"Okay," said Bat.
"I've been going over a lot of stuff," Jonas went on. "I see you haven't restructured the business. I wondered if I might come back and find my name wasn't on the letterhead anymore."
"Oh, sure," said Bat.
"You really think we ought to quit making TV sets? You never give up on that, do you?"
"I've given you my reasons."
"Yeah. Well, you've got me by the short hairs. Okay. Phase it out. Your job. Phase us out, so we don't look like we've been beat. Also, you're saying we ought to quit making airplanes."
"You're a pilot," said Bat. "Would you fly a Cord 50?"
"It's a good little plane. For a trainer."
"So's a Piper," said Bat. "So's a Cessna 150. And the Beech. Look at the sales numbers."
"What do you want me to do, give up Intercontinental Airlines, too?"
"Hell, no. Inter-Continental is competitive. It holds its market share very nicely on its routes. It's a prestige property. Maybe someday we'll want to sell it. If we do, we'll get a big piece of cash for it — or a strong position in the stock of the buyer airline."
"Why would you ever want to sell it, for Christ's sake? Am I going to have anything left?"
"The airline business is going the way of automobile manufacturing," said Bat. "The trend is to fewer and fewer companies. Only the really big operators will be able to survive. But that's years down the pike."
"I can hear the wheels going around in your head," said Jonas. "Okay. So no Cord TVs, no Cord airplanes. But phase them out, not too fast. We don't want it to look like we gave up on something or were forced out. What else?"
"I think we ought to consolidate Cord Explosives and Cord Plastics. They're the same kind of business: chemicals. I don't see the point in keeping two sets of management on the payroll, two sets of accountants, two sets of lawyers, and so on."
"I'm damned if you're not telling me I haven't run things very efficiently!"
"I'm not telling you that," said Bat. "It's for you to decide if you have or haven't. I do have another suggestion, though. Cord Explosives. I think there's some disadvantage in calling the parent company of all the other enterprises by the name Explosives. In some quarters it brings a negative reaction. I suggest we give it a new name: Cord Explosives Division of Cord Enterprises. Then Cord Plastics and Cord Productions and Cord Hotels are also divisions of Cord Enterprises."
"You didn't restructure, but you were sure as hell thinking about it," said Jonas ruefully.
"Also," said Bat, "I recommend we call Cord Enterprises CE and design a distinctive company logo for it. General Electric is GE, International Business Machines is IBM, Trans World Airlines is TWA, and so forth."
"My father is spinning in his grave," said Jonas.
"If he were alive, he'd do things like this," said Bat.
"If he were alive he'd be in a rest home," said Jonas.
"They're not such big changes. They don't threaten your control."
"Okay, then," said Jonas. "Make your changes. I'll make you vice president and a director of this CE, which will be the parent company, as you say. I want frequent and detailed reports. I'm going to stay here and run Cord Hotels myself. I'm going to see to it that the Intercontinental Vegas gets built. Also, I'm going to ride herd on that son of a bitch Chandler. He's getting a little independent."
"He keeps bad company," said Bat.
"Doesn't he? Listen, is your lawyer friend Amory coming aboard? We'll need a corporate lawyer to make these changes."
"What about Phil Wallace?"
"Phil Wallace is my personal attorney, though he's handled a lot of company business. Dave Amory will be general counsel to Cord Enterprises. That is, he will if you think he's good enough."
"He's good enough."
"Then that's settled. He should be in New York, which is where you should be. Why'd you take our TV star with you to Havana? She that good a lay?"
"She and I — "
"Yeah. But if she's around too much when things are happening, she'll get to know too much about our business. I don't want her to know anything. From a lifetime's experience, I tell you: Keep your business life and your sex life separate. Okay?"
"What if I told you I might marry her?"
"I'd think you'd lost your mind," Jonas said, total scorn in his voice. "Like your sister. She says she might marry that bum Parrish. I tried to talk her into going into a drying-out clinic, and she won't do it. Hey! I can't cover all these bases. Use the kind of smarts in your personal life that you do in business."
"What Jo-Ann needs is a job," said Bat. "She doesn't want to live on an allowance. She needs responsibility ... and purpose. I'd like to give her a job with Cord Productions, say in advertising or maybe public relations."
"No," said Jonas. "Not if she marries Parrish. Not until she dries out."
Bat shrugged. "You're the boss," he said.
Jonas looked away from Bat for a moment, stared at the window where the telescope still stood on its tripod. "Don't you even think of marrying that bitch," he said. "You've told me not to meddle in your personal life, but a man's judgment about his personal affairs reflects on his judgment in business affairs. Are you telling me you're infatuated with Glenda Grayson?"
"You asked if she's a good lay. I'm gonna tell you, she's a hell of a lay."
"Let me tell you something," said Jonas. "In my time I've humped a lot of women. I've had children by two of them, just two. And let me tell you, neither of them was a woman I'd have had to be ashamed of. Your mother is a fine woman. Monica is, too, in her way. If you married Glenda Grayson, or if she became the mother of a child by you, you'd be ashamed of her sooner or later, embarrassed to have your business associates and your personal friends meet her. She was a goddamned stripteaser, Bat! She's coarse!"
