Текст книги "The Villiers Touch"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

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?”

“You’ll think of something.”

“What if I don’t? What if I can’t bring it off?”

“I don’t think I have to spell it out, do I? Let’s not get tedious.”

Steve Wyatt swallowed. “All right. I’ve never tried spying before-maybe it’ll be amusing.”

“I’m sure it will,” Villiers muttered. “Now, this next is between you and me, and if it goes any further, I’ll have your head in a basket, understand that. Heggins Aircraft isn’t your main objective. What you’re really going to look for is confidential information on Northeast Consolidated Industries. Everything there is-You’ll have to get into Claiborne’s private confidential files. I particularly need to have anything you can get on Elliot Judd.”

“Jesus. You want a lot.”

“With parsley,” Villiers agreed.

“Do you mean personal items on Judd?”

“Anything. His private holdings, his politics, the state of his health.”

“You think he’s not well?”

“Did I say that?”

“It rings a bell,” Wyatt said. “He’s been hidden away on that Arizona ranch for almost a year. He’s about as accessible as Howard Hughes. I may not come up with much.”

“Howard Claiborne’s his broker. He probably knows more about Elliot Judd than Judd’s doctor knows. It will be in Claiborne’s files.”

“Those files are locked up, damn it.”

“Do you think I’d have gone to all this trouble to nail you down if Claiborne’s files were out in the open like merchandise on a dimestore counter?”

“All right-all right. You’ve made your point.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Villiers muttered. Without stirring in his chair, he closed his eyes and said, “You can go.”

“How do I get in touch with you?”

“Through Hackman.”

“How much does he know about this?”

“Best for you to assume he knows absolutely nothing about it. You’ll make appointments with me through Hackman. Other than that, you’ll tell him nothing. You may get instructions from me through him from time to time. If so, don’t argue with him, because he’ll only be delivering messages.”

“I understand,” Wyatt said, and got up. Glancing up at him, Villiers saw he had already gained his resilient composure. Wyatt grinned impudently. “So long.” And left the office.

Villiers picked up the file of investigators’ reports and folded it shut.

6. Steve Wyatt

Wyatt emerged from the office with a pulse pounding in his throat, walked forward through the corridor, and saw George Hackman in the front reception room. Hackman stood close behind the receptionist’s chair, leaning forward to read something on her desk, his left forearm balanced casually across her shoulder, fingers trailing one firm high breast. When Wyatt came in sight, Hackman removed his hand quickly, and the girl gave him a saucy upward look-one lifted eyebrow and a smirking upturn of one lip corner.

Wyatt strode toward the door, but Hackman came around the desk to intercept him. Hackman beamed and put a thick arm across his shoulders to walk him to the door, talking expansively. “Glad you’ve joined our team, kid.”

“Sure. Welcome aboard, Ishmael.” Wyatt smiled synthetically.

At the door Hackman turned him with hand pressure. “Hold up a minute.”

“I’ve got to get back to the office before closing time.”

“This’ll just take a sec. Stay put.” Hackman went back to the desk and rummaged through a drawer until he found a Xeroxed sheet of paper. He brought it back to the door. “Here. Long as you’re joining up, be a good idea for us to get to know each other. My wife and I are throwing a little party tonight, nine o’clock. I ran off this little map to show folks how to get to our place from Thornwood. You know Thornwood?”

“No.”

“You go up the Saw Mill Parkway to-hell, have you got a car?”

“Certainly.”

“Fine, fine. Otherwise I could send somebody to pick you up at the station. Anyway, all you do is drive up the Saw Mill to Hawthorne Circle, keep going on the Saw Mill past the Circle, and it’s the first exit. Take a right and go across the railroad tracks, and you’re on the main drag, this street here.” He planted a stubby finger on the map. “From there, follow the map. Look, it’s all sociable, bring your girl, okay? See you tonight?”

Wyatt’s shrewd eyes lifted to Hackman’s florid face. “Actually,” he began, but then he hesitated and pursed his lips. “I may be able to come. I’ll let you know later.”

Hackman clapped him on the shoulder. “Great, kid-great. You take care, now.” He grinned affably.

