Brian Garfield: Villiers Touch

“You’ve always loved him, Russ, he knows that. I’m glad you went out to see him-Oh, God, I’ve got to run, I’ll miss my plane. I’ll call you from the ranch.”

The line went dead. Hastings hung up and turned. The stenographer was settling in a chair with her notebook; Burgess looked up at him. He said, “Villiers knows Elliot Judd is dying.”

Burgess stared at him. “So that’s it. It makes it all fit, doesn’t it? The slimy bastard, taking advantage of an old man’s sickness.”

Hastings walked over to the interrogation table and put his palms flat on it. Steve Wyatt flinched. Hastings said, “How did he find it out, Steve?”

“Okay-okay. Part of it he got from me. I found one of Judd’s letters in Howard Claiborne’s files. After that, Villiers hired some shady detective agency to burgle Judd’s doctor’s files. I think he’s been suspicious ever since Judd withdrew from public sight last year. You know what it means, of course-NCI’s always been a one-man empire, and in that kind of situation it works the same every time, the death of the tycoon always causes a tidal wave, and Villiers will be ready to buy carload lots of stock certificates when the price hits bottom.”

Burgess looked over Wyatt’s head at Hastings. “What do we do about it?”

“I’ll post a man at a phone inside the Exchange. We’ll have to brief the Exchange officials. If Judd dies and the news hits the wire, I want to be ready to suspend trading in the stock immediately, before Villiers has a chance to touch it.” He sat down on the corner of the table and put his hard glance on Wyatt. “Let’s have it now, from the beginning.”

Villiers came awake and saw that he had slept alone. He had thrown Ginger out two hours ago; he didn’t like to find women around when he woke up in the morning.

It was Monday morning; he felt keyed up. He rang down for breakfast and performed his morning ablutions with unusual enjoyment, a keen awareness of the roughness of the brush against his teeth, the heat of the shower spray, the scratch of the towel. He juggled plans while he breakfasted and dressed; he was downstairs forty minutes after waking up, climbing into the limousine and telling the driver to get him to Hackman’s office fast.

The English girl gave him a frank appraisal as he crossed the office, but he was preoccupied and did not respond; he walked into Hackman’s office, slammed the door, and let his hooded glance move from Hackman to Sidney Isher. And as soon as he saw Isher’s face he knew something had gone wrong.

He looked at his watch-nine-forty. He said, “What’s the matter with you?”

Isher said, without preliminaries, “The NCI board won’t play ball. I couldn’t reach Cleland-I left a message with his answering service. He’s got a hell of a sense of timing. But I did get hold of Dan Silverstein, and he says there’s been heavy pressure put on them to stand pat and fight.”

“Pressure. From where?”

“Evidently from Howard Claiborne and the SEC and the Justice Department, not necessarily in that order.”

George Hackman said, “There’s indications some stockholders may be filing private suits demanding a full accounting of the directors’ activities. And some of your stockholders in your little companies filing suits against you personally.”

“On what grounds?”

“Charging you’ve misused company assets, that kind of thing.” Hackman didn’t look friendly. His jovial facade had crumbled.

Sidney Isher hawked into a handkerchief and said, “This could be a lot rougher than any of us bargained for. NCI’s going to fight, Mace. No question of it. It’s backfired. I say it’s time to cut our losses and get the hell out. It was a good try, but to hell with it. We’ve still got our skins.”

“If Wyatt keeps his mouth shut,” Hackman growled.

Isher frowned at him. “Why shouldn’t he? They turned him loose, didn’t they? They didn’t have enough on him to hold him.”

“That’s what he said. But I don’t like the way he went straight out to his old lady’s shack in East Hampton. He hasn’t budged off the property since. And there’s a carload of Justice Department cops watching the place.”

“Maybe they want to make sure he doesn’t run for it.”

“And maybe they want to make sure we don’t get to him,” Hackman snapped. “What if he’s talked?”

“If he talked, they’d keep him in protective custody, wouldn’t they?”

Villiers said, “Shut up, both of you. It’s easy enough to settle. Get him on the phone and ask him.”

“I asked him last night,” Isher said. “He told me he didn’t say a word. Just demanded to have his lawyer present when they questioned him. They hollered at him for a while and then let him go. He says. No reason why he’d change the story now if we ask him again.”

Villiers shrugged. “Claiborne fired him for manipulating the Wakeman Fund. They probably had him on the griddle over that. If he’d talked about us, they’d have come after us by now, I think. There’s no point carrying on about it-we’ve got other fish to fry.”

“We have,” Sidney Isher agreed. His eyelid ticked irregularly. “Let me tell you something. Cleland and his boys are preparing a series of ads to run opposite ours in the papers. According to Silverstein, they’ve dug up some highly unsavory material about your background in Chicago when you were a kid. I don’t know what it is, but evidently they’ve got it documented to the point where they feel they can run it in their ad without risking a libel suit. It won’t exactly help inspire confidence in us or our Heggins tender offer. And NCI’s starting to line up proxy-soliciting firms.”

“We’ll line up our own.”

“Let me finish, Mace. The whole thing’s out of hand. Sure, we’ll pick up a few blocks of NCI from the greedy ones who only see the instant profit we’re offering them, but the big boys, the institutions, they’ll hang back. We’re not going to get anywhere near buying control of NCI with the Heggins operation. At a horseback guess, I’d say you won’t end up with more than twenty-five percent of the outstanding. It means you’ve got to go out and buy another twenty-six percent for cash. You haven’t got that kind of cash. Do you know how much it would take?”

“Six or seven hundred million, assuming I’d have to pay the whole thing in cash with no margin.”

“The minute it starts to slide, you won’t find anybody willing to give you a margin. You know that.”

“That’s why I said it, Sidney. On the safe side we can figure seven hundred million. I already told you I’m prepared to put up three hundred million myself.”

“Leaving a slight gap,” Isher said. “Don’t look at me, Mace, I haven’t got that kind of investment capital. I’m lucky if I can scrape up fifty grand to speculate with.”

Villiers said, “I haven’t asked either of you to risk a dime in this. I’ll raise the cash-within twenty-four hours if I have to.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Isher said. “I know, I’m always saying it can’t be done, and you’re always proving me wrong, but this time you’re talking about four hundred million dollars and I’m saying it can’t be done. I’m saying it loud and clear. Now convince me I’m wrong.”

“I’ll convince you by showing you the money. Tomorrow morning you’ll-”

The phone interrupted him. Hackman picked it up and listened briefly, said, “Thank you,” in an odd tone of voice, and hung up. He looked at Villiers. “Ten minutes ago.”

Elliot Judd was dead.

Villiers said, “All right. You both know what has to be done. Activate your orders the minute the market opens.” He looked at his watch. “Four minutes to go.”