Villiers Touch

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.”

“Truth,” she said, “is anything but beautiful. You’re babbling like a romantic idiot. Act your age.”

“Why not humor me?”

“Oh, damn it, Russ-if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll walk out that door and never see me again.”

He said in a flat voice, “I might-if I knew enough about one thing.”

“Oh, God, now we’re back to those shares of stock.”

“That’s right. We are.”

“What the hell do you want of me?” She threw up her hands. “They were a gift from an admirer, all right?”

“A two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar gift? Come off it. I could get a subpoena, you know.”

She gave him a wicked small grin. “Now you’re trying to bluff me.”

“Bluff? Don’t you believe I have subpoena power?”

“You have the power to subpoena the records of corporations and insiders and control stockholders. I’m none of those. I own nine thousand shares of NCI common voting stock. That’s not even one-half of one percent of the outstanding stock. You couldn’t convince a federal judge I was an insider by any stretch of the imagination.”

He made no immediate reply. Only one lamp was lit. Carol stood highlighted in the center of the carpet, statuesque, shadows deepening the roundnesses of her high breasts, soft thighs, and long legs. He came to her, leaned forward, kissed her mouth. It was a long lover’s kiss but her lips were still and stiff under his. She slipped her face away. “Don’t be ridiculous-don’t get intense, Russ.”

He straightened. His face was expressionless. “You’re damned beautiful, you know.”

“You’re forcing me to be cruel,” she said. “You asked me if I enjoyed it. The answer is, it’s the way I earn my living-it’s no more enjoyable than punching a clock, and no less.”

“Maybe-maybe. But you’re a good liar. How do I know that’s true?”

She only gave him the twisted smile he was getting used to.

He said, “You made a mistake, you know, coming back at me with that business about insiders and control stockholders. You were trying to prove it wouldn’t be any good for me to try to push you around, but all you did was convince me you’re involved in something. Whatever it is, you’re in it up to your gorgeous hairline. You’ve been too well briefed in legal technicalities for an innocent.”

She uttered a harsh laugh. “I have never pretended to be an innocent.”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“Do I? You’d have to prove that, wouldn’t you?”

“Being top-priced in your line may be lucrative, but it’s not that lucrative. Why don’t you tell me who you’re fronting for?”

“Fronting for? I don’t know what you mean.”

“All right,” he said, turning toward the door. “I’ll keep digging until I find out.”

“Please don’t, Russ.”

“It’s my job-what do you expect me to do? You could make it easier for me.”

“I could only get you hurt if I did what you want me to do.”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“Melodramatic? You don’t know the kind of people I have to deal with.”

“Do you mean the Mafia?”

“No. That’s not what I mean.”

“I thought they were tied up in-your racket.”

“You don’t have to use that tone on me, Russ. The skin trade doesn’t pay enough to interest the Mafia anymore, they don’t bother to organize it. Oh, they force a lot of kids onto the streets by hooking them on heroin, and it’s true racketeers are like anyone else with money-they can get a girl when they want one. But it isn’t what you think. I’ve got no connection with them.”

“Then stop threatening me. It’s asinine. You’re only throwing raw meat on the floor.”

“No. I’m telling you the truth. I don’t want you to play boy detective in my affairs. There are too many powerful people who can’t afford to have that kind of thing going on.”

“Like the one you fronted for when you bought the stock?”

“Drop it right now, Russ. I’m not kidding.”

He gave her a long, slow scrutiny, as if to fix her image forever in his mind, and suddenly he put a chill smile on his face. “Ciao, then,” he said softly, and turned on his heel and left.

By the time he reached the street he was feeling hung-over and stupid. He lit a cigarette and walked east toward Fifth Avenue, his shoes thudding the pavement; took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into the gutter; lifted his shoulders defensively and put his hands in his pockets. He was angry with himself for his stupefying naivete. He had somehow ignored all the signs-they must have been there all along-and plunged ahead, his perceptions corrupted by an innocence so eager it must have been comical to her. It had been a shabby trick; he had made a fool of himself.

He turned downtown on Fifth and walked all the way home. By the time he got there, his thinking had undergone a series of subtle changes. Mounting the steps of the converted brownstone, he found himself remembering her radiance, the range of colors in her voice, the sincerity screened by her mockery. He had opened the gates of his mind to let her flow inside, and now, by the time he entered his apartment, her face and name raged in him like a fever. Incredulous, he sat down on the bed and stared sightlessly, filled with disbelief and a half-hysterical feeling that things had escaped completely from his control.

The more he thought about it, the more outraged he became. He was far too mature for this kind of silly infatuation. It was absurd. She was nothing but a tramp. A prostitute, a cheap Goddamned whore. How many thousands of men had gone through her as if she were a revolving door or a public rest room? It was epic to estimate. He tried to make the dirty degradation of it loom forbiddingly, tried to fill his mind with loathing and contemptuous disgust. And when that didn’t work, he went to his desk and began to write, in a fierce crabbed hand, a list of investigative gambits on which he would get to work first thing in the morning. But when he finished it and leaned back to stretch, he could hear her throaty, mocking laugh and see the twisted smile on her stunning face. He caught himself reaching for the phone to call her; he shouted an oath and slammed the receiver down and sat staring in amazement at his own trembling hands.