Villiers Touch (18 page)

“You sound like a lawyer.”

“I should—I've argued with enough of them. But I'm trying to lay it out without legalese double-talk. Your lawyers will examine everything. If they find anything at all to object to, you can withdraw anytime without losses. I'll even pay the legal fees. You want to know what I'm getting out of it? Easy. I can raise capital to buy into any company, but it can be messy and costly—a lot of money gets eaten up in taxes. But if I buy in through a corporation—through Nuart—then the picture changes completely. When one company buys another, it can be reported as a pooling of interests. A merger. The buyer's assets don't have to reflect the cost of purchase, which would reduce his reportable profits, and he doesn't have to pay any tax on the exchange of stock—Does this bore you?”

“No. It does confuse me. You're handling me with kid gloves. The smile on the face of the tiger. You're clever, Mason—I'm not. You're an astute judge of weakness, and I can't escape feeling you're putting something over on me.”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn't you? Isn't it the way you work?
Caveat emptor
?”

“I'm not selling you a bill of goods, Diane. What do I have to do to convince you?”

She inspected him coolly. His suit displayed its good London tailoring, if a bit showy—he tended to wear his money on his lapels, but that hint of crudity was attractive in its way; it set off his magnetic power. He was like a natural force, not possible to control; like a volatile explosive. He surrounded himself with an electric aura of excitement—violence held precariously in check.

She pursed her lips. “Granting it's the wise thing for me to do at this point—going public—what makes you think I won't just take the idea to my father and let him handle it for me?”

“You won't.”

“Why not?”

“You never have. You could have done that anywhere along the line, from the time you opened your first gallery on Third Avenue. But you didn't. You've got too much pride—your ambition's too personal, too private. I get the feeling somewhere along the line you decided you had to prove you were just as good a man as your father.”

“That's silly. I'm not competing with my father.”

“Aren't you?”

He let it drop softly between them and hang in the air until she heard herself utter a brief and unconvincing nervous laugh. Villiers said, “I don't know anything about your ex-husband, but from what I hear, you had to choose between him and your business, and you chose the business. Doesn't that suggest an unusual sort of drive?”

“That's ridiculous. Russ and I broke up for a lot of reasons that were far too complex for you to boil down into half a dozen words. Maybe we were just two incompatible people—it happens.”

“It happens,” he agreed. “But not everybody's father is Elliot Judd. And not every daughter of a billionaire has to prove she can succeed in business on her own, without her daddy's help.”

“Where did you come across all this cockeyed information about me?”

“I never go into things blindfolded,” he said. “I know a great deal about you. Enough to be sure you won't take the proposition to your father. You'll do it with me or not at all. You may turn me down, but you won't take it behind my back—and particularly you'll never take it to him.”

“You're so damned sure of yourself, aren't you?”

“Of course I am. I learned a long time ago that only a fool goes into anything without doing his homework.” He turned his hand over and gave her a brief hard smile.

Her apartment was on the eleventh floor of a high-ceilinged old building on East 61st Street, a co-op occupied mainly by presidents of insurance companies, banks, and industries. An elderly starched doorman leaped to open the door of Villiers' limousine when it eased in at the curb. An elevator boy in white gloves whisked them up the eleven stories in a fast, silent elevator, and Diane stood at her foyer door with key in hand, hesitating, not wanting to admit him.

Looking at him, she saw how fragile was her standard New York armor—the defense of brittle sophistication which, to a man like him, was no defense at all.

He gripped both her arms and turned her to face him. “Invite me in for a nightcap.”

“I don't wear nightcaps, Mason.”

“I see. And that's all there is to it?” He smiled slightly, and she felt the pressure of his hands drawing her toward him. She said sharply, “Please, Mason.”

“You're a bit glacial tonight, aren't you? You know damn well you're a beautiful woman, desirable. We're not adolescent kids—do you really need to have me start breathing hard and whispering sweet nothings to you?”

