The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

  "Your contract doesn't provide for advances like that," I said.

  "I know," he answered. "But this is important. It won't happen again, I promise. It's for Monica."

  "Monica?" I looked at him. This was going to be good. "What about her?"

  He shook his head. "I want to send her to her mother in England. She's too much for me. I can't control her any more. She's seeing some guy on the sly and I have a feeling if she isn't balling him already, she soon will be."

  For a moment, I stared at him. I wondered if this wasn't a gentle form of blackmail. It could be that he already knew and was taking this way of letting me know. "Do you know the guy?"

  He shook his head. "If I did, I'd kill him," he said vehemently. "A nice sweet innocent kid like her."

  I kept my face impassive. Love is blind but parents are blinder. Even a cheater like Amos, with all his knowledge, was no smarter than Joe Doakes in Pomona. "You talk to her?"

  He shook his head again. "I tried but she won't listen. You know how kids are nowadays. They learn everything in school; you can't teach them anything. When she was sixteen, I found a package of Merry Widows in her pocketbook."

  He should have stopped her then. He was about three years too late. She was nineteen now and carried her own brass ring. "Guys like you never learn."

  "What was I supposed to do?" he asked truculently. "Keep her locked in her room?"

  I shook my head. "You could have tried being her father."

  "What makes you such an expert?" he snapped. "You won't talk like that after you have kids of your own."

  I could have told him. I had a father who was too busy with his own life, too. But I was tired. I got to my feet.

  "What about the money?" he asked anxiously.

  "I’ll give it to you," I said. A feeling of disgust suddenly came up in me. What did I need guys like this around me for? They were like leeches. Once they got into you, they never let go. "As a matter of fact, I'll give you twenty-five thousand."

  An expression of surprised relief flooded across his face. "You will, Jonas?"

  I nodded. "On one condition."

  For the first time, caution came into his eyes. "What do you mean?"

  "I want your resignation."

  "From Winthrop Aircraft?" His voice was incredulous.

  "From Cord Aircraft," I said pointedly.

  The color began to drain from his face. "But- but I started the company. I know everything about it. I was just planning a new plane that the Army will sure as hell go for- "

  "Take the money, Amos," I said coldly. "You've had it." I started for the elevator. I stepped inside and the boy closed the doors in his face. "Going up, Mr. Cord?" he asked.

  I stared at him. That was a stupid question. What other way was there to go?

  "All the way," I said wearily.

  Monica was lying across the bed in the tops of my pajamas, half asleep. She opened her eyes and looked at me. "Everything go all right?"

  I nodded.

  She watched me as I threw my shirt across a chair. "What did Daddy want?"

  I stepped out of my trousers and caught the pajama bottoms she threw at me. "He just turned in his resignation," I said, kicking off my shorts and getting into the pajamas.

  She sat up in bed, her brown eyes widening in surprise. "He did?"

  I nodded.

  "I wonder why?"

  I looked at her. "He said it had something to do with you. That he wanted more time to be your father."

  She stared at me for a moment, then began to laugh. "Well, I'll be damned," she said. "All my life I wanted him to pay some kind of attention to me and now, when I don't need him any more, he suddenly wants to play daddy."

  "Don't need him any more?"

  She nodded. "Not any more. Ever," she said slowly. She came off the bed and laid her head against my chest. Her voice was a childlike whisper of confidence. "Not now that I have you. You're everything to me – father, brother, lover."

  I stroked her soft brown hair slowly. Suddenly, a surge of sympathy came up inside me. I knew how alone you could be when you were nineteen.

  Her eyes were closed and there were faintly blue weary hollows in the soft white flesh beneath them. I pressed my lips lightly to her forehead. "Come to bed, child," I said gently. "It's almost morning."

  She was asleep in a moment, her head resting on my shoulder, her neck in the crook of my arm. For a long time, I couldn't fall asleep. I lay there looking down at her quiet face as the sun came up and light spilled into the room.

