Tycoon

by Harold Robbins

  “You are a persuasive man, Mr. Lear.”

  Jack smiled. “You run a successful business, Mr. Dickinson. Maybe I’m presumptuous in telling you what to do. But I do know something about broadcast advertising.”

  “I’ll review your suggestions with my people,” Dickinson said. “So . . . would you care to have lunch at the Yale Club one day soon?”

  Four

  JACK AND ANNE WERE SO PLEASED WITH THE HOUSE THEY had leased in Greenwich that, in the spring of 1949, they bought it. With a second child coming, the brownstone in New York began to seem confining. They decided to keep the brownstone and not move its elegant furnishings into the country house, where they would have looked out of place anyway. The Greenwich house, which stood on an acre and a half of land, had been built in the 1890s as a reproduction of the eighteenth-century New England Colonial style. The Lears bought it furnished and agreed they would not spend a great deal of money decorating it. The purchase itself had placed a strain on their finances, and Anne had to put the last of her Weldon inheritance into it, It was to be a comfortable retreat from Manhattan when they needed one.

  In June they sent Mrs. Gimbel and Little Jack to Greenwich. The little boy, now two, loved the beach and was encouraged to romp on it all he wanted. Priscilla went out to take care of the house and to get it ready for Jack and Anne, plus John and Joni, who would take up residence the first of July.

  In the town house, Jack and Anne reveled in their newly regained privacy, which they had cherished in the past.

  On a Friday night late in June, Jack broke away from the office early and reached the townhouse by six o’clock. Anne was waiting for him, dressed in an ivory brocade satin short teddy, which she wore with a matching G-string. Garters attached to the teddy supported sheer black stockings.

  “God!” Jack exclaimed.

  “While I can. Next month I’ll start to swell.”

  She had Johnnie Walker Black on the coffee table, with a bucket of ice. Because she was pregnant she would drink nothing more than a glass of white wine. After he poured a Scotch and soda for himself and wine for her, they stood at the window looking down on the FDR Drive and the East River.

  “It seems,” Anne said, “that I may be named one of the ten best-dressed women in the world.”

  “No doubt you’re the one who spends the least for the honor,” he said.

  “The honor should go to someone who knows how to do it without spending a fortune. I’ve got eleven pairs of shoes, including tennis and beach shoes. I counted them today after I read that one of the candidates has sixty pairs.”

  “What would anyone do with sixty pairs of shoes?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Is the honor for conspicuous consumption or for taste?” Jack asked.

  “I won’t comment.” She laughed.

  They stood close together, far enough back from the window so that someone below wouldn’t see them. His arm was around her.

  Anne put her hand in his crotch and felt for an erection. She found one. “The honor is partly for appearing at the right places at the right times,” she explained. “Which reminds me that we have two appearances to make before we retreat to Connecticut. A dinner at the English-Speaking Union and one at the Lotos Club. By the time the fall season opens, I’ll have an incontrovertible reason for failing to appear at the right places and times.”

  “And I won’t go without you,” he said simply.

  “Well, we have to think about that. There will be places you need to go, need to be seen. You are not just an ordinary businessman. You are becoming something of an institution, Jack. Some functions will not be complete if you’re not there!”

  He turned and kissed her very gently. He still acted like a new husband in awe of his wife’s pregnancy and afraid of injuring her.

  She thrust her tongue into his mouth and made the kiss erotic. “Maybe you’re right to be so cautious,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m already at the stage where I shouldn’t let you inside me. I’ve got so I enjoy the other, though. I would not have believed I ever could. But I do . . . a little anyway. And I know you enjoy it immensely, husband!”

  He nuzzled her throat. “You don’t have to, darling.”

  “I want to. I don’t want to let my pregnancy interrupt everything. Trousers off, please. Sit down.”

  Putting his pants and shorts aside as well as his jacket, but still wearing his white shirt and necktie, he sat down on a velvet-upholstered chair and spread his legs. Anne knelt before him. She had a tissue handy. She spit on it, then used it to wipe him.

  She glanced up at him, giving him a devilish, lascivious look. Then she lowered her head and took his penis into her mouth. For a minute or so she slipped it in and out, back and forth; then she withdrew it from her mouth and began to lick it. This was what she did best. She had an instinct for it, for the way to generate in him the most exquisite sensations.

  It did not take her long to bring him. She swallowed his come and licked him clean, swallowing the last drops.

  Jack dropped to his knees in front of her, to embrace and kiss her. “One of the ten best dressed or not,” he whispered hoarsely, “you are the best. For sure. I love you beyond anything I ever thought I was capable of.”

  “I love you. You know it. But I want you to understand something. The first time I did what I just did, it was a sacrifice—because I loved you so much. Now I like to do it almost as much as you like to get it.” She grinned and twisted her shoulders. “It’s great for pregnant times, isn’t it?”

  Five

  IT WAS GREAT ALSO FOR A BROTHER AND SISTER WHO WERE genuinely in love with each other but did not dare risk another pregnancy.

