"Maybe you underestimate me," said Bat somberly.
"If you let him drag you into his business, it will be a lifelong fight," she said. "And you'll lose."
"Maybe not. If you'll help me —"
"I'll help you, Bat. I love you."
"Then we can marry?"
"Not yet. Being married to you will be a full-time job, and I'm not finished with my other job yet."
"Toni, goddammit —"
"Patience, Bat. Besides ... Let's don't waste a night in bed arguing. I've got something better in mind."
6
They didn't have a night to waste. At six on Christmas morning they were wakened by a knock on the door. Robair had come to tell Bat his father wanted to see him.
The usual heavy Cord breakfast was not yet on the dining table, but a small table in Jonas's office was set with a breakfast of sausage, scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Already, this early in the morning, Jonas had a bottle at hand and was sipping bourbon. He wore a heavy gray turtleneck sweater and blue jeans.
"Before the girl's up, before anybody else is up," he said to Bat, "I want to talk to you alone."
"You summoned me out of a warm bed with a warm body," said Bat ruefully.
"There are more important things. I've got something I want to talk with you about. As we might put it ... your future. I hear you're a good lawyer. You've got a promising career ahead of you. On the other hand, you're an heir. In due time you will inherit ... probably half of my estate."
"I never expected anything like that," said Bat. "I'm surprised even now that you should say it."
"Who else is going to get it? What do you think of your half sister? Jo-Ann's a smart girl. But her talents, if I'm any judge, lie more toward the artistic. Her mother has encouraged her in that. Anyhow, she can't take over the business after I'm gone or have got too old to run it anymore."
"I wouldn't underestimate her," said Bat.
"When I was twenty-five years old and my father died suddenly, I came into possession of the whole shebang. One minute I was a careless kid having a good time. The next minute I was one of the wealthiest young men in America — but also one saddled with a heavy and complex burden. I could have lost it all. Almost did. The various Cord businesses, what some people call the Cord empire, are worth ten times and more what they were worth when my father died. People say I did it by being tough, not by being smart."
"The word about you is that you're both tough and smart. That's what I've always heard about you," said Bat.
"Yeah? Well, you've also heard that I'm a ruthless, rapacious son of a bitch. Right?"
Bat nodded. "I've heard that."
"Okay. Well, I've done something, too; I've built something. But where does it all go if what happened to my father happens to me? And of course it's gonna happen, eventually. What I need is a son to take over the way I did."
Bat frowned. "My god, what are you saying?"
"What's it sound like? I want you to come into the business. If you're not interested in it, everything's going to wind up in the hands of somebody not named Cord, somebody that's got nothing of me in him and nothing of my father. No Cord genes. Lawyers, accountants ... pencil pushers."
"I want to practice law a few years at least. Long enough to prove I can do it."
"I won't say no to that. But we may not have all the time in the world. I'm forty-eight years old. I'm coming into — What do they call it? The hurricane years. I'm reminded all the time that I don't take very good care of myself. Anyway, if you came into the business, you could be a lawyer at first. Corporate law. Anti-trust. Securities. Tax problems. It will take time to learn what you'd need to know if ... Well, if —"
"I'll have to think about it."
"You do that. I'm offering you a goddamned world, and you'll 'think about it.' Okay. I won't offer a second time. I won't shove it down your throat. But you better make a pretty careful appraisal of what you're accepting or rejecting ... a pretty thorough goddamned appraisal."
"I'll keep it in mind," said Bat. He wondered what Toni would say to this.
7
Using the excuse that he wanted to drive his new Porsche, Bat drove into town and placed a call from a pay telephone in a gasoline station. On the way, he told Toni what Jonas had said. She was predictably appalled. Toni sat impatiently in the car, waiting while he made his call. She knew who he was calling: his mother in Mexico City.
They spoke Spanish, so the man in the station would not understand. Virgilio picked up an extension phone and listened. Bat told his mother what Jonas was offering.
