Tycoon (37 page)

A
T THE SAME TIME THAT HIS FATHER AND STEPMOTHER WERE
reenacting their wedding night in rural England, Midshipman John Lear was exulting in one of the most memorable experiences of his life. Tense but alert, he took his turn at the wheel of the venerable aircraft carrier
Essex.
It was midafternoon in California, and the
Essex
was cruising off San Diego, launching and recovering F9F Panther jets. The pilots were in training for carrier operations. The midshipmen were getting their first sea experience.

Keeping an eye on the compass, hoping he wouldn't let the ship wander off heading, John could not watch the air operations, even though they were what interested him most. The jets roared off, hurled by steam catapults. Returning to the deck demanded the maximum skill and steely calm of every pilot. It was surely the most difficult flying anyone would ever be asked to do.

The wind was shifting.

“Bring the ship to two-eight-five degrees.”

“Two-eight-five degrees, aye, sir.”

John spun the wheel.

“Twenty right rudder will be enough,” muttered the regular quartermaster. “Then ten left when she's within five degrees of course, to stop the turn.”

Watching the turn of the compass, feeling the huge ship turn in response to his steering, John had to brace himself to keep from shuddering.

His turn at the wheel lasted only half an hour, but he knew he would never forget the experience. Leaving the bridge, he was able to linger for a while at a vantage point where he could see the flight deck operations. There was no doubt in his mind that in another three years he would be flying from a carrier.

1954

“I'
M GLAD TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE,
M
R.
L
EAR.
I'
VE
wanted to meet you for a long time.”

Dick Painter saluted Bob Lear with a glass of rye. They sat together in the living room of a suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. They had chosen this place because they didn't want Jack to learn they had met.

Dick had made all of the arrangements. Two girls in black panties and bras, with black garter belts and dark stockings, sat in chairs by the bar, ready to bring fresh drinks to the two men on the couch.

“I can't help but feel that your brother has made a point of keeping us from meeting. Do you have that feeling too?”

Bob shrugged. “Jack's a devious guy.”

Dick leaned forward and stared into Bob's eyes. “Your brother is one of the most intelligent and effective men I've ever known. And ‘devious' is not a word I would use to describe him. Since you used it—”

“He has a lot in common with our father. You know much about my father?”

“Everyone knows of your father. He was a tycoon. Whatever he touched turned to money.”

“Well, my father and my brother have got something in
common. When my father wanted something,
he got it!
Whether it was a piece of ass or a contract. But he ran up against one guy he couldn't break—Jack. Jack just walked out on him. My father hated him for it. Still, he had to recognize that Jack was just like him.”

“A chip off the old block,” Painter suggested.

“Like that. Me, I'm more a business-type guy. I had to be. That was what the old man wanted.”

Dick Painter was glad he had arranged this meeting. He'd had no idea what Bob Lear might be like. Now Bob sat there in a light-gray double-breasted suit with a bright, splashy necktie, the archetypal envious younger brother, unable even to
aspire
to his elder brother's achievements.

In Bob's own suite, before they came here for their business meeting, Dick had met Dorothy Lear. My God! Married to that, Bob would have had to be blind and illiterate not to have been envious of his brother's marriage to the exquisite Anne, Countess of Weldon. And before her, there had been the most beautiful Boston debutante of 1929.

“Bob, some of us at Lear Communications have been exploring for almost four years now the idea of merging Carlton House Productions into LCI. We think there are immense advantages. Jack has blocked us at every turn, saying
you
would never accept such an arrangement. Has Jack seriously presented the proposal to you?”

Bob shook his head. “I never heard of the idea,” he said. “He never said anything to me.”

Dick glanced at the two young women waiting beside the bar. “Why don't you girls call down and have dinner sent up?” he said. “Tell them to give us, say, forty-five minutes.” Then he lowered his voice. “Bob, do you have any idea how much Jack is worth?”

“A hell of a lot, I figure.”

“Have you seen the home he's built in Greenwich, Connecticut? A fuckin'
museum,
Bob! And where did the money for something like that come from? He sold most of his network to the gentlemen who now own the controlling interest in LCI. In short, he cashed out! But he won't with Carlton House, and he won't let you. Maybe, uh . . . You get my point?”

Bob Lear nodded.

“Okay. Maybe that's as far as we can go this evening. Tell you what, maybe we should look a little closer at the two young ladies over there. I can promise you one thing. They're
artists!
You take your choice. Maybe a little before dinner, then a little after.”

Bob Lear frowned. “I've been . . . Well, I've never been what my father was—what I guess my brother is.”

Dick laughed. “Then here's your chance to expand your horizons, Brother Bob. Pros, those girls. Absolutely discreet. They don't know who you are. I'll take care of them, money-wise. Enjoy!”

“Well . . . the one with red hair,”

“Good! Good choice, Bob! Uh . . . figure half an hour before dinner comes up. Save a little of yourself for later. Okay? Know what I mean?”

When Bob Lear had gone into a bedroom with the redhead, Dick and the other girl shared a laugh. Then Dick slipped into a closet to make sure the cameraman caught everything that happened in that bedroom.

J
ACK HAD NO HESITATION ABOUT CALLING
M
ONICA
D
ALE TO
ask her if she would appear on a special television show he was producing. He was surprised and pleased when she said she would, depending on her schedule and the script. He told her he wanted her to appear on a special two-hour broadcast of
The Sally Allen Show.
It would be a variety show, built around songs and dances, with perhaps some sort of flimsy plot in the background to tie it all together.

