Villiers Touch

by Brian Garfield

  “Maybe they want to make sure he doesn’t run for it.”

  “And maybe they want to make sure we don’t get to him,” Hackman snapped. “What if he’s talked?”

  “If he talked, they’d keep him in protective custody, wouldn’t they?”

  Villiers said, “Shut up, both of you. It’s easy enough to settle. Get him on the phone and ask him.”

  “I asked him last night,” Isher said. “He told me he didn’t say a word. Just demanded to have his lawyer present when they questioned him. They hollered at him for a while and then let him go. He says. No reason why he’d change the story now if we ask him again.”

  Villiers shrugged. “Claiborne fired him for manipulating the Wakeman Fund. They probably had him on the griddle over that. If he’d talked about us, they’d have come after us by now, I think. There’s no point carrying on about it—we’ve got other fish to fry.”

  “We have,” Sidney Isher agreed. His eyelid ticked irregularly. “Let me tell you something. Cleland and his boys are preparing a series of ads to run opposite ours in the papers. According to Silverstein, they’ve dug up some highly unsavory material about your background in Chicago when you were a kid. I don’t know what it is, but evidently they’ve got it documented to the point where they feel they can run it in their ad without risking a libel suit. It won’t exactly help inspire confidence in us or our Heggins tender offer. And NCI’s starting to line up proxy-soliciting firms.”

  “We’ll line up our own.”

  “Let me finish, Mace. The whole thing’s out of hand. Sure, we’ll pick up a few blocks of NCI from the greedy ones who only see the instant profit we’re offering them, but the big boys, the institutions, they’ll hang back. We’re not going to get anywhere near buying control of NCI with the Heggins operation. At a horseback guess, I’d say you won’t end up with more than twenty-five percent of the outstanding. It means you’ve got to go out and buy another twenty-six percent for cash. You haven’t got that kind of cash. Do you know how much it would take?”

  “Six or seven hundred million, assuming I’d have to pay the whole thing in cash with no margin.”

  “The minute it starts to slide, you won’t find anybody willing to give you a margin. You know that.”

  “That’s why I said it, Sidney. On the safe side we can figure seven hundred million. I already told you I’m prepared to put up three hundred million myself.”

  “Leaving a slight gap,” Isher said. “Don’t look at me, Mace, I haven’t got that kind of investment capital. I’m lucky if I can scrape up fifty grand to speculate with.”

  Villiers said, “I haven’t asked either of you to risk a dime in this. I’ll raise the cash—within twenty-four hours if I have to.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” Isher said. “I know, I’m always saying it can’t be done, and you’re always proving me wrong, but this time you’re talking about four hundred million dollars and I’m saying it can’t be done. I’m saying it loud and clear. Now convince me I’m wrong.”

  “I’ll convince you by showing you the money. Tomorrow morning you’ll—”

  The phone interrupted him. Hackman picked it up and listened briefly, said, “Thank you,” in an odd tone of voice, and hung up. He looked at Villiers. “Ten minutes ago.”

  Elliot Judd was dead.

  Villiers said, “All right. You both know what has to be done. Activate your orders the minute the market opens.” He looked at his watch. “Four minutes to go.”

  Isher said, “It’s brutal, Mace—the man’s just died!”

  “He’s been dead for months. I won’t weep for him.”

  They sat in uneasy silence until the ticker started. Hackman was instantly on the phone, barking orders; Isher was glued to the Quotron.

  After a time Isher said, “I don’t see any quote on NCI at all. But the whole damn market’s sliding a little. Have you got a newswire somewhere, George? Maybe the news already got through—but that’s damn fast work on somebody’s part. We should have had a couple of hours.”

  Hackman closed his palm over the telephone mouthpiece and said dismally, “That’s it. They’ve suspended.”

  “What?” Villiers, for the first time, displayed alarm on his face.

  Hackman said, “There was an emergency meeting of the board of governors of the Stock Exchange at eight this morning. They voted to suspend trading in NCI common.”

