Tycoon (53 page)

When the rest of the group left the island, Jack and Val flew to New Hampshire, where she owned a ski lodge. Jack did not ski, but she did and enjoyed it exuberantly. She skated, too.

Back in Greenwich in the spring, she introduced him to horseback riding. That he could do, but he could not conceal from her the fact that he did not enjoy it. When she took a fence, Jack would not even try it. Then came sailing. Val had friends who owned a sloop, and she was a skilled crewman. Jack tried. He pulled on the ropes as they told him to do, but he didn't understand what he was doing or why and was not a quick study. What was more, he didn't play golf.

Val placed a great deal of emphasis on outdoor sports. But she didn't play bridge. Jack had not played much in recent years, but he was still a formidable bridge player. People in Val's circle knew of his prowess at the table. Aboard the sloop, while Val and her closest friends were on deck working the sails, Jack and three others would sit at a table in the cabin and contentedly play bridge. That annoyed Val.

Their sex was good. She was adventuresome and let him introduce her to tricks she insisted she'd never tried before. But by the time they had been seeing each other for a year, they had to accept the fact that they were not compatible enough to commit themselves to each other. He continued to take her to dinner from time to time, and she slept with him in Manhattan every now and then. But the occasions occurred less and less frequently.

C
AP
D
URENBERGER RETIRED WHEN HE TURNED EIGHTY-ONE
. The banker Joseph Freeman also retired. To replace them, the stockholders elected Billy Bob Cotton and Ted Wellman. Dr. Friedrich Loewenstein had earlier been elected to replace Painter.

In the hallway late one afternoon Jack spotted Cathy McCormack. He walked up to her. “Didn't I fire you?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Five years ago.”

“And . . . ?”

“Mrs. Carson was kind enough to bring me back.”

“Come in my office.”

Cathy sat down in Jack's office. She still wore the uniform Dick Painter had required of her: white blouse, black skirt. Jack tried to remember how old she was—approaching sixty, he imagined.

“I fired you because Dick Painter was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And you were his woman, in every way.”

She nodded. “Yes. I was. I haven't seen him since the day you locked him out of the building. He had a few things in my apartment. He didn't even come for them.”

“So Mrs. Carson—”

“Took pity on me, Mr. Lear. I was out of work again. Too old.”

“Too old?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where's your loyalty now, Miss McCormack?”

“My loyalty has always been to the person I worked for. When I worked for Dick Painter—”

“But you didn't just work for him.”

She lowered her eyes. “No.”

“He abandoned you.”

“Probably he didn't have any choice. He thought he might go to jail.”

“You had another job, and they let you go because they said you were too old?”

“As God is my witness, sir, there was no other reason.”

Jack stared at her. “I didn't mean to put you on the street, Cathy. You impressed me as a hell of a competent secretary, and I thought you'd find another job easily enough.”

She shook her head. “It
wasn't
easy.”

“What are you doing here?”

She lowered her eyes again. “I'm in the secretarial pool.”

“Jesus . . .” He glanced at his watch. “Well, you were probably leaving. Would you like to have a drink somewhere?”

Cathy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

She was happy to have the drink in his apartment. He took her to dinner at the Quilted Giraffe. She spent the night with him.

Six weeks later his secretary of ten years took the early retirement she had long ago been offered, and he gave the job to Cathy McCormack.

1972

H
E TOOK
C
ATHY WITH HIM TO
S
T.
C
ROIX AFTER
C
HRISTMAS.
She had not been at the Greenwich house at Christmas, and the family was more than a little surprised by her. She could have hardly been more different from Valerie Latham Field, who had accompanied Jack the year before. Still daring to wear a bikini—actually wearing one because Jack had urged her to—Cathy was conspicuously mature. She was intelligent and soft-spoken, but she was his secretary, and it was all too obvious why she was traveling with him.

The only member of Jack's family who did not join him in St. Croix was LJ. The Miami Dolphins were in the American Conference playoffs. He had flown home for a short visit at Christmas, and had brought with him a Miami cheerleader
named Gloria, a vapid teenager with a sumptuous figure. Liz called her “the chippy.”

LJ had not been able to resist swaggering around his family. The Dolphins were having a highly successful season, and Howard Cosell had called him one of the finest tight ends in football.

Liz continued to despise her brother. She would graduate from Princeton in the spring and had been admitted to Harvard Law. She was happy with the challenge and looked forward to practicing law or perhaps teaching it. She slept regularly with a young man from Richmond but had not met his family or brought him to meet hers. When she did decide to bring her friend home, she hoped her hulking jock brother would not be there.

Joni's daughter, Michelle, was six. She knew David was her father and called him Daddy. She was not yet old enough to suffer any embarrassment from the fact that her father and mother were not married. Jack urged them to marry, for Michelle's sake.

During that week on St. Croix, Joni observed that her father was reasonably content. He had not gotten over the death of Anne; she knew he never would, but at least he had found life again. Joni learned something surprising about him: that at this stage of his life he cherished contentment. He would be sixty-six this year. Business would offer him challenges enough. He didn't need any others in his personal life. Joni understood that the problem with Val had been that she was a challenge to him. Cathy, little as Joni might esteem her, made her father happy because she offered no challenge. Well, if that was what he wanted . . . Still, Joni couldn't help thinking that he was too young to stagnate. Anne would never have allowed it.