She did not ask the question her agent would have asked: did the Lear Network have enough stations to cover the nation and get worthwhile exposure for his star? Very soon the agent called to ask just that—plus, of course, how much Jack proposed to pay. The answer was that Lear Communications, In
corporated had just acquired WNNJ in Newark, New Jersey, whose signal could be received in all five boroughs of New York City and even in Westchester County and well up into Connecticut, as well as all over northern New Jersey. WNNJ was a Lear satellite station. Most of its broadcasting came in by microwave transmission from Kansas City, which continued to be the pilot station of the network.

Sally Allen surprised Jack with an odd request.

“I got a letter from Len,” she told him. “Jack, I can't help still having some kind of feeling for the guy. He's not asking for money. But could I help him find a job? Is there anything in the world we could do for the guy? I guess I'm too tenderhearted, but I hate to see old Len on the curb.”

“Doing what? What could he do?”

Sally closed her eyes and smiled. “Believe it or not, Jack, the stupid son of a bitch is a not-bad comedy writer. He wrote all our old routines, plus a lot of routines for other people. He's not a bum. He really isn't”.

“Are you telling me you want him to write for
you?”

“We've got worse guys.”

“To be perfectly frank with you, Sally, four years ago he looked like a shabby bum.”

“I'll be just as frank, Jack. If you had to live on what he's had to live on, you'd look like a shabby bum, too. When I married him, in 1938, Len was a good-lookin' guy and a sharp dresser. He made a hundred a week. So did I. In those days plenty of people were working for twenty a week.”

“What about his girlfriend, the one who stripped with her leg in a cast?”

“Gone to the slammer. Ten to twenty for possession of heroin. His letter says he doubts he'll ever see her again.”

“And you want him for a writer. Seriously?”

“Give him a chance, Jack.”

“Well, let's see what he can do.”

The show was built during the spring and summer, for fall broadcast. Leonard submitted a script to the producer, and the producer hired him—whether because Sally had promoted him or because the script was good, Jack would never know. He let production people handle production.

J
OHN GRADUATED FROM
A
NNAPOLIS IN
J
UNE AND WAS COM
missioned an ensign in the United States Navy. His application to be admitted to flight training was approved, and he was given two months' leave before he was to report to Pensacola.

Kimberly did not come to Annapolis for his graduation. But his seventy-three-year-old grandfather did. Harrison Wolcott told John that Edith, John's grandmother, had become too frail to travel but sent her congratulations and highest regards.

Jack and Anne were there, as were Curt and Betsy Frederick and Cap and Naomi Durenberger.

And of course Joni came. She had always been tall and leggy and busty. The training she had received at the modeling agency had given her new self-confidence and grace. The new ensigns abandoned their families for the privilege of being introduced to her. John confided to her that he had shown clippings of her ad layouts to some of his friends. The ads had became collector's items among the midshipmen. The early ones, in which she had modeled bras, were especially prized and kept under lock and key.

John spent his leave in Connecticut. He went into the city every week and stayed for two or three days with Joni in the Manhattan place. They slept together.

They were in bed, in fact, when Joni received a telephone call from a young man who reminded her that John had introduced them on graduation day. His name was Frank Neville, and he was calling to ask if Joni would allow him to take her to dinner or maybe to a play, or both.

She was holding the phone a little distance away from her ear, to let John listen in. She looked at him, grimaced, and shrugged. John nodded vigorously.

When she had agreed to the date and hung up the telephone, John said, “Frank is a good guy, and I mean a
very
good guy.
To have a date with him— Well, Joni, as much as I love you, we both understand for sure that we can't . . . You know what we can't do. You've got to see guys.”

“Then you have to see girls,” she said defiantly.

John nodded. “Yes. I suppose I do.”

T
HE MOST VALUABLE ARTWORKS AND FURNITURE FROM THE
Manhattan townhouse were moved out to the new house in Greenwich. That house became the new Lear family showplace.

Jack never said so to Anne—or to anyone else—but he was determined that the Greenwich house should exceed in every respect the house on Louisburg Square. Even though it was new, he didn't want the house to look as if it had just been built. He had insisted that every old tree should be preserved and that the construction crews should work around them. New plantings were not of raw young shrubbery but of mature shrubs bought from all over the area. His architect's staff had visited sites fifty miles around, looking for old lumber and especially for old bricks. Bemused farmers accepted surprisingly high prices for their old brick walks that ran between farmhouse and gate or farmhouse and barn. The worn and sometimes slimy bricks were hauled to Greenwich and laid to form new walks and the patio behind the greenhouse conservatory. The floor of the library was meticulously assembled from oak that had formed the hayloft floor of a barn built in the 1770s.

The electrical circuits and plumbing, hidden inside the walls, were absolutely modem. The house was centrally air-conditioned, which was almost unheard of in Connecticut.

Jack had insisted that the architects find him a duplicate of the marble-enclosed shower he had enjoyed in Boston. They could not, but they employed people who could build one. Jack
had his choice of marble and chose white with black streaks. The showerhead was as big around as a sunflower. Plumbers drilled nickel-plated pipe to make the needle shower. The bidet swung out from the wall, just like the one in Boston. Even Anne had never seen a shower like it before and declared it a “Yankee extravagance.” She loved it. When they were at home together, they never showered alone.