  “Then that’s it,” Isher said. “God knows when they’ll reopen it for trading. Your margin factors will call their loans any minute now. You’ve got to pay off and raise more cash someplace else. You’re all through, Mace, can’t you see it? The NCI deal is finished. You’ve got no more credit. You’ve got to pull out—all the way out. You’ll be lucky to save enough for a bus ticket back to Montreal.”

  “I don’t like your tone,” Villiers said, his voice gritting. ’Remember this, Sidney—if anything happens to me, it happens to you, too. Don’t be in a hurry to pull the gangplank—you may want to get back on board.”

  The phone rang again; Hackman snatched it up and barked. Then he made a face. “For you, Mace.”

  Villiers took the receiver. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Mr Villiers? Harold Ward, here, in Montreal. I’m Salvatore Senna’s attorney. The Canadian securities police have raided Mr. Senna’s brokerage office. He asked me to call you—the entire staff is in custody pending the setting of bail.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”

  He hung up and sat down and said in a dead-flat monotone, “They’ve raided our Montreal room. They won’t find much to tie me into it, but they’ll keep it closed down for a while.”

  “There goes your last source of quick cash,” Isher said. “Get out, Mace. Get out, can’t you see it yet?”

  Villiers was slightly pale; but his jaw crept forward to lie in a long, hard line, and he said, “Don’t make any funeral arrangements until you’re sure you’ve got a corpse, Sidney. My God, any man who loses his cool in this business should never have got into it in the first place. Finance is no place for a nervous loser. If you’re that scared, you’re in the wrong game.”

  “Even a fool knows enough to quit when he’s got no chips left to play with.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve still got a good chance. They’ve suspended trading on the Exchange, but they can’t suspend trading over the counter. They can’t stop us from going right ahead with the Heggins tender exchange. For that matter, it should be twice as attractive to NCI stockholders now—their only chance to unload at a profit, because the Big Board has to resume trading sometime, and when they do, NCI will open a good spread below where it closed last Friday. The whole world knows that much. We’re offering to bail them out, we’re giving them an opportunity they’ve got to snap up.”

  Isher just watched him morosely, winking and hacking. In the end he said, “The little ones will grab it, the twenty-five percent. But the institutions will hang on, Mace. They know it’ll go back up to where it was before—as long as you don’t get your hands on it. None of them will sell one lousy share to you, Mace, not for double the price in Heggins convertibles.”

  George Hackman averted his beefy red face. “He’s right, Mace. I hate to admit it, but this time he’s right. Cut your losses, buddy. Quit while you’re ahead.”

  “I’ll quit,” Villiers replied, “when I get ahead.” His face was tight, a stern mask of arrogance, giving away nothing at all of the furious anxiety inside. There was still a chance—a long shot. With far more confidence than he owned, he snapped, “The twenty-five percent is all I need. I’ll buy the rest for cash.”

  “Whose cash?” Isher demanded.

  Villiers walked with careful, even strides to the door. “By this time tomorrow,” he said, “it’ll be mine.” And went.

  32. Naomi Kemp

  Naomi lay on the bed pouting at the typewriter across the room. On days like this it was just as well to stay away from it. Maybe after lunch she’d feel
better about it and write half a chapter.

  She heard a knock at the door, a sharp impatient rapping, and she could tell from the sound who it was. She let him in.

  He looked taut and pale; he seemed reluctant to pry his teeth apart when he spoke. “I want to use your phone.”

  “You look terrible,” she said. “You look like the world just fell down around your ankles.”

  He went straight to the phone and turned the dial once, held the receiver to his ear, and said, “I want Information in Montreal.”

  She pushed the door shut and watched him; a slow frown of suspicion creased her brow. Villiers barked into the phone, “Montreal, Canada, for God’s sake. What have you heard from your head lately, sweetheart?… Directory Assistance, Information, is there one good reason on earth why I should care what you call it?… Yes, hello, give me the number of Harold Ward. He’s an attorney. No, I don’t know his address.”

  He stood with his eyes shut as if frozen in statuary, pressing the phone to his ear. His eyelids fluttered just slightly. She had never seen him so agitated.

