He could not buy the station because his brother, who had never before expressed any interest in radio, had bought it while Jack was en route. Robert’s motive was all too obvious: over lunch with Jack and their father, Bob offered to sell him the station. Jack told him he’d paid far too much for it. For that reason as well as because he knew nothing about running a radio station, he would lose a lot of money on it.
Erich just shook his head as he watched Jack eat a shrimp cocktail and said he obviously didn’t care what he ate.
Dinner that evening was far more pleasant. Jack had arranged a room-service dinner in his suite and had invited Mo Morris and his client Connie Lane—the Consetta Lazzara who had danced nude for him four years before. She was twenty now and was modestly successful in pictures. After dinner she told Jack she’d stay if he wanted her. He did.
On the return flight the airliner made an unscheduled landing at Omaha. The pilot explained that just to the east a line of thunderstorms extending hundreds of miles north and south had stalled instead of continuing to move east as expected. As the passengers waited uncomfortably in the airport terminal building, from time to time the pilot visited them and explained what the storms were doing.
Jack was fascinated. He caught up with the pilot before he left the room and asked if he could talk to him.
“About what, sir?”
“About the weather. About how you know so much about the weather.”
“Well, sir, we have to know. We don’t want to fly into dangerous conditions.”
“But how do you get the information? You seem to know exactly where the storms are and what they are doing. I own a string of radio stations, and I’d like to be able to give my listeners that kind of detailed weather information. All we get from the Weather Bureau is that it’s going to be warmer or cooler and that it might rain or snow.”
“We couldn’t fly with information no better than that,” the pilot replied. “Come with me, and I’ll show you the operations room where we get our weather briefings.”
For the first time in his life, Jack saw a weather map. The young pilot explained to him the nature and significance of highs and lows, cold fronts and warm fronts. He pointed out isobars and isotherms and explained the other symbols on the map. A Teletype chattered, bringing in detailed weather reports from all over the nation.
“What’s the source of all this information?”
“We do use the Weather Bureau reports. That’s what’s coming in on the Teletype. But the Bureau does not make complete forecasts, and a lot of their information is not current. There are weather instruments on every airport—barometers, thermometers, wind gauges—so we know what conditions are on every airport. Pilots and airlines share the information. If I hit turbulence I didn’t expect or see a thunderstorm building where none was reported, I radio that information. Other pilots hear it. Of course, the boys here assemble as much information as they can get and draw these weather maps. If you know how to read them, you can pretty much figure out what the weather is going to do.”
Back in Boston, Jack checked with the newspapers. Not all of them bothered to publish weather information. Those that did ran only the general information that the Weather Bureau provided. He went to the airport. There he found a weather station with even more detailed information than they’d had in Omaha.
He sent a memo ordering each of his station directors to visit his local airport, make a deal to get detailed weather information regularly, and broadcast the forecasts several times a day—in fact, every hour.
On September 20, the day before the century’s most destructive hurricane struck New England and killed seven hundred people, the newspaper weather forecasts read, “Cooler, rainy tomorrow.” Only the Lear stations broadcast a warning of the powerful storm racing toward Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The Lear stations were the first to broadcast weather forecasts that predicted the temperature, the amount of rain that would fall, and the time of day it was most likely to occur. The forecasts often proved wrong and became the butt of jokes. Even so, other stations followed suit, and shortly the newspapers began to publish the same kind of forecasts.
Three
JACK MET WITH SOLOMON WEISMAN IN A SMALL RESTAURANT in Cambridge, a place frequented by members of the Harvard faculty. They sat in a booth of heavy dark wood with seats upholstered in red leather.
The owner of six shoe stores in the Boston area, Weisman was an active member of B’nai B’rith and was often its spokesman, He was a big, solidly built man, perhaps ten years older than Jack, whose black curly hair was beginning to thin out.
After they had saluted each other with their glasses and taken their first swallows of Scotch, Weisman spoke gravely to Jack. “Your grandfather Johann Lehrer was a professor of rational and revealed religion at the University of Berlin. He left Germany in 1888 because he didn’t want to serve in the German army.”
