Villiers Touch

35. Russell Hastings

The news had leaked, inevitably. Reporters had the Tombs under siege-photographers, radio-TV truck crews, newsmen with microphones and notebooks. Hastings and Burgess led a wedge through to the door. Mason Villiers stared through the crowd, expressionless, while Civetta and Fields threw up their hands in front of their faces. “No pictures please!” A reporter crowded in front of Villiers and shoved a microphone in his face and yelled something; and Villiers said loudly, in a friendly voice, “Fuck yourself, friend,” which ensured that the soundtrack wouldn’t be aired.

They had to lean against the door to close it on the crush of newsmen. Burgess remarked, “I hate the whole breed-there’s not one of them who’d leave a stricken grieving widow alone without flash-bulbing and interrogating her to tears, and then they go ahead and write lies anyway.”

Quint was inside, with the U.S. attorney. One of Burgess’ men read aloud, in a bored monotone, the prisoners’ rights, at the end of which Civetta said loudly, “No talking until we get our lawyers down here. Not a word.”

Hastings all the while watched Villiers, but the tall man never cracked; he acted as if he were in complete control of his fate and looked forward to beating the rap. Burgess growled in Hastings’ ear, “There’ll be an arraignment, and they’ll get bail set, and the Goddamned outcome is murky as hell, tape or no tape. About all I can see is we’ve squashed the raid on NCI.”

“Isn’t that what it’s all about?” Hastings said. He looked at Burgess, and his eyes sparkled and flashed. “There’ll be another raid, Bill. And another one after that. God knows why they call it the securities market.”

After endless red tape and inconsequential talk the two men walked out and stood on the corner of Centre Street, and Burgess said, “It’ll rain soon.”

“You still playing poker Wednesday night?”

“Sure. You gonna be there, Russ?”

“You bet your ass I’ll be there,” Hastings said. “Warn them all to watch out for me, Bill-I’m going to be the Rommel of that poker table from now on.”

“Yeah,” Burgess said absently. “I wonder what’s going on right now inside his head.”

“Villiers?”

“I wonder if he ever thinks about all the people he swindled along the way.”

“Would you?” Hastings asked, and walked away from him. When he turned the corner he was thinking of half a dozen girls’ names and deciding which one to call tomorrow.

He turned uptown, deciding to walk. It was the deserted nadir of a very hot night; he moved north briskly, bright-eyed in a wilted seersucker suit. He remembered Mason Villiers’ cold eyes, which for a moment back there had mesmerized him, leading him to understand how and why Villiers was able to do the things he did; he remembered coming out of that brief entrancement suddenly with the realization that Mason Villiers was, after all, flesh. Not unique; I brought him down, he thought with hard satisfaction.

When you were on a tightrope, you had to walk carefully-but you had to keep walking.

The tiny smile on Hastings’ face hardened suddenly, like a scar, like a trap abruptly sprung.