Tycoon (47 page)

1965

D
R.
H
AROLD
M
ANNING SAT IN THE CHAIR BESIDE
A
NNE'S HOS
pital bed. He was a young internist, only three years out of his residency, but she knew he had already developed an excellent reputation at Greenwich Hospital. She liked him and had confidence in him. The only fault she could detect in him was his tendency to smile a little too much and a little too broadly.

“How are you feeling this morning, Mrs. Lear?”

“I suppose a little better,” she said. “Bed rest . . .”

He nodded. His smile faded. “Yes. Rest is good. I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to rest more.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I've asked Dr. Philip DeCombe to join us for a conference. He has worked with me on your diagnosis. He'll be here in a moment.”

“This sounds ominous,” Anne said.

“Well, I'm afraid our findings are not the most encouraging,” Dr. Manning conceded. “Dr. DeCombe is a specialist.”

“A specialist in what, Doctor?”

Dr. Manning drew a deep breath. “Cancer,” he said quietly.

“What kind of cancer?”

“Mrs. Lear, before I tell you, let me say that people live for years with this particular disease. Not only that, they live normal,
productive lives. It's only in the final stages that it becomes debilitating.”

“Final stages . . .”

“Yes. We— Ah. Dr. DeCombe,” he said looking up at the older man who had entered the room.

DeCombe had come directly from surgery and was wearing greens. He was tall, rail thin, and absolutely bald. He said good morning, making no effort to be cheery.

“I've begun to tell her,” said Dr. Manning.

Dr. DeCombe nodded grimly. “You have leukemia, Mrs. Lear.”

W
HEN
J
ACK AND
J
ASON ARRIVED AT
K
ENNEDY
A
IRPORT,
A
NNE
was waiting. She offered to drive Jason into the city, but he insisted on taking a cab.

Jack waited until they were in the car before he asked her what she had learned at the hospital.

“It seems I'm a little anemic,” she said. “They prescribed some medicine for it. My blood count's up already, and I'm feeling better.”

“What's the cause of it?”

“This particular anemia seems to have been caused by a virus. It's not serious. I may have to take the pills for some time, and I'm to go in and have a blood count taken periodically, but I'm not going to be an invalid.”

“Jesus, Anne . . . I don't know what I'd do if—”

She laughed. “Don't think about it. Don't worry. I'm not, so there's no reason for you to.”

T
HE RITUALS OF MAJOR QUIZ SHOWS HAD ALWAYS BEEN THE
same. Contestants entered a soundproof booth, usually with lights shining up from below to make deep, dramatic shadows. They then frowned and pondered over the questions posed by a vacuous host or master of ceremonies.

For
You Bet!
the host was Art Merriman, the morning-show host whose shtick of capering up and down the studio aisles trying on women's hats had grown not only thin but also impossible as women stopped wearing hats.

The teenage baseball expert Glenda Bonham was an appealing contestant. A plump little blond who wore miniskirts, she chewed gum and giggled as she answered the questions. In her appearances on
You Bet!
she had attracted the highest rating any Lear Network show had ever received.

On her final night, the show clearly would have far outstripped every other show on television if Lear had had stronger outlets in some markets. Many viewers still did not receive UHF channels.

“Now, Glenda,” Merriman intoned, “we have a two-part question. Here's the first part. The Baseball Writers Association began naming the Most Valuable Player of the Year, for each league, in 1931. Since 1931 a number of players have been named Most Valuable Player twice, but only a few have been named three times. Who were the players named three times?”

The lights outside the booth went down. The studio filled with recorded music. Glenda Bonham frowned, wrote one name on her pad, frowned some more, wrote another, and finally wrote a third.

“Glenda! Who were the players?”

She giggled. “Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial, and Joe DiMaggio.”

Merriman applauded wildly, as did the studio audience.

Then Merriman turned somber. “Now, Glenda, the toughest question of all. Are you ready?”

