The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

  He turned to Rosa. "Sorry to bust in on your party like this, Doc," he said. "But it was good seeing you again."

  "That's all right, Mr. Schwartz."

  They watched Irving walk over to the curb and get into his car, a Cadillac convertible. He started the motor and looked up at them. "Hey, you two. Yuh know what?"

  "What?" David asked.

  Irving grinned. "Like your Mama would say, yon make a nice-looking couple."

  They watched him turn the corner, then David looked at Rosa. It seemed to him that her face was slightly flushed. He took her arm. "My car is across tike street."

  She was silent almost the whole way to the hospital. 'Something bothering you, Doc?" he asked.

  "Now you're doing it," she said. "Everybody calls me Doc. I liked it better when you called me Rosa."

  He smiled. "What's on your mind, Rosa?"

  She looked down at the dashboard of the car. "We came all the way to America to get away from them."

  "Them?" David asked.

  "The same as in Germany," she said tersely. "The Nazis. The gangsters. They're the same, really. They both say the same things. Take us or you'll get the communists. And we'll be easier to get along with, you can deal with us." She looked up at him. "But what do you say when you find they've taken everything away from you? That was the gimmick they used to take over Germany. To save it from the communists."

  "You're intimating my friend Irving Schwartz is a Nazi?"

  She stared at him. "No, your friend is not a Nazi," she said seriously. "But the same insanity for power motivates him. Your friend is a very dangerous man. He carries a gun, did you know that?"

  David nodded. "I saw it."

  "I wonder what he would have done it you'd refused him," she said softly.

  "Nothing. Needlenose wouldn't harm me."

  Again her gray eyes flashed at him. "No, not with a gun," she said quickly. "Against you, he has other weapons. Economic weapons that could bankrupt your business. But a man does not carry a gun if he does not intend to use it, sooner or later."

  David stopped the car in front of the hospital. "What do you think I should have done? Refuse to make a deal with Irving and let everything I've worked for all these years go to pot? Ruin every lousy investor who has put his faith and money in the company? Put our employees out on the streets looking for jobs? Is that what I should have done? Is it my fault that my employees haven't brains enough to choose decent representatives and see to it that they have an honest union?" Without realizing it, his voice had risen in anger.

  Suddenly, she leaned over and put her hand on his where it rested on the wheel. Her hand was warm and firm. "No, of course it's not your fault," she said quickly. "You did what you thought was right."

  A doorman came down the long steps and opened the car door. "Good evening, Dr. Strassmer."

  "Good evening, Porter," she said. She straightened up and looked at David. "Would you like to come in and see where I work?"

  "I don't want to get in your way. I don't mind waiting here if you'd rather."

  She smiled and pressed his hand suddenly. "Please come," she said. "It would make me feel happier. Then, at least, I’d know you weren't angry at me for putting my – how do you say it – two cents into your business."

  He laughed, and still holding his hand, she got out of the car and led him up the steps to the hospital.

  He stood in the doorway and watched as she gently lifted the bandage from the child's face. She held out her hand silently and the nurse took a swab from a bottle and handed it to her. "This may hurt a little, Mary," she said. "But you won't move or talk, will you?"

  The girl shook her head.

  "All right, then," Rosa said. "Now we’ll be still, very still." Her voice murmured, low and soothing, as her hand quickly traced the edge of the girl's lips with the swab. David saw the child's eyes fill with sudden tears. For a moment, he thought she was going to move her head but she didn't.

  "That's fine," Rosa said softly as the nurse took the swab from her hand. "You're a brave girl." The nurse efficiently replaced the bandage across the girl's mouth. "Tomorrow morning, we'll take off the bandage and you'll be able to go home."

  The girl reached for a pad and pencil on the table next to her bed. She scribbled quickly for a moment, then handed it to Rosa. She looked down at the paper and smiled. "Tomorrow morning, after the bandage comes off."

