"How's he gonna react when he reads this extra stuff I'll be putting in the story?"
"He won't buy out the paper over that."
"Well gee, thanks, Miss Cord. I'm glad we met."
4
"He told her he was in love with her. She believed him."
Jo-Ann would meet Ben only over lunch, only in a public place where there could not be a scene. There was a scene anyway, of sorts. People stared at them. Some laughed. They were surrounded in the restaurant by people who would have sworn they never looked at a supermarket tabloid, but they glanced at Ben Parrish and Jo-Ann Cord and recognized them as two of the people shown on the front page of this week's Sketch.
The story had made front page, complete with photographs, none flattering. The picture of Glenda Grayson was one that Gib Dugan had distributed of her fourteen years ago, wearing her signature black hat and nothing more but bra and panties. The picture of Jo-Ann was one taken the night she was led under arrest and handcuffed into a Los Angeles police station. The one of Ben showed him at a swimming pool, paunch spilling out over the top of his trunks, cigarette in one hand, martini glass in the other.
The reporter was more clever, more devious than Jo-Ann had realized. If she had seemed deferential toward the end of the interview, nothing of the sort carried over into her story. She had treated none of them kindly. She called Glenda Grayson "a one-time stripper," Ben a "Hollywood hustler," and Jo-Ann a "swinging rich kid." She called the three of them "a libidinous trio" — libidinous being one of the Sketch's favorite words.
"I believed you," said Jo-Ann, carefully holding her voice down. She had drunk more Scotch than her limit allowed, but she was in control of herself. "I was stupid. I hate myself for that. Cords are supposed to be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them."
"Bat told Glenda he loved her and wanted to marry her," said Ben, equally quietly. "Then he went off to New York and began to find excuses not to come back out here to spend weekends with her. She found out he was seeing Toni again, in fact that Toni was living part of the time in the Waldorf Towers apartment. Glenda was upset. I was upset. And you were in jail!"
"Yeah. I recommend that for a short, restful vacation sometime. It beats the drying-out clinic. A cellmate is not holier than thou. Mine was in for the same thing I was and could hardly look down her nose at me."
"We're the same kind of people, you and I," said Ben.
"Is that a suggestion that I forgive and forget?"
"We are the same kind. We enjoy the same things. We— "
"What are you saying to Glenda?" Jo-Ann asked.
"Nothing. She won't take my phone calls. She's moved out of the beach house, you know. Sam Stein is furious. I suppose your father is even more furious."
Jo-Ann smiled and shook her head. "Not at all." She had decided not to tell him who had initiated the Sketch story. "I can think of a way to make him furious."
"Hey! He's not a guy to be played around with."
"What's he gonna do to me? Shut off my friggin' allowance? Make Bat fire me? What'd you say — that we're the same kind of guys?" She lifted her glass and gulped down Scotch. "Damn right we are. And I'm not going to let that son of a bitch dominate my whole life. I can handle you, stud, and I can handle him, too."
"The Consolidated deal went down the drain yesterday," said Ben.
"Sure. Of course. The fine hand of Jonas. We can screw him."
"Honey, he's not a man to— "
"We fly over to Reno," she said. "Tonight. See how he likes that."
5
Jonas paced the living-room-office in his suite in The Seven Voyages, his talk fast and angry. Bat, sitting on a couch with his legs stretched out before him, watched and listened. He had begun to worry about his father. Jonas, though as fully recovered from his heart attack as he would ever be, isolated himself more and more in the hotel and rarely ventured out. In the ten months since the attack he had not returned once to New York and had flown to Los Angeles only twice. He managed his businesses from the suite, using half a dozen telephone lines. In the suite across the hall, converted into offices for staff, a teletype chattered constantly, sending and receiving. The long coffee table that served as his desk was strewn with the yellow paper torn off the machine.
For a few weeks he had let his beard grow but had shaved it off when it came out grayer than his hair. He didn't wear business suits anymore, or even jackets and slacks. He wore wrinkled khakis with golf shirts and sometimes cardigan sweaters.
"How the hell can a man focus his attention on business when he has to contend with damned foolishness like this?" he barked.
The damned foolishness he referred to was the newspaper story reporting Jo-Ann's marriage to Ben Parrish. It was a short, factual story in the Los Angeles Times. Probably he had not seen the coverage in the Sketch, which featured a photo of the newlyweds strolling hand-in-hand on the beach, he in a pair of boxer trunks, she in a spectacularly brief bikini. The beach was the one below Bat's beach house. Since Glenda had moved out, he had turned the house over to Jo-Ann.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Jonas went on. "The next word I'll get, she'll be pregnant."
