Tycoon (55 page)

“A company cannot be run by someone who has less than complete devotion to it. A chief executive officer works fourteen hours a day. Jack Lear never has—not since I've known anything about LCI.”

“Well, you'd have to outvote him in a stockholders' meeting.”

“Each of you gentlemen owns 5 percent of the stock,” she said. “My father left me 5 percent, and I've bought another 13 percent on the q.t. Those shares are not in my name, but I control them. I can vote 18 percent. You can vote 10 percent. Dick Painter still has the 1 percent he was given when he came to the company, and he'll be with us. That makes 29 percent, enough to control most companies—except a closely held one, which LCI is not.”

“Don't forget that Jack has his own allies. Harrison Wolcott had 6 percent, which he left to Joni and Linda. Joni has bought 2 percent more. Frederick, Durenberger, Morrill, and Sullivan got stock bonuses way back when and still hold their shares—1 percent apiece, making another 4 percent likely to vote with Jack. Sally Allen owns 2 percent, and she probably figures she owes Jack something. Of course, he has 10 percent of his own. Have you added all that up?”

“Okay, 24 percent—which ain't as good as 29 percent. Besides which, we can pick up some proxies.”

“So can he, and he's got a hell of a big name,” Ray reminded her.

“Let me throw something else into the equation,” said Mary. “I don't think Jack gives a damn, and I don't think he'll fight. All we have to do is toss him a bone so he'll save face, and he'll shrug and walk away. You can count on it.”

Billy Bob shook his head. “I
wouldn't
count on it, Mary,” he said. “Jack Lear's not the kind of man you can toss a bone to. He
built
the company. He built it from nothin'. He's not going to give it up.”

Ray l'Enfant sighed audibly. “It'd be the end of an era,” he said sadly.

“Everything comes to an end,” said Mary. “Good things. Bad things.”

1973

J
ONI HELD
D
AVID'S PENIS IN HER HAND.
“Y
OU KNOW WHAT
I like about your cock?” she asked him.

“Not its size, I should imagine,” he said. “It's nothing extraordinary.”

She sucked his foreskin between her lips and ran her tongue over it. His shoulders stiffened, and he drew a loud, deep breath.

“I'm going to make a confession to you,” she said. “Only two living people know this. This is how much I trust you. I like this cock because it's so much like the first one I ever saw, ever touched. You want to know whose that was?”

David raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Do I want to know?”

She lowered her head and ran her tongue over his scrotum.

“I'm going to tell you. It was my brother's. He was like you. I like cocks that haven't been surgically mutilated—circumcised.”

“Your brother?”

“My brother who was killed. I used to suck his cock all the time. You want to know why I sucked it? Because he got me pregnant doing it the other way. I had to have an abortion when I was fourteen years old.”

“My God!”

“I loved him. He loved me. I mean, we loved each other
that
way, besides loving each other as brother and sister. But I learned to suck cock at a very early age.” Joni smiled. “Not a bad thing to learn. I may be the last big star who—”

“Don't kid yourself. I know it's not supposed to happen anymore. But the money and fame and glamour involved—”

“It's a matter of
power,
isn't it?” Joni suggested. “It happens everywhere, anywhere and everywhere.” She shrugged. “I can't get hysterical about it. I wasn't
forced
. I was never forced or raped. It wasn't an ordeal for me.”

“Humiliating,” he suggested. “Debasing.”

“The first time, yes.”

“You've done it more than once?”

“Be realistic, David.”

“Recently?”

“Not recently. Uh, change the subject. I'm going east for a few days. I hope you can come with me.”

“Going anywhere with you is like going to heaven.”

“We're going to a wedding. My father is getting married again.”

“That's rather sudden, isn't it?”

“He says at his age you don't have time to diddle around.”

D
IANE
H
ECHLER WAS A SURPRISE TO EVERYONE.

Kimberly and Anne had been exquisite beauties. Diane was an attractive woman but not one who would turn heads on the street. Her face was long and thin. Her eyes, under sleepy lids, were gray. Her mouth was wide, her lips narrow.

She was tall and tended to hold her chin so high that many people, on first meeting her, judged her haughty and formidable. A few minutes with her was enough to dispel that impression. She never lost an iota of her dignity, but she tempered it with a quick and earthy sense of humor.

The weekend before the wedding, most of the Lear family trekked to a New Jersey country club, where a hundred politicians and lawyers gathered at the cocktail hour to gape at the broadcasting tycoon who was marrying their representative to Congress.

“A hundred of us would have liked to do what you're doing,” one politician told Jack. “She's jus' the greatest ol' gal in the world!”

Diane's parents greeted Jack with enthusiasm. William Hechler was an active trial lawyer, with the characteristic flamboyance of a successful trial lawyer. Diane had practiced in his firm until she went to Congress. Diane resembled her mother, a tall slender woman.

Diane's sister, Nelle Davidson, looked nothing like her mother. She was three years older than Diane, and now that her children were grown, she was chiefly a country-club drinker.

“Should have been here twenty years ago,” the same politician said to Jack with a big grin. “Nelle was on the fourteenth tee. She had on these skimpy shorts and a halter. She took one hell of a swing, and her tits popped out! She didn't know it She just watched her ball and watched her ball. Not one of the guys around the fourteenth tee had any idea where her ball went, I can promise you!”

Nelle's son, George, it turned out, was casually acquainted with Liz Lear. They had seen each other in the library at Harvard Law. He was a year ahead of her. He attached himself to her as though it had been arranged in advance that he would be her date for the evening.

