Cone shrugs. “Take it for what you think it’s worth. It’s your decision.”
McDonnell leans forward to slam a meaty palm down on the desk. “Goddamn it!” he cries. “You’re holding out on me and I know it. You want to be charged with obstruction of justice?”
“Be my guest,” Cone says. “I’ll be delighted to see you make a fucking idiot out of yourself-if you’re not one already.”
They lock eyeballs, both infuriated. It’s Hamish McDonnell who blinks first. “Can’t you give me anything to go on?” he says hotly. “Anything at all that will make me think you’re just not blowing smoke.”
“Yeah,” Cone says, “I can give you something. Three names. Two guys and a company. They’re all hotshot financial advisers, with pension and trust funds to diddle. They’re the weasels who are financing this scam. There may be others, but these three are in it up to their pipiks.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. You want the names or not?”
The ADA groans. “Give me the goddamned names,” he says.
It turns out that Cone’s ballpoint pen has run dry and he can’t find a clean piece of paper to write on. So his triumph is somewhat diminished by having to borrow McDonnell’s pen and a sheet torn from his pocket notebook.
“You’re a winner, you are,” the ADA says. “How do you get across the street-with a Boy Scout?”
Cone jots down the three names provided by Neal Davenport. “You won’t have any trouble getting addresses,” he tells McDonnell. “They’re all well-known operators on Wall Street. And listen, do me a favor and do yourself a favor, get moving on this fast. These bums are planning another trick. It’s going down right now.”
“Yeah? And how do you know that?”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“Seems to me I’m taking your word for a helluva lot.”
“What do you want-a list of personal references?”
“This is going to take a lot of work, and if-”
“Bullshit,” Cone says. “You pick up these chiselers, sweat them a little, tell them you’ve got all the facts and figures on their smelly deals with David Dempster, and I guarantee at least one of them is going to crack. He’ll spill his guts to wangle a lesser charge. Wall Street villains are not stand-up guys; you know that.”
“If you’re scamming me on all this, Cone, I’m going to come back to this shithouse and personally take you apart. And believe me, I can do it.”
“Maybe,” Timothy says.
Hamish McDonnell rises and buttons his raincoat. He makes no effort to shake hands, and neither does Cone.
“And don’t call me,” the ADA says. “I’ll call you when and if I’ve got something.”
Cone leans back and lights a cigarette. He figures McDonnell for a tough nut who’s not afraid to use the muscle of his office to get the job done. That’s okay; the pinstriped types will find themselves confronted by a heavyweight with none of the deference of their golf club pros or private nutritionists.
He pulls on his leather cap and leaves the office. He discovers the rain has stopped. But the sky is still leaden with drizzle. He curses his stupidity for not having driven to work that morning. He tries to find an empty cab and fails. Damning the weepy day, he starts the long hike back to his loft, convinced there’s no productive work to be done in the office.
It’s true that he persuades other people to do his job for him. Neal Davenport, Jeremy Bigelow, and now Hamish McDonnell-all cooperate, but only because they believe it’s to their own profit. Everyone acts out of self-interest-right? Because self-interest is the First Law of Nature. You could even make out a case that a guy who devotes his whole life to unselfish service-like spooning mulligatawny into hopeless derelicts or converting the heathen-is doing it for the virtuous high it gives him.
But even assuming that no one acts without an ego boost, there’s a very practical problem Cone has in farming out his investigative chores. Once he’s done it, all that’s left for him is twiddling his thumbs-or anything else within reach. No use leaning on his helpers; that would just make them sore and earn him static. So there’s nothing for him to do but be quietly patient-which is akin to asking a cannibal to become a vegetarian.
These rank musings occupy his mind during his sodden toddle back to his cave. There he finds that Cleo, apparently surfeited with garlic salami, has upchucked all over the linoleum.
He spends the remainder of that day futzing around the loft, smoking too many cigarettes and drinking too much vodka. He goes over the caper a dozen times in his mind, looking for holes in the solution. No holes. Then he wonders if another meet with Dorothy Blenke or Eve Bookerman would yield anything of value. He decides not.
In the evening, warned by what happened to Cleo, he shuns the salami and opens a can of pork and beans.
“Beans, beans, the musical fruit,” he sings to the cat. “The more you eat, the more you toot.”
He finishes the can (eaten cold), leaving just a smidgen for the neutered tom, figuring to give the poor creature’s stomach a rest. Then he gets caught up on his financial newspapers and magazines, devouring them with the avidity of a baseball maven reading box scores. Wall Street is his world, and he’s long since given up trying to analyze his love-hate feelings about it.
On Wednesday morning, he calls Samantha Whatley at the office.
“I won’t be in for a couple of days,” he tells her. “I’m sick.”
“Oh?” she says. “Don’t tell me it’s the fantods and megrims again. You pulled that one on me once before.”
“No,” he says, “this time I think I got coryza and phthisis. With maybe a touch of biliary calculus.”
“I’ll tell you what you’ve got, son,” she says. “More crap than a Christmas goose. Hiram was asking about you. He hasn’t seen you around lately and wanted to know if you still worked here.”
“Tell fatso to stuff it,” Cone says angrily. “I’m working the Dempster-Torrey file and he knows it.”
“How you coming on that?”
“Okay.”
She sighs. “I should have known better than to ask. Will you be in tomorrow?”
“Probably not.”
“Friday?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s payday, you know.”
“Well, if I don’t make it, will you pick up my check?”
“No,” she says. “If you want it, do us the honor of stopping by.”
“Now you’re acting like a shithead.”
“Asshole!” she says and hangs up.
He goes out to buy cigarettes, food, cat litter, newspapers, and to replenish his liquid assets. The low-pressure area is still hanging over the city, and the denizens are beginning to snarl at each other. That’s all right with Cone; at least it’s better than everyone giving him a toothy “Have a nice day.”
If it wasn’t for the Dempster-Torrey case, he would have enjoyed that solitary day in the loft. The phone never rings-not even a wrong number-and Cleo snoozes away the hours under the bathtub. Cone rations his drinks carefully, just keeping a nice, gentle buzz as he reads his newspapers, takes a couple of short naps, showers with his stiff brushing and cornstarch treatment, and changes his underwear and socks.
Several times he’s tempted to call Davenport and McDonnell, but resists. He just hopes to God they’re doing their jobs. If not, it’ll take him weeks, maybe months, to bring down David Dempster and put that gonzo behind bars.
Late that night, stripped to his briefs, he’s ready to sack out. He’s got a little high-intensity lamp he uses for horizontal activities. He’s also got his copy of Silas Marner, which he’s been reading for four years now. He’s already up to page 23, and has discovered it’s a better somnifacient than any flurazepam he can buy on the street.
He reads another half-page and has just enough strength left to put the book aside and turn off his lamp.