"I knew from the day you met him that you would give up your career in law and take employment with your father," said Sonja gravely.
"It is an immense opportunity," said Virgilio Escalante. "You may become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men on the continent."
"But you must be realistic about your father," said Sonja. "He is not a modest man. He is not an honest man. Don't forget that he had a motive for telephoning me. He wanted to make a connection with Uncle Fulgencio."
"I can see my father's faults," said Bat. "Among them is that he is not very well educated and has a limited perspective."
"Don't underestimate him. Above all, you must always remember that he is capable of lying," she said.
"So am I," said Bat.
"But you must be able to tell the difference, to know when he is and when he isn't. And let me ask you this: Do you have any personal feeling toward him at all?"
Bat drew a breath and blew it out. "I suppose so," he said without conviction. "I can't ignore the genes, can I? Not entirely. No. They're in me. Which means I can out-Jonas Jonas. Maybe. He never had to contend with the likes of me before: a man who's got the same stuff in him as he's got in him."
"'Out-Jonas Jonas,'" she repeated quietly. "Do you really think you can?"
"Why not?"
14
1
JO-ANN WAS ANGRY AND RESENTFUL. LIFE HAD CRAPPED on her. For fourteen years her father had refused even to acknowledge she was his daughter. Then he had. There had been a few halfway good years. Then he'd walked away from her and her mother to duck a subpoena, and the next thing they knew he had acquired a grown son.
On Christmas night she lay alone in bed. The next room was shared by her newfound half brother and his girlfriend, and Jo-Ann could hear their exuberant coupling — humping was the word that came to her mind. In the master bedroom her father was no doubt doing the same with his girlfriend.
Jo-Ann could see the attraction this Angie had for her father. The woman was of course a great deal younger than her mother, and she was superficially glamorous, with a hard edge to her that spoke "hooker" to the girl. If Angie wasn't that, she was something like. Jo-Ann could see it on her face.
She did not hate her father for divorcing her mother once, then getting himself divorced by her, and now bedding with this Angie. Monica had never slept alone. Two nights after Jonas left the house in Bel Air another man — What was his name? Alex — had slept in Monica's bed.
Without even letting her finish her year at Pepperdine, her mother had moved them to New York, so she could be closer to her work and closer to the men she had known for years and now once more was free to welcome to her bedroom. Jo-Ann was able to transfer some credits to Smith, but she had an anomalous status there and could not be sure exactly when she would graduate.
Monica had meant to live in the Cord apartment in the Waldorf Towers, but after she and Jo-Ann had stayed there only a week the lawyers informed them they would have to get out. The lease did not belong to Mr. Cord but to Cord Explosives, which was not a party to the divorce suit. Mrs. Cord could raise her cash settlement demands, since she was not going to get the apartment, but she could not remain there. Besides, Mr. Cord's attorneys had come up with some embarrassing evidence. So, out again. They moved into a furnished apartment on East fifty-ninth Street.
That was one of the problems. They had moved too much. Sometimes they ha
d tried to follow after her grandfather, whose name was Winthrop. She remembered that old man: a nauseating drunk. He had done only one good thing — he had died saving her father's life. The good thing he'd done was die; saving her father's life had been extra.
The brother. The newfound brother. Her father was ecstatic to have found a third Jonas, even if he did call himself Bat. He was what she wasn't and could never be: a male. Her father was not subtle about what he had in mind. This son who had dropped on him like something from heaven was going to be his heir-in-chief and the next head of the family business.
She had never imagined she would be the head. Her mother had explained to her that, although she would probably inherit most of the Cord stock, her father would arrange a voting trust or something of the kind so that she would not be able to control the business, not even to exercise much influence over it.
In her naivete she had speculated on how her father might react if she married well — well, that is, in terms of a young man with demonstrated intelligence and maybe an MBA from Harvard. Would he take him into the business and confide in him? When she dated, she appraised young men in terms of how her father might react to them. So ... She need not worry about that anymore. She would date for fun now. She'd find herself a stud and have a good time.