  His eyes shot open. “Put me through to Ward. This is Mason Villiers…. Sweetheart, I don’t give a shit if he’s in conference with the Prime Minister. Put me through to him or I’ll have your pretty head in a sack.”

  His eyes closed once more, and opened. He gave her a glance, but he didn’t really see her at all. His shoulders tensed, and he turned half away from her. “Ward. Where’s Senna? Where can I reach him?… You mean he’s still in jail? What the hell kind of a lawyer do you think you are? Look, I don’t care if the magistrate’s gone fishing up on the Great Slave Lake, I want Senna out within the next sixty minutes…. Don’t give me that. Take cash out of your safe and grease whoever has to be greased. Senna will reimburse you. Just get him out, tell him to call his contacts in New York, and tell him to set up a meeting for me with Civetta tonight. And tell him I’ll have his balls if he doesn’t come through. It has to be tonight. Tell him to call George Hackman when it’s set up, and leave the details with Hackman. Damn it, stop blubbering and get it done.”

  He slammed the receiver down hard enough to make the bell ring. Naomi said, “Civetta. He’s a gangster.”

  “Shut up.”

  “What’s wrong, Mace? I’ve never seen you like this before. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right,” he muttered. “I’m fine. The whole world’s trying to break me down, but they’re not going to do it. They think they’ve got me by the balls. Well, we’ll see. By God, we’ll see.”

  She said, “It’s about time. You’ve been getting away with murder for years.”

  He brought his head around and seemed to recognize her for the first time. His face closed up; he said in a voice once more under control, “Not murder. You don’t know business people. They’re too stupid to get sore—they gripe about thieves, but none of them wants to stop the thief. They just try to figure out how they can get in on his act. They may be losing blood by the quart, but they’re still eager to come in. They’ve never stopped me before, and they’re not going to stop me this time. Come here.”

  Startled, she took a step and then stopped. He strode across the room, grasped her under the arms, and pulled her against him. His kiss was harsh and urgent.

  Her mouth twisted while she let him strip her clothes off like rags. He thrust her toward the bed; and with sudden anger she stood her ground. “Why in hell did you have to come to me?”

  “Shut up, Naomi.”

  “All you want is a Goddamned ego massage. You stand there with your dingle sticking out and you want to prove something to yourself by using me as a box to make a deposit in.”

  He slapped her across the face and laid both hands against her breasts and shoved her back onto the bed. He put one knee on the bed between her legs. In a strange sort of rage she closed her hand on his throbbing penis, hard. She squeezed.

  His face changed, and she heard him utter an odd sound, somewhere between whine and groan. Driven by some sudden and extraordinary urgency, he fell across her, clutched her body, clung to her bitterly. Suddenly she understood. Her smile was hard; she saw him fight the flames leaping in him, and she squeezed his phallus with a fast, pulsing grip. Instantly she felt him shudder and gasp, and the warm issue of him ran wet along her hand.

  Hard-breathing and pale, he rolled violently away. He refused to look at her.

  She gave him a lidded glare. “You’re no good to anybody any more, Mace—not even yourself.”

  “Shut up,” he whispered.

  33. Russell Hastings

  Russ Hastings sat in his little office with a hand wrapped around a beaded cold can of soda. Bill Burgess was staring at the Post headline—“JUDD SUCCUMBS”—as if he hadn’t already read the entire story twice. Hastings said, “I am going to miss him.”

  “He must’ve been quite a guy.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “Not much you can add to that,” Burgess said, and glanced at the ticker. His shoulders stirred; he changed his tone: “Dow Jones down more than fourteen points today, Russ—Exchange Index down sixty-two cents. Amazing how much impact one man’s dying can have. I wish I’d met him. What’s that you’re reading? You look like you’re trying to memorize it off the page.”

  “The Act of Nineteen-thirty-four. Ever read it?”

  “On my list of favorite reading, it’s second only to God’s Little Acre,” Burgess said. “I confess I have not read it. You find something fascinating?”

  “Rule Ten B-Five.”

  “Oh, sure. Yes. Absolutely. Now I comprehend everything.” Burgess rolled his eyes upward and threw up his hands.