“I'm ready, Mr. Merriman.”

Merriman nodded grimly. “The player who hits the greatest number of home runs in the National League and in the American League wins the home-run championship for that league. Only once in the history of modern baseball have those two championships been won by players who hit the
same number
of home runs in the National League and the American League. What year? Who? How many?”

Glenda Bonham grinned as she quickly wrote on her notepad. She stood relaxed and confident and smiling as the rigmarole of lights and music played out.

“Glenda?”

She giggled. “In 1923 Babe Ruth hit forty-one for New York, American, and Cy Williams hit forty-one for Philadelphia, National.”

“You have just won . . . one . . . hundred . . . thousand.. dollars!”

D
ICK
P
AINTER HUGGED
C
ATHY
M
C
C
ORMACK.
“I
TOLD YOU
the kid would be good!”

“How much could she have answered on her own?”

“Most Valuable Player—She knew the answer to that one flat out. Home runs—She knew it was Babe Ruth and Cy Williams, but she didn't know the year, and she wasn't sure who Williams played for. She had the basic stuff. We just had to help her fine-tune her answers a little bit.”

“But she knew what she'd be asked?”

“Cathy! Don't be naive.
Of course
she knew what she'd be asked. If you believe in an unrigged quiz show you believe in the tooth fairy!”

T
WO WEEKS AFTER
J
ACK RETURNED TO
N
EW
Y
ORK FROM
S
T.
Croix, a messenger delivered a package to his office. He opened it to find a netsuke, a tiny Japanese ivory carving, maybe an inch and a half tall. It was valuable, a collectible. Like many of the genre, it was erotic and depicted two Japanese men fellating. It was a gift from Jason.

He could think of no way to explain to anyone why Jason Maxwell had sent him such a gift. He returned it to its velvet bag and little wooden box and put it in a desk drawer.

His telephone buzzed. “Mr. Lear, there is a Mrs. Horan on the line, calling from Boston.”

He took the call.

“Jack, I've got to tell you something. Kathleen has disappeared! She ran away from her college, and we don't know where she's gone. I've never told you anything about her and never looked to you for any help with her. You've been very good about her. You've never interfered, as you promised not to do. But I—” Connie wept and couldn't go on.

“Did you ever tell her about me?”

“No. I brought her to Mrs. Wolcott's funeral so you could see her. But we didn't tell her who you were.”

“Don't you have any idea where she's gone? A girl nineteen years old can't just disappear. Does she have a boyfriend?”

“No! She was in a convent school. She met boys, but she didn't date.”

“Other friends, then.”

“We've called everybody.”

He was silent for a moment, then asked, “What can I do for you, Connie?”

“I don't know. Probably nothing. But I thought you should know. Maybe she's come down to New York.”

“Connie, do you have anything with a set of Kathleen's fingerprints on it?”

“Fingerprints?”

“Yes. If anything horrible has happened, somebody will take fingerprints. Do you have—”

“Of course I have!” Connie wept.

“All right. A woman named Rebecca Murphy will be calling you. You give her whatever you have that has Kathleen's fingerprints on it. Also photographs.”

“Who is she?”

“She's a private investigator who's done good work for me in the past. Missing-persons bureaus can't do much. They don't have the resources. But Miss Murphy will have, because I'll pay her. I'll call her as soon as I get off the phone.”

“I
F YOU WERE A NAIVE NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD RUNNING AWAY
from home, where would you go?” asked Anne.

“New York?” Jack suggested.

“Maybe. But I'd rather think California. Los Angeles. Lotus Land.”

Jack slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. “The girl has no goddamned education! She's been made to live in a never-never land! The first man who figures her out will take advantage of her.”

An hour later, when they were at the dinner table, the telephone rang. Because it was Rebecca Murphy calling, Jack went in the study and picked up the telephone.

“News,” said Rebecca. “She boarded a bus in Concord.”

