The Carpetbaggers (54 page)

I was silent for a moment while I finished the rest of the coffee. "How's Amos?" I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I haven't heard from him in four years. How did you find out where I was living?"

"From Rina," I said.

She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Jonas." I could see sympathy deep in her eyes. "You may not believe me but I'm truly sorry. I read about it in the papers. It was a terrible thing. To have so much and go like that."

"Rina had no surviving relatives," I said. "That's why I'm here."

A puzzled look came over her face. "I don't understand."

"She left her entire estate in trust for your daughter," I said quickly. "I don't know exactly how much, maybe thirty, forty thousand after taxes and debts. She appointed me executor and made me promise to see that the child got it."

She was suddenly pale and the tears came into her eyes. "Why did she do it? She didn't owe me anything."

"She said she blamed herself for what happened to us."

"What happened to us was your fault and mine," she said vehemently. She stopped suddenly and looked at me. "It's foolish to get excited about it at this late date. It's over and done with."

I looked at her for a moment, then got to my feet. "That's right, Monica," I said. "It's over and done with." I started for the door. "If you'll get in touch with McAllister, he'll have all the papers ready for you."

She looked up into my face. "Why don't you stay and let me fix you supper," she said politely. "You look tired."

There was no point in telling her that what she saw was the beginning of a hangover. "No, thanks," I said, equally polite. "I have to get back. I have some business appointments."

A wry, almost bitter look came over her face. "Oh, I almost forgot," she said. "Your business."

"That's right," I said.

"I suppose I should be thankful you took the time to come out." Before I could answer, she turned and called to the child. "Jo-Ann, come out here and say good-by to the nice man."

The little girl came into the room, clutching a small doll. She smiled up at me. "This is my dolly."

I smiled down at her. "It's a nice dolly."

"Say good-by, Jo-Ann."

Jo-Ann held out her hand to me. "Good-by, man," she said seriously. "Come an' see us again. Sometime. Soon."

I took her hand. "I will, Jo-Ann," I said. "Good-by."

Jo-Ann smiled and pulled her hand back quickly, then ran out of the room again.

I straightened up. "Good-by, Monica," I said. "If there's anything you need, give me a call."

"I'll be all right, Jonas," she said, holding out her hand. I took it. She smiled tentatively. "Thank you, Jonas," she said. "And I’m sure if Jo-Ann could understand, she'd thank you, too."

I smiled back. "She's a nice little girl."

"Good-by, Jonas." She took her hand from mine and stood in the open doorway while I went down the walk.

"Jonas," she called after me.

I turned. "Yes, Monica?"

She hesitated a moment, then laughed. "Nothing, Jonas," she said. "Don't work too hard."

I laughed. "I'll try not to."

She closed the door quickly and I continued on down the sidewalk. Forest Hills, Queens, a hell of a place to live. I had to walk six blocks before I could get a cab.

* * *

"But what are we going to do about the company?" Woolf asked.

I looked across the table at him, then picked up the bottle of bourbon and refilled my glass. I went to the window and looked out over New York.

"What about
The Sinner
?" Dan asked. "We'll have to decide what to do about that. I'm already talking to Metro about getting Jean Harlow."

I turned on him savagely. "I don't want Harlow," I snapped. "That was Rina's picture."

"But my God, Jonas," Dan exclaimed. "You can't junk that script. It'll cost you half a million by the time you get through paying off De Mille."

"I don't care what it costs!" I snarled. "I’m junking it!"

A silence came over the room and I turned back to the window. Over to my left, the lights of Broadway climbed up into the sky; on my right, I could see the East River. On the other side of that river was Forest Hills. I grimaced and swallowed my drink quickly. Monica had been right about one thing. I was working too hard.

I had too many people on my back, too many businesses. Cord Explosives; Cord Plastics; Cord Aircraft; Inter-Continental Airlines. And now I owned a motion-picture company I didn't even want.

"Well, Jonas," McAllister said quietly. "What are you going to do?"