She would not go on sleeping alone, either. Nobody else did. This house tonight was a goddamned whorehouse! As she pressed fingers into herself and tried to find some relief, she was glad she had hit the Scotch and brandy bottles every chance she got. For the time being bottles were damned important to her. At least she would go to sleep. At least she could go to sleep ...
2
Nevada understood her feelings, and maybe he was the only one who did. Nevada understood more than most people — and more certainly than either her father or her mother. She was glad she'd had a chance to talk with him. Glad and ... then for a different reason, not glad.
The family hadn't even flown out here together. Her flight had landed at San Francisco, where Nevada met her at the airport. An Inter-Continental Airlines company plane, a Beech Baron, had flown them to the ranch landing strip. She had been the first to arrive. The Beech went back to pick up her new brother and his girlfriend, and she had been alone at the ranch with Nevada.
They'd had horses saddled and had gone out to ride across the sandy, rocky countryside.
"You always was a natural in the saddle. Shame your parents decided to move you to California."
"I think I could have been happy here."
"Uhmm. That mean you're not, where you are?"
"I might be. But who knows how long I'll be there before I'm packed up and sent somewhere else? There's nothing permanent, Nevada."
"Don't feel like you got no roots down," he said.
Jo-Ann shrugged. She frowned at a coyote limping across the ground in front of them. It had been bitten by a rattlesnake apparently and was dying. Nevada pulled a .30-30 Winchester from its scabbard on his saddle, took aim, and put the creature out of its misery.
"I'm shoved this way and the other," she said. "Obviously, I've got nothing of my own. I'm so — Nevada, I'm so goddamned dependent!"
"Who ain't, your age? Of course me, I had to go out younger. But that was another time, another place. You're the daughter of Jonas and Monica. You gotta get your education and be smart and sophisticated-like. Who's not dependent at that time of life?"
"Do you believe that man he found in Mexico is really his son?" she asked.
"I expect he is," said Nevada. "I remember the girl. Sonja Batista. First thing he had to do after he sudden-like inherited everything was go to Germany to see how they made plastics, since that was what his daddy had bought into. He took Sonja Batista with him. I was surprised when he didn't marry her. Pretty thing, she was. All this was before he met your mother."
"That wouldn't have made any difference. They never really loved each other. She was a piece of ass. He was a cock. That's all either of them ever wanted."
"Young lady," said Nevada sternly, "you shouldn't use them kind of words. Anyhow, you're wrong. I don't know what happened, but they did love each other. At least twice. Once when they made you. Once when they got together again. I didn't see the first part. I saw the second. You got a point if you wanta say they're not the kind of folks that fall in love in the romantic way. But don't put 'em down, Jo-Ann. Love ain't always a lifetime thing."
Jo-Ann loved the kind of country they were riding across. They were five miles from the house. It smelled good: big and fresh and dry. The horses spooked occasionally. Living things skittered in the low dry brush to either side of them. They came across the track left by a sidewinder. That would spook a horse. The mountains rising in the distance were more beautiful for their promise from miles away than they were when you reached them.
"Nevada ..."
"Uh?"
"I'm a virgin."
"I'd sort of hope you was, at your age."
Jo-Ann shook her head. "My mother wasn't when she was eighteen. My father —"
"Prob'ly was when he was eighteen," Nevada interrupted. "Th' old man wasn't for foolin' around. 'Course ... your father made up for it pretty quick, when he got the chance. Uh — Come to think of it, once he started to drive a car ..."
"Nevada ... I'm very uncomfortable."
The lanky old man shook his head. "Honey, you ain't got no idea what uncomfortable is."
"I'd like a man I trust to — It could be you, Nevada."
"Missy! Don't you never say nothin' like that ag'in! Jeezuss Christ! I don't ever wanta hear nothin' like that ag'in. I won't tell your father, but —"
Jo-Ann sobbed. "But you can see!"
He shook his head. "I can't see."
