Tycoon

by Harold Robbins

  “I like your boy’s spirit,” said Coach Hayes. He was a big, square, expansive man with a wide and ready grin. “He’s got the right kind of stuff to be successful on the football field or wherever he decides to go.”

  “Well, thank you,” said Jack. “I don’t know if he’s told you, but he had a half brother who had the right kind of spirit, too. He was killed in a night carrier landing in the Pacific.”

  “LJ, you never mentioned that.”

  Little Jack grinned. “I didn’t know if I should.”

  “You should have. Now, tell us, LJ,” said the coach with sincere enthusiasm, “just what did we learn from today’s game?” He turned to Jack and Anne. “The boys are expected to learn something from every game. We play to win, yes; but we play for the learning experience, too. What did we learn today, LJ?”

  “I suppose it was the importance of practice, Coach.”

  “That’s right, that’s exactly right. Let me speak with your parents alone for just a minute.” When LJ had stepped away, Coach Hayes said, “He’s a brainy player. That boy reads the football field about as well as any boy I ever coached. When he got that quarterback this afternoon . . . I didn’t guess where that kid was going, but LJ did and went right after him. You can be proud of him.”

  Four

  1968

  THE COURT GRANTED THE PETITION OF KATHLEEN HORAN TO change her name to Sara Lehrer.

  Even so, she did not pursue her studies with the rabbi far enough to make her bat mitzvah. She went to the temple sporadically, then stopped going.

  In June she would graduate from Columbia, which she had entered with advanced standing and with Linda’s help. She told Jack she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She confided in Anne more than in Jack and told Anne she would give anything in the world do be able to do what Joni did, yet she had to be realistic. She knew she had neither the talent nor the looks to become a movie star. Anne suggested she go to Los Angeles and spend a few days with Joni, where she might learn something that would surprise her.

  Joni gladly agreed to receive her, and shortly after graduation, Sara flew to Los Angeles.

  Five

  DOUGLAS HUMPHREY WAS EIGHTY-TWO YEARS OLD AND DEcided to retire from active participation in business. He notified Jack that he meant to resign from the LCI board of directors and asked Jack to come to Houston to meet with him and discuss the question of who would succeed him.

  Jack took the company jet from Westchester Airport and flew to Texas on a Monday in July. Humphrey liked to meet beside his pool. Jack unpacked in the guest room and went out wearing a pair of swim trunks. Humphrey sat under his big umbrella, as usual; and, as usual, Mary Carson was swimming.

  Humphrey was cracking crab claws. He shoved the platter toward Jack.

  “I’ve written a will,” he said. “I leave as much as I can to Mary. She’ll own most of my interest in everything. She’s helped me a lot the last few years. She knows as much about things as I do, just about.”

  “She impresses me very positively,” said Jack. “Always has.”

  “My son was killed in Normandy in 1944.1 had supposed he would inherit from me and run the businesses, but— Mary is the child of my middle age. I was forty years old when she was born. She is divorced. She has given her recent years to me.

  “You are fortunate to have her,” said Jack.

  “How would you react to Mary’s replacing me on the LCI board of directors?”

  Surprised by the question, Jack glanced at the husky, deeply tanned, bikini-clad woman who was swimming laps in the pool. “Doug, I can’t think of a reason why not.”

  Humphrey smiled. “You’d give me a reason if you could think of one, right?”

  “I suppose so, but I can’t think of one.”

  “If I vote my stock and you vote yours, for Mary, it’s settled.”

  “Okay. It’s a deal.”

  “Mary! He agrees.”

  She climbed out of the pool and came to the table. She poured gin on the rocks for herself and raised her glass.

  Six

  WHILE JACK WAS IN TEXAS, ANNE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL and received her first X-ray therapy. It made her nauseous. She thought she’d throw up, but she didn’t.

  Dr. Manning gave her a shot to relieve the nausea. “Have you told your family yet?” he asked her.

  “My stepdaughter knows,” she said quietly.

  “You’re not going to be able to keep it a secret much longer,” he said.