  David saw the sudden smile that leaped into the child's eyes. Rosa turned to him as they walked down the corridor. "We can go back to your mother's now."

  "That was a pretty little girl," he said as they waited for the elevator.

  "Yes."

  "What was the matter with her?"

  She looked at him. "Harelip," she said. "The child was born with it." A note of quiet pride came into her voice. "Now she'll be just like anyone else. No one will stare at her or laugh when she talks."

  The door opened and they stepped into the elevator. David pressed the button and the door closed. He noticed the note the girl had given Rosa still in her hand. He took it from her. It was in a childish scrawl. "When will I be able to talk?"

  He looked at Rosa. "It must make you feel good."

  She nodded. "Plastic surgery isn't all nose jobs, or double-chin corrections for movie stars. The important part is helping people so they can live normal lives. Like Mary up there. You've no idea how a deformity like that can affect a child's life."

  A new respect for her grew in him as they crossed the lobby toward the front door. The doorman touched his cap. "I'll get your car, sir."

  As he ran down the steps and crossed over to the parking lot, a big limousine came to a stop in front of them. David glanced at it casually, then turned toward Rosa. He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket. "Cigarette, Rosa?"

  He heard the limousine door open behind him as Rosa took the cigarette. He put one in his own mouth and held a light for her. "You wanted to see me, David?"

  David spun around, almost dropping his lighter. He saw the white blur of a shirt, then a head and shoulders appeared in the open doorway of the limousine. It was Jonas Cord. David stared at him silently.

  Involuntarily David glanced at Rosa. There was a strange look in her eyes. He thought she might be frightened and his hand reached out for her.

  Jonas' voice was a quiet chuckle behind him. "It's all right, David," he said. "You can bring Rosa with you."

  12

  Rosa sank back onto the seat in the corner of the limousine. She glanced at David sitting next to her, then at Jonas. It was dark inside the car and occasionally the light from an overhead street lamp would flicker across Jonas' face as he sat facing them on the jump seat, his long legs stretched across the Tonen.

  "How is your father, Rosa?"

  "He is fine, Mr. Cord. He speaks of you often."

  She sensed rather than saw his smile. "Give him my best when you see him."

  "I will do that, Mr. Cord," she said.

  The big automobile picked up speed as they came out on the Coast Highway. Rosa glanced out of the window. They were going north toward Santa Barbara, away from Los Angeles.

  "McAllister said you wanted to see me, David."

  She felt David stir on the seat beside her. He leaned forward. "We've gone about as far as we can on our own, Jonas. If we're to go any further, we'll need your O.K."

  Jonas' voice was emotionless. "Why go any further?" he asked. "I'm satisfied with the way things are. You've eliminated your operating losses and from now on, you should be in the black."

  "We won't stay in the black for long. The unions are demanding increases or they'll strike. That will absorb any profits."

  "Let them," Jonas said, his voice still emotionless. "You don't have to give it to them."

  "I already did," David answered.

  Rosa could almost hear the moment's silence. She looked from one to the other, though she couldn't see their faces.

  "You did?" Jonas said quietly, but an undercurrent
of coldness had come into his voice. "I thought union negotiations were Dan's province.''

  David's voice was steady. There was a cautious note in it but it was the caution used by a man seeking his way through unknown territory, not that of fear. "It was, until tonight," he said. "Until it affected the welfare of the company. Then it became my business."

  "Why couldn't Dan settle it?"

  "Because you never replied to his messages," David said quietly. "He felt he couldn't make a deal without your approval."

  "And you felt differently?"

  "Yes."

  Jonas' voice grew colder. "What makes you think you don't need my approval any more than he does?"

  She heard a click as David flicked his lighter and held the flame to his cigarette. Light danced across his face for a moment, then went out. The cigarette glowed in the dark. "Because I assumed that if you'd wanted me to bankrupt the company, you'd have told me so two years ago."

