Villiers Touch

by Brian Garfield

  Hastings moved to the window and swept the horizon. Finally he said, “You’re dead right, of course.”

  It brought a wide smile to Judd’s face. “You can’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that. Because I’m offering it to you.”

  Hastings’ mouth dropped open. He spun on his heel and stared.

  “I need a man I trust to take it over,” Judd said. “To oversee the birth-control trusts and see to it this place is kept intact. Someone to live here, on this land, and watch over it. When I set it up, I had you in mind.”

  Hastings was shaking his head. The old man murmured, “Don’t say anything yet. Think about it, that’s all I’m asking.”

  He had forgotten what a straightforward affair supper was at Elliot Judd’s house. Judd had always been a meat-and-potatoes man. The old Indian woman rustled in and out of the dining room, serving; the conversation, with Lewis Downey at table, was light and inconsequential.

  There were fourteen rooms in the house, most of them connected to one another only by the common porch-roofed walkway that ran around the patio. The front of the house contained three enormous rooms interconnected by wide double doorways.

  The dining room contained Monets, and a Renoir worth close to a million dollars; the front room was hung with postimpressionists, Léger, and Lichtensteins; the office-library contained a hodgepodge of Wyeths and Sargents and a Remington cowboy in bronze. Judd was talking about his artwork: “I loathe museums. They’re as bad as zoos. Hang a picture in a museum, and it takes the life out of it—museums are for the dead. Paintings were made for the walls of houses, where people live.”

  Downey said in his irritatingly impersonal voice, “Hadn’t you better take it easy on that Rothschild?”

  The old man’s hand made a claw around the wineglass. “You’re an old woman, Lewis. We’re celebrating a homecoming.”

  It made Hastings feel awkward. The meal concluded, Downey excused himself and left. Hastings sat back, finishing his wine, feeling logy and inert; the wine moved like a soft warm hand across his tired joints.

  The old man sat slack and indifferent, like an animal going into hibernation; he was awake, but unmoving, his breathing hard to detect, his metabolism slow in the suspended animation of the very old. He stirred and said, “Do you ever see Diane? Or did I ask you that before? I apologize—sometimes memories get stuck together like pages in a book. But the strange thing is, even now when I look in the mirror I still expect to see a young face looking back at me.… I was asking about Diane, wasn’t I?”

  “We—don’t see each other.”

  “Just as well, of course.”

  There was another stretch of silence; finally Judd said, “When I sit here dozing I like to think it passes for deep thinking. Actually, I’m distantly aware of the beating of my old heart, but that’s about all. Oh, Christ, Russ, when you’re old it takes so damned much frustrating time to do even the simple things like getting to the bathroom, reading, getting in and out of chairs. You’ve noticed I’ve pared the staff here down to nearly nothing—the old Indian woman cooks and cleans, and Lewis pretends to nurse me, and there’s a fellow who comes up from the bunkhouse once or twice a week to make repairs and do the gardening. But I got rid of the rest of them—they all started treating me with humorous amicability, which I hated bitterly. I can’t stand being patronized. I envy my late wife, you know—she died within two days of falling ill with bulbar polio. No time for the kind people to come around and croon their sycophantic sympathy. You never knew her, did you—Diane’s mother? No, of course not, she died long before. On this last page of my life I tend to confuse things in time. But sometimes I wake up in the morning and twist my head around, and I’m surprised to discover I’ve slept alone.”

  After a silent while, sipping wine, Hastings said in a soft voice, “Are you all right, Dad?”

  “What do you mean? I’m old, Russ. Nobody gets out of this life alive.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  The old man stared at him, his lids beginning to droop as if to cover his soul. “I know,” he said at last. “Of course, you’re right—it would take a blind man not to know. This thing I’m in, this body, it ought to be in a hospital, but I’ll be damned if I’ll lie in a stinking hospital with plastic tubes rammed up my ass and prick and nose. Too many old ones have their lives stretched out by modern medicine—what good is it? Once I lose my ability to see with my mind and think with my soul, I want to get out of it fast.”