  “I haven’t got much time left.”

  “I wish I could tell you how much. Sometimes X-ray therapy arrests the disease for months, even years. But—”

  “You said maybe five years. I’ve only had three and a half.”

  “Your children are grown, aren’t they?”

  “My son is a loutish hunk of a football player for Ohio State. My daughter graduated from high school this year and will go to Princeton in the fall. I’ve been spared long enough to see them out of the nest. It’s my husband who is going to need emotional support.”

  “Who’s supporting you, Mrs. Lear? Emotionally.”

  “It will be bad enough for Jack when it happens. I don’t want him to have to suffer through it for months ahead of time.”

  Seven

  HARRISON WOLCOTT DIED IN JUNE, AGED EIGHTY-SEVEN. JACK and Anne flew to Boston for the funeral. The Horans, who had appeared for the funeral of Edith Wolcott, did not show up.

  In July, Linda brought Nelly for a swim in the pool and told Anne that her marriage to Guy Webster was not working out. She was taking the Pill to prevent getting pregnant by him, but he wanted to begin a family.

  “I don’t want to have a child by that man. I’ve never done anything so stupid!” she wailed.

  “Don’t have a child you don’t want,” Anne said softly.

  Linda stared at Anne for a moment. She drew her lower lip in between her teeth for a moment, then said, “Anne, you’re losing weight. Are you dieting?”

  “No, I’m anemic. It’s causing me to lose weight, and it saps my energy.”

  Linda frowned hard. “Anne . . . ?”

  “Joni knows,” Anne whispered. “Now I guess you do, too. It’s our secret. It will come out soon enough. But not yet.”

  “Anne, I married bad. I came here today to ask how you and Jack would react if I walked away from Guy and came here to live for a while. That’s what I want to do. You’re going to need somebody here.”

  Anne covered her face with her hands and began to sob. “Only if you’re sure you want to leave your husband for other reasons.” she wept.

  Eight

  ANNE AND JACK WERE SITTING AT THE DINNER TABLE WITH Linda and Nelly. “I think we— I think we—” Anne couldn’t finish her sentence. Suddenly she pitched forward, and her face struck her plate.

  “Anne! Anne! No!”

  Jack hovered over her, patting her shoulders and back, trying to revive her.

  Linda called the emergency squad.

  On Wednesday, September 18, 1968, Anne’s secret was revealed.

  Jack spent the next ten days at the hospital, twenty-four hours a day, getting a little sleep in the chair in Anne’s room. He watched her weaken. He watched the desperate efforts taken in the hope of effecting a remission. She turned more and more lethargic. Her hair fell out, leaving her completely bald. She did not seem to know it. Certainly she did not care.

  She was weak and slept most of the time, but during her waking hours she was alert; she knew and understood everything.

  “I kept it from you as long as I could,” she told Jack. “You’re suffering enough. There would have been no point in making you suffer all of the last three years.”

  “I would have shared your suffering with you, at whatever cost,” he whispered.

  “We’ve had twenty-two years together,” she said. “I would have paid this price for those years even if I had known what was going to happen.”

  When she was asleep again, Jack sat in the vinyl-covered reclinin
g chair and sobbed as quietly as he could.

  After Anne’s tenth day at the hospital, Dr. Manning asked Jack to sit down with him in the day room on the hospital floor. “She can go home now, Mr. Lear,” he said.

  “To die,” Jack said numbly.

  The young doctor ran his hands over his eyes and cheeks. “We’ve done all we can,” he whispered.

  Anne came home in an ambulance and was put to bed by two nurses. She would have round-the-clock nurses from then on.

  Anne sat up in bed as much as she could. She asked Jack to play Scrabble with her, and as long as she remained alert she played well and seemed to enjoy it.

  Jack called the children home. Liz came immediately. LJ said he had an important game Saturday but would try to get away and come home Sunday. Jack called Woody Hayes, who personally drove LJ to the university airport and put him aboard a Lear jet offered by an Ohio business corporation to fly the boy to Westchester Airport. He missed the game. The LCI jet brought Joni from Los Angeles. Sara came with her.

