The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (6 page)

“Yeah, whatever you say, Max,” said Lehman, with no warmth in his voice.

“Maybe you should develop a stammer, like Dillman,” said Cilento, the grip tightening. Lehman looked at the hand on his shoulder. It was big and wide, the nails neatly clipped, the flesh soft and white. Each finger wore a large, gold ring and the four rings had the collective appearance of a knuckle-duster. Cilento wouldn’t have to hit hard to do a lot of damage.

“Diff’rent strokes,” said Lehman. “I always find that my boyish charm pays off.”

Cilento nodded and released his grip. “Just keep it up, Danny boy,” he said, slipping the sales orders off Lehman’s spike and taking them back to his table. Cilento had a glass-panelled office in the far corner of the room but he rarely used it, preferring instead to be with the salesmen.

The young man in an LA Lakers sweatshirt who’d been standing up for the last three days and who’d probably be out of a job by the end of the week, put his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone and called out, “Conrad Morgan?”

“That’s me,” shouted Dillman. In the boiler room, no one used their real name with the punters. Lehman finished his Diet Coke and he lobbed the can through the air towards a wastepaper-basket. It smacked into the rim and then slipped in with a clatter. One of the young slammers clapped his hands and yelled “Two points!” and Lehman stood up to take a bow. He needed a caffeine boost, he decided, and went over to the small kitchenette where the coffee machine was and poured himself a styrofoam cup of black coffee. Dillman finished his call and came up to put a croissant in the microwave. As he waited for it to heat up he asked Lehman how he was getting on.

“Doing okay,” said Lehman. “I think Cilento is trying to work up a grudge match between the two of us.”

“He’s a charmer, isn’t he?” said Dillman. “If it wasn’t for his brother I doubt that they’d let him within a mile of an operation like this.” Dillman folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the storage cupboard where the men kept their tea and coffee supplies. With his tweed suit and wool tie Dillman looked more like a small-town schoolteacher than the first-rate slammer that he was.

“Yeah. He wants me to copy your stammer.”

Dillman laughed and ran his hand across his balding head. “Well, Dan, it’s never f-f-f-failed m-m-m-me.”

The microwave dinged and Dillman took out his croissant. “Well, back to the grind,” he said.

Lehman sipped his hot coffee and surveyed the room. Cilento had a telephone receiver pressed against his ear as he flicked through the lines, listening in on the salesmen’s conversations to check that they were following the sales pitches. One of the younger slammers was working his way through a list of mineral-right holders that Cilento had bought from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, knowing that investors who’d dabbled in minerals once could usually be persuaded to invest again. Another was reading the
Wall Street Journal
and circling comments which he could use when talking to his clients. Another amateur, thought Lehman. Any slammer worth his salt should have read the
Journal
, the
Financial Times
and scanned the financial wire services before he even sat down at his desk.

