The Villiers Touch

“Yes.”

“What if I go broke?”

“Then I’ll find another wi

He smiled. “Anyhow, you’re honest. I’m still rich. Do you need money?”

“I always do. It takes me ten weeks to write a book, and I only get a fifteen hundred advance on it.” Her mouth twisted, and she added, “Just put it on the bed. That’s the way they do it, isn’t it?”

“Don’t get sour, I only asked.”

She said, “When I was thirteen I laid my best girl friend’s old man. I guess I’ve always been a whore. But not for money, Mace. Always for free, for fun. Once in a while they give me something-a bracelet or a watch. But it’s not pay. I never take pay. The difference may not look very important to you, but it does to me.”

He said, not caring, “I understand. All right, you don’t want anything right now, because that would be too much like taking pay. Suppose we have di

For some reason he sensed but did not comprehend, she gave him an enraged scowl and turned her back, folding her arms. She said in a low tone, “When you invite a girl to di

“I don’t make invitations unless I mean them.”

“You could look a little less bored.”

“Suit yourself, then,” he said indifferently, and opened the door.

When he glanced back, she had turned to watch him; her eyes were too wide and too bright. She said, “God damn you, you think you can come and go like a subway train.”

He made no answer; he pulled the door shut and walked to the elevator.

He emerged from the narrow apartment building onto a Greenwich Village street and looked around, pla

Sanders, via the rear-view mirror, gave his cowardly apologetic smile and said, “Where to?”

“Hackman’s office.”

“Yes, sir.” Sanders looked over his shoulder at the traffic and eased out into the flow. Villiers sat back and frowned at the back of Sanders’ billiard-ball head.

They stopped for a traffic light, and Sanders cleared his throat. “Sir…”

“What is it?” Villiers snapped.

“My mother, sir. She’s ill, and I was wondering if you’d be needing me for the evening. I mean-”

“I may need you. I’ll let you know.”

“Yes, sir.” The traffic began to move, and Sanders turned into Seventh Avenue and manhandled the limousine through heavy traffic past St. Vincent’s Hospital, heading downtown toward the financial district.

Tod Sanders was becoming an a

Ten blocks farther downtown, Sanders said again, “I’m not looking for a chance to goof off, sir. She really is sick. My mother, I mean. I wish I hadn’t brought her down here from Canada. You know, this stinking hot wea-”

“Shut up,” Villiers said. “Nothing runs out of listeners faster than a hard-luck story. You ought to’ve learned that by now.”

“Yes, sir. I suppose. Mr. Villiers, why is it things like this never bother you? What’s the difference between you and me?”

“Difference? I dominate my world, Tod. Your world dominates you. Now, shut up, I’ve got thinking to do.”

But the back of Sanders’ head was an irritant that badgered him and kept him from concentrating. Memory took Villiers back to the Alaska oil fields two years ago, when he had met Sanders. He had thought he’d known the man from the past, but Sanders had refused to answer to the name Villiers had addressed him by. Sanders had been a petroleum engineer, thought to be very bright by the oil company that employed him. Thinking Sanders might be of use to him, Villiers had investigated-and found out that the youth he had once known in Chicago had fled a hit-and-run homicide charge and disappeared.

He had confronted Sanders with it, broken him down with ridiculous ease, and used him to obtain inside information from the oil company, which he had been in the process of raiding.

Tod Sanders was a small shy man with inky fingernails and a hangdog face. A thirty-four-year-old mama’s boy whose mother became ill every time he got serious with a girl. It had aroused Villiers’ interest, as a coolly scientific experiment, to see how far the man could be pushed without stiffening to retaliate. Evidently there were no limits to the degradation he was willing to suffer. He had been convinced from the moment he was born that the world was too much for him, and Villiers’ harsh treatment of him only provided him with added evidence of that which he was already convinced of. Sanders had become Villiers’ valet, chauffeur, shoeshine boy, and memo pad; he spent his scuffling hours arranging hotel rooms and procuring women for Villiers. He didn’t object to any of it. Sanders never seemed to be taxed by any desire to ask himself why he had to be subjected to such degrading ignominy; and because he was so unresisting, Villiers was sick and tired of baiting him.

By the time the limousine reached Hackman’s building, Villiers had forgotten Sanders; he was thinking about bigger things.

The car slid in at the curb, and Villiers glanced upward past the tall buildings at the thick sky which hung heavily masked in vapor. The traffic of pedestrians was a morass of hot bodies, tramping gray sidewalks and narrow streets in an area where every square foot of ground was worth more than six hundred dollars.

Hackman and Greene were on the nineteenth floor of a building which hadn’t been there three years before. The modern reception foyer reminded Villiers unfavorably of the waiting room of an airport. Beyond lay a collection of cubicles with desks, phones, and typewriters, inhabited by junior salesmen and brokers, secretaries, and the clerical staff. The firm boasted an English receptionist with high breasts and a good London accent, an elegant letterhead on twenty-weight linen bound stationery, and an acronymous cable address for clients abroad.

George Hackman, one of the big beefy hucksters of Wall Street, was standing by the receptionist’s pretty shoulder, leaning forward, with her telephone at his ear. He nodded to Villiers and went on talking into the phone-evidently the call had caught him here and he had taken it rather than go back to his own desk. Talking and listening on the phone, Hackman was jotting with his left hand in a brass-framed calendar pad on the receptionist’s desk. Villiers noticed Hackman’s brawny forearm brushing the receptionist’s breast as he wrote. The girl had a pretty face but sat with spreading heavy buttocks; Villiers wondered dispassionately why she didn’t wear a girdle.

Villiers went to the window beyond and looked down at tiny New Yorkers crawling painfully across the hot pavements.

George Hackman said into the phone, “Bet your ass, Carl. You heard right, Continental’s buying them out. It can’t help but jack up Reuland Express, and Jackson’s go

Hackman handed the phone to the English girl, leered at her, and walked over to Villiers to clap him on the arm; he said heartily, “How they hanging, Mace?”

Villiers gave him a cool stare. Hackman swallowed his smile and backed up a pace. Over his shoulder he said, “No calls and no visitors until I let you know otherwise,” to the receptionist, and steered Villiers back along a corridor toward the door to his private office.

“Sidney Isher’s already here,” Hackman said. Villiers went into the office and saw Isher in a chair. The lawyer nodded his red head and coughed. Hackman shut the door behind them and went around to sit behind his desk; he said, “How’d you like the new girl out front, Mace? Class with a capital ‘K,’ boy. She’s a pistol. Christ, I love to watch the way she shifts her carriage.” Hackman gri