Villiers Touch (20 page)

“Suppose it turns out to be Elliot Judd?”

“I've thought of that.”

“Of course you have,” Quint mumbled. “It would make you look a bit of an ass, wouldn't it?”

“It doesn't have to. That's why I want to stir things up. I want to take the wraps off—let our man know we're tracking him.”

“Whatever for?”

“It may frighten him off,” Hastings said, and watched the fat man for a reaction.

Quint shifted his seat on the uncomfortable wooden chair. Finally he said slowly, “No. I'm afraid we can't have it bruited about.”

“It's the only way I know to—”

“Let me finish, please. That technique may have worked for you in investigating political corruption. Let a malfeasor know he's being watched, and he'll very likely back away from the trough. I understand your tactics. But they won't work here. We inhabit an asylum of paranoid sensitivity, Russ. To reveal we're investigating a security as big as NCI is to shake public confidence in it. If public confidence falls, the price of the stock falls, and if a blue chip like NCI falls, the whole market may fall with it. Our only weapon against that sort of disaster is our power to force the Exchange to suspend trading in the stock. But we're not permitted to exercise that power unless we have substantial and cogent reasons—reasons we can explain to the satisfaction of all concerned. Do you see? Wall Street couldn't be more fragile if it were perched on the lip of a seismic fault. We all have the same responsibility, to do nothing that threatens to set off the earthquake.”

The fat man crumpled the cellophane wrapper in his huge fist and dropped it in the ashtray. “Request denied,” he concluded.

Hastings nodded. “I understand all that. But I'm beginning to think it may be worth the risk. After all, the company's too big to take very much of a beating in the market. Everybody knows it's sound. If we begin to drop hints there's a raider moving in, it may even raise the price of the stock—after all, if it's attractive to a raider, there must be something in it.”

“Risk,” the fat man replied, “has to be measured not in terms of what you've got to gain, but in terms of what you've got to lose. Look, Russ, I don't mean to trample your enthusiasms. You've convinced me there's something afoot that bears investigating. But I'm afraid you're going to have to go on conducting the investigation by the book. The idea doesn't appeal to you? There was a time when I was too impatient to go by the book too. But everything in the book was put there for a reason. You'll go right ahead and dig, with my blessings, but you'll do it discreetly, and you won't broadcast any warnings. I trust I'm making that abundantly clear.”

“About as unmistakable as a giraffe in a bathtub,” Hastings agreed. He stood up. “I guess you're right.”

“You bloody Americans are always ‘I-guessing.' It's not one of your more endearing habits of speech.”

“You'll get used to it. The first hundred years are the hardest.” He turned to the door.

“Russ.”

“Mmm?”

“Not one man in a hundred would have had the hunch you started with on this thing. Not one in a thousand would have played it. I'm not unmindful of that. Don't take my schoolmasterish scoldings as criticisms. You're worth any five other men in this office—and if it comes to it, I'll support you right up to the lynching. But you must play this one close to your chest.”

“I understand.” He gave Quint a smile and went out into the hallway.

When he entered his own office, Miss Sprague looked up from her desk and said, “Mr. Burgess is waiting in your office. And there was a phone call from a Miss Cynthia MacNee.”

It stopped him in his tracks. He frowned at her. “Did she say what she wanted?”

“Only that she'd call again within a half-hour. She specifically asked that you don't call her back—she said she's not at the Nuart office. She also said it was very important, and she hoped you'd wait for her return call.” Miss Sprague gave him an arch look of speculation and turned back to her typewriter.

Puzzled, he went into the office and greeted Bill Burgess. The lawyer from Justice was a harried-looking sort with dark blond hair and a square face with a short nose and good jaw. He spent Wednesday nights playing poker, took his wife to neighborhood Italian restaurants and movies on Saturday nights, and spent summer Sundays at Jones Beach. He had limp shirt cuffs, blackened around the seams by soot and too much wearing; his shoes were very old and assiduously polished; the seersucker suit was baggy. His smile was fond with the warmth of old friendship.

“I know,” Hastings said, going around behind his desk and seating himself, “I didn't show up at the poker game, and you're sore because you missed a chance to nip me for fifteen bucks.”

