“But she knew what she’d be asked?”
“Cathy! Don’t be naive. Of course she knew what she’d be asked. If you believe in an unrigged quiz show you believe in the tooth fairy!”
Five
TWO WEEKS AFTER JACK RETURNED TO NEW YORK FROM ST. Croix, a messenger delivered a package to his office. He opened it to find a netsuke, a tiny Japanese ivory carving, maybe an inch and a half tall. It was valuable, a collectible. Like many of the genre, it was erotic and depicted two Japanese men fellating. It was a gift from Jason.
He could think of no way to explain to anyone why Jason Maxwell had sent him such a gift. He returned it to its velvet bag and little wooden box and put it in a desk drawer.
His telephone buzzed. “Mr. Lear, there is a Mrs. Horan on the line, calling from Boston.”
He took the call.
“Jack, I’ve got to tell you something. Kathleen has disappeared! She ran away from her college, and we don’t know where she’s gone. I’ve never told you anything about her and never looked to you for any help with her. You’ve been very good about her. You’ve never interfered, as you promised not to do. But I—” Connie wept and couldn’t go on.
“Did you ever tell her about me?”
“No. I brought her to Mrs. Wolcott’s funeral so you could see her. But we didn’t tell her who you were.”
“Don’t you have any idea where she’s gone? A girl nineteen years old can’t just disappear. Does she have a boyfriend?”
“No! She was in a convent school. She met boys, but she didn’t date.”
“Other friends, then.”
“We’ve called everybody.”
He was silent for a moment, then asked, “What can I do for you, Connie?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing. But I thought you should know. Maybe she’s come down to New York.”
“Connie, do you have anything with a set of Kathleen’s fingerprints on it?”
“Fingerprints?”
“Yes. If anything horrible has happened, somebody will take fingerprints. Do you have—”
“Of course I have!” Connie wept.
“All right. A woman named Rebecca Murphy will be calling you. You give her whatever you have that has Kathleen’s fingerprints on it. Also photographs.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s a private investigator who’s done good work for me in the past. Missing-persons bureaus can’t do much. They don’t have the resources. But Miss Murphy will have, because I’ll pay her. I’ll call her as soon as I get off the phone.”
Six
“IF YOU WERE A NAIVE NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD RUNNING AWAY from home, where would you go?” asked Anne.
“New York?” Jack suggested.
“Maybe. But I’d rather think California. Los Angeles. Lotus Land.”
Jack slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. “The girl has no goddamned education! She’s been made to live in a never-never land! The first man who figures her out will take advantage of her.”
An hour later, when they were at the dinner table, the telephone rang. Because it was Rebecca Murphy calling, Jack went in the study and picked up the telephone.
“News,” said Rebecca. “She boarded a bus in Concord.”
“Going where?”
“Hard to say. She bought a ticket for Hartford. I’ll drive over there and see what I can find out.”
Back at the table, Jack shook his head and muttered, “Hartford.”
Little Jack, who was now seventeen and no longer little, frowned and said, “May I know what’s going on?”
Jack glanced back and forth between Little Jack and Liz, then at Linda and Nelly, and then at Anne.
“You might as well tell them,” she said.
Jack nodded sadly. “A very beautiful nineteen-year-old girl has disappeared from a college just outside Boston. She’s run away. Everybody is terribly worried.”
“Why are we worried?” asked Liz.
Jack glanced around the table. “Because she’s your half sister.”
Seven
LITTLE JACK WOULD GRADUATE FROM BRUNSWICK ACADEMY in June. In the meantime there was the baseball season. During his first season, the manager had started him as a pitcher; but when he hit two home runs in one game and two more in the next, the coach switched him to first base. In the middle of his final season he was batting .408. He intimidated defensive players. Stretching singles into doubles, he slid into second base with his spikes up, daring the second baseman to tag him. He spiked two second basemen so badly they required treatment at a hospital. Coming into home, his tactic was to hit a waiting catcher so hard that the catcher would drop the ball. One schoolboy catcher was put out of baseball for the season with broken ribs after Jack Lear collided with him at the plate.