  Damn Amos Winthrop! Damn Jonas Cord! I cursed all men who were too busy and self-centered to be fathers to their children.

  I began to feel weariness seep through me. Half asleep, I felt her move beside me and the warmth of her long, graceful body flowed down along my side. Then sleep came. The dark, starless night of wonderful sleep.

  We were married the next evening at the Little Chapel in Reno.

  4

  I SAW THE GLEAMING PHOSPHORESCENCE MOVING in the water and flicked the fly gaily across the stream just over the trout. The instinct came up in me. I knew I had him. Everything was right. The water, the flickering shadows from the trees lining the bank, the bottle-blue, green and red tail of the fly at the end of my line. Another moment and the bastard would strike. I set myself when I heard Monica's voice from the bank behind me.

  "Jonas!"

  Her voice shattered the stillness and the trout dived for the bottom of the stream. The fly began to drag and before I turned around, I knew the honeymoon was over.

  "What is it?" I growled.

  She stood there in a pair of shorts, her knees red and her nose peeling. "There's a telephone call for you. From Los Angeles."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know," she answered. "It's a woman. She didn't give her name."

  I looked back at the stream. There were no lights in the water. The fish were gone. That was the end of it. The fishing was over for the day.

  I started toward the bank. "Tell her to hold on," I said. "I’ll be up there in a minute."

  She nodded and started back to the cabin. I began to reel in the line. I wondered who could be calling me. Not many people knew about the cabin in the hills.

  When I was a kid, I used to come up here with Nevada. My father always intended to come along but he never did make it.

  I came out of the stream and trudged up the path. It was late in the afternoon and the evening sounds were just beginning. Through the trees I could hear the crickets beginning their song.

  I laid the rod alongside the outside wall of the cabin and went inside. Monica was sitting in a chair near the telephone, turning the pages of a magazine. I picked up the phone. "Hello."

  "Mr. Cord?"

  "Yes."

  "Just a moment," the operator sang. "Los Angeles, your party is on the wire."

  I heard a click, then a familiar voice. "Jonas?"

  "Rina?"

  "Yes," she said. "I've been trying to get you for three days. Nobody would tell me where you were, then I thought of the cabin."

  "Great," I said, looking over the telephone at Monica. She was looking down at the magazine but I knew she was listening.

  "By the way," Rina said in that low, husky voice. "Congratulations. I hope you'll be very happy. Your bride's a very pretty girl."

  "You know her?"

  "No," Rina answered quickly. "I saw the pictures in the papers."

  "Oh," I said. "Thanks. But that isn't why you called."

  "No, it's not," she said with her usual directness. "I need your help."

  "If it's another ten you need, I can always let you have it."

  "It's for more money than that. Much more."

  "How much more?"

  "Two million dollars."

  "What?" I all but yelled. "What the hell do you need that much money for?"

  "It's not for myself," she said. Her voice sounded very upset. "It's for Nevada. He's in a bind. He's about to lose everything he's got."r />
  "But I thought he was doing great. The papers say he's making a half million dollars a year."

  "He is," Rina said. "But- "

  "But what?" I pulled out a cigarette and fished around for a match. I knew Monica saw me but she kept her nose buried in the magazine. "I’m listening," I said, dragging on the cigarette.

  "Nevada's hocked everything he has to make a picture. He's been working on it for over a year and now everything's gone wrong and they don't want to release it."

  "Why?" I asked. "Is it a stinker?"

  "No," she said quickly. "It's not that. It's great. But only talking pictures are going. That's all the theaters will play."

  "Why didn't he make a talking picture to start with?" I asked.

  "He started it more than a year ago. Nobody expected talkies to come in the way they did," she answered. "Now the bank's calling his loan and Norman won't advance any more money. He claims he's stuck with his own pictures."

  "I see," I said.

  "You've got to help him, Jonas. His whole life is wrapped up in this picture. If he loses it, he'll never get over it."

  "Nevada never cared that much about money," I said.

