The Raiders

by Гарольд Роббинс

  "A couple of guys coming in from the East want to meet with you."

  Bat shrugged. "I'll meet with just about anybody. Who do you have in mind?"

  "A couple of men with money to invest," said Chandler.

  "Do you want to tell me who they are?"

  "Mr. David Beck and Mr. James Hoffa," said Chandler. "Mr. Beck is the president of —"

  "Dave Beck is president of the International Teamsters. Jimmy Hoffa is his bag man. I know who you mean."

  "The union has hundreds of millions of dollars in its pension fund," said Chandler. "It is looking for investments. Knowing that you and your father want to build another casino-hotel in Las Vegas — "

  "They want to be partners," said Bat. "Not likely. I'll meet with them. But partnership ... Not likely."

  Bat called New York, and four days later, Jonas arrived. The next day, Beck and Hoffa arrived and were taken up to the fifth floor.

  Bat had no difficulty in seeing Jimmy Hoffa for what he was and would have recognized him for it if he had read nothing about him. He'd met the type in the army: scrappy, cocky little street bullies. Some of them had smarts, too. Hoffa did. Hoffa was a street tough, and he was short-tempered and quick with his fists, but he was shrewd. Dave Beck was something else: a fat thug, a straw-hatted waddling hunk of grease.

  Morris Chandler treated them with oily respect. He introduced them to Bat and suggested which chairs they might like. He had already ordered a cart of liquor and snacks.

  Little time was wasted on small talk. Beck came to the point.

  "Your company is operating what is probably the most profitable hotel-casino in town," he said, speaking directly to Jonas. "We understand you want to build another one and maybe a third one. Obviously you have expertise. You have the connections that get the gaming licenses. We have capital. The Central States Pension Fund is looking for secure investments with more than conservative return. Some of your money ... And some of ours ... Some of your savvy ... And some of ours ..."

  "I control my businesses," said Jonas.

  "I control my union," said Beck. "Like, you've never had any problem with drivers refusing to back trucks up to your docks because they don't exactly meet safety standards. Inter-Continental Airlines has some real problems with non-standard loading docks, but we've never made an issue of it. You see what I mean? One hand washes the other."

  "One hand washes the other," Jonas agreed. "Before we could do business, though, you'd have to wash your hands."

  "What the hell's that mean?" barked Hoffa.

  "To start with, Tony Pro," said Jonas.

  "Whatta ya mean by that?"

  "Tony Provenzano," said Jonas. "He may be a great guy, but I don't want to do business with him. There are others."

  "Are you gonna tell me who I can associate with?" asked Beck angrily.

  "Not at all. But I'm gonna tell you who I'll associate with."

  Beck looked at Chandler. "I don't think Mr. Cord has been listening."

  "Why bother?" asked Bat.

  They stood, and Hoffa strode up to Bat. "Who the hell are you, sonny?" he asked, his saliva spraying.

  "I'll tell you who I'm not," said Bat. "I'm not a cheap little street punk. That's who I'm not."

  Hoffa danced like a boxer and threw a punch. It glanced off Bat's left cheek, stinging but not hurting. Hoffa danced some more, his fists up, ready to try again. Bat smiled faintly and kicked him sharply on the shin. Hoffa yelled and was distracted for the instant it took Bat to drive a fist hard into his solar plexus. Stunned, Hoffa dropped his hands, and Bat flattened his nose with a left jab, then broke his front teeth with a right cross.

  "Open the door, Chandler!" Bat yelled. When Chandler hesitated, Bat yelled again.

  Chandler opened the door. Bat grabbed the reeling Hoffa by the nape of the neck and seat of the pants and threw him into the hall. Hoffa rolled across the floor and against the elevator doors.

  Dave Beck, crimson-faced, shrieked at Jonas, "You'll regret this till the day you die!"

  Jonas snapped a punch against his nose, splattering blood. "That's just a sample of what you'll get if you try calling a strike on me, you sleazy tub of lard," he said. "You get out of town. I don't want to see you here again."