“Going where?”

“Hard to say. She bought a ticket for Hartford. I'll drive over there and see what I can find out.”

Back at the table, Jack shook his head and muttered, “Hartford.”

Little Jack, who was now seventeen and no longer little, frowned and said, “May I know what's going on?”

Jack glanced back and forth between Little Jack and Liz, then at Linda and Nelly, and then at Anne.

“You might as well tell them,” she said.

Jack nodded sadly. “A very beautiful nineteen-year-old girl has disappeared from a college just outside Boston. She's run away. Everybody is terribly worried.”

“Why are
we
worried?” asked Liz.

Jack glanced around the table. “Because she's your half sister.”

L
ITTLE
J
ACK WOULD GRADUATE FROM
B
RUNSWICK
A
CADEMY
in June. In the meantime there was the baseball season. During his first season, the manager had started him as a pitcher; but when he hit two home runs in one game and two more in the next, the coach switched him to first base. In the middle of his final season he was batting .408. He intimidated defensive players. Stretching singles into doubles, he slid into second base with his spikes up, daring the second baseman to tag him. He spiked two second basemen so badly they required treatment at a hospital. Coming into home, his tactic was to hit a waiting catcher so hard that the catcher would drop the ball. One schoolboy catcher was put out of baseball for the season with broken ribs after Jack Lear collided with him at the plate.

Late in April the headmasters of the preparatory schools that played in the league with Brunswick called a meeting. After no more than ten minutes discussion, they passed a resolution that Brunswick would forfeit any game in which Jack Lear was put forth as a member of the Brunswick team.

Little Jack's career as a secondary school athlete was over.

He pretended not to care. He told his father the preppy boys were sissies. He'd play ball in college. He had been rejected by Harvard and Yale, but had been admitted to Ohio State University in Columbus. Maybe Woody Hayes would want a hard-tackling guard.

R
EBECCA
M
URPHY SHOWED PHOTOS OF
K
ATHLEEN
H
ORAN TO
the people who worked in the bus station in Hartford and learned that the girl had bought a ticket for Cleveland. Becky caught a flight, hoping to arrive at the Cleveland bus station before Kathleen. She was an hour late. And there the trail went cold. Rebecca had nothing to report except that Kathleen seemed to be heading west. She returned to Boston and persuaded the police to distribute the girl's picture and fingerprints on police wires.

Days passed, and nothing happened. Connie and Dan Horan were frantic. Jack was doing something, through Rebecca, but they themselves could do nothing. Dan flew to San Francisco and wandered the streets of Haight-Ashbury, a place where runaway youngsters were known to congregate. He showed Kathleen's picture to everyone: police officers, narcs, priests, street people. Some sympathized. Some didn't. He flew back to Boston, defeated.

Dan didn't say so to Connie, but his thought was that the Lear in Kathleen was coming out—as maybe it had been bound to do.

Jack was in a state of suspension. He canceled a business trip, for fear of being where he couldn't be reached if word came. He drank too much. He didn't sleep well. Anne watched him closely. She did not like what she saw of how her husband handled a personal crisis.

Finally, several weeks after Kathleen disappeared, Jack flew to Houston for a meeting with Doug Humphrey. He couldn't put it off any longer. Lear Communications was planning a major offering of preferred stock, to raise half a billion dollars of capital, and the two bankers on the board of directors—Douglas Humphrey and Joseph Freeman—wanted to meet with the chief executive officer. Billy Bob Cotton and Ray l'Enfant would be there, too.

Jack arrived the evening before the meeting and had dinner with Doug, Billy Bob, and Ray—plus Mary Carson, who now often sat in on their meetings. In the morning the group sat down beside the pool as usual, spreading their papers out on a glass-topped table.

The meeting had only begun when a call came from Rebecca Murphy. Jack picked up the phone at the table.

“Bingo! I know where she is.”

“Good news?” Jack asked hopefully.