  Kimberly and Dodge had reestablished their attic love nest, this time securing it with a heavy cylinder lock. They didn’t think John and Joni knew what was up there; but John was seventeen years old, Joni was fifteen, and they did know. They knew that when their mother and Dodge noisily attached the chain inside the attic door and went up those stairs they would be up there for at least an hour. Also, the sound of their footsteps on the uncarpeted, creaky stairs would give plenty of warning that they were coming down again. The two young people had privacy to do anything they wanted.

  Right now they wanted to love each other, and they did. John used his tongue on her and brought her to ecstasy. Then she took his hard cock into her mouth. Joni never swallowed. She spit into a Kleenex, which she immediately flushed down the toilet.

  She returned from the bathroom, where she had also rinsed out her mouth. They began to dress.

  “What in the world are we going to do?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing we can do for a while. Then . . . who knows?”

  “You should find another girl.”

  John shook his head. “I don’t want another girl. I love you, Joni.”

  “I love you, too. But, Jesus!”

  Six

  BEFORE THE END OF JULY, JOHN RECEIVED HIS LICENSE AS A PRIvate pilot. Jack rented a high-wing two-seater Cessna and sat in the right seat while John proudly took off, flew up the Hudson River for a view of West Point, then crossed over toward Long Island Sound and flew to Greenwich. As he passed over the Lear house he wagged his wings. Anne and Joni were sitting by the pool and waved at the little airplane circling a thousand feet above. The following day John took Joni for the same flight.

  Over dinner two nights before John and Joni were scheduled to go to the Cape to join Kimberly and Dodge at their beach house, Jack asked John when he would make his application to Harvard.

  “This fall,” said John. “Grandfather Wolcott got the papers. I guess it’s all settled. I’m not at all sure I want to go there, though.”

  “What he’d really like to do is go to M.I.T. and study aeronautical engineering,” Joni added.

  John shook his head. “What I’d really like to do is get an appointment to Annapolis.”

  “And after graduation go to Pensacola and learn to fly
the navy way?” Jack asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are we to understand that you want to fly, not design or build airplanes?” Anne asked.

  “I want to fly,” John affirmed.

  “Have you spoken to your mother about Annapolis?” Jack asked.”

  “I wouldn’t dare. She doesn’t even know I can fly.”

  “I think you had better talk to your grandfather. Or would you like me to call him?”

  John’s face brightened.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d talk to him. Then I’ll try to make him understand.”

  Seven

  IN OCTOBER ANNE GAVE BIRTH TO A LITTLE GIRL THEY NAMED Anne Elizabeth.

  In November Jack flew to Houston. Cap Durenberger and Herb Morrill went with him. In a private dining room in the Petroleum Club, the three of them met with Billy Bob Cotton and Raymond I’Enfant, two of the partners in Broadcasters Alliance, and a man named Douglas Humphrey, who was president of—among other things—Humphrey Petroleum.

  Jack and his friends knew what the meeting was to be about. They were prepared.

  They met over drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and before lunch was called in, Humphrey opened the discussion.

  “You gentlemen call me Doug, please. Jack, you know that Billy Bob and Ray and I have been giving a good deal of thought to your company. Our nation—hell, our world, for that matter—stands on the threshold of a communications revolution. On the threshold of an entertainment revolution. This thing called television is coming on, and . . . well, I won’t be surprised if it closes a lot of movie theaters. I happen to own forty-two drive-in theaters. Seemed like a big thing when I decided to invest in them, and it’s been a big thing; but what do you want to bet that in a dozen years I won’t have ten of them open anymore? When people can sit home and watch shows on the little screen, they won’t be as interested in the big screen.”

  Douglas Humphrey exuded strength and self-confidence. He was perhaps sixty years old, probably a little older. His powerful face was tanned and deeply lined. His abundant hair was white. He had loose jowls, and the tight knot of his necktie pinched a wattle. His blue eyes were a bit sleepy and droopy. His wide mouth was expressive. His dark blue pinstripe suit was faultlessly tailored, probably by a Savile Row tailor, Jack guessed. His breast-pocket handkerchief was folded into two points. His white shirt was undoubtedly handmade. He wore on his lapel a red, white and blue ribbon emblematic of the Distinguished Service Cross, which he had earned in France in 1918.

  “You and your company are, in one sense, admirably situated to play a leading role and make an immense profit in this coming business,” he told Jack. “In another sense, you are not. You are not because you are inadequately capitalized.” He paused and thrust out upturned palms. “Am I right?”

  This was precisely what Jack had expected to hear, and he had decided there would be nothing to gain from denying the point. “You are right,” he said simply.

  “Okay. This is a preliminary, exploratory meeting. And here is a preliminary, exploratory proposal. Are you willing to listen to a proposal?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Humphrey’s lips curled into a faint amused smile, then quickly turned solemn. “At present you own 82 percent of the common stock of Lear Network, Incorporated. You have distributed 18 percent to certain of your associates. And that, Jack, is why you are undercapitalized. You need a broader base of stockholders. I myself don’t own anything like that percentage of any of my companies. The vast majority of the shares are owned by investors. That’s where capital comes from—investors.”

  Jack nodded. “I’m not sure I could sell off much of my stock. The balance sheet doesn’t look that good.”

