Villiers Touch

by Brian Garfield

  Isher hawked, cleared his throat, and growled, “You give me a pain, Mace.”

  “Take something for it.”

  “Okay, so it’s an offer he can’t refuse. Suppose he refuses it?”

  “Then use pressure. Everybody’s got something in his past he’s a little ashamed of—everybody’s scared of something. Find Rademacher’s soft spot.”

  “I’m no detective.”

  “You can hire them.”

  Isher’s eyelid was winking rapidly with tension. “I don’t like it. You’re getting too ambitious too fast. You can’t just—”

  “Don’t lean, Sidney. I’ve been leaned on by heavier men than you. Just do your job. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  Isher flushed. He slid forward until he was sitting on the edge of his chair. “Hold it right there,” he said, his voice under stern control. “You’re not talking to a six-thousand-a-year lackey. Okay, so I’ve seen you order bigshot executives around as if you were a hung-over topkick yelling at recruits, and they let you do it because you’ve got enough clout to destroy them. You’ve never been bothered by leaving your cleat marks on people’s backs, and I suppose up to a point that’s good—it works, it’s helped you claw your way up to seven figures. But listen to me, Mace, you can’t treat these people the way you treat your boiler-room marks, with that world-is-my-ashtray attitude of yours. And you can’t treat me that way either. I know what you probably think of me, but—”

  “What makes you think I think of you at all?” Villiers inquired, breathing evenly.

  “—but don’t forget I know you pretty well. I make allowances because, hell, a few years ago you could hardly spell Manhattan, and now you’re close to owning it. I’m not such a hypocrite I won’t admit I’m greedy. Okay, so your star’s rising, and I hitched my wagon to it. But this time you’re getting tense, I can feel it myself, and a tense man makes mistakes. Now, you can go ahead and sling insults at me, because I’m used to that, but when it comes to legal counsel, you’re going to pay attention to me. That’s what you pay me for, and I do a good job of it. Now, in this Melbard thing you’ve got ideas fixed in your head and you think you don’t give a damn what I think. But I’m telling you for the good of both of us. You’re taking a plunge in this thing without even knowing if there’s water in the pool. You’re too rigid, Mace—too stubborn. It’s your great weakness. The inflexible man is always easiest to defeat. Look, the world is not a candy store. You’ve run into a dead end on this one, and I’m telling you to back out and find another way around.”

  Villiers had waited him out. Now he said, “A little more of that, Sidney, and you could be ending a promising career.”

  “Mine—or yours? Do you think I’m talking for the pleasure of hearing my own voice?”

  “You are cram up to here with principles you haven’t earned, Sidney—you’re a snobbish prig. I told you to keep a rein on that conscience of yours.”

  “You just don’t listen, do you? I’m not talking about conscience. I’m talking about a stone wall you’re up against. You won’t budge Arthur Rademacher. Certainly not with bribes, and I doubt you’ll find anything in his past strong enough to use for blackmail. He’s a crusty old son of a bitch, but he’s a powerful man—he’s a pillar of society, sits on half a dozen corporate boards. God knows he doesn’t need your money. To budge him you’d have to start talking in seven-figure sums, which is ridiculous. You haven’t got it, and it wouldn’t be worth it even if you did.”

  “You’re wrong. It might.”

  “For Melbard Chemical? Who are you kidding? The whole organization isn’t worth fifteen million at the outside.”

  “It is to me.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Villiers gave him a long scrutiny. Sidney Isher sat coiled like a taut-wound watch spring. His eyelid fluttered. Villiers said, “I’ve got to have control of Melbard before NCI starts thinking about bidding against me. Understand? Your mandate is clear and simple—go thou and keep piling the chips on the table in front of Arthur Rademacher until he comes across. I don’t care what it takes.”

