The Carpetbaggers (69 page)

She smiled. "It wasn't anything you said. It was just that I could sense a shrinking in you when I told you who I was." She played nervously with her spoon. "I expect Amos told you all about me — about how I ran off with someone else, leaving him with a child to raise alone?"

"Winthrop and I were never that close. We never discussed you."

"You must believe me, Mr. Cord," she whispered, a sudden intensity in her voice. "I didn't abandon my daughter. I want her to know that, to understand it."

Nothing ever changed. It was still more important for parents to be understood than to understand.

"Amos Winthrop was a woman-chaser and a cheat," she said quietly, without bitterness. "The ten years of our marriage were a hell. On our honeymoon, I discovered him with other women. And finally, when I fell in love with a decent, honest man, he blackmailed me into giving up my daughter under the threat of exposure and the ruination of that man's career in His Majesty's service."

I looked at her. That made sense. Amos was a cute one with tricks like that. I knew. "Did you ever write Monica and tell her that?"

"How does one write something like that to one's own daughter?"

I didn't answer.

"About ten years ago, I heard from Amos that he was sending her over to stay with me. I thought then that when she got to know me, I'd explain and she'd understand." She nodded slightly. "I read in the papers of your marriage and she never came."

The butler came and took away the empty plates. Another servant placed demitasse cups before us. When he went away, I spoke. "Just what is it you would like me to do, Mrs. Holme?"

Her eyes studied my face for a moment. I saw the slight hint of moisture in them. Her voice was steady, though. "If you should happen to speak with her, Mr. Cord," she said, "let her know that I asked for her, that I think of her and that I'd appreciate hearing from her."

I nodded slowly. "I'll do that, Mrs. Holme."

The butler began to pour coffee as the dull thud of bombs rolled into the heavily draped room like a muffled sound of thunder in peacetime London.

* * *

The roar of the four big motors came back into my ears as I opened my eyes. Morrissey was in the bucket seat, his head tilted uncomfortably to one side as he dozed. He opened his eyes as I sat up. "How long was I sleeping?" I asked.

"About four hours."

"I better give Roger some relief," I said, getting to my feet.

Forrester looked up as I came into the compartment. "You must have been tired. For a while, you were snoring so loud back there I was beginning to think we had five motors instead of four."

I sank into the copilot's seat. "I thought I'd give you a little relief. Where are we?"

"About here," he said, his finger pointing to the map on the holder between us. I looked down. We were about a thousand miles out over the ocean.

"We're slow."

He nodded. "We ran into heavy head winds."

I reached for the wheel and pulled it back to me until it locked in. "O.K.," I said. "I got her."

He released his wheel, got to his feet and stretched. "I think I’ll try to get a nap."

"Fine," I said, looking out through the windshield. It was beginning to rain.

"Sure you can keep your eyes open for a few hours?"

"I'll manage."

He laughed. "Either you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din, or I'm getting old. For a while, back there, I thought you were going to fuck every woman in England."

I looked up at him, grinning. "With the way those bombs were coming down, I thought I better make the most of it."

He laughed again and left the compartment. I turned back to the controls. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. The girls must have felt it, too. There'd been something desperate in the way they insisted you accept their favors.

It was beginning to snow now, heavy, swirling flakes against the windshield. I switched the de-icers on and watched the snowflakes turn to water against the Plexiglas. The air speed was two hundred and slowing. That meant the head winds were picking up speed. I decided to see if we could climb up over it.

I moved the wheel back and the big plane began to lift slowly. We came through the clouds at thirteen thousand feet into bright sunlight. I locked in the gyrocompensator and felt the plane level off.

It was a clear and smooth flight all the rest of the way home.

Robair was standing in the open doorway when I came out of the elevator. Though it was four o'clock in the morning, he looked as fresh and wide-eyed as if he'd just awakened. His dark face gleamed in a welcoming smile over his white shirt and faultlessly tailored butler's jacket. "Good morning, Mr. Cord. Have a good flight?"

"Fine, thank you, Robair."

He closed the door behind him. "Mr. McAllister's in the living room. Been waiting since eight o'clock last night."