  The family knew they were assembling to say good-bye to Anne.

  She insisted on being brought down to the living room to see the family, even though she had to be carried. She sat in a wing chair to one side of the fireplace, wearing gray wool slacks that hid her emaciated legs and a dark green sweater that hid her emaciated arms. She did not cover her head. After drinking a Scotch and eating a bowl of soup, she urged the family to go in to dinner. She would not let them see Jack and the nurse support her on the stairs.

  When she was asleep and Jack came back downstairs, he was weeping. He had not left the house except to go to the hospital since the day Anne had collapsed. He had collapsed as well. He could not function. Others were running the business. Mary Carson had flown up from Houston and assumed the chairmanship of an executive committee of the board of directors, to run the company until Jack returned. No one even tried to call him.

  The next day Anne came downstairs again. She sat in the library and saw each of the children individually. She was calm. The truth was, she was resigned. She had resisted the idea of dying for as long as she could.

  They were not to stay any longer, she said. She might the tomorrow; she might live through Christmas. Nothing could distress her more than watching them interrupt their lives to sit around and wait. Jack was doing that—she couldn’t talk him out of it—and that was bad enough.

  Except for Linda, who was living in the house because her marriage had failed, the family scattered again.

  On Sunday, November 10, Anne died peacefully, early in the morning. The night nurse woke Jack to tell him, then left him to writhe in agonized sobs in his bed.

  THIRTY - SIX

  One

  1969

  ON MONDAY, JANUARY 6, JACK FINALLY REAPPEARED AT HIS office. He was gaunt. For the first time that anyone could remember, he wore a suit that did not fit him perfectly. He was also deeply tanned, since he had been in St. Croix since Anne died in November. Linda had been there with him most of the time. Nelly had stayed at home in the care of Priscilla until mid-December but came as soon as her school closed for Christmas break.

  LJ and Liz joined Jack in St. Croix for Christmas, as did Joni and David. Sara, who had found a job in Los Angeles, visited during the week before Christmas.

  All of them had seen him cry. They would find him sitting on the beach, staring at the waves coming in, and sobbing.

  By telephone from St. Croix he had called a meeting of LCI executives and ranking staff, to convene in the boardroom at ten o’clock on Monday, January 6.

  Mary Carson was there, sitting at the foot of the big conference table. Also present were Mickey Sullivan, Cap Durenberger, Herb Morrill, Dr. Friedrich Loewenstein, and Raymond l’Enfant. Other executives sat in chairs around the walls, and still others stood.

  Jack rose. “I want to thank all of you for relieving me from my responsibilities for more than three months. It has helped me tremendously to know that during a period when I was not able to do my job, competent and committed people were here doing it for me. I am sincerely grateful.

  “I am going to ask you to do me one more service. I know that all of you want to offer your sympathy. I have received your cards and letters and will in time reply to every one of them. I do ask you, though, not to offer any further sympathy. When we sit down together privately, don’t begin our conversation by telling me how sorry you are about my loss. I know you are. But each kind expression of sympathy just reminds me once again—”

  His voice broke, and for a minute everyone stared at the table or the floor, not at him, while he struggled to regain his composure.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a company to run. When I called from St. Croix I suggested an agenda for a management meeting this morning. I would like to ask all those seated at the table to remain—also Dave and Margaret. The rest of you I thank again. I will be sitting down with each of you individually during the week to discuss what you are doing and what we need to do.”

  For a moment, before he flipped the pages of his notebook and introduced the first item on his agenda, he glanced around the table at his self-conscious officers, directors, and staff. There had been changes. There would be more. Painter was gone, of course. He would have to be replaced by a programming man. Cap Durenberger was seventy-nine and would retire soon. There were rumors that Ray l’Enfant might be offered a position in the Nixon administration. He was euphoric over Nixon’s election and wore an enameled American-flag pin on his lapel. Mary Carson was no longer the bikini-clad young woman Jack had seen in the pool but a mature woman, with her hair cut shorter and wearing a pair of reading glasses.