Wyatt left without making an answer. He came out of the building into sweltering heat and hurried the two blocks to the baroque building at 42 Wall Street, which housed a number of distinguished brokerage firms and two investment-banking partnerships, of which one was Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers, occuping the seventh and eighth floors. Wyatt went into the feudal-hall lobby and crossed the echoing marble, hurrying.

At the eighth floor the elevator doors slid open with a soft, almost soundless scrape. The hallway was wide and carpeted, broken at intervals by wide, double, carved oak doors. He looked at his watch and was surprised that it was only ten till five. He entered the bullpen by the side door, to attract less attention; coming into the big room by way of carbon-paper-filing-and-clerical country, he tightened his lips and hurried on past rows and rows of desks toward his own, near the head of the room.

The huge bullpen was a picture full of restive motion. Squads of long-haired young men bustled in and out. Scores of men at scarred enormous old desks, arranged in neat rows like military ranks, spoke into telephones or dictated to stenographers, keeping the wheels rolling within the thousands of stock positions that Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers maintained on its books. Claiborne’s empire was an investment bank, a brokerage, and a specialist firm all at once. It held four New York Stock Exchange seats, three American Exchange seats, and made markets in twenty-eight major stocks.

Approaching his desk, Wyatt passed the open door of the War Office, the walls of which were papered with graphs on which were plotted the movements of various stocks, watched by youthful analysts who during Exchange hours stood near telephones which were wired directly to a computer bank in Jersey City.

Progress through the ranks had moved Steve Wyatt up from the seventh floor a year ago; since then his desk position had been switched three times-each time closer to the head of the room. As portfolio manager for the Wakeman Fund, a closed-end mutual fund, he now rated a desk less than twenty feet from the splendid dark-oak door of the executive sanctum, inhabited by the old man himself: Howard Claiborne, descendant of merchant princes, Wall Street patrician, gentleman of glacial elegance honed by ancient habit, representing the quiet wealth of old money, the image of grace and comfort, well-worn elegance, and mellow tone.

Wyatt rolled his desk swivel chair back on its casters to sit down and turned to speak to the blond young man at the next desk.

“Anything come up?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” The blond man gave him a brash grin. “I put a few notes on your desk.”

“Thanks for covering for me, Jimmy. It was important.”

“Sure-what was her name?”

Wyatt waved a hand and smiled. “How’s the Yankee Croesus? Good mood or bad?”

“Good, today. I took your report on Motors in to him, and he liked it. I heard him grunt four times while he was reading it.”

“Four times?”

“Four times. Indeed. You did a hell of a job.” Jimmy grinned at him.

“Did that seem to surprise him?”

“God, no. The last time anything gave the old man a surprise was when Truman beat Dewey. That’s nothing-old man Bierce told me the last time Claiborne smiled was the day they repealed the Volstead Act. But he liked your report, even if he didn’t crack a smile, and that’s saying something, since it came from a man whose guiding principle is ‘No.’”

Wyatt grinned and nodded, and watched Jimmy get up to walk over to the railing that surrounded the secretary’s desk just outside the door of Claiborne’s office. Jimmy De Angelo was a slim, blond, northern Italian youth with the fresh open innocence of a Midwestern college sophomore; he was inoffensive and eager to be helpful. Wyatt watched him go over to the railing to speak with the girl at the desk there. She was Howard Claiborne’s private secretary, but in the feudal setup of Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers even a private secretary didn’t rate a room of her own; her status was indicated only by the oak railing that separated her desk from the bullpen. She was a Polish girl-Anne Goralski. A small girl, dark and pretty. Smooth Indian-black hair gracefully surrounded her olive face. Jimmy De Angelo had been dating her casually for a few weeks.

She was smiling up at Jimmy while he talked; but then her eyes slid past Jimmy and came to rest on Wyatt. He let his eyelids droop when he smiled at her. She lifted her eyes to reply to something Jimmy De Angelo said; De Angelo turned, shaking his head, to come back to his desk, and the girl returned her glance to Wyatt and suddenly gave him a blinding smile. It was lovely and brilliant. Her teeth were bright, she looked happy and flirtatious.