“I know all that,” said Jack.
“Something you did not know, maybe, is that he had three brothers and a sister. None of them left Germany. You have an extended family of great-uncles, second cousins, and so on.”
“I do know, in part. My grandfather exchanged letters with some of them. I recall his saying he urged them to leave Germany. But they wouldn’t. It was where they had their homes and businesses. Anyway, what are you driving at?”
Solomon Weisman smiled and nodded. “Let me come to that point by point,” he said. “Did you know that a second-cousin of yours was murdered on Kristallnacht?”
“The Night of the Broken Glass. No—”
“Three other second cousins were arrested. We talk about people ‘disappearing.’ Your three cousins have disappeared.”
“My God! I don’t know these people. Except that they exist, I know nothing about them. But . . . of course there was nothing I could have done about it, even if I had known. There’s nothing I can do now, about the ones who were arrested. Is there?”
Solomon Weisman shook his head. “There is nothing you can do about it. Except . . . except this, which is why I asked to meet with you. The more prominent Jewish businessmen affiliate with B’nai B’rith, the more effective we can be. All we can do now is try to make the world know what is going on in Germany, and seek help. You and your radio stations could do a lot. You’ve already done something by broadcasting the Hitler speech. You can do more.”
Jack wrapped his hands around his glass of Scotch and stared into it for a long moment. “Mr. Weisman,” he said quietly, “I have never denied I am a Jew. I am sympathetic with your cause—”
“Our cause.”
Jack hesitated briefly, then nodded. “All right, our cause. I think I can do more to help it if I am not publicly identified with it.”
“You don’t want to be known as a Jew.”
“I don’t want to advertise that I am a Jew.”
Weisman nodded. “I understand. Many feel that way. It has always been so.”
Jack stared into Weisman’s eyes. “If the Nazis had understood that Lear Broadcasting is Jewish-owned, they would never have consented to our broadcasting one of Hitler’s harangues.”
“I suppose you have a point.”
“I may find other opportunities to inform the American public of what is going on in Germany. In fact, you can bring information to my attention. But even in this country, if my company is identified as a Jewish broadcasting company, what we put on the air will be less effective.”
“The New York Times is known as a Jewish newspaper but nonetheless is quite effective.”
“Not everywhere,” said Jack. “In some parts of the country it is suspect.”
“Well . . . I believe my effort to recruit a member has been rejected.”
“Let’s not put it so harshly. You put me on a hell of a spot. I’m serious when I tell you I’ll broadcast information about Nazi persecutions. You hand me facts, and I’ll broadcast those facts. Hand them to the other stations, too, and we’ll see who uses more of them
. Also, when I go back to my office I’ll send you a check for a thousand dollars. I’ll give B’nai B’rith at least a thousand a year from now on.”
“That’s generous,” Weisman conceded. “I think we understand each other. You even arranged to meet me where none of your friends or associates would see us together. Didn’t you?”
Jack flushed. “I . . . I wish I could deny it,” he said. “I’m deeply embarrassed. No. Make that ‘ashamed.’ That’s what I am: ashamed.”
“So,” said Solomon Weisman. “We really don’t have to have lunch. If you can do more for us by not being identified with us, so be it.”
“Identification would be counterproductive,” Jack said quietly.
Four
JACK FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO CARRY ON HIS LOVE AFFAIR WITH Connie Horan. She could not—or would not—arrange to see him more than once a month or so. Because she was practicing the rhythm method in hope of avoiding conception, she could see him only on those days when she was infertile—or so she hoped. She knew for a certainty that rubbers were sinful. When he offered to slip one on to be sure she would not conceive, she recoiled in horror.
“I’ve really fought with myself over this one,” she told him one afternoon as she ran her tongue from the back of his scrotum to the tip of his cock. “I can’t—I can’t ask anyone for advice. Do you know what sophistry is? I’ve reached a conclusion that it’s not a sin for me to lick you, so long as I don’t take you inside my mouth. I mean, licking is affection, but—”
“Okay, baby. Okay.”
