The Carpetbaggers (25 page)

"Then you knew more than I did."

"That's what makes a good banker," he said.

I hung up and turned back to the others. "Now, the first thing I do is fire Von Elster."

Nevada's face was shocked. "But Von is one of the best in the business," he protested. "He's directed every picture I ever made. He discovered me."

"He's a lousy little shit," I said. "The minute he thought you were in trouble, he tried to sell you out. He had Bernie Norman up here at seven o'clock this morning. They wanted to give me some free advice. I didn't talk to them."

"Now maybe you'll believe me when I say Bernie was behind the squeeze," Pierce said.

"Like it or not, Nevada," I said, "we made a deal. It's my picture and what I say goes."

He nodded silently.

"The next thing I want is for Pierce to arrange for me to see as many of the talkies as possible in the next three days. Then, next weekend, I'll fly you all to New York. We're goin' to spend three or four days goin' to the theater. We might even pick up a stage director while we're there. We'll see." I paused to light a cigarette and saw a sudden look come over Nevada's face. "What are you smiling at?"

"Like I said, you're gettin' more like your pappy every day."

I grinned back at him. Just then, the waiter came in with breakfast. Nevada and Pierce went into the bathroom to wash up and Rina and I were left alone.

There was a gentle look on her face. "If you'd only let yourself go, Jonas," she said softly, "I think you might become a human being."

I looked into her eyes. "Don't try to con me," I said. "We both know why I did it. You and I made our deal last night."

The gentle look faded from her face. "Do you want me to blow you right now?" she asked.

I knew I had hit her from the way she spoke. I smiled. "I can wait."

"So can I," she replied. "Forever, if I have to."

Just then the telephone rang. "Get it," I said.

Rina picked it up and I heard a voice crackle for a moment, then she handed the phone to me. "Your wife."

"Hello, Monica."

Her voice was filled with anger. "Business!" she shrieked. "And when I call you up, some cheap whore answers. I suppose you're going to tell me it's your stepmother!"

"That's right!"

There was an angry click and the phone went dead in my hands. I looked down at it for a moment, then began to laugh. Everything was so right.

And so wrong.

I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW AT THE FIELD. There were several planes warming up on the line, the red, white and blue ICA gleaming in the circle along their sides and under their wings. I looked down at the planning board, then up at the designer.

Morrissey was young, even younger than I. He had graduated from M.I.T., where he'd majored in aeronautical engineering and design. He wasn't a flier; he was of a new generation that walked on the sky. What he proposed was radical. A single-wing, two-motor plane that would outlift anything in the air.

He set his glasses lower on his nose. "The way I see it, Mr. Cord," he said in his precise manner, "is that by deepening the wings, we get all the lift we need and also increase our fuel capacity. Plus which, we have the added advantage of keeping our pilot in direct visual control."

"What I'm interested in is the payload and speed," I said.

"If my calculations are correct," Morrissey said, "we should be able to carry twenty passengers in addition to the pilot and copilot at a cruising speed of about two fifty. It should fly for about six hours before refueling."

"You mean we could fly from here to New York with only one stopover in Chicago?" Buzz asked skeptically. "I don't believe it!"

"That's what my calculations show, Mr. Dalton," Morrissey said politely.

Buzz looked at me. "You can throw away your money on fool schemes like this," he said, "but not me. I've been through too many of these pipe dreams."

"About how much would it take to build the first one?" I asked Morrissey.

"Four hundred, maybe five hundred thousand. After we get rid of the bugs, we can produce them for about a quarter of a million."

Dalton laughed raucously. "A half million bucks for one airplane? That's crazy. We'll never get our money out."

First-class passage coast to coast by train was over four hundred dollars. It took almost four full days. Plus meals, it came to more than five hundred bucks per passenger. A plane like this would have a payload of seven grand a trip, plus the mail franchise, which would bring it up to about eighty-five hundred dollars. Flying five trips a week, in less than twenty weeks we could get all our costs back, plus operating expenses. From there on in, it would be gravy. Why, we could even afford to throw in free meals on the flight.

