“Cousin Howard gave me half a case.”
“Good old cousin Howard.”
She pinned him with her shrewd gaze. “I spoke to him about you last night.”
“To Howard Claiborne?”
“He seems satisfied with your work, but when I hinted he might see his way clear to promoting you, he turned a deaf ear. Have you done something to offend him?”
“Not that I know of. He’s a skinflint by nature-the fellow I work with describes him by saying ‘His guiding principle is “No,”’ and that’s a good way to sum him up, isn’t it? What are you worrying about? I’m doing all right.”
“What’s happened to your ambition? Balls-when your grandfather was your age he’d already made his first million.”
“They didn’t have the income tax then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What do you think I brought you up to do? Waste your life working for someone else on a salary?”
“And,” he said dryly, “it is very expensive to be rich, is it not?”
“Money,” she said, “does not matter as long as one has it. But you’ve a long way to go before you reach that point.”
“Your trouble, mater, is you were born chewing on a silver spoon, thinking that money, because it had always been there, always would be there. Then suddenly it disappeared, and my father killed himself, and you decided to forge me into a weapon of revenge and retaliation against the world for the injustices the world had visited upon you. Now, of course, you’re getting anxious because you want to see me succeed before you die. Well, you were a good teacher, and I’ve been a good willing student, and it won’t be long at all before we’ll have our fortune back. But I wish you wouldn’t keep trying to marry me off to bitches like Beth Van Alstyne-I’ve collected enough stud fees in my time and from now on I’d rather do it my own way.”
She didn’t answer right away. He lit a cigarette and inhaled too deeply.
Finally she smiled at him. “Very well. But let me remind you, your background and your social position impose certain great obligations on you-one of them being the choice of a wife. You can’t afford to pick up with just any sexy guttersnipe. If you want to have flings with some hatcheck girl, then by all means have your fling-take a mistress, be discreet, and let it run its course. But that kind of marriage is out. You understand? Your position rules it out. You’ll have to start thinking about marriage, Steve, and you’ll have to start thinking about it in terms of girls like Beth, whether you like her or not.”
He murmured, “You’re getting anxious to see your grandkids before you croak, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be insulting. Are you eager to have me die?”
“Sometimes I am,” he said, and grinned at her.
She laughed with easy warmth. When he came to stand beside her chair, she reached for his hand and held it gently. “In all my years,” she said, “you are the only man who’s ever really loved me. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like, when I was still young enough to have been capable of it, to have had an incestuous affair with you.”
“That’s something we’ll never find out, isn’t it?” He bent to peck her cheek. “I’ve got to run.”
“So early? I thought you’d spend the night in your old room.”
“Can’t this time. I’ve got things on the fire.”
“Money things, I should hope.”
“Naturally.”
He left shortly thereafter, buoyed to high spirits as he always was by these times at home; he drove the little car at high speed along the night-empty parkways and reached downtown Manhattan before three o’clock. The narrow streets held a clinging residue of heat, clammy and a little frightening; the familiar block was as empty of life as it might have been after a nuclear blast. He parked directly in front of the elegant entrance and banged on the glass door with his ring to alert the watchman, who admitted him to the lobby and watched him sign the night book. Wyatt would have preferred to come and go undetected, but there was no way to circumlocute the building alarm system; later, if necessary, he would manufacture an excuse for his nocturnal visit. He took the service elevator up, because the main block of lifts didn’t run at night, and carried his thin briefcase into Howard Claiborne’s walnut-paneled private office. He took ten minutes to familiarize himself by the light of his pencil flashlight with the arrangement of files inside the row of brown filing cabinets that stood to attention in the alcove off the main office. Feeling like a spy in a movie, he began to go through the folders one by one, occasionally selecting a document and taking it into the windowless Xerox room to make a copy. It was slower than making flash photographs, but he didn’t know anyone with a darkroom, and he could hardly send this sort of material to a commercial photo developer. No one would miss the few sheets of Xerox paper from the supply cabinet.
While he waited over the duplicating machine he was thinking, with petulance, that it served the old man right. As a fund manager, Wyatt handled upwards of a hundred million dollars in his portfolio; Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers received a percentage of the value of the fund’s assets as annual payment for its “management services”-at least $750,000 a year-yet Wyatt, who did the work, was salaried at a miserable $28,000. Claiborne deserved to be robbed.
The Wakeman mutual fund had tremendous impact on the market, because of its purchasing power-and its dumping power. Vast manipulative authority was vested in its managers’ hands; if Wyatt selected a stock with a limited number of outstanding shares, the mere fact that he was buying it would make its price go up. Then it was easy to unload at a good profit. It didn’t matter that the result could be catastrophic. Once, he had arrived at the opening with 125,000 shares of a small stock to sell through dummies. The dump had knocked the price down to the cellar-and Wyatt had sold the same stock short. He had cleared sixty thousand on that one. Thinking of it now, he felt pleased; Mason Villiers would have applauded.
He tidied the Xerox room and switched off the light; returned to Claiborne’s office and exchanged the Xeroxes for half a dozen documents from his briefcase-documents meticulously prepared by someone working for Villiers. Some of them went into the files-substitute fact sheets on Heggins and NCI and other companies, the kind of sheets a broker would take out of their loose-leaf binders to examine when he made his weekly account evaluations. Others went into the stack of newly arrived material in the In box on Anne’s desk; Claiborne would have it in front of him an hour after he came in to work Monday morning.
Wyatt locked up with his duplicate keys, went downstairs, signed out, and said good night to the watchman. The entire operation had taken less than an hour. He drove to his apartment, went into the lobby past the drowsing doorman, and punched the elevator button.
Bone-tired, he let himself in-and pulled up short: the lights were on. He frowned as he closed the door, and then Anne Goralski appeared at the bedroom door in a wisp of a translucent nightie and a blinding smile.
“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, “what the hell is this?”
Her face changed slowly; she said, “What’s the matter?” Her tone was small.
“How did you get in here?”
“Why-the doorman let me in; he knows me. Steve-darling-whatever’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “I just don’t like being taken by surprise like that.”
She said in a tiny apologetic voice, “I love you, Steve.”
“I know-I know you do. But maybe I can’t take your love if I have to take this with it.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Do you know what time it is? Jesus, do you want to swallow me up? Is this your idea of love? Waiting up the whole damned night for me as if you had a set of chains for me with a lock and key?”
She looked miserable. “I thought you’d be pleased,” she said vaguely. She broke into tears. “You don’t love me. You hate me.”
He crossed the room to her and held her shoulders; he said softly, “Darling, what have I got but you? What the hell’s the matter with you? I’ve told you how I feel about you-isn’t that enough?”