  16

  1

  TONI SOMETIMES FORGOT ABOUT THE TIME ZONES AND phoned Bat as soon as she arrived at her office. Her calls woke him.

  "Can you keep a secret?" she asked at six-fifteen in the morning.

  "Yeah ... Yeah, sure. What you got in mind, honey?"

  "Is this phone line clear?"

  "Clear. Clear. What you got in mind?"

  "A federal grand jury has returned a secret indictment. It will be announced this afternoon. They've charged Dave Beck under enough specifications to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life!"

  "What about Hoffa?"

  "Not Hoffa. But the whole damned gang will be tied up in knots, trying to keep their boss out of the slammer. I don't think you have to worry about them for a while, Bat. That is ... until Beck is gone and Hoffa takes over."

  "Well, thanks. I guess there's nothing like having a girlfriend in the Senate."

  "That's something else, Bat. In the spring I'll have been a Senate aide four years. I'm leaving. I've given the senator my resignation."

  "And ... ?"

  "I'm going to work for The Washington Post. As a political reporter."

  "I see."

  "For a while, Bat. For a while."

  "Okay."

  "Bat, I —"

  "I couldn't ask you to come and live in Vegas," he interrupted. "You hate it more than I do."

  "Bat ... We're not yet thirty years old! There's time!"

  "Sure, babe. When will I see you?"

  "If you don't come East in the next month, I'll come out there. Deal?"

  "Deal," he grunted. He turned over and went back to sleep.

  2

  During her spring break in 1954, Jo-Ann flew to Las Vegas. She said she would like to drive her Porsche, and she didn't care if she ever went back to Smith College, but Jonas, Monica, and Bat all discouraged her from that plan and insisted she fly.

  "You bastard," she said. "Oops! Sorry, Bat. I mean, you son of a — Well, that's not so good either. Why in hell did you have me put in a suite on the second floor, when ..."

  They were standing in the living room of the suite he used as an office, embracing, kissing. "Little sister," he said. "Get this straight. We are not going to sleep together." He ran a hand through her silky dark hair and down her cheek. "I'm not saying I wouldn't like to. But I told you the one time was all the times, and that's the way it's got to be. You're my sister, goddammit!"

  "Pretty good piece of pussy, too, aren't I?"

  Her warm young body, bound up in nylon and rubber bra and panty girdle, was firm and pointy and all but irresistible. But he resisted it. "Ruin your life, ruin mine," he said. "I'm glad we were together once, but we can't do it anymore."

  "Coward."

  "Jo-Ann ... You drink too much."

  "I'm the daughter of Jonas and Monica. If that didn't make a girl drink, what would?"

  He sighed. "We'll talk about that later. I've got an agent and his girl dancer coming in for an audition. Why don't you sit down and watch?"

  "Audition?"

  "For the show. In the show room downstairs. I've started booking the shows myself. You know how it is. I was supposed to be a company lawyer. Instead I find myself managing a hotel."

  "What about Chandler?"

  "Chandler does his job. Booking talent isn't part of it. I took that away from him. Relax. Sit down and have a light Scotch. An agent named Sam Stein is bringing up a dancer named Margit Little. The girl is going to show us what she can do."

  Sam Stein was a small man, wearing a faultlessly tailored gray double-breasted suit. He was bald, and his face was cherubic and looked as if it had been drawn in sharp, unshaded lines by a skillful cartoonist.

  As he had promised,
Margit Little was cute. Her big round blue eyes spoke wondering innocence. Her light-brown hair was tied down tight. She was probably nineteen years old, maybe only eighteen.

  "Margit has real talent," said Stein. "I don't want for her just a place in the chorus. She should be a featured dancer. She can sing a little also, nothing too challenging. She has brought a record. You have a player?"

  Bat had a high-fidelity record player in the suite. He put the seven-inch record the girl offered on the turntable. She removed her skirt and shoes to dance, and danced barefoot in black leotards cut high on her hips. Her first number was classical, akin to ballet. When she was finished she asked Bat to turn the record over, and she danced then to a fast, rhythmic jazz number.

