The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

"Good. Keep it like that. If there's anything you need, let me know."

  "I will."

  "I won't forget what you're doing," Cord said.

  There was a click and the line was dead. Slowly David put down the telephone. "That was Jonas Cord," he said.

  Ilene didn't raise her face from her hands.

  He turned and looked back at the telephone. It didn't make sense. From what he'd heard about Cord, he wasn't the kind of man who spent his time making sympathy calls. If anything, he was exactly the opposite.

  Unconsciously he glanced at the closed door to Rina's bedroom. There had to be more to it than that, he thought.

  It was four months before he saw Rina again. He looked up from the couch in his uncle's office as she swept into the room.

  "Rina, darling!" Bernie Norman said, getting up from his desk and throwing his arms around her enthusiastically.

  The producer stepped back and looked at her, walking around her as if she were a prize heifer in a cattle show. "Slimmer and more beautiful than ever."

  Rina looked over. "Hello, David," she said quietly.

  "Hello, Rina." He got to his feet. "How are you?"

  "I'm fine," she answered. "Who wouldn't be after three months on a health farm?"

  He laughed. "And your next picture will be another vacation," Norman interrupted.

  Rina turned back to him, a faint smile coming over her face. "Go ahead, you old bastard," she said. "Con me into it."

  Norman laughed happily. "For a minute, I was wondering if it was my old girl who was coming into the office, so nice she was!"

  Rina laughed, too. "What's the vacation?" she asked.

  "Africa!" Norman said triumphantly. "The greatest jungle script I read since Trader Horn."

  "I knew it," Rina said, turning to David. "I knew the next thing he'd have me do would be a female Tarzan!"

  After she was gone, David looked across the room at his uncle. "Rina seems quieter, more subdued, somehow."

  Norman looked at him shrewdly. "So what?" he said. "Maybe she's growing up a bissel and settling down. It's about time." He got up from his desk and walked over to David. "Only six months we got to the stockholders' meeting next March."

  "You still don't know who's selling us short?"

  "No." Norman shook his head. "I tried everyplace. The brokers, the underwriters, the banks. They tried. Nobody knows. But every day, the stock goes down." He chewed on his unlit cigar. "I bought up every share I could but enough money I ain't got to stop it. All the cash I could beg or borrow is gone."

  "Maybe the stock will go up when we announce Rina's new picture. Everyone knows she's a sure money-maker."

  "I hope so," Norman said. "Everywhere we're losing money. Even the theaters." He walked back to his chair and slumped down into it. "That was the mistake I made. I should never have bought them. For them I had to float the stock, borrow all that money from the banks. Pictures I know; real estate, phooey! I should never have listened to those chazairem on Wall Street, ten years ago. Now I sold my company, the money I ain't got no more. And I don't even know who owns it!"

  David got to his feet. "Well, there's no use in worrying about it. There's still six months till the meeting. And a lot can happen in six months."

  "Yeah," Norman said discouragingly. "It can get worse!"

  David closed the door of his office behind him. He sat down at his desk and ran down the list of enemies his uncle had made in the course of his life. It was a long list but there wasn't anyone who had the kind of money this operation required. Besides, most of them were in the picture business and they had done as much to his uncle as he had done to them. It was a kind of game among members of a club. They screamed and hollered a lot but none ever took it seriously enough to carry a grudge like this.

  Suddenly, he remembered something – Rina. He glanced at the door, his hand going automatically to the telephone. He pulled his hand back sharply. There was no sense in making a fool of himself.

  But he had a hunch. How right he was he wasn't to know until he had Ilene sign Rina into the hospital under a phony name six months later. She was just back from Africa after shooting The Jungle Queen, and suddenly took very sick. He hadn't wanted the press to find out until after the picture was released.

  21

  "Jonas Cord," Norman said bitterly. "Jonas Cord it was the whole time. Why didn't you tell me?"

  David turned from the hotel window looking out over Central Park. "I didn't know. I was only guessing."

  "Know, not know," the producer said, chewing on his dead cigar. "You should have told me, anyway."

