The Raiders

by Гарольд Роббинс

  "Let me worry about that," said Hamilton.

  "You're the boss," she said simply.

  "Here's the story. Her agent Sam Stein warned the girl not to go to Cord's hotel suite alone. She did anyway. She was supposed to call him when she got home. She called the next day. Sam's had her watched. When Cord is in town, she is not home nights."

  "Sam's pissed," said Lorena Pastor. "You know he lost Margit Little as a client. To Ben Parrish. He might be— "

  "Don't worry about it," said Hamilton. "I want you to play it. I'll run pictures with the column — sick old man and fresh young girl. That's the theme: old lecher taking the bloom of youth off pretty little dancer."

  "Jonas Cord an old letch?" She shook her head. "I was in my forties. He was in his late twenties. Not a letch, Walt — a stud!"

  "Write the story my way, Lorena," said Hamilton firmly. "Either that, or I'll write it and insert it in your column."

  "Understood," she said sadly.

  "Okay. Drink up. You see, your onetime friend Mr. Cord has run his ass up against some people who aren't afraid of him."

  6

  An hour later Hamilton was on the telephone to Detroit. "Done, my friend," he said. "No, I didn't have to; she'll write it herself, in her own inimitable style. Sixty-eight papers, Jimmy! Plus others that'll pick up the story as news. Sunday in thirty-five papers, Monday in the rest. This time next week every other American will know that Jonas Cord is screwing Margit Little. So— We got a deal, right? Your local will sign the contract. Right. Right. Sure, I know it's peanuts to what your pension fund is putting into the new Glenda Grayson. But you can understand a man's interest in— Right. Your word's good. I know that. So's mine. Look for the story on Sunday."

  25

  1

  JONAS HAD RECONSIDERED HIS DECISION ABOUT A BEARD. It was gray, no question about that, but he had retained not just a barber but a hair stylist to trim it, and the man came to the suite twice a week to clip both beard and hair. With a straight razor he cut the hair low on Jonas's cheeks, to give him a beard and chin whiskers reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln's in the final Brady photograph — which indeed he acknowledged was his model. Unlike Lincoln, though, Jonas wore a mustache, which was the most difficult part of the trimming job.

  Lest the beard seem to have turned him into some sort of bohemian character, Jonas returned to wearing jackets, white shirts, and neckties. A tailor came to the suite and measured him for half a dozen conservative single-breasted business suits. He abandoned the rumpled khaki slacks and golf shirts.

  In April he flew to New York. In the Waldorf Towers apartment he did not reclaim his office but left it to Bat. Father and son met for lunch at The Four Seasons.

  "I can break the bitch," Jonas said.

  "No, you can't," said Bat. "She doesn't need us. Besides, she's got money behind her. She can walk away from us— "

  "And shoot us a finger," Jonas interrupted. "How'd you think you were going to prevent her from doing that? By humpin' her? Well, it didn't work, did it?"

  "That doesn't work very often, does it?" Bat challenged. "You haven't made it work any better than I have. You think you've sewed up Margit Little's loyalty by — to use your term — humping her?"

  "Margit— "

  "The Margit Little Show will not replace the Glenda Grayson Show," Bat interrupted. "Not in ratings, not in revenue. Hell, she's got talent, she's appealing, and in time she'll be a winner. But next season we don't have a major show."

  "Are you telling me I fucked it up?" Jonas asked irritably.

  "I'm not saying it. You say it, if you think it's possible."

  "You humped our star, then dropped her," said Jonas.

  "You're humping Margit," said Bat grimly. "That's the problem. You started humping Margit, then you announced you were going to build a new show around her, and when Glenda asked for more money, you said no. What'd you think she'd do?"

  "Son," Jonas murmured with mock patience, "Glenda didn't go off the reservation because I'm humping Margit and am going to make a new star of her. She'd have gone off, no matter what. Two days, just two goddamned days, after we broke off negotiations, she announced her nightclub schedule. She and Sam Stein didn't arrange that in two days. That took time to set up. When they came in to negotiate, they already knew she was going to do nightclubs all next season. Face it, Bat. The bitch sold out."

