“It’s my job not to believe anything too quickly,” he said. But he was frowning darkly. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll nose around in our files and let you know what I find. You can put it up to her yourself.”

“She wouldn’t take it, coming from me. She knows I hate his guts.”

“Why?”

“Call it postcoital depression,” she said. “It was a long time ago, and I’d rather forget it. In fact, I did forget it for a while. When I first learned she was seeing him, I encouraged it. I thought he’d be good for her. She needs a man strong enough to bring her to heel. But as soon as I found out what he was up to, I got wise. Nuart is a dollar bill to him. Wherever there are two people and one dollar, there’s going to be a fight to see who gets the dollar. It’s always been that way with him. I’m scared to death, Russ. You’ve got to do something.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

Brian Garfield

Villiers Touch

14. Steve Wyatt

The bullpen vibrated with a racket of phones and calculators and voices. Wyatt completed a call and glanced toward the secretary’s railing. Anne had been absent from her desk all afternoon, taking dictation in the old man’s office. He looked at his watch and leaned back in his swivel chair for a stretch.

The big room was filled with well-dressed young men, all cut from the same bolt, all imbued with the pep talk they’d received when, after the tough seven-month training drill, they had achieved the exalted nirvana of status-analyst, Account Executive: “Remember, gentlemen, from now on you’re on your own. When you pick up that telephone, you are Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers.” They were earnest, they knew the vocabulary, they knew everything from capital-gains taxation to corporation finance, they kept up with the required reading-financial pages, trade journals, tip sheets. They spent three-quarters of every working day on the phone, yet they had to know how to be discreet at all times.

He had to laugh.

The jangling phone cut off his ramble; he reached for it. “Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers, Wyatt speaking.”

The caller identified himself and asked a question. Wyatt turned, bored, to run a finger down his note sheets. “It’s quoted forty-five to forty-six bid and asked, CTM. Anything else right now?”

Getting a negative answer, he said good-bye, and looked toward the door beyond the railing. She was just coming in sight; she sat down, watching him with silent adoration.

He took her to Le Manoir for dinner. Afterward they window-shopped hand in hand along Fifth Avenue. He slipped the Jensen case out of his pocket and gave her the silver necklace, and she flung her arms around him and kissed him under the streetlight on the corner by St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He took her home to his apartment. When he closed the door, she moved against him and flicked her tongue against his, wheeled across the room in a gay dance, and stopped by the mirror to fit the necklace around her pretty throat. “How do I look?”

“Delicious.”

“Steve, there’s never been anybody but you and me.”

He smiled and ran his fingertips up her arms very softly, feeling her shudder. Her eyes were half-closed; she began to lose her breath.

A full-length mirror hung on the back of the closet door. He twisted the door open, held it at the right angle, and stepped back toward the bed to test it.

He went into the kitchen to make drinks; dropped the liquid contents of a chloral hydrate sleeping capsule in her glass and delivered it to her; adjusted lamps and the record player, and came to her by the bed. He kissed the tip of her nose, and clicked glasses with her, said, “Bottoms up,” and watched critically while she swallowed half the drink.

She smiled her warm, loving smile. When he reached around her to undo the back of her dress, she put the glass down and watched the dress fall in a pool around her ankles, and stepped out of it. “Can’t we go on like this forever?” she breathed. “Oh, my darling, I never thought it could ever-”

“I love you, Anne.”

“Always-always. We’ll have eight kids. No, we won’t have any, they take too much time, and there’s no time for anything but this you and me, darling… Do you love my breasts, darling?”

“Mmmmm.”

“Aren’t they beautiful?”

“They’re the finest perfect little breasts in the world.”

“They belong to you, darling. Oh!”

He lay across her and caught his breath. She fell fully, deeply asleep with a nesty little smile on her lips. He padded across the room, switched off the stereo, and picked up her handbag. The drug would keep her asleep for hours; he moved without stealth. When she came to she would blame it on sexual exhaustion, the way the old ones had in the days when he had made a practice of rifling rich women’s jewel boxes.

He found the leather key case in her bag and dressed without hurry, and before he left he looked up a phone number and dialed it. When a man answered in an irritable tenor voice, Wyatt said, “I just wanted to make sure you were there. I’ve got to get these keys duped and return them in a couple of hours.”

The petulant high voice said, “I always keep appointments, Mr. Jones. You just bring the cash.”

“I’m on my way.”

He hung up and glanced back at the sleeping girl. She was superb in bed; he congratulated his luck. A little inexperienced, but he would teach her to make it soar. She had a good body and a great generous sensitivity to his pleasure. It was too bad she was the nesting kind. It would hardly do for a Wyatt to entertain marrying the daughter of a Polish taxi driver.

15. Mason Villiers

Ginger Hackman was long-legged and sad-faced. Villiers watched with tight-lipped reserve while she disrobed before him and came unwillingly toward the bed, her eyes half-closed. She said, “Make it good.”

He did. As always, he was bored afterward. He watched her slip into the bathroom; he lay back, sated and thinking. When she reappeared in the lighted doorway, he had trouble for a moment remembering who she was-just one more in the endless chorus line of golden-thighed girls.

The vagueness passed; he made a brief smile.

Ginger said, “You look like a leading man in dirty movies. Shall we have some lunch?”

“No.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Later,” he told her. He talked while he began to dress. “How long has it been since you saw Dan Silverstein?”

“Come again?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten his name.”

“No. But it was kind of a non sequitur, wasn’t it? Since when are we talking about the old crowd?”

“Since now. How long has it been?”

“I haven’t seen any of that bunch since before I married George.”

“Does Silverstein know you’re married?”

“I suppose so. Why shouldn’t he? It was hardly a secret, the way George bragged it up at the time. Exactly the way he’d have boasted about buying a new Rolls. Only now it appears the chrome must have rusted overnight.”

“You haven’t rusted,” Villiers said, granting her a piece of a smile. “George gets tired of all his new toys fast, like a kid.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before I let him marry me, Mace?”

“It was none of my business. You had your eyes open-don’t tell me it was a love match, mad passion made you blind.”

“I knew what he was-but I thought he’d keep his part of the bargain.”

“George has plenty of talent,” he said. “It doesn’t, show, but he knows his business. But he’ll never keep a bargain unless you force him to.”

“He keeps bargains with you.”

“He can’t afford not to.”

“Then you’ve got something on him,” she said.

“Possibly I have. Why go into it?”

“Because I need something to hold over his head too.”

“If you don’t trust him, divorce him.” He feigned interest, but most of his attention was concentrated in the mirror; he was knotting his silk tie. His face was lifted, poked forward, the muscles hard at the angles of his jaw.