Timothy's Game by Lawrence Sanders Page B

for dinner and whose turn it is to do the cooking.
    She can see the intimacy between them, a warm bond that may be fondness, may be affection, may be love. Whatever, each completes the other. They are easy together, and no strains show. There is a privacy there, and Sally finds it disturbing. For that kind of sharing is a foreign language to her and yet leaves her feeling cheated and bereft.
    The stock of Trimbley & Diggs, Inc., is going up, up, up, and Sally is ecstatic. When it hits seven dollars, she has Paul Ramsey buy another 9,000 shares.
    She also notes the trading volume of T&D is increasing as the value of the stock rises. She figures there’s either an inside leak at Snellig Firsten Holbrook or the arbitrageurs have ferreted out the takeover and are looking to make a bundle. So is Sally. And so, apparently, is Mario Corsini. He calls her at home, late at night, a week after their talk in her office.
    “Good tip,” he says, his raspy voice revealing neither joy nor enthusiasm. “You buying more?”
    “Thinking about it.”
    “How high do you think it’ll go?”
    “Who knows?” she says. “Ten. Twelve maybe.”
    “Twelve?” he says cautiously. “If it hits twelve, you think I should bail out?”
    “Hey,” she says, “I’m not your financial adviser. I gave you a good tip. What you do with it is your business. And what about my business? What’s going to happen to Steiner Waste Control?”
    “I’m working on it,” he says. “Listen, one of the reasons I called: Tony Ricci will be late for work tomorrow. There’s a family funeral, and I want him to be there. He’ll show up around noon. Okay?”
    “I guess it’ll have to be,” Sally says. “It’ll screw up my truck schedules, but I’ll work it out.”
    “You do that,” Corsini says. “And if you get any more tips, let me know.”
    He hangs up abruptly, leaving Sally staring angrily at her dead phone. It infuriates her that she’s enabling that gonnif to make even one lousy buck. It’s she who’s breaking her nails digging through garbage from Bechtold Printing. All Corsini has to do is call his broker.
    She drives to work early the next morning, checks in at the office, then crosses Eleventh Avenue to the Stardust Diner. Terry Mulloy and Leroy Hamilton are seated at the back table. Both men are working on plates of three eggs over with a ham steak, a mountain of home fries, a stack of toast with butter and jelly, and coffee with cream and sugar. Sally joins them.
    “You’re both going to have coronaries,” she says, and tells Mabel to bring her a plain bagel and a cup of black coffee.
    It’s payoff day, and she slips each man an envelope under the table.
    “I thank you kindly,” Hamilton says, pocketing his hundred. “And the best part is my wife don’t know a thing about it.”
    “How long is this going to last?” Mulloy wants to know.
    “Till I tell you to stop,” Sally says. “What’s the matter—getting all worn out, poor baby? I can always find two other imbeciles to handle Bechtold Printing.”
    “Nah,” Leroy says, “no call to do that. We like the job, don’t we, Terry?”
    “Well, yeah,” the redheaded harp says. “The money’s good, but I’d like to know what’s going down. I don’t want to get my ass busted for a hundred a week.”
    “You worry too much,” Sally says. “You know those three monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. That’s the way you monkeys should be.”
    At about the same time, a silver gray Cadillac limousine pulls into a No Parking space in front of the marquee of the Hotel Bedlington on upper Madison Avenue.
    “What’re we stopping here for?” Angelo asks.
    “Vic,” Mario Corsini says, “we got plenty of time to get downtown for the meet. I figured we’d grab some breakfast. You like it here. The French toast—remember?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Angelo says. “Good idea.”
    They get out of the car. The uniformed doorman comes forward, and Corsini slips him a