Villiers Touch

by Brian Garfield

  He had no way of anticipating what she might answer. Her smile changed; she tipped her head toward him, the fall of her hair swaying. She was one of the most exquisite creatures he had ever seen.

  After a while she said, “It might not be a good idea.”

  “I didn’t mean to step on anybody’s toes.”

  “Not that. But I don’t think I want to—” Whatever she had meant to say, she didn’t finish it; instead, she tossed her head quickly, her eyes flashed at him with some kind of sudden resolution, and she said in a different voice, “It might be fun.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Why not?”

  He found himself grinning; he said, “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

  “It will be better if I meet you at the restaurant,” she said.

  “Fine. The Bourgogne suit you? Eight o’clock?”

  She nodded; the smile was quizzical now, speculative. Still grinning, Hastings went out. Halfway to the elevator he realized he was almost loping. He hadn’t felt this good in months.

  5. Mason Villiers

  Villiers stepped out of the rickety old elevator and walked the length of a narrow hallway. He knocked at a door and looked at his watch—just short of two-thirty. He stood without patience waiting for the door to open. Sometimes it was an irritant to him, his sexual imprisonment: he needed women frequently—sometimes two or three times in a day, when he was tense with the pressures of corporate juggling.

  He knocked again and put his ear close to the door. He could hear the rapid clicking of a typewriter. Finally it stopped, and after a moment he heard Naomi’s voice, close to the door, husky and cross: “Who is it?”

  “Mace.”

  “Who?”

  “Mace Villiers.”

  She opened up, and hands impudently on hips, cocked her head to glare. “I’m in the middle of a chapter. Why didn’t you telephone?”

  “Ran out of small change. Anyhow, a telephone’s always long distance.”

  “You Goddamned sex maniac.” She looked him up and down with slow insinuation and stepped back to let him in.

  She was a small, tight-packed, spider-waisted girl, fluffy and blond. She had huge china-blue eyes and a soft, heavy mouth. She wore a yellow dress, not quite chic because it had strong-seamed darts around the bustline to clothe her unfashionably big, plump young breasts, which bobbed and jiggled when she moved ahead of him into the large studio apartment.

  Villiers pushed the door shut, indifferent to the surroundings, looking at the girl with desire.

  The typewriter was on a small desk by the window. On the sill were dozens of teen-age girls’ novels, pointedly displayed, all by the same author: Naomi Kemp.

  Villiers said, trying to put some show of interest in his voice, “What are you working on?”

  “A simpering book about a prissy nurse. As if you gave a shit. Really, Mace, you could have picked a better time of day to come charging in.”

  “I’m on my way downtown.”

  “And that explains the whole thing? You just dropped in on your way to Wall Street for a quick bang?”

  “That’s right,” he said, without humor.

  “You’re a one-of-a-kind original, Mace. Don’t you know there’s a speed limit in this town?”

  “If the idea doesn’t appeal to you,” he said, and turned to the door.

  “You’re pitching low and inside,” she complained, and then blurted, “Come back here. You know you turn me into cream pudding. Can’t I be sore for a minute first? I haven’t seen you in months. Not even a postcard.”

  “I’ve never sent a postcard in my life.” But then he smiled at her. “What would you want with a postcard from a man who was too far away to stick it in you?”

  “You’ve got a foul mouth,” she said. “No shit.”

  He peeled back his cuff to look at his wrist. “I haven’t got a lot of time.”

  “You motherfucking bastard,” Naomi said, and stripped off her dress. He could see dark fluff in the translucent crotch of her nylon panties. She wore no stockings. She unfastened her brassiere, leering at him, doing a stripper’s bumps and grinds; she rubbed her back where the bra straps had welted her. He watched unblinking, savoring the milky full richness of her breasts. They were warm, red-brown-tipped; her body was the kind boys conjured up in adolescent masturbatory fantasies. Her breasts were so engorged, so thrustingly assertive, that it was never possible to look at her or think of her without focusing on them. Naked, she kept her arms wide of those proud organs, as if they were swollen to the point of tender soreness.

