Tycoon

by Harold Robbins

  TWO

  BOB LEAR FLEW UP TO SAN FRANCISCO TO MEET DICK Painter again in a suite at the Mark Hopkins. The scene was the same as before. Two girls sat by the bar, well out of earshot of the men’s earnest conversation. One of them was the redhead who had gone with Bob into a bedroom.

  “Let me get right to the point, Bob,” Painter said. “We’ve done our homework, and we know that the book value of each of your shares of Carlton House Productions, Incorporated, is $211.75. My associates have authorized me to offer you $250. Sell to us, and you’ve got a personal fortune of $12,500,000. Free of capital gains tax because the value of your shares has declined since you inherited them. And it’s entirely possible they’re going to decline some more.”

  “Are you offering Jack the same?”

  “We’re talking to you first Jack’s a little difficult to talk to on this subject. He will be much easier to persuade if he knows you’ve sold.”

  “I’ll have to discuss it with my wife.”

  “Of course. Why don’t you call your wife and have her come up here for dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Uh . . . well.”

  Painter grinned. “Of course the girls won’t be joining us.”

  Three

  INVITED TO VISIT THE CONTROL TOWER AT PENSACOLA, JACK and Anne listened to the radio talk and watched John approach and land an advanced trainer. They knew next to nothing about aircraft, but the trainer was sleek and conspicuously powerful.

  “He’ll be leaving here shortly, you know,” said Commander Hogan, a flight instructor who was acting as the Lears’ host during their visit to the base. “Next stop, San Diego, where he’ll start flying the blowtorches. Jets.”

  “Off a carrier, I suppose,” said Jack,

  “Well, eventually—after a thousand touch-and-goes on San Diego Naval Air Station.”

  “I can’t hide the fact that I’m apprehensive,” Jack said. “When I bought him his first flying lessons, I didn’t guess he’d one day be flying jets off carriers. That’s got to be dangerous.”

  “It is dangerous, Mr. Lear. I can’t deny it. But John is good at it. Look at this landing. Look at the precision. He comes in over the threshold, and his wheels touch the pavement in the first ten yards. He’s already thinking in terms of carrier landings.”

  “It’s all he ever wanted to do,” said Jack. “From the time he was a little boy, he was fascinated by airplanes.” Jack smiled weakly. “More than by girls.”

  “He’s got one of those,” said Commander Hogan. “You know, almost all our young men here are handsome, romantic types: young officers, naval fliers. Girls have a choice. From the young men’s point of view, the competition is fierce. Well, John has impressed one girl very favorably. Very favorably.”

  “I’m surprised you know that much about the trainees’ personal lives,” said Anne.

  “In this case, I have to,” said Commander Hogan. “The girl he’s made the impression on is my daughter.”

  “He’s a gentleman, I assume,” Anne said with brittle precision in her voice.

  “Oh, absolutely. But this is why I took for myself the duty of showing you around the base. I wanted to get to know you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” said Jack. “Maybe you and your wife and daughter can join John and Anne and me for dinner.”

  “Our plan was to invite you to our house.”

  Anne and Jack met Linda Hogan on the screened-in front porch of a large white frame house. She was beautiful. She was a blond with perfect features in a perfectly shaped face. Though she was wearing a loose cotton dress, her figure was obviously perfect too. She was just twenty years old and was a student at Florida State University at Tallahassee.

  The Hogans were amiable people. They had seen much of the world. The commander had graduated from Annapolis in 1933. He had been stationed in San Diego and had married there. During the war he had flown a Wildcat off the U.S.S. Hornet.

  Though the cocktail hour and dinner were pleasant, it was apparent that the Hogans’ purpose was to study and assess the people who might become their daughter’s in-laws.

  On the way back to quarters, Jack asked John what his relationship was.

  “I wanted you to meet her before I ask her to marry me.”

  “That’s plain enough.”

  “So what do you think of her?”