I walked back to the table and refilled my glass. My mind was made up. I knew just what I was going to do from now on. Only what I wanted to. Let them earn their keep and show me how good they really were.

I stared at Dan Pierce. "You're always talking about how you could make better pictures than anyone in the business," I said. "O.K. You're in charge of production."

Before he had a chance to answer, I turned to Woolf. "You're worried about what's going to happen to the company. Now you can really worry about it. You're in charge of everything else   sales, theaters, administration."

I turned and walked back to the window.

"That's fine, Jonas," McAllister said. "But you haven't told us who the officers will be."

"You're chairman of the board, Mac," I said. "Dan, president. David, executive vice-president." I took a swallow from my glass. "Any more questions?"

They looked at each other, then Mac turned back to me. "While you were away, David had a study made. The company needs about three million dollars of revolving credit to get through this year if we're to maintain the current level of production."

"You'll get a million dollars," I said. "You'll have to make do with that."

"But Jonas," Dan protested. "How do you expect me to make the kind of pictures I want to make if you won't let us have the money?"

"If you can't do it," I snarled, "then get the hell out and I'll get someone who can."

I could see Dan's face whiten. He closed his lips grimly and didn't answer. I looked from him to the others. "The same thing goes for all of you. From now on, I’m through playing wet nurse to the world. Any man that doesn't deliver can get out. From now on, nobody bothers me about anything. If I want you, I’ll get in touch with you. If you have anything to report put it in writing and send it to my office. That's all, gentlemen. Good night."

As the door closed behind them, I could feel the hard, angry knot tightening in my gut. I looked out the window. Forest Hills. I wondered what kind of schools they had out there that a kid like Jo-Ann could go to.

I swallowed the rest of my drink. It didn't untie the knot; it only pulled it tighter. Suddenly I wanted a woman.

I picked up the phone and called José, the headwaiter down at the Rio Club. "Yes, Mr. Cord."

"José," I said. "That singer with the rumba band. The one with the big— "

"Eyes," he interrupted, laughing quietly. "Yes, Mr. Cord. I know. She'll be at your place in half an hour."

I put down the telephone and walked back to the table. I took the bottle to the window with me while I filled my glass. I'd learned something tonight.

People would pay any price for what they really wanted. Monica would live in Queens so she could keep her daughter. Dan would swallow my insults so he could make pictures. Woolf would do anything to prove he could run the company better than his uncle Bernie. And Mac kept on paying the price for the security I'd given him.

When you got down to it, people all had their price. The currency might differ. It could be money, power, glory, sex. Anything. All you needed to know was what they wanted.

A knock came on the door. "Come in," I called.

She came into the room, her dark eyes bright, her long black hair falling down her back almost to her hips, the black gown cut way down in front showing white almost to her navel. She smiled at me. "Hello, Mr. Cord," she said, without the accent she used in the café. "How nice of you to ask me up."

"Take off your dress and have a drink," I said.

"I’m not that kind of girl," she snapped, turning and starting for the door.

"I’ve got five hundred dollars that says you are."

She turned back to me, a smile on her lips, her fingers already busy with the zipper at the back of her dress. I turned and looked out the window while she undressed.

There weren't as many lights in Queens as there were in Manhattan. And what few lights there were weren't as bright. Suddenly, I was angry and I yanked the cord releasing the Venetian blind. It came down the window with a crash and shut out the city. I turned back to the girl.

She was staring at me with wide eyes. All she had on was a pair of skin-tight black sheer panties, and her hands were crossed over her bosom, hiding only the nipples of her large breasts. "What did you do that for?" she said. "No one out there can see in here."

"I'm tired of looking at Queens," I said and started across the room toward her.

David Woolf walked into the hotel room and threw himself down on the bed fully clothed, staring up at the dark ceiling. The night felt as if it were a thousand years old, even though he knew it was only a little past one o'clock. He was tired and yet he wasn't tired; he was elated and yet, somehow, depressed; triumphant and yet there was the faint bitter taste of intangible defeat stirring within him.