  Bat drew a deep breath. "Margit is damaged goods," he said. "When the word got out that you were sleeping with her, the whole goddamned world took that as an explanation as to why you wanted to build a show for her."

  "I told you last year to build her up, in anticipation that Glenda would jump. And you didn't do it."

  "I had a few other things to do, if you recall. Anyway, we didn't announce a plan to build her up until the word was out that you and Margit— "

  He paused for a moment. Senator Jacob Javits had come in, spotted Bat, and was coming toward their table. Bat introduced him to Jonas, and the three men chatted for a moment. When the senator moved on, Jonas and Bat picked up their conversation.

  "There's more to this than just a performer with a wounded ego," said Jonas. "Sam Stein has been talking to Lennie Hirschberg about a new Glenda Grayson Show, for the '59 season. That's going to take a lot of money, and guess who's coming up with it."

  "Who?"

  "The Teamsters Union. Central States Pension Fund. Jimmy Hoffa."

  "Yeah, and they're funding a Vegas hotel," said Bat.

  "You have any idea how much money is in that fund?" Jonas asked. "Billions."

  "But that's a trust fund," said Bat. "How can they invest it in a television show?"

  "They play fast and loose with their fiduciary obligations," said Jonas. "Dave Beck did, and now Hoffa does. They don't invest just to make the fund grow; they invest to wield power. And they've formed an alliance with some damned unsavory guys."

  "You think they approached Glenda Grayson, rather than the other way around?"

  Jonas nodded. "And I hardly need tell you why. Problems are beginning to show up at the construction site. They don't want the InterContinental built."

  "Strikes?"

  "No. That would tip their hand too much. Delays in delivery. After three days preparation for pouring a concrete floor, we couldn't pour because one of the five mixer trucks failed to show up. You can't pour four and add one later; that would make layers and seriously weaken the structure. The driver said the truck broke down on the road. I suspect he made it break down."

  "Well ... maybe," said Bat skeptically.

  "If that was the only thing that's happened, I wouldn't be suspicious. Last week a load of steel fasteners disappeared from a warehouse in San Francisco, and our men had to stop work until we could get a load from another source. The warehouse said they'd accidentally delivered our fasteners to the wrong job. And so on and so on and so on. Too many coincidences. We're falling more and more behind. I don't need to tell you how much it's costing."

  Jonas stood up to greet an auburn-haired woman who had literally trotted across the room to his table.

  "Jonas, dah-ling!" she boomed in her all-but-patented smoky voice. "Back in town! And this is that mysterious son of yours who doesn't go where people go — which has deprived me of the pleasure of meeting him."

  Jonas kissed her hand, then introduced her to Bat. "This is Tallulah Bankhead, in case you hadn't already figured that out."

  "In the gossip columns again, naughty boy," she said, shaking her head. "Thank Gawd that wretched woman Lorena Pastor never found out about you and me!"

  "Found out what, Tallulah?" Jonas asked, smiling and frowning at the same time.

  "That we never did it!" She laughed. "That would have been a much more scandalous story than if we had." She turned to Bat. "Give me a ring, dah-ling. Come up to my place and play bridge sometime. Well ... ta-ta."

  As she hurried back to her own table and Bat and Jonas sat down again, nearly every eye in the room was on them.

&nb
sp; "Whatever you do, don't go to her apartment and play bridge with her," said Jonas.

  "Any particular reason?"

  "She takes off her clothes and plays bridge nude. Not always, just when the spirit moves her. She's casual about it, makes no big drama. She goes on playing bridge as if nothing were different. Sometimes it's embarrassing as hell — depending who's at the table with you. She did it in front of David Sarnoff one night. He's a man not easily embarrassed, but she took him completely unawares, and he began to cough and turned red, and I thought maybe he was having a heart attack."

  "She mentioned the Lorena Pastor column," said Bat. "How did Angie react to that?"

  "Angie's realistic," said Jonas. "And if your personal life is none of my business, mine's none of yours."

