The Carpetbaggers (61 page)

"One week you're here already and this is only the second time you've been to see me. And not even once for supper!"

"I’ll make it for supper soon, Mama. I promise."

She fixed him with a piercing glance. "Thursday night," she said suddenly.

He looked at her in surprise. "Thursday night? Why Thursday night, all of a sudden?"

A mysterious smile came over her face. "I got someone I want you should meet," she said. "Someone very nice."

"Aw, Mama," he groaned. "Not another girl?"

"So what's wrong with meeting a nice girl?" his mother asked in hurt innocence. "She's a very nice girl, David, believe me. Money her family's got. A college girl, too."

"But, Mama, I don't want to meet any girls. I haven't the time."

"Time you haven't got?" his mother demanded. "Already thirty years old. It's time you should get married. To a nice girl. From a nice family. Not to spend your whole life running around in night clubs with those
shiksas
."

"That's business, Mama. I have to go out with them."

"Everything he wants to do he tells me is business," she said rhetorically. "When he doesn't want to do, that's business, too. So tell me, are you coming to dinner or not?"

He stared at his mother for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "All right, Mama. I’ll come. But don't forget, I'll have to leave early. I've got a lot of work to do."

She smiled in satisfaction. "Good," she said. "So don't be late. By seven o'clock. Sharp."

There was a message to call Dan Pierce waiting for him when he got back to the hotel. "What is it, Dan?" he asked, when he got him on the telephone.

"Do you know where Jonas is?"

David laughed. "That name sounds familiar."

"Quit kidding," Dan said. "This is serious. The only way we'll get Nevada to make those Westerns is if Jonas talks to him."

"You really mean he'll go for the deal?" David asked. He hadn't really believed that Nevada would. He didn't need the money and everybody knew how he felt about quickies.

"He'll go," Dan said, "after he talks to Jonas."

"I’d like to talk to him myself," David said. "The government is starting that antitrust business again."

"I know," Dan said. "I got the unions on my neck. I don't know how long I can keep them in line. You can't cry poverty to them; they saw the last annual reports. They know we're breaking even now and should show a profit next year."

"I think we better talk to Mac. We'll lay it on the line. I think two years without a meeting is long enough."

But McAllister didn't know where Jonas was, either. As David put down the telephone, a faint feeling of frustration ran through him. It was like working in a vacuum. Everywhere you turned, there was nothing. All you did was try and make deals. Deals. Piled one on top of the other like a pyramid that had no end. You traded with Fox, Loew's, RKO, Paramount, Warner. You played their theaters, they played yours. All you could do was stand on one foot, then on the other.

He wondered why Jonas took that attitude toward them. He wasn't like that with his other interests. Cord Aircraft was rapidly becoming one of the giants of the industry. Intercontinental Airlines was already the largest commercial line in the country. And Cord Explosives and Cord Plastics were successfully competing against Du Pont.

But when it came to the picture company, they were just keeping alive. Sooner or later, Jonas would have to face up to it. Either he wanted to stay in this business or he'd have to get out. You had to keep pushing forward. That was the dynamics of action in the picture business. If you stopped pushing, you were dead.

And David had done all the pushing he could on his own. He'd proved that the company could be kept alive. But if they were ever going to make it for real, they'd have to come up with something really big. Deals or pictures — he didn't care which.

Actually, he preferred deals. They were safer and much less risky than big-budget pictures. Disney, Goldwyn and Bonner were all looking for new distribution outlets. And they all came up with big pictures, which grossed big and, best of all, were completely financed by themselves. He was still waiting for replies to the feelers he'd put out to Goldwyn and Disney. He'd already had one meeting with Maurice Bonner. But the approval for any such deal had to come from Jonas. It could come from no one else.

Bonner wanted the same kind of setup that Hal Wallis had at Warner's, or Zanuck had over at Twentieth Century-Fox — over-all executive supervision of the program, personal production of his own four major projects each year, stock and options in the company.

It was a stiff price to pay but that was what you paid if you wanted the best. Skouras hadn't hesitated when he wanted Zanuck. One man like that could add twenty million to your gross. It was the difference between existing and reaching for the brass ring.