“Yah. We need new blood in the game.”

“What you mean is, you need a fish.”

“You're not all that bad,” Burgess said, packing his pipe. “Listen, you've made a lot of work for me. Ever since you called and dropped that name in my lap I've been going around in circles.”

“What name?”

“Salvatore Senna. The Canadian stock buyer you wanted to know about.”

Hastings sat up straight. “You've got something.”

“Yah, I confess. The name kept kicking around in the back of my skull, and I knew there had to be something. I started checking things out yesterday, put a girl on the files, and spent an hour of overtime digging. Came up with some interesting stuff.”

“Then unload it. Or does it come with a price tag?”

“This job makes cynics out of them all, doesn't it? Okay, so there's a price tag. Some of the stuff I got for you had to come out of FBI files, and they want reciprocation from you. Anything you get on Senna, they'd be obliged if you'd turn it over to them.”

“So I was right about him.”

“Uh-hunh. Cosa Nostra up to his eyeballs. Eight arrests, one conviction. Sullivan rap, concealed weapon. That was nine years ago, a little before my time. He's been in Canada since he got out of Sing Sing five years ago, which is why I didn't tumble to the name. But the FBI likes to keep tabs on them wherever they go. Anyhow, here's the gen. They call him Little Sally, which is to distinguish him from Big Sally—Salvatore Civetta, who as we all know is Vic Civetta's younger brother. Senna was a button in the Civetta mob before he went to Canada. His background maybe explains why he's turned into a stock-market investor. He used to enforce the money rackets for Civetta in Queens—loan-sharking mostly, and the numbers. Evidently he got interested in stocks and bonds when he was serving time at Ossining—there's a note in the file that he took out every book the prison library had on securities and investment. Since he went to Montreal we haven't been keeping an active file on him, but according to the FBI he's been fronting a boiler-room operation up there. Want details?”

“Go ahead,” Hastings said. “I'll yawn if I get bored.”

“Well, it's a stock-market confidence game. I guess you know that. Senna's got a big crew of professional con men. They work the phones eighteen hours a day, selling stocks by long-distance high-pressure pitches to widows and housewives and retired pensioners all over the States. You understand these stocks they sell are legitimate over-the-counter stocks, not fake paper. But the boiler-room boys sell them at twenty to fifty times their real value. Don't ask me where they find suckers stupid enough to fall for it, but they do—in droves. Technically, it's a crime—fraud. But they don't run much of a risk. How can a victim identify a swindler he's only talked to on the phone, never even seen? The boiler rooms used to operate out of lofts in the Wall Street area, but we cracked down on them, and most of the big operations moved to Canada. Gives them a good base to work from—the Canadian cops have a tough time with them because the victims aren't Canadians and aren't even in Canada at the time the crimes are committed. The cops try to harass them up there, but most of—”

The buzz of the intercom interrupted him. Miss Sprague's voice, full of disapproval, said, “Cynthia MacNee is on the line. Shall I ask her to hold, or do I tell her you're in conference?”

“Put her on,” Hastings said to her, and to Burgess, “Don't move, I want to hear the rest of it.” He picked up the phone. “Hello, Cynthia?”

“Dahling,” Cynthia MacNee drawled, “it's not really necessary to sound so overjoyed to hear my voice.”

“What's on your mind?”

“My deah, that tone of voice will never get you elected to office. I want to see you—it's important. I'm in the East Village in a telephone booth that's full of broken glass and the scent of piss, so I won't prolong this delightful conversation. I've just spent an hour looking at the most hideous paintings in the world and I'm prepared to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, but en route to it I could tell the taxi driver to stop at Foley Square. I can be there in ten minutes. Have you got a few moments to spare me?”

“I'm kind of busy. But you said it was important?”

“I did say that, didn't I?”

“You're insufferable,” he said.

“I know. Isn't it wonderful? It is important, lover, and I'll see you in ten minutes.
Hasta luego
.”

He cradled the phone, rearranged his thoughts, and said to Bill Burgess, “And Salvatore Senna runs one of these boiler-room operations in Montreal?”