  “I can find nothing to object to,” said Jack.

  “Good. I’m going to ask her.”

  “We have something else we want to talk to you about,” said Jack. “It seems that this Frank Neville you introduced to your sister has made an even greater impression on her than you’ve made on Linda. I don’t know what else they do, but they take showers together; I know that.”

  “Good,” said John. “Frank’s a first-rate fellow. Serving on an antisubmarine destroyer in the North Atlantic right now. Then he’s going on to law school. Going to stay in the navy and be a sea lawyer.”

  “So you’d say he’s the right kind of guy for her?”

  John grinned. “Even my insane mother will accept him.”

  Four

  IN 1954 PABLO PICASSO BEGAN TO SKETCH VARIATIONS ON THE famous Manet painting, Le déjeuner sur l’Herbe, Luncheon on the Grass, in which two young men and two young women are seated at what appears to be a picnic. The painting caused a scandal in the nineteenth century because one of the young women is nude. Picasso’s variations continued for years as he filled sketchbooks with pages of line drawings, some colored with crayon, some realistic, some entirely abstract.

  One of the European dealers who kept in touch with Anne wired her that a drawing from this series had somehow escaped the Picasso studio and was for sale in Paris. Would she be interested? The drawing was of an erotic nature and had been colored with crayon. Anne wired that she would be interested. A series of wires ensued until she beat out the other bidders and bought the drawing. It was so valuable that the dealer flew to New York to deliver it in person.

  Almost all the Picasso drawings based on the Manet painting were bound in spiral sketchbooks, with pages 23 by 32 centimeters in size. This one was not bound and was twice that big. It was already sealed behind glass, where nitrogen had been injected to prevent the oxidation of the paper. Anne had it framed and presented it to Jack on his birthday.

  The drawing was not something they would display in their living room. Against a yellow and green background that was the only suggestion of the inspiration from Manet, two distorted couples copulated. The men were bearded, bald, and lecherous, and their phalli were hugely exaggerated. The plump women looked frightened but offered little resistance.

  They hung the Picasso in their bedroom, beside the etchings by Tauzin. The insurance agent was totally flustered when he tried to appraise it, but his company investigated its value and ultimately agreed to insure the Picasso for $200,000.

  Anne was forty-two years old. Jack did not detect it, but she had gained a few pounds. She enrolled in a ballet class and danced strenuously three times a week. She asked Jack to build a glass enclosure over their swimming pool, so she could swim all year ‘round. He did, and she swam a mile every day.

  She began to wear knit pants with stirrup straps that emphasized her long, trim legs. She wore them with loose, casual sweaters. The style suited her well, and Jack decided she was more beautiful than ever.

  She gave a good deal of thought to what she wore in the master bedroom suite, too: diaphanous negligees, sometimes over nothing, sometimes over lingerie that was both tasteful and erotic.

  Jack loved her immoderately. He was confident she loved him, too.

  Five

  PLAYBOY BOUGHT BATCHELDER’S PICTURES, AND JONI BECAME a Playmate of the Month. The text with the photo spread identified Joni as Jack’s daughter and mentioned that she lived in a handsome Manhattan town house. The centerfold picture was one of the shots that showed her sitting nude on the soda-fountain chair. Several black-and-white photos—the ones Batchelder’s assistant had made with the Rolleifl
ex—were printed on preceding pages. Also, the magazine ran two pictures of Joni modeling bras.

  When New York model Joni Lear agreed to pose for us, we were elated. Whether modeling the latest Paris fashion or just bras, as seen here, 21-year-old Joni is a very welcome departure from the spare, boyish models typically seen in fashion ads. With her 36-24-36 figure and her smiling young face, she is an ideal Playmate.

  The picture chosen for the centerfold suggested precisely what Clint Batchelder had hoped it would suggest—that Joni was comfortable with being seen nude but still, as betrayed by a subtle hint in her expression, a little embarrassed, too.