His hard hands were against her arms. She had a swift, sudden vision of two figures on a bed, clutching at each other—it was what she wanted; it was what she feared. She stiffened; she said, “Damn it, this city's packed full of women that want a man. Any man. Do you have to force yourself on
me?
”

“You're not just any woman.”

“Please, Mason. Don't. You'd be wasting your time, and I'd rather not disappoint you.”

“I'll take that chance. I've always—”

“Damn it, what I have to tell you is difficult enough without your impatience. I'm no good in bed. Do you understand?”

Her eyes went wide; her breath stopped in her throat.

Mason Villiers said, “Do you think I can't arouse you?”

“Mason, please, for heaven's sake. Do you know how hard this is for me?”

She lifted her hands and pushed his arms away, and backed up against the door, feeling the hot rush of blood to her face. “Please,” she whispered, shaking her head.

He nodded slowly. “All right.” His voice was gentle enough, but his face had closed up. He turned to the elevator and pushed the button.

She clutched her arms and stared at his wide, flat back in miserable silence. He didn't stir. The elevator came, the doors slid open, and he stepped in.

She took a pace forward. “Mason?”

He turned to regard her with a calm air of cold, arrogant disdain.

She said in a small voice, “Go ahead and start the arrangements to incorporate.”

He nodded his head an inch. “Thank you,” he said with precise courtesy, and watched her, unblinking, while the elevator doors slid shut, cutting him off from her view.

She went through the apartment turning on lights, and sat down on the living-room couch with a cigarette. She had a sudden impulse to run from the empty apartment and rush into one of the crowded bars on Second Avenue.

She was halfway to the door before she stopped and went slowly back to the couch. She could just see herself sitting in a bar, trying not to look like a pickup, fighting off men who knew of no other reason why a woman alone should come into a bar. In her strong moments she was fully capable of turning a slow burning stare on a man that would send him hurrying away, shaking his head defensively; but right now she didn't have the courage to look a man in the face.

She said sternly, aloud, “I am not going to crack up. I absolutely refuse to crack up. It's ridiculous—it's absurd. I won't!”

She went into the bedroom, drew the blinds and draperies, and removed her clothes, putting them away with care. She sat down naked at the dressing table and fluffed her hair, watching critically in the mirror.

Lamplight on the pale blue walls depressed her; she resolved to have the room repainted. She went into the bathroom and turned on the tub faucets, and walked through the apartment to the bar, where she poured half a tumbler of straight gin over two ice cubes; carrying the drink, she went around switching off lights, checked the bolt at the front door, and came back to the bathroom in time to shut off the water. She closed the bathroom door, glanced at her expressionless face in the mirror, and stepped into the steaming tub; she took a long swallow of gin, set the glass on the rim of the tub, and lay back in the hot water, thinking about nothing in particular; and then she slowly became aware of the tingling in her breasts, the vaginal tautness, the generation of hidden excitement that made her feel shamed and sick with loathing, knowing she would spend a little while pretending it wasn't there, and a little while more hoping it would go away, and a little while more massaging her hardened nipples while a protective cloak of serenity would seem to descend around her, and in the end she would promise she would never let it happen again, but she would begin to rub herself with her fingers until she reached that terrible guilty, lonely climax.

12. Mason Villiers

The limousine turned up Third Avenue from Forty-seventh Street and cruised slowly with the lights. Taxis darted past, jumping the traffic lights, and along the window-lit sidewalks male prostitutes cruised with brazen, casual arrogance. In the back seat of the limousine Villiers became irritated with the bedraggled whine of Tod Sanders' complaining voice and said, “I'm sick of hearing about your mother. Shut up.”

Sanders didn't say another word until he eased the big car in at the curb in front of Villiers' hotel. Then, blank-faced, Sanders turned in his seat and said, “You want a girl? You want me to send for a girl?”

