And so on.
Without a sponsor, none of the networks could commit a time slot. When Bat returned to California from Northampton, Sam had not yet found a sponsor.
8
Jonas picked up a bottle of bourbon from the rolltop desk in his office — his father's office — in the Cord Explosives plant. He poured into a shot glass, then handed the bottle and a glass to Bat. Bat took a splash, no more; he did not share his grandfather's and father's taste for bourbon.
"We could back off, take the loss, and forget it," Jonas said. He flipped over the pages on which Bat had brought him the numbers. "I've lost more than this on dumb ideas."
"It's not a dumb idea," said Bat.
"Depends on how you define a dumb idea. If an idea is supposed to make money and then can't, it's a dumb idea — by one definition, anyway. The other definition is, it's too damned good an idea, too good for the market. I don't know which this is, Bat. Maybe you misjudged it. The fact that you're screwin' the star hasn't influenced your judgment, has it?"
"Absolutely not."
"Okay. I take your word on it. But be damned sure it doesn't."
"Liberace is a good showman, whatever else you may think of him. He judged it was a good idea."
"Yeah, but he's been paid for his role. He doesn't have anything invested."
"Danny Kaye agreed to allow his name to be used on the first show," said Bat. "He's agreed to appear on a future show, if there is a future show."
"Another guy with nothing invested," said Jonas. "So what are you going to do?"
Bat shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted.
"Okay. I know. Your old man, who plunked seventeen million into the Pacific, as you politely reminded me, will bail you out."
"I can't ask you to pour more money into it."
"You can't? The hell you can't! If you believe in the project you can ask for more money. If you don't believe in it any more than that, then by God I don't believe in it either. Which is it?"
Bat stiffened. "I believe in it," he said. "But I don't know what we can do. If —"
"I know what we can do," said Jonas.
9
ABC broadcast Cord Television Presents: The Glenda Grayson Show for the first time in August 1955 as a summer special, filling a time slot that would be filled in the autumn by a returning variety show. The notices were encouraging:
—"Miss Grayson's exuberant review was a happy relief from bland television variety shows." The New York Times.
—"The youthful cast, led by Glenda Grayson herself, went all out to offer an hour of exciting entertainment." Newsweek.
—"Nothing can rescue television's so-called 'situation comedies' from their hackneyed, overworked cliches, and The Glenda Grayson Special did not accomplish that impossible task. The variety segment of her show is something else again. Television variety may never be the same. Treacle is out! Sophistication is in! Or so we may hope."
The second show aired two weeks later, with Danny Kaye as guest. It drew twenty-two percent of the viewing audience.
A church in Mississippi published a "protest resolution," complaining that Glenda Grayson was indecent and a threat to the nation's morality. "What does it say to our young people when they see this woman cavorting on their television screens in clothing decent women wear under their clothing?" A few editorials laughed at that and won the show more public notice.
A third show was broadcast as a special in November. Two more specials were broadcast in the spring season 1956. The ratings were not spectacular but were not disastrous either. The network decided it had a time slot for the show.
For the 1956-57 season, ABC slotted the show at nine o'clock on alternate Wednesday evenings. American Motors came aboard as a co-sponsor, so the show was no longer Cord Television Presents but The Glenda Grayson Show.
10
The sun rose late in winter, so only a little gray light had entered the bedroom when the telephone rang. Glenda woke and stared at the ceiling as Bat took the call.
It was from Angie, calling from the Waldorf Towers apartment in New York.
"Your father has been taken to the hospital. I don't know if it was a stroke or a heart attack, but he was unconscious when they put him in the emergency-squad ambulance. I'm leaving here now to go to the hospital. I can't reach Jo-Ann. Try to do that, will you, Bat? Then I think you'd better come here."
Reaching Jo-Ann was a matter of knocking on her bedroom door. An hour and a half later the two of them were aboard a plane on their way to New York.
Jonas was in a cardiac unit at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Bat and Jo-Ann were allowed five minutes with him but found him so heavily sedated he could not talk. They found Angie waiting in a solarium. She said the cardiologist would talk with them and went to a telephone to call him. The doctor joined them in a coffee shop.
"He'll make it," the doctor said, "but he's lost about a third of his heart capacity. He'll have to take it easy from now on."
Bat smiled. "What chance do you think there is he will ever slow down?"
Angie shook her head. "He dictated a letter to you. He did it when he began to feel the symptoms and after I'd called an ambulance. I borrowed a typewriter here in the hospital and typed it out. It isn't signed, but it's what he wants, and I think you will be justified in acting on it."
The letter read:
It appears likely that I will be some time recovering from the flu. You will have to take on some additional responsibility for a while. That being the case, increase your salary to $125,000. Take it from Cord Explosives.
I authorize you to act as my surrogate in all corporate matters for such time as may be necessary. Don't overlook Cord Explosives or Cord Plastics. They are more secure sources of revenue than the airline, the hotels, or TV production.
You may require some assistance. See if you can get your friend David Amory to leave his firm and become full-time counsel to us — that is, if you want him. Having a lawyer you trust is very important.
