“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.
She said, “I may get a divorce, but it’s going to have to be on my terms. I need ammunition-to keep him from contesting it.”
“Maybe I can let you have something,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Make it good,” she said. It made him look at her in the mirror, but she seemed unaware it was the same phrase she’d used before coming to bed with him. The irony amused him. Ginger said, “I don’t intend to be thrown out like an old shoe. When I leave him it’s going to be in style. I want to gouge him good when I go. He can afford it-thanks to you.”
“Suppose I ask you to hold off for a while.”
“Why should I? Have you any idea how intolerable he makes my life?”
“You seem to be surviving,” he said, shoehorning his feet into his shoes. “Hold off until I give you the word, and I’ll give you the ammunition you want.”
“I suppose I never should have expected anything from you that didn’t have a price tag attached.”
“If it didn’t cost you something, it wouldn’t be worth much, would it?”
“The puritan ethic, from you?” She was astonished.
He slipped into his suit jacket. “Let’s get back to Dan Silver-stein. You used to get along with him pretty well, didn’t you?”
“Carol got along with him better than I did. She was always his favorite. At least she was until they had some kind of falling-out.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
“She was pretty green-it was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Four or five years, anyway. She wasn’t used to all the tricks of the trade. He wanted her to do something she didn’t want to do, he pressed the point, and she kept refusing, he got nasty, and she belted him one. Carol used to have a pretty good right hand. Do you keep in touch with her?”
“Sure,” Villiers said.
“The same way you keep in touch with me,” Ginger said dryly. “But that’s all right, you’re big, Mace, there’s plenty of you to go around. I never felt possessive about you at all. I couldn’t care less about your other women-I suppose I’m only being realistic.”
“You’ve always been realistic, Ginger.”
“All right, you win. What about Dan Silverstein?”
“He’s on a few corporate boards of directors,” Villiers said. “I need his vote on a few things.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“I want you to bump into him, by accident. He’s in New York, staying at the Plaza. Generally he has his dinner in the hotel dining room around seven-thirty. Let him run into you there.”
“And?”
“Charm him. Reminisce about old times. Throw in a little nostalgia and a lot of sex appeal. He hasn’t got his wife with him-he’ll take you upstairs.”
“I suppose you’ve got his room bugged with cameras and microphones? What the hell have you got in mind, a badger game?”
“You’ve played it before,” he told her. “Don’t be indignant, it doesn’t suit you.”
“I don’t think I like it. What if I refuse?”
“What if you refuse? Nothing. I’m not twisting your arm.”
“But if I don’t do it, you won’t help me with George, is that it?”
“Ginger, when you want something, you’ve got to be willing to trade something for it. I’m not a charity.”
She said, “I don’t like it. If you get him on film, it means you get me on the same film. Suppose you turn around and show the film to George?”
“You’re not thinking,” he said. “I’ve already got plenty of film on you. Don’t you remember? If I’d wanted to show it to George I could have done it anytime in the past five years. Look, if you’re worried, pull the sheets up over your face. Just make sure Silverstein’s in plain sight. You know how it’s done.”
“Some things you just don’t forget-even if you try.”
He said mildly, “Go on, get dressed.”
While she was in the bathroom he crossed the suite to the telephone in the living room and called George Hackman. A girl’s voice told him in an English accent to hold on; in a moment the broker’s hearty voice struck his ear. Villiers said, “Never mind the small talk. I want you to call Steve Wyatt. Tell him to get to a pay-phone booth at exactly two-thirty this afternoon and call me at this number.” He quoted a phone number from memory, not the hotel’s number.