  Jonas ignored the answer. "What else did you want to see me about?"

  "The government's starting that antitrust business again," David said. "They want us to separate the theaters from the studio. I sent you all the pertinent data some time ago. We'll have to give them an answer."

  Jonas sounded uninterested. "I've already told Mac what to do about that. We'll be able to stall until after the war, when we ought to get a good price for the theaters. There's always an inflation in real estate after a war."

  "What if we don't have a war?"

  "We'll have a war," Jonas said flatly. "Sometime within the next few years. Hitler is going to find himself in a bind. He'll have to expand or bust the whole phony prosperity he's brought to Germany."

  Rosa felt a knot in her stomach. It was one thing to feel that it was inevitable because you always kept hoping you were wrong. But to put it as simply and concisely as Jonas… Sans emotion; one plus one equals two. War. And then there would be no place left to go. Germany would rule the world. Even her father said that the Fatherland was so far ahead of the rest of the world that it would take them a century to catch up.

  She stared at David. How could Americans know so little? Did they honestly believe that they could escape this war unscathed? How could he sit there talking business as if nothing were going to happen? He was a Jew. Didn't he, too, feel the shadow of Hitler falling across him?

  She heard David chuckle. "Then we're in the same boat," he said. She stared at him in shocked surprise as he went on talking. "What we've done by virtue of enforced economies is to build a false economy for ourselves. One in which we count as profit the savings produced by eliminating the waste from our own body. But we haven't created any new sources of real profit."

  "And that's why you've been talking to Bonner?"

  She felt David start in surprise. For the first time that evening, his voice wasn't assured. "Yes," he answered.

  "I suppose you felt it was quite within your authority to initiate such discussions without prior consultations with me?" Jonas' voice was still quiet.

  "As far back as a year ago, I sent you a note asking your permission to talk to Zanuck. I never received a reply and Zanuck signed with Fox."

  "If I’d wanted you to talk to him, I’d have let you know," Jonas said sharply. "What makes you think Dan can't do what Bonner can?"

  David hesitated. He ground his cigarette out in the ash tray on the arm rest beside him. "Two things," he said cautiously. "I’m not knocking Dan. He's proved himself an extremely able administrator and studio executive. He has developed a program that keeps the factory working at maximum efficiency, but one of the things he lacks is the creative conceit of men like Bonner and Zanuck. The ability to seize an idea and personally turn it into a great motion picture."

  He stared at Jonas in the dark. They passed a street lamp, which revealed Jonas for a moment, his eyes hooded, his face impassive. "Lack of creative conceit is the difference between a real producer and a studio executive, which Dan really is. The creative conceit to make him believe he can make pictures better than anyone else and the ability to make others believe it, too. To my mind, you showed more of it in the two pictures you made than Dan has in the fifty-odd pictures he's produced in the last two years."

  "And what's the second?" Jonas asked, ignoring the implied flattery of David's words. Rosa smiled to herself as she realized that he'd accepted the remark as fact.

  "The second is money," David replied. "Assuming Dan could develop this quality, it would take money to find out. Five million dollars, to make two or three big pictures. Money which you don't want to invest. Bonner brings his own financing. He'll make four pictures a year, and our own investment is minimal only the overhead on each. Between distribution fees and profit-sharing, we can't get hurt, no matter what happens. And his supervision of the rest of the program can do nothing but help us."

  "You've thought about what this would do to Dan?" Jonas asked.

  David took a deep breath. "Dan is your responsibility, not mine. My responsibility is to the company." He hesitated a moment. "There'd still be a lot Dan could do."

  "Not the way you want it," Jonas said flatly. "No business can run with two heads."

  David was silent.

  Jonas' words cut sharply through the dark like a knife. "All right, make your deal with Bonner," he said. "But it'll be up to you to get rid of Dan."

  He turned in the jump seat. "You can take us back to Mr. Woolf's car now, Robair."

  "Yes, Mr. Cord."