  "What good would it have done?" David asked. "I couldn't have proved it and even if I had, you didn't have the money to fight him."

  Norman took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it glumly. With an angry gesture, he threw it on the rug. "What did I ever do to him he should want to ruin me?" he asked angrily.

  David didn't answer.

  "Nothing! That's what I did. Only made money for him. More money that he should use to cut my throat with!" Bernie took a fresh cigar from his pocket and waved it in front of David's face. "That should be a lesson to you. Never do a favor for anybody, never make money for anybody, only yourself. Otherwise, you'll find a knife in your back made of your own silver!"

  David looked at his uncle's angry purple face, remembering the scene that had taken place at the stockholders' meeting.

  Norman had gone into it, feeling more confident than he had at any time during the past few months. The percentage of proxies that had been returned was about what they got every year. Only about twenty-five per cent of the stockholders ever bothered to send in their proxy forms. All they were interested in was when they'd begin receiving dividends again. But those proxies, plus the eight per cent of stock that Norman had in his own name, gave him a comfortable thirty-three per cent of the stock to vote.

  The attendance at the meeting was the same as usual. A few retired businessmen and some women who wandered in off the street because they owned ten shares and it gave them something to do; those directors of the company who happened to be in town and the company officers from the New York office.

  It was only after the formalities of the meeting were over and Norman was asking for nominations for the board of directors that he sensed there was something wrong. As he was speaking, Dan Pierce, the agent, and another man, whose face was familiar but whose name Norman couldn't remember, came into the room and sat down in the front row of the small auditorium.

  A vice-president in charge of sales dutifully read off Norman's approved list of nominations for directorships. Another vice-president, in charge of theater operations, dutifully seconded the nominations. A third vice-president, in charge of foreign operations, then dutifully moved that the nominations be closed.

  At that moment, Pierce got to his feet. "Mr. President," he said, "I have several more nominations to make for directors of the corporation."

  "You got no right," Norman yelled from the podium.

  "According to the bylaws of the company," Dan Pierce retorted, "any stockholder of record may nominate as many persons for directors as there are directors in the corporation!"

  Norman turned to his vice-president and general counsel. "Is that true?"

  The attorney nervously nodded. "You're fired, you dumb bastard, you!" Norman whispered.

  He turned back to Pierce. "It's illegal!" he shouted. "A trick to upset the company."

  The man seated alongside Pierce got to his feet. "Mr. Pierce's nominations are perfectly in order and I, personally, can attest to his legal right to make them."

  It was then that Norman remembered the name – McAllister – Jonas Cord's attorney. He calmed down immediately. "I suppose you can prove you're stockholders?" he asked cannily.

  McAllister smiled. "Of course."

  "Let me see your proof. I got a right to demand that!"

  "Of course you have," McAllister said. He walked up to the podium and handed up a stock c
ertificate.

  Norman looked down at it. It was a stock certificate for ten shares properly issued in the name of Daniel Pierce, "Is this all the stock you got?" he asked innocently.

  McAllister smiled again. "It's all the proof I need," he said, evading the producer's attempt to find out just how much stock he represented. "May I proceed with the nominations?"

  Norman nodded silently and Pierce got to his feet and presented six names for the nine-man board. Just enough to assure clear-cut control. Outside of his own and McAllister's, all the names were strange to Norman.

  When the votes were ready to be counted, McAllister presented to the meeting proxies representing forty-one per cent of the company – twenty-six per cent in the name of Jonas Cord and fifteen held by various brokerage houses. All six of his nominees were elected.

  Norman turned to his executives. He studied them silently for a moment, then withdrew six of his nominees, leaving only himself, David and the vice-president and treasurer on the board. The meeting over, he called for a directors' meeting at the company offices that afternoon, for the election of officers.

  Silently he started out of the room, his usually ruddy face pale and white. Pierce stopped him at the door. "Bernie," Pierce said, "I'd like a minute with you before the directors' meeting."

