Villiers Touch

by Brian Garfield

  Villiers said, “Then we’ll assume Rademacher doesn’t know the sordid details.”

  “I don’t like your brand of humor very much, Mr. Villiers.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Now, Rademacher got out from under the Market crash of twenty-nine by methods which, not to put too fine a point on it, could be described as devious. Questionable. Nothing actionable, of course—it’s too long ago, there’s a statute of limitations, but just the same he’s got a reputation to uphold, and his family has got a reputation to uphold, and in your circles nothing matters much except reputation.”

  “How the hell did you find out anything about what an old man did forty years ago?”

  “The same way I found out about your activities of five years ago.”

  “Okay, okay,” Wyatt said. “Go ahead.”

  “I need a lever to move Rademacher. You’re the lever. By now the old man thinks his secret’s safe forever. It will hit him hard when you spring it on him.”

  “When I spring it on him?”

  “Coming from you, it will hurt more. You’re one of his people, not an outsider. Once he knows you’re onto him, he’ll have to come around. Exposure in his own crowd could ruin him, and he’s too old to start over. I want you to pry him loose from those half-million shares.”

  “I take it you made him an offer. Why’d he turn it down?”

  “He doesn’t want to see a venerable company like Melbard taken over by an upstart art-gallery chain.”

  “Art gallery?”

  “The front I’m using. I’ve made him a legitimate offer; when you hang up, call Hackman, he’ll give you all the details.”

  “All right,” Wyatt said.

  “It’s got to be done fast. I want Rademacher pried loose from control by Sunday at the latest.”

  “I’ll go out there tomorrow,” Wyatt said.

  “Lean on him,” Villiers told him. “It will be worth your while.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve got to have a man to put in charge of Melbard once I’ve got control of it—a straw board and an agreeable president. Why not you? You’ve got a respectable society name. I know those people—you’ll be blackmailing Rademacher, but he’d rather be blackmailed by you than by an outsider. He’ll be more willing to come around if he knows you’re going in as the crown prince, ready to become president of the company as soon as the deal goes through.”

  “You’re going to hand me the company just like that?”

  “With strings. You won’t be free to handle it your way.”

  Wyatt grunted. “In the long run, you’ll get done with whatever you wanted it for. Then it’ll be a drag on you. All I have to do is wait you out—you’ll turn it loose sooner or later.”

  “Maybe,” Villiers said, smiling again. “At least it’s worth the gamble, from your point of view.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Get it done fast,” he said, and hung up. He pulled open the booth door and stood up. Two weeks, he thought. By two weeks from now I’ll have the world in the palm of my hand.

  16. Russell Hastings

  Shortly after three o’clock Russ Hastings checked NCI’s closing price on the ticker, scribbled the figures at the bottom of a column in his notebook, and buzzed his secretary. “Miss Sprague, ask the Exchange to have Herb Capps call me right away, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He flipped back through the notebook and scowled. He had spent three days tracking investors who had recently bought blocks of NCI common. He had been able to reach only a handful; none of them had told him anything useful; by now they shifted together in his mind, as vague as the characters in a Russian novel.

  Intercom buzz. “I have Mr. Capps on the line.”

  “Thank you…. Hello, Herb? I see by today’s close, NCI is up another two points for the week.”

  “Still worrying that bone, Mr. Hastings? You won’t find much meat on it.”

  “Possibly. It happens I’m calling you about something else.”

  “That list of buyers I was going to send you. Look, I’m sorry about that. My secretary’s out sick, I’ve been trying to put it all together myself, evenings. I’m a one-finger, hunt-and-peck typist, it’s gone kind of slow. But I’ll have it up to date and on your desk by Monday morning.”

  “All right. Thank you. I hope it’s nothing serious—your secretary?”

  “What? Oh, only a summer flu bug. She’ll be back early in the week, I expect.”

