The Villiers Touch

“Proof of what?”

“It’s all sordid and tedious, Russ, I don’t want to go over it with you, sitting here face to face like this. I want to remember your face with warmth in it. Once you’ve read my statement, you won’t think of me that way any more. I’ve done some unspeakable things.”

“We all have,” he said. “I don’t think anything you could tell me would change my feeling for you.”

“How do you feel about me? I know you made an absurd marriage proposal to me once, but you were drunk, and we were both upset, and none of it made any sense. Now we’re on your turf instead of mine, for the first time. Does it make a difference in the way you feel?”

“No.”

“I thought perhaps you’d thought about what I was. I had visions of your teeth grinding every time you thought about me.”

He laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t know very much about love,” she said softly. “Oh, I guess all women think about it, but I think there’s no room left inside me for love-I mean, the real kind, between a woman and a man. I’ve been used by too many men.”

“There are other kinds of love,” he said. “I’m not going to propose to you again, and I’m not going to fall to pieces when you leave for Rome. We’ll probably never see each other again. I regret that, but I’ll live with it. I’ll be grateful to have known you.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered. She stood up to go, but Hastings put out a detaining hand. Her back registered taut reaction. He turned her around toward him and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her lightly, and then her throat made a groaning sound, and her fingers bit deep into his back.

She wrenched herself away and smiled. Her eyes were moist. “You’re so incredibly good, Russ. I wish you everything.” She halved her smile, gazed at him intently as if to fix his image in her mind, and wheeled abruptly away, walking straight to to the door with lithe strides, going right on through without once looking back. His last glimpse of her remained in his vision like an afterglow after she was gone: God, she was so lovely. He turned back to his desk, sat down very slowly, and reached for the document she had left behind.

34. Mason Villiers

The sky was crowded with full-bellied clouds, there was the smell of rain in the hot air. But the night remained fetid and oppressive. Villiers stood under the awning in front of an apartment house on West Thirteenth Street and kept looking at his watch, filling up with impatient anger. He remembered what Diane had said about keeping others waiting; he promised himself this would be the last time, ever.

The big Lincoln drew up in the shadows fifty feet down the street. He walked toward it. The right-hand rear door opened, but the interior domelight didn’t go on-disco

There was the driver, and a ski

Villiers didn’t offer to shake hands with the man. He sat back and put his briefcase in his lap and said mildly, “This has got all the heavy-handed, cloaked melodrama of an old German silent movie. Is it really necessary?”

“We ride now,” the man said. “We talk when we get there.”

After that there was no more talk. Villiers gave the man a sidewise study. Civetta’s black hair was slicked back; his dark suit was carefully tailored, his shirt monogrammed on the pocket, his tiepin a glistening diamond. He wore Stacy Adams shoes and a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses which failed to soften the lines of his big square face. He had burly arms inside the tailored cloth, and the hard-jowled features of a cross-country truck driver.

Civetta turned his head and gave him a frank appraisal; his iron eyes studied Villiers with cool mistrust. Then, with a trace of a smile, he said, “Maybe the heat’s go

“I think we may get some rain.”

“Should clear some of the gunk out of the air, huh?”

“Bound to,” Villiers said, hating small talk, volunteering nothing more.

Civetta started talking about a Broadway musical he had seen recently. Villiers feigned attentiveness and grunted now and then. The Continental glided noiselessly toward the river, stair-stepping north along avenues and streets until it bumped up the ramp onto the West Side Highway and accelerated into the traffic stream with a smooth surge of power. The driver was superb-he crowded the speed limit all the way but never had to hit his brakes hard. They prowled north past the steamship piers-Villiers had a glimpse of the Queen Elizabeth II looming against the sky at the Cunard dock, probably just returned with a capacity load of summer travelers from England. The Lincoln swept past Harlem’s tenement roofs at a precise fifty miles an hour and climbed the ramp to the George Washington Bridge. A freighter churned its way up the Hudson beneath them, its screw fighting the current. The driver paid the toll with a green ticket book, and they swung north onto the Palisades Parkway. At this hour it was all but deserted, but the driver kept carefully to the speed limit. Lush trees whipped past, black against the translucent gray of light-reflecting clouds. Within ten minutes, somewhere toward the northeastern corner of the state of New Jersey, the driver pulled off onto U.S. 9W and made a quick turnoff into a side road. Trees intertwined thickly, arched over the road, cutting out the sky. The driver slowed to a crawl, peering forward. Shortly they came to a dirt road which went into the woods through a locked gate with a metal “NO VEHICULAR TRAFFIC” sign. The driver pulled off and parked on the narrow strip of dirt between the main road and the gate. The headlights flicked off, and Civetta said, “End of the line. We walk from here.”

They got out of the car and chunked the doors shut. Civetta looked both ways and walked quickly through the small pedestrian opening beside the gate, into the woods. The little bald man smiled nervously at Villiers and went ahead of him, as if to reassure him. Villiers, frowning, began to follow; but the driver took a step forward and said, “Pardon me, sir. Your briefcase.”

Villiers scowled at him. “What about it?”

“Mind leaving it in the car, sir?”

“You’re damn right I mind. Look-”

Civetta, having looked back, spoke harshly. “What the hell’s the matter back there?”

The driver only pointed toward Villiers’ briefcase. Civetta snapped, “Leave the case, if you don’t mind. He won’t steal anything.”

Reluctantly, Villiers handed it over and followed the two men into the woods. As he stepped through the pedestrian gate, he saw a car’s headlights appear around the bend of the main road a quarter-mile away, but he paid it no attention; none of the others seemed to mind. The driver got back into the car, holding his briefcase, and sat smoking, the button tip of his cigarette alternately glowing and dimming. Villiers turned and joined up with the others. Civetta led them a hundred feet or so into the woods, and, to his surprise, Villiers discovered they were at the edge of a clearing. Three or four picnic tables were

scattered around; there was a perforated trash drum and a number of signs posted-“ NO FIRES,” “ NO COOKING,” “ NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES ON PARK PREMISES.”

“It’s the backside of a county park,” Civetta explained. “Nobody comes here at night-they lock the front gates, and I guess the teen-age lovers haven’t discovered the back way in. It makes a useful place to talk. This is my legal associate, Mr. Norman Fields.”

Fields offered a hand, and Villiers, not without distaste, shook it briefly. Civetta sat down on one of the picnic benches and said, “Sit down and make yourself comfortable and let’s talk.”