The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

  Forrester looked up as I came into the compartment. "You must have been tired. For a while, you were snoring so loud back there I was beginning to think we had five motors instead of four."

  I sank into the copilot's seat. "I thought I'd give you a little relief. Where are we?"

  "About here," he said, his finger pointing to the map on the holder between us. I looked down. We were about a thousand miles out over the ocean.

  "We're slow."

  He nodded. "We ran into heavy head winds."

  I reached for the wheel and pulled it back to me until it locked in. "O.K.," I said. "I got her."

  He released his wheel, got to his feet and stretched. "I think I’ll try to get a nap."

  "Fine," I said, looking out through the windshield. It was beginning to rain.

  "Sure you can keep your eyes open for a few hours?"

  "I'll manage."

  He laughed. "Either you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din, or I'm getting old. For a while, back there, I thought you were going to fuck every woman in England."

  I looked up at him, grinning. "With the way those bombs were coming down, I thought I better make the most of it."

  He laughed again and left the compartment. I turned back to the controls. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. The girls must have felt it, too. There'd been something desperate in the way they insisted you accept their favors.

  It was beginning to snow now, heavy, swirling flakes against the windshield. I switched the de-icers on and watched the snowflakes turn to water against the Plexiglas. The air speed was two hundred and slowing. That meant the head winds were picking up speed. I decided to see if we could climb up over it.

  I moved the wheel back and the big plane began to lift slowly. We came through the clouds at thirteen thousand feet into bright sunlight. I locked in the gyrocompensator and felt the plane level off.

  It was a clear and smooth flight all the rest of the way home.

  2

  Robair was standing in the open doorway when I came out of the elevator. Though it was four o'clock in the morning, he looked as fresh and wide-eyed as if he'd just awakened. His dark face gleamed in a welcoming smile over his white shirt and faultlessly tailored butler's jacket. "Good morning, Mr. Cord. Have a good flight?"

  "Fine, thank you, Robair."

  He closed the door behind him. "Mr. McAllister's in the living room. Been waiting since eight o'clock last night."

  "I'll talk to him," I said, starting through the foyer.

  "I’ll fix some steak sandwiches and coffee, Mr. Cord."

  I stopped and looked back at the tall Negro. He never seemed to age. His hair was still black and thick, his frame giant-sized and powerful. "Hey, Robair, you know something? I missed you."

  He smiled again. There was nothing subservient or false about his smile. It was the smile of a friend. "I missed you, too, Mr. Cord."

  I turned and walked into the living room. Robair was more than just a friend. In a way, he was my guardian angel. I don't know how I would have held together after Rina died if it hadn't been for Robair.

  By the time I'd got back to Reno from New York, I was a wreck. There was nothing I wanted to do. Just drink and forget. I'd had enough of people.

  My father rode my shoulders like a desert Indian on a pony. It had been his woman I had wanted. It had been his woman who had died. Why did I cry? Why was I so empty?

  Then one morning, I awakened in the dirt of the yard, back of Nevada's room in the bunkhouse, to find Robair bending over me. I vaguely remembered having leaned my back against the wall of the bunkhouse while I finished a bottle of bourbon. That had been last night. I turned my head slowly. The empty bottle lay beside me.

  I placed my hands in the dirt and braced myself. My head hurt and my mouth was dry and when I tried to get to my feet, I found I didn't have the strength.

  I felt Robair's arm slip around behind me and lift me to my feet. We started to walk across the hard-packed earth. "Thank you," I said, leaning against him gratefully. "I’ll be all right once I get a drink."

  His voice had been so soft that at first I thought I hadn't heard him. "No more whisky, Mr. Cord."

  I stared up into his face. "What did you say?"

  His large eyes were impassive. "No more whisky, Mr. Cord," he repeated. "I reckon it's time you stopped."

  The anger pulled up in me and gave me strength. I shoved myself away from him. "Just who in hell do you think you are?" I shouted. "If I want a drink, I'll take a drink!"

  He shook his head. "No more whisky. You're not a little boy no more. You can't run an' hide your head in the whisky bottle ever’ time a little bad comes your way."