  When Capps broke the connection, Hastings picked up the notebook and walked out past Miss Sprague’s desk. She looked up. He discovered her neck was ropy, wondered that he’d never noticed it before, and said, “I’m going up to the boss’s office. I need you to handle a small discreet job for me.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “See if you can find out if Herb Capps’s secretary has been out sick this week. Don’t let Capps find out you’re inquiring about it.”

  “All right, sir.”

  He grinned at her and looked at his watch. “Buzz me in the field marshal’s office if you find out about her before I come back.”

  He went down the hall to Gordon Quint’s sanctum.

  The fat man gave him an amiable glare. “What now?”

  “My liege, I come bearing curious tidings.” Hastings sat down without waiting to be asked. “Do you believe in coincidence?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t. Not unless every other possibility has been ruled out.”

  “Things are never neat and tidy,” Quint said. “You have a suspicious mind.”

  “That’s what I’m paid for, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s have it, then.”

  Hastings flipped back the cover of his notebook. “There’s been considerable escalation in purchases of NCI common, in blocks, by a large number of investors who don’t want to be traced. Over the past seven weeks, all together one million eight hundred thousand shares of NCI have been traded. Of those shares, about two hundred thousand have been bought in small lots. That leaves a million six. Of which something like five hundred thousand shares have been bought by bona-fide institutional investors—banks, mutual funds, pension funds. Another eighty or a hundred thousand shares I can eliminate from suspicion because I’ve been able to track down the buyers and they’re reputable.”

  “Leaving a million shares you haven’t yet accounted for,” Quint said.

  “Your math’s good enough. Want to know who bought those one million shares?”

  “That’s childish. I don’t enjoy riddles. Get on with it.”

  “It’s one riddle I haven’t found the answer to. You can follow those purchases just so far, and then a door slams in your face. Canadian front men. So-called mutual funds that turn out to be nothing more than dummies for unspecified stockholders. Anonymous numbered Swiss bank accounts. Corporations in Liechtenstein that won’t divulge the names of their officers and principal stockholders. I’ve traced a quarter of a million dollars’ worth to a call girl and another quarter of a million to a gangster. The other day you wanted to know if I had anything more than a hunch. Well?”

  Quint grunted. He leaned on the leather arm of the chair and dipped his finger into the abalone-shell ashtray to stir candy wrappers as if they were tea leaves in which he expected to find an oracular message. Presently he looked up. “You are not making me a very happy man. I was looking forward to a quiet, untroubled weekend in the country.”

  “A thousand pardons if I’ve disturbed your royal slumbers.”

  “Oh, shut up, Russ.”

  Hastings grinned at him.

  The fat man stirred and made a face. “You haven’t finished, have you?”

  “No. There are more curious coincidences. Herb Capps, the NCI floor specialist at the Big Board. That’s number one. He promised me a list of buyers, but somehow he’s managed to delay it from day to day, and I still haven’t seen it. Is that coincidence? My secretary’s trying to find out right now. Number two, Elliot Judd. I tried
to reach him in Arizona. I intended to make it a personal call, just sound him out, see if he had anything on his mind. It would help to know if he’s got suspicions of his own.”

  “Has he?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to find out. It seems he’s not taking phone calls.”

  “That’s hardly surprising. Does J. Paul Getty answer his phone every time it rings?”

  “Judd and I are pretty close. He’d be happy to talk to me—unless he had a specific reason not to.”

  “Are you suggesting he knows something he’d rather not have us know?”

  “It could be. Or it could be he isn’t well enough to come to the phone. You see what that could lead to, don’t you?”

  Quint scowled at him. He was about to make a remark, but his interphone announced a call for Hastings; Quint handed him the phone and Miss Sprague said in Hastings’ ear, “About Mr. Capps’s secretary, she’s been out of the office since Tuesday. One of the girls in the adjoining office overheard Mr. Capps calling a florist to send flowers to her at home. She’s expected back at work Monday or Tuesday.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Not at all.”