I looked down at my watch. It was almost nine o'clock. I got to my feet. "I have to get down to the studio. They're shooting the first scene today."

Dalton's face turned red with anger. "Come off it, Jonas. Get down to business. For the past month and a half, all you been doin' is spending time at that goddam studio. While you're jerkin' off with that lousy picture, we got to find ourselves a plane to build. If we don't, the whole industry will get ahead of us."

I stared at him, unsmiling. "As far as I'm concerned," I said, "we have one."

"You're not— " he said incredulously, "you don't mean you're goin' to take a chance with this?"

I nodded, then turned to Morrissey. "You can start building the plane right away."

"Wait a minute," Dalton snapped. "If you think ICA is going to foot the bill, you're crazy. Don't forget I own half of the stock."

"And Cord Explosives owns the other half," I said. "Cord Explosives also holds over half a million dollars of mortgages on ICA planes, most of which are past due right now. If I foreclosed on them, I'd wind up owning all of Inter-Continental Airlines."

He stared at me angrily for a moment, then his face relaxed into a grin. "I shoulda known better, Jonas. I shoulda learned my lesson when I lost that Waco to you in the poker game."

I smiled back. "You're a great flier, Buzz. You stick to flying and leave the business end to me. I’ll make a rich man out of you yet."

He reached for a cigarette. "O.K.," he said easily. "But I still think you're nuts to build this plane. We could lose our shirt on it."

I didn't answer as we walked out to my car. There was no use explaining to Buzz the simple rules of credit. ICA would order twenty of these planes from Cord Aircraft. The two companies would then give chattel mortgages on them to Cord Explosives. And Cord Explosives would discount those mortgages at the banks, even before the planes were built. The worst that could happen, if the plane was no good, was that Cord Explosives would end up with a whopping tax deduction.

I got into the car. "Good luck with the picture!" Buzz yelled after me as I pulled away.

* * *

I turned into the main gate at the Norman studios. The guard looked out and waved me on. "Good morning, Mr. Cord," he called. "Good luck, sir."

I smiled and drove toward the parking lot. There was a small marker with my name on it. mr. cord. They didn't miss a trick when it came to sucking ass. There was a reserved table with my name on it in the executive dining room. I also had a private bungalow with a suite of offices and two secretaries, a liquor cabinet stocked to the brim, an electric refrigerator, a private can and shower, a dressing room, a conference room and two secretarial offices in addition to my own.

I went through the back door of my bungalow and directly into my office. I wasn't at the desk more than a moment when one of the secretaries came in. She stood in front of the desk, looking very efficient with her notebook and pencil. "Good morning, Mr. Cord," she said brightly. "Any dictation?"

I shook my head. You'd think by this time she'd know better. For the past five weeks, this had been going on every morning. I never write anything — messages, memos, instructions. If I want anything written, I call McAllister. That's what lawyers are for.

The telephone on my desk buzzed. She picked it up. "Mr. Cord's office." She listened a moment, then turned to me. "They've completed rehearsal on Stage Nine. And they're ready for their first take. They want to know if you'd like to come down."

I got up. "Tell them I’m on my way."

Stage Nine was at the far end of the lot. We built the New Orleans set there because we figured it was quieter and there wouldn't be any interfering sounds coming across from the other stages. I began to hurry along the brick paths, cursing the distance, until I saw a messenger's bicycle leaning against one of the executive bungalows. A moment later, I was pedaling like mad down the path. I heard the messenger start yelling behind me.

I pulled around to front of Stage Nine and almost clashed into a man opening the door. He stood there and looked at me in shocked surprise. It was Bernie Norman. "Why, Mr. Cord," he said. "You didn't have to do that. You could have called for a car to bring you down here."

I leaned the bike against the wall. "I didn't have time, Mr. Norman," I said. "They said they were ready to start. It's my money and my time they're spending in there."

They were ready to play the first scene, the one where Max, as a young man, is having his first interview with the madam of the fancy house. That wasn't the opening of the picture, but that's the way they shoot them. They make all the interior scenes first, then the exteriors. When it's all finished, an editor splices it together in its proper sequence.

