The Carpetbaggers (68 page)

David stared at him.

"Did I say I definitely wouldn't do it for you?" Irving said.

* * *

Aunt May's ample bosom quivered indignantly. "Like a father your Uncle Bernie was to you," she said in her shrill, rasping voice. "Were you like a son to him? Did you appreciate what he done for you? No. Not once did you say to your Uncle Bernie, while he was alive, even a thank you." She took a handkerchief from the front of her dress and began to dab at her eyes, the twelve-carat diamond on her pinkie ring flashing iridescently like a spotlight. "It's by the grace of God your poor
tante
isn't spending the rest of her days in the poorhouse."

David leaned back in the stiff chair uncomfortably. He felt the chill of the night in the big, barren room of the large house. He shivered slightly. But he didn't know whether it was the cold or the way this house always affected him. "Do you want me to start a fire for you,
Tante
?"

"You're cold, Duvidele?" his Aunt May asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I thought you might be chilly."

"Chilly?" she repeated. "Your poor old
tante
is used to being chilly. It's only by watching my pennies I can afford to live in this house."

He looked at his watch. "It's getting late,
Tante
. And I have to get going. Are you going to give me the proxies?"

The old woman looked at him. "Why should I?" she asked. "I should give proxies to help that
momser
, that no-good, who stole his company from your uncle?"

"Nobody stole the company. Uncle Bernie would have lost it anyway. He was lucky to find a man like Cord to let him off so easy."

"Lucky he was?" Her voice was shrill again. "Out of all the shares he had, only twenty-five thousand I got left. What happened to the rest of them? Tell me. What happened, hah?"

"Uncle Bernie got three and a half million dollars for them."

"So what?" she demanded. "They were worth three times that."

"They were worth
bupkas
," he said, losing his temper. "Uncle Bernie was stealing the company blind and you know it. The stock wasn't worth the paper it was printed on."

"Now you're calling your uncle a thief." She rose to her feet majestically. "Out!" she screamed, pointing at the door. "Out from my house!"

He stared at her for a moment, then started for the door. Suddenly he stopped, remembering. Once his uncle had chased him out of his office, using almost the same words. But he'd got what he wanted. And his aunt was greedier than Bernie had ever been. He turned around.

"True, it's only twenty-five thousand shares," he said. "Only a lousy one per cent of the stock. But now it's worth something. At least, you got somebody in the family looking out for your interests. But give your proxies to Sheffield and see what happens. He's the kind that got Uncle Bernie into Wall Street in the first place. If you do, I won't be there to watch your interests. Your stock won't be worth
bupkas
again."

She stared at him for a moment. "Is that true?"

He could see the calculating machine in her head spinning. "Every last word of it."

She took a deep breath. "So come," she said. "I'll sign for you the proxies." She turned and waddled to a cabinet. "Your uncle,
olev a'sholem
, always said I should listen to you when I wanted advice. That David, he said, has a good head on his shoulders."

He watched her take some papers from the cabinet. She walked over to a desk, picked up a pen and signed them. He took them and put them in his jacket pocket. "Thanks, Aunt May."

She smiled up at him. He was surprised when she reached out her hand and patted his arm almost timidly. "Your uncle and me, we were never blessed with children," she said in a tremulous voice. "He really thought of you like his own son." She blinked her eyes rapidly. "You don't know how proud he was, even after he retired from the company, when he read about you in the trade papers."

He felt a knot of pity for the lonely old woman gather in his throat. "I know, Aunt May."

She tried to smile. "And such a pretty wife you got," she said. "Don't be a stranger. Why don't you sometime bring her here to have tea with me?"

He put his arms around the old woman suddenly and kissed her cheek. "I will, Aunt May," he said. "Soon."

* * *

Rosa was waiting in his office when he got back to the studio. "When Miss Wilson called and told me you'd be late, I thought it would be nice if I came down and we had dinner out."

"Good," he said, kissing her cheek.

"Well?"

He sat down heavily behind his desk. "Aunt May gave me her proxies."

"That means you've got nineteen per cent to vote."