  “Sometimes chutzpah isn’t enough, Mace. And—”

  The door opened, and George Hackman came in beaming. Isher broke off and directed a resentful stare at him. Hackman’s red face streamed with sweat, but he grinned with triumphant self-satisfaction. “The top of the fucking morning to you both,” he said, and slapped down a briefcase violently on the corner of the desk nearest Villiers. “Help yourself. Merry Christmas.”

  Villiers waited for him to sit down before he said, “What is it?”

  “Colonel Butler’s signature on all five copies. I caught him at the airport. He had a few words to say, but he signed.”

  Villiers opened the briefcase and had a look through the contracts. George Hackman was laughing. “Son of a bitch nearly dropped his pants. He thought it was going to be weeks before we’d have the papers ready. It never occurred to the stupid bastard we had the papers all typed up and ready for his signature before he even heard about the deal.”

  “Satisfactory,” Villiers muttered, making a neat stack of the contracts and dropping it on the desk. “But it shortens your deadline, Sidney. I’m buying Colonel Butler out with Melbard stock, and I don’t own any Melbard stock. Until you get it for me.”

  “I told you you were moving too fast.”

  “Nuts. Just do it—quit whining.”

  Hackman was punching up the Quotron, reading its market announcements. He looked at his watch and grunted. “Good enough. The Dow Jones is up three points over yesterday’s close—market index up eight cents.”

  Villiers said, “Never mind that. I want the two of you to look around for a man to put in nominal charge of Heggins Aircraft—somebody with an air of respectability who can be controlled. We’ll have to juice up their accounting, they haven’t been depreciating things fast enough. We’ll put out a slick report with plenty of expensive artwork. The first thing for the new administration to do is shave the operating costs—I want all superfluous personnel fired, particularly at the management level. The company’s topheavy with Butler’s retired Air Force cronies and sixty-year-old executives. I’ll spend the weekend going over the books, and by next week I’ll have a set of goals mapped out for the next quarter. One thing I know already—Heggins has a fleet of repossessed obsolescent cargo planes in mothballs in the desert down in Arizona. I want those planes fixed and sold—there are plenty of markets in the Middle East and South America. I want Heggins’ balance sheet to be in the black by the end of the year, with or without government contracts.”

  Sidney Isher said, frowning, “You sound as if you want to keep Heggins operating. I thought you planned to strip it.”

  Villiers shook his head. “The company’s no good to me dead. One thing our new management will have to do right away. Heggins has been paying rent to one of its own subsidiaries for the use of runways and test-flight ranges in Nevada. One of Butler’s cute ideas—the rent boosted Heggins’ operating expenses and cut its earnings, so Butler could defend his applications for higher government research fees. He never applied the subsidiary’s dividends against Heggins’ operating costs—he allotted them all to stockholders, and he’s the principal stockholder outside of Heggins itself. I don’t want the money going into Butler’s pockets. Heggins will have to buy back the runways and close down the subsidiary. That way we’ll increase the assets on the books and cut the operating expenses. It should show a big rise in paper profits by the end of the year, and that’s what we’ve got to have—the appearance of strength in the company.”

  Sidney Isher said, “Mind telling us why?”

  “My reasons are complex, and there’s no need to go into them all. I might just mention one item. Certain parties have been selling Heggins stock short in big bundles. If we can improve Heggins’ image in the market, the price will go up and the short-sellers will be caught in a tight bind, which is exactly where I want them to be.”

&nb
sp; “Who are they?”

  “Does it matter? They’re people I mean to squeeze, Sidney. That’s all you need to know.”

  The lawyer did not bother to conceal his resentment. Villiers stood up, ready to leave; he said to Hackman, “Any word from the Wyatt kid?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He may need to be leaned on.”

  “Just let me know,” Hackman said.

  Villiers glanced at Sidney Isher, who did not meet his eyes, and left the office. He felt very good—taut, alive, expectant, the way he used to feel at fifteen when he was lining up a particularly complex and tricky shot on the green felt of a pool table. He gave the English girl his handsome smile on his way out.