"It happens," said Bat. "People do live their lives. I don't like Ben Parrish. But we've got to face it; he's Jo-Ann's husband. And Jo-Ann is not to be taken for a dummy. I don't know what she thought she was doing, marrying that man. But there it is; she did it."
"She did it to defy me. And you."
"Well ... maybe. Why not?"
"Whose side are you on?" asked Jonas sullenly.
"Are there sides? Do there have to be sides?"
"I am placed — you are placed — in a hell of a position," said Jonas.
"You didn't have to send the story to the Sketch."
"Who says I did?"
"Do you deny it?" Bat asked.
Jonas stiffened and flared with indignation. "I don't have to deny things," he said. "When did it get started that you hit me with challenges and I have to deny them?"
Bat shrugged. "Describe this hell of a position that we're in," he said.
"I didn't want her to have any part in the business," said Jonas. "Now she's married to that worthless son of a bitch, and anything she finds out he'll find out. Pillow talk. She's got to go."
"Why do you think she married him?"
"To shoot me a finger."
Bat grinned. "Why would she want to do that?"
"Why the hell do you think?" Jonas asked. "You know Parrish was trying to make a big deal with Consolidated. Well, I queered that for him. I let Goldish know I wouldn't take it kindly if Consolidated let Benjamin Parrish in on anything. So now where am I? The bastard is my son-in-law!"
"It'll have to be worked out," said Bat. "I've got a worse problem."
"Worse than that?"
"We've got one successful television production," said Bat. "The Glenda Grayson Show. It's showing a profit, and we're starting to get your investment back. But I've got one seriously unhappy star."
"You screwed the girl. It's a dumb dog that shits in his own bed."
"Forgive me," said Bat. "A chip off the old block."
"How much is it gonna take to make her happy?"
Bat nodded. "You have it figured."
"A word of advice," said Jonas. "Glenda Grayson is thirty-five years old and getting a little shopworn. Get your guys to write better stuff for Margit Little. Build her up. One of these days we can tell Glenda Grayson to go screw."
"Great minds run in one direction," said Bat. "If you'll forgive the cliché."
Jonas had stopped pacing and now he sat down. "Got something to show you," he said. He picked up a telephone and dialed a number. "Angie, have the guys wheel in that model." He spoke to Bat. "The new hotel."
Angie came in, and two young men wheeled in an architect's model of a new casino-hotel. "The Cord Intercontinental Vegas," she said.
Bat stood and looked at the model. Since he had last involved himself personally with the new hote
l, his father had authorized a substantial increase in its size. He had obviously acquired more land, since this hotel would not stand on the land they had originally bought.
"Okay?" asked Jonas.
"Beautiful," said Bat. It would have been pointless to say anything else. Except— "But it looks like a hell of a lot of money." His thought was that it was his father's plaything, but it would have been a major mistake to suggest it.
"Sixteen floors," said Jonas as if he didn't detect Bat's thought. "The executive offices of the company will occupy the top floor, the way they do here — only four times as big. A stage that can accommodate the most spectacular nightclub shows in the world. I've been in touch with the Folies-Bergère in Paris. It may be that we can stage an authentic Folies right here in Las Vegas."
"Problems?" Bat asked.
"Oh, yeah. The problems are beginning to show up. Coincidences that don't make sense. Oh, yeah. We're going to have problems."
23
1
JONAS ENJOYED ASSEMBLING PEOPLE HE CARED FOR at the ranch at Christmas. It wasn't always possible. The year Nevada died, and the next year, he didn't feel like it. He couldn't imagine the party without Nevada. He invited Jo-Ann the next year. And he brought Angie. Bat had felt obliged to go to Mexico for Christmas. Four sat down at the table: Jonas and Jo-Ann and Angie and Robair. It wasn't enough. He had actually considered inviting Monica, to fill the house. Then last year he was just out of the hospital for Christmas, so they spent the holiday in the apartment in the Waldorf Towers — the same four, plus Bat. This year there would be more people but no Robair, who had died in August.
This year Bat would bring Toni again. Jonas asked Jo-Ann to bring Ben Parrish. He had to face the man sometime. So did Monica, so he had invited her, too, and her cartoonist friend Bill Toller, if she wanted to bring him — or whoever was sleeping in her bed this year.