De Angelo sat down, glum, and turned his back to make a phone call. Wyatt propped one elbow on his desk and looked past De Angelo’s shoulder at the girl. She had gone back to her work. The thought which had edged into his mind in Hackman’s office was still there: she was Howard Claiborne’s private secretary.

Dimly he heard De Angelo, talking on the phone: “It’s quoted forty-five to forty-six bid and asked, CTM… Well, I know, but Gulfstream Investments sold a big block, you know.” Wyatt leaned back in his swivel chair, his eyes closing down to slits, thinking.

Promptly at five o’clock, Howard Claiborne emerged from his cork-lined office and marched into the bullpen rather like a Buckingham Palace guard. Claiborne had nostrils like a horse; he carried his head high. He wore a carnation in his buttonhole and looked as dignified as a penguin.

The old man’s appearance always had a disintegrating effect on conversation. The muted bedlam of the bullpen subsided to a low rumble, soft voices speaking into telephones. Claiborne stopped at Anne Goralski’s desk to say a few words and then came forward, dropping a remark here and there-each of his words was received as attentively as a ransom note. He had a dignified core of blue ice; he carried around him an aura of melancholy antique solitude, indifference to trivialities-a gentleman of privilege with a shrewd, skilled intellect. He was the heir to one of the great fortunes, but in spite of that, he had, according to the values of his generation, chosen to start out as a page boy and runner for the family bank firm.

He stopped by Steve Wyatt’s desk. “You did a satisfactory job on the Motors report.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Claiborne nodded and moved on-the evening ritual. From here he would go directly to the Wall Street heliport, where his private copter would pick him up and whisk him to his estate on Fishers Island.

When the dapper, unbent old figure had disappeared into the corridor, the bullpen erupted. Typewriters were tilted back into their desks, and the steno girls gathered together to leave in a twittering knot. The men shoved papers into briefcases, straightened up their desk tops, and went out by ones and twos. Wyatt sat back, relaxed, his arrogant high-bred face sleepy, watching bemusedly while Jimmy De Angelo made his preparations for leaving, and then, instead of heading for the hall, went to the secretary’s railing, where Anne Goralski was repairing her eye shadow with the aid of her compact. De Angelo spoke; the girl shook her head; De Angelo shrugged angrily.

De Angelo came past Wyatt’s desk with a downturned mouth and joined the exodus. Wyatt stayed put. The huge arena was almost empty when he left his desk and went toward the girl’s little fenced-in enclosure. She was busy liberating a little sweetheart rose from the vase on her desk and pinning it to her dress. When she looked up at him with her warm brown eyes, he said, “I just wanted to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

He smiled at her. “You light up the whole room.”

It was a direct attack, but it didn’t put her off; it amused her. She had put the telephone receiver on her shoulder, head tilted against it to free her hands, and now she shushed him with a gesture and spoke softly into the phone. “Yes, Mr. Bierce.” She hung up and got out of her chair. She went through the little gate and said, “I’ll be back immediately-I’ve got to hear the rest of this, it must be good.” Wrinkling her nose at him, she disappeared into the executive offices.

Glancing impatiently across the empty bullpen, Wyatt lit a cigarette and waited.

She was true to her word. Within less than sixty seconds she reappeared. She had good breasts and a provocatively outflaring rump; she was animated and vibrant-and, he thought, ready to be aroused by gentle, easy masculinity.

She settled her nice round little ass in the chair, not taking her eyes off him. “Now, then, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” he told her. “‘My prince,’ if you like.”

She wet her lips with the sharp pink tip of her tongue and said, “You were saying, my prince?”

“To begin with, I don’t mean to tread on anyone’s toes.”

“Whose, for instance? Mine?”

“De Angelo’s.”

She only grinned at him. “Tell me, do you always talk with your teeth together?”

“That’s breeding.” He glanced at the door and said, “A stock-broker with a reputation as the wildest party thrower in West-chester County has invited me to a bash at his suburban bungalow tonight, only I have a terrible problem.”

“And?”

“The invitation is for two,” he said, and turned his hands over. “You see how it is. Mr. Hackman was absolutely insistent that I bring with me the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance. Of course, you are the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance, and in order to meet the requirement, I would have to bring you. However, since we’ve hardly exchanged fifty words in three months, I don’t hold out much hope of meeting the requirement. That’s my problem.”

