“Well,” Wyatt’s voice said, and after a beat added, “it’s kind of rough right now-I’ve got an appointment.”
“Break it.”
“I really can’t-”
Villiers cut him off. “Among the items I want to discuss with you is a woman named Sylvia.”
There was a long silence, at the end of which Steve Wyatt said in a different voice, “I’ll remember this, Villiers.”
“I’ll see that you do. Be here in twenty minutes.” Villiers handed the phone back to Hackman, who hung up, his face twisting up in spasms of soundless laughter.
Hackman said, “He’ll be here, just as sure as there’s a hole in his ass.” It was wasted on Villiers, who had gone back to reading the file. Hackman said less firmly, “Well, then, uh-suppose I leave you here to read that? I’ll be out front.” When Villiers didn’t respond, he left.
At six minutes past four the door opened and Hackman admitted the young man to the office.
Villiers looked up without hurry. The young man stood motionless just inside the door. He was handsome in a tennis-bum fashion-thin nostrils, large clever eyes, sandy hair brushed to one side, shaggy but carefully groomed sideburns and hair fluffing out fashionably over the back of his suit collar. He had a long, spare, sinewy body which looked neat in a lean dark suit, deep blue shirt, and modishly wide blue tie. Roman-coin cufflinks and soft expensive shoes. The suit, Villiers guessed, was a Dunhill-maybe five hundred dollars.
Villiers did not rise; Steve Wyatt did not offer to shake hands. He slid his cool glance past George Hackman and brought it to rest on Villiers. Villiers’ hard eyes penetrated him, sizing him up. “All right, you’ve had your look. I’m Villiers. Sit down.”
Steve Wyatt settled into a chair beyond the corner of Hackman’s desk. “I’m listening.”
Villiers opened the folder. “You know who I am and what I do. I’m-”
“What’s that?” Wyatt interjected. “The story of your life?”
“Not mine. Yours.”
Wyatt snorted.
George Hackman said, “Think again, boy. We’ve investigated you right down to the price you pay for pants and the brand of gin you drink and the number of women you balled in nineteen-sixty-two.”
Wyatt bridled. “What is this? Some sort of blackmail? You’ve come to the wrong store to make that kind of buy. I’m not rich.”
Villiers shook his head. “George, suppose you go outside.”
“But I-”
“It’ll be better if there are no witnesses to this conversation. Better for me and better for Wyatt.”
“Oh-all right. I get you.” Hackman got out of his swivel chair and went.
When the door closed Steve Wyatt lifted a flat cigarette case from his inside pocket, selected a cigarette, and lit it in the manner of an actor. Squinting through the smoke, he said, “What’s this all about?”
Villiers closed the file and set, it down beside his chair. “You’re twenty-eight years old, not married, no close surviving family except your mother, Fran Wyckliffe Wyatt. You-”
“Why tell me what I already know?”
“To convince you I’m not bluffing. You went to the right schools as a child, the right summer camps, the right birthday parties and dancing classes and tennis lessons and ski resorts. You marched with the Knickerbocker Greys; you graduated with gentlemanly marks from Hotchkiss and Yale, where you made Skull and Bones, and in nineteen-sixty-four you made a good showing in the Bermuda Cup Race sailing a boat that belonged to a second cousin of your mother’s. You’re a fair shot with a skeet gun, a good horseman and beagler, and a fair if casual hand with a tennis racket. You’re a good swimmer. You can hold up your end of a conversation, whether it’s opera, pop art, stock market, or who’s who. It’s only natural, because you come from a family that represents the luster of aged vintage money, if not the money itself. You’re poor, and your mother is poor. You’ve always been a hanger-on, living off relatives. When-”
“All right, all right. You said you wanted to talk to me about someone named Sylvia. I don’t know any Sylvia.”
Villiers shook his head with a mild grimace. “That won’t do, and you know it.”