  When she finished and bent over to retrieve her skirt and shoes, Stein rubbed his hands together. "She has talent, yes?"

  "She has talent, yes," Bat agreed.

  "When did you become a judge of talent, big brother?" asked Jo-Ann.

  Bat smiled at the little girl and said, "You don't have to be a judge to know talent when you see it." He turned and spoke to Stein. "I'd like to have her in a show, Mr. Stein. My only problem is, I'm not sure where I put her. She can't dance in the bar. I can only use singers there. In the show room I've got a revue. I can't slot her into it, I don't think."

  "I have a bigger proposition for you, Mr. Cord," said Stein. "Your revue has been running a long time. Have you thought about a new production?"

  "Proposition," said Bat.

  "Glenda Grayson," said Stein. "And Margit. An unforgettable show."

  3

  Brother, sister, and Sam Stein sat at a table in The Roman Circus in Los Angeles watching a loud and colorful production number on the big stage. A brash blonde wearing a rhinestone-studded pink dress was energetically belting out a song, dancing at the same time. She was Glenda Grayson.

  "Jonas won't like her," said Jo-Ann flatly. "She's too frenetic. She bounces around too much."

  "He's given me authority — "

  "Which he'll withdraw in a moment, if he wants to," she said. "Don't count on him to give you a free hand. There are guys lying bleeding on the floor who thought they had a free hand from our father."

  Bat did not respond. He turned his attention to Glenda Grayson.

  The show ended. The lights came up. Bat reached for the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and poured for himself and Jo-Ann. He and his father shared a habit: They poured for others without asking if they wanted any more.

  Sam Stein had overheard the exchange between brother and sister. "I also represent Doug Howell," he said. "He's looking for somebody to produce a series of Westerns, hour-long shows probably. He wants to do realistic Westerns — no singing, no guitars, no comic sidekick, no embroidered shirts. Actually, he's thinking of shows along the lines of the old Nevada Smith films."

  "There are a lot of Westerns on television already," said Bat.

  "The American public never tires of them," said Stein. "The archetypal American morality play."

  Bat frowned and shook his head. "What you say may well be right — I mean, that there may be room for another Western. But I don't think I'll want to produce it."

  "Oh?"

  "My chief interest in getting back into film production — that is, videotape production — is to utilize the facility we already own. Cord Studios. We've got soundstages there that we've been renting to other people. I want to use them myself."

  Jo-Ann listened to her brother and was surprised. He didn't talk about what his father might want, or even what "we" might want, but about what "I" want. She wondered if his father knew that was how he expressed himself. Big brother was taking a big risk. God knew how his father would react if word got to him that his son talked this way.

  "I can understand that, Mr. Cord," said Stein. "But — "

  Bat interrupted. "If I make Westerns, a lot of the shooting will have to be on outdoor locations, which means I'll be losing the economy of using an asset we already own. No, Mr. Stein, I think our first ventures into television production will be sitcoms or variety shows, where we can shoot on our soundstages and not have to go out. That's why I came here to see Glenda Grayson."

  Stein drew a deep breath. "Well, how did you like Glenda? I'm sorry you don't like her, Miss Cord."

  "I'd like to meet her," said Bat.

  "She has to do another show," said Stein. "After that she'll be totally exhausted. I'll go back and speak to her. She might meet with you for five minutes tonight. Tomorrow ... maybe for lunch."

  4

  Sam was wrong. Glenda Grayson came to their table after her second show, sat down, and accepted a Scotch from Bat. They could not talk, though. People in the nightclub came to their table to say they had enjoyed her performance or to ask for her autograph.

  "Let's go up to my suite," she said. "We can have a drink there without all this."

  "Aren't you tired?" asked Sam.

  "I want to talk to this man," said Glenda. "After all, he came all the way to Los Angeles to see me. I'll see you at lunch, Sam."

  Jo-Ann was insightful enough to understand that she was being dismissed, too.

  In her suite, Glenda poured Scotch for Bat and poured a shot of vodka into a large glass of orange juice. She was not wearing a costume from her act, just a rather ordinary white blouse and a black skirt.