  Norman stared at him. "Traitors to their own kind I don't talk to," he said coldly. "Go talk to Hitler!" He stamped out of the room.

  Dan Pierce turned to David. "David, make him listen to reason," he said. "Cord authorized me to offer three million bucks for the old man's shares. That's twice what they're worth. If he doesn't sell, Cord says he'll put the company in receivership and all the shares will be good for then is wall-paper."

  "I'll see what I can do," David said, hurrying after his uncle.

  Now Norman was yelling again, pacing up and down the room and threatening a proxy fight. He'd show that crazy Cord that Bernie Norman was no fool, that he hadn't built a business up from nothing with his bare hands without having something in his kopf.

  "Wait a minute!" David said sharply. He had taken more than enough nonsense from his uncle. It was time somebody taught the old man the facts of life. "You're talking about a proxy fight?" he shouted. "With what are you going to fight him? Spitballs instead of money? And if you fight, do you honestly believe that anybody will go along with you? For the last four years, this company has been steadily losing money. The biggest picture we had during that time was The Renegade – Cord's picture, not ours. And the biggest picture on the market today is Devils in the Sky – Cord's picture, too. The one you wouldn't distribute for him because there wasn't enough koom-shaw in it for you! Do you think anybody in his right mind is going to pick you over Cord?"

  The producer stared at him. "To think," he cried out, "that from my own flesh and blood should come such words!"

  "Come off it, Uncle Bernie," David said. "Family's got nothing to do with it. I'm just looking at the facts."

  "Facts?" Norman shouted. "Facts is it you want? Well, look at them. Who was it went out and bought Sunspots, a picture that won almost every award? Who? Nobody but me."

  "It also lost a million dollars."

  That's my fault?" his uncle replied bitterly. "I didn't tell them before I did it? No, prestige they wanted, and prestige they got."

  "That's over the dam, Uncle Bernie," David said. "It has nothing to do with today. Nobody cares about that any more."

  "I care about it," Norman retorted. "It's my blood they're spilling. I'm the sacrifice they're making to the Golem. But not yet am I dead. When I tell them about the pictures I'm making with Rina Marlowe, I’ll get all the proxies I want."

  David stared at his uncle for a moment, then went to the telephone. "Long distance, please," he said. "I want to place a call to the Colton Hospital, Santa Monica, California, room three-o-nine, please."

  He glanced at his uncle, who was looking out the window. "Ilene? This is David. How is she?"

  "Not good," Ilene said, her voice so low he could scarcely hear her.

  "What does the doctor say?"

  David heard her begin to sob into the telephone. "Hold on," he said. "This is no time to start breaking down."

  "He said – she's dying. That it's a miracle she's lasted this long. He doesn't know what's keeping her alive."

  There was a click and the phone went dead in his hand. David turned to his uncle. "Rina won't make another picture for you or anybody else," he said. "She's dying."

  The producer stared at him, his face going white. He sank back into a chair. "My God! Then what will happen to the company? She was the one chance we had to stay alive. Without her, the bottom will drop out of the stock, we're finished." He wiped at his face with a handkerchief. "Now even Cord won't bother with us."

  David stared at his uncle. "What do you mean?"

  "Schmuck!" Norman snapped. "Don't you see it yet? Do I got to draw for you diagrams?"

  "See?" David asked, bewildered. "See what?"

  "That Cord really don't give a damn about the company," the old man said. "That all he wants is the girl."

  "The girl?"

  "Sure," Norman said. "Rina Marlowe. Remember that meeting I had with him in the toilet at the Waldorf? Remember I told you what he said? How he wouldn't tell me the courvehs' names because I stole the Marlowe girl from under his nose?"

  The light came on suddenly inside David's head. Why hadn't he thought of it? It tied up with the phone call from Cord the night Dunbar killed himself. He looked at his uncle with a new respect. "What are we going to do?"

  "Do?" the old man said. "Do? We're going to keep our mouths shut and go down to that meeting. My heart may be breaking but if he offered three million for my stock, he’ll go to five!"