Late in April the headmasters of the preparatory schools that played in the league with Brunswick called a meeting. After no more than ten minutes discussion, they passed a resolution that Brunswick would forfeit any game in which Jack Lear was put forth as a member of the Brunswick team.
Little Jack’s career as a secondary school athlete was over.
He pretended not to care. He told his father the preppy boys were sissies. He’d play ball in college. He had been rejected by Harvard and Yale, but had been admitted to Ohio State University in Columbus. Maybe Woody Hayes would want a hard-tackling guard.
Eight
REBECCA MURPHY SHOWED PHOTOS OF KATHLEEN HORAN TO the people who worked in the bus station in Hartford and learned that the girl had bought a ticket for Cleveland. Becky caught a flight, hoping to arrive at the Cleveland bus station before Kathleen. She was an hour late. And there the trail went cold. Rebecca had nothing to report except that Kathleen seemed to be heading west. She returned to Boston and persuaded the police to distribute the girl’s picture and fingerprints on police wires.
Days passed, and nothing happened. Connie and Dan Horan were frantic. Jack was doing something, through Rebecca, but they themselves could do nothing. Dan flew to San Francisco and wandered the streets of Haight-Ashbury, a place where runaway youngsters were known to congregate. He showed Kathleen’s picture to everyone: police officers, narcs, priests, street people. Some sympathized. Some didn’t. He flew back to Boston, defeated.
Dan didn’t say so to Connie, but his thought was that the Lear in Kathleen was coming out—as maybe it had been bound to do.
Jack was in a state of suspension. He canceled a business trip, for fear of being where he couldn’t be reached if word came. He drank too much. He didn’t sleep well. Anne watched him closely. She did not like what she saw of how her husband handled a personal crisis.
Finally, several weeks after Kathleen disappeared, Jack flew to Houston for a meeting with Doug Humphrey. He couldn’t put it off any longer. Lear Communications was planning a major offering of preferred stock, to raise half a billion dollars of capital, and the two bankers on the board of directors—Douglas Humphrey and Joseph Freeman—wanted to meet with the chief executive officer. Billy Bob Cotton and Ray l’Enfant would be there, too.
Jack arrived the evening before the meeting and had dinner with Doug, Billy Bob, and Ray—plus Mary Carson, who now often sat in on their meetings. In the morning the group sat down beside the pool as usual, spreading their papers out on a glass-topped table.
The meeting had only begun when a call came from Rebecca Murphy. Jack picked up the phone at the table.
“Bingo! I know where she is.”
“Good news?” Jack asked hopefully.
“Not very. It could be worse. She’s in jail in a town called Grant, Nebraska.”
“In jail, for Christ’s sake! Why?”
“Nothing terribly serious. It seems she walked out of a café without paying. She’s serving out a fine at the rate of three dollars a day. I spoke with the sheriff. She’s still got a bus ticket for Los Angeles and a few dollars in cash, which she won’t apply to her fine. What’s more, she refuses to tell them who she is or allow them to
contact her family.”
“What’ll it take to get her out?”
“About eighty dollars, at this point. I can transfer funds to—”
“No. Then we lose her again. I’ll fly up there and take care of it. I’ll take her home. Don’t call the Horans or anyone else.”
Nine
JACK HAD FLOWN TO HOUSTON IN A BEECHCRAFT SUPER H18 that cruised at nearly three hundred miles per hour. He called the pilot before he left Humphrey’s and told him to plan a flight to the airport nearest to Grant, Nebraska, and also to arrange for a rental car at the airport.
They took off at 10:30 A.M. and landed at Ogallala in midafternoon. From there it was a short drive to Grant, the county seat of an adjoining county.
Elmer Hastings, the sheriff, was tall, tanned, and rawboned. He sat behind a scarred yellow-oak desk wearing a khaki uniform with badge and a straw hat.