He looked at her. "It won't do much good if Jonas doesn't back me up. Irving told me he'd have to sell the stock to Sheffield if Cord wouldn't pick it up."

She got to her feet. "Well, you've done all you could," she said in a practical voice. "Now let's go to dinner."

His secretary came in just as David got to his feet. "There's a cablegram from London, Mr. Woolf."

He took the envelope and opened it.

SET PRODUCTION DATE SINNER MARCH 1.

CORD.

Just as he was about to hand it to Rosa, the door opened and his secretary came in again. "Another cablegram, Mr. Woolf."

Quickly he ripped it open. His eyes skimmed through it and he felt a sudden relief surge through him.

MCALLISTER READY WHATEVER CASH NEEDED SPIKE SHEFFIELD. GIVE IT TO HIM GOOD.

Like the first cablegram, it was signed CORD. He passed them both to Rosa. She read them and looked up at him with shining eyes. "We did it!" he said excitedly. He had started to pick her up in his arms when the door opened again.

"Yes, Miss Wilson?" he said in an annoyed voice.

The girl stood hesitantly in the doorway. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Woolf," she said, "but another cablegram just arrived."

"Well, don’t stand there. Give it to me." He looked at Rosa. "This one is for both of us," he said, handing it to her. "You open it."

She looked down at the envelope, then back at David. A smile came over her face.

He looked down at the cable in her hand.

MAZEL TOV! HOPE IT WILL BE TWINS!

This one was signed JONAS.

"This is damn stupid!" Forrester muttered as he lifted the CAB-200 into the air behind the formation of Spitfires.

"What's stupid?" I asked, looking down behind me from the copilot's seat, to see London dropping back into the early-morning haze. There were several fires still burning from last night's raid. "They didn't buy our plane but they'll buy all the B-17’s we can turn out. What the hell, we both know they have to standardize."

"I’m not talking about that," Roger grumbled.

"Engines one and two, check," Morrissey called from behind us. "Engines three and four, check. You can cut the fuel now."

"Check." Roger turned down the mixture. "That's what I’m talking about," he said, motioning toward Morrissey, who was acting as flight engineer. "It's stupid — all of us on the same plane. What if it went down? Who'd be left to run the company?"

I grinned at him. "You worry too much."

He returned my smile without humor. "That's what you pay me for. The president of the company has to worry. Especially the way we're growing. We grossed over thirty-five million last year; this year we'll go over a hundred million with war orders. We'll have to start bringing up personnel who can take over in case something happens to us."

I reached for a cigarette. "What's going to happen to us?" I asked, lighting it. I looked at him through the cloud of smoke. "Unless you got a little jealous of the R.A.F. back there and are thinking about going back into the service."

He reached out and took the cigarette from my mouth and put it between his lips. "You know better than that, Jonas. I couldn't keep up with those kids. They'd fly rings around me. If I have to be an armchair pilot, I’d rather do it here, where at least I’m on your general staff."

There was something in what he said. The war was pushing us into an expansion that neither of us had ever dreamed of. And we weren't even in it yet.

"We'll have to get someone to run the Canadian plant."

I nodded silently. He'd been right — it was a hell of a wise move. We'd fabricate the parts in our plants in the States and ship them to Canada, where they'd go on the production line. As they rolled off, the R.C.A.F. would fly them to England. If it worked, we could knock about three weeks off the production time for each plane.

The idea also had some fiscal advantages. The British and Canadian governments were willing to finance the building of the plant and we'd save two ways. The factory would cost less because we would have no interest charges and the tax on net income could be taken in Canada, where the depreciation allowance was four times that allowed by Uncle Sam. And His Majesty's boys were happy, too, because living in the sterling bloc, they'd have fewer American dollars to pay out.

"O.K., I agree. But none of the boys working for us has the experience to take on a big job like that except Morrissey. And we can't spare him. You got anybody in mind?"

"Sure," he said, shooting a curious look at me. "But you aren't going to like it."

I stared at him. "Try me and see."

"Amos Winthrop."

"No!"

