Timothy's Game (34 page)

“But not you,” she says, stroking his bristly hair. “You think everything happens for the worst.”

“Not everything,” Cone says.

I
T NEVER OCCURS TO
Cone that Samantha Whatley doesn’t want to be seen with him in public because he dresses like a refugee from Lower Slobbovia. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to run the risk of being spotted by an employee of Haldering & Co., and then their rare liaison will be trivialized by office gossip.

So their trysts are limited to her gentrified apartment in the East Village or his scuzzy loft in a cast-iron commercial building on lower Broadway. That’s okay with Timothy; he’s a hermitlike creature by nature, and perfectly willing to play the game according to her rules.

So there they are in her flossy apartment on Sunday night, August 8th, gnawing on barbecued ribs and nattering of this and that.

“When are you going to take your two weeks?” she asks him.

“What two weeks?”

“Your vacation, you yuck. When do you want to take it?”

He shrugs. “Makes no nevermind to me. Anytime.”

“Well, I’m taking off on Friday. I’m going home.”

He ponders a moment. Then: “You’re flying on Friday the thirteenth?”

“Best time. The plane will be practically empty. I don’t want you tomcatting around while I’m gone.”

“Not me.”

“And try to cut down on the booze.”

“Yes, mother. Who’s going to fill in for you at work while you’re gone?”

“Hiram himself.”

“Oh, Jesus!” he says, dropping his rib bone. “Don’t tell me that while I’m eating.”

On Monday morning after Sam leaves, Cone wanders to work an hour late, as usual. He finds two file folders on his desk: assignments to new investigations. He flips through them listlessly; they look like dullsville to him. One concerns a client who’s invested a nice chunk of cash in a scheme to breed miniature horses. Now, with his money gone and the phones of the boiler shop operation disconnected, he wants Haldering & Co. to locate the con men and get his investment back. Lots of luck, Charlie.

The second case concerns a proposed merger between two companies that make plastic cocoons for scores of consumer products—the kind of packaging that breaks your fingernails and drives you to stabbing with a sharp paring knife to open the damned stuff. One of the principals wants a complete credit check on the other. Instant ennui.

Cone tosses the folders aside and finishes his breakfast: black coffee and a buttered bialy. He’s on his second cigarette when his phone rings. He picks it up expecting a calamity. That’s always safe because then a mere misfortune arrives as good news.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Cone? Hiram Haldering. Come here at once, please.”

He was right the first time. It’s usually a calamity when H.H. says, “Please.”

He slouches down the corridor to the boss’s office, the only one with two windows. The bright summer sunlight is bouncing off fatso’s balding pate, and he’s beaming and nodding like one of those bobbing dolls in the back windows of cars driven by morons. But at least his two air conditioners are wheezing away, so the room is comfortably cool.

Which is providential because the visitor, who rises when Cone enters, is wearing a black three-piece suit that looks heavy enough to be woven of yak hair. He’s a tall, cadaverous gink with a smile so pained it surely seems his drawers must be binding. The hand he gives to Cone when they’re introduced is a clump of very soft, very shriveled bananas.

“This is Timothy Cone,” intones Hiram Haldering. “He is one—and I repeat
one
—of our experienced investigators. Cone, this gentleman is Mr. Omar Jeffreys.”

“Of Blains, Kibes and Thrush,” Jeffreys adds. “Attorneys-at-law.”

Everyone gets seated, and H.H. turns to the lawyer.

“Mr. Jeffreys,” he says, “will you explain to Cone what it is you want.”

“It is not what
we
want,” the other man says. “Oh, dear me, no. Our desires are of no import. We merely wish to present, to the best of our abilities, the wishes of our client.”

“Yeah, well,” Cone says, “who’s the client?”

“For a number of years Blains, Kibes and Thrush, P.A., has provided legal counsel to an Oriental gentleman, Mr. Chin Tung Lee. He is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of a corporation that processes and markets a variety of Chinese foods under the White Lotus label. You are, perhaps, familiar with the products?”

“Oh, hell yes,” Cone says. “Lousy grub.”

“Cone!” Haldering shouts indignantly.

“Well, it is,” he insists. “Take their chicken chow mein, for instance. My God, you can hardly find the meat in it. They must be using the same chicken for ten years. So what I do is buy a small can of boned chicken and add it to the chow mein. That makes it okay. Even my cat loves it.”

