Harold Robbins Thriller Collection

by Harold Robbins

  “Finished?” Janette asked coldly.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. I want you to hear me out. Then you can decide whether you think I’m getting old or not.” He paused again, then continued without waiting for a word from her. “And even if we are successful, what do we gain?

  “We have heard that they make more than twice the profit that we do. But we don’t know how that profit is broken down or from where it comes. Don’t forget they made this deal with us because they already have the plants and facilities to manufacture their own textiles as well as finished goods. They make them from every step of the operation, and I’m willing to venture that the greatest portion of their profit comes from that end rather than the retail. They can, if they want to, even operate the retail division at a loss because it can be absorbed into their manufacturing profits.

  “If I am right, the most we can gain, if we buy our way out, and if we are successful in doing all the things I have said we must do, will amount to about two million dollars a year. That means it would take us ten years just to recoup the twenty million dollars we would have to invest. And that is without even knowing what we have to pay for the twenty million dollars if we could get it. It is entirely possible that the four or five million dollars a year we do make will disappear entirely, eaten up by the operations of a business we know nothing about. It happened to Agache-Willot. It can happen to us.”

  He took another deep breath. She was still watching him silently. “I am your friend, Janette. We have fought many battles together, side by side, so I don’t think I have to prove either my friendship or devotion to you. I have watched with admiration the fierce drive within you that brought you from a girl to the strong and important woman that you are today, second to none in our business. So, as a friend, I feel free to caution you. No one in this world can own it all. Always leave something for others to do and profit by, and you will profit.

  “Do not let your own ego and blind ambition lead you to your own destruction.”

  They were silent for a long while, just looking at each other. Finally, she spoke. “That was quite a speech.”

  He nodded slowly. “It was. I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t expect it.”

  “Neither did I,” she said. They were silent again for a moment, then she met his eyes. “Do you really mean that? What you said about my ego and blind ambition?”

  He was embarrassed. “I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t know what else it could be that is pushing you. We’re making all the money we really need. Up to now, everything we’ve done has been a challenge and fun to do. But suddenly it’s not fun anymore.”

  “And if I were to give you another ten percent of the company?” she asked. He already had five percent. “Would it become fun then?”

  “I thought you knew me better than that, Janette,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t want anymore. I have all that I need. What I said, I said for your sake, not to gain something for myself.”

  “What would you say if I told you I was going to do it despite your advice?”

  He looked at her. “I would say, ‘Good luck, Janette.’”

  She met his eyes. “And that is all?”

  He rose from his chair heavily. “No, Janette. I would also say for that you would need someone far more capable and knowledgeable about those matters than I.”

  Suddenly she was angry. “I was right!” she snapped. “You’re not only getting old, Jacques. You’ve become a coward, afraid to fight.

  This time the hurt showed on his face and echoed in his voice. “I’m sorry that you feel like that, Janette.” His voice broke and he went quickly to the door so that she could not see the sudden blurring in his eyes.

  At the door, he turned and looked back at her. She looked at him in stony silence. He shook his head slowly. If only she would say one word. He didn’t want it to end like this. But she remained silent. It was over.

  He opened the door, still looking at her. She returned his gaze as if he were a stranger. “Goodbye, Janette,” he said. And silently closed the door behind him.

  She stared at the closed door. Goddamn him! What right did he have to sit in judgment on her? Her anger began to dissipate, replaced by an impulse to run after him and bring him back. But that was what men always wanted. A woman to run after them, begging them to come home.

  She wouldn’t do it. She would wait. He would come back. He would think it over and in the morning he would be in his office as if nothing had happened.

  But then the tone of finality in his farewell echoed in her mind and she knew it was not to be. A strange sense of loss came into her. He was never coming back. In a way, he was the only real friend she had ever had. He had always been there. Now she was truly alone.

  Lauren could hear the car horn blast in front of the white beach house on the Pacific Coast Highway clear into the kitchen at the other end of the house. She put down her coffee cup and got to her feet. Before going to the front door, she glanced out the terrace window at the beach. Anitra was naked, sitting on the sand, playing with the two puppies. Sitting in the shade of a beach umbrella, her nanny, Josefina, a Mexican woman in her forties, was knitting and watching the child.

  Lauren ran through the house, out the front door into the courtyard, and opened the front gate. The car was right in front and Harvey was already opening the straps that held the surfboard to the roof. She laughed and went to help him. Nothing had changed about Harvey except the car. It was a Porsche 918 now instead of a Volkswagen. He had not achieved his ambition to become a millionaire at twenty-one, but now at twenty-five he was getting close. And he had never become a dealer as he had planned. Instead, everything was very straight. Sun Earth had really taken off.