  I stared at him, speechless for a moment, as the shock and anger ran through me in ice-cold waves. Then I found my voice. "You're fired!" I screamed. "No black son of a bitch is going to own me!"

  I turned and started for the house. I felt his hand on my shoulder and turned. There was a look of sadness on his face. "I’m sorry, Mr. Cord," he said.

  "There's no use in apologizing, Robair."

  "I’m not apologizing for what I said, Mr. Cord," he replied in a low voice. Then I saw his giant, hamlike fist racing toward me. I tried to move away but nothing in my body seemed to work the way it should and I plunged into the dark again.

  This time when I woke up, I was in bed, covered with clean sheets. There was a fire going in the fireplace and I felt very weak. I turned my head. Robair was sitting in a chair next to the bed. There was a small tureen of hot soup on the table next to him. "I got some hot soup here for you," he said, his eyes meeting mine levelly.

  "Why'd you bring me up here?"

  "The mountain air'll do you good."

  "I won't stay," I said, pushing myself up. I'd had enough of this cabin when I was here the last time. On my honeymoon.

  Robair's big hand pushed me back against the pillow. "You'll stay," he said quietly. He picked up the tureen and dipped a spoon into it, then held the spoon of soup out to me. "Eat."

  There was such a note of authority in his quiet voice that involuntarily I opened my mouth before I thought. The hot soup scalded its way down. Then I pushed his hand away. "I don't want any."

  I stared into his dark eyes for a moment, then I felt rise up inside me a hurt and a loneliness that I had never felt before. Suddenly, I began to cry.

  He put down the tureen. "Go ahead an' weep, Mr. Cord. Cry yourself out. But you'll find tears won't drown you any more than whisky."

  He was sitting on the porch in the late-afternoon sun when I finally came out. It was green all around, bushes and trees all the way down the side of the mountain, until it ran into the red and yellow sands of the desert. He got to his feet when I opened the door.

  I walked over to the railing and looked down. We were a long way from people. I turned and looked back at him. "What's for dinner, Robair?" I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. "To tell the truth, Mr. Cord, I was kind of waitin' on how you felt."

  "There's a brook near here that has the biggest trout you ever saw."

  He smiled. "A mess o' trout sounds fine, Mr. Cord."

  It was almost two years before we came down from the mountain. Game was plentiful and once a week, Robair would drive down for supplies. I grew lean and dark from the sun and the bloat of the cities disappeared as the muscles tightened and hardened in my body.

  We developed a routine and it was amazing how well the business got along without me. It merely proved the old axiom: once you reached a certain size, it was pretty difficult to stop growing. All the companies were doing fine except the picture company. It was undercapitalized but it didn't matter that much to me any more.

  Three times a week, I spoke to McAllister on the telephone. That was generally sufficient to take care of most problems. Once a month, Mac would come driving up the winding road to the cabin, his brief case filled with papers for me to sign or reports for me to study.

  Mac was a remarkably thor
ough man. There was very little that escaped his observant eye. In some mysterious way, everything of importance that was going on in any of the companies found its way into his reports. There were many things I knew I should attend to personally but somehow, everything seemed a long way off and very unimportant.

  We'd been there almost a year and a half when we had our first outside visitor. I'd been out hunting and was coming back up the trail, with a brace of quail swinging from my hand, when I saw a strange car parked in front of the cabin. It was a Chevy with California license plates.

  I walked around and looked at the registration on the steering column: Rosa Strassmer, M.D., 1104 Coast Highway, Malibu, Cal. I turned and walked into the cabin. There was a young woman seated on the couch, smoking a cigarette. She had dark hair, gray eyes and a determined jaw.

  When she stood up, I saw she was wearing a faded pair of Levis that somehow accentuated the slim, feminine curve of her hips. "Mr. Cord?" she asked, holding her hand out to me, a curious, faint accent in her voice. "I’m Rosa Strassmer, Otto Strassmer's daughter."