You'll have to tend to business for a while. Consider living in New York. I urge you to come here alone. You know what I mean.
Give me complete reports as often as you can, as soon as I am able to receive them.
As Bat read the letter, he lowered his chin slowly to his chest, and his eyes flooded with tears.
11
Not until two days later was Jonas able to communicate in anything but an incoherent mumble. He smiled on Jo-Ann and Angie and thanked them for their concern, then said he wanted to talk with Bat alone, about business.
Bat drew a chair up to the bed. "I'm sorry about this," he said. "The doctor says you're going to be okay."
"Cut the shit and listen to me," said Jonas. "Lean over this way, so I don't have to yell. Now listen. Morris Chandler is talking to guys he shouldn't be talking to. Carlo Vulcano, Pietro Gibellina, and John Stefano."
"How do you know?"
"When I was living on the fifth floor. Chandler hooked me into his private telephone system. I didn't trust him, so I had my people rewire the whole system, unbeknownst to him. He routes his calls through a telephone drop in San Diego, so FBI types tapping those guys' phones won't figure it out they're talking to a hotel in Vegas. Of course, they never use names. They talk in codes. Chandler's code name is Maurie. Nevada called him that, so it's got some kind of meaning."
"What do you think they're doing?"
"They want to block us from putting up the Intercontinental Vegas. They don't want the competition. They want to use the casinos their way, and we're an embarrassment to them."
"What do you think they'll do?"
"Give us trouble getting building permits. See if they can arrange some strikes. Who knows? I don't think they'll try violence. Do you carry a gun?"
Bat shook his head.
"Well, I have for many years, on and off. I suggest you think about it."
20
1
THE SECOND WEEK AFTER JONAS SUFFERED HIS HEART attack, Son
ja flew to New York. Bat met her at Kennedy Airport and took her to the apartment in the Waldorf Towers. She went the next day to visit Jonas at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
Bat offered to drive her, but she insisted she would take a cab. She wanted to do some shopping, too, and would meet him for lunch at the 21 Club at one-fifteen. Her first cab driver, a Puerto Rican, took a sympathetic interest in her when she spoke Spanish to him and suggested she remove a diamond ring and an emerald bracelet she was wearing and carry them in her purse. She thanked him for his advice and did what he said. He could not have guessed she was wearing a jeweled platinum belt worth more than the combined value of the ring and bracelet, plus his taxicab.
Jonas was grateful to her for coming. He was sitting up now, propped up by pillows and the mechanical bed. He was thinner already and looked a bit fragile. He had a better color, just the same. Maybe that was because this was the first time since his hospitalization after the crash of The Centurion that he had gone twelve whole days without a drink.
He was in a mood to speak earnestly, driven undoubtedly by his brush with mortality. "Do you have any idea how grateful I am to you for rearing our son to be the man he is?" he asked her. "Here I am, out of it. Bat is a godsend for me. Who else could I trust to take responsibility for everything?"
"You have a loyal staff," she said.
"They are not Cords," said Jonas with a tone of finality in his voice that suggested that was a complete answer.
"He is," she said. "I can see that."
"But Sonja ... He doesn't like me. Why doesn't he like me?"
"Because the two of you are of a piece," she said sharply. "Both of you ought to see that."
"Christ, I've offered him the world! I've given him ..." He stopped, shrugged.
Sonja nodded and did not comment. She was trying to assess the damage this man had sustained. Her memories of him were — first, of the twenty-one-year-old stud she had accompanied to Europe: handsome, muscular, filled with optimism and enthusiasm; and, second, the matured and self-confident entrepreneur she had met for the second time four years ago. He was fifty-two years old now, young to have suffered a heart attack. It was apparent that he knew it. He had planned at least twenty more vigorous years, without limitations, and now he had to reassess his plans.
"I would like to ask a favor of you," he said.
"Of course," said Sonja.
"Your Uncle Fulgencio knows my name. On Bat's recommendation, I have invested money in a casino in Havana. I depend on a man your uncle also knows to keep the operation honest."
"Meyer Lansky," she said.
"You know — Well ... It would be in everyone's best interest — Uncle Fulgencio's, Bat's, and mine — if your uncle were to look sympathetically on an application Meyer Lansky will be making for a license to open a casino-hotel in Havana. He will adhere to the customs, if you follow my meaning."
"He will pay my uncle such bribes as are customary," Sonja said dryly.
"Whatever is customary," said Jonas.
"Will you have money in this?"
"Bat will make that judgment," said Jonas.
"You're letting Bat make judgments? That's something new, isn't it?"
Jonas shrugged weakly. "What else can I do? Anyway, he's smart. He's a Cord ... and a Batista, of course."
"Do you want a word of advice?" she asked.
"Why not?"
"Invest a little more in your relationship with your son. It will pay a better return than any other investment you ever made."
"I do. I let him have his head on that television show. I put money where I shouldn't have put it. We'll be damned lucky if we break even on it."