  Hastings’ hand reached the table and gripped its edge.

  The bony shoulders stirred. “It’s inoperable, of course. The first doctor told me it was a medical opinion, not a fact—not then, yet. I’d want to consult another doctor, he said. So I did. Naturally I hoped for a different opinion—I do not want to die. Who does? There were tests, X rays, a biopsy. It’s a malignant melanoma-bone cancer. No way to cut it back or stop it. Once it starts moving, it’s faster than the telegraph, all through the skeleton. I can live a month or two or three. That’s all. The pain’s already damned severe, as you can imagine, but I control it with drugs. A few more days, and I suppose I’ll have to confine myself to the house, because I’ll be too doped up to walk. I’ll regret that—walking around this place has been one of my greatest pleasures the past few months.”

  The old man took a breath; miserably, Hastings did not speak, but Judd saw his eyes and nodded. “We all get uncomfortable in the presence of sickness and pain. Don’t search your mind for the right thing to say—your expressions of sympathy will only make you feel stupid, and they won’t do anything for me. I can see in your face the love between us, like son and father—let it go at that. I’ve learned to live with it, if that’s the word. There are times when I get touched with panic and dread—I’m no superman. Sometimes I sit alone in a room, and I try to sit absolutely quiet, waiting for the pain to touch me again. But there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Now, then—you did come out here on some sort of business. I suppose we’d better talk about it now, since I happen to be feeling up to it.”

  “I don’t think it’s important enough to—”

  “Nonsense. Let’s hear about it, and then we’ll decide whether it’s important.”

  Feeling morose and reluctant, he turned the wineglass in his fingers by the stem and said, as briefly as he could, “For the past few weeks a large number of dummies have been buying up blocks of NCI shares. Up to this point they seem to have accumulated about a million shares. You’ve got something over eighty million outstanding. Either a raider is moving in from outside, or somebody’s moving up from inside.”

  He wasn’t sure the old man had been listening, until Judd gave him a small smile. “Interesting,” he muttered. “All right, it’s not me, if that’s what had you worried, and it’s not anyone I know about.”

  “Then it’s trouble.”

  “I suppose it is. I suppose I ought to work up a great deal of indignation and rage. If it had happened a few months ago I might have enjoyed winning one last fight, but I’m afraid it’s too late now, Russ. Anyhow, I’m too well protected—I’m still the chairman of NCI, only because there hasn’t been a stockholders’ meeting yet this year. I’ve assigned almost all my personal holdings to the population and wilderness trusts—I haven’t got any NCI stock left in my own name. Of course, the trusts will be able to vote the stock when the time comes, but I’m pretty much out of it. And frankly, I don’t care that much about the corporation any more. I’d just as soon have all the corporations gutted by raiders. It might destroy our civilization, but if our damned production machinery came grinding to a halt, we might have a chance that at least a few human beings would survive.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t look at it that way. Putting a company like NCI in the hands of a buccaneer could never possibly do anyone any good.”

  “Except the buccaneer,” Judd said dryly.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’re loyal to your hire, which is an honorable thing�
�though I sometimes wonder if there’s any room left in this world for values like honor and loyalty. At any rate, you do what you see fit, in your little Wall Street battles. You have my authority to get in touch with the members of my board of directors and inform them of any suspicions you have, or any facts you dig up to support the suspicions. Let the directors handle it—I’m sure they’ll want to fight. Fighting the jackals is the oldest and most firmly established of all animal activities. They’ll enjoy the struggle. And maybe that’s all there is left, now. It’s possible to enjoy a good fight, you know, even when you’re losing it.” The old man grinned, sparkling.

  Hastings began to speak; Lewis Downey appeared at the door. “Bedtime,” he announced without fuss. “And you haven’t taken your medicine. It was due an hour ago.”

  “Nonsense,” the old man growled. “You know what that junk is as well as I do. I take it when I feel the need, not on any hidebound pharmacist’s schedule. God, Lewis, you’ll make a morphine addict of me yet.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Downey crossed to the old man’s chair and took his arm to help him up. Judd looked over his shoulder. “Think about that proposition of mine, Russ.”