But meanwhile, where was Jonas? Jonas held the one key that could unlock the golden door.

* * *

"There's a Mr. Irving Schwartz calling," his secretary said on the intercom.

David frowned. "What does he want? I don't know any Irving Schwartz."

"He says he knows you, Mr. Woolf. He told me to say Needlenose."

"Needlenose!" David exclaimed. He laughed. "Why didn't he say so the first time? Put him on."

The switch clicked as the girl transferred the call. "Needlenose!" David said. "How the hell are you?"

Needlenose laughed softly. "O.K. And you, Davy?"

"Fine. I've been working like a dog, though."

"I know," Needlenose said. "I been hearin' lots of good things about you. Makes a guy feel good when he sees one of his friends from the old neighborhood make it big."

"Not so big. It's still nothing but a job." This was beginning to sound like a touch. He figured rapidly how much old friends were worth. Fifty or a hundred?

"It's an important job, though."

"Enough about me," David said, eager to change the subject. "What about you? What are you doing out here?"

"I'm doin' O.K. I'm livin' out here now. I got a house up in Coldwater Canyon."

David almost whistled. His old friend was doing all right. Houses up there started at seventy-five grand. At least it wasn't a touch. "That's great," he said. "But it's a hell of a long way from Rivington Street."

"It sure is. I’d like to see you, Davy boy."

"I’d like to see you, too," David said. "But I’m so god-damned tied up here."

Needlenose's voice was still quiet, but insistent. "I know you are, Davy," he said. "If I didn't think it was important, I wouldn't bother you."

David thought for a moment. Now that it wasn't a touch, what could it be that was so important? "Tell you what," he said. "Why don't you come out to the studio? We can have lunch here, then I'll show you around."

"That's no good, Davy. We got to meet someplace where nobody'd see us."

"What about your house, then?"

"No good," Needlenose replied. "I don't trust the servants. No restaurants, either. Someone might snoop us out."

"Can't we talk on the telephone?"

Needlenose laughed. "I don't trust telephones much, either."

'"Wait a minute," David said, remembering suddenly. "I'm having dinner at my mother's tonight. Come and eat with us. She's at the Park Apartments in Westwood."

"That sounds O.K. She still make those
knaidlach
in soup swimming with chicken fat?"

David laughed. "Sure. The matzo balls hit your stomach like a ton of bricks. You'll think you never left home."

"O.K.," Needlenose said, "What time?"

"Seven o'clock."

"I’ll be there."

David put down the telephone, still curious about what Needlenose wanted. He didn't have long to wonder, for Dan came into his office, his face flushed and excited, his heavy jowls glistening with sweat. "You just get a call from a guy named Schwartz?"

"Yeah," David said, surprised.

"You going to see him?"

"Tonight."

"Thank God!" Dan said, sinking into a chair in front of the desk. He took out a handkerchief and mopped at his face.

David looked at him curiously. "What's so important about my seeing a guy I grew up with?"

Dan stared at him. "Don't you know who he is?"

"Sure," David said. "He lived in the house next to me on Rivington Street. We went to school together."

Dan laughed shortly. "Your friend from the East Side has come a long way. They sent him out here six months ago when Bioff and Brown got into trouble. He's union officially, but he's also top man for the Syndicate on the West Coast."

David stared at him, speechless.

"I hope you can get to him," Dan added. "Because, God knows, I tried and I couldn't. If you don't, we'll be out of business in a week. We're going to have the biggest, god-damnedest strike you ever saw. They'll close down everything. Studio, theaters, the whole works."

David looked at the dining-room table as he followed his mother into the kitchen. Places were set for five people. "You didn't tell me you were having a lot of company for dinner."

His mother, who was peering into a pot on the stove, didn't turn around. "A nice girl should come to supper for the first time with a young man without her parents?"

David suppressed a groan. It was going to be even worse than he'd suspected. "By the way, Mama," he said. "You better set another place at the table. I invited an old friend to have dinner with us."

His mother fixed him with a piercing glance. "Tonight, you invited?"