  "You are supposed to be totally exhausted," said Bat.

  "I am," she said. "You might not believe this, Bat, but I lose two or three pounds during an evening. Then I gain it back the next day. It's loss of fluid, mostly. I sweat. Then I drink a quart of orange juice and — "

  Glenda Grayson was a slender blonde with a good figure and an extraordinarily expressive face. Jo-Ann had called her performance on the stage frenetic, which it had been, and now, being alone with her, Bat saw that the woman was incapable of relaxation. She was possessed by a sort of irrepressible tension that perhaps released her only when she was asleep. It was difficult to think she was comfortable, or ever could be.

  Her performance on the nightclub stage had been dynamic, as she danced, sang, and delivered comic one-liners in rapid-fire succession. When she began a line with her catch phrase "V wouldn' b'lieve it," her audiences began to laugh before she told them what it was they wouldn't believe.

  She used no coarse language in her act. Her comedy did not rely on titillating or scatological references, but a heady eroticism was never far beneath the surface, meticulously contrived to achieve the maximum effect from subtlety. She was good at that. She changed costumes twice during each performance. The final costume was a form-fitting red dress that was fastened up the back with Velcro and could be torn off in one movement. At the end she tore it off and sang and danced in a red corselette with garters holding up dark stockings. People seeing her act for the first time felt sure she would tear off the corselette, too, and stand revealed at the end either naked or in something sensationally brief. But she didn't.

  She was thirty-two years old and had been a star nightclub performer for thirteen years. She had appeared on network television a score of times, always as a guest on someone else's variety hour or talk show. She'd wanted a special of her own but had never had one. She had wanted a movie of her own but had never had one. Her name was known to nearly everyone — but at a level well below that of superstar. She was one of the top fifty performers in the United States, maybe, but certainly not one of the top ten.

  "You like the act?" she asked Bat. She was not accustomed to having to ask the question, but he had not said anything.

  "Oh, sure. You've got a lot of talent. I've just been wondering how it can be packaged for a television series — assuming it can be packaged."

  "Cord Television?"

  "No. Cord Productions."

  "What are you thinking about?"

  "I'm thinking about a weekly show. The Glenda Grayson Show. But I'm thinking about how to do it. You can't repeat the act once a week. Even if you could stand the strain, we couldn't come
up with enough material to let you do a forty-minute performance once a week. You've got a great act. But you can't do it time and again, time and again, week after week."

  She nodded. "I don't repackage at intervals," she said. "If you see my shtick a month from now, you'll see it's different. Next month, more different. By the time I get back to The Roman Circus for next year's show, it will be all different. Different songs, different dancing, new costumes — but all worked in gradually over the course of the year. That's how I work. I may try something different tomorrow night, just to see how it works. If it bombs, I fix it or drop it. That's the great thing about club acts. You can tinker with them. TV — " She shrugged. "You go on the air with a bit and it falls flat, you've fallen flat. You don't have a chance to fix it. Tough damned medium, TV."

  She poured more orange juice into her glass, without adding vodka.

  "Does Sam make your decisions?" he asked.

  "Sam finds opportunities," she said. "I choose. I make my own career decisions."

  "Would you be interested in trying to work something out?" he asked. "A weekly show. The Glenda Grayson Show."

  "Sure."

  "Then I work with you. Or Sam?"

  "With me. And Sam. He's a great guy. I'm not gonna shut him out. But he's the business side of things. We make a deal, he'll negotiate the contract."

  Bat reached across the table and took her hand in his. "We could come up with something real great, you and I," he said quietly.

  Glenda put her other hand to her face and used a finger to wipe the corners of her eyes. "Hey," she whispered. "Careful. I'm a sucker for handsome shkotzim. I've made a fool of myself more than once."

  "Shkotzim?"

  She grinned and closed her hand around his. "Guys that're not Jewish," she said.

  "Glenda ..."

  He rose and walked around the little table to stand behind her. He put a hand on her curly blond hair and found it stiff. He realized he was touching hairspray. Throughout her energetic performance her hair remained in place because of spray lacquer.