  TWO

  AT DINNER WITH MARY CARSON, JACK LEARNED THAT SHE wanted to be more of a hands-on director than her father had been. Having listened to her ideas during the day, Jack said he would recommend that the board elect her a vice president.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when he arrived home. Mickey dropped him off, and Jack let himself into the house with his key. Linda was waiting for him in the library, where she was watching television and at the same time scanning a book.

  She switched off the television set and put down her book. She stood. She was wearing a yellow baby-doll nightgown, not sheer but short enough to expose her legs and yellow panties. She stepped toward Jack and into his arms. They kissed.

  He had called her, so she knew he’d had his dinner. “Let’s go up,” she whispered.

  They didn’t use the master bedroom suite where he had slept with Anne. He had moved into one of the guest rooms. The master bedroom suite had been left as it was the last night Jack and Anne slept together. Even Anne’s nightgown was laid out, as it had been in September before she went to the hospital for the last time. The guest room would have been rather spare, but Linda had moved some things into it, including the erotic prints Anne had bought for Jack. His clothes hung in the closet. One drawer in the bureau was reserved for her lingerie.

  While Jack undressed, Linda chose something to wear. She carried her selections into the bathroom and changed into them. When she came out, she was wearing a sheer black jacket, a black satin G-string, dark stockings held up by lacy black garters, and black patent-leather high-heeled shoes.

  Jack, who himself had stripped to white slingshot underpants, had poured them two brandies, and they sat on a love seat—Linda in his arms. It was eleven o’clock, and he clicked on the television set. It was their habit to watch the news, then at least part of the Johnny Carson show each night.

  He pulled down her G-string. She kept her crotch shaved, and she had the most prominent wattles he had ever seen, red and fleshy and visible. He fondled them, and Linda stiffened and moaned. She seized his penis.

  As usual, the news was less interesting than what they were doing. They hurried to the bed and plunged into a round of lovemaking. They finished by the time the Carson show started and returned to the love seat, both naked now except that she still wore her stockings. They cuddled. />
  Linda had been his salvation. Providence seemed to have brought them together. Neither had planned it. For five weeks after Anne died, Jack and Linda had been alone on St. Croix. Linda had given him support and sympathy. Joni would have interrupted the shooting of Norma to be with him, but Linda had said she could take a leave of absence from Yale-New Haven Hospital to go to St. Croix with him. Jack was immensely grateful.

  Linda knew how to hit the right notes with him, when to be solemn, when he was ready to be cheerful, when he wanted to brood alone on the beach, when he wanted her to walk with him into town to prowl the market. When he took her hand in the market one day, she squeezed his. Everything from that point on was settled.

  “Jack,” she said when Carson broke for commercials, “I’m going to have to move out of this house.”

  “My God, no!”

  She kissed his neck. “We can’t be what we are. We’ve got to stop it. I can’t let Nelly find out I’m sleeping with her grandfather. We can’t let the rest of the family find out.”

  He ran both hands down over his face. “I know . . .” he whispered. He reached for her hands. “Linda, I might have killed myself if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “No. You wouldn’t have.”

  “I might have. I’d give anything in the world if—”

  “People would hate us. My parents, to start with. I mean, they’d hate us, Jack.”

  He sighed and nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “That’s why I’ve got to find someplace else to live. I’m not going back to Guy, for damned sure. I—”

  “Hold on a minute,” he interrupted. “You don’t need to find a place to live. You live here. I’ll move out.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can. Think of the problems it solves. I’ll live in the city. I don’t want to live in Greenwich anyway. Not now. Still . . . this is the family home. I’m reluctant to sell it. When Joni or LJ or Liz comes home, this place should be here for them. And Kathleen, too—I mean Sara. This house is also home to Priscilla. She’s been with us more than twenty years. I’ll move into the brownstone. I’ll take a few personal things, and—Linda! Do it! Make this your home, for you and Nelly. I’ll come out from time to time. And we don’t need to—”