  I took her hand, staring at her for a moment. Her grip was firm. I tried to keep the faint tinge of annoyance from showing in my voice. "How did you know where to find me?"

  She took out an envelope and gave it to me. "Mr. McAllister asked me to drop this off when he heard I was driving through here on my vacation."

  I opened the envelope and looked at the paper inside. It was nothing that couldn't have waited until his next visit. I dropped it on the table. Robair came into the room just then. He looked at me curiously as he took the brace of quail and my gun and went back into the kitchen.

  "I hope I haven't disturbed you, Mr. Cord," she said quickly.

  I looked at her. Whatever it was I felt, it wasn't her fault. It was Mac's not too subtle reminder that I couldn't stay on the mountain forever. "No," I answered. "You must forgive my surprise. We don't get many visitors up here."

  She smiled suddenly. When she smiled, her face took on a strange bright beauty. "And I can understand why you don't ask people to come, Mr. Cord," she said. "More than two people would crowd a paradise like this."

  I didn't answer.

  She hesitated a moment, then started for the door. "I must be going now," she said awkwardly. "I'm glad to have met you. I've heard so much about you from my father."

  "Dr. Strassmer!"

  She turned toward me in surprise. "Yes, Mr. Cord?"

  "I’ll have to ask you to forgive me again," I said quickly. "Living up here as I have, I seem to have forgotten my manners. How is your father?"

  "He's well and happy, Mr. Cord, thanks to you. He never gets tired of telling me how you blackmailed Goring into letting him out of Germany. He thinks you're a very brave man."

  I smiled. "It's your father who is brave, doctor. What I did was very little."

  "To Mother and me, it was a great deal," she said. She hesitated again. "Now I really must be going."

  "Stay for dinner," I said. "Robair has a way of stuffing quail with wild rice that I think you'd enjoy."

  Her eyes searched mine for a moment. "I will," she answered. "Under one condition – that you call me Rosa, not doctor."

  "Agreed. Now sit down again and I’ll get Robair to bring you something to drink."

  But Robair was already in the doorway with a pitcher of Martinis. It was too late for her to leave when we were through with dinner, so Robair fixed up the tiny guest room for her. She went to bed and I sat in the living room for a while and then went to my room.

  For the first time in a long while, I could not fall asleep. I stared up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling. There was a sound at the door and I sat up in the bed.

  She stood there silently in the doorway for a moment, then came into the room. She stopped at the side of my bed and looked down at me. "Don't be frightened, lonely man," she whispered in a soft voice. "I want nothing more from you than this night."

  "But, Rosa- "

  She pressed a silencing finger to my lips and came down into the bed, all warmth and all woman, all compassion and all understanding. She cradled my head against her breast almost as a mother would a child. "Now I understand why McAllister sent me here."

  I cupped my hands beneath her firm young breasts. "Rosa, you're beautiful," I whispered.

  I heard her laugh softly. "I know I’m not beautiful, but I am happy that you should say so."

  She lay her head back against the pillow and looked up at me, her eyes soft and warm. "Kommen sie, liebchen," she said gently, reaching for me with her arms. "You brought my father back to his world, let me try to bring you back to yours."

  In me morning, after breakfast, when she had gone, I walked back into the living room thoughtfully. Robair looked at me from the table, where he was clearing away the dishes. We didn't speak. We didn't have to. In that moment, we both understood that it was only a matter of time before we would leave the mountain.

  The world was not that far away any more.

  McAllister was asleep on the couch when I entered the living room. I walked over to him and touched his shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked up at me. "Hello, Jonas," he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. He took a cigarette and lit it. A moment later, the sleep was gone from his eyes. "I waited for you because Sheffield is pressing for a meeting," he said.

  I dropped into the chair opposite him. "Did David pick up the stock?"

  "Yes."

  "Does Sheffield know it yet?"

  "I don't think so," he said. "From the way he's talking, my guess is he still thinks he's got it in the bag." He ground the cigarette out in the ash tray. "Sheffield said that if you'd meet with him before the meeting, he'd be inclined to give you some consideration for your stock."