  The bed, made up for the day with divan throw pillows, waited against the wall. He came to her beside it. She surged her warm breast up full into his palm, meeting his eyes with a sensual smile and quickened breath; she unzipped his fly and put her hand in. He clutched her breast and slid his left hand up her naked back to her neck, and pulled her forward for a kiss. Her lips were moist and parted; she sucked his tongue in her mouth. Her hand caressed his huge muscle-rippled shaft, thick and hard with pumping blood.

  She drew back from his kiss and whispered, “You bastard, haven’t you even got time to take your clothes off? Never mind the window—let the voyeurs watch if that’s how they get their jollies. At least take your Goddamn pants off.”

  She undid his belt buckle and the fly fastener of his trousers, and laughed at him when they fell down around his ankles. He kicked them away, shrugged out of his suit jacket, and pushed her down on the bed. He came down upon her, his fierce mouth on hers. Her arms came around him; her tongue probed him, her hands glided over his buttocks. He bent his head to suckle her soft white breasts. His rigid hot phallus brushed her thighs and found her ready moistness and thrust into her, lunging. She clung to him furiously, sweat-slick and arching herself ecstatically. He plunged and twisted, a hungry strong animal, mauling her around the narrow bed. As her flesh beneath him began its anguished tumultuous throes of completion, he was thinking of tomorrow night, his dinner date with Diane Hastings. Then his own excitement quickened, and he spurted himself into her. A shuddering sigh, and she clutched him tight, her eyes closed, her fingernails sharp against his back, scratching through the silk of his shirt.

  Tension went out of his fibers. He lay across her, limp, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing under him. After a moment he got up.

  She opened her eyes and frowned. He went into the bathroom, spent two minutes, and came out again to put on his pants. Naomi got off the bed, not speaking, not even looking at him; she pulled her panties up and stooped, making herself round-shouldered, to fit her spectacular breasts into the twin hammocks of her bra, hitched it into adjustment, and straightened, elbows spread-eagled, to snap it behind her.

  He got into his jacket and straightened his tie, went to the mirror to comb his hair, and heard her say to his back, “Are you still rich?”

  “Sure.” He turned around to regard her. “You always go with the winner, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I go broke?”

  “Then I’ll find another winner.”

  He smiled. “Anyhow, you’re honest. I’m still rich. Do you need money?”

  “I always do. It takes me ten weeks to write a book, and I only get a fifteen hundred advance on it.” Her mouth twisted, and she added, “Just put it on the bed. That’s the way they do it, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t get sour, I only asked.”

  She said, “When I was thirteen I laid my best girl friend’s old man. I guess I’ve always been a whore. But not for money, Mace. Always for free, for fun. Once in a while they give me something—a bracelet or a watch. But it’s not pay. I never take pay. The difference may not look very important to you, but it does to me.”

  He said, not caring, “I understand. All right, you don’t want anything right now, because that would be too much like taking pay. Suppose we have dinner together, say Thursday night.”

  For some reason he sensed but did not comprehend, she gav
e him an enraged scowl and turned her back, folding her arms. She said in a low tone, “When you invite a girl to dinner, at least you could look as if you cared which way she’ll answer.”

  “I don’t make invitations unless I mean them.”

  “You could look a little less bored.”

  “Suit yourself, then,” he said indifferently, and opened the door.

  When he glanced back, she had turned to watch him; her eyes were too wide and too bright. She said, “God damn you, you think you can come and go like a subway train.”

  He made no answer; he pulled the door shut and walked to the elevator.

  He emerged from the narrow apartment building onto a Greenwich Village street and looked around, planning to ambush a taxi before he saw the limousine and remembered that Sanders was driving him today. He crossed the curb diagonally and got into the luxurious back seat. Sanders had the engine idling and the air-conditioning on; it was cool but stuffy in the Cadillac.

  Sanders, via the rear-view mirror, gave his cowardly apologetic smile and said, “Where to?”

  “Hackman’s office.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sanders looked over his shoulder at the traffic and eased out into the flow. Villiers sat back and frowned at the back of Sanders’ billiard-ball head.

  They stopped for a traffic light, and Sanders cleared his throat. “Sir …”

  “What is it?” Villiers snapped.

  “My mother, sir. She’s ill, and I was wondering if you’d be needing me for the evening. I mean—”

  “I may need you. I’ll let you know.”

