“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?”
“No,” she said, sniffling, burying her face against the front of his shirt. “Telling me isn’t enough, darling.”
He stepped back, dropping his hands, turning cool. “Then what do I have to do? You want to tie a bell on me? You want to keep me in reach twenty-four hours a day?”
She wiped her eyes with her hands and looked up, straightening, defiance seeping into her fibers; she said, “I’m sorry I went all to pieces. I guess I’m tired. But I’ve never seen you snappish like this-do you get like this whenever you go to see your mother? Is this the effect she has on you?”
He stared at her in slack-jawed amazement. “What the devil does my mother have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. But every time I mention her, you bristle.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Then why haven’t you taken me to meet her?”
The thought of such a meeting made him smile. “My dear, she’d chew you to ribbons, believe me. I’m doing you a favor by keeping you apart.”
“Why do you assume she’d hate me? Because she hates all your women? Is she jealous of them? Do you think it’s an accident that by adding just one letter you can change ‘mother’ to ‘smother’? I’m beginning to get very strange feelings about your-”
“That’s enough,” he snapped. “That’s God damned well enough. You’re one hundred percent off base-let’s just keep my mother out of it from now on, all right? There are things beyond your understanding, Anne dear. I have a strong feeling of loyality to my family-we Wyatts are tribal creatures in a way you could never comprehend. It has nothing to do with the cheap Freudian cliches you seem to have bouncing around in your head. My mother doesn’t dominate me. I am not a concealed, mother-tyrannized homosexual. I’m not a hagridden victim of momism. Can’t you trust me when I tell you it’s better that you don’t meet my mother for a while? She’s a sixty-seven-year-old sachem, she’s vicious and bawdy and hard to take, and if I’m to avoid having the two of you start scratching each other’s eyes out, I’ll have to pave the way with her gradually, get her used to the idea-after all, it’s been at least thirty years since she last spoke to a single person, outside of shopkeepers and servants, who didn’t belong to a family that was descended from Newport society or an ambassador to the Court of St. James. She’s old and she’s stubborn, and it’s going to take me time to bring her around. Darling, I’ve told you all this before-you just don’t seem to-”
“I’m sorry, Steve,” she said. “I don’t believe you.”
He blurted, “Why not?” and immediately realized that what he should have said was, I don’t give a damn whether you believe me or not. He tried to cover the lapse by sweeping her into the circle of his arms and murmuring, “Oh, look here, darling, let’s not quarrel. I love you, you know-with all my heart.” He caressed her slowly, gently, beginning to smile at her.
She said faintly, “I wish I could understand all this. I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I just don’t want to be hurt.”
“I could never hurt you,” he breathed, and tipped her face up with his finger to kiss her mouth. Within his palm, through the fabric of the nightie, her nipple hardened.
“Oh, Steve darling,” she said, with a long breath escaping; she began to smile with childlike eagerness. “I’m so sorry-forgive me?”
He laughed in his throat and carried her to the bed. Happy with the cruelty of planting doubts in her mind, he made love to her languorously and quietly.
Afterward he lay back, drowsy, caressing her absently.
She said, “Talk to me, darling.”
After a pause he said, “About what?”