Jack introduced himself. “I understand you’ve spoken with my private investigator, Miss Murphy.”
“Yes. Quite a gal, that one. Piece of work to find out where Miss Horan is. You say you’re her father, but Miss Murphy told me the girl’s name is Horan. Yours is Lear.”
“Long story,” said Jack. “I can tell you the details if you want. What I’d like to do is pay off her fine and take her with me. I’ve got a company plane on the field at Ogallala. I hope to be able to get Kathleen to New York tonight.”
“Well, let’s see here. Her fine was a hundred dollars, plus court costs of $14.75. She’s been here eleven days.” The sheriff figured on a pad. “That’s $114.75 less $33.00. Comes to $81.75. How you figure on payin’? Cash, I hope.”
“Cash,” Jack agreed.
“Jerry,” the sheriff said to a deputy who seemed to be listening to this conversation with great interest, “you go back and tell Miss Horan to get her stuff together. Her daddy’s here and bailin’ her out.”
Jack put four twenties, a one, and three quarters on the desk.
“May have a little problem here,” said the sheriff.
“What’s that?” Jack asked skeptically.
“She may not want to go. She’s a stubborn girl. Before I write you a receipt, maybe you better talk to her and make sure she’ll go. She’s said she’s goin’ to California and not back east, no matter what. In eleven days she hasn’t changed her mind, and she knows she’s got twenty-seven more. Maybe—”
“I’d like to talk to her.”
The women’s jail was not a line of cells, just a cage some ten feet square with steel bars on three sides. It was furnished with two cots, a toilet, and a basin. Kathleen was the only prisoner, and she sat hunched forward on a cot, staring apprehensively through the bars. She wore a tartan skirt, white blouse, and dark-blue cardigan sweater. She was the mature, graceful blond he had seen on the stage at the convent school. But she was marred. Her face was hollow and thin and colorless. He looked at her for only a moment before he made a vow to himself.
Jack nodded and smiled at Kathleen. She rose and came to the bars. “Who are—Mr. Lear? They said my father was here.”
“They said right, Kathleen. I am your father.”
Her mouth dropped open. She gripped the bars with both hands as if to steady herself. Then she nodded and began to cry. “I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I’ve always known they were lying to me. About something. I always knew there was something different about me.” She drew a deep breath and stifled her sobs. “You! Why didn’t you come to me years ago?”
“I couldn’t. We have a lot to talk about. I have a private plane waiting. We’ll be in the air for hours and can talk and talk.”
“I’m not going back to Boston. I’m not going back to that school!”
“That’s right. You’re not going back to Boston, and you’re not going back to that school.”
Kathleen slipped her right hand higher on the bar. She dropped her left hand and let it lie on the crosspiece. “You and my mother?”
“That’s right. She is your mother.”
“They say you’re a Jew. I mean . . . Connie and Dan say—”
“They would, wouldn’t they? That’s important to them.”
Kathleen grinned. “If you’re a Jew, then I’m a Jew! That’s why they shoved their religion— Have I got a surprise for them!”
“Don’t make any big decisions right now, Kathleen. You’ve got a lot of time to think. I love you, and I’m going to take you home, and we can work out something good for you.”
THIRTY - FOUR
One
1965
CHRISTMAS WAS A STRANGE BUT JOYOUS HOLIDAY AT THE LEAR house in Greenwich. Priscilla, who was still with the family, declared she had never seen anything so grand.
Jack and Anne presided happily over three separate parties and an expanded household.
In the spring, Linda would receive her Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia. She had applied for faculty positions at several universities. She was dating and would not live with Jack and Anne after this academic year. Nelly was eight and had announced her goal in life: to play the cello.