  13. Russell Hastings

  Quint had probably been born fat—generous, good-natured, and often childish. His huge torso, contained in a dark vest, seemed to need a golden watch chain. He was a pink flannel-and-tweed man with thinning brown hair and a guardsman moustache; his face was big, with deep square brackets creasing it right down past the mouth into the big dependable jaw. He liked to act bumbling and vague, as if he were unaware of the events that surrounded him. It was an effective pose; it put his adversaries off their guard.

  His office commanded a view of Foley Square. His desk ashtray, full of cellophane candy wrappers, was an abalone shell.

  Russ Hastings sat in a wooden armchair listening to him growl. As Quint spoke, the bow tie bobbed up and down at his throat. “I don’t know, Russ, you come into this business full of spice and vim, and before you know it you’ve been flattened and dried out by the damned bureaucracy of it all. I sit at this desk trying to work out my plans of action, and all day long I get phone calls from one fellow talking about personnel and another fellow talking about budgets and vacation schedules and some unhappy clerk who wants to resign. The chap from two offices down the hall drops in to ask for information about this and that. Salesmen get past the secretary and unnerve me about office supplies. One inconsequential interruption after another, and before you know it it’s the end of one more day, and you don’t know what the devil’s happened to it, you came in red hot and raring to go in the morning, and you never got a chance to start. It makes me wonder what the hell I’m ever going to accomplish.”

  It was a speech Hastings had heard before, with variations; he said, “Why don’t you burn the whole place down and start from scratch?”

  Quint grinned and waggled a finger. “Don’t mind me, old boy. There aren’t many sympathetic ears hereabouts. Forgive me if I lean on yours now and then.” The English accent, added to the guardsman mustache, gave Quint a Blimpish aura—one kept expecting him to refer to his wife as the memsahib.

  Quint put on his stern down-to-business face. “All right. You said you had a request.”

  “I want your authority to make a few waves.”

  “To what end?”

  “Maybe to squash a raid. Maybe nothing. It’s still too vague to write up a bill of particulars—but somebody’s playing Ping-Pong with Northeast Consolidated stock.”

  Quint said, “A few days ago that was a hunch. Is it anything stronger than that now?”

  “It’s getting there. I’ve collected lists of NCI trades from the floor specialist and a dozen big brokers. When you compare them, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Too much Canadian activity, too many anonymous Swiss accounts and dummy front men—all buying NCI. Small lots, but steady buying. Just the kind of thing you’d do if you wanted to accumulate a strong position but didn’t want to alert anybody or inflate the price. Whoever he is, he’s collected better than half a million shares in the past six weeks.”

  “Is that a firm figure or a guess?”

  “A little of both. Some of the Canadian purchases may be legitimate. It’s impossible to tell the difference until we’ve traced every stock certificate by number from source to buyer. That’s going to take time. But in the meantime this fellow’s still out there buying. It’s my opinion if we wait for guaranteed proof with all the t’s crossed, he’ll get there ahead of us.”

  Quint unwrapped a ball of hard low-calorie candy and popped it in his mouth. “Any idea who this mythical chap is?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Suppose it turns out to be Elliot Judd?”

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  “Of course you have,” Quint mumbled. “It would make you look a bit of an ass, wouldn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t have to. That’s why I want to stir things up. I want to take the wraps off—let our man know we’re tracking him.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “It may frighten him off,” Hastings said, and watched the fat man for a reaction.

  Quint shifted his seat on the uncomfortable wooden chair. Finally he said slowly, “No. I’m afraid we can’t have it bruited about.”