This was the beginning of opportunity, the first faint dawn of his secret ambitions, hopes and dreams. Then why this baffling mixture of emotions? It had never been like this before. He'd always known exactly what he wanted. It had been very simple. A straight line reaching from himself to the ultimate.

It must be Cord, he thought. It had to be Cord. There could be no other reason. He wondered if Cord affected the others in the same way. He still felt the shock that had gone through him when he entered the suite and saw him for the first time since the night Cord had left the board meeting to fly to the Coast.

Fifteen days had passed, two weeks during which panic had set in and the company had begun to disintegrate before his eyes. The whispering of the employees in the New York office still echoed in his ears, the furtive, frightened, worried glances cast as he passed them in the corridor. And there had been nothing he could do about it, nothing he could tell them. It was as if the corporation lay suspended in shock, awaiting the transfusion that would send new vitality coursing through its veins.

And now, at last, Cord sat there, a half-empty bottle of bourbon in front of him, a tortured, hollow shell of the man they had seen just a few short weeks ago. He was thinner and exhaustion had etched its weary lines deeply into his cheeks. But it was only when you looked into his eyes that you realized it wasn't a physical change that had taken place. The man himself had changed.

At first, David couldn't put his finger on it. Then, for a brief moment, the veil lifted and suddenly he understood. He sensed the man's unique aloneness. It was as if he were a visitor from another world. The rest of them had become alien to him, almost like children, whose simple desires he had long ago outgrown. He would tolerate them so long as he found a use for them, but once that purpose was served he would withdraw again into that world in which he existed alone.

The three of them had been silent as they came down in the elevator after leaving Cord's suite. It wasn't until they stepped out into the lobby and mingled with the crowd that was coming in for the midnight show on the Starlight Roof that McAllister spoke. "I think we'd better find a quiet spot and have a little talk."

"The Men's Bar downstairs. If it's still open," Pierce suggested.

It was and when the waiter brought their drinks, McAllister lifted his glass. "Good luck," they echoed, then drank and placed their glasses back on the table.

McAllister looked from one to the other before he spoke. 'Well, from here on in, it's up to us. I wish I could be more direct in my contribution," he said in his somewhat stilted, formal manner. "But I'm an attorney and know almost nothing about motion pictures. What I can do, though, is to explain the reorganization plan for the company that Jonas approved before the deal was actually consummated."

It wasn't until then that David had got any idea of how farseeing Jonas had been — retiring the old common stock in exchange for new shares, the issuance of preferred stock to meet certain outstanding debts of the corporation and debentures constituting a mortgage lien on all the real properties of the company, including the studio and theaters, in exchange for his putting up a million dollars' working capital.

The next item McAllister covered was their compensation. David and Dan Pierce would be offered seven-year employment contracts with a salary starting at sixty-five thousand dollars and increasing thirteen thousand dollars each year until the expiration of the agreement. In addition, each would be reimbursed completely for his expenses and bonused, if there were profits, to the amount of two and one half per cent, which could be taken either in stock or in cash.

"That's about it," McAllister said. "Any questions?"

"It sounds good," Dan Pierce said. "But what guarantee have we got that Jonas will keep us in business once the million dollars is gone? None at all. But he's completely covered by his stock and debentures."

"You're right," McAllister agreed. "You have no guarantee, but then, neither has he any guarantee about what his stock will be worth if your operation of the company should prove unsuccessful. As I see it, it's up to you two to make it work."

"But if the study David made is correct," Dan continued, "we won't be halfway through our first picture before we'll be unable to meet our weekly payroll. I don't know what got into Jonas. You can't make million-dollar pictures without money."

"Who says we have to make million-dollar pictures?" David asked quietly.

Suddenly, the whole pattern was very clear. Now he was beginning to understand what Jonas had done. At first, he had felt a disappointment at not being put in charge of the studio. He would have liked the title of President on his door. But Cord had cut through the whole business like a knife through butter. In reality, the studio was only a factory turning out the product of the company. Administration, sales and theaters were under his control and that was where the money came from. Money always dictated studio policy and he controlled the money.