  “Right. Your profit-and-loss statement looks very good. Your balance sheet—You’re carrying too much debt. You’ve got valuable assets, but you’re strapped for cash. And that’s where I may be able to interest you in a proposition.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We take your company public. Dallas Trust—in which I own a substantial interest—will buy all but 20 percent of your stock at book value. It will buy the 18 percent your friends hold, but each of them can retain 1 percent. And the bank will put the stock on the market, with the understanding that I can buy 10 percent and Billy Bob and Ray can buy 5 percent each, but no other investor can buy more than 1 percent. Then we offer a big issue of preferred stock. I’ll exchange half of my 10 percent of common for preferred. You exchange half of your 20 percent of common for preferred. Preferred stock in a widely held corporation will attract investors. I know a dozen men who will snap at it.”

  Eight

  ANNE SAT PROPPED UP AGAINST PILLOWS. JACK SAT ON THE edge of the bed, sipping on a light Scotch and soda.

  “You’re giving up control,” she said quietly.

  Jack shook his head. “Suppose he’d gone to the banks and bought my notes. Then I wouldn’t have given up control; I’d have lost control. For some reason I trust the man. Maybe I have to.”

  “But—”

  “I stay as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. I get a new executive vice president, designated by Doug. I keep control of programming. I—”

  “You’ve never shared control of your business with anybody. Your father doesn’t share control of his.”

  Jack bent over and kissed her nipple. “Something more,” he said. “When Dallas Trust buys all but 20 percent of my stock, I will be wallowing in cash. After taxes we’ll have something like twelve million dollars in the bank. In the bank, Anne! I’ve worried about . . . well, you know. That money will be ours, and not a dime of it is going to be churned back into the business. Even if Doug Humphrey takes the whole damned thing away from me, you and I are going to be comfortable for the rest of our lives.”

  Anne shook her head. “You’ll never be comfortable watching someone else running the business you built.”

  TWENTY - TWO

  One

  1950

  THE COMPANY WAS COMPLETELY REORGANIZED. JACK REmained chairman of the board and chief executive officer, as Humphrey had promised. And he got a new executive vice president, also as Humphrey had promised.

  Richard Painter was ten years older than Jack. He was bald and wore a succession of hairpieces that had been designed to make it appear as if his hair were still growing—until he supposedly had a haircut and started the sequence over again. Casual acquaintances didn’t know about the hairpieces; people who knew him well did. His facial expressions were never casual or bland; they shifted from dark scowls to exaggerated toothy grins. He was a careless dresser who favored rumpled off-the-rack suits and ugly neckties. Nevertheless, Jack had to admit that Painter was a shrewd and aggressive executive who seemed to have achieved success by expending a great deal of nervous energy and always moving at a trot.

  Although Painter was a Chicagoan by birth, Douglas Humphrey had recruited him away from a Dallas-based company that owned eleven radio stations and one television station. He bought 1 percent of the stock in Lear Network.

  He brought two assistants with him: gofers who made no particular impression on anybody. He also brought his personal secretary, the strikingly handsome Cathy McCormack. She had a flawless face, stylishly short coal-black hair, and a spectacular figure. She dressed the same way every day, probably as Painter required, in long-sleeved white silk blouses buttoned up to her throat with collars fastened by an oversized gold safety pin, tight black skirts that ended just above her knees despite the current fashion of lower hemlines, and black patent-leather shoes. The other secretaries found her formidable. Everyone called her Miss McCormack, including Painter. She did not encourage familiarity. She ate lunch alone, someone discovered—and not at the Automat or Schrafft’s but in a secluded booth in a good restaurant on Forty-third Street, where she drank two glasses of wine with her meal. People suspected after a while that she was more to Painter than his secretary.

  Jack still occupied the same office in t
he Chrysler Building and still sat behind the ornate mahogany desk Kimberly had bought for him. He still had his onyx pen-and-pencil stand and the old WCHS microphone that he had retrieved from a closet in the Boston office when he repurchased the station. But Anne had made a few changes. Dealers in Berlin remembered her and kept her appraised of choice items whenever they appeared on the market. The Matisse they offered her was almost certainly stolen from a family that would never lay claim to it, and she was able to buy it for a bargain price. The painting was of a nude woman lying on a couch, with a vase of flowers in the background. Though the nude was voluptuous, the style of painting was so linear and bold that not even the most prudish visitor could see anything erotic about it. It hung above a standup reading desk Anne had also bought. She had found the office lighting too bright and had arranged new lighting, by lamps only. Jack was proud of the office and very comfortable in it.

  He discovered to his horror that Richard Painter had nothing better in his office than a gray steel desk, behind which he sat in a vinyl-and-aluminum swivel chair. The room was lighted with glaring fluorescent tubes. His desk was cluttered with piles of paper, paper coffee cups, and doughnut wrappers.

  Jack didn’t like Painter, but he tried not to show it.

  TWO

  THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS CONSISTED OF JACK LEAR, DOUGLAS Humphrey, Richard Painter, Emil Durenberger, Raymond I’Enfant, Curtis Frederick, and Joseph Freeman. Freeman was a Chicago banker who had participated in the company’s recapitalization.