  “I will. Sleep well.”

  The old man went away, leaning on Downey’s arm, feeble and full of pride.

  Hastings left his wineglass behind and went outside. When he hit the open air he waited for it to revive him. The night air held a chill; he rammed his hands into his pockets. Under the stars it was as if he had stepped back a hundred years through time, and he felt tensions drain out of him as if he had pulled a plug. He heard the mourning hoot of a mountain owl. Somewhere on those slopes prowled the night-hunting predators; the world here, for a brief time perhaps, was still in balance. He stood in the empty silence, not reckoning time, thinking about Judd’s offer.

  22. Steve Wyatt

  Wyatt went over Hackman’s file on Arthur Rademacher for the third time, closed the folder, and sat back to blow smoke out of his nostrils and stare toward the ceiling, going back over it and making sure he had all of it ready on the tip of his tongue. He had to have it letter perfect; there was too much at stake this time to play it by ear. He spent half an hour rehearsing just how he would do it, and in the end he smiled and got up from his couch and sauntered into the bedroom.

  She lay curled in a tight knot. Her sleeping face was composed, gentle, reflecting quiet happiness; she made a small curved mound under the sheet. He glanced at the clock and got onto the bed with her, snuggling close, fitting tight against her back; he slid his hand under her arm and cupped her breast.

  Anne turned her face up, smiling to herself, her eyes half-closed; she looked warm and drowsy. She moved her shoulder under his chin so he could kiss her. She made him think of all the sagging middle-aged ones he had hustled—she had so much that none of them had ever owned. It was too bad her name had to be Goralski. He printed light kisses on her nose, her cheek, her mouth and chin. Sweet and warm, she turned over slowly, burrowing, and twisted her torso to feed him a saucy little breast. She murmured, “Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?”

  He grunted and got out of bed, reaching automatically for a cigarette. Anne’s frown was like a child’s, solemn and innocent. Wyatt lit up and moved to the mirror to check his tie, and she said to him, “You’re smoking too much—do you know you’re smoking almost three packs a day?”

  “Now that’s starting, is it?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be a nag, darling,” he said, shooting his cuffs and inspecting his teeth in the mirror.

  She said, “What are you doing?”

  “What do I appear to be doing? I’ve got to go out.”

  “Now? Tonight?”

  “It’s only eight-thirty.”

  She looked in puzzlement at the clock. “So it is. When did I fall asleep?”

  “About an hour ago. You were exhausted.”

  “As well I might be. You sex maniac.” She was grinning gaily.

  “It’s business,” he said, “and very important. I should be back around midnight.”

  “Business? On a Saturday night?”

  “Don’t you believe me?” He gave her a warm look of amusement. “I suppose you think I’ve got energy left over to go out and rape some other woman.”

  “But what kind of business could—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  “Why not, darling?”

  “I just don’t,” he said. “I haven’t time. I’ll see you later.” He kissed her with feigned passion and left.

  He made the drive in his bright cocky Jaguar from New York, by way of the Turnpike and the Raritan Bridge, in just over an hour. Arthur Rademacher’s imposing house was set back from a curving street in Edison amid its own miniature rain forest. Carrying a thin attaché case, he walked up to the door, straightened his jacket, made sure his smile was on straight, and rang.

  Ethel Rademacher was a stout, elderly woman with blue hair and a Rushmorean countenance; she gave her imperious caw of welcome and admitted him, explaining that the servants had retired for the night. It made him smile slightly; he knew the Rademachers had dismissed the last of their live-in staff some time ago. It was necessary for Mrs. Rademacher to keep up pretenses, and that was both ridiculous and a point in Wyatt’s favor.

  Arthur Rademacher was on his feet in the drawing room, an old man whose white hair and eyebrows had the flowing fineness of the formerly blond. Wyatt crossed the room with long masculine strides to shake his hand. “You look good, Arthur.”