He ends triumphantly, and the other two men stare at him glassily.

“Very interesting, I’m sure,” the attorney finally says. “But I do not believe the ingredients in White Lotus chicken chow mein are germane to this discussion. Mr. Chin Tung Lee is presently faced with a financial problem outside the expertise of Blains, Kibes and Thrush. He wishes to employ the services of Haldering and Company, and I am authorized to conclude an oral agreement, prior to the execution of a written contract that will finalize the terms of the aforementioned employment.”

“Why didn’t he just pick up the phone and call us?” Cone wants to know. “Or come over here himself?”

“Mr. Lee is an elderly gentleman who, unfortunately, has been confined to a wheelchair for several years and is not as physically active as he would like to be. He specifically asked for your services, Mr. Cone.”

“Yeah? How come? I never met the guy.”

“He is a close personal friend of Mr. Simon Trale of Dempster-Torrey, and I believe it was Mr. Trale’s recommendation that led to Mr. Lee’s decision to employ Haldering and Company, and you in particular.”

“And I’m sure he’ll be happy with our services,” Haldering booms. “We guarantee results—right, Cone?”

“Nah,” the Wall Street dick says. “No one can do that. Mr. Jeffreys, you said that Lee has a financial problem. What is it?”

“I’m afraid I am not at liberty to reveal that at this particular time. Our client wishes to discuss the matter with you personally.”

“Okay,” Cone says equably. “If he wants to play it cozy, that’s fine with me. How do I get hold of him?”

The attorney proffers a business card. “This is the address on Exchange Place. It is the corporate headquarters of White Lotus. On the back of the card you will find a handwritten telephone number. That is Mr. Chin Tung Lee’s private line. Calls to that number will not go through the company’s switchboard.”

Cone takes the card and stands. “All right,” he says, “I’ll give him a call and find out what his problem is. I also want to tell him to put more chicken in his chow mein.”

He shambles back to his office, digs through the mess in his desk (what’s a stale package of Twinkies doing in there?), and finally roots out an old copy of Standard and Poor’s Stock Guide. He looks up White Lotus.

The corporation, listed on the OTC exchange, sells packaged Chinese foods to consumers, restaurants, and institutions. It is capitalized for slightly over two million shares of common stock, no preferred. It has no long-term debt. It has paid a cash dividend every year since 1949. What is of particular interest to Cone is that the price range of the stock for the past fifteen years has varied from 31 to 34, never below, never above.

Similarly, there has been little change in the annual dividend rate. White Lotus stock is currently yielding slightly over 5 percent. Its financial position appears exemplary: high assets, low liabilities, and a hefty bundle of surplus cash and cash equivalents.

All in all, it seems to be a solid, conservative outfit, but maybe a bit stodgy. It sounds like the kind of stock Chinese widows and orphans would love to own: a nice 5-percent return come wars, inflation, or financial foofarows. No one’s going to get rich trading White Lotus, but no one’s going down the drain either. So what could their financial problem be?

“Ah so,” Cone says aloud in a frightful Charlie Chan accent. “It is written that when icicles drip on the mulch bed, the wise man hides his peanut butter.”

He then dials the direct line to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of White Lotus. But when Mr. Chin Tung Lee comes on the phone, he sounds nothing like Charlie Chan. And nothing like an invalid confined to a wheelchair. His voice is strong, vibrant, with good resonance.

He says he will be happy to see Mr. Timothy Cone in an hour, and thanks him for his courtesy. A very polite gent.

Cone plods down Broadway to Exchange Place. It’s a spiffy day with lots of sunshine, washed sky, and a smacking breeze. Streets of the financial district are crowded; everyone scurries, the pursuit of the Great Simoleon continuing with vigor and determination.

But as he well knows, Wall Street is usually a zero-sum game: If someone wins, someone loses. That’s okay; if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And thinking that makes him smile because once, not too long ago, Samantha was bitching about how difficult it was for women to rise to positions of power on the Street. To which Cone replied, “If you can’t stand the heat, go back in the kitchen.” She kicked his shin.