"He's the only man around who can handle it," he said. "And he won't be available for long. The way things are going, somebody's going to snap him up."

"Let them! He's a prick and a lush. Besides, he's bombed out on everything he ever did."

"He knows aircraft production," Forrester said stubbornly. He glanced at me again. "I heard what happened between you two but that's got nothing to do with this."

I didn't answer. Up ahead of us, I saw the Spitfire formation leader waggle his wings. It was the signal to break radio silence. Forrester leaned forward and flipped the switch. "Yes, Captain?"

"This is where we leave you, old boy."

I looked down. The gray waters of the Atlantic stared back at me. We were a hundred miles off the coast of the British Isles.

"O.K., Captain," Forrester said. "Thank you."

"Safe home, chaps. And don't forget to send us the big ones. We'll be needing them next summer to pay Jerry back a little."

Forrester laughed in his mike. The British had just taken the shellacking of their lives and here they were worried about getting their licks in. "You'll have them, Captain."

"Righto. Radio out."

He waggled the wings of his Spitfire again and the formation peeled away in a wide, sweeping circle back toward their coast. Then there was silence and we were alone over the Atlantic on our way home.

I pulled out of my safety belt and stood up. "If it's O.K. with you, I'm going back and grab a little snooze."

Roger nodded. I opened the compartment door. "You just think about what I said," he called after me.

"If you're talking about Amos Winthrop, forget it."

Morrissey was sitting dejectedly in the engineer's bucket seat. He looked up when I came in. "I don't understand it," he said sadly.

I sat down on the edge of the bunk. "It's easy enough to figure out. The B-17 flies with a five-man crew against our nine. That means they can put almost twice as many planes in the air. Round trip to Germany at the most is two thousand miles, so they don't need a five-thousand-mile range. Besides, the operational costs are just a little more than half ours."

"But this plane can go ten thousand feet higher and two hundred miles an hour faster," Morrissey said. "And it carries almost twice the pay load of bombs."

"The trouble with you, Morrissey, is you're ahead of the times. They're not ready for planes like this one yet."

I saw the stricken look come over his face. For a moment, I felt sorry for him. And what I'd said was true. For my money, he was the greatest aircraft engineer in the world. "Forget it. Don't worry, they'll catch up to you yet. Some-day, they'll be flying planes like this by the thousands."

"Not in this war," he said resignedly. He picked up a Thermos from a cardboard carton. "I think I’ll take some coffee up to Roger."

He went forward into the pilot's compartment and I stretched out on the bunk. The drone of the four big engines buzzed in my ears. I closed my eyes. Three weeks in England and I don't think I had a good night's rest the whole time. Between the bombs and the girls. The bombs and the girls. The bombs. The girls. I slept.

* * *

The shrill shriek of the falling bomb rose to its orgiastic climax as it fell nearby. All conversation at the dinner table hung suspended for a moment.

"I’m worried about my daughter, Mr. Cord," the slim, gray-haired woman on my right said.

I looked at her, then glanced at Morrissey, seated opposite me. His face was while and strained. I turned back to the woman. The bomb had landed practically next door and she was worried about her daughter, safe in America. Maybe she should be. She was Monica's mother.

"I haven't seen Monica since she was nine years old," Mrs. Holme continued nervously. "That was almost twenty years ago. I think of her often."

You didn't think of her often enough, I thought to myself. I used to think it was different with mothers. But they were no different than fathers. They thought of themselves first. At least that was one thing I’d had in common with Monica. Our parents never gave a damn about us. My mother died and hers had run away with another man.

She looked up at me from the deep violet eyes under the long black lashes and I could see the beauty she'd passed on to her daughter. "Do you think you might see her when you return to the States, Mr. Cord?"

"I doubt it, Mrs. Holme," I said. "Monica lives in New York now. I live in Nevada."

She was silent for a moment, then again came the piercing look from her eyes. "You don't like me very much, do you, Mr. Cord?"

"I hadn't really thought about it, Mrs. Holme," I said quickly. "I'm sorry if I give that impression."