Since the heart attack Jonas had let his pilot's license lapse. He had not taken the biennial physical, because he doubted they would pass him. Bill Shaw was technically pilot in command of the Beechcraft Bonanza they flew from Las Vegas to the ranch, but Jonas sat in the left seat and flew the airplane. He hadn't lost his touch and was exhilarated by having his hands on the controls of an airplane again.
He landed first at the Cord Explosives plant and went in to see once more the office where his father died. The plant manager didn't use it. It was kept as an office for the Cords, whenever one of them came to the plant. Jonas went out into the plant and shook hands with as many as he could of the workers, mostly Mexicans, who still operated this highly profitable seminal enterprise of the Cord empire. They hadn't seen him for a long time, and they didn't see Bat often either. His visit was good for their morale.
Bill Shaw carried Jonas's luggage into the ranch house and then took off in the Bonanza to be with his family in Los Angeles for Christmas. Angie was in the house, trying to do what Robair had always done: decorate for Christmas and organize the meals. She was a good girl and was doing her best, but Jonas realized she couldn't do what Robair had done, much less what Nevada had done; and he reached an abrupt conclusion that he would sell the ranch. This would be his last Christmas there.
2
Toni was dismayed by Jonas. She couldn't really like him, because she couldn't like his influence over Bat; but she was jolted by the change in the man. She remembered what Bat had told her when she came here for Christmas five years ago: that the household would live to Jonas's schedule, that probably consciously but even unconsciously he would dominate totally. He would be the center of everything. He still was, but not in the same way. Everyone gathered around him. Everyone deferred to him. But it was for a new reason — that they sensed he was a dying lion. What was worse he obviously sensed the same thing and had settled into the role. It was appalling. He was only fifty-three!
At Christmas in 1952 she had observed the immense energy of these people. Now she saw something else: that none of them loved Jonas, and he didn't love them. She was distressed by the thought that maybe they were incapable of love. They shared a sense of family, a stalwart loyalty toward each other; but it wasn't love; it was something else, a defensive family allegiance that inspired them to strike out at anyone who threatened the demesne. That was their only commitment to each other: to protect the turf. They would rush to each other's defense, not because they cared for each other, but to defend the empire.
Monica stood by the fireplace chatting with her friend Bill Toller, who had to have accommodated her to come here and be subjected to this evening. Monica patently didn't like any of the Cords, including her own daughter. She knew why Jonas had invited her here: to let her see what her daughter had married. Jonas was punishing her for something out of the past. He was succeeding. Monica was at no pains to conceal her antipathy for the Hollywood hustler her daughter had married, nor her indifference for the son Jonas had discovered.
Toni had done a little research into the life and character of Benjamin Parrish. She had a word for him. Slick. She had anticipated slick, and he was slick. He was a bulky man, ten years older than Jo-Ann, and he was all but absurdly protective of her. He was also playing a transparent game of deference toward Jonas and Bat. He smoked only when he stood by the fireplace, where the draft would carry his smoke up the flue.
Jo-Ann had matured since Toni last saw her at her graduation two years ago. Matured? No, she had deteriorated. At twenty-three, she was a damaged woman; heavy drinking and constant smoking had marked her. She had been an unhappy girl when Toni first saw her at the 1952 Christmas party ... a bitter, cynical young woman at the graduation ... a scarred woman now.
And, damn it, they were all responsible for it, except maybe Bat. Jonas had expectations of her, and he let her know she didn't meet them. Monica didn't want to acknowledge she had a daughter who looked nearly as old as the mother. The mother and father weren't proud of their daughter and had let her know it. What the hell did they expect of her?
Toni could see that Angie was devoted to Jonas, perhaps pitiably so. It looked as if Jonas accepted her devotion the same way he accepted the devotion of employees — he would reward it, but he thought it was no more than his due. Angie was realistic and probably comfortable.
Bat. He was of course the one most interesting to Toni. She had watched him change. He had always been a Cord, she understood. Some of the combined elements of his character and personality — the relentless drive, the focused and endless span of attention, the calm and unaffected egocentricity, all coupled with an unremitting erotic appetite — had been enigmatic until she met Jonas and saw the same combination of traits in him. In Bat, all but the last had been tempered by what he was of his mother, as Toni judged, but under the continuing influence of his father he was more and more a Cord, with the tempering influence diminishing. It was said of Jonas