Villiers Touch (10 page)

Villiers shook his head. “George, suppose you go outside.”

“But I—”

“It'll be better if there are no witnesses to this conversation. Better for me and better for Wyatt.”

“Oh—all right. I get you.” Hackman got out of his swivel chair and went.

When the door closed Steve Wyatt lifted a flat cigarette case from his inside pocket, selected a cigarette, and lit it in the manner of an actor. Squinting through the smoke, he said, “What's this all about?”

Villiers closed the file and set, it down beside his chair. “You're twenty-eight years old, not married, no close surviving family except your mother, Fran Wyckliffe Wyatt. You—”

“Why tell me what I already know?”

“To convince you I'm not bluffing. You went to the right schools as a child, the right summer camps, the right birthday parties and dancing classes and tennis lessons and ski resorts. You marched with the Knickerbocker Greys; you graduated with gentlemanly marks from Hotchkiss and Yale, where you made Skull and Bones, and in nineteen-sixty-four you made a good showing in the Bermuda Cup Race sailing a boat that belonged to a second cousin of your mother's. You're a fair shot with a skeet gun, a good horseman and beagler, and a fair if casual hand with a tennis racket. You're a good swimmer. You can hold up your end of a conversation, whether it's opera, pop art, stock market, or who's who. It's only natural, because you come from a family that represents the luster of aged vintage money, if not the money itself. You're poor, and your mother is poor. You've always been a hanger-on, living off relatives. When—”

“All right, all right. You said you wanted to talk to me about someone named Sylvia. I don't know any Sylvia.”

Villiers shook his head with a mild grimace. “That won't do, and you know it.”

“I tell you, the only Sylvia I ever heard of was Sylvia Ashton Warner, and I never met her. Sylvia Sidney, maybe? I never met her either.” Wyatt had a glittering smile and a quick glib-ness. His accent was the kind of maloccluded patois spoken by some of the upper crust who had obviously been taught as children to speak with pencils clenched in their teeth.

Villiers said, “If the name meant nothing to you, you wouldn't have hurried over here. Forget it, you'll only waste both our time by stalling.”

“I tell you I—”

“Sylvia Hunter, now deceased, was the alcoholic wife of a real-estate financier named Farris P. Hunter. Her life was a textbook history of notoriety and divorces punctuated by psychoanalysis, tranquilizers, and a parade of gigolos, of whom you were the last.”

Wyatt's eyes were bright with venom. He spoke without bothering to pry his lips apart, “You fucking bastard.”

The phrase was, in a sense, a literal description of Mason Villiers. He didn't respond to it. What he said was, “I'll finish this, and then you can get the wisecracks off your chest. When you graduated from Yale you spent two years drifting the international watering places, worming your way into jet-set cliques as a professional guest, bed partner, and mascot with your brassy line of patter and your well-developed seductive talents. You cut a swath with eight or nine society wives and too many unmarried girls to count—I have a sampling of names and dates here if you want them, but it's not necessary right now—incidentally, if you've got a microphone on you, you'll find this conversation has been jammed to jibberish.”

“I'm not wired for sound,” Wyatt growled. “Go on—you're doing the talking.”

“You met Sylvia Hunter in nineteen-sixty-four, in Biarritz. You ripened the acquaintance in sixty-five, when you made it your business to appear in Palm Beach at a time when Mrs. Hunter and her daughter were there but Farris Hunter was wintering in New York to take care of his business affairs. The daughter was seventeen, the product of one of Sylvia Hunter's earlier marriages. Mrs. Hunter was forty-two at that time, plenty attractive from these photographs, in spite of the punishment she gave herself.”

“You had the draft board on your tail at the time, but Mrs. Hunter introduced you to a doctor who told you what drugs to take before your draft physical, so you were classified 4-F and didn't serve. By this time, of course, you were already living on forgery—you wrote a lot of bad paper against the checking accounts of various people who couldn't afford to expose you because they couldn't afford scandals. A bit sordid for a Wyatt, you must admit. I've got photocopies of some of the canceled checks here with your forged signatures on them.”