“I tell you, the only Sylvia I ever heard of was Sylvia Ashton Warner, and I never met her. Sylvia Sidney, maybe? I never met her either.” Wyatt had a glittering smile and a quick glib-ness. His accent was the kind of maloccluded patois spoken by some of the upper crust who had obviously been taught as children to speak with pencils clenched in their teeth.
Villiers said, “If the name meant nothing to you, you wouldn’t have hurried over here. Forget it, you’ll only waste both our time by stalling.”
“I tell you I-”
“Sylvia Hunter, now deceased, was the alcoholic wife of a real-estate financier named Farris P. Hunter. Her life was a textbook history of notoriety and divorces punctuated by psychoanalysis, tranquilizers, and a parade of gigolos, of whom you were the last.”
Wyatt’s eyes were bright with venom. He spoke without bothering to pry his lips apart, “You fucking bastard.”
The phrase was, in a sense, a literal description of Mason Villiers. He didn’t respond to it. What he said was, “I’ll finish this, and then you can get the wisecracks off your chest. When you graduated from Yale you spent two years drifting the international watering places, worming your way into jet-set cliques as a professional guest, bed partner, and mascot with your brassy line of patter and your well-developed seductive talents. You cut a swath with eight or nine society wives and too many unmarried girls to count-I have a sampling of names and dates here if you want them, but it’s not necessary right now-incidentally, if you’ve got a microphone on you, you’ll find this conversation has been jammed to jibberish.”
“I’m not wired for sound,” Wyatt growled. “Go on-you’re doing the talking.”
“You met Sylvia Hunter in nineteen-sixty-four, in Biarritz. You ripened the acquaintance in sixty-five, when you made it your business to appear in Palm Beach at a time when Mrs. Hunter and her daughter were there but Farris Hunter was wintering in New York to take care of his business affairs. The daughter was seventeen, the product of one of Sylvia Hunter’s earlier marriages. Mrs. Hunter was forty-two at that time, plenty attractive from these photographs, in spite of the punishment she gave herself.”
“You had the draft board on your tail at the time, but Mrs. Hunter introduced you to a doctor who told you what drugs to take before your draft physical, so you were classified 4-F and didn’t serve. By this time, of course, you were already living on forgery-you wrote a lot of bad paper against the checking accounts of various people who couldn’t afford to expose you because they couldn’t afford scandals. A bit sordid for a Wyatt, you must admit. I’ve got photocopies of some of the canceled checks here with your forged signatures on them.”
Wyatt jerked violently. The back of his hand struck his cigarette, showering sparks over his pants. He brushed them awkwardly and straightened up, trying to smile; the effect was tremble-lipped, white, ghastly.
“To go on. You ingratiated yourself with Sylvia Hunter, and in the absence of Farris Hunter, you moved into their Palm Beach estate, living ostensibly in a guest house, but actually, of course, sleeping with Mrs. Hunter. But Mrs. Hunter’s daughter was underfoot all the time-Amy. You seduced the girl, of course. Amy was-is-a careless pretty blond who grew up with several stepfathers in seasonal homes in New York, Palm Beach, and the Adirondacks, with the usual visits to Riviera spas. She hated her mother. When you seduced her, she taunted her mother by revealing that she was taking you away from her mother. It was too much for Sylvia. She died of what the doctor friend called heart problems caused by an accidental overdose of reducing pills. The fact is, Mrs. Hunter didn’t take reducing pills, she didn’t need to. Was Mrs. Hunter so enraged by the way you let her daughter capture your attentions that she threatened to throw you out and expose you? And when she threatened you with exposure, did you kill her to keep her quiet? Probably not-and anyhow, I doubt anybody could prove premeditated murder at this late date. But the doctor who signed the false death certificate can be reached, and there’s enough circumstantial evidence lying around to put you in a bad fix if anybody decides to resurrect the case. Any comment?”
Wyatt’s crooked smile slipped. “You’re asking all the questions, and you’re answering them. What am I supposed to say?”
“I’ll go on, then. Mrs. Hunter died. You must have been sick of the kept-man role by then anyway-you could