“It sounds like a terrible problem,” she agreed. “Are you asking me to help you solve it, sir?”

“I certainly am,” he said eagerly. “I’m so glad you understand.”

“Yes, indeed,” she replied.

“What I’m doing,” he said, “is inviting you to dinner, say, at Armand’s, and then to Mr. Hackman’s party. I have a car, so it will be no trouble getting you home afterward, unless-”

“Unless I happen to live in some ungodly place like Brooklyn? I’m afraid I do.”

“You wouldn’t put me on!”

She shook her head gravely. “Brooklyn,” she said, drawing her lips back and pronouncing it with a conspiratorial leer. Then, with her face screwed up brokenheartedly, she whispered, “You see, that’s my terrible problem. You can’t imagine how many men have broken dates with me as soon as they found out I lived in Siberia. So I’m being very honest with you and giving you this chance to withdraw gracefully.”

“I’ll risk it,” he said staunchly. “Neither fire nor flood nor sleet nor Brooklyn streets could stay me from making my appointed rounds with the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance on my arm.”

He saw the lift of her breath; she smiled. “Honest to God, I thought you’d never ask me.”

Steve Wyatt took her arm like a true gentleman and walked her out.

7. Russell Hastings

Russ Hastings sat at the curve of the bar pushing his ice cubes around with a swizzle stick, looked at his watch and wondered if she had decided to stand him up-she was twenty-five minutes late now. Waiting laid a frost on his nerves, and he ordered another Scotch. Sunset midtown traffic crawled by outside the window. His fresh drink came and he demolished half of it at a gulp and looked at his watch again, thinking of Carol McCloud. A glamorous woman with a mysterious source of income-his lips made a lopsided wry smile, but as he began to feel the pervasive ease of the whiskey, her image came to him like a photograph printed on the insides of his eyelids.

When he looked up toward the door, she was there.

He gave a start and went to her. She smiled a little and said, “I’m sorry. I hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten. The phone rang just as I was leaving-someone I had a hard time getting rid of.”

They waited by the door until the captain took them in tow and guided them to a small table. She wore a sexy black dress, sleeveless and cut low beneath lovely arms and shoulders. She moved with grace and pride.

They were seated and a waiter hovered until they ordered drinks. There was small talk, the awkward maneuverings of strangers-the traffic, the heat, the elections. Her voice had a resonant low smoky quality, and when Hastings remarked on it the girl dipped her head with an inturned smile-her hair swung forward, swaying with silken weight. She said with a small laugh of admission, “I spent a good many boring hours at home with a tape recorder correcting my voice level. That was a few years ago-you wouldn’t have recognized the old Carol McCloud. I had a God-awful twang.”

When he responded, she said, “That’s a nice laugh.” Her eyes smiled at him over the rim of her martini glass.

He tipped glasses with her. “To a long and happy life.”

“By all means,” she replied, with an inverted twist to her tone. It puzzled him, and he said, “What sort of twang was it? Texas?”

“Kentucky.”

“No kidding.”

She laughed. “You know-where they have pretty horses and fast women. I’m a refugee from a one-drugstore town in the back hills.”

“In that case,” he announced, “you certainly have got no right to look so beautiful.”

She only shook her head, giving him the same amused look she had given him at her apartment this afternoon. She said, “Some men are afraid of beautiful women.” But when that remark only elicited his amiable smile, she laughed again. “Was that a trite old saw, or did I make it up?”

She seemed fully at ease. He couldn’t tell if she was flirting with him, and for the moment it didn’t matter: it suited him well enough merely to look at her. Her only jewelry was a huge amethyst clip set in gold. Her elegance was all in her luxurious simplicity. She had the kind of firm-muscled, high-boned beauty that wouldn’t fade.

They smoked and drank and ordered dinner. After a stretch of silence, he said, “I suppose we could play the old game of who do you know that I know.”

Her eyes widened a little, and she pursed her lips. “I don’t think so.”

“No? You keep taking me by surprise.”

“I was born this afternoon when you met me. No past, no associations-let’s just leave it that way.”