"I'll talk to him," I said, starting through the foyer.

"I’ll fix some steak sandwiches and coffee, Mr. Cord."

I stopped and looked back at the tall Negro. He never seemed to age. His hair was still black and thick, his frame giant-sized and powerful. "Hey, Robair, you know something? I missed you."

He smiled again. There was nothing subservient or false about his smile. It was the smile of a friend. "I missed you, too, Mr. Cord."

I turned and walked into the living room. Robair was more than just a friend. In a way, he was my guardian angel. I don't know how I would have held together after Rina died if it hadn't been for Robair.

By the time I'd got back to Reno from New York, I was a wreck. There was nothing I wanted to do. Just drink and forget. I'd had enough of people.

My father rode my shoulders like a desert Indian on a pony. It had been his woman I had wanted. It had been his woman who had died. Why did I cry? Why was I so empty?

Then one morning, I awakened in the dirt of the yard, back of Nevada's room in the bunkhouse, to find Robair bending over me. I vaguely remembered having leaned my back against the wall of the bunkhouse while I finished a bottle of bourbon. That had been last night. I turned my head slowly. The empty bottle lay beside me.

I placed my hands in the dirt and braced myself. My head hurt and my mouth was dry and when I tried to get to my feet, I found I didn't have the strength.

I felt Robair's arm slip around behind me and lift me to my feet. We started to walk across the hard-packed earth. "Thank you," I said, leaning against him gratefully. "I’ll be all right once I get a drink."

His voice had been so soft that at first I thought I hadn't heard him. "No more whisky, Mr. Cord."

I stared up into his face. "What did you say?"

His large eyes were impassive. "No more whisky, Mr. Cord," he repeated. "I reckon it's time you stopped."

The anger pulled up in me and gave me strength. I shoved myself away from him. "Just who in hell do you think you are?" I shouted. "If I want a drink, I'll take a drink!"

He shook his head. "No more whisky. You're not a little boy no more. You can't run an' hide your head in the whisky bottle ever’ time a little bad comes your way."

I stared at him, speechless for a moment, as the shock and anger ran through me in ice-cold waves. Then I found my voice. "You're fired!" I screamed. "No black son of a bitch is going to own me!"

I turned and started for the house. I felt his hand on my shoulder and turned. There was a look of sadness on his face. "I’m sorry, Mr. Cord," he said.

"There's no use in apologizing, Robair."

"I’m not apologizing for what I said, Mr. Cord," he replied in a low voice. Then I saw his giant, hamlike fist racing toward me. I tried to move away but nothing in my body seemed to work the way it should and I plunged into the dark again.

This time when I woke up, I was in bed, covered with clean sheets. There was a fire going in the fireplace and I felt very weak. I turned my head. Robair was sitting in a chair next to the bed. There was a small tureen of hot soup on the table next to him. "I got some hot soup here for you," he said, his eyes meeting mine levelly.

"Why'd you bring me up here?"

"The mountain air'll do you good."

"I won't stay," I said, pushing myself up. I'd had enough of this cabin when I was here the last time. On my honeymoon.

Robair's big hand pushed me back against the pillow. "You'll stay," he said quietly. He picked up the tureen and dipped a spoon into it, then held the spoon of soup out to me. "Eat."

There was such a note of authority in his quiet voice that involuntarily I opened my mouth before I thought. The hot soup scalded its way down. Then I pushed his hand away. "I don't want any."

I stared into his dark eyes for a moment, then I felt rise up inside me a hurt and a loneliness that I had never felt before. Suddenly, I began to cry.

He put down the tureen. "Go ahead an' weep, Mr. Cord. Cry yourself out. But you'll find tears won't drown you any more than whisky."

He was sitting on the porch in the late-afternoon sun when I finally came out. It was green all around, bushes and trees all the way down the side of the mountain, until it ran into the red and yellow sands of the desert. He got to his feet when I opened the door.

I walked over to the railing and looked down. We were a long way from people. I turned and looked back at him. "What's for dinner, Robair?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "To tell the truth, Mr. Cord, I was kind of waitin' on how you felt."