"I'm not talking about money, Jonas. Investing money is your whole life. It's what you do, and you do it well. What you don't do is invest yourself. You don't commit yourself. Do you love our son?"
"Of course I do."
"Then why don't you tell him?"
"He's never said anything of the kind — " He stopped abruptly, and for a moment Sonja thought he'd felt a hard twinge in his chest. " — to me ..." His voice trailed off, and Sonja was alarmed.
"Jonas?"
"It isn't easy. My father died without ever having said he loved me. He never heard it from me either. He died, and we never ... told ... each other. That was a huge mistake, Sonja, a horrible mistake. My god, am I making it again?"
"You have pride, Jonas. So has Bat. I could wish you were not so very much alike."
2
Sonja surprised Bat at "21" by ordering steak tartare. "They know how to do it here," she said.
"You've been here before, then."
"Did you suppose I had never been to New York before?" she asked with an amused smile.
Of course she had been in New York before. He should have remembered that. She had been in Europe, too, and not just when his father took her there. She had been in Cuba and most of the countries of Latin America. She had decorated two rooms in the hacienda outside Cordoba with pre-Columbian artifacts from Peru. Hanging in her own bedroom, instead of the crucifix that hung in the bedrooms of most dutiful wives, was a print by Picasso and a Calder mobile. She was no longer the innocent girl his father remembered. In fact, she was not the placid, compliant woman he thought he remembered as his mother. He should have thought before of being proud of her.
At age fifty, she was a memorably striking woman, who drew glances from men at nearby tables. His father had a taste for women who were beautiful when they were young and then aged well. Though he found it difficult to like Monica much, he could see why his father had married her twice. And the latest of them, Angie, was a fit successor to the two others he knew about.
His mother had ordered an appetizer of caviar, with Stolichnaya vodka so cold that it was not absolutely liquid but had begun to change consistency to something thicker. He had never tried it but had duplicated her order and found it surprisingly good.
"Your father tells me you are having an affair with Glenda Grayson."
"That's true."
"She's older than you are."
"She's a wonderful woman. The world has not always been kind to her."
Sonja shook her head. "That is a very bad reason to fall in love with a woman."
"She's very outgoing, very loving."
"Worse reasons," said Sonja. But then she smiled. "I thought you meant to marry the little girl from Florida."
"She wants a career."
"And Glenda Grayson does not? If you should decide to marry her, which God forbid, would she give up her career and become a wife?"
"Things haven't come to that state yet," said Bat.
Sonja glanced around the room, as if to make sure their fellow diners could not overhear their conversation. "I need to talk with you about something. How much money have you and your father committed to Cuba?"
Bat, too, glanced around before he answered. He leaned a little toward his mother and said, "A little over a million dollars. In the Floresta casino."
"What about the hotel being built by Meyer Lansky? Don't you have money in that?"
"So far, we don't have any money in that. Lansky has secured financing through others. He'd like for us to buy out one of his partners. It would give him more respectability."
"Your father asked me to contact our Uncle Fulgencio and ask him to be certain Lansky gets all the necessary licenses and permissions."
"That might be helpful," said Bat. "Lansky has a good relationship with Uncle Fulgencio, but I'm not sure it's good enough."
Sonja took a sip of the icy vodka. "I will fly to Havana on my way back to Mexico," she said. "I am going to tell you something, however. I'll put in a good word for your friend Lansky. I strongly advise you, even so, not to invest any more money in Cuba."
"Why?"
"You'll lose it."
Bat touched his mouth with one finger. "You take seriously the — "
She nodded. "The whole thing is a house of cards. Our uncle may be dead in a year. If he's l
ucky, he'll be in exile. He is not bright. He steals too much. Cuba looks brilliantly prosperous. It isn't. A few miles from those beautiful new casino-hotels, people live in squalor. The rebels in the mountains are growing stronger. More of them all the time. And they're getting weapons from the Soviet Union. Our uncle's regime — " She shrugged. "He was driven from power before. It can happen again. It will happen again."
"Meyer Lansky has committed every dime he has to his hotel."
"He will lose it."
"The new regime, whatever it is, will need the casino-hotels just as much as the present regime does," said Bat. "And they can't run them themselves."
"The British thought the Egyptians couldn't run the Suez Canal," she said. "Anyway, they will close the casinos. Those people in the mountains are Communists. They don't want the tourist trade."
"You paint a gloomy picture," said Bat.
"It's a gloomy situation," said his mother.
Bat watched the waiter stir raw eggs and herbs into the raw ground beef. He wished he had ordered steak tartare.
"Tell me about your father," she said.
Bat sighed. "It's difficult to know what to say. One day he's a thoughtless egomaniacal tyrant, scornful of anything I suggest; the next day he promotes me and increases my compensation. You know— He's clever as hell. Little by little, he's drawn me within his orbit. It's a game. When he gets me to where I'm seriously thinking of chucking the whole thing, he makes a concession. He doesn't make them short of that. The longer I stay, the more difficult it is to tell him to go to hell and walk out."
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