Villiers Touch (25 page)

His eyes were locked on hers; she felt her face flaming. She looked away. “What do you want of me? Who are you?”

“My name is Mason Villiers.”

The greater part of communication between people, she had learned, was nonverbal. It was in gestures and expressions, postures and physical movements; in the tone of a voice, even in the pace and depth of a person's breathing, the pinched-artery throb of a crossed leg, the way he moved his hands through his hair—things seen and absorbed, even if not recognized consciously for the signals they were.

What made it impossible to detect Mason Villiers' emotions was not his choice of words, the carelessly insulting diction, or the sometimes brutal impersonality of his sentences, but rather the control he exercised over all his physical responses. He let no clues escape. Rarely was he caught off guard; rarely were his reactions not studied and deliberate. Even his rages were not genuine: they were calculated for their effects. Sometimes he appeared to inflict outrageous insults on people just to see what the response might be.

Trying to understand him was like trying to hit him—something she did just once. Her fist cracked against the taut muscles and stopped cold, penetrating no farther, doing no damage, achieving nothing except to make him laugh at her.

He bedded her often, sometimes with drive and fury, but no one could have called it making love; sex was like food to him—something to nourish physical needs, not emotional ones—and if it gave him pleasure he made no indication of it. She was never sure how he really felt about her, if in fact he had feelings about her at all. She was useful to him, that was all: useful with men from whom he needed favors, men to whom he owed favors, men he wanted to control with infrared photographs. He told her once that the world was filled with women of glamour and beauty but she had something unique: “You make them think of Marlene Dietrich,” he said. “Call it mystery.” There were stag parties in expensive hotels. There were weekends for which johns paid fortunes. Three thousand dollars for a six-day cruise. Villiers never bought her gifts that were not part of the role he created for her, and he never paid her except in clothes, books, coiffures, training in voice and body movement—none of it given personally. He made her pay her own way from the start; he made it clear he was not going to keep her.

She became wholly professional about it. For her it wasn't hard, she didn't have to learn that most toads were not Prince Charmings in camouflage, they were just toads. She studied Villiers and by emulating him taught herself to close her mind to all feelings when she went through the ritual stag body grinds, pulling her dress slowly over her head until her breasts popped out, servicing panting drunks with no more feelings about it than she would have devoted to the act of feeding pigs at a trough. She invented an elaborate litany of self-justification (
It pays well; everybody sells himself for something; what harm in taking a sucker if that's what he wants? Might as well get paid for what you'd give away anyway
.) but she soon discovered that all these rationalizations were part of the standard lexicon of every prostitute. Every whore had an excuse. After she learned that, she stopped trying to defend herself.
No apologies necessary, thank you very much
. Perhaps there was something wrong with her. Her conscience didn't trouble her; she wanted only to be safe—she just didn't want to be caught and sent back to Albuquerque. Whatever it took to ensure that, she would do. She became neat, calm, careful. She prepared for the worst; it was possible some freak accident could happen someday, someone would find her out, New Mexico would extradite her. Not likely, perhaps, but possible. With that in mind, she had made plans accordingly. Over the years she had set aside a growing emergency hoard, though it hadn't been easy. Her high prices had to include the expenses of a considerable overhead—the grease sheet: bell captain, house dick, elevator boys, the cop on the beat, the precinct captain, two assistant district attorneys; and the weekly medical checkup, clothes, high rent. But she had saved enough to pay the highest fee of the country's best trial lawyer. Before a jury, a good lawyer, together with her own good looks and acting ability, would be more than a match for any hick district attorney who might try to put her away. And so, slowly and deliberately, she was paving a path out of Mason Villiers' trap.

He arrived promptly at seven; he said very little; he only watched her unbind her breasts and mounted her with unusual frenzy, spending himself in a harsh impersonality of pounding lust, sinking back afterward to lie in hard-breathing satiety.

She said, “Either you haven't had a woman all week or it's a very big business deal.”

“You know me too well,” he growled, and rolled off the bed to get dressed.

It was strange, she thought; he still had the capacity to terrify her, and yet in some utterly unlikely way she had become fond of him. She lay watching the light change on the hard planes of his face as he moved around the room; unaccountably she said, “Have you ever had anything close to you but your shirt, Mason?”

For a brief moment his hands became still. He did not glance at her, but she saw that she had scored a point and she took momentary satisfaction from it. Then he brought himself around, under rigid control, to look at her; he said, “Your concern is most touching.”

“Have you ever loved anybody?” she said, and was alarmed by her boldness.

It made him laugh. “After all the things that have happened to you, you can still ask a question like that.” He shook his head. “You'll never grow up as long as you believe in love, Carol.”

“Oh, I believe in it. I believe in money, too. Some people have it, some people don't.”

“Keep talking like that, and you'll end up looking like a fool,” he told her.

She laughed, suddenly and with wild abandon; she could see it disturbed him, and that was what she wanted. He almost allowed his anger to show. She said demurely, “Yassuh, boss.”

He rammed his shirttail into his trousers and planted his feet and gave her his undivided attention. “You're uncommonly impertinent and independent tonight.”

“Am I? Never mind. Tell me something—with all the respectable women you can get for a snap of your fingers, why keep coming back to me?”

“Because I taught you to be the best.”

“That's not quite what I was fishing for—I was hoping you might admit it was because you like me.”

His head lifted slightly; lamplight reflected from his eyes. “I don't dislike you,” he said. “I don't dislike anybody, as long as they don't get in my way.”

“At least I'm not in your way.”

“You make me wonder about that.”

“Do I? It's probably good for you.”

“Have you been smoking pot?”

“No. Only thinking.”

“Don't think, Carol. It's not your strong point.”

“What would you say if I told you I was thinking of retiring?”