  He turned to look at her as she came next to him and began to tug at the next rack strap. She was tan and lithe in her cut-off jean shorts and bikini top, her hair long and white from the sun, her blue eyes sparkling in her tanned face. “You’re looking good,” he said, kissing her upturned cheek.

  “How, paleface,” she said mockingly, holding up a hand face out, Indian style.

  He laughed, tugging his strap loose. “Some people have to work for a living,” he said. “They can’t afford to lay around on the beach all day.”

  “That ain’t the way you used to tell it,” she said, pulling her own strap loose. “Things sure have changed.”

  He lifted the surfboard from the roof carefully. “How’s the surf?”

  “Not bad,” she said. “Running at six feet according to the radio. You might have some fun.”

  “Great,” he said, holding the surfboard under one arm and pulling a small bag from the jump seat with the other. “I can’t wait to try it. It’s been too long.”

  “A month and a half,” she said.

  He followed her into the courtyard. “How’s Anitra?”

  “You won’t recognize her,” Lauren laughed. “She’s getting so big. She’s having a ball with those two Dalmatian puppies you gave her. She hasn’t realized yet that they’re getting bigger than she is.”

  She led the way along the path next to the side of the house to the beach. They came out at the terrace. Harvey leaned the surfboard against it in the shade and followed her up the terrace steps. He squinted at the water, then up at the sun. He began to strip off his shirt and turned to Lauren, smiling. “This must be the place for the good life. What I dreamed about as a boy. Nothin’ but surfin’ an’ smokin’.”

  She laughed. “That hasn’t changed. It’s still here. The kids are still doing it.”

  He looked over the terrace railing and saw Anitra playing in the sand. He held up his hand, waving. “Hey, Anitra!” he yelled.

  The child never looked up, continuing to play with the puppies.

  “Hey, Anitra!” he shouted again. “It’s Uncle Harvey.”

  Nothing. The child gave no sign that she had heard him, still playing with the dogs.

  He turned to Lauren, a hurt look on his face. “She’
s ignoring me. She never even looked up.”

  “She’s a woman,” Lauren smiled. “She’s playing hard to get. After all, you haven’t come to see her in a long time.”

  “Oh,” Harvey said. Then he grinned. He opened his bag and took out a box. Holding the box in the air over his head, he called to the child again. “Hey, Anitra! It’s Uncle Harvey and look what I got you!”

  The child looked up. A moment later she was running on her little brown legs across the sand to him.

  Harvey turned to Lauren with a triumphant smile. “She’s a woman all right. A present will get them all the time.”

  After dinner that night, they moved over to the living room and stretched out in front of the fire on the woven Mexican floor rug. The child was already asleep and Josefina was finishing off in the kitchen.

  Harvey rolled over onto his stomach and looked out of the floor-length windows at the ocean. He could hear the pounding of the surf but he couldn’t see it. Fog had rolled in, up the beach almost to the windows. “Fog’s really comin’ in,” he said. “Spooky.”

  “You get used to it,” she laughed, throwing a log on the fire. She watched it for a moment, then added another log as a shower of sparks went up the chimney. “It was hot today. But in November the nights can get real cold.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He took a pouch from his pocket and began to roll a joint.

  “Something new?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing new anymore. Johnny’s so busy scoopin’ up the dirt, he don’t have time for planting no more. He’s got more’n twenty people working for him now an’ his mother won’t even let him grow lettuce. She says they’re doing so good they don’t want to do anything that will bring the law down on them. I feel lucky if he gets good grass from his neighbors for me.”

  He finished rolling the joint, licked it, then smoothed it with his fingers and lit it. He took two deep tokes, then passed it to her. “This is good,” he said appreciatively. “Try it.”

  She did the same thing, holding the smoke in for a long time before letting it out slowly. “It’s not bad,” she commented, returning it to him. “But it’s not a Harvey special.”

  He grinned, dragging on the joint again. “Them days are gone forever.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “They were fun.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at her. “I guess we can forget about ever getting our investment back. We never made it to the grass we wanted.”

  She laughed. “Do you think we can write it off our income tax?”

  He laughed with her. “We can always try. But the IRS might have some other ideas.” He passed the cigarette back to her and grimaced as he sat up. “I think I got sunburned today.”

  She stared at him. “You sure did. That’s terrible. How do you think it will look when the president of Sun Earth walks into the office Monday morning looking like a lobster? Nobody will believe that it really works.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “But I was havin’ such a good time out there, I forgot.”

  “Remember next time,” she said with mock sternness. “Rule number one. Physician, heal thyself.”

  “I’ll put some on now,” he said. “It will take out the sting and by morning I’ll be okay.” He got to his feet and went to his room. A few minutes later he was back, his shirt off and the familiar Sun Earth jar in his hand. “You’ll have to do my back,” he said. “I got it pretty good there too.”