  Jonas turned back to them. "I saw Nevada earlier," he said. "He'll make that series for us."

  "Good. We'll begin checking story properties right away."

  "You don't have to," Jonas said. "We settled that already. I suggested to him we pick up the character Max Sand from The Renegade and take it from there."

  "How can we? At the end of the picture, he rode off into the hills to die."

  Jonas smiled. "We'll presume he didn't. Suppose he lived, took another name and got religion. And that he spends the rest of his life helping people who have no one else to turn to. He uses his gun only as a last resort. Nevada liked it."

  David stared at Jonas. Why shouldn't Nevada like it? It captured the imagination immediately. There wasn't a Western star in the business who wouldn't jump at the chance of making a series like that. That was what he'd meant by creative conceit. Jonas really had it.

  The car came to a stop in front of the hospital. Jonas leaned over and opened the door. "You get off here," he said quietly.

  The meeting was over.

  They stood in front of his car and watched the big black limousine disappear down the driveway. David opened the door and Rosa looked up at him. "It's been a big night, hasn't it?" she asked softly.

  He nodded. "A very big night."

  "You don't have to take me back. I can get a cab here. I’ll understand."

  He looked down at her, his face serious, then he smiled. "What do you say we go someplace for a drink?"

  She hesitated a moment. "I have a cottage at Malibu," she said. "It's not far from here. We could go there if you'd like."

  They were at the cottage in fifteen minutes. "Don't be upset at how the place looks," she said, putting the key into the lock. "I haven't had time lately to straighten up."

  She flicked on the light and he followed her into a large living room that was very sparsely furnished. A couch, several occasional chairs, two small tables with lamps. At one end was a fireplace, at the other a solid glass wall facing the ocean. In front of it was an easel holding a half-finished oil painting. A smock and palette lay on the floor.

  "What do you drink?" she asked.

  "Scotch, if you have it."

  "I have it. Sit down while I get ice and glasses."

  He waited until she went into another room, then crossed to the easel. He looked at the painting. It was a sunset over the Pacific, with wild red, yellow and orange hues over the almost black water. He heard ice clink in a glass behind him and turned. She held out a drink to him.
<
br />   "Yours?" he asked, taking the glass from her.

  She nodded. "I'm not really good at it. I play the piano the same way. But it's my way of relaxing, of working off my frustrations over my incapabilities. It's my way of compensating for not being a genius."

  "Not many people are," he said. "But from what I've heard, you're a pretty good doctor."

  She looked at him. "I suppose I am. But I’m not good enough. What you said tonight was very revealing. And very true."

  "What was that?"

  "About creative conceit, the ability to do what no other man can do. A great doctor or surgeon must have it, too." She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm a very good workman. Nothing more."

  "You might be judging yourself unfairly."

  "No, I’m not," she replied quickly. "I’ve studied under doctors who were geniuses and I've seen enough others to know what I'm talking about. My father, in his own way, is a genius. He can do things with plastics and ceramics that no other man in the world can. Sigmund Freud, who is a friend of my father's, Picasso, whom I met in France, George Bernard Shaw, who lectured at my college in England – they are all geniuses. And they all have that one quality in common. The creative conceit that enables them to do things that no other man before them could do." She shook her head. "No, I know better. I'm no genius."

  He looked at her. "I’m not, either."

  David turned toward the ocean as she came and stood beside him. "I’ve known some geniuses, too," he said. "Uncle Bernie, who started Norman Pictures, was a genius. He did everything it now takes ten men to do. And Jonas Cord is a genius, too, in a way. But I’m not sure yet in what area. There are so many things he can do, it's a pity."

  "I know what you mean. My father said almost the same thing about him."

  He looked down at her. "It's sad, isn't it?" he said. "Two ordinary nongeniuses, standing here looking out at the Pacific Ocean."

  A glint of laughter came into her eyes. "And such a big ocean, too."