  2

  Angie loved the black Porsche that Jonas had given her for Christmas in 1952. The hotel garage kept it washed and waxed, and she liked to go for drives in the desert. She'd had it up to 125 miles per hour and had sensed it had more in it when she eased off on the accelerator. Once she'd been chased by a Nevada highway patrolman, and he had simply given up after a few miles. He was getting all he could out of his special police Ford, and she was opening more distance between them. He knew who she was and meant only to give her a warning anyway, so he pulled off the road, and when she passed him on her way back to town, he just blinked his lights, and she blinked hers playfully.

  Usually she drove alone, though sometimes Jonas rode with her. Today Morris Chandler sat in the right seat.

  "Haven't you got it figured out?" he asked her. "You can't trust him. Nobody can trust him."

  "He can sleep with another woman if he wants to," said Angie, staring at the road, not glancing at Chandler. "He never said he wouldn't. He made no commitment of that kind."

  "He's not a nice man," said Chandler. "Nevada Smith was a good man, a true friend. He asked me to take Jonas in to help him duck a subpoena, and the next thing I know he owns the hotel and I'm his employee. And so are you. And you're sleeping with him."

  "He's been good to me," she said firmly.

  "Yeah, but Jonas giveth and Jonas taketh away. Whatever you've got from him, he can take away any time he feels like it. You've got no security, honey. What are you, forty years old? His new girlfriend is barely twenty."

  "Twenty-two," said Angie dryly. "Where you gonna be ten years from now?"

  "What are you trying to say, Morris? Spit it out."

  "I have friends who could do some very good things for you, Angie," said Chandler.

  "Who are they? And why would they want to do anything for me?"

  "Never mind who they are. They're the kind of people that, if you do something good for them, they'll take care of you for the rest of your life. Hell, that's what they've done for me. I'm gonna be seventy-six years old this year. If Jonas fired me, they'd take care of me. It's what you call loyalty."

  "If I do 'something good for them,' huh? Just what do they have in mind?"

  "They want information, that's all. Maybe copies of some papers."

  "In other words, they want me to betray Jonas," she said coldly.

  "The bastard has betrayed you!"

  She shook her head. "No. He hasn't."

  "Be realistic, Angie."

  "The answer is no, Morris."

  "Better think about somethin'. These guys I'm talking about are loyal and all that, but they're also the kind of guys you don't say no to. They have ways of getting what they want."

  "That's a threat, I suppose."

  "Angie, let's don't use bad words! You're being offered a good deal."

  "The answer is no, Morris."

  He sighed. "Jesus ... I suppose you'll tell Jonas about this conversation."

  Angie shrugged.

  3

  Dr. Maxim was at the wheel of Maxim's III, taking the boat home at the end of a half day's fishing, during which nobody had caught anything but a bonito. Nobody was unhappy about that. They had come out to fish, but their real purpose, of getting to know each other better, had been accomplished.

  Morgana Maxim had arranged the afternoon. As a prominent Democrat, she wanted to know all other prominent Democrats so far as possible and be influenced by personal judgment, not by what she read in the newspapers. Tanned and sun-bleached as always, she sat in the rear of the boat, relaxed and sipping from a gin and tonic.

  Toni sat beside her stepmother, dressed almost identically in a red polo shirt and brief white shorts.

  Sitting in one of the two fishing chairs, wearing tennis whites — shorts and shirt — with a Red Sox baseball cap and aviator sunglasses, smoking a small cigar, his face deeply wrinkled from squinting into the sun, was the man Morgana had wanted to meet: Senator Jack Kennedy of Massachusetts.

  Senator Kennedy had barely failed to take the 1956 vice-presidential nomination away from the farcical Estes Kefauver, and it was widely supposed he would claim a spot on the 1960 Democratic ticket. He had only one hurdle to leap: reelection in Massachusetts in the fall.

  Morgana had been impressed, as Toni had told her she would be. Toni had known Jack Kennedy from the time of his arrival in the Senate in 1953, when she was still an aide to Senator Holland. More recently she met with him from time to time as a political reporter for The Washington Post. She had learned to mimic his Boston-Harvard accent, and one time he had overheard her doing it. From that time, they counted each other as friends.