  She took the jar from his hand and looked at it as he sat on the floor, his back to her. The blue earthenware ceramic jar in the shape of a mercator of the world was highlighted by the continents in green on its surface, and the gold-painted ceramic cork holder fitted to the top representing the sun told you exactly what it was even if you couldn’t read the clear black lettering on the gold. SUN EARTH. Pour le soleil de JANETTE. She began to spread it on his back. “Janette knew what she was doing,” she said. “She said the most important thing was the package.”

  “Nobody’s arguing with her,” Harvey said. He glanced back over his shoulder at her. “By the way, do you know that Jacques is no longer with her?”

  “No, I didn’t.” She was surprised. “I haven’t spoken to her in months. What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We got the news just last month when I called to make an appointment to go over and talk to her about our new cosmetic line. Jacques wasn’t there and I was pushed off to the new guy.”

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But they tell me he’s a hotshot that used to work for Revlon in France. A real cold-ass too. He didn’t even wait for me to finish explaining to him that we got the three basic shades and colors all worked out the way Janette wanted so that they could be blended to achieve any makeup color wanted. He just cut me off and said that their market study had shown that it had too limited a market for them to achieve a worthwhile gross and that women wouldn’t go for the idea of having to blend their own shades of makeup. Besides they were already planning to introduce their own line of makeup next year.”

  “You never talked to Janette?” she asked.

  “No. He said she was away on some promotion trip or something but that she would be in the States sometime in November and would probably see me to talk about a new distribution contract.”

  “What’s the matter with the one you have?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “But it was only for three years. That’s over next month at the end of December. He also said that they would probably require a doubling of their fees, that costs have gone up so much, their study reveals, that they’re losing money on every jar they sell.”

  “What happens if you don’t agree to give them more?”

  “He already as much as told me that they would come out with their own. I told you he was cold-assed.”

  “Can they do that?” she asked.

  “Sure they can,” he said. “All they have to do is monkey with the formula a little bit.”

  “But the name?” she asked. “Are they entitled to that too? Janette was the one that thought it up.”

  He faced her, smiling. “They’re fucked on that one. It’s a registered trademark of our company and they can’t touch it.”

  “Good,” she said. “You don’t seem worried about it.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “As a matter of fact I’m hoping they don’t renew our contract. As soon as I hung up on the Frenchman I called Squibb and made a deal for the cosmetics. And if I can move Sun Earth over to them, they’ll give me an even better deal.”

  She closed the jar and put it down. “Roll another joint,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  She watched his hands expertly fashion the cigarette. He lit it and passed it to her. She took a deep drag. “I feel sad about Jacques,” she said. “It seems to me that he’s always been around. I remember him from when I was a kid. I wonder what happened?”

  He took the joint from her. “You can ask her when you see her. If cold-ass is right, she’ll be here sometime this month and we’ll hear from her.” He took a drag on the joint. “What are you planning for Thanksgiving? It’s in two weeks, you know.”

  “I promised the folks I would spend it with them,” she said. “They’re dying to get their hands on Anitra and spoil her. They feel terribly deprived that I don’t live right next door to them. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “My folks are still on that world cruise my Dad promised to take when he retired. They won’t be back until the end of January.”

  “That’s what Mother thought,” she said. “She told me to ask if you would join us.”

  “Hey, that’s great. Does that mean she’s finally decided I was respectable?”

  Lauren laughed. “If she has it’s only because she doesn’t know you as I do.”

  They were on their dessert, pumpkin pie and coffee, when Johann looked across the table at Lauren. “I forgot to tell you. Janette’s in town at the Beverly Hil
ls Hotel. Did you know?”

  Lauren shook her head. “She never called me.”

  “That’s funny,” Johann said. “She seemed to know that you were going to be here. I asked her to come for dinner but she said she had another engagement and that she would come for a drink about six o’clock. She wanted to talk to the two of us. I wonder how she knew you would be here.”

  “I probably told her,” Harvey said. “I had a meeting at the hotel with her yesterday.”

  “What happened?” Lauren asked him.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “Beginning January first, Sun Earth will be distributed by Squibb.”

  “Then you didn’t renew with her?”

  “That’s right.” Harvey smiled. “She has a new system now. She doesn’t talk business, she leaves that all to her new managing director. After we said hello, we went down to his room. He told me what they wanted. I said I wouldn’t pay it. He said that in that case they had no choice but to place their own product on the market. I said it was okay with me. Then we went back to Janette’s suite and told her. I think she was surprised. She never expected me to turn them down flat like that. They must have thought they had me by the short hairs.”