The Villiers Touch

Hackman’s voice: “My call? I didn’t call her.”

“From the tone of her voice I gathered that. You must have had a very rough night.”

“Bet your bottom,” Hackman replied, hearty but guttural with hangover. “It was a doozy.”

Villiers, deliberately eavesdropping, heard a quick rustle, as if the girl had dodged Hackman’s rush. The girl said in a tone like ice, “You live like a bloody sailor on shore leave. You weren’t with your wife, and you weren’t with me-just where the bloody hell were you?”

“You’re getting just like her. I come home early, and she thinks I want something-I come home late, she thinks I’ve already had it. Look, I had business to do last night, okay? Christ.”

There was a snort and the quick hard tap-tap of the girl’s heels. Villiers pushed the door all the way open and strode in just as Hackman growled, “Sca-rew you, doll,” at the girl’s disappearing back.

Hackman turned and gave Villiers a momentary startled glance of red-faced alarm. Villiers pushed the door shut with his heel and allowed himself to smile slightly. Hackman, scowling, with a cigar in his mouth, was a picture of beefy chagrin. He removed the cigar and complained sourly, “She’s just pissed because she knows she’s nothin’ but a piece of tail I can knock off anytime. Shit, one time she begs me for it, I may just let her hang up there and suffer.”

Eliciting no answer, Hackman finally shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Ah, she’ll be okay when she cools off. They all come around, don’t they? Hell. Come on inside.”

Villiers went along with him into the private office. “What did NCI open at?”

“Up a quarter. We got to talk about that.”

“Why?”

“Because right now you’re in trouble either way, the way I see it.”

“Fascinating,” Villiers said, settling in a chair. “Tell me about it, George.”

“Well, look, you’re holding a damn strong position in it. If it starts to slide, you’ll have to start covering the accounts-you’ll have people breathing down your neck for margin calls.”

You don’t know the half of it, he thought. “That’s one way. What’s the other?”

“You’re right in the middle. Suppose it goes up instead of down? It could happen fast, any minute now. All the big firms have got computers sca

“I pyramid.”

“With what? You got maybe eighty, ninety thousand shares on the books here. That’s a drop in the bucket. But what I’m really worried about, suppose it takes a plunge? You paid for the stuff with checks written on a dozen corporations.”

“Why shouldn’t I? They’re my corporations.”

“That don’t make it your money to sling around. I’d feel a lot happier if you’d sell off enough NCI shares to pay off the margin. I’m still holding your Amalgamated Elcom check to cover it, but I don’t want to put that check through-I can return it to you, you tear it up, it won’t have to show on anybody’s books. Mace, you’re too deep into the Amalgamated Elcom reserve fund. You got no legal right to draw money out of it at all. I could get in a hell of a mess.”

“Stop sweating,” Villiers said mildly. “Elcom’s as sound as granite. They’ve just discovered four hundred square miles of bauxite aluminum ore in Canada.”

“It says here. Christ, you started that rumor. How much you want to bet there’s no bauxite at all on that lease? All you wanted was to boost the price so you could issue carpets of the stock and trade it for NCI shares.”

“Sometimes you surprise me a little,” Villiers said, and as an afterthought showed a smile.

The yellowish, magnified stock tape moved rapidly across the screen. Villiers said in the same cool, even voice, “You’re wrong on one point, George. I haven’t got ninety thousand shares of NCI. That’s only the part you’ve bought in your street name. My position in NCI, as of this morning, runs to approximately one million, seven hundred thousand shares.”

Hackman just stared at him.

By the time Sidney Isher arrived at ten-thirty, Hackman was sitting back beaming with an H. Upma

When Isher sat down, Villiers thought at first-astonished-that Isher was winking at him. Then he remembered it was a tic, a permanent affliction, the quivering of Isher’s eyelid. It flicked and drooped of its own volition, and Isher probably had long ago lost his awareness of it. What unsettled Villiers’ was that he had forgotten it. Not enough sleep, he judged.

Isher said, “I hear Farouk’s nineteen-thirty Alfa Romeo is up for sale in Boston.”

“I’m looking into it,” Villiers said. “Right now we’re going to have a conference. I want both of you wide awake.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“I’m ready to come out in the open,” Villiers said. “You two would have to know all of it eventually anyhow-I’ve held it back because you both get so damned nervous over the big ones. But now I’m going to spell it out so you’ll know what we’re after and what to look out for along the way.”

Isher slid back in his chair and cleared his throat. “It’s about time,” he muttered.

“Yes sirree Bob,” said Hackman.

“My aim,” Villiers said, spuriously casual, “is to take control of Northeast Consolidated Industries.”

Hackman beamed. “Sure.”

Isher was blinking and rubbing his eyes. “NCI?” He seemed unsure he had heard right.

“Does it make sense now, Sidney?”

Isher’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I’m, ah, not sure.”

“Melbard was only a preliminary. That’s why I didn’t care what I had to pay to get it. The same with Nuart and Heggins Aircraft. You see-”

“Mace, maybe you ought to start at the begi

Villiers disliked being interrupted but this time he let it go. “You’re probably right. All right, from the top. I started by piling up capital. Used every gimmick I could think of to raise dimes and dollars. I’ve got boiler rooms ru

“I used one trick I learned from you, George-bought small amounts of my own stocks on the exchanges at the close of the trading day, paying a higher price than the last previous quotation. That way the stock shows an uptick on the listings. Keeps the price up and sustains the appearance of activity, which makes the stock more attractive to the over-the-counter buyer.”