  A segment of the centerfold photo—her face and shoulders—appeared in a montage on the cover, with a blurb:

  SUPERMODEL JONI LEAR NUDE!

  Six

  JACK STOPPED BY THE TOWN HOUSE.

  “My only negative comment,” he said once he was seated and she had poured him a Scotch, “is that I wish you had told me about it. I mean, there I am, sitting at lunch in the men’s bar in the Waldorf, and in comes Greg Hamilton with a copy of the magazine and asks me if I’ve seen it. I may have been the only man in the bar who hadn’t yet seen it. That was a little embarrassing. Someone asked me if you really have staples in your navel. Well, you do look very nice.”

  “Thank you, Daddy. And I agree, I should have told you.”

  “I bought five copies. They’re in my briefcase. Do people ask you to autograph your picture?”

  She grinned and nodded. “I’m afraid they do.”

  He reached for the briefcase.

  “Oh, don’t take them out! I don’t want you looking . . . when we’re together.”

  “Okay. Well, you’re the most famous member of the family now.” He paused and frowned. “I’m not sure it was a good career move, though.”

  Joni went to her bar and poured herself a little Scotch. “Let me tell you how good it was,” she said quietly. “My per-hour fee tripled when the magazine appeared. The agency began to ask three times what I was being paid before, and advertisers are paying it. I’m getting different kinds of jobs now, not so much fashion layouts as ads for cigarettes, liquor, an automobile . . . And I’ve been invited to Hollywood for a screen test.”

  “By which studio?” he asked grimly.

  “MGM.”

  “Well, okay, but don’t test for anybody else before you check with me. There’s still a lot of hanky-panky in film casting.

  “Uncle Bob called and asked me to test for Carlton House.”

  Jack shook his head. “The word would go around that you got something only because you’re my daughter. I’ll talk to Bob.”

  Joni smiled warmly. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  Jack stared at her thoughtfully. Twenty-one years old. Drinking Scotch. A nude centerfold. Little Joni. Her mother would go into hysterics.

  Seven

  KIMBERLY DID GO INTO HYSTERICS, BUT THAT WAS NOT THE worst reaction Joni got. Frank Neville called from Boston. His ship was in.

  “Oh, Joni! How could you? What in the world ever possessed you to show yourself off naked to half the men in the United States? Do you have any idea how embarrassed I am? That magazine was brought aboard the ship at Reykjavik by a seaman who’d carried several issues of it from the States in his duffel bag. One of the officers saw it and recognized the name and face as my girl, whose picture was on my desk. The whole damned crew, officers and men, including the skipper, saw that god-awful spread of pictures. I don’t understand you.”

  “You know I am a model, Frank. Whether you understand it or not, doing that centerfold was an opportunity. I’m more in demand than before, and—guess what?—I’ve been asked to Hollywood for a screen test!”

  “For what, a nudie flick?”

  “Nothing of the kind! For MGM. What’s the matter with you? Have you been drinking?”

  “Yes, I have. Everywhere I go, guys shove that thing in my face. I’ve actually been asked to autograph it—’Ensign Frank Neville, boyfriend of Joni Lear.’”

  “All right, all right. When does your train leave? When will you be here?”

  “I don’t really think I should come, Joni. I can’t afford to be associated with a . . . Playmate of the Month.”

  “Oh, really? Okay. Then, fuck off, you cheap little prig!”

  TWENTY - EIGHT

  One

  1956

  BOB LEAR RARELY CAME EAST. HE THOUGHT OF HIMSELF AS A man with a West Coast style who was in some way out of place east of the Mississippi. He was uncomfortable in Jack’s house. He was uncomfortable in the presence of Jack’s wife, constantly fearful that he would make a grammatical error in conversation with her or would pick up the wrong fork at the table.

  Jack understood that if Bob came here he had something significant on his mind. When the two brothers sat down in the library after dinner, Jack learned what it was. At first he was not surprised.