  He had to get up to cradle the phone; he stayed on his feet, restless and irritable. “The NCI floor specialist appears to be ruled out for now, but I’m not scratching anybody off the list just yet. I wouldn’t be surprised to find all kinds of people in this right up to their hairlines.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s big.”

  “Granted. But we still need to know whether Elliot Judd has an active part in it. Without that piece of information, we’ve got nothing.”

  “I know.” Hastings put his hand on the back of the chair he had vacated and squeezed it until the knuckles whitened. “I want to fly out there.”

  “To Arizona?”

  “Yes.”

  “If he won’t come to the telephone, what makes you think he’ll see you?”

  “It would be awkward for him if he didn’t—it would tell me something. Assume he’s doing something illegal—would he risk confirming my suspicions by turning me away?”

  “And you honestly think if he’s concealing something you’ll be able to sniff it out just by seeing him?”

  “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “It’s also possible you’ll put him on the alert and make it ten times as difficult for us to catch him.”

  “I think we have to take that chance,” Hastings said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t really believe he’s got anything to do with it. And if that’s true, he’s got to be warned. Right now. You see that, don’t you?”

  Quint hesitated. Finally he said, “When do you plan going?”

  Hastings moved his grip from the chair, “The first flight I can get tomorrow morning.”

  “Very well,” Quint said.

  17. Carol McCloud

  Carol McCloud had two telephones, both in the living room of the suite. One was her listed number; the bell was disconnected, she never knew if it was ringing. An answering service took her calls on that line.

  The unlisted telephone rang. She was lounging on the divan with a book; in her occupation, with most of the day to herself, she had a good deal of time for reading.

  “Hello?”

  “Carol?”

  A man’s voice, calling her by her first name. She had the brief wild thought that there was only such a tiny handful of people in the whole world who would think of her when they spoke the name “Carol.”

  She said, “Hello, Mason,” absenting all feeling from her tone.

  “Have you got a date tonight?”

  “How delicately you put it,” she said. “It’s Friday. What do you think?”

  “Break it.”

  “My clients don’t like that sort of thing.”

  “Break it,” he said again. “Find somebody else to take your place.”

  “If I could be replaced that easily at the last minute,” she said, “I wouldn’t be in my tax bracket.”

  He laughed. Over the phone it was a hard, metallic sound. He said, “That’s my own line you’re using against me. Do you think that’s fair?”

  “Since when have you ever worried about whether anything was fair?”

  “Break your date,” he said. “I’ll be there at seven.”

  Click.

  She put the receiver down slowly and glanced at the Seth Thomas clock on the mantel—ten past five.

  She had to make nine phone calls before she was able to find a suitable girl to cover for her. Afterward she went around the apartment doing meaningless busy things—adjusting ashtrays, moving a chair six inches, fiddling with air-conditioners. She was too angry to go back to her book.

  In the bathroom mirror she inspected the fresh bruise on her right cheek and applied a new coat of makeup to cover it; the bruise had come on top of an old one that hadn’t quite healed, and her cheek stung with throbbing agony.

  An East Side hotel manager had called yesterday—he had four tycoons from the Coast looking to have a party. She had rounded up three girls and shepherded them to the appointed suite. The four tycoons were in real estate, and there was an hour’s bragging about the millions they had made from Southern California land, after which they began to complain that the hotel manager had made them shell out the price of a small aircraft carrier and you girls God damn better be worth it.

  The girls gave the johns a full-scale stag act. Three of the tycoons were high enough to loosen up and enjoy it. The fourth was beyond that stage into drunken surliness. He babbled something about his wife, something about Good Christian Women, something about Sin and Communists, and he belted her across the face. She laid his face open with her fingernails and kneed him in the groin and left him to his three companions, who shut him up.

  It didn’t happen often; it had been a long time since she had accepted a john without references. She didn’t like being mauled; she feared exposure, the unknown allegiances of strangers. There were only two things she feared more. One was time, which would age her; the other was that voice on the telephone just now.