  The old man gave him a quick, firm handshake, said, “I’ve got a new taxidermist,” and spoke to his wife: “We’ll be in my office.” And showed Wyatt into the private office with a flourish.

  By choosing a chair other than the customary one, Wyatt intended to throw the old man off balance. But if the trick had effect, Arthur Rademacher gave no sign of it. He settled into his high leather chair with the slow movements of incipient arthritis, a gaunt antique with eyes gone pale with watery age. He had to swivel his chair to face the younger man, and when he did, he had Steve Wyatt against a lamp in silhouette. Nonetheless, Wyatt veiled his eyes when he said with false geniality, “It was good of you to see me at this hour.”

  The old man sucked on his teeth to keep them in place. “Quite all right, Steve boy. I’m so old they don’t trust me with much work anymore—a few papers to push around on the desk, that’s about all. In any event, I’ve always got time for Fran Wyatt’s boy. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you. Well, then, what’s this business matter that’s so urgent it needs discussing on a Saturday evening?”

  “Well, sir, you see, I’ve been approached with an offer for an excellent position.”

  “Very glad to hear it.”

  “But it seems I need your help.”

  “My help?” The old man moved a hand in a self-deprecating gesture. “I doubt there’s much I can do any more, you know.”

  “The fact is, I’ve been offered a job that doesn’t exist yet. It can come into existence only with your help. Now, I understand you were approached a few days ago by representatives of Nuart Galleries with an offer to—”

  “Absurd,” the old man snapped, cutting him off. “The whole thing was absurd. They incorporate their damned firm one day and they want to buy Melbard the next. It’s absurd. Put an old-line company like Melbard in the hands of those Madison Avenue upstarts and it would fall apart overnight. They deal in nothing but sham and pretense, those people—art fashions and fads that change from one minute to the next; what could they know about anything as solid and sturdy as Melbard?”

  “Sir, we thought that might be the reason why you turned down the offer. That’s why I’ve come to see you.”

  “You? Involved with that pack of Madison Avenue frauds?” The old man shaped his mouth with delicious cruel emphasis around the words “Madison Avenue,” as if they were the foulest epithet in the language.

  Wyatt thought, T
he old fart. He made his voice conciliatory: “Well, sir, after all, it is Elliot Judd’s daughter who owns Nuart. We’re not really talking about a gang of young opportunists without background or breeding, are we? From what I understand, it wouldn’t hurt Melbard Chemical to have an infusion of Judd money. Besides, Elliot Judd is a big stockholder in Melbard—we’d only be keeping it in the family, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Then why not keep it in the Melbard family—my family?” The old man snorted. He had a disturbing trick of clicking his false teeth like castanets. Either he hadn’t heard of, or didn’t want to bother with, denture adhesives. He said, “I certainly don’t see what makes Melbard Chemical so desirable to your Madison Avenue friends. It’s hardly in their line.”

  “But you’d have to agree it’s a good investment—a sound company. All it needs is an injection of capital to build on.”

  “Got capital enough of its own,” the old man said curtly. “How did you get involved in this, anyway?”

  “They wanted someone who knew corporate finance,” Wyatt lied. “You see, the job I’ve been offered—it’s the presidency of Melbard, provided, of course, it can be bought by Nuart.”

  The old man bridled immediately. His eyes narrowed; his face became hard and shrewd. He yanked open a desk drawer and took out an old meerschaum pipe with a badly chewed stem, and clenched it unlit between his teeth, supporting the bowl with one hand.

  Wyatt said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I don’t. I just use it to remind me to keep my mouth shut when I’m confronted by something I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t think it was hard to understand at all, sir.”

  “Isn’t it? You tell me if I’m wrong, Steve, boy—it seems unconscionable to me. They’re trying to bulldoze me by using you as a lever against me. They must know it would go against my grain, against my family ties, to stand in your way. But it must have occurred to you that for me to sell out to your friends would go just as much against my grain. After all, if you become president of Melbard, what happens to James Melbard?”