year and then festooning it with a heavy gold chain from which a Phi Beta Kappa key dangled.
All minor affectations, Cone admits, but revealing. The man comes perilously close to being a poof, or acting like one. Whatever he is, Cone suspects, there is not much to him. Beneath that confident, almost magisterial manner is a guy running scared. Prick him and he’ll deflate like a punctured bladder of hot air.
Except … Except … In David Dempster’s final words, regarding the drunken driver who killed his dog, he said in tones of uncontrolled savagery, “I kicked the shit out of the bastard.” That shocked Cone, not because of the act or the words describing it, but that it was so out of character for someone he had tagged as a wimp, and a pompous wimp at that.
It’s a puzzlement, and Timothy decides to put David Dempster on hold, not that the guy is obviously a wrongo, but only because no one else questioned up to now has given off such confusing vibes. Like all detectives, Cone tends to pigeonhole people. And when he can’t assign them to neat slots, his anxiety quotient rises.
The interview with Simon Trale is held in the offices of Dempster-Torrey on Wall Street. Trale elects to meet Cone in the boardroom, a cavernous chamber with a conference table long enough to sleep Paul Bunyan. It is surrounded by twenty black leather armchairs, precisely spaced. On the table in front of each chair is a water carafe, glass, pad of yellow legal paper, ballpoint pen, and ashtray-all embossed with the corporate insignia.
“I brought you in here,” Trale says in a high-pitched voice, “because it was swept electronically about an hour ago. The debuggers won’t get to my office until this afternoon, so I thought it would be safer if we talked in here.”
“Yeah,” Cone says, “that makes sense.”
He wonders if they’re going to sit at opposite ends of that stretched slab of polished walnut and shout at each other. But Trale pulls out two adjoining chairs along one side, and that’s where they park themselves.
The CFO is a short guy. In fact, Cone figures that if he was a few inches shorter he’d qualify as a midget. Usually a man so diminutive will buy his clothes in the boys’ section of a department store, but Trale’s duds are too well tailored for that. He’s wearing a dark blue pinstripe with unpadded shoulders and side vents. His shirt is sparkling white, and he sports a paisley bow tie. Small gold cuff links. A wide gold wedding band. A gold Rolex. Black tasseled loafers on his tiny feet.
He’s got a full head of snowy white hair neatly trimmed. The white hair is understandable because Timothy guesses that Simon Trale is pushing seventy, if he’s not already on the downslope. But his movements are sure, and that reedy voice has no quaver.
“Mind if I smoke?” Cone asks.
“Go right ahead,” Trale says. “The doc limits me to one cigar a day, but it tastes all the better for that.”
“When do you smoke it-at night after dinner?”
“No,” Trale says, smiling. “First thing in the morning. It gets the juices flowing.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
“I don’t mind. I’ll be seventy-three next year.”
“I should look as good next year as you do right now,” Cone says admiringly. “No aches or pains?”
“The usual,” the little man says, shrugging. “But I still got my own teeth, thank God. I use reading glasses, but my hearing is A-Okay.”
“How come you’re still working?” Cone asks curiously. “Doesn’t Dempster-Torrey have a mandatory retirement at sixty-five?”
“Sure we do. But Jack Dempster pushed a waiver through the Board of Directors allowing me to stay on. You know why he did that?”