The actress playing the madam was Cynthia Randall, Norman's biggest female star. She was supposed to be the sexiest thing in the movies. Personally, she didn't do a thing for me. I like my women with tits. Two make-up men and a hairdresser were hovering over her as she sat in front of the dressing table that was part of the set.

Nevada was standing over in the other corner, his back to me, talking to Rina. He turned around as I came up and a chill ran through me as memory dragged up a picture of him from my childhood. He looked even younger than he did when I first saw him. I don't know how he did it; even his eyes were the eyes of a young man.

He smiled slowly. "Well, Junior. Here we go."

I nodded, still staring at him. "Yeah," I said. "Here we go."

Somebody yelled, "Places, everybody!"

"I guess that means me," Nevada said.

Rina's face was turned toward the set, a rapt expression in her eyes. A man pushed past carrying a cable. I turned away from him and almost bumped into another man. I decided to get out of the way before I did any damage.

I wound up near the sound booth. From there I could see and hear everything. Now I knew why pictures cost so much money. We were on our eleventh take of that same scene when I noticed the sound man in the booth. He was bent over the control board, his earphones tight to his head, twisting the dials crazily. Every other moment, I could see his lips move in silent curses, then he would spin the dials again.

"Something wrong with the machine?" I asked.

He looked up at me. I could tell from his look he didn't know who I was. "There's nothing wrong with the machine," he said.

"Something's bothering you?"

"Look, buddy," he said. "We both need our jobs, right?"

I nodded.

"When the boss tells yuh to make somebody look good, yuh do what he says — yuh don't ask no questions. Right?"

"Right," I said.

"Well, I'm doin' my best. But I ain't God. I can't change the sound of voices."

I stared at him, a kind of dismay creeping over me. I had only Rina's word that Nevada's voice test had been O.K. "You mean Nevada Smith?"

He shook his head. "Naah," he said contemptuously. "He's O.K. It's the dame. She comes over so nasal it sounds like her voice is coming out of her eyeballs."

The sound man turned back to his machine. I reached over and snatched the earphones off his head. He turned angrily. "What the hell's the idea?"

But I had them on by then and there was nothing he could do but stand there. Nevada was speaking. His voice came through fine — there was a good sound to it. Then Cynthia Randall began to speak and I didn't know whether to believe my eyes or my ears.

Her voice had all the irritating qualities of a cat wailing on the back fence, with none of the sexual implications. It shivered its way down my spine. A voice like that could put an end to sex, even in the fanciest house in New Orleans. I ripped the earphones from my head and thrust them into the sound man's astonished hands. I started out on the set. A man grabbed at me but I angrily pushed him aside.

A voice yelled, "Cut!" and a sudden silence fell over the set. Everyone was staring at me with strangely startled expressions.

I was seething. All I knew was that someone had played me for a patsy and I didn't like it. I think the girl knew why I was there. A look of caution appeared in her eyes, even as she tried to bring a smile to her lips.

Bernie Norman hurried onto the set. A flicker of relief showed in her face and I knew the whole story. She reached for Bernie's arm as he turned toward me. "Mr. Cord," he asked, "is anything wrong?"

"Yeah," I said grimly. "Her. Get her off the set. She's fired!"

"You just can't do that, Mr. Cord!" he exclaimed. "She has a contract for this picture!"

"Maybe she has," I admitted, "but not with me. It wasn't my pen she squeezed the last drop of ink out of."

Bernie stared at me, the pale coming up underneath his tan. He knew what I was talking about. "This is highly irregular," he protested. "Miss Randall is a very important star."

"I don't care if she's the Mother of God," I interrupted. I held out my wrist and looked down at the watch and then back up at him. "You've got exactly five minutes to get her off this set or I’ll close down this picture and hit you with the biggest lawsuit you ever had!"

* * *

I sat down on the canvas chair with my name on it and looked around the now deserted set. Only a few people hovered about, moving like disembodied ghosts at a banquet. I looked over at the sound man hunched over his control board, his earphones still glued to his head. I closed my eyes wearily. It was after ten o'clock at night.