Free Villiers Touch by Brian Garfield Page B

looking for a chance to goof off, sir. She really is sick. My mother, I mean. I wish I hadn’t brought her down here from Canada. You know, this stinking hot wea—”
    â€œShut up,” Villiers said. “Nothing runs out of listeners faster than a hard-luck story. You ought to’ve learned that by now.”
    â€œYes, sir. I suppose. Mr. Villiers, why is it things like this never bother you? What’s the difference between you and me?”
    â€œDifference? I dominate my world, Tod. Your world dominates you. Now, shut up, I’ve got thinking to do.”
    But the back of Sanders’ head was an irritant that badgered him and kept him from concentrating. Memory took Villiers back to the Alaska oil fields two years ago, when he had met Sanders. He had thought he’d known the man from the past, but Sanders had refused to answer to the name Villiers had addressed him by. Sanders had been a petroleum engineer, thought to be very bright by the oil company that employed him. Thinking Sanders might be of use to him, Villiers had investigated—and found out that the youth he had once known in Chicago had fled a hit-and-run homicide charge and disappeared.
    He had confronted Sanders with it, broken him down with ridiculous ease, and used him to obtain inside information from the oil company, which he had been in the process of raiding.
    Tod Sanders was a small shy man with inky fingernails and a hangdog face. A thirty-four-year-old mama’s boy whose mother became ill every time he got serious with a girl. It had aroused Villiers’ interest, as a coolly scientific experiment, to see how far the man could be pushed without stiffening to retaliate. Evidently there were no limits to the degradation he was willing to suffer. He had been convinced from the moment he was born that the world was too much for him, and Villiers’ harsh treatment of him only provided him with added evidence of that which he was already convinced of. Sanders had become Villiers’ valet, chauffeur, shoeshine boy, and memo pad; he spent his scuffling hours arranging hotel rooms and procuring women for Villiers. He didn’t object to any of it. Sanders never seemed to be taxed by any desire to ask himself why he had to be subjected to such degrading ignominy; and because he was so unresisting, Villiers was sick and tired of baiting him.
    By the time the limousine reached Hackman’s building, Villiers had forgotten Sanders; he was thinking about bigger things.

    The car slid in at the curb, and Villiers glanced upward past the tall buildings at the thick sky which hung heavily masked in vapor. The traffic of pedestrians was a morass of hot bodies, tramping gray sidewalks and narrow streets in an area where every square foot of ground was worth more than six hundred dollars.
    Hackman and Greene were on the nineteenth floor of a building which hadn’t been there three years before. The modern reception foyer reminded Villiers unfavorably of the waiting room of an airport. Beyond lay a collection of cubicles with desks, phones, and typewriters, inhabited by junior salesmen and brokers, secretaries, and the clerical staff. The firm boasted an English receptionist with high breasts and a good London accent, an elegant letterhead on twenty-weight linen bound stationery, and an acronymous cable address for clients abroad.
    George Hackman, one of the big beefy hucksters of Wall Street, was standing by the receptionist’s pretty shoulder, leaning forward, with her telephone at his ear. He nodded to Villiers and went on talking into the phone—evidently the call had caught him here and he had taken it rather than go back to his own desk. Talking and listening on the phone, Hackman was jotting with his left hand in a brass-framed calendar pad on the receptionist’s desk. Villiers noticed Hackman’s brawny forearm brushing the receptionist’s breast as he wrote. The girl had a pretty face but