  “They’ve increased their bid to $275,” said Bob.

  “I don’t give a damn if they raise it to $375.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You cashed out of Lear Communications and are a millionaire many times over. I’m not.”

  “Why aren’t you?” Jack asked. “You own half of a company they’re offering $27.50 a share for.”

  “But it’s all in stock! If something went wrong—I mean, if something went badly wrong—I’d be . . . broke. Look. Carlton House is my bread and butter now. The salvage business is in decline. It was for a long time before the old man died. The truth is, he didn’t pay much attention to it the last ten years of his life.”

  “You want cash? Are you going to invest in something else?”

  “Diversify. I need to diversify.”

  “Okay. I’ll buy ten percent or twenty percent of your stock. Then you’ll be a millionaire and can diversify. Buy an assortment of blue chips. Treasury bonds. Municipals. You want security—”

  “Jack . . . I can’t.” Bob’s lips trembled, and tears came to his eyes. “I have to sell to them. I’ve agreed to sell to them.”

  “Why? Why do you have to sell to them? God, man, there are all kinds of alternatives if you want to cash out.”

  “They’ve got me by the short hairs!” Bob wept.

  “What short hairs? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Bob reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “Look . . . Those are frames from a movie film!”

  The black-and-white prints showed Bob in bed with an attractive young woman. They were fuzzy, but they were good enough for Jack to recognize him. He knew the projected film would be a lot clearer. The pictures were like outtakes from the cheapest 1940s stag films. Bob was naked except for a vest undershirt and ankle-length black socks. In three pictures he was taking head from the girl. In four others he was astride her.

  “Who took these?” Jack demanded.

  “Painter.”

  “What are you saying? Is that bastard blackmailing you?”

  “Jack, it’s a movie. I’ve got the whole reel . . . a copy.”

  Jack reached for the telephone with one hand and for a pocket notebook with the other. He dialed a number.

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Humphrey, please. This is Jack Lear in Connecticut. The matter is urgent.”

  TWO

  A STATION WAGON MARKED HP, MEANING HUMPHREY PETROleum, was waiting for Jack and Bob at the Houston airport. The driver, who said he was a geologist, stowed their luggage in the rear and held the doors open for them. He drove them to a Houston suburb west of the center of the city, where he said Mr. Humphrey was expecting them. They were to be guests in his house for the night.

  The one-story beige stucco house sat in the middle of a grove of great old trees. From the road it did not look prepossessing; but as the car approached, the dimensions of the house became more impressive. It was in fact a mansion.

  Douglas Humphrey was waiting for them at an umbrella table beside the kidney-shaped swimming pool. He had
been swimming and wore a white terry-cloth robe.

  “Jack! And you must be Bob. Good to see you. Sit down. Mary! Emily! Come out and meet the Lear brothers.”

  A woman in a yellow bikini came out of the pool. She looked about thirty years old, and was blond, tanned, and handsome. The girl, who was eight or nine years old, was nude. Though she showed no sign of being particularly embarrassed, she did not come out of the water.

  “This is my daughter, Mary Carson, and that’s my granddaughter, Emily. Mr. Jack Lear and Mr. Bob Lear.”

  “We’ve heard your names often,” Mary Carson said smoothly.

  Jack had remained standing. “I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Carson, Miss Carson. Don’t let us interrupt your swimming.”

  “We’ve got lots of spare trunks, if you’d like to come in,” said Mary Carson.

  “Maybe we’ll do that a little later.”

  The mother returned to the pool by diving gracefully from a low board. Jack sat down. A houseboy in white coat and black pants approached. The three men ordered a round of drinks.

  “Let’s deal with this thing,” said Humphrey. “I want you to understand that Dick Painter acted totally without authority from me or Ray or Billy Bob. I talked to him today while you were flying down. I told him I want that reel of film burned, along with any copies or prints taken from it.”