Brian Garfield: Villiers Touch

He said, “You’ll see the beauty in the irony of it. You see, the big coup I mentioned-I’m taking your father’s empire away from him.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. Her face changed slowly as realization came to her.

He said, “It’s intriguing, in an odd way, that you’ll profit from your father’s defeat. It always appealed to me.”

She was stiff, cold; she said in a hoarse breath, “Why?”

“A Freudian nutcracker might say I was raised by nuns and I learned to hate women in positions of executive authority. I doubt it, but it’s as good an excuse as any. Of course, it might be because you turned down my advances. If you think I’m that cheap. Actually, I doubt I could give you a good sensible answer. The design of it, the composition, the balance-that’s what appealed to me from the start. Years ago I went to your father with a deal that would have made him richer and made my fortune. He turned me down flat-not because the deal was no good, but because he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Me, personally. I wasn’t good enough for Elliot Judd.” He gave her a very quiet, soft little smile and turned his hands over as if to say, You see how it is.

Watching him in horror, she became slowly enraged-flesh aquiver, eyes bulging. She caught herself; she said in a stiff low voice that trembled, “You’ll never do it. My father has hung tougher men than you out to dry!”

“Your father,” he said gently, “won’t live long enough to stop me.”

He strolled unhurriedly to the door, went through it, and pulled it shut behind him.

She walked toward the door woodenly, as stubbornly blind as a wind-up toy; she leaned both arms against the door, and after a while she heard the soft chunk of the elevator door. She went back to the drink she had left by her chair and drained it at a gulp. Then, still moving like a mechanism, she reached for the telephone and dialed the operator and said in a voice that broke, “I want to call Arizona.”

Brian Garfield

Villiers Touch

30. Russell Hastings

By Sunday night the young prisoner was hoarse from the sixty cigarettes he had consumed in the last eight hours. He had chewed his manicure to pieces. The small room was all but empty of furniture; Hastings and Bill Burgess camped hipshot against the spindly wooden table-the room wasn’t designed for sitting.

Steve Wyatt got up after ten minutes’ graveling silence and began to stride back and forth. His eyes were pouched, his clothes punctuated by wrinkles and creases.

The room’s air was thick with heavy body heat. Russ Hastings, stripped down to a rumpled pink shirt, felt tired and angry.

Bill Burgess said, “Nobody’s after your cherry, Wyatt. Why don’t you relax?”

“Why don’t you cool yourself off? You’re melting my butter.”

“We don’t want you, Wyatt. We want the big one. Villiers.”

“Look, I’m nobody’s flunky. Not Villiers’, not anybody’s.”

Hastings drawled mildly, “It’s no time to get contentious, Steve. We’ve got enough documentation to put you away for quite a few years, if the impulse strikes us.”

“Yeah. What other heroic kinds of work do your snoops do besides inspecting the contents of vacuum-cleaner bags and wastebaskets?”

“It netted us your copies of the phony sheets you planted on your employer, didn’t it?”

“Suppose I say somebody must have planted that stuff in my apartment?”

Burgess shrugged. “You could try that on a jury. I don’t think they’d like the fit of it much, but you could try. Now, quite waltzing with us, kid. You can’t afford to-you don’t know how much we know. Go back and sit down, and let’s talk.”

“God, you’re a stubborn pair of bastards!”

“We have to be. And you’d be wise to remember it.”

Wyatt’s eyes flickered when they touched Burgess’. Finally he pulled the chair out and sat down. “Look, can I get bail?”

“If you decide to cooperate, you won’t need any.”

“You bastards make it sound easy, don’t you? You make it sound as if I’d get off free as a bird. The fact is, if I tell you what you want to know, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of mud flying, and a good deal of it will stick on me.”

“You took that chance when you threw in with Villiers,” Burgess said. “Isn’t it a little late to worry about it now? Look, we’re all tired, and if you don’t want to testify, you don’t have to. I offer my personal guarantee you’ll end up making mail sacks in Atlanta, but it’s your choice.”

Wyatt’s jaw muscles stood out like cables. He looked from Burgess to Hastings. His eyes were tired and raw. He lit a cigarette and held it in the manner of an actor preparing to turn toward the audience and deliver the line that would bring down the curtain, and Hastings felt himself tense up. But what Wyatt said was, “I don’t suppose there’d be any way of keeping it from my mother?”

“I won’t kid you,” Burgess said. “It’s going to be the biggest Wall Street news break since Robert Young went after the New York Central. I’m just stating facts, not enjoying it. You understand?”

There were signs stamped in Wyatt’s face that Hastings saw with quick and easy recognition, and a slight contempt. To prime him, Hastings prompted, “You went with Villiers and another man to a board meeting of the NCI directors. Who was the third man with you?”

“Sidney Isher. You must know that if you know I was there.”

“All right. Who’s Isher?”

In the corner, the telephone rang. Burgess went to answer it. Hastings said, “Who’s Isher?”

“He works for Villiers.”

“Doing what?”

“Keeping the flies off him, maybe. I don’t know. He’s a lawyer. He draws up papers, that kind of thing. You’d have to ask him.”

“We will. Now, what about-”

At the phone, Burgess had turned, catching his eye. Hastings went to the phone, crossing paths with Burgess, who said to Wyatt, “Ready to have your statement taken down by a stenographer now?”

“I guess so,” Wyatt said, drained.

Burgess went to the door to call outside; Hastings picked up the telephone.

“Russ? It’s Diane.”

“Hello,” he said, unable to think of anything else to add.

“It’s important, Russ.” She sounded dulled, as if she had taken a drug. “I’ve been trying to find you all weekend-I’ve been on the phone several times with Lewis Downey in Arizona. It doesn’t look as if my father’s going to last the night out, but I’m flying out there now to be with him. I’m at the airport now-I only have a minute. I hope I can get there in time. But I had to reach you-I saw Mason Villiers Friday night. You remember when you asked me about him?”

“Yes, I remember. My God, I’m shocked to hear-he seemed to be holding his own when I saw him…”

“It seems to have hit suddenly. Lewis said the doctors had warned him this could happen almost anytime. But Russ-they’re calling my plane, I must hurry-listen to me. I’ve told my lawyers to try to break off the deal with Mason Villiers, if it isn’t already too late. You were right about him, I should have listened to you. He’s a dangerous megalomaniac. But something he said the other night has been echoing around in my head ever since, and it just came to me how important the implication was. He said-let me see if I can remember the exact words-he said he was going to take my father’s company away from him, and then we argued, and I said my father would never let him do it, and then he said to me-I’m sure these are his words-‘Your father won’t live long enough to stop me.’ Do you understand what I’m saying, Russ?”

“I understand it very well. Diane, tell your father-Oh, hell, what’s the point?”