  "You should hear Toni do me," he had said to Dr. and Morgana Maxim just after they came aboard the boat. "If I wanted to do a radio speech, I could let her do it, and I could take a day off."

  Toni had laughed. "Let him explain to you that there's no such thing as a Harvard campus, just the 'Haa-v'd yaad,' " she had said. "Sometimes he takes his daag for a ride in the caa."

  Kennedy had laughed heartily. "See? A little change in voice, and she could take my place at any microphone."

  He had caught the bonito. They had tossed it back.

  "Plans?" Morgana asked Kennedy.

  He shrugged. "Life is short," he said. "Art is long. Who knows?"

  4

  Jack Kennedy remained astride Toni, though he had withdrawn from her and his drooping penis gleamed with their fluids.

  "Would Dr. Maxim and Morgana be angry if they knew about this?" he asked.

  "Morgana'd be disappointed if we didn't," said Toni. "She'll be a delegate for you, and she'll lead other delegates."

  "What about, uh, Jonas Cord the Third?"

  "Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. I don't ask you— "

  "No, you don't, and I appreciate that, Toni." This was the third time they had been together this way, and each time it had been a completely satisfying experience, made more satisfying by their mutual understanding that they did it honestly: for the pleasure of the moment, with no thought of any kind of commitment. He was a handsome, personable, virile man, and her pleasure in him was enhanced by her hunch that one day she would look back on these hours and be glad she had fucked with one of the century's preeminent leaders, maybe even a President.

  Another reason for their satisfaction was the certainty that they could trust each other.

  "What can I do for you, Toni?" he asked.

  "Uhhmm ..." She chuckled. "You've done quite enough, thank you."

  He grinned broadly, showing his teeth. "I had something, uh, different in mind. A different kind of thing. I mean— "

  "Jack ... I'm not from Massachusetts. You don't have to do me favors."

  "You've done some very nice favors for me," he said.

  "Meaning I did something I didn't enjoy so you could enjoy it?" she asked. "C'mon, Jack. Women like to play the old game: pretending they can hardly bear to do it and are making a big sacrifice for you, making themselves martyrs. But don't kid yourself. Women like it just as much as men do. Anyway, this woman does."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  She nudged him playfully.

  "Are you going to marry Jonas Cord the Third?" he
asked.

  "I haven't decided," she said.

  "His father is like my father," said Jack Kennedy. "Life in that family would be exciting ... but tough and demanding. Challenging, Toni. Challenging."

  "Speaking of challenges. The Cords are being challenged to get out of Las Vegas."

  "Mafia turf," said Kennedy.

  "Hoffa," said Toni. "The Teamsters are making it difficult for Cord Hotels to build the InterContinental. No strikes. Just ... coincidences."

  "My brother Bobby would be interested. So would Senator McClellan. I'll talk to Bobby about it."

  "Do that, will you, Jack? I'd appreciate it. And have Bobby keep me informed, okay?"

  5

  Ben Parrish enjoyed driving Jo-Ann's Porsche 356. He appreciated fine cars. It was the only car he'd ever driven in which you might actually turn off music on the radio and just listen to the engine. It handled beautifully, too. You didn't have to steer it around a turn; you just pointed it where you wanted it to go, and the little coupe would obediently slip through the curve — provided you didn't ask too much of it and make the rear end come around.

  Because he was driving the Porsche, Ben had decided to return to Santa Monica by way of Mulholland Highway and Topanga Canyon Road. He was doing just fine, too, pushing seventy most of the time, up to eighty occasionally, and conceding sixty or below only when he had to.

  His mind was on his wife. She was waiting for him, ready with an ice-cold vodka martini, for sure, and something more besides that would melt the ice in that martini.

  He'd fallen into shit and come out smelling like roses. He could stand the old man: Jonas. He had to grit his teeth to be polite and deferential, but he could do it. He could function as a Cord errand boy. There was money in it. And status. And there'd be an inheritance. The girl — Jo-Ann — was a handful in more ways than one; but she was the most eager to satisfy of any piece of tail he'd ever had; and whether she'd married him for his long schlong or to shoot a finger at her father, she was a good wife in most senses of the term.