Lehman felt no guilt about taking money from punters. In his opinion all he was doing was taking advantage of their greed. Most of the time he was simply telling them something they already wanted to hear: that there was a quick, simple way to riches that didn’t involve hard work or taking risks. If they believed that, well, as far as Lehman was concerned, they deserved everything they got. It wasn’t that he was totally amoral. Lehman would never do anything to harm a child or lie to a nun, but he regarded practically everyone else in the world as fair game. There were times when he pictured himself as a sleek shark carving through shoals of small, silver fish, twisting and turning and swallowing them whole. If the small fish weren’t fast enough or smart enough to get the hell out of the way, then they deserved to be eaten. That was the way of things. The law of the jungle. Just as the shark feels no remorse for the prey it rips apart, so Lehman never worried about the people he took money from. With one exception. He would never, under any circumstances, defraud a fellow Vietnam veteran. Whenever he was delivering his sales pitch he’d check the mark out to make sure that he hadn’t done a tour of duty in Nam, and if he had, Lehman would gently steer him away, making sure that Cilento wasn’t listening in on the line. Lehman himself wasn’t exactly sure why he was like that, though he knew it had something to do with the camaraderie he felt with the men he’d fought with, the fact that he’d been to the edge with them, the fact that he’d come back totally unscathed when so many of his friends had come back in body bags or with limbs missing. “Lucky” Lehman they’d called him in Nam, because of the number of times bullets had cracked by him and mortars had exploded into craters only yards away from his helicopter. The nickname had been appropriate, but it came loaded with bitterness, too, because most of the time the bullets and the shrapnel that missed him ended up causing the death of others. Mortar shells would miss him but instead blow apart grunts that had just left his Huey. Tracers would go zipping past the Plexiglas window of his Huey only to rip through the helicopter behind him. Lehman had been lucky, of that there was no doubt, but those around him often didn’t share in his good fortune, and after a while he began to regard the “lucky” tag as a curse. If he’d bothered to speak to a psychologist about how he felt when he’d returned to the States he’d probably have identified him as suffering from a bad case of survivor’s guilt, but Lehman never felt the need to talk over how he felt with anyone. He was totally self-contained emotionally and unwilling to share his feelings with anyone, which is why he was pushing himself so hard in the boiler room. He had two failed marriages behind him and two ex-wives who were both chasing him for alimony payments. He earned big bucks pushing non-existent investments, but he spent big, too.

Dillman flicked a switch on his console and called out, “Call on line six for Michael Glenn.”

“That’s me,” said Lehman, lobbing his empty coffee cup into the waste-paper bin.

“Name’s Komer. Rob Komer. From Albany.”

Lehman sat down at his desk and pulled out Komer’s reference card. Michael Glenn was the name he used for oil and gas investments, in particular non-existent oil-wells in Texas. Lehman had obtained Komer’s name from a junk mail shot offering free investment advice and according to the details on the card he had about 185,000 dollars to invest. Three days earlier Lehman, or Michael Glenn, had persuaded him to part with 125,000 dollars, though the cheque hadn’t arrived yet.

Lehman switched on to the line. “Rob, how’s it going?”

“Fine, Michael, just fine. Though I’m starting to have second thoughts about Lone Star Oil and Assets.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Rob. You were lucky to get in on the ground floor on that one. We’re turning investors away now. I can’t tell you how enthusiastic the response has been to that company. You made a real good decision there. I reckon you’re showing a profit of almost 15,000 dollars already. That’s more than ten per cent, and your cheque hasn’t even been cashed yet. You did send the cheque, didn’t you, Rob? I’d hate for you to have missed out on this.”

“Oh yeah, I sent the cheque as soon as I was off the phone to you. It should be with you today. But I gotta tell you, Michael, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve done the right thing.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt on that score. I could sell your interest today for 15,000 dollars more than you paid, though you’d have to pay two sets of dealing costs. You’d show a small profit, but Rob, Lone Star Oil and Assets is going to keep going up, I can assure you. If I were you, I’d stick along for the ride. The 15,000 dollars you’ve made so far is nothing to the profits you’ll be able to make. Doesn’t it make sense to take a bigger profit than a smaller one?”

“I suppose so,” said Komer hesitantly. Lehman could hear another voice in the distance, as if someone was standing next to Komer, then the line went quiet as if he’d put his hand over the receiver.

When Komer’s voice came back on the line, he sounded less hesitant. “The thing is, Michael, my wife thinks that I shouldn’t be putting all my eggs in one basket, investment-wise. She thinks I should spread my money around.”

“Rob, I don’t know how much your wife knows about financial markets, but I know that my wife always leaves decisions on that score up to me. Wives are always on the conservative side, you know that. They’re not as good as we are at taking risks, they prefer to play it safe. But Rob, we both know that there’s a time for playing safe, and a time when you’ve just got to go for the big one. It’s a judgment call, and in my opinion you’ve called this one just right. Tell your wife you’ve already made 15,000 dollars profit and that there’s more to come. She should be proud of you, Rob.”

“Yeah, I told her that,” said Komer. “But she’d rather sell now and spread the money around. She says I should have used some of the money to pay off the mortgage on our house, what with interest rates being so high and all.”