Wyatt jerked violently. The back of his hand struck his cigarette, showering sparks over his pants. He brushed them awkwardly and straightened up, trying to smile; the effect was tremble-lipped, white, ghastly.

“To go on. You ingratiated yourself with Sylvia Hunter, and in the absence of Farris Hunter, you moved into their Palm Beach estate, living ostensibly in a guest house, but actually, of course, sleeping with Mrs. Hunter. But Mrs. Hunter's daughter was underfoot all the time—Amy. You seduced the girl, of course. Amy was—is—a careless pretty blond who grew up with several stepfathers in seasonal homes in New York, Palm Beach, and the Adirondacks, with the usual visits to Riviera spas. She hated her mother. When you seduced her, she taunted her mother by revealing that she was taking you away from her mother. It was too much for Sylvia. She died of what the doctor friend called heart problems caused by an accidental overdose of reducing pills. The fact is, Mrs. Hunter didn't take reducing pills, she didn't need to. Was Mrs. Hunter so enraged by the way you let her daughter capture your attentions that she threatened to throw you out and expose you? And when she threatened you with exposure, did you kill her to keep her quiet? Probably not—and anyhow, I doubt anybody could prove premeditated murder at this late date. But the doctor who signed the false death certificate can be reached, and there's enough circumstantial evidence lying around to put you in a bad fix if anybody decides to resurrect the case. Any comment?”

Wyatt's crooked smile slipped. “You're asking all the questions, and you're answering them. What am I supposed to say?”

“I'll go on, then. Mrs. Hunter died. You must have been sick of the kept-man role by then anyway—you could live in style, but you'd never accumulate the fortune you wanted, not even by forgery and blackmail. You've always wanted to restore the family fortune.”

Wyatt snorted.

Villiers picked up the folder and turned pages. “In April of nineteen-sixty-seven you persuaded Howard Claiborne, through your mother, to recommend you for an executive training program in a Wall Street firm, not Claiborne's firm. You spent a year as a trainee, and with your brains and character you were well qualified to become a stock-market swindler. You—”

“You sound like you're describing yourself.”

“No. I've never been a cheap swindler. One thing I learned early—if you're going to take the risk, you may as well steal big. The penalty's the same either way if you get caught. That's something you'll learn for yourself if you survive long enough.”

Wyatt cocked his head; for the first time, his curiosity seemed stimulated.

Villiers said, “Up to now, what I've described is ancient history, for you and for me. I have no interest in it, and I won't use it unless you force me to.”

“Force you?”

“Let's pick you up in May of nineteen-sixty-eight, when you went to work in the bullpen at Bierce, Claiborne & Myers. Your mother had to work hard on Howard Claiborne to persuade him to take you into his organization. He knew some of your background—he had a vague idea of your history. But you promised that was all behind you. You said you'd just been sowing wild oats, and now you were ready to take on adult responsibility. Claiborne swallowed it, provisionally. Not because he wanted to, but because your mother begged him to.”

“Within a year, always keeping your books scrupulously clean, you were made an account executive, and you—”

“Account executive,” Wyatt barked. “A two-dollar name for a ten-cent job. Salesman, that's all I was.”

“With your ambition, I suppose it was menial. It would have been for me. But it was a leg up, and you used it. You got your chance late last year, didn't you? You finally persuaded Claiborne to give you a crack at one of his mutual funds. He must have had misgivings, and you must have had your mother bend his ear quite a bit. But finally he let you take over the portfolio of the Wakeman Fund. You started carefully, but it appears it wasn't long before you were manipulating it like a high-wire juggler.”

“Crap. Prove it.”

“Do you think I can't? You committed the portfolio deep in Petrol stock, far deeper than Claiborne would have allowed if he'd still been auditing your performance as closely as he did the first year. You used the portfolio to cover your own operations—you bought and sold in the name of the fund, but the trades went into your own dummy accounts. I suspect you must have embezzled from the fund to get it started, but it's immaterial, and I'm sure you put the money back before anybody could find out. The scheme succeeded spectacularly, and you must have put the money back fast—you didn't want to get caught out by a minor indiscretion like penny-ante embezzlement.”