  “It’s the only way I know to—”

  “Let me finish, please. That technique may have worked for you in investigating political corruption. Let a malfeasor know he’s being watched, and he’ll very likely back away from the trough. I understand your tactics. But they won’t work here. We inhabit an asylum of paranoid sensitivity, Russ. To reveal we’re investigating a security as big as NCI is to shake public confidence in it. If public confidence falls, the price of the stock falls, and if a blue chip like NCI falls, the whole market may fall with it. Our only weapon against that sort of disaster is our power to force the Exchange to suspend trading in the stock. But we’re not permitted to exercise that power unless we have substantial and cogent reasons—reasons we can explain to the satisfaction of all concerned. Do you see? Wall Street couldn’t be more fragile if it were perched on the lip of a seismic fault. We all have the same responsibility, to do nothing that threatens to set off the earthquake.”

  The fat man crumpled the cellophane wrapper in his huge fist and dropped it in the ashtray. “Request denied,” he concluded.

  Hastings nodded. “I understand all that. But I’m beginning to think it may be worth the risk. After all, the company’s too big to take very much of a beating in the market. Everybody knows it’s sound. If we begin to drop hints there’s a raider moving in, it may even raise the price of the stock—after all, if it’s attractive to a raider, there must be something in it.”

  “Risk,” the fat man replied, “has to be measured not in terms of what you’ve got to gain, but in terms of what you’ve got to lose. Look, Russ, I don’t mean to trample your enthusiasms. You’ve convinced me there’s something afoot that bears investigating. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to go on conducting the investigation by the book. The idea doesn’t appeal to you? There was a time when I was too impatient to go by the book too. But everything in the book was put there for a reason. You’ll go right ahead and dig, with my blessings, but you’ll do it discreetly, and you won’t broadcast any warnings. I trust I’m making that abundantly clear.”

  “About as unmistakable as a giraffe in a bathtub,” Hastings agreed. He stood up. “I guess you’re right.”

  “You bloody Americans are always ‘I-guessing.’ It’s not one of your more endearing habits of speech.”

  “You’ll get used to it. The first hundred years are the hardest.” He turned to the door.

  “Russ.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Not one man in a hundred would have had the hunch you started with on this thing. Not one in a thousand would have played it. I’m not unmindful of that. Don’t take my schoolmasterish scoldings as criticisms. You’re worth any five other men in this office—and if it comes to it, I’ll support you right up to the lynching. But you must play this one close to your chest.”

  “I understand.” He gave Quint a smile and went out into the hallway.

  When he entered his own office, Miss Sprague looked up from her desk and said, “Mr. Burgess is waiting in your office. And there was a phone call from a Miss Cynthia MacNee.”

  It stopped him in his tracks. He frowned at her. “Did she say what she wanted?”

&n
bsp; “Only that she’d call again within a half-hour. She specifically asked that you don’t call her back—she said she’s not at the Nuart office. She also said it was very important, and she hoped you’d wait for her return call.” Miss Sprague gave him an arch look of speculation and turned back to her typewriter.

  Puzzled, he went into the office and greeted Bill Burgess. The lawyer from Justice was a harried-looking sort with dark blond hair and a square face with a short nose and good jaw. He spent Wednesday nights playing poker, took his wife to neighborhood Italian restaurants and movies on Saturday nights, and spent summer Sundays at Jones Beach. He had limp shirt cuffs, blackened around the seams by soot and too much wearing; his shoes were very old and assiduously polished; the seersucker suit was baggy. His smile was fond with the warmth of old friendship.

  “I know,” Hastings said, going around behind his desk and seating himself, “I didn’t show up at the poker game, and you’re sore because you missed a chance to nip me for fifteen bucks.”

  “Yah. We need new blood in the game.”

  “What you mean is, you need a fish.”

  “You’re not all that bad,” Burgess said, packing his pipe. “Listen, you’ve made a lot of work for me. Ever since you called and dropped that name in my lap I’ve been going around in circles.”

  “What name?”

  “Salvatore Senna. The Canadian stock buyer you wanted to know about.”

  Hastings sat up straight. “You’ve got something.”

  “Yah, I confess. The name kept kicking around in the back of my skull, and I knew there had to be something. I started checking things out yesterday, put a girl on the files, and spent an hour of overtime digging. Came up with some interesting stuff.”