Villiers Touch (44 page)

“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—disconnected, probably. Villiers stooped to get in.

There was the driver, and a skinny bald man in the front passenger seat, and one man in the back seat beside him. That man reached across him to pull the door shut, and said to the driver in a voice that rumbled out like lump coal tumbling down a metal chute, “Let's go, Charley.”

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 gonna break soon, what do you think?”

“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.”

“I don't like the setup,” Villiers said. “You've got a witness, I haven't.”

“Do we need witnesses, Mr. Villiers? My, my. I only brought Mr. Fields along for legal advice.”

Villiers took out his wallet and extracted a bill. He stepped forward and held it up to Norman Fields. The little man frowned. “What's that for?”

“One dollar. You take it, and you agree that in the matter we're about to discuss, you're acting as my legal counsel as well as Mr. Civetta's. That makes it a privileged communication. If anybody subpoenas you, you don't have to answer questions.”

The lawyer looked over his shoulder at Civetta, who nodded impatiently. “Sure—sure. It's all right, Norm, take the damn dollar and let's get down to it.”

Fields stuffed the dollar in his pocket and sat down. Villiers kept his feet. He didn't like the clandestine setting, and he didn't like the fact that they had forced him to leave his briefcase behind. It contained the jammer, and the jammer wouldn't do a bit of good as long as it was enclosed in four thousand pounds of Detroit steel; the car would absorb its signals completely.

But it was no time to call the meeting off. He would take his chances; he had to.

He said, “All right. I want to make you a business proposition.”

“Senna said that much. You worked pretty damn fast, getting him out of the Montreal brig on bail so he could set up this meeting. You must be in a hurry, Mr. Villiers.” Civetta said it in a way that made it abundantly clear he was prepared to extract every possible advantage from Villiers' need for haste.

“I won't beat around the bush,” Villiers said. “I'm taking over Northeast Consolidated Industries.”

“You wouldn't kid me,” Civetta said with a straight face. “Do you mean to tell me Heggins Aircraft is just a front for Mason Villiers?”

“You knew that already—everybody knows it.”

“What everybody knows and what somebody can prove are two different things. You've just admitted it out loud, which means you're giving something away to me, and when a man puts that kind of advantage in my hands, Mr. Villiers, I kind of figure he wants something in exchange. Or am I gettin' too cynical in my old age?”

“Let's not play games, Civetta. I've got a proposition to make. Something I want in exchange for something you want.”

“I know that, Mr. Villiers. You want money to finance your proxy fight. A lot of money. That's what you want. Now, what do I want that you could possibly give me in return?”

“Interest on a loan, to begin with.”

“Peanuts, Mr. Villiers,” Civetta murmured in his low gravel growl; but his face was attentive. “Let's talk facts and figures. How much?”

“Four hundred million.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Norman Fields ejaculated. Civetta's eyes shifted toward him, but Civetta's big head did not move.

All Civetta said was, “That's a lot of money.”

“I've done business with the Chicago organization before. They know I don't welsh on my debts. And I know how it's done. I go to your bank, and if I want a one-thousand-dollar loan, I sign a two-thousand-dollar note. The note is legitimate, its terms are the usual bank terms and rates—but the only profit your bank shows on its books is the legal interest. The extra one thousand goes into your pockets. I'm willing to do business on that basis. Only, of course, when we're talking about four hundred million, I'm not willing to pay you back double. What I'm offering is standard legal interest plus a twenty-five-percent profit. You lend me four hundred million, and I pay you back five hundred million. Plus legal interest on the four hundred million.”

Civetta didn't give him a direct answer. He looked at Fields, and Fields said nothing. He said after a moment, “You don't like me, Mr. Villiers.”

“Should I?”

“A lot of people seem to think it's good politics to like me.”

“Civetta, I don't like you, and I don't dislike you. This is business, not personalities. I'm not asking to join your social club.”

“Point is,” Civetta said, “I don't owe you a thing, Mr. Villiers, and you don't even pretend you're my friend. So why should I do you a favor? Why should I cut my vigorish rate down to one-quarter of the usual? You can have your four hundred million—all you got to do is, you pay me back eight hundred million. You see, I figure you can succeed if you get backing from me, and if you succeed, I know damn well you can afford to pay me eight hundred million. I'm a businessman too, Mr. Villiers. I know when I'm in a seller's market, see?”

“I see, yes. It's a matter of indifference to you, and you feel insulted that I should ask you into the deal when I don't particularly like you, but it gets less insulting if I raise the ante from twenty-five percent to a hundred percent.”

“You're real astute, Mr. Villiers. Now, you can tell me something else. Suppose I give you the four hundred million. What do you do with it?”

“I buy NCI.”

“Four hundred million don't buy control of NCI, Mr. Villiers. It ain't enough. I know my figures, see?”

“My tender offer of Heggins debentures buys the rest.”

“And what if it doesn't? You come back to me for more money, right? I'm not a bottomless pit, Mr. Villiers. My assets are just as limited as the next guy's.”

“You take my word for it or you don't, Civetta. Would I ask for four hundred million if I wanted six or eight? What good would it do me to ask for less than it takes to do the job? The whole thing falls apart if I don't end up with fifty-one percent of NCI. I think I can do it with three hundred million. But this thing's too big to shave too close.”

Head down, Norman Fields pressed his hands together until Villiers heard the knuckles crack. Fields looked up and broke in, “Listen, I don't like the whole—”

“Shut up, Norm. You're out of order.” Civetta kept his eyes on Villiers. “Mr. Villiers, I'm in business because I learned a long time ago to find out what people need, and give it to them. Maybe sometimes the law don't approve, but I supply the people's needs, and I make a profit. Now, you come to me with a proposition, it means you got to make an offer that supplies my needs too. You get me? So far, you ain't offered me nothing.”