The corporate offices of White Lotus are in a lumpish building that looks in need of steam cleaning. The frowsy lobby is vaguely Art Deco, but the old elevators still have operators—which has become as rare as finding a shoeshine boy or paperboy on the streets of Manhattan.

Timothy, a fast man with a stereotype, figures the offices of any outfit that sells canned chop suey are going to look like a joss house: carved teak furniture, brass statues, and paneled silk screens. But the offices of White Lotus are done in Swedish modern with bright graphics on the walls and, on the floor, a zigzag patterned carpet that bedazzles the eye.

The receptionist—female, Caucasian, young—phones and says Mr. Lee will see Cone in a few minutes. The Wall Street dick spends the time inspecting a lighted showcase in the reception room. It contains packages of all the White Lotus products: noodles, fried rice, chop suey, chow mein, pea pods, water chestnuts, soy sauce, fortune cookies, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots. Cleo would approve.

It really is no more than two minutes before he is ushered into the inner sanctum. Lee’s personal office is a jazzy joint with not a hint of any Oriental influence or even the slightest whiff of incense. It’s all high-tech with splashes of abstract paintings and clumpy bronze sculptures that look like hippopotamus do-do. There’s a mobile hanging from the high ceiling: a school of pregnant pollack in flight.

“You like my office, Mr. Cone?” Chin Tung Lee asks in his boomy voice.

“It’s different.”

Lee laughs. “My wife decorated it,” he says. “I admit it took some time getting used to, but now I like it. My son says it looks like a garage sale.”

He presses buttons on the arms of his electric wheelchair and buzzes out from behind the driftwood desk to offer a tiny hand.

“So pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” he says. “Mr. Trale has told me a great deal about you and what a fine job you did for Dempster-Torrey.”

“That was nice of him,” Cone says, shaking the little paw gently. “You and Trale old friends?”

“Please sit down there. I insisted I have at least one comfortable chair for visitors. As you can see, my chair is mobile, but I must sit on a Manhattan telephone directory to bring me up to desk level.”

He laughs again, and Cone decides this guy is the most scrutable Oriental he’s ever met. Timothy flops down in the leather tub chair, and Lee whizzes around behind his desk again.

“Oh, yes,” he continues, “Simon and I have been friends for many, many years. We play chess together every Friday night.”

“And who wins?”

“I do,” the old man says, grinning. “Always. But Simon keeps trying. That is why I admire him so much. Mr. Cone, I received a phone call from Mr. Jeffreys of Blains, Kibes and Thrush. He informed me that he has negotiated a satisfactory service contract with Haldering and Company, and that you have been assigned to our case. I was delighted to hear it.”

“Thanks,” Cone says. “So what’s your problem?”

“Before I get into that, I’d like to give you a little background on our company.”

“I got all the time in the world,” Cone says. “You’re paying for it.”

“So we are. Well, I’ll try to keep it mercifully brief. I emigrated from Taiwan—called Formosa in those days—in 1938, just before the beginning of the war. I had been waiting several years to get on the quota. At that time it was extremely difficult for Asians to enter the United States legally.”

“I can imagine.”

“However, eventually I did arrive. I came to New York and, with the aid of relatives already here, started a small business on Mott Street. It was really a pushcart operation; I couldn’t afford a store. I sold Chinese fruits and vegetables. Well, one thing led to another, and now I own White Lotus. A typical American success story.”

“You make it sound easy,” Cone says, “but I’ll bet you worked your ass off.”

“Eighteen hours a day,” Lee says, nodding. “In all kinds of weather. Which is probably why I’m now chained to this electric contraption. But the family members I eventually employed worked just as hard. The pushcart became a store, offering poultry and meats as well as vegetables. That one store became four, and we began selling prepared foods. And not only to local residents but to tourists and uptown visitors who came to Chinatown. They wanted mostly chop suey and chow mein in cardboard containers, so that’s what we sold. It was merely a small step from that to the canning process. We went public in 1948.”

“And the rest is history.”

Chin Tung Lee smiles with a faraway look, remembering.

“Do you know, Mr. Cone,” he says, “I miss those early days. The hours we worked were horrendous, but we were young, strong, and willing. And you know, I don’t think any of us doubted that we’d make it. This country offered so much. If you devoted your life to your business, you would succeed. It seemed that simple.”