  “It says here,” Hastings drawled, “all investors have an equal right to material information that might affect stock values. In other words, anybody who’s privy to inside information can’t act on it before it becomes public knowledge—otherwise he’s guilty of fraud.”

  Burgess sat up. “Ah-hah!”

  “Villiers had information about Elliot Judd’s health before it became public knowledge, and he acted on it, and we can prove it.”

  “How much could we hit him with?”

  “On that charge? Maybe a three-year sentence.”

  Burgess slid back down in the chair. “Or maybe we get a bleeding-heart judge who slaps his wrist and turns him loose on a suspended sentence. It’s not good enough, Russ.”

  “Better than nothing, isn’t it?”

  “Christ, I wish we could act on the evidence we got out of Wyatt. Villiers gave the orders to burgle Claiborne’s files.”

  “But all we’ve got is Wyatt’s word against Villiers’. You know what happens to Wyatt’s credibility in front of a jury when some crack lawyer gets done tearing him to shreds. He could swear the sun came up this morning and you wouldn’t get twelve men to believe him.”

  “Well, hell, Russ, we’ve got Wyatt tying him into stock fraud and we’ve got Manny Berkowitz in Chicago tying him into the Mafia, and—”

  “If Wyatt makes a poor witness,” Hastings cut in sourly, “what would you call Berkowitz? We can’t go into court without witnesses more reputable than those two—we’d get laughed right out of the building. We’ve got to find an unimpeachable witness, or concrete evidence. Diane doesn’t know enough. The only things we’ve got on paper so far are documents that implicate Wyatt. That’s no help at all.”

  “Then what do we do? Sit on our hands?”

  “We’ve got to wait for Villiers to make a mistake. We’ve got a four-man surveillance team tailing him. We’ve got a tap on his phone in the hotel, and by tomorrow we’ll have bugs in his suite and George Hackman’s office. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I don’t—Wait a minute.” He turned in his chair, picked up Wyatt’s signed statement, switched on the desk lamp, and hunched over the deposition, thumbing pages back rapidly. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “I know,” Burgess said. “I saw the light go on.”

  Hastings found his place. “Here. Wy
att says Isher kept warning Villiers he wasn’t going to be able to raise enough money to finance the operation, and Villiers kept saying he had a source of capital if he needed it.”

  “So?”

  Hastings closed the deposition and turned off the lamp. “So what’s the source?”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “What’s his source of money, Bill? We’ve closed his Montreal operation. He certainly can’t go to the usual sources—banks, brokers, factors, insurance companies, investment trusts, professional moneylenders. After this morning they’d slam the door in his face; they wouldn’t risk lending a dime to a man in his position, let alone the hundreds of millions he needs. He didn’t have the money on tap already, and yet he’s confident he can get it whenever he wants it. Now, even if he had a legitimate source for that much money, they wouldn’t produce it fast enough to do his scheme any good. They’d have to investigate the whole thing down to the last line of fine print. They’d have to spend weeks drawing up legal documentation. Narrow it down, it’s obvious—knowing his background. He’s got to go to the mob for the money.”

  Burgess blinked and stared. “Sure. Christ, it’s got to be.”

  “All right, then. Who does he go to? Which mobster? That’s in your department, not mine; I don’t know who’s who in the hierarchy. But there can’t be very many Mafiosi he could approach who could come up with a nine-figure sum overnight.”

  “Civetta,” Burgess said promptly. “Sal Senna is Villiers’ man in Montreal—and Senna traces back to Civetta’s organization. Civetta’s the money man in New York, he controls the loan sharks and the numbers. It’s got to be Civetta, nobody else fits.”

  “Villiers has to get in touch with him soon, then. Can your people plant bugs in Civetta’s hangouts?”

  Burgess made a face. “We’ve had him bugged for months. Either he knows it or he’s careful by nature. He rarely talks on the phone at all, only to his wife. When he wants a business conference he picks a nightclub with a loud orchestra or he drives his pals out into the woods somewhere and they talk half a mile from the nearest building. We’ve even bugged his car, but they don’t talk in the car. They get out and talk too far away for the mikes to pick them up.”