"Okay, okay. You've made your point," Bat muttered resentfully.
"Anyway, how could you do anything like that to the smart, beautiful little girl in Washington? Use your fuckin' brains, Bat!"
2
"You know what he said to me? 'You're the boss.' I just make the boy vice president of the main company, and when he disagrees about something, he just shrugs at me and says, 'You're the boss.'"
"Why does that offend you?" asked Angie. Jonas was supposed to take an hour's rest in the afternoon. The doctor said that meant taking off his clothes and going to bed. Usually, Angie joined him. Usually, she could distract him from the racing thoughts that monopolized his mind and denied him the rest he was supposed to be getting. Right now she lay beside him, gently massaging his penis and scrotum, hoping he might relax and maybe even go to sleep.
"I don't know," he said in a voice that suggested maybe he was beginning to relax. "Damnit, I — I didn't think he'd get hostile if I overruled him on something. My god, I'd accepted all kinds of big changes he wanted to make; and when I said no to one thing, to just one goddamned thing, he shrugged me off, telling me I'm the boss. Of course I'm the boss. What the hell did he think?"
"Maybe it was because it was about a personal thing, his newfound sister."
"I want the boy to be a success. I want him to be ready to take over when the time comes. But not yet."
"Just how big a success do you want him to be?" asked Angie.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to suggest how big," she said. "Big — but not quite as big as you. Right?"
Jonas kept silent for a quarter of a minute. "You're like Bat," he said then. "You're too damned smart for your own good."
3
"I was warned," said Bat to Glenda. "People told me I'd become his errand boy."
"Damned highly paid errand boy, I'd say," Glenda commented.
They were in bed at the beach house.
"I'm like a dog on a leash. I can run out a certain distance; and then, whenever he wants to, he jerks me back. I won't be your producer anymore, incidentally. He dropped that one on me this afternoon."
"You won't? Who will be?"
&n
bsp; "I don't know yet. I don't know if it's my call or his. I'll be executive producer but I won't be in charge of day-to-day operations. I'm going to have to spend a lot more time in New York."
"In other words, I won't be seeing you so much anymore."
"I'll come to LA as often as I can. And you can come to New York."
"Not until a season of shows is in the can," she said.
"Well, I'll get out here. Often. It's just that we won't be together every day."
"Every night," she said quietly. "You won't need the beach house anymore. I can — "
"Of course I need the beach house. We need the beach house."
"So the old man's going to have his way, after all," she said dully.
"What makes you say that?"
"You've got to go to New York. I've got to stay in California. He seems to be arranging things so as to keep us apart."
"I'm my own man," said Bat grimly.
"Sure you are," she sneered.
4
The Wall Street Journal published the story of the reorganization of what it, like many other newspapers, chose to call the Cord Empire.
NEW "CEO" CORD EMPIRE
Jonas E. R. Cord, the son of Jonas Cord II, has been assigned broad responsibilities in the restructured Cord conglomerate.
While the thirty-one-year-old Jonas Cord III is obviously being groomed to succeed his formidable father and grandfather at the head of the Cord Empire, it is apparent that the real reins of power remain in the hands of the fifty-three-year-old father, who has retained his positions as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of what is now to be called CE — this in addition to owning a majority of the common stock.
Toni Maxim, although she was a political reporter and not a business reporter, covered the story for The Washington Post, writing in part:
The third Jonas Cord — Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista — is anything but the All-American Boy. He is his father's illegitimate son and was born and reared in Mexico. He was educated in the States, though — at Culver Military Academy, Harvard, and Harvard Law. His education was interrupted by a stint in the United States Army, during which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and two Purple Hearts.
He continues a family tradition begun by his grandfather and father, in that he is a ladies' man of note. He is frequently seen with nightclub and television star Glenda Grayson and recently took her with him on a visit to Cuba, where he inspected a Cord investment in a gambling casino and renewed his acquaintance with his great-uncle, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
When Toni came to New York, Bat showed her the wire he had received from his father.
I HAD SUPPOSED THIS GIRL WAS OUR FRIEND. SHE KNOWS TOO MUCH AND SHE TALKS TOO MUCH. REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT TELLING YOUR WOMEN ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS.
She sat across from him at his desk in the Chrysler Building. His desk was a big table, actually, and behind it, instead of a credenza, sat two handsome rolltop desks. It was in Bat's nature to live with clutter on his desk but also to like to hide the clutter by closing the rolltops. The teletype machine his father used to send him messages from Las Vegas stood in a corner. It was chattering away now, printing some query or complaint from Jonas. He seemed not even to notice it. When it stopped he didn't get up to see what message had arrived.