  "It isn't the money," she said quickly. "It's the way he feels about this picture. He believes in it. For once, he had a chance to show what the West was really like."

  "Nobody gives a damn what the West was really like."

  "Did you ever see one of his pictures?" she asked.

  "No."

  A shade of disbelief crept into her voice. "Weren't you curious to see what he looked like on the screen?"

  "Why should I be?" I asked. "I know what he looks like."

  Her voice went flat. "Are you going to help?"

  "That's a lot of dough," I said. "Why should I?"

  "I remember when you wanted something real bad and he gave it to you."

  I knew what she was talking about. Nevada's stock interest in Cord Explosives. "It didn't cost him two million bucks," I said.

  "It didn't?" she asked. "What's it worth now?"

  That stopped me for a moment. Maybe it wasn't yet, but in five more years it would be.

  "If he's in that much of a jam," I said, ''why didn't he call me himself?"

  "Nevada's a proud man," she said. "You know that."

  "How come you're so interested?"

  "Because he's my friend," she said quickly. "When I needed help, he didn't ask any questions."

  "I’m not promising anything," I said. "But I'll fly down to L.A. tonight. Where can I reach you?"

  "I'm staying at Nevada's," she said. "But you better let me meet you someplace. I don't want him to know I called you."

  "O.K.," I said. "I’ll be at the Beverly Hills Hotel about midnight."

  I put down the telephone. "Who was that?" Monica asked.

  "My father's widow," I said, walking past her toward the bedroom. "Pack your bags. I'm taking you back to the ranch. I have to go down to L.A. on business tonight."

  "But it's only been five days," she said. "You promised we'd have a two-week honeymoon."

  "This is an emergency."

  She followed me into the bedroom as I sat down on the bed and pulled off my waders. "What will people think if we come back from our honeymoon after only five days?" she said.

  I stared up at her. "What the hell do I care what they think?"

  She began to cry. "I won't go," she said, stamping her foot.

  I got to my feet and started out. "Then stay!" I said angrily. "I'm going down the hill to get the car. If you're not ready when I get back, I'm leaving without you!"

  What was it with dames, anyway? You stood in front of some two-bit preacher for five lousy minutes and when you walked away, everything was turned inside out.

  Before you were married, it was great. You were the king. She stood there with one hand on your cock to let you know she wanted it, and with the other, tried to light your cigarette, wash your back, feed your face and smooth your pillow all at the same time.

  Then come the magic words and you got to beg for it. You got to go by the book. Play with it, warm it up, treat it gentle. You got to rest on your elbows and light her cigarettes and carry her wrap and open doors. You even have to thank her when she lets you have it, the same piece she couldn't stop offering you before.

  I pulled the car up in front of the cabin and tooted the horn. Monica came out carrying a small bag and stood there waiting for me to open the car door. After a moment, she opened the door and got in with a grieved expression. And she wore the same expression for the two hours it took us to drive back to the ranch.

  It was nine o'clock when I pulled up in front of the house. As usual, Robair was at the door. His expression didn't change when I stayed in the car after he took out Monica's valise. His eyes flicked across my face as he turned and bowed to Monica. "Evenin', Miz Cord," he said. "Ah have you' room all tidied up an' ready for you." Robair looked at me again and turned and went back up the steps.

  When Monica spoke, her voice was low and taut as a bowstring. "How long will you be gone?"

  I shrugged. "As long as it takes for me to finish my business." Then I felt a softening inside me. What the hell, after all we'd only been married for five days. "I’ll get back as quick as I can."

  "Don't hurry back!" she said and stalked up the steps and into the house without a backward glance.

  I swore angrily and threw the car into gear, then started up the road to the plant. I kept the old Waco in the field behind it. I was still angry when I climbed into the cockpit and I didn't begin to feel better until I was twenty-five hundred feet up and heading toward Los Angeles.