“You?” He became amused. “You, Carol? A few more years of ringside tables and sable coats and you'll be too whipped and worn-out to make expenses at a plumbing-supply convention in Rapid City. You'll get passed down the line from hand to hand until some smart guy comes along and takes you on a little vacation to Hong Kong, and then they'll cop your passport and unload you into a crib, where you'll get slapped down so far you won't even
want
to come home.”

She stood up, full of languid grace, her hair fanning down her well-shaped back; she smiled frostily. “What a pig you can be.” She went into the bathroom, showered, and put on beige lace undies and a careful dose of scent, and emerged to find him smoking a cigarette, going through her closet with one hand. He was holding out the sleeve of a full-length Schulman Emba mink coat. “This is new,” he observed.

“A great many things are.”

He turned to face her. “What's all this about, Carol?”

“I want off the hook, Mason. I want to pick and choose among the dirty jobs to suit myself.”

“Are you going to force me to remind you of the same tired old things we've been over before?”

“I'm not afraid of Albuquerque anymore. With a good lawyer I think I can beat the rap.”

“Possibly. And if you did, what do you suppose Rocco would be inclined to do?”

“You could use your influence. Persuade him I have no intention of making trouble for him.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Out of friendship, Mason. It's the kind of thing a friend does for a friend.”

When he made no answer, she added mildly, “All you have to do is point out to him that even if I did accuse him of anything, it would only be my word against his.”

He began to smile; he said nothing, and Carol said, “That's right, isn't it? Rocco's known that all along—that's why he never made trouble for me. It never had anything to do with you, did it? You just used it as something to hold over my head. It only worked as long as I didn't think it through.”

“You've learned to use your head, haven't you?”

“I just don't see how it could possibly be worth your while to go to the trouble of turning me over to the New Mexico cops, not when I'd probably be acquitted anyway. Look, why not drop it right here and go on like equals?”

He shook his head gently, watching her. She said in a rougher voice, “You just can't do it, can you? You just can't have any kind of relationship with anybody where your money or your blackmail doesn't give you an edge.”

He ignored it; he said, “You're ass-deep in muck, Carol. With your history it's far too late for a declaration of independence.”

“Why? What could you prove against me? You can't use anything you've got on me without implicating yourself. You'd hardly do that. You've got thousands of feet of infrared film on me, but you'd never use it because you can't afford to expose the men who appear on the film with me. Besides, who would you show it to? I haven't got a family. The law wouldn't care, and even if they did, I'd survive a fifteen-day sentence for prostitution.”

“I admire your guts,” he said. “But you haven't thought it all the way through. Working for me, you've learned too much about too many people. Some of them couldn't afford to let you off the hook, even if I could. You're locked in, Carol. There's never been any way out. You're a white chip in a no-limit game, and there are too many people in it who wouldn't care if they had to tie weights on you and drop you off a motor launch in Long Island Sound.”

“You could keep them off my back, if you wanted to. You could convince them I was no danger to them. I've built up a complete new identity, false passport and bank accounts—I can fade out of sight and come to the surface in England or on the Riviera with a whole new identity. If you cover for me, the rest of them will never find me.”

“Maybe I could,” he said, turning toward the door, “but I won't. Not now. Maybe I'll think about it later. In the meantime, you'll stay put and do as you're told.”

She felt exhausted; she had nothing further to say. At the door he paused and said absently, “That lawyer from the SEC who asked you about my shares—have you heard from him again?”

“No.”

“All right,” he said. “Don't do anything foolish.” He gave her a flat, hard glance with his hooded eyes, and went.

She put on a dress, walked into the living room, and stared at the door he had shut behind him; crossed the room to the stereo and put an album on the turntable. It pushed a slow, soothing beat through the room. She was adjusting the volume when she heard a knock at the door.

Surprised, frowning a little, she walked to the door.

It was Russ Hastings.

He smiled and said, “May I come in? I'm unarmed.”

Not certain how to respond, she stood looking at him. He was dressed in a rumpled seersucker suit, and he had an unassailable amiability on his pleasant, blocky face. He was searching her face with an odd intensity, but his manner was pleasantly abrasive, like a coarse towel after a bath. He said, “What a beauty you are, Carol,” and grinned at her. “Look here—my palms are sweating from the effort of pronouncing your name.”

“Good Lord,” she said. She shook her head in amazement. “The hell with it. I need cheering up—come on in, then.” She stepped back to let him enter; she thought,
I'm being a fool
.

18. Russell Hastings

She walked away from him into the room, moving slowly, because it was more graceful; all her movements were studied.

Russ Hastings said, shutting the door, “You're gorgeous.”

“What's on your mind? I'm not sure I should have let you in.”

“I think I'd like a drink. I don't mind fixing it myself—have one with me?”

“Why not?”

He went to the bar and watched her settle on one of the sectional pieces, drawing her lovely long legs up under her with a trim display of swelling calves and shapely ankles.

He mixed two drinks, heavy on the Scotch, and said to her, “I have been thinking about you all week. I decided Wednesday that I was in love with you, and Thursday that I wasn't. Today I'm somewhere in the middle. Maybe I'm not in love with you, but what the hell does it matter? Whatever you want to call it, maybe it's a way to ease loneliness. I need somebody—I guess that's all it amounts to.”

He brought the drink across to her. “Very grave,” he judged. “Very self-possessed and cool and competent and bemused by my foolishness. Very beautiful, above all. The trouble is, you see, in my vague fantasies it's far too easy to see you making a warm, serene home.”

“You're drunk.”

“Only a little.” He tasted his drink, standing above her. “That piano record makes the room feel emptier, doesn't it? It's a good night for blues.”

“I'm sorry you're so depressed,” she said evenly. “Is it something you want to talk about?”