The wedding presents from New Jersey were on display in a room adjacent to the dining room. Diane's parents' gift was a silver-gray Mercedes-Benz sedan that was parked outside. The Republican Party of her district gave a set of sterling silver. President and Mrs. Nixon sent a sterling creamer and sugar engraved with the Great Seal of the United States.

The Lear family attracted reporters and cameramen to the country club. Reporters read the cards and made notes.

Joni was swarmed by reporters, one of whom had the temerity to ask who pretty, seven-year-old Michelle was. She answered, “None of your fuckin' business.”

Joni and even her father were eclipsed by the big football
star, LJ Lear, who still toted around the cheerleader named Gloria. LJ had a keen instinct for public relations, and Gloria carried a portfolio of glossy photographs that LJ would sign at the least suggestion.

Liz still despised him. She was pleased to see that George made no effort to meet him.

After the cocktail reception the families gathered in a private dining room. Diane had forbidden speeches, even toasts, and had put place cards on the table in order to mix the two groups. Observant, she had slipped into the dining room just before dinner and moved George's card to a place beside Liz.

Just before midnight George knocked discreetly on Liz's door at the motel where the Lears were staying. She let him in. He left at six the next morning.

T
HE WEDDING WAS AT ELEVEN-THIRTY ON
T
HURSDAY MORN
ing, April 12, in the living room of the house in Greenwich. The minister of the Diamond Hill Methodist Church conducted the ceremony. Diane wore a knee-length white silk brocade dress and carried a tiny bouquet of white flowers. After the brief ceremony, the families and a few friends and neighbors shared a champagne brunch. Not long after one that afternoon Jack and Diane were driven to Westchester Airport where a company jet took off for San Francisco. They would spend their wedding night at the Fairmont Hotel and in the morning catch their flight to Tokyo. Their wedding trip would include Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Tahiti, Hawaii, and a return visit to San Francisco.

They had a light dinner delivered to their suite. As they ate and drank a little wine, they exchanged caresses and knowing smiles—thinking of the bed that awaited them.

Diane had told him she was a virgin. At forty-seven, she had never been to bed with a man. They had talked about it over
dinners and while traveling. She had been unwilling, she'd explained, to do it casually and had never met an unattached man she wanted to commit herself to. She had never made any determination not to have sex, but occasions for it had slipped by year after year.

Jack had never done more than hold her and kiss her. He had never undressed her. He had never touched her breasts or her legs. He wondered how she would react when he did.

When they had finished their dinner she asked him to stay in the living room while she went to the bedroom to change. “My sister helped me pick out a nightgown. I hope it's—”

While she was in the bedroom, Jack wheeled the dinner cart out into the hall, keeping only the ice bucket and some champagne.

Diane opened the bedroom door. A white silk lace-trimmed bra lifted her breasts. A lustrous white silk gown attached to the bra fell smoothly to her ankles—but only to either side, because a long wedge of sheer material, beginning at the center of the bra and widening below, displayed all of her from her breasts to her ankles.

She paused in the doorway and smiled at him. It was the first time he had ever seen Diane short on confidence. He realized that in a sense he had married the equivalent of a teenage girl. She had never shown herself to a man before and was not sure how he would like her. What was more, she was apprehensive about what was going to happen next.

“You are gorgeous,” he said quietly. “The nightgown is beautiful. Perfect.” He stood and stepped toward her. “I'm the most fortunate man in the world, and I hope you have some idea of how much I love you.”

When she saw his penis she said it was the first one she had ever seen. She'd looked at pictures, of course, but had been unable to gain a sense of how big her husband's organ would be.

“Oooh!” she whispered. “That goes inside me? All of it?”

Jack grinned. “When it's all in, you'll frown and say, ‘Is that all there is?'”

She managed a nervous little laugh.

After they had hugged and kissed a few minutes more, he helped her out of her nightgown. As he stared at her naked body, Diane actually blushed.

She was painfully self-conscious about her breasts, which were big and soft. Freed from the confines of a brassiere, they hung like two soft grapefruits almost to her lowest ribs. Jack bent forward and kissed each nipple, then lifted and squeezed each breast. He murmured appreciatively.

He put a hand between her legs and rubbed her pubes. She grunted and closed her eyes. She was quite dry, and when they lay down together on the bed he continued to stroke her gently there, inserting a finger just a little, until her fluids came and made her slippery.

He encouraged her to lie on her back and spread her legs. He used his penis as he had used his finger, to stroke and stimulate her. When he judged she was ready he paused and smiled at her, as if to let her say no if she was not ready. She didn't, and he pressed himself into her. She stiffened. She sighed then and relaxed, and he gently pushed in until their bellies touched.

At first she lay passive with her eyes closed, accepting him, learning; but a little later she began to squirm and to spread her legs wider and welcome him in deeper. He had not been certain this woman would enjoy the carnal pleasures, but plainly she did, which gladdened him immensely.

“Am I a good woman, husband?” she whispered when they lay side by side.

“You are a delight.”

D
IANE WAS AWARE THAT
J
ACK'S FIRST TWO WIVES HAD BEEN
rare beauties and that Anne had been repeatedly named one of America's ten best-dressed women. He told her again and again that she was not competing with anyone, or with anyone's memory, but she was determined to make herself as cherished as any woman in his life had ever been. One way to do it, she seemed to imagine, was to be more adventuresome in their intimate life than any other woman had ever been.