The Villiers Touch

“Of course you have,” Quint mumbled. “It would make you look a bit of an ass, wouldn’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to. That’s why I want to stir things up. I want to take the wraps off-let our man know we’re tracking him.”

“Whatever for?”

“It may frighten him off,” Hastings said, and watched the fat man for a reaction.

Quint shifted his seat on the uncomfortable wooden chair. Finally he said slowly, “No. I’m afraid we can’t have it bruited about.”

“It’s the only way I know to-”

“Let me finish, please. That technique may have worked for you in investigating political corruption. Let a malfeasor know he’s being watched, and he’ll very likely back away from the trough. I understand your tactics. But they won’t work here. We inhabit an asylum of paranoid sensitivity, Russ. To reveal we’re investigating a security as big as NCI is to shake public confidence in it. If public confidence falls, the price of the stock falls, and if a blue chip like NCI falls, the whole market may fall with it. Our only weapon against that sort of disaster is our power to force the Exchange to suspend trading in the stock. But we’re not permitted to exercise that power unless we have substantial and cogent reasons-reasons we can explain to the satisfaction of all concerned. Do you see? Wall Street couldn’t be more fragile if it were perched on the lip of a seismic fault. We all have the same responsibility, to do nothing that threatens to set off the earthquake.”

The fat man crumpled the cellophane wrapper in his huge fist and dropped it in the ashtray. “Request denied,” he concluded.

Hastings nodded. “I understand all that. But I’m begi

“Risk,” the fat man replied, “has to be measured not in terms of what you’ve got to gain, but in terms of what you’ve got to lose. Look, Russ, I don’t mean to trample your enthusiasms. You’ve convinced me there’s something afoot that bears investigating. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to go on conducting the investigation by the book. The idea doesn’t appeal to you? There was a time when I was too impatient to go by the book too. But everything in the book was put there for a reason. You’ll go right ahead and dig, with my blessings, but you’ll do it discreetly, and you won’t broadcast any warnings. I trust I’m making that abundantly clear.”

“About as unmistakable as a giraffe in a bathtub,” Hastings agreed. He stood up. “I guess you’re right.”

“You bloody Americans are always ‘I-guessing.’ It’s not one of your more endearing habits of speech.”

“You’ll get used to it. The first hundred years are the hardest.” He turned to the door.

“Russ.”

“Mmm?”

“Not one man in a hundred would have had the hunch you started with on this thing. Not one in a thousand would have played it. I’m not unmindful of that. Don’t take my schoolmasterish scoldings as criticisms. You’re worth any five other men in this office-and if it comes to it, I’ll support you right up to the lynching. But you must play this one close to your chest.”

“I understand.” He gave Quint a smile and went out into the hallway.

When he entered his own office, Miss Sprague looked up from her desk and said, “Mr. Burgess is waiting in your office. And there was a phone call from a Miss Cynthia MacNee.”

It stopped him in his tracks. He frowned at her. “Did she say what she wanted?”

“Only that she’d call again within a half-hour. She specifically asked that you don’t call her back-she said she’s not at the Nuart office. She also said it was very important, and she hoped you’d wait for her return call.” Miss Sprague gave him an arch look of speculation and turned back to her typewriter.

Puzzled, he went into the office and greeted Bill Burgess. The lawyer from Justice was a harried-looking sort with dark blond hair and a square face with a short nose and good jaw. He spent Wednesday nights playing poker, took his wife to neighborhood Italian restaurants and movies on Saturday nights, and spent summer Sundays at Jones Beach. He had limp shirt cuffs, blackened around the seams by soot and too much wearing; his shoes were very old and assiduously polished; the seersucker suit was baggy. His smile was fond with the warmth of old friendship.

“I know,” Hastings said, going around behind his desk and seating himself, “I didn’t show up at the poker game, and you’re sore because you missed a chance to nip me for fifteen bucks.”

“Yah. We need new blood in the game.”

“What you mean is, you need a fish.”

“You’re not all that bad,” Burgess said, packing his pipe. “Listen, you’ve made a lot of work for me. Ever since you called and dropped that name in my lap I’ve been going around in circles.”

“What name?”

“Salvatore Se

Hastings sat up straight. “You’ve got something.”

“Yah, I confess. The name kept kicking around in the back of my skull, and I knew there had to be something. I started checking things out yesterday, put a girl on the files, and spent an hour of overtime digging. Came up with some interesting stuff.”

“Then unload it. Or does it come with a price tag?”

“This job makes cynics out of them all, doesn’t it? Okay, so there’s a price tag. Some of the stuff I got for you had to come out of FBI files, and they want reciprocation from you. Anything you get on Se

“So I was right about him.”

“Uh-hunh. Cosa Nostra up to his eyeballs. Eight arrests, one conviction. Sullivan rap, concealed weapon. That was nine years ago, a little before my time. He’s been in Canada since he got out of Sing Sing five years ago, which is why I didn’t tumble to the name. But the FBI likes to keep tabs on them wherever they go. Anyhow, here’s the gen. They call him Little Sally, which is to distinguish him from Big Sally-Salvatore Civetta, who as we all know is Vic Civetta’s younger brother. Se

“Go ahead,” Hastings said. “I’ll yawn if I get bored.”

“Well, it’s a stock-market confidence game. I guess you know that. Se