Lehman shook his head. God save me from interfering wives, he thought. Damn the woman. He heard Komer’s muffled voice arguing with his wife but the man’s hand was over the receiver again and he couldn’t make out what was being said. He could guess, though.

The next voice he heard on the line was a woman’s. “Hello, Mr Glenn. This is Tracey Komer, Rob’s wife.”

“Yes, Tracey. I guess Rob has told you how well he’s done with his oil investment. He’s showing a real good profit after just three days. You guys should be celebrating.”

“Well, naturally I’m pleased that the investment has gone up, but I personally feel that we’d be safer if we had the money in the bank rather than in more speculative investments.”

“I could understand that if you were showing a loss, but that’s not the case, is it? You’ve already made 15,000 dollars and as I told your husband, there are investors queuing up to buy into this company. We’re having to turn them away. Your husband was lucky to get in when he did.”

“That’s good, Mr Glenn. You shouldn’t have any problem in selling our interests to another investor then. Could you do that for us, please?”

“I could, Tracey, of course I could. But I’d sincerely recommend that you hold on to the investment, I really would. I’m sure it’ll continue to appreciate.”

“I’m sure it will, but that money represents almost all of the inheritance my husband received from his late father’s estate. I don’t know if he told you, but he’s in a wheelchair and he can’t work. We need that money, it’s all we have.” Lehman heard Komer’s voice protesting in the background. “He has to know, Rob,” he overheard Tracey say. “Sometimes you’re just too stubborn. Too proud.” To Lehman, she said, “Mr Glenn, we just want our money back.”

“Believe me, Tracey, that money is as safe as if it were in the bank. In fact, the way some of our Californian banks are going, it’s probably safer in Texas.”

“That’s probably right, but we need to have that money where we can get it at short notice. We need a totally risk-free investment, Mr Glenn. Rob has other problems, too, problems that mean he can’t work. He hasn’t been able to work since he came back from Vietnam.”

Lehman went cold. “Vietnam?” he said.

“He stepped on a mine, Mr Glenn. He’s lucky to be alive.”

“He didn’t tell me,” said Lehman.

“He doesn’t like people to know that he’s handicapped, Mr Glenn. He’s a proud man.” Her hand covered the receiver again and Lehman heard a muffled argument.

“Mrs Komer?” he called. “Mrs Komer? Are you there?”

“I’m here, Mr Glenn. I was just talking to my husband.”

“Can I speak with him please, Mrs Komer?”

“We’ve already made up our minds, Mr Glenn. We just want our money back.”

“I understand that. But could I please speak to your husband.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr Glenn,” she said coldly. “I think you’ve said more than enough to him already.”

Her voice was firm but polite, and Lehman could tell that she was not a woman who could be talked into, or out of, anything. She’d make a damn good slammer. “Mrs Komer, I promise I won’t talk him into anything. I was in Vietnam, too. I’d just like a word with him, that’s all.”

“Well …”

“Please, Mrs Komer.”

She agreed, reluctantly, and handed the telephone to her husband.

“Michael, I’m sorry about this,” Komer began to say, but Lehman cut him off.

“Rob, why the hell didn’t you tell me you were in Nam?”

“It’s not something I volunteer, you know. I’m not exactly proud of what happened to me. And I don’t want to be treated like some sort of cripple. The fact that I’m in a wheelchair shouldn’t make any difference to the way I get treated. I mean, I know it does, but at least on the phone no one can tell that I’ve got wheels instead of legs.”

“Shit, man. I wish you’d told me. When were you in country?”

“Sixty-seven, ‘68,” said Komer. “I got hurt on April Fool’s Day, 1968. Khe Sanh. Like Tracey said, I stepped on a mine. We were on Route 9, to the west of Ca Lu.”

“Marines, huh?”

“Yeah, I was with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. You were at Khe Sanh?”

“Not in ‘68. But I was there in 1970. I was a chopper pilot.”