  The dream didn't slip away this time when Rina opened her eyes. If anything, it seemed more real than it had ever been. She lay very still for a moment, looking up at the clear plastic tent covering her head and chest. She turned her head slowly.

  Ilene was sitting in the chair, watching her. She wished she could tell Ilene not to worry, there really wasn't anything to be afraid of. She had gone through this so many times before in the dream. "Ilene!" she whispered.

  Ilene started and got up out of her chair. Rina smiled up at her. "It's really me, Ilene," she whispered. "I'm not out of my head."

  "Rina!" She felt Ilene's hand take her own under the sheet. "Rina!"

  "Don't cry, Ilene," she whispered. She turned her head to try and see the calendar on the wall but it was too far away. "What day is it?"

  "It's Friday."

  "The thirteenth?" Rina tried to smile. She saw the smile come to Ilene's face, despite the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. "Call Jonas," Rina said weakly. "I want to see him."

  She closed her eyes for a moment and opened them when Ilene came back to the bed. "Did you get him?"

  Ilene shook her head. "His office says he's in New York, but they don't know where to reach him."

  "You get him, wherever he is!" Rina smiled. "You can't fool me any more," she said. "I’ve played this scene too many times. You call him. I won't die until he gets here." A faint, ironic smile came over her face. "Anyway, nobody dies out here on the weekend. The weekend columns have already gone to press."

  JONAS – 1935

  ____________________

  Book Five

  1

  I pulled the stick back into my belly with a little left rudder. At the same time, I opened the throttle and the CA-4 leaped upward into the sky in a half loop, like an arrow shot from a bow. I felt the G force hold me flat against my seat and bubble the blood racing in my arms. I leveled her off at the top of the loop and when I checked the panel, we were doing three hundred, racing out over the Atlantic with Long Island already far behind us.

  I reached forward and tapped the shoulder of the Army flier seated in front of me. "How about that, Colonel?" I shouted over the roar of the twin engines and the shriek of the wind against the plastic bubble over our hea
ds.

  I saw him bob his head in answer to my question but he didn't turn around. I knew what he was doing. He was checking out the panel in front of him. Lieutenant Colonel Forrester was one of the real fly boys. He went all the way back to Eddie Rickenbacker and the old Hat in the Ring squadron. Not at all like the old General we'd left on the ground back at Roosevelt Field, that the Army had sent out to check over our plane.

  The General flew an armchair back in Purchasing and Procurement in Washington. The closest he ever came to an airplane was when he sat on the trial board at Billy Mitchell's court-martial. But he was the guy who had the O.K. We were lucky that at least he had one Air Corps officer on his staff.

  I had tabbed him the minute he came walking into the hangar, with Morrissey, talking up a storm, trotting beside him. There were two aides right behind him – a full colonel and a captain. None of them wore the Air Corps wings on their blouse.

  He stood there in the entrance of the hangar, staring in at the CA-4. I could see the frown of disapproval come across his face. "It's ugly," he said. "It looks like a toad."

  His voice carried clear across the hangar to where I was, in the cockpit, giving her a final check. I climbed out onto the wing and dropped to the hangar floor in my bare feet. I started toward him. What the hell did he know about streamline and design? His head probably was as square as the desk he sat behind.

  "Mr. Cord!" I heard the hissed whisper behind me. I turned around. It was the mechanic. There was a peculiar grin on his face. He had heard the General's remark, too.

  "What d'yuh want?"

  "I was jus' gettin' ready to roll her out," he said quickly. "An' I didn't want to squash yer shoes."

  I stared at him for a moment, then I grinned. "Thanks," I said, walking back and stepping into them. By the time I leached Morrissey and the General, I was cooled off.

  Morrissey had a copy of the plans and specs in his hand and was going over them for the benefit of the General. "The Cord Aircraft Four is a revolutionary concept in a two-man fighter-bomber, which has a flight range of better than two thousand miles. It cruises at two forty, with a max of three sixty. It can carry ten machine guns, two cannon, and mounts one thousand pounds of bombs under its wings and in a special bay in its belly."