“No, to hell with it. You go on home and sit up with your sick mother.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Tod Sanders was perpetually nodding, nervously pretending agreement before he could possibly know what he was going to be agreeing with; he was like a student—there was one in every classroom—whose head bobbed up and down the whole hour long.

“I'll need you here at nine in the morning with the ear.”

“Yes, sir.”

The doorman had the limousine door open; Villiers stepped out and went into the hotel lobby. He glanced at the row of elevators but went on to the cocktail lounge. Drunk businessmen were crowded loud at the bar. As he moved past them, he saw a slim attractive woman sitting alone; her glance touched him, direct and interested. He sized her up as an easy lay.

She had a warm, slow smile.

He sat down and spoke: “Staying here in the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“In town long?”

“I live here.” She was still smiling.

“Work here?”

“Well, I'm sort of between jobs, you know. I do a little dancing, and I model a little. I'm just sort of—around, you know?”

He nodded. “Expensive?”

“Some gentlemen don't think I am.”

“Go on,” he said.

“Two hundred.”

He laughed quietly and gave her his room number and walked out to the lobby.

At nine-thirty in the morning he entered the offices of Hackman and Greene and went back through the corridor without waiting for the English receptionist to announce him. He found Sidney Isher in Hackman's office; the broker himself was nowhere in sight. Isher said, “George must be stuck in the traffic. It's murder out there in this Goddamned heat. You want a cup of coffee?”

“No.” Villiers settled on a chair in the cool blast of the air-conditioner.

The red-haired lawyer coughed; his eye tic winked steadily. “I swear the pavements are starting to melt out there.”

Villiers said, “Take a pill or something—you're nervous.”

“I guess I am. We've got a problem.”

“I'm listening.”

“It goes by the name of Arthur Rademacher. He's James Melbard's brother-in-law—this'll take a minute to explain. You see, Melbard Chemical has about one and a half million shares of capital stock. As you know, there's only about a hundred thousand shares outstanding on the open market—the rest belong to the Melbard family and a few insiders, and the twenty-three percent that NCI and Elliot Judd own together. The idea, as I understood it from you, was to tender an offer to Melbard to get a controlling interest from the Melbard family, in an exchange-of-stocks deal with Nuart Galleries. This was supposed to—”

“I'm losing interest,” Villiers snapped. “Get to the point.”

“I'm trying to.” Isher kept crossing and uncrossing his legs. “You want to buy a controlling interest in Melbard, right? The only way to do it is to buy eight hundred thousand shares of Melbard stock, right? And the only place you can buy that many shares is from Melbard's family, because nobody else owns that much. But what I'm trying to tell you is, there's a hitch we didn't foresee. It seems this old bastard Rademacher owns a quarter of a million shares in his wife's name—she's James Melbard's sister—and he's also got options on another quarter of a million shares which James Melbard owns at the moment. You get the picture now? James Melbard can't sell his stock to you unless Rademacher releases him from the options. For all practical purposes, Rademacher controls half a million shares of Melbard stock, which is better than thirty percent of the whole lot. Without that block of stock, you can't get control of Melbard Chemical—not unless you can buy NCI's block, and I doubt you could.”

“I don't see the problem,” Villiers said. “If Rademacher owns it, then buy it from Rademacher. What's so difficult about that?”

“Difficult? Nothing. It's dead simple. Rademacher won't sell.” Isher assumed a pained smile and made a vague gesture. “Just like that.”

“How do you know? Have you tried making him an offer?”

“Of course I have. What the hell do you think I'm talking from—pure guesswork? As soon as I got your call telling me Mrs. Hastings had agreed on the deal, I put my people to work on the Melbard group. I got a report from one of them this morning. Rademacher flatly turned us down. His half-million shares are too big a block for us to buck.”

“Maybe—if he isn't bluffing. Who says he's actually got control of that many shares?”

“Believe me. I checked it out.”

“Have you talked to him personally?”

“I put in a call. He wouldn't talk to me.”