“Now you’re really making me curious.”

She made no answer of any kind. A waiter took away the ashtray and replaced it with a clean one. Carol said, “You look older in this light than you did this afternoon. You’ve got a touch of snow around your temples.”

He nodded. “My gray hair’s a little premature, but I prefer it to no hair at all. Early gray runs in my family.”

“It must be nice to know things like that.”

“Come again?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Only, you haven’t volunteered much about yourself.”

“Not much to volunteer.”

“Now you’re being demure,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you. You do interest me, you know-you caught me off guard this afternoon and I pegged you all wrong.”

“I know. You said you took me for a-And then you stopped. Took me for a what?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I jumped to conclusions, which I don’t ordinarily do. But you didn’t seem to fit into the image you were trying to create for yourself. I mean, you just don’t match the ink-stained bureaucratic hack picture, the gray-faced civil-service type tangled in the typical government delirium of red tape. You’re too-I hate the word, it’s so damned emasculating, but you’re too sensitive. That’s what intrigued me.”

His lips slowly twitched into a little smile. “I can’t tell if you’re flattering me or insulting me. The truth isn’t nearly as mysterious as you seem to think. I’m a lawyer, I used to work for a politician named Speed, and when he died I had to find a job, so now I’m with the SEC.”

“Jim Speed?”

“Did you know him?”

“I knew him to-to talk to,” she said. “He was a very nice guy, compared to most.”

“Most politicians?”

She opened her mouth, thought better of what she had been about to say, closed it, and nodded.

He said, “As for not fitting the image, what can I say? At least my work’s less dull than sitting in an office drawing up corporate charters.” The dinner came-filets mignon with sauce bearnaise.

He regarded the girl from under lowered brows while she began to eat; he said suddenly, “If I ask you a direct question, will you answer it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who are you?”

“Try another one.”

He said, “We’re skating around each other. I don’t like it much.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, with an edge on her voice.

He matched her tone. “If you didn’t want to know me, you didn’t have to accept my invitation.”

“Can’t we just enjoy each other’s company? Why do we have to pry up rocks and see what’s under them? Have I asked you about your wife?”

It took him aback. He bridled. “I haven’t got a wife.”

“No? You don’t act like a bachelor-you act like a man with a home who doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m divorced,” he said. “A few months ago. Does that satisfy you?”

“If you say so.” She was eating; her eyes lifted to meet his. She had his anger up now, and he glared at her; they began to scowl at each other, silently, jaws set.

It went on, a grim contest of wills, until abruptly Carol’s eyes began to sparkle. Hastings’ nose twitched. Suddenly they were both laughing helplessly.

He said, “Okay-okay. I apologize.”

“No, don’t. It was my mistake.”

“Mistake?”

“I thought I could try something. I can see it’s no good.”

He said, “Damn it, you confuse me. Every time you open your mouth, I get confused.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been putting on an act with you. I deserve your anger.”

“An act? What kind of act?”

Her hair swung forward as she looked down; it masked her face. She said slowly, with care, “Sometimes it seems an awful waste to think about where you are-it’s so much nicer to think about where you could be.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“When you came to my apartment this afternoon you were a total stranger, you didn’t know anything at all about me, and I liked you immediately-you seemed so nice and sensitive and so Goddamned normal. I don’t meet many normal men in my life and I gave in to the stupid fairy-tale wish that I could just meet a nice normal fellow and have a nice normal dinner with him, no strings attached, no front to keep up, no tired dreary thoughts of what would come after it.”

She still hadn’t looked up, and he didn’t speak; he waited for her to go on, and after a moment she drew breath sharply and said in a very low voice, “It wasn’t any good. I should have known that-I should never have come. But you asked me here without suspecting a damned thing and you haven’t mentioned a word about that NCI stock you tried to pump me about this afternoon, and I did come, and now, damn it I owe it to you-I’ve got to level with you.”

She tossed her head back and gave him, full face, a twisted smile. “Do you really want hear about me, the sad story of my life?”

“Do you want to tell it?”

“No. But I’ve got to, or you’ll keep phoning me for dates-you’ll keep after me until you’re satisfied, I can see it in your face, and I’d only have to turn you down. You deserve to know why.”