"There's a brook near here that has the biggest trout you ever saw."

He smiled. "A mess o' trout sounds fine, Mr. Cord."

It was almost two years before we came down from the mountain. Game was plentiful and once a week, Robair would drive down for supplies. I grew lean and dark from the sun and the bloat of the cities disappeared as the muscles tightened and hardened in my body.

We developed a routine and it was amazing how well the business got along without me. It merely proved the old axiom: once you reached a certain size, it was pretty difficult to stop growing. All the companies were doing fine except the picture company. It was undercapitalized but it didn't matter that much to me any more.

Three times a week, I spoke to McAllister on the telephone. That was generally sufficient to take care of most problems. Once a month, Mac would come driving up the winding road to the cabin, his brief case filled with papers for me to sign or reports for me to study.

Mac was a remarkably thorough man. There was very little that escaped his observant eye. In some mysterious way, everything of importance that was going on in any of the companies found its way into his reports. There were many things I knew I should attend to personally but somehow, everything seemed a long way off and very unimportant.

We'd been there almost a year and a half when we had our first outside visitor. I'd been out hunting and was coming back up the trail, with a brace of quail swinging from my hand, when I saw a strange car parked in front of the cabin. It was a Chevy with California license plates.

I walked around and looked at the registration on the steering column: Rosa Strassmer, M.D., 1104 Coast Highway, Malibu, Cal. I turned and walked into the cabin. There was a young woman seated on the couch, smoking a cigarette. She had dark hair, gray eyes and a determined jaw.

When she stood up, I saw she was wearing a faded pair of Levis that somehow accentuated the slim, feminine curve of her hips. "Mr. Cord?" she asked, holding her hand out to me, a curious, faint accent in her voice. "I’m Rosa Strassmer, Otto Strassmer's daughter."

I took her hand, staring at her for a moment. Her grip was firm. I tried to keep the faint tinge of annoyance from showing in my voice. "How did you know where to find me?"

She took out an envelope and gave it to me. "Mr. McAllister asked me to drop this off when he heard I was driving through here on my vacation."

I opened the envelope and looked at the paper inside. It was nothing that couldn't have waited until his next visit. I dropped it on the table. Robair came into the room just then. He looked at me curiously as he took the brace of quail and my gun and went back into the kitchen.

"I hope I haven't disturbed you, Mr. Cord," she said quickly.

I looked at her. Whatever it was I felt, it wasn't her fault. It was Mac's not too subtle reminder that I couldn't stay on the mountain forever. "No," I answered. "You must forgive my surprise. We don't get many visitors up here."

She smiled suddenly. When she smiled, her face took on a strange bright beauty. "And I can understand why you don't ask people to come, Mr. Cord," she said. "More than two people would crowd a paradise like this."

I didn't answer.

She hesitated a moment, then started for the door. "I must be going now," she said awkwardly. "I'm glad to have met you. I've heard so much about you from my father."

"Dr. Strassmer!"

She turned toward me in surprise. "Yes, Mr. Cord?"

"I’ll have to ask you to forgive me again," I said quickly. "Living up here as I have, I seem to have forgotten my manners. How is your father?"

"He's well and happy, Mr. Cord, thanks to you. He never gets tired of telling me how you blackmailed Göring into letting him out of Germany. He thinks you're a very brave man."

I smiled. "It's your father who is brave, doctor. What I did was very little."

"To Mother and me, it was a great deal," she said. She hesitated again. "Now I really must be going."

"Stay for dinner," I said. "Robair has a way of stuffing quail with wild rice that I think you'd enjoy."

Her eyes searched mine for a moment. "I will," she answered. "Under one condition — that you call me Rosa, not doctor."

"Agreed. Now sit down again and I’ll get Robair to bring you something to drink."

But Robair was already in the doorway with a pitcher of Martinis. It was too late for her to leave when we were through with dinner, so Robair fixed up the tiny guest room for her. She went to bed and I sat in the living room for a while and then went to my room.

For the first time in a long while, I could not fall asleep. I stared up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling. There was a sound at the door and I sat up in the bed.