He understood by now that she was willing to lick him for up to an hour at a time, running her tongue also over his belly and hips and even his backside. Unless he misunderstood her sighs and murmuring, she had developed a fondness for it. She would lick until her mouth became dry, when she would moisten it by sipping tomato juice laced with gin. This she could do at any time of month, and after a while she came to prefer it over letting him enter her and risking pregnancy.
“We’re not risking pregnancy, and we’re not doing anything to prevent it, either,” she explained.
He decided to let her lick and not to point out the weaknesses in her rationalization. He was afraid that if she thought any more carefully about what they were doing, she might reach conclusions he would deplore.
“Connie honey, if I washed the old backside thoroughly with soap and water, would you run your tongue in there?”
“Well, I suppose I could try it. If it doesn’t gag me. I do want to show you how much I care for you.”
When he returned from the bathroom, she took a big sip of tomato juice and gin. Tentatively at first, she experimented with running her tongue into the crack of his anus. He grunted. The sensations were exquisite but short of orgasmic.
“So . . .” she muttered. “Well—”
She pressed her face hard against his backside and ran her tongue as far as she could make it reach.
“Ohh . . . baby!”
Connie pulled back and laughed. “You like, hmm. Okay. We can do this anytime you want.”
Jack realized he had a serious problem on his hands. He had begun to care for Connie Horan.
Five
KIMBERLY, AT THIRTY-ONE, WAS IF ANYTHING MORE ARDENT than ever. Having decided, though, that two children were enough, she announced her intention to undergo a tubal ligation. Jack expressed his unhappiness with the plan, but she said it was her choice to make. She made it, and the surgery was performed in the autumn.
Maybe relief from her anxiety about getting pregnant released new energy and imagination in Kimberly. She began to suggest to Jack that they become more adventuresome and conduct experiments in eroticism.
She kept a small library in the sitting room off their bedroom, where her books would not be seen by guests. For the first six years of their marriage Jack had paid little attention to the books she kept there. But, after her operation, when Kimberly told him that these books had whetted her appetite for sexual experimentation, Jack took a look at them. Somehow she had managed to import from France the forbidden Henry Miller novel, Tropic of Cancer. It had to have arrived hidden in someone’s luggage; otherwise it would have been seized by Customs. Next there appeared on her shelves a scandalous eighteenth-century novel called Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure—the notorious Fanny Hill—by John Cleland, first published in 1749. Then appeared a multivolume erotic autobiography, published in the nineteenth century, called My Secret Life. Jack was astonished to learn that his wife was reading these books; and of course he read them himself, to find out what was in them.
Then came something more interesting and influential—the Kama Sutra, a Hindu sex manual that described the pleasures of activities Jack would never have imagined could be pleasurable, such as biting and scratching.
One evening early in December Kimberly invited him to go to bed early. She switched on the bedside lamps and sprinkled cologne on the sheets. It was apparent that she had no intention of going to sleep. Their lovemaking was nothing unusual at first; then suddenly it turned extremely unusual. He was straddling her, and she had wrapped her legs around his back—one of her favorite positions. With her eyes wide open, she stared at his face. He reached his orgasm. As the first violent paroxysm shot his fluid into her, she ran her fingernails down his back, scratching him painfully. As long as his spasms continued, she scratched him. He knew she was drawing blood. He might have protested. But he couldn’t. The pain on his back intensified the rapture in his loins. He experienced more spasms than he had ever experienced before. They exhausted him.
“Hmm, lover?” she whispered when he lay flat on top of her.
“God, Kimberly!” he exclaimed as he rolled off.
“The greatest you ever had, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“I know. We can’t do it again. If you’d known what was going to happen, you couldn’t have come. But aren’t you glad you had it that way once?”