  “Yes, sir.” The traffic began to move, and Sanders turned into Seventh Avenue and manhandled the limousine through heavy traffic past St. Vincent’s Hospital, heading downtown toward the financial district.

  Tod Sanders was becoming an annoyance, Villiers thought. For a while it had amused him to put Sanders through hoops.

  Ten blocks farther downtown, Sanders said again, “I’m not looking for a chance to goof off, sir. She really is sick. My mother, I mean. I wish I hadn’t brought her down here from Canada. You know, this stinking hot wea—”

  “Shut up,” Villiers said. “Nothing runs out of listeners faster than a hard-luck story. You ought to’ve learned that by now.”

  “Yes, sir. I suppose. Mr. Villiers, why is it things like this never bother you? What’s the difference between you and me?”

  “Difference? I dominate my world, Tod. Your world dominates you. Now, shut up, I’ve got thinking to do.”

  But the back of Sanders’ head was an irritant that badgered him and kept him from concentrating. Memory took Villiers back to the Alaska oil fields two years ago, when he had met Sanders. He had thought he’d known the man from the past, but Sanders had refused to answer to the name Villiers had addressed him by. Sanders had been a petroleum engineer, thought to be very bright by the oil company that employed him. Thinking Sanders might be of use to him, Villiers had investigated—and found out that the youth he had once known in Chicago had fled a hit-and-run homicide charge and disappeared.

  He had confronted Sanders with it, broken him down with ridiculous ease, and used him to obtain inside information from the oil company, which he had been in the process of raiding.

  Tod Sanders was a small shy man with inky fingernails and a hangdog face. A thirty-four-year-old mama’s boy whose mother became ill every time he got serious with a girl. It had aroused Villiers’ interest, as a coolly scientific experiment, to see how far the man could be pushed without stiffening to retaliate. Evidently there were no limits to the degradation he was willing to suffer. He had been convinced from the moment he was born that the world was too much for him, and Villiers’ harsh treatment of him only provided him with added evidence of that which he was already convinced of. Sanders had become Villiers’ valet, chauffeur, shoeshine boy, and memo pad; he spent his scuffling hours arranging hotel rooms and procuring women for Villiers. He didn’t object to any of it. Sanders never seemed to be taxed by any desire to ask himself why he had to be subjected to such degrading ignominy; and because he was so unresisting, Villiers was sick and tired of baiting him.

  By the time the limousine reached Hackman’s building, Villiers had forgotten Sanders; he was thinking about bigger things.

  The car slid in at the curb, and Villiers glanced upward past the tall buildings at the thick sky which hung heavily masked in vapor. The traffic of pedestrians was a morass of hot bodies, tramping gray sidewalks and narrow streets in an area where every square foot of ground was worth more than six hundred dollars.

  Hackman and Greene were on the nineteenth floor of a building which hadn’t been there three years before. The modern reception foyer reminded Villiers unfavorably of the waiting room of an airport. Beyond lay a collection of cubicles with desks, phones, and typewriters, inhabited by junior salesmen and brokers, secretaries, and the clerical staff. The firm boasted an English receptionist with high breasts and a good London accent, an elegant letterhead on twenty-weight linen bound stationery, and an acronymous cable address for clients abroad.

  George Hackman, one of the big beefy hucksters of Wall Street, was standing by the receptionist’s pretty shoulder, leaning forward, with her telephone at his ear. He nodded to Villiers and went on talking into the phone—evidently the call had caught him here and he had taken it rather than go back to his own desk. Talking and listening on the phone, Hackman was jotting with his left hand in a brass-framed calendar pad on the receptionist’s desk. Villiers noticed Hackman’s brawny forearm brushing the receptionist’s breast as he wrote. The girl had a pretty face but sat with spreading heavy buttocks; Villiers wondered dispassionately why she didn’t wear a girdle.

  Villiers went to the window beyond and looked down at tiny New Yorkers crawling painfully across the hot pavements.

