Brian Garfield: Villiers Touch

Quint’s eyes glinted. “I’ll only ask it again, Russ. What do you want? How would you handle it? I’ll listen-sit down and talk.”

He went back to his chair and cuffed the hair back out of his eyes; he glanced at Burgess and said, “Villiers can make his scheme work only as long as NCI doesn’t fight him. He knows he’s got the directors on the run. He must know Judd won’t fight him. With a relatively small cash investment he’s trying to take over a giant corporation worth billions. It can work only if people are willing to give him their NCI shares. If he had to pay for those shares, he’d be stopped-he hasn’t got the money, nobody’s got that kind of money. All right-I say we go to the directors, and we make it hotter for them than he’s making it. We fight him with his own weapons. We force them to switch sides and fight him. Faced with a proxy fight right down to the wire, he’ll go under; he hasn’t got the kind of financial backing it would take to fight it through. Even if he did try to go all the way with it, at least it would give us more time to dig into this thing and develop evidence against him. There have got to be chinks in his armor, and the longer we force him to fight, the more likely he is to make the kind of mistakes that can hang him.”

“I suppose you know exactly how to force the NCI board to turn against him?”

“If there’s one thing I learned with Jim Speed,” Hastings said softly, “it’s how to put pressure on people.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Go on,” Quint said, “both of you. Get out of here and leave me in peace.”

“You’re not buying it, then?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?” Quint did not smile; he glowered. “Every decision I make in this office is subject to review by higher authority, Russ. I can’t authorize you to use threats or extortion. On the other hand, you’re under no obligation to explain to me the nature of every stitch you sew into the fabric of your case. If you get results, that’s all anyone will notice. If you fail, it’s your neck, not mine. Clear?”

“Clear,” Hastings said. Feeling vital and alive, full of juices, he bolted out of the chair and strode to the door. “Come on, Bill.”

Burgess trailed him into his own office. Miss Sprague was out to lunch; there were three or four phone messages on his desk. He glanced through them and put them aside. “Damn it,” he said, “I feel good. For the first time in months.”

“Something you can sink your teeth into,” Burgess said. “I’ve been watching you flounder around like a headless chicken. Waiting for you to snap out of it. Ever since you got divorced, you’ve been acting as if you didn’t know who you were or what you wanted.”

Hastings gave him a look of surprise. “You see a lot, don’t you? You’re right, you know. Until a short time ago I was wandering around as if I’d lost myself somewhere in all the confusion. It’s like a nightmare-you keep trying to see yourself in terms of other people, like looking in a distorted mirror. I fell in love with a woman I didn’t even know. Whipped up all kinds of enthusiasm for a job Elliot Judd offered me when I knew all the time it wasn’t for me, it had nothing to do with me.”

“Forget it, Russ. You’ve turned the leaf over-I’ve seen the change in you. You could have ignored this NCI trouble, it was nothing but a vague hunch-but you sank both hands in it right up to the elbows.”

“Sure I did. Because right down inside I’m a gut-fighter, Bill. It took a long time to discover it, and I feel like a fool. But something clicked on this job. I’m a predator just like Mason Villiers. I like a good fight. I need to be where it’s at. Right down at bedrock, I’ve got the temperament of a good old-fashioned cop. Set me down in a precinct station house and I’ll bet I’d blend right into the woodwork.”

Burgess grinned at him. In a different voice, Hastings said, “I’m going to enjoy matching wits with Mason Villiers. And I think I’m going to beat him. It can’t be done Quint’s way, but it can be done.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’ve got to have you with me right down to the wire, Bill, and it may get sticky. We’re going to tromp on some important toes.”

“Which Quint won’t know about?”

“Which Quint won’t know about.”

“Then I guess my boss better not know about it either,” Burgess said, and spread his grin even wider. “Where do we start?”

“With Ansel Cleland. Villiers got himself a corner on Heggins, and he’s using it to whip Cleland’s board into line. All right. Cleland can get back at him by staging a bear raid on stock in every company Villiers controls. He puts together a syndicate which sells Villiers short and publicizes the fact. They force the market price of those stocks down to levels where Villiers’ creditors will sell him out to protect their loans-I’m taking it for granted Villiers has hocked every share he owns to finance this operation. Maybe he’ll pull in his horns, and maybe he won’t, but at least he’ll have to scramble to raise the cash to pay off his margins, and when a man like Villiers goes after cash in a hurry, he’s likely to do something we can nail him for.”

“Fine. But how do we persuade Cleland to stage a counterraid against him?”

“Any stockholder has a right to file a private suit demanding a full accounting of the board’s activities. All we need to do is find one man who owns one share of NCI and who’s willing to file suit. We explain that to Cleland.”

“I see. It puts the heat on his directors-‘full disclosure.’”

“Exactly right. Cleland’s directors will have to fight Villiers, no matter what it costs them, because if they don’t, our stockholder suit will drag them into court, and they’ll have to admit out loud, under oath, that they knuckled under to Villiers’ extortion. They won’t dare have it brought out in open court. They’ll fight Villiers.”

Burgess said mildly, “It’s all pretty shady, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t know anywhere in the regulations where it says the SEC or my department are empowered to pull this kind of stunt. It’s pretty raw-what if Quint finds out about it?”

“Why don’t we worry about that if and when it happens?”

“Okay. You’re the boss.” Burgess stood up. “Who goes to Cleland? You or me?”

“We both do. When he knows both our departments are cooperating on it, he’ll be impressed.”

“If he only knew,” Burgess said, and chuckled.

Hastings reached for the phone. “I want Villiers hung in a proxy fight where the whole world can see him fall down. If we don’t pin him to the wall with legal evidence, at least we’ll make damn sure he never does business in this town again.”

“You don’t mind fighting a little dirty yourself, do you?”

“I told you,” Hastings said, finding Cleland’s number in the Wheeldex and beginning to dial, “I’m a cop. My job is to stop the bad guys-any way I can.”

There was a phone call from Mason Villiers at four o’clock. He merely asked if he might drop by Diane’s apartment after dinner to discuss a business matter. “Or perhaps you’d rather meet somewhere?”

She let the silence run on before she said, “No. Come up to my apartment.”

She had trouble keeping her mind on work for the last hour of the working day; she was alarmed by the way she responded to him with both fear and fascination. She knew she could be an absurdly easy mark for Mason’s seduction, if she wanted it. She did not want it, and that was what troubled her. She was afraid.

At home she ate a silent dinner served by the unobtrusive day maid, who after washing the dishes removed her apron and said good night and left. Diane sat in the living room with a cup of coffee, irritable and impatient, trying to read an art-museum catalog. If only I could stand being alone at night.