He lifted himself to kiss her breast. He sat up and looked at the sheet under him. It was stained with his blood. She rubbed his back with alcohol. It stung terribly, but somehow even that was vaguely stimulating and caused him to regain his erection.
Three nights later when he was on top of her and thrusting, she opened her mouth wide and whispered, “Slap me!”
Before, he would not have done it, but now he knew she meant it, and he slapped her cheek.
“Harder, for Christ’s sake!”
He slapped hard. Her head jerked under the impact.
“Again! And keep it up till I tell you to stop.”
Her head snapped from side to side as he hit her with the palm of his hand, first on one cheek and then on the other. She began to writhe and squirm and moan. Then suddenly she reached up and drew him down on herself, pinning his arms so he could not slap anymore. Her eyes were brittle with elation.
In the bathroom a little later she spit blood. Her teeth had cut the insides of her cheeks. Outside they glowed pink.
When he woke in the morning she was already out of bed. He found her in the bathroom, carefully applying makeup to cover the red marks on her cheeks. Her lips were a little swollen, but like an artist, she used lipstick to disguise the gleaming swelling.
He drew a deep breath. “Well, don’t expect me to say I’m sorry. You wanted it. Harder and more.”
Her words were a little slurred by her swollen lips. “I can take more than this. And you better be able to give it!”
NINE
One
1939
IN 1939, WHEN JACK WAS THIRTY-THREE YEARS OLD, KIMberly arranged for him to be photographed in his office. She attended the photography session to make certain Jack Lear appeared as she wanted him to appear: as a distinguished young businessman on the rise, self-confident and handsomely dressed in a handsome office.
She chose the suit he would wear, a dark gray with a faint white pinstripe, double-breasted but tailored with narrower lapels and softer shoulders than the typical double-breasted suit o
f 1939. In some of the shots he held a cigarette between two fingers, not in a holder, which he insisted was an affectation.
She had refurnished his office not long before, in anticipation of these photographs. The yellow-oak desk that had suited him for years was gone, replaced by an ornately carved mahogany desk. All of the usual clutter had been removed. Sitting on the gleaming mahogany desktop were an onyx pen-and-pencil stand, a deep marble ashtray, and a microphone bearing the letters WCHS. On a credenza behind his desk stood three gleaming trophies he had won at bridge. For some of the photographs he did not sit at his desk but stood in front of green velvet drapes. In a few of those shots he was holding an Old-Fashioned glass filled with ice and what looked like whiskey but was actually tea.
Kimberly chose one of the color prints submitted by the photographer and turned it over to a painter from Maine, who produced a portrait that she hung in the library of the house on Louisburg Square.
The painting did not flatter Jack. It looked exactly like him. He had given up on trying to comb his thinning hair to cover his widow’s peaks; they were there, and he could only hope his hair would recede no further. His eyelids had developed a tendency to droop, giving him a sleepy-eyed look. His mouth in repose still settled into a natural smile, but he had developed a small second chin.
A caricature of him in Fortune magazine provided a more insightful likeness. It portrayed him smiling as if at some private joke, with sly, shrewdly appraising eyes.
The caption identified him as “Radio mini-tycoon, Bostonbased owner of seven radio stations.” The brief profile identified him as “the elder son of Erich Lear, a man who has hugely augmented the family fortune by buying and breaking up for scrap some of the world’s finest old liners. Jack is apparently something of a chip off the old block. Owners of small East Coast radio stations hope he will not take notice of them, for what he covets he seems invariably to get.”
When Jack decided he wanted an outlet in Washington, he sent Mickey Sullivan to scout the ground. Sullivan reported that WDIS, a Negro-owned station that broadcast chiefly to the Negro population of the city, had borrowed heavily to upgrade its power and studio facilities and was having difficulty making payments on its notes. The owners took great pride in the station, and it was not for sale. But its notes were. Jack bought them for eighty cents on the dollar from the D.C. bank that had made the loans. Then he sued the station to collect. Within five months after he’d identified the station, it was his. He kept its management, for the most part, but drastically changed its programming.
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