Toni was more beautiful than ever. At thirty-one, she had gained no weight; she was if anything maybe slightly thinner than before. Her heavy breasts swelled provocatively under the white silk of her blouse. He hadn't touched them for a very long time. The thought made him draw a deep, tense breath.
"I didn't mean to offend your father," said Toni. She said it with a sly little smile that contradicted her words.
"His heart attack has made him more curmudgeonly," said Bat. "The doctor warned me it might."
"Brush with death," she said.
"Something more than that. Something about the blood supply to the brain."
"I didn't stop by to talk about your father," she said. "I'll be interviewing the mayor this afternoon and wondered if you would like to meet for dinner."
"You bet," said Bat. He flipped a page on his calendar. "I'll cancel a couple of things."
"Fine. Where shall I meet you?"
"Where are you staying?" he asked.
"At the Algonquin."
"There's a fine dining room in the hotel. But, uh ... why are you staying in a hotel? You know, I've got the place in the Waldorf Towers."
"How would Glenda react to my bunking in with you?" she asked.
"It's none of her business," said Bat.
"That's right — any more than it's any of mine that you've been sleeping with her. I mean, if we only see each other once every few months, I can't expect you to be celibate in the meantime. And, for that matter, you can't expect me to be either."
"Now that I'm on the East Coast we can see each other a lot more often," he said.
Toni nodded. "I'd like that. I still care for you, you know."
"Well, I care for you, too. We — "
"Let's don't get into a deep discussion," she interrupted. "I'll come to the apartment. When will you be there?"
He opened the center drawer in one of the rolltop desks and handed her a key. "Come as soon as you can," he said. "If I'm not yet there you can let yourself in. Keep the key. You don't ever need to go to a hotel in New York."
5
It was like it had always been when he was with her. On nights after long separations, they did not sleep at all. He would drop away from her exhausted, then quickly recover under her ministrations and return for something more. She denied him nothing. He denied her nothing. Twice they went in the bathroom and showered together, to rinse off their sweat and other fluids. Afterward they returned to the bed, straightened the tangled sheets, and gave themselves to each other again.
At four in the morning the telephone rang. Bat hesitated but then answered it, knowing that nothing but something urgent would generate a call on his unlisted number at that hour.
"Jesus Christ!" Toni muttered.
"It's my father," Bat whispered. "Calling from Las Vegas."
"You heard from your sister?" his father asked.
"No. Should I have?"
"You can't guess where she is!"
Jonas was excited. Too excited. "Where is she?" he asked quietly, trying to communicate calm.
"She's in jail, for Christ's sake!"
"Where? And why?"
"Los Angeles. For drunken driving. She was in some kind of little accident, nobody hurt, thank God, but they hauled her in and gave her the test, and she didn't pass."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know. Go to LA and see what you can do about it."
"I'll call you from Los Angeles," said Bat.
6
Jo-Ann, her face flushed and her eyes puffy from crying, sat behind a screen of wire mesh. She wore the gray cotton uniform of Sybil Brand Institute, the Los Angeles County women's jail.
"It's just three days," said Bat. "That's the mandatory minimum sentence for operating under the influence, and there was no getting you out of it. So ... Thursday, Friday, and Saturday."
"So goddamned humiliating," she sobbed.
"We've posted a bond that allows you to drive, though your license is technically under suspension for one year. You don't know how lucky you are. You might have killed yourself. Or someone else."
"I might have been better off."
"Forget that kind of talk."
"Have you talked to Ben?" she asked.
"Yes."
"He hasn't come to see me."
"He can't. You're allowed to see family members and lawyers, no one else. We could get an exception, but you'll be out of here before it would come through."
"I don't want him to see me in here anyway."
"Now, I've got something else to tell you. I've checked you into the Sunset Hills Clinic. I'll pick you up when you're released and take you there."
&
nbsp; "A drying-out clinic," said Jo-Ann despondently. "I don't ... want to go there. I'll be locked up as much as I am here."
"If you don't go, our father will cut off your allowance."
She sobbed. "The goddamned allowance! Always the goddamned allowance! I have to do what he says, no matter what, to keep the goddamned allowance! And you have to do whatever he says to keep your goddamned job. You think you're independent of him? No more than I am, big brother. Nobody's independent of Jonas. How long do I have to stay in that place?"
"At the end of the month they'll evaluate your case."
She blew a loud sigh. "You drink. He drinks. Why do I have to be warehoused in a psycho ward because I drink?"
"I don't have to tell you why. You know why."
"And when I get out, how different is anything going to be?"
"When you get out, I'm going to give you a job with Cord Productions."
"He won't let you."
"I'm going to do it whether he likes it or not."
7
Glenda sat down on the bed in the room Ben Parrish had rented in the Golden Evenings Motel. She had come off the set half an hour before and was still tense and sweaty.
"So, let me see this notorious tool of yours," she said.
Without hesitation Ben unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis.
"Oi!" she cried. "The biggest one in California, right?"
Ben smiled. He let it hang out, making no move to put it back inside his pants. "Well, I haven't seen all the others in California, have you?"
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