  George Hackman said into the phone, “Bet your ass, Carl. You heard right, Continental’s buying them out. It can’t help but jack up Reuland Express, and Jackson’s gonna suffer from the competition, with all that new capital behind Reuland. So what happens, you go long on Reuland, and you sell Jackson short, got it?… Sure, just give me the word. All right, then, five hundred of each. See you, Carl baby.”

  Hackman handed the phone to the English girl, leered at her, and walked over to Villiers to clap him on the arm; he said heartily, “How they hanging, Mace?”

  Villiers gave him a cool stare. Hackman swallowed his smile and backed up a pace. Over his shoulder he said, “No calls and no visitors until I let you know otherwise,” to the receptionist, and steered Villiers back along a corridor toward the door to his private office.

  “Sidney Isher’s already here,” Hackman said. Villiers went into the office and saw Isher in a chair. The lawyer nodded his red head and coughed. Hackman shut the door behind them and went around to sit behind his desk; he said, “How’d you like the new girl out front, Mace? Class with a capital ‘K,’ boy. She’s a pistol. Christ, I love to watch the way she shifts her carriage.” Hackman grinned and stuck a cigar in his mouth.

  Villiers sat down and looked at him, not speaking. Hackman was big, meaty, hearty, with a broad red-brick face lined with broken commandments. He spoke with the rapid-fire delivery of a used-car salesman. He was the kind of man who believed his life could be measured by his number of old buddies and by his possessions, inside tips, and the athletic accomplishments of his adolescence. He was an after-office-hours alcoholic, casually unfaithful to his third wife, a former showgirl. He lived a lusty routine and threw rowdy parties in his suburban home. Isher had once described him to Villiers as a golfer who lied about his score at the nineteenth hole; it was an accurate thumbnail description.

  Seated in an enormous leather chair behind his desk, Hackman pushed the office intercom button and said, “Honey, never mind that stuff on cocoa futures till later, I’ll be tied up for a while. Go powder your snatch if you want.” He flicked the intercom off and sat back to light his cigar. “Christ, Mace, long time no see. How’s
a Canadian operations? Jesus, I may move up there myself pretty soon; I tell you, they’re running us out of business down here in the Street. The Goddamned Stock Exchange reduced our brokerage fees on big-block trades, down five percent. Going to cost me six thousand dollars in commissions this year.”

  Villiers opened his mouth and said mildly, “Spare me your ululations, George.”

  “The hell. Some broker down on the twelfth floor jumped out his window last week.”

  Villiers shrugged. “Financial wounds aren’t fatal. I’ve never understood bankrupts’ suicides.”

  Hackman exhaled a diaphanous cloud of smoke. “Country club had an antique-car auction last weekend. There was a 1913 Rolls Royce landaulet that went for twenty grand. I thought of you.”

  “I know the car,” Villiers said. “I didn’t come down here to talk about it. What’s the market on Melbard?”

  “The stock’s moving around a little. Up a quarter, down an eighth—I imagine it’s a few casual boys moving in, selling short, and buying it back half a point below, pushing it up and selling it again. Nothing to worry about. It’s all small stuff.”

  Sidney Isher cleared his throat and remarked, “Nobody’s onto you, yet.”

  Hackman said. “I sounded out a bank about underwriting the Nuart Galleries if they go public. They like it. The boy I talked to seemed to think the issue will be oversubscribed the minute it goes on the market. You ought to open with a nice premium, one-fifty or two dollars.”

  Villiers said, “How much will they be getting?”

  “The underwriters? Two and three-quarters percent, and options on ten thousand shares at two bucks above par.”

  “All right,” Villiers said, without excessive interest. “I’m having dinner tomorrow with Mrs. Hastings. You’ll have word from me next morning, either way. She’ll probably come along.”

  “Meaning she’s a woman,” Hackman observed. “You do have a way with them.”

  “When you get word from me,” Villiers told him, “I want you ready to roll fast. Tell the underwriters to give it a good hard sell, like bond salesmen. And we’ll want to put out a nice slick report full of color photographs and expensive artwork on the heaviest coated stock you can buy. We’ll need front men to go out on the circuit, Elks and Lions and Kiwanis and whatever—any of those outfits that need speakers. Send the front men up with literature and lecture material, some off-color stories, plenty of illustrated color slides to sell the company. I haven’t got a year to get this one off the ground.”