The Timothy Files by Sanders Lawrence

Author:Sanders, Lawrence [Sanders, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, thriller, Crime
ISBN: 9781453298480
Amazon: 1453298487
Goodreads: 17318373
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery Thriller
Published: 1987-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

BOOK THREE

A Covey of Cousins

1

WALL STREET, AS EVERYONE knows, is a short, narrow, bustling thoroughfare that runs from a river to a graveyard. But it is more than a passage from deep water to deeper earth.

It is not a street at all, but a community whose backroom workers might toil in Queens, Hackensack, or Peoria. Indeed, Wall Street encompasses the world via a bewildering array of speedy electronic communication equipment: telephones, cables, satellites, facsimile reproduction, television and, faster than all of these, rumors.

Wall Street is fueled by greed and oiled by cupidity. It is a state of mind, a culture, a never-never land with all the hopeful romance of the Roseland Ballroom and the grungy despair of a Bowery flophouse. Men have soared on Wall Street—and not all of them through the nearest window because they guessed wrong.

It is a mystery, even to experienced insiders. It is a rigorous mathematical puzzle and simultaneously the most emotional and irrational of human institutions. Dealers come and go, customers come and go, but Wall Street endures, a series of nesting boxes so enormous, so artfully contrived and frustrating, that no one has ever uncovered the final secret.

Players on Wall Street, addicted to the madness, have coined a number of pithy aphorisms to serve as guides to financial adventures:

“If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.”

“Never panic—but if you do, make sure you’re the first to panic.”

“Happiness can’t buy money.”

There are many fine buildings channeling the Street. Some house prestigious trading firms whose probity cannot be questioned. And then there are concrete barns with stalls for cash cows and others for spavined beasts not worth the feed to keep them alive, although they continue to exist until fatally stricken by Chapter Seven.

It is in one of the thriving establishments just east of Nassau Street, on a nippy Monday morning in mid-December, that the passion, the fervor of Wall Street may be glimpsed in all its crass, exciting glory. For there, on the premises of Laboris Investments, Inc., a throng of the covetous are attempting to follow the dictum of Sophie Tucker: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and believe me, rich is better.”

The outer office is plain enough: plywood walls, plastic plants, and furniture that looks as if it has been rented from an outfit that supplies political campaign headquarters. The air is gummy with smoke, and the two begrimed windows look out on a shadowed airshaft that plunges to a concrete courtyard, bare and cold.

But the people coming through the door in a constant stream care nothing for the surroundings. The light of avarice is in their eyes. Many carry ads torn from newspapers, magazines, and direct-mail solicitations.

There to greet them are three personable employees of Laboris Investments, Inc. The two young men and one young woman wear large badges inscribed: ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE. And below: HI! and their names.

Each new arrival is handed a flier that, in four pages, describes the Laboris investment philosophy and technique.

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