I
N
A
PRIL
, D
OUGLAS
H
UMPHREY DIED AT THE AGE OF EIGHTY
five. Mary Carson inherited the bulk of his estate, including, of course, his stock in Lear Communications, Incorporated. Shortly after her father's death she invited Jack to join her for dinner in her Manhattan apartment. They ought to discuss the company, she said—the two of them, alone.

Whether to make an unusual statement or because it reflected her taste, Mary Carson had decorated her Manhattan apartment in Southwestern style, with wool rugs woven by Indians, tall cacti in tubs, and couch and chairs covered in tan leather. Jack recognized a large painting on her living room wall as a Georgia O'Keeffe.

Mary was dressed as she had been in the office that afternoon: in a rose-colored mini-dress accented with silver buttons. She pointed to a chair.

“Scotch?” Mary asked.

“Please.”

Mary went to the kitchen to pour the drinks. She returned with their glasses and a silver tray of hors d'oeuvres.

“You didn't know my father very well,” she said to Jack.

“He was an infantry captain in the First World War. He was wounded and also decorated. As soon as he got home he married, then fathered my brother Doug. Doug's mother died in 1924. Dad married
my
mother in 1926, and I came along in 1927. Doug, too, was an infantry captain. He died on Omaha Beach. Dad was shattered. Then my mother died shortly before you met him. My father made millions, but his life was filled with tragedy and disappointment.”

“I told him he was lucky he had you.”

Jack took a swallow of Scotch and reached for an hors d'oeuvre.

“Before we go to dinner, let's talk business and have it out
of the way,” said Mary Carson crisply. “You're sixty-six years old. You're like my father; you don't have an heir. Oh, you have wonderful children, but you don't have one who's going to succeed you as head of LCI. Am I right?”

“Well, I suppose you're right. My children aren't likely to
want
to succeed me in the company.”

Mary put a hand on his left hand. “Well,
I do
,” she said bluntly. “Not until you're ready. Not until you
want
to retire. But I'm twenty-one years younger than you are. I'd like to work closely with you, Jack, so that when the time comes we can achieve an efficient transition.”

He nodded. “I haven't thought much about retiring.”

“Of course not. We're not talking about soon. But eventually . . . What do you say?”

“I can't think of any reason to say no.”

“I want to be executive vice president, clearly understood to be your Number Two. Number
Two.
For sure. Okay?”

“Again, I can't think of a reason to say no.”

“Well, I'm going to give you a reason, Jack,” she said quietly. She lowered her eyes and seemed to be struggling for self-control. “I'm going to tell you something in confidence. Complete confidence. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“You remember my daughter, Emily, She was nine, I think, when you first met her. She was in my father's pool.” Mary smiled faintly. “She was nude.”

“And not embarrassed,” said Jack.

Mary nodded. “Well . . . that little girl is grown up now. And she's in prison. She's serving a five-to ten-year sentence in the federal reformatory for women at Alderson, West Virginia. Once a month I fly to White Sulphur and visit her.”

“My God! Why?”

“Because I'm a bad mother, probably. I kept her under terribly tight rein. So she ran away. She got hooked on heroin. She became a revolutionary, a member of the Weather Underground. So there's a horrible skeleton in the closet of your would-be executive vice president.”

Jack shook his head. “You never told me, Mary. I never heard about it.” He assured her. “Of course, if it ever comes up, I'll say I knew all about it and appointed you anyway.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

1972

O
N THE EVENING OF
F
RIDAY
, N
OVEMBER
10, 1972, J
ACK SUF
fered a heart attack over dinner with Mary Carson at Lutèce. He collapsed and was taken to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

For the first twenty-four hours the doctors could assure no one that he would survive. Mary Carson sent an LCI jet to Los Angeles to pick up Joni and Sara and a Beech twin to Boston for Liz. The Dolphins were in the middle of an undefeated season, and LJ sent word that he would fly to New York after Sunday's game.

For two days Jack lay flat on his back, colorless, sedated, breathing oxygen from tubes in his nostrils. Only on Sunday did he recognize Joni and squeeze her hand.

On Monday, December 11, he was transported by ambulance to his home in Greenwich, where he would be attended by round-the-clock nurses. Except for LJ, whose undefeated season was continuing, the family came and filled the house.

The faithful Priscilla put up two Christmas trees, a cut one in the living room and a live one by the swimming pool. She saw to it that the temperature was raised in the pool, because Jack's cardiologist recommended that he float in a life jacket and do a little gentle exercise.

Jack sat in the greenhouse much of the time, happy to watch
Joni's little Michelle paddle in the water. Linda's daughter, Nelly, was fifteen, and she brought her cello out to the greenhouse and played Christmas carols for her grandfather.

Jack had lost twenty pounds and looked gaunt. His skin was pale. But Dr. Philip Hagan, his New York cardiologist, insisted he was recovering well. The week before Christmas, Dr. Hagan took him to Greenwich Hospital for a more complete examination by local cardiologists, and they concurred that he had suffered relatively little permanent damage.

Mary Carson knelt by Jack's chaise longue beside the pool and kissed the palm of his hand. “Not yet, for Christ's sake!” she whispered. “I want your job, but not fuckin'
yet!”

Jack nodded. “No. Not fuckin' yet. Bet on it!”

LJ came for three days at Christmas. He brought Gloria again. Liz sneered, but Jack shook his head and quietly told her he was glad to have Gloria in the swimming pool—the chippy in her iridescent green thong bikini. “She gives me an erection,” he whispered, “and I'm damned glad to know I
can
have one.”