“You were deep in Petrol stock. Through the fund, you borrowed heavily to pay for the stock. You pyramided Petrol on factor margins, paying about ten percent cash and borrowing the rest from the factors. You started with ten thousand shares, which you bought for a hundred thousand dollars. It went up a few points, and you took the profits and applied them against the purchase of more stock on the same factored margin. Now you had approximately twenty times your initial cash investment, all tied up in Petrol stock.”

“But then, six months ago, the stock dropped three points, and you had to pony up twenty-five thousand dollars to cover with the factors. You managed to do that, but Petrol kept going down, and you got desperate. You short-sold a block of NCI, hoping to recover there, but NCI went up about three points. So now you had to produce the NCI stocks to cover your short sales, at a higher price.”

“Working through Claiborne's bullpen, you started a rumor that Petrol's new Chilean oil field was going to be taken over by the Chilean government. Then you sold ten thousand shares of Petrol short. That worked, didn't it? There was a plunge, and you stepped in to buy the stock at a lower price and cover your previous short sales. It was a little clumsy, but a good trick, and you got away with it—as far as everyone was concerned but me.”

Wyatt's cigarette, forgotten in his still hand, had grown a tall ash. He said, “You'd have a hard time proving that story.”

“I can prove enough of it to raise serious questions. I can produce at least four witnesses who'll testify they heard the rumor first from you. I can see to it that the factoring banks produce their records of the money you borrowed on big margins to pyramid Petrol stock, and I can prove you were selling Petrol short at the same time you were spreading the phony rumor about the nationalization of the Chilean oil field. The lawyers call that manipulation and fraud—they take a dim view of it.”

“You ought to know,” Wyatt growled.

“It'd be pathetically easy to nail you,” Villiers said. “All I'd have to do is blow the whistle. In fact, I don't even need to do that. All I need to do is see to it that the information falls into Howard Claiborne's hands. It'll get you fired on the spot—and unless your portfolios are in perfect shape, which I very much doubt, you can't afford to have the slightest whisper right now. If Claiborne fires you, he'll audit your books—and if he finds what I suspect he'll find, he'll have to prosecute you.”

Abruptly Wyatt grinned. “You're slick, you know that?”

“I'm glad you're impressed.”

“It still doesn't mean I've got anything you want.”

“I didn't ask if you're selling,” Villiers said. “What I'm telling you is, I'm buying.”

“Buying what? You know I'm broke.”

“Buying you.”

Wyatt nodded. “Of course. What do you want me to do—and what do I get out of it?”

The youth's brashness both irritated and pleased Villiers. He said, “I'll want you to take care of a few chores inside Howard Claiborne's organization.”

“Such as?”

“I'll want every piece of confidential information Claiborne has on Heggins Aircraft and certain other stocks. Later on, I'll want you to plant pieces of information in Claiborne's files, and spread a few rumors.”

“To affect the market price of some stock?” Wyatt pursed his lips. “You're after big game, aren't you? Suppose I say I'm willing—if there's something in it for me.”

“There will be.”

“Such as?”

“Don't push your luck,” Villiers murmured. “You're outside jail right now on my sufferance.”

“I see that. Only I'd be a happier workman if I was sure I'd get adequate pay for the job.”

“We'll see.”

Wyatt studied him with narrowing eyes and said slowly, “I can compile a dossier on you too, you know.”

It made Villiers smile. “Go ahead and try.”

“You think I can't?”

“When you get a little older, you'll learn how to cover your tracks.”

“You must have left a few tracks when you were young, before you had experience.”

“I had experience from the day I was born,” Villiers murmured. “The difference between you and me is, you were born broke, but I was born poor. There's a hell of a difference, even though you'll probably never be able to distinguish it. Hell, I was peddling the streets of Chicago when I was eight years old. I state this as advice, not threat—don't bother trying to dig into my past. You'd be wasting your time.”

“Maybe,” Wyatt said, making his face judicious and noncommittal. “In the meantime, you want everything I can get on Heggins Aircraft, is that it? I'll have to figure out a way to get at it—it's not in my department. Any suggestions?”