“Not me. I’m saving it. One day I’ll write the Great American Novel, and you’ll be in it, Mace-a crummy little orphanage kid on the South Side of Chicago who always had to have more jacks and marbles than any other kid on the block.”

He heard rustling movement and opened his eyes. She was standing above the narrow bed, almost naked, presenting her great red-tipped round breasts. She rotated her hips at him, the buttocks all but bursting from her panties. Her tummy was sucked in, emphasizing the soft overhanging weight of breasts pendulant. Her smile was coy; she placed his hand between her legs, and he felt dampness through the nylon of the panties.

“Later,” he said. “After I’ve had some sleep.”

24. Russell Hastings

Gordon Quint popped a candy ball in his mouth and stuck it in his cheek squirrellike. “You’ve got a look on your face like a man who’s about to make a speech.”

“Just a few curious facts,” Russ Hastings said.

“I suppose I must listen to this?”

“Listen to a name, Gordon. We were talking about coincidences last week, remember? I begin to disbelieve in coincidences when the same name appears too often in too many unlikely places.”

“Since you evidently want me to inquire,” Quint murmured, “whose name?”

“Mason Villiers.”

The bulge rolled from one cheek to the other.

Hastings said, “Do I begin to see a gleam of interest?”

“Indeed,” Quint growled.

“The name doth strike a familiar chord, then, sire?”

“Certainly. He’s a young man who gave this department a hot foot four or five years ago when he managed to raid Lee Central Plastics and line his pockets with its assets without ever leaving himself open to prosecution. It was such a neat job of cannibalization I almost wanted to see him get away with it-purely aesthetic appreciation, of course. Morally he’s a savage. He made it work by somehow blackmailing all the potential witnesses against him, extorting guarantees from them that they wouldn’t testify. Fortunately the Lee Central Plastics affair gave the financial world ample demonstration of his character. Nobody’s wanted to have dealings with him since then-he’s dropped out of sight. I haven’t heard his name in several years, but I’ve always been certain it would surface again. Apparently it has. You may proceed-you have my attention.”

“Your majesty’s attentiveness is most deeply gratifying.”

“Can’t we dispense with the vaudeville routines, Russ?”

Hastings grunted. “Number one, last week Villiers took control of Heggins Aircraft. Item, Heggins supplies some patented components to NCI subsidiaries under government research-and-development contracts. Item, Heggins is a small company accessible to a raider with pyramiding in mind, and Heggins is listed on the Big Board, a significant asset.”

“Number two, Villiers wanders the Western world like a prodigal gypsy, but if you could say he had a headquarters, it’s a brokerage in Montreal which may or may not be a covering front for a high-pressure boiler-room operation. Item, a Mafioso named Senna seems to run one of the Montreal boiler rooms, and Senna recently bought a block of NCI. Item, a lot of untraceable purchases of NCI common have been made through Canadian offices in the past few weeks.”

“Number three, last week Nuart Galleries announced it was going public. Item, Nuart belongs to my ex-wife, who is also the daughter of Elliot Judd, who is chairman of the board of NCI. Item, the power behind Diane’s decision to go public is Mason Villiers.”

“How do you know that?”

“Diane’s head girl told me.”

Quint said, “You’ve done a proper job of detective work, haven’t you?”

“I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I’m fishing for more authority. I want a longer leash-I think what I’ve turned up so far justifies it.”

“I’m inclined to agree.”

“Maybe Villiers is an errand boy. Maybe he’s fronting for the Mafia. Maybe he’s running the whole show himself. I need to find out.”

“What do you want, Russ?”

“Authority to put a full-sized team of detectives on it. It’s too big for me to handle alone, and it’s no job for the lawyers and accountants on our staff. I want a trained team from the Justice Department to work under me.”

“Justice will scream bloody murder.”

“Not if I work through Bill Burgess. He’ll do it, if I can show him I’ve got complete backing from you.”

“Very well. I’ll sign anything that needs to be signed. But keep careful, old cock-without evidence that will stand up in court, we can’t make overt moves. There’d be too much danger in it, the market’s perched on the point of a pin. I can’t give you authority to uncover our official artillery and begin blazing away.”

“When I want that, I’ll ask for it.”

“Wait, Russ. Before you go-your ex-wife. What do you plan doing about that?”

“I’m having lunch with her. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, she’ll probably take it the wrong way. But if she’s got herself into Villiers’ hands, she’s in trouble.”

He went down to the square, trapped a taxi, got in, and braced himself while it made its ass-jarring way north along pitted pavements. He thought about Elliot Judd’s proposition, worrying it around from all angles like a dog with a strange bone.

An illuminated sign on a bank told him it was 96 degrees at 12:19; the traffic was stop-and-go. Five minutes late, he paid off the driver and went into the sterile tall building. When he touched the depressed plastic square at the elevator bank, it lighted up in obeisance. Presently the doors opened and disgorged a crowd, and he got into the cage and watched lighted numbers move along the row, while Muzak whispered hideously and the elevator climbed so smoothly that he had the sensation it wasn’t going to stop, it would break dreamily through the roof and carry him into space…

Diane kept him waiting. The receptionist asked him to be seated, but he stood, moving from painting to painting, making a circle of the room, pretending to study the oils and watercolors and gouaches. He was thinking of long ago, a vision of the young Diane stepping off a train with an art magazine in one hand and her tennis racket strapped to the outside of her suitcase. Memories crowded in, rushed together. Days of Russ-and Diane-one word, one entity. Days of increasing obsessive fervor, her evening salons at home for arty friends, the internecine gossip that crowded him out, the faces like living waxworks, until he got to feeling like just another object in the apartment-something she and her friends tried to avoid bumping into.

She kept him waiting almost ten minutes, then came out past the receptionist and gave him her cool hand. In the bright artificial light he saw the little scar traces of time on her throat and face. “You look lovely,” he told her, feeling tense and awkward. Her skirt was three inches above the knees-a little nothing dress that had probably cost as much as a round-trip ticket to Rome. He said, “I thought we’d try the Homestead. I booked a table.”

“Good. Isn’t the heat ghastly?” She was ready to go, carrying her bag, putting on oversized dark glasses; she gave him a jerky smile and hurried ahead toward the elevator, and for the first time it occurred to him she was as nervous as he was.

They rode down in discomfited silence and walked toward the corner. He said with forced gaiety, “Look at all the damned cars. I once calculated the land occupied by a parked car in midtown Manhattan is worth something like a hundred thousand dollars.”

They turned the corner. Diane said, “You’ve got sunburn on the nose. You must have found a girl who likes the beach.”

“You know better than that.”

“Better than to think you’ve got a girl?”

“Better than to think I’d let anybody drag me near a beach.” He tried to smile, and held the restaurant door.

They climbed a flight of stairs to a corner table-chip-proof, burn-proof, stain-proof. Over drinks they exchanged furtive looks and kept starting to say things and subsiding, until he said, “You’ve been well?”