“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.