“He appears to. I doubt he owns the operation—he's fronting for somebody. Maybe it belongs to one of the mobs. Anyhow it's worth pondering. When you get a mobster nosing in on the legit securities business, it spells Cosa Nostra and that starts with ‘C' and that rhymes with ‘T' and that stands for ‘Trouble,' according to the impeccable logic of Professor Hill. We've traced some sizable stock-theft hauls to the Mafia, and I suppose the dons must own chunks of blue-chip stocks, but your interest in Senna is one of the first hints I've seen that they might be muscling in on the market itself. Have you got anything for me?”

“Nothing worth broadcasting. Senna bought a block of gilt-edged a couple of weeks ago. I've been curious to find out why.”

“If you do turn up anything, let me know so I can pass it on to the hotshots over at FBI.”

“I'll have to clear it through Quint first.”

“Sure, I know.” Burgess was out of his chair and moving. “I'll hold a chair for you at the game Wednesday,” he said, and went.

Cynthia swept into the office with imperious clumsiness and came around the desk to deposit a smacking kiss on his cheek. “Dahling!” she cried at the top of her lungs; she grinned impudently and settled asprawl in the chair Burgess had vacated a few minutes earlier. “That was for the benefit of your sterile secretary,” she said under her breath. She wore a ridiculous hat; her dress, a loud print, was girdled under her abundant breasts. There was a great deal of irrepressible mischief in her face, but—it always surprised him—it was essentially a very lovely face, an ivory shield surrounded by long dark hair, as fine and straight and liquid as an Oriental's, falling softly to her big shoulders.

She said, “You look fine, Russ. You look like a surfer. You must like your job here.”

“It has its points. What's up?”

She nodded. “You didn't want to see me. I guess I understand that—you don't want reminders. In the terminology of the pulp magazines, you've still got fresh scars that haven't healed over. Am I warm?”

“You are always very warm, Cynthia.”

“How am I to take that?”

“With a grain of salt,” he said. Then he smiled. “All right, it
is
nice to see you, after all.”

She laughed. “My deah, you've made my whole day. Christ, it needed a boost, let me tell you. The horse shit I've had to look at in those East Village galleries. But what can you expect in a civilization whose most popular cultural achievement is
Bonanza?
America is divided into quality and equality, and we at Nuart are resoundingly dedicated to the latter.” She was incapable of speaking without the accompaniment of vast sweeps and lunges of her arms. Gesticulating wildly, she said, “I should never have been given an education, you know. Think of the bliss of ignorance. I could have been a truck driver. I mean, I did try my best. At Bennington I drank all my classmates under the table, but they graduated me with honors anyway. It's a fucking trap, Russ, don't let anybody kid you.”

“I see you're your usual cheerful self today. Looking for a sympathetic ear?”

“In a way I am, lover, but not for myself. Yes, that's right—steel yourself. I have come to speak of her ladyship.”

“Did she send you?”

“No. God forbid. She doesn't know I'm here, and she had better not find out.”

“What is it, Cynthia?”

“I think she's in trouble.”

His jaw clicked. “She can take care of herself.”

“She thinks she can. Question, Russ—have you heard of one Mason Villiers?”

“The one who gutted Lee Central Plastics?”

“Among others. Have you ever met him?”

“No. Have you?”

“Once,” she said. “Would you like to see my Purple Heart? Never mind. The point is, he's persuaded Diane to go into business with him.”

He sat up straight. “What?”

“He's quite a panther, you know. To use the most apt cliché, a lady-killer.”

“With Diane?” Hastings' smile twisted. “I wish him luck.”

“Don't be too sure. When I asked her about it, her face became a study in scarlet. She admitted she's authorized him to set up incorporation proceedings for Nuart. She's planning to go public. Of course, it's something we should have done before this—I don't object to incorporating the business. But Villiers is a barracuda, Russ. He'll swallow her whole. You need a deaf ear and a tough skin to survive his type, and whatever you think of her, she's not that hard. As soon as she told me about it, I tried to talk her out of it. I used all the artillery I could think of. I told her Mace Villiers is trouble. I told her the business world has been treating him as if he had financial halitosis for good reason. He's not the type who likes to see people dead—he's the type who enjoys watching them die.”