Brian Garfield: Villiers Touch

When the doorman buzzed to announce her visitor, she paused on her way to the door to inspect herself in the mirror. Her lips were spotted; she had chewed the lipstick from her lower lip in her agitation. She repaired it quickly and opened the hall door when she heard the elevator arrive.

His cool, handsome face glittered; he was in high spirits, not bothering to conceal his satisfaction. He strode past her into the apartment and made the customary appreciative remarks about the decor, which surprised her, coming from him-and then it occurred to her he might have done it for just that reason: he liked to keep everyone off balance.

She made drinks, and they sat facing each other across the coffee table, and Mason Villiers said, “I’ve got good news.”

“Tell me.”

“You’re about to make your fortune,” he said.

She arched her eyebrows. “Indeed?”

“I’m on the verge of pulling off the biggest financial coup this town has seen in twenty years-and you’re going to share in it.”

“I am?”

“You’re the one who made it possible,” he said.

“I didn’t realize Melbard Chemical was all that much of a coup.”

“It’s the key that’s opening the floodgates. By this time next month you’ll be a millionaire in your own right.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” she said.

“Let’s just say the price of Melbard stock is going to shoot through the roof-which means Nuart will go right along with it, since Nuart’s merged with Melbard.”

She laughed uneasily. “I still don’t understand, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Yes,” he said. He was staring fixedly at her. She swallowed the last of her drink and realized she had finished it too quickly. She felt light-headed and hot.

He rose from his seat with the flowing lazy grace of a well-fed lion and came around the coffee table, put his hand at the back of her neck, and bent his head toward her. Fear quivered in her eyes; she drew back and shook her head violently. “No, Mason.”

He straightened, but his hand remained at the back of her neck, hard and heavy. For a moment, staring into his face, she could not get her breath; she was frozen with an unknown dread. She whipped away from him and went striding away to a neutral side of the room, still shaking her head. When she got her breath she said finally, “No, I won’t have it. I won’t be just another scalp for you to hang on your belt.”

“I thought we’d celebrate our success. But have it your way-we’re both grown up, aren’t we? I can hardly expect you to start breathing hard every time I come in sight. All right, I won’t make it cheap-you don’t have to be afraid. Come back and sit down. I’ll keep my distance.”

She returned to her seat, still half-consumed by disbelieving wariness. “I’m grateful.”

“Are you? I’m not altogether sure you wouldn’t have preferred to have me overpower you. Maybe you need to be taken by force, for it to work.”

“Now you’ve made me feel cheap. Is that what you really think of me?”

“I’ve never been altogether sure what to think of you,” he said. “You’ve turned down my advances three times running. Three strikes, I’m out. I won’t try it again.”

“You didn’t really try all that desperately hard, now, did you?” she said recklessly.

“Is that an invitation?”

“You know better than that.”

He sat back with his drink; his eyelids drooped. An effervescence had begun inside her, and she denied it silently, but it crept through her body, a sultry heat like alcohol in the blood; it made her body feel looser, but it conjured up at the same time an image of rutting sweat and tangled sheets, and that image was all she needed to regain her resistance. She put on a cool smile, an arch look of self-confident control, and she said, “Thank you for not pressing the point. It would have made things disagreeable if you’d forced me to throw you out.”

He put his glass down on the table. “How long has it been since you’ve had a man?”

She blanched; she bridled. “You love taking people by surprise, don’t you?”

“Sometimes it’s the best way to break through to the answers.”

“Your questions can be very crude. That one was. You don’t honestly expect me to answer it?”

“You might have surprised me.”

“I won’t. In any case, it doesn’t matter that much to me. There are some of us who think about other things than sex, hard as that may be for you to believe.”

He only smiled a little and stood up. “Can I freshen your drink?”

“A weak one.”

“I didn’t have it in mind to get you smashed.” He took her glass away, and she put her head back and closed her eyes, listening to the clink of ice cubes as he made the drinks.

When he returned and settled facing her, she opened her eyes and said, “Are you going to tell me about your magnificent coup?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course. It’s what you came for, really, isn’t it? To do a little genteel bragging?”

That made him laugh softly, but his eyes didn’t laugh. “Not really. You don’t know much about me, after all, do you?”

“I know you’ve always fascinated me. You’re real, I’ll give you that-the kind of violence and force most people have never remotely tasted and can never understand.”

“But you do?”

“There’s a little of the same thing in me. I’ve met only a very few people who really understand how to enjoy power. Mostly they just go after it because it’s the way they were brought up, it’s part of the value system they’ve always been surrounded by. But they don’t really comprehend it. They make money because everybody approves of you when you make money. Even millionaires-they’re just doing it because it’s a game to play, a way to pass the time. But you’re not like that, I know that much. You don’t really care about money for its own sake, do you? What counts with you is the power to dominate the world. The difference between being kept waiting and keeping others waiting. Doesn’t it come down to that?”

He drank silently, and when his eyes narrowed she had the feeling, in that brief instant, that he was unguarded; something she had said had stripped the carefully crafted armor from him and left him naked before her. She comprehended that in this precise moment she had the absolute power to get total control of him-if only she knew the right method.

He said in an odd, light voice, “It’s funny. I’ve got dozens of people involved in this thing, and all any of them can see is the Goddamned money. They look at it, and the only thing they see is the size of the risk and the dollars-they’re awed by all those zeros. All those people and all those brains, and you’re the only one who sees the point, you’re the only one who can put your finger on what I’m really after.”

The armor had rejoined; the moment was gone; and now she said uncertainly, “I don’t think you’re pleased that I know. It bothers you, doesn’t it? It was your secret.”

Instead of giving her a direct reply, he got onto his feet and went over to the front wall and stood pretending to look at the Cezanne and the Corot. With his back to her he said, “This deal of mine is going to make you very rich. Or very powerful, choose your own word. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“You told me.”

“Has it occurred to you to wonder why I went out of my way to bring you into this thing? You, rather than someone else, some other company?”

“Of course it has.”

“You haven’t asked. Not once.”

“If I had,” she said, “would you have given me a straight answer?”

He turned to face her. “I will now.”

She kept her face strict and composed.