Joni and David Breck came from Los Angeles. Joni had been nominated for an Academy Award again, this time for her role in Dandelion. She was four months pregnant. It did not show yet. She and David said they would marry before the baby was born, but they were uncertain as to when. Harry Klein had given David a strong supporting role in Dandelion, and he had a nomination for Supporting Actor. News of her pregnancy out of wedlock would kill enough votes to deny both of them an Oscar, so they were playing the situation very carefully.
The most interesting addition to the household was Kathleen. The Horans came to Greenwich, and the confrontation had been angry, almost violent.
“What in the world can you be thinking of?” Connie had shrieked. “You’re a Christopher and a Child of Christ! Some of the sisters still think you have a vocation.”
“Ignorant, dried-up old bitches,” Kathleen had muttered.
“That will be enough of that kind of talk,” Dan had declared darkly.
“I’m going to take instruction in Judaism and have a bat mitzvah,” Kathleen had said.
Dan and Connie had glared at Jack, who had shrugged and said, “I told her I never had a bar mitzvah.”
“What you are going to do, young lady, is come home and go back to school,” Dan had said with an air of finality.
Kathleen had shaken her head with just as strong an air of finality.
“I’ll make you come!”
Jack had pointed a finger at Dan. “No. That you won’t do. Persuade her if you can.”
They couldn’t.
Later, when Kathleen went to see the rabbi at Temple Shalom, he gently advised her that the decision she proposed to make could not be made in anger and resentment. Even so, he agreed to let her begin instruction in Hebrew and in the Jewish faith. She saw a lawyer. She wanted her name legally changed to Sara Lehrer. He told her they could discuss it again after she’d given the matter more thought.
Kathleen, who asked now that they call her Sara, was a loving and helpful young woman around the house. In spite of her insistence that the convent schools had provided her with a poor education, she was able to help Liz with problems of calculus and to show Nelly what a close relationship existed between music and mathematics.
TWO
1966
IN MARCH JACK WAS SUMMONED TO APPEAR BEFORE A SENATOrial committee investigating misuse of television broadcasting franchises. He sat down at a table behind a bank of microphones, in the glare of television lights, and faced ten senators and their counsel.
The committee counsel was a young man with a mop of unruly hair and chipmunklike teeth. His name was Roger Simmons, and he asked most of the questions.
“Mr. Lear, is it your opinion that you use the valuable television frequencies assigned to your company in the public interest?”
Jack had been thoroughly coached for this appearance. He wore a handsome dark-blue suit and sat respectfully but con
fidently at the witness table, his hands clasped in front of him. His lawyer sat to his left. Anne sat behind him. Joni sat behind the lawyer.
“Obviously, Mr. Simmons, a broadcaster would serve the public interest best by broadcasting nothing but educational shows, in the manner of the public television stations. Unfortunately, we can’t make money that way, and we must make money if we are to remain in business. I am one of those who deplore the banality of a lot of what is broadcast by the networks, including the Lear Network. We do focus on quality in programming, and I think we do at least as well as any of our competitors.”
“Mr. Lear, at the present time your network is the only one that continues to broadcast quiz shows with big prizes. Egregious cheating on such shows was exposed and all but killed them. How do you explain your network’s reviving that format?”
Jack took a sip of water, then said, “I don’t try to explain it. Generally speaking, I don’t choose the shows that are broadcast on the Lear Network. That is done by others who are more attuned to the public taste than I am. My impression is that the public enjoys quiz shows and wants to see them.”
“You broadcast a show called You Bet! Is that show honest?”
“I have no reason to believe otherwise.”
“Then you are not prepared to testify to a certainty that it is honest?”
Jack smiled comfortably. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Simmons, I have never even seen it. I signed off on it—meaning that I told my people to go ahead and do it. They wanted to do it, and I said yes. That’s the only contact I’ve had with it.”
“Mr. Lear, if we show evidence that You Bet! is rigged, will you deny that it is?”
“I will neither affirm nor deny anything about it,” said Jack smoothly. “I have nothing to do with You Bet! It makes money. That’s why we broadcast it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t put it on the air.”
Tycoon Page 34