"I had to, Mama," he said. "Business."

The doorbell rang. He looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock. "I'll get it, Mama," he said quickly. It was probably Needlenose.

He opened the door on a short, worried-looking man in his early sixties with iron-gray hair. A woman of about the same age and a young girl were standing beside him. The worried look disappeared when the man smiled. He held out his hand. "You must be David. I’m Otto Strassmer."

David shook his hand. "How do you do, Mr. Strassmer."

"My wife, Frieda, and my daughter, Rosa," Mr. Strassmer said.

David smiled at them. Mrs. Strassmer nodded nervously and said something in German, which was followed by the girl's pleasant, "How do you do?"

There was something in her voice that made David suddenly look at her. She was not tall, perhaps five four, and from what he could see, she was slim. Her dark hair, cropped in close ringlets to her head, framed a broad brow over deep-set gray eyes that were almost hidden behind long lashes. There was a faint defiance in the curve of her mouth and the set of her chin. An instant realization came to David. The girl no more cared for this meeting than he did.

"Who is it, David?" His mother called from the kitchen.

"I beg your pardon," he said quickly. "Won't you come in?" He stepped aside to let them enter. "It's the Strassmers, Mama."

"Take them into the living room," his mother called. "There's schnapps on the table."

David closed the door behind him. "May I take your coat?" he asked the girl.

She nodded and slipped it off. She was wearing a simple man-tailored blouse and a skirt that was gathered at her tiny waist by a wide leather belt. He was surprised. He was experienced enough to know that the pert thrust of her breasts against the silk of the blouse was not fashioned by any brassière.

Her mother said something in German. Rosa looked at him. "Mother says you and Papa go in and have your drink," she said. "We'll go into the kitchen and see if we can help."

David looked at her. Again that voice. An accent and yet not an accent. At least, it wasn't an accent like her father's. The women turned and started toward the kitchen. He looked at Mr. Strassmer. The little man smiled and followed him into the living room.

David found a bottle of whisky on the coffee table, surrounded by shot glasses. A pint bottle of Old Overholt. David suppressed a grimace. It was the traditional whisky that appeared at all ceremonies — births,
bar mizvahs
, weddings, deaths. A strong blend of straight rye whiskies that burned your throat on the way down and flooded your nose unpleasantly with the smell of alcohol. He should have had enough brains to bring a bottle of Scotch. He was sure it was Old Overholt that had kept the Jews from ever acquiring a taste for whisky.

It was apparent that Mr. Strassmer didn't share his feelings. He picked up the bottle and looked at it. He turned to David, smiling. "Ah,
Gut
schnapps."

David smiled and took the bottle from his hand. "Straight or with water?" he asked, breaking the seal. That was another thing that was traditional. The bottle was always sealed. Once it was opened and not finished, it was never brought out for company again. He wondered what happened to all the open, half-empty bottles. They must be languishing in some dark closet awaiting the day of liberation.

"Straight," Mr. Strassmer said, a faintly horrified note in his voice.

David filled a shot glass and handed it to him. "I’ll have to get a little water," he apologized.

Just then Rosa came in, carrying a pitcher of water and some tumblers. "I thought you might need this." She smiled, setting them on the coffee table.

"Thank you."

She smiled and went out again as David mixed himself a drink, liberally diluting it with water. He turned to Mr. Strassmer. The little German held up his glass. "
L'chaim
."

"
L'chaim
," David repeated.

Mr. Strassmer swallowed his drink in one head-tilted-back gesture. He coughed politely and turned to David, his eyes watering. "
Ach, gut
."

David nodded and sipped at his own. It tasted terrible, even with water. "Another?" he asked politely.

Otto Strassmer smiled. David refilled his glass and the little man turned and sat down on the couch. "So you're David," he said. "I’ve heard a great deal about you."

David smiled back and nodded. This was the kind of evening it would be. By the time it was over, his face would ache from all this polite smiling.

"Yes," Mr. Strassmer continued. "I have heard a great deal about you. For a long time, I've wanted to meet you. We both work for the same man, you know."