The Villiers Touch

“No doubt. Anything else on your mind? How do you like the job up there?”

“Too soon to tell. If I could get my teeth into something, it might be all right.”

“You sound jaded, Russ.”

“Maybe I am. I’ll see you sometime.” He rang off and sat back, drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk, frowned, and wondered if he wasn’t jumping at illusions. In the old days, with Speed, he had produced large results by following nebulous hunches; but maybe Quint had been right: this was finance, not politics, and perhaps he wasn’t yet sensitive enough to the clues and signs. In this arena one needed a good deal more than hunches and suspicions; the evidence of malfeasance had to be ironclad and substantial. Otherwise there was no point in opening a case. The government, even with the best evidence, was loath to prosecute securities cases; to a juror, the details were as baffling as hieroglyphics; to get a conviction was to achieve a miracle.

Prosecute a case… jurors… conviction. His chuckle, uttered aloud, was a wry snort. He didn’t have so much as a clear-cut suspicion. Only the vaguest intimation. But he had told Quint there were vibrations: he had felt them. Something was in the air. He felt vague stirrings, the disquiet of anticipated excitement, and he didn’t want to bring himself down by reminding himself that perhaps he was only sensing what he wanted to sense: he wanted the hunt, the chase. I feel like a fight. So help me, I feel like a fight.

3. Diane Hastings

In the dirty narrow gorge of Madison Avenue a yellow taxi made its way to the curb to discharge its passenger, who emerged with a trim stretch of long legs and drew male stares when she walked across the curb into a tall, checkered-glass slab of a building.

She took the express elevator to the thirty-third floor and stepped out into the deep-carpeted reception foyer of Nuart Galleries International, answered in kind the pretty receptionist’s grin, and went along a hall until she stopped outside the open door of the stockroom.

The place was a frenetic mess, a welter of prints and paintings. Matted reproductions stood against every available inch of wall. Cynthia MacNee was striding back and forth with impatient disgust. “Shit. Hello, Diane dear.”

Diane Hastings stepped carefully over a litter of catalogs, chic and slim as a fashion model, with the long-boned slender-ness that photographers loved as a clothes hanger. She used it herself for that purpose, today wearing a severe, classic Givenchy.

Cynthia flung herself around the room with big-limbed abandon; she gave Diane a rushed and furious glance and said, “God damn it, it’s all crap.”

Diane Hastings surveyed it. “How can you possibly tell, in this clutter? Where did that Mandering come from?”

“I wanted to have a look at it. We might be able to get the repro rights for a few thousand. It’s the one what’s-her-name auctioned off upside down at Parke-Bernet.”

“Not bad,” Diane said.

Cynthia stopped, stared at her, and uttered a horsey snort. “Not bad? My dear, you see before you examples of dismal taste from every period in the history of civilization. I ask you-look at that moth-eaten Scott Taylor. That vertiginous Mosarely.” She struck a pose. “Aht for the masses at pop-yew-lah prices! Madness, don’t you know? Yah gets what yah pays for, honey, and this pile of horse shit only proves once again that you can’t make a silk purse out of a two-dollar whore.”

Diane laughed, picking a path across the room to her office door. “Better get it cleaned up before their majesties the out-of-town buyers arrive tomorrow.”

“I’ll dump it all down the incinerator chute,” Cynthia said in her drawling, throaty voice. “Just see if I won’t!” She made a Girl Scout’s honor sign. Diane laughed again and shook her head, staring with amused wonder at the huge girl in transparent boots, lacy patterned stockings, a miniskirt, a little vinyl jacket, and a derby hat. Cynthia recognized her expression and crinkled her nose with fierce defiance. “Somebody around here has got to look the part of the artsy-craftsy kook. Who’d buy modern art from anybody who looks as sane as you?”

Diane went into her private office, leaving the door open behind her. It was a big room with deep carpet, push-botton phones, big-window views of the downtown skyline and a patch of the East River. The furnishings were in walnut, gold, and beige; there was a long couch with a coffee table, a wide expanse of beige carpet, and set across the corner, the desk. Its opulence and size were part of the boss-lady image which, at rare moments, amused her. She had not got used to the idea-after five years she probably never would-and she still felt she lacked the hard brass that seemed common to all the bitch-on-wheels female executives she knew.

She settled into her chair and buzzed the secretary: “Any messages, Maude?”

“A Mr. Villiers called this morning. He said he wasn’t sure where he’d be and said he’d call you back.”

Diane took a deep breath. “Thanks. Anything else?”

“A call from the manager of the Seattle store wanting to know what had happened to his shipment of Thanksgiving greeting cards. I switched him to Mr. Winslow in Distributing. He sounded kind of sore-I guess the computer loused up his order.”

“That damned computer,” Diane said. “That all?”

“Yes. You have a luncheon appointment at one-thirty.”

“I know. I’ll be in the office till then, if there are any calls.”

She switched off the intercom and thought of Mason Villiers, constructing a picture of him-dark, tautly attractive, glittering with hard ambition and thoroughly masculine charm. She hadn’t seen him in months. She had met him just after her divorce, and there had been a few dates; she had been afraid of what the wags called the Rebound, and she had not allowed anything to come of it. He had wanted to seduce her; he was a man to whom conquest came easily. But she had told herself, I won’t be a pushover. She had evaded him, and he seemed to have taken the hint. Now he was back. Why?

She played with a pencil, speculating, a walnut-haired woman with skin pulled taut across the good high bones, the sweep of her eyebrows emphasized in pencil. She knew she was beautiful, not with the padded softness of early youth, but with the pared-down bone beauty of thirtyish maturity. She had seen few men since the divorce, and those few only casually; she had plunged deep into her work. She didn’t want to admit she was afraid of herself in a man’s company, but she couldn’t forget the things Russ had said to her. She wanted very desperately not to believe him: “It’s got to the point where you’re doling out warmth by the teaspoonful.” Words blurted in the anger of the moment, admittedly-but sometimes when she glimpsed herself in the mirror, she thought the eyes were a bit too cool, a bit glittering.

Her friends in art and business claimed to envy her; with awe they assured her she had reached the exalted nirvana of the parlor psychologist: she was well adjusted. But adjusted to what?

The result of a collapsed marriage was always self-pity. She had seen it often enough in others. It was, she knew, time to come out of the self-imposed period of mourning. She began to look forward to Mason Villiers’ call.

Cynthia MacNee came batting into the office like a clumsy brunette sheepdog. It was always a surprise to view that pretty, shield-shaped face atop the ungainly hugeness of her. She wasn’t unattractive; were it not for her horsey way of moving and the absurdity of her costumes, she might have been regarded as statuesque and lovely. She had to be in constant social motion, or she would perish; her overwhelming energy and furious bounce were awe-inspiring. She said loudly, with her customary twinkling urbanity, “I know a lot about art, but I know what I like, and this season’s horse shit isn’t either one.”