"Somebody I trust. That was the point."
"I could be — I could be your grandfather. Grandfather? Hell, I could be your great-grandfather."
"Forgive me?" She sniffed.
"Sure. But look, sis. When you're eighteen it looks like that's got to be the most wonderful thing in the whole world. It ain't. It's good, but it's not the best thing in the world. You gotta learn to live with it, like you do with everything else."
"I heard my father say one time that you were the smartest man he'd ever met when it came to ... life."
Nevada shook his head. "Maybe that's because he's done some dumb things in that department. It could be that was what killed his daddy, findin' out that Junior had done it dumb again and was going to have to pay hush money."
"Blackmail?"
Nevada shrugged. "Whatever they called it. Oh, hell, it didn't kill him. He died of bourbon and hot temper and maybe of tryin' to keep up with the young woman he'd married to keep your father from marryin' her."
"Rina?"
"You've heard of her. Your daddy wanted to marry her. He was set on it. Your granddaddy married her and carried her off to Europe on a honeymoon."
"What a family! No wonder I'm crazy."
"You're not crazy, honey." He chuckled. "Maybe you're a Cord, though."
Jo-Ann reined her horse to a stop. "Sex," she said. "If you won't teach me, tell me something, anyway. It ruins lives."
Nevada reined his horse around and sat facing the beautiful dark-haired girl in the tight blue jeans and wool shirt. "Blue-eyes lives," he said. "My daddy was a buffalo hunter. My ma was a Kiowa. The Kiowa were noble people that knowed how to live. A Kiowa man never dreamt dreams about doin' it. He didn't have to; he did it. A Kiowa woman never worried about it. She didn't have to; she did it. The Kiowa wouldn't-a cared about pictures of people doin' it. What good was that? They wouldn't-a read in books about people doin' it. What good was that? They didn't make up stories about it, or make laws about it, or suppose the Great Unknowable cared how and when they done it. If children come and nobody could figure out exactly whose they was, that didn't make no difference; children belonged to the tribe, and all of 'em was taken care of. You understand?"
"Do it with whoever I want to?"
"Not quite that
. Do it with whoever'll take responsibility, the way the tribe did. Responsibility. That there's the point. An ugly word with the white man. And forget all the hoodoo-voodoo. This thing we're talkin' about, it's mine, it's your'n, it's his'n, it's her'n. It's nobody else's but. And it's not worth moanin' and groanin' and worryin' and hurryin' about. Live, little girl! Pee when you have to and fuck when you want to. But you wouldn't pee on the street in public, so don't fuck where and when it ain't right — and not with the wrong man. That's all the rules they is about it."
Jo-Ann smiled and started her horse back toward the house. "Thank you, Nevada," she said. "My father was right about one thing. You are the smartest man about life either one of us has ever met."
3
She had known yesterday afternoon that she and Nevada would be returning to the house alone — alone, that is, but for Robair and the ranch hands who worked around the place. The plane bringing her new half brother and the woman from Washington wouldn't arrive before midnight.
She had continued to wish Nevada would consent to come to her bed, but she'd known he wouldn't, and she'd known better than to mention it again.
A hundred yards from the house, Jo-Ann reined her horse to a stop again. She yawned. "Would you believe I got out of bed this morning in New York?" she said. "Are you having dinner with me, Nevada?"
"I wasn't countin' on it, but you are alone, huh? Gonna eat early?"
She nodded. "Surprise Robair," she said.
"Not much surprises that man. Anyway, sure, tell him to set two places."
The dinner was what she'd asked for because she knew it was what the ranch kitchen most easily afforded — besides which she did not want to invade the food stocked for the Christmas Eve party. She and Nevada sat facing each other across the table, over steaks and potatoes, salads, and a bottle of red wine. Neither had changed clothes since their ride. Nevada actually wore buckskins. Jo-Ann wished he would wear them tomorrow night but knew he wouldn't. She would like to show up at the party in her jeans and wool shirt — and knew she wouldn't.
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