  I laughed. "That's very kind of him, isn't it?" I kicked off my shoes. "Tell him to go to hell."

  "Just a minute, Jonas," Mac said quickly. "I think you'd better meet with him, anyway. He can make a lot of trouble. After all, he'll be voting about thirty per cent of the stock."

  "Let him," I snapped. "If he wants a fight, I'll curl his hair."

  "Meet him, anyway," Mac urged. "You've got too many things coming up to get involved in a fight right now."

  He was right, as usual. I couldn't be in six places at one time. Besides, if I wanted to make The Sinner, I didn't want a stupid minority-stockholder's suit holding up production.

  "O.K. Call him and tell him to come over right now."

  "Right now?" Mac asked. "My God! It's four o'clock in the morning."

  "So what? He's the one who wanted a meeting."

  Mac went over to the telephone.

  "And when you get through talking to him," I said, "call Moroni on the Coast and find out if the bank will let me have the money to buy in Sheffield's stock if I give them a first mortgage on the theaters."

  There was no sense in using any more of my own money than I had to.

  3

  I watched Sheffield lift the coffee cup to his lips. His hair was a little grayer, a little thinner, but the rimless eyeglasses still shone rapaciously over his long, thin nose. Still, he accepted defeat much more graciously than I would have, if the shoe had been on the other foot.

  "Where did I go wrong, Jonas?" he asked casually, his voice as detached as that of a doctor with a clinic patient. "I certainly was willing to pay enough."

  I slumped down in my chair. '"You had the right idea. The thing was that you were using the wrong currency."

  "I don't understand."

  "Movie people are different. Sure, they like money just like everybody else. But there's something they want even more."

  "Power?"

  I shook my head. "Only partly. What they want more than anything else is to make pictures. Not just movies but pictures that will gain them recognition. They want to regard themselves as artists. Well insulated by money, of course, but artists, just the same."

  "Then because you've made motion pictures, they accepted your promises rather than
mine?"

  "I guess that's about it." I smiled. "When I produce a picture, they feel I'm sharing the same risks they are. I'm not risking money. Everything I am goes on the line. My reputation, my ability, my creative conceit."

  "Creative conceit?"

  "It's a term I got from David Woolf. He used it to rate certain producers. Those who had it made great pictures. Those who didn't, made pictures. In short, they preferred me because I was willing to be judged on their own terms."

  "I see," Sheffield said thoughtfully. "I won't make the same mistake again."

  "I'm sure you won't." I felt a suspicion growing in me. This was too easy. He was being too nice about it. He was a fighter. And fighters die hard.

  Besides, his whole approach had been inconsistent with his usual way of doing business. Sheffield was a financial man. He dealt with business people about finances. Yet, in this case, he'd gone directly to the picture people. Ordinarily, he'd have contacted me right off the bat and we'd have battled it out. We'd each have compromised a little and been satisfied.

  There could be only one answer. Something that had happened in England when I was there began suddenly to make sense. I'd come out of the projection room of our office in London, where I had gone to see the Jennie Denton test, with our British sales manager.

  The telephone had rung when we walked into his office. He picked it up and spoke into it a few minutes, then put it down. He looked up at me.

  "That was the circuit-buyer for the Engel theater chain," he said. "They are frantic for product now. Their studios were lost completely in the first raid and they had never made a deal for American product, as have the other companies."

  "What are they going to do?" I asked, still thinking about the test. For the first time since Rina had died, I began to feel the excitement that came only from making a motion picture again. I only half listened to his answer.

  "I don't know," he replied. "They have four hundred theaters and if they can't get additional product in six months, they'll have to close half of them."

  "Too bad," I said. I couldn't care less. Engel, like Korda, had come to England from Middle Europe and gone into the picture business. But while Korda had concentrated on production, Engel had gone in for theaters. He came into production only as an answer to his problem of supply. Rank, British Lion, Gaumont and Associated among them managed to control all the product, both British and American. Still, there was no reason to mourn for him. I had heard that his investments in the States were worth in excess of twenty million dollars.