She peered past the bar to the front window of the restaurant. The lobby entrance of a small hotel across the street was lit. “Do you see the two girls in that hotel entrance?”

He turned to look. The girls were skinny and nervous, standing hipshot in the hotel doorway, wearing miniskirts and elaborate tousled hairdos which were probably wigs.

Carol said, “Ladies of Cypriot persuasion. They do a brisk business from lobbies like that one, all over the midtown area. This town is Mecca for thousands of teen-aged girls like that. Out in Queens and New Jersey the pimps recruit them in candy stores by promising them parties and expensive clothes. They’re stupid, backward, maybe already hooked on hard stuff, fourteen or fifteen years old. I mean the ones that cruise Times Square and hole up in flophouses on Ninth Avenue. Those two across the street work out of that hotel. They’re a little higher in the social order-they get maybe twenty dollars a trick, which they have to split with bellhops and cops and a pimp. They may gross a hundred and fifty a night, but they only keep sixty of it, and most of that goes to support their habits. They’ll snag a chief petty officer on overnight shore leave, or a typewriter repairman whose wife’s home pregnant and won’t let him touch her, but if you’re a district sales manager in town for a meeting, or a doctor at a medical convention, you want something better-a girl you can take to dinner at the Copacabana and show off to the other doctors at an after-hours hotel party. Someone who can make good conversation and look gorgeous and spend the night, provided you’re willing to shell out for it.”

Hastings’ eyes were squinted almost shut; his hands had become still. Carol said wearily, “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I guess.”

“Then you do understand what the mystery was all about.” She met his eyes and said with brutal directness, “I see no reason not to believe I’ve been the principal player in more dirty locker-room stories than the farmer’s daughter. It’s part of my stock in trade-one of the reasons I can charge what I charge is that the johns want to boast about it later. It feeds their egos and their sagging libidos to brag to the boys in the club car that they just blew a stinking great fortune on one of the highest-priced call girls in New York City. A girl who only accepts johns with references, who looks innocent and gives them the illusion of glamour. A girl who shops in the best Fifth Avenue stores and likes paying two hundred dollars instead of nineteen-ninety-nine for a dress. By appointment only.”

She sat back and gave him a brassy stare.

He paid the check, drew back Carol’s chair, and took her elbow. Outside she disengaged herself and turned to walk away, her back stiff. He gripped her arm, saw her puzzled scowl, and held her beside him while the doorman smiled and nodded and summoned a cab. Hastings tipped him and got in beside her. He gave the driver the address of her hotel, and settled back. There was no conversation. It was a short ride. They got out of the cab and, on the sidewalk, Hastings said, “One question. Do you enjoy it?”

Her smile was twisted.

“My God, you’re rude. I suppose now you want to go up with me for a nightcap. No man’s got any conscience below the waist.”

He took her inside, his mouth making a pinched line across his face like a surgeon’s wound. They went up silently in the elevator, and he walked her to her door. When she inserted the key she said coolly, “I’d better warn you, I come damned high.”

“Sure,” he said. “I guess the fat ugly ones have to be extra generous if they want you.”

She opened the door and went inside, not barring his way. She said, “Misunderstood husbands, sweating little-boy men-I thought maybe you were a little different.”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. Then, shutting the door and going into the big room after her, he said, “What I’d really like is a cup of coffee.”

She froze. “What the hell are you up to?”

He shook his head. “I don’t honestly know. I was putting on a tough act, the same as you were, but I can’t bring it off, can I? The trouble is, once I make up my mind about someone, I resist changing it even when I get proof that I was wrong. I’ll be honest about it-you’re outside my experience, but then you’re probably outside most men’s experience. I have never understood men who were capable of buying sex. I’ve never been with a whore in my life-frankly, if there wasn’t some kind of emotional communication, I doubt I could get it up. So you see, I didn’t come up with you for that. I came because I’m intrigued. You tried to shock me right out of your life, and it almost worked-it would have, except I’m curious, and a little stubborn, and it seems to me you can’t just label somebody ‘prostitute’ and let it go at that. When you say the words ‘call girl,’ that’s fact, but it’s not truth. I still want to know the truth.”