Timothy's Game by Lawrence Sanders Read Free Book Online Page B

with $2,500 in cash and the name and phone number of her stockbroker.
    “Stick with me, kid,” she tells Paul, kissing his cheek, “and you’ll be wearing diamonds.”
    “I prefer emeralds,” he says.
    She goes back to the office, pondering her next move. She’s walking from her parking slot when she meets Anthony Ricci. The kid is wearing tight jeans and a Stanley Kowalski T-shirt, and he looks beautiful.
    “Hey, Tony,” Sally says. “How’s it going? You like the job?”
    “No,” he says with his 100-watt smile, “but the money is good.”
    “All money is good,” she tells him. “The loading—you can handle it?”
    “Sure,” he says. “I’ve done worse. Maybe someday I’ll be a driver—no?”
    “Why not? We have a lot of turnover. Hang in there, kiddo.”
    She goes into her office, parks her feet on her desk, and tries to figure how to paw through the Bechtold garbage without endangering Steiner Waste Control. She decides she can’t do it by herself. She’s got to use fronts, some bubbleheads who won’t have a glimmer of what she’s doing. She looks out the window and sees Terry Mulloy and Leroy Hamilton wheeling onto the tarmac to dump their load. “Oh, yeah,” Sally breathes.
    The next morning, at breakfast, Jake Steiner says to his daughter, “You better take your car. I’ll be gone all afternoon. I got things to do.”
    “Sure, pa,” she says. “I’ll drive in.”
    They don’t look at each other. She knows about his “things to do.” He’s going to shtup his twist in Brooklyn.
    He drives to the dump in his Cadillac and she follows in her Mazda. By the time she arrives at the office, Jake is on his second cigar and third black coffee. He’s also nibbling on a tot of schnapps from a bottle he keeps in his desk.
    “You’re killing yourself, pa,” Sally says.
    “Tell me about it,” he says, not looking up from his Times.
    She keeps glancing out her window, watching for the big Loadmaster crewed by Mulloy and Hamilton. Finally, a little after noon, she sees it coming in. She knows the guys are going to take their lunch break. She grabs her shoulder bag and goes running out. She has to wait until they wash up in the locker room.
    “Hey, you bums,” she says. “Want a free lunch?”
    “Whee!” Leroy says. “Christmas in May. What’s the occasion, Sally baby?”
    “She wants to make nice-nice,” Terry says. “I told you she’d come around eventually.”
    “This is strictly business, you schmuck,” Sally says. “Come on, let’s go over to the Stardust.”
    She picks out a table in a back corner of the diner. They give Mabel their order: three cheeseburgers, home fries, cole slaw, and beer.
    “Can either of you guys get hold of a pickup or a van?” she asks them.
    They look at each other.
    “What for?” Mulloy says.
    “It’s a special job. I need a pickup every Tuesday and Thursday. I want you to load it with the barrels of Bechtold Printing scrap, drive out to my house in Smithtown, and leave the barrels in the garage. The next Tuesday or Thursday when you bring the new barrels out, you pick up the old ones and bring them back here to the dump for baling. Got that?”
    “What’s this all about?” Terry asks.
    “It’s about an extra hundred a week for each of you. In cash. Off the books.”
    They think about that awhile, chomping their cheeseburgers.
    “I got a cousin with an old, beat-up Chevy van,” Hamilton says slowly. “I could maybe borrow it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Probably get it for five bucks a shot and gas.
    “I’ll pay,” Sally says promptly. “However you want to work it. Just get those Bechtold barrels out to Smithtown twice a week. I’ll rig your Tuesday and Thursday schedules so you’ll have plenty of time to make the round trip. Maybe one of you better stick in town on the big truck, and the other guy makes the drive out to the Island in the van.”
    “But we get a hundred each?” Mulloy says.
    “That’s right. Per week. Cash.