  She went into the bedroom and put on her leotards and rolled out the mat on top of the carpet. She had done her exercises once today, but now she did them again, needing that mindless concentration on ritual physical movement. She spent an hour at it, exhausted herself, and knew she would be stiff in the morning; she took a hot shower, and a cold shower, and creamed and powdered her body, and after that she dressed herself in floor-length satin hostess pajamas. She took a great deal of care and time with her hair and her eye makeup, but just the same it was only six-forty when she was done. She went into the living room and sat down facing the door, folded her hands in her lap, and waited with no expression at all on her face.

  He always made her vividly aware of the past she didn’t want to remember. She remembered the sagging clapboard Victorian farmhouse with its paint long gone, weathered to a splintery gray. Kentucky, childhood, endless cuddlings by numerous “uncles.” Her father had been an unidentified sailor who had spent one night in Lexington on his way to New London. About the only home she remembered was the old farmhouse, with a rusty De Soto up on blocks in the yard, a sagging washday line hung between house and tree, chickens and dogs, two rusty truck fenders, and a dented galvanized milk can. They were on the relief rolls, recipients of charity packages of clothes and food at Christmastime. Her mother had been a sleazy middle-aged bag of Southern discomforts, too distracted by sex and alcohol to mind living in lackluster filth.

  She remembered herself, a child of nine, curiously watching through an open window, seeing her mother step out of her clothes and leave them on the floor while a man, whose two-and-a-half-ton truck sat warm-hooded in the drive, came into sight putting a can of beer to his lips, wiping his mouth, brutally crushing the empty can in one hand. She remembered the torn undershirt, a wedge out of the cloth open and flapping at the side, revealing the man’s hirsute
pelt. The man tossed the mangled can away and reached impatiently for her mother’s sagging naked body. The clatter of the can on the linoleum floor, the resigned flatness of her mother’s withdrawn face, the man’s blasphemous laughing remarks, and then the crash and squeak of the bed.

  One day her mother had gone down to the crossroads to get a bottle of whiskey. She hadn’t come back. Somebody said she took up with a salesman driving through. Carol had been twelve then; she remembered teen-age boys sneaking looks at her legs, a teacher who’d fondled her developing breasts, the groping hands of the men folk of the hill families who’d passed her from hand to hand after her mother ran off. She had done chores, now and then gone briefly to school. One seventeen-year-old had taken her to a boondock party, and he had put something in her drink that had made her feel good all over. Whatever it was, it ran her up the walls. She had stayed with him in the woods for four days. Afterward someone said something, and the boy’s father horse-whipped her off the farm.

  At fifteen she was slinging hash in a crossroads tavern. The cook’s young brother came home from the Army, he was a smiling dandy with worldly charm, and they were married in the spring by a circuit preacher. Their sensuous delirium had lasted almost a week, after which Floyd had turned sulky and cross and dragged her off with him, to Concord and then to Pensacola, and then to Houston, on the trail of elusive wealth: “You want to eat beans the rest of yo’ life?” He had borrowed money to open a Japanese car franchise, but it had failed; he had wildcatted an oil field and hit a dry hole; he met some gamblers, and they went to Miami.

  He had become rough and cursory in bed, mounting her and pumping his spurt into her and leaving her hung up dry. She learned to make her body a nerveless thing, without shame or sensation, a bitter insensitive receptacle for his absentminded pleasures. He was making enemies then, with his surly ways, and they were not the kind of enemies a man could afford. He had already become a compulsive loser; now he ran his gambling debts up so high there was nothing to do but run for it. By then she had a spiderweb of scars on her buttocks from his tantrums. He refused to leave her behind; they left in the middle of the night, traveling in a car he had stolen, driving across the South by night, holing up by day. She was sixteen then, pregnant, and terrified. They fled into the Southwest and ditched the stolen car in Amarillo, hitchhiked to Albuquerque, and stopped there. He found work pumping gas in a filling station and began to lay plans to rob the till.