  5

  I LOOKED DOWN AT THE BLUE-COVERED SCRIPT in my hand, then back up at Rina. Time hadn't taken anything away from her. She was still slim and strong and her breasts jutted like rocks at the canyon edge and I knew they would be just as hard to the touch. The only things that had changed were her eyes. There was a sureness in them that hadn't been there before.

  "I’m not much for reading," I said.

  "I thought that was what you'd say," she said. "So I arranged with the studio to screen the picture for you. They're waiting down there right now."

  "How long you been out here?"

  "About a year and a half. Ever since I came back from Europe."

  "Staying at Nevada's all this time?"

  She nodded.

  "You sleeping with him?"

  She didn't evade. "Yes. He's very good for me."

  "Are you good for him?" I asked.

  Her eyes were still on mine. "I hope so," she said quietly. "But that doesn't really matter. You don't give a damn whether I am or I'm not."

  "I was just curious," I said, getting to my feet and dropping the script on the chair. "I was just wondering what it takes to keep you."

  "It's not what you think," she said quickly.

  "What is it, then?" I shot back. "Money?"

  "No." She shook her head. "A man. A real man. I never could make it with boys."

  That touched home. "Maybe I’ll make it in time," I said.

  "You just got married five days ago."

  I stared at her for a moment. I could feel all the old familiar excitement climbing up in me. "Let's go," I said tersely. "I haven't got all night."

  I sat in the darkened projection room with Rina on one side of me and Von Elster, the director, on the other.

  Rina hadn't lied. The picture was great, but for only one reason. Nevada. He held the picture together with an innate core of strength that somehow illuminated the screen.

  It was the strength I had always felt in him but up there it was larger, more purposeful, and no one could escape it. He started out on that screen as a sixteen-year-old boy and rode off into the hills in the end as a twenty-five-year-old man. Not once during the whole picture was I ever aware of his real age.

  I leaned back in my chair with a sigh as the lights came up. I reached for a cigarette, still feeling the excitement of the screen. I lit
the cigarette and dragged on it. The surging reached down into my loins. There was still something missing, I felt vaguely. Then I felt the heat in my thighs and I knew what it was.

  I looked at Von Elster. "Outside of that small bit about the madam in New Orleans and the convict's daughter in the cow town, there aren't any women in the picture."

  Von Elster smiled. "There are some things you don't do in a Western. Women is one of them."

  "Why?"

  "Because the industry feels that the image of the clean, strong man must be preserved. The hero can be guilty of any crime but fornication."

  I laughed and got to my feet. "Forgive the question," I said. "But why can't you just add voices the way you did the music? Why make the whole thing over?"

  "I wish we could," Von Elster said. "But the projection speed of silent film is different from sound film. Talking film is projected at the speed of speech, while silent film moves much faster, depending on dialogue cards and broader action to carry the story."

  I nodded. Mechanically, what he said made sense. Like everything else in this world, there was a technology to this business and it was beginning to interest me. Without mechanics, the whole thing would be impossible.

  "Come back to the hotel with me. I'd like to talk some more about this."

  I saw a sudden look of caution come into Rina's eyes. She glanced at Von Elster, then turned to me. "It's almost four o'clock," she said quickly. "And I think we've gone about as far as we can without Nevada."

  "O.K.," I said easily. "You bring him up to the hotel in the morning. Eight o'clock, all right?"

  "Eight o'clock will be fine."

  "I can drop you off at your hotel, Mr. Cord," Von Elster said eagerly.

  I glanced at Rina. She shook her head imperceptibly. "Thanks," I said. "Rina can drop me on her way home."

  Rina didn't speak until the car pulled to a stop in front of the hotel. "Von Elster is on the make," she said. "He's worried. He's never made a talking picture before and he wants to do this one. It's a big picture and if it comes off, he'll be in solid again."

  "You mean he's shaky?" I asked.

  "Everybody in Hollywood is. From Garbo and Gilbert on down. No one is sure just what talking pictures are going to do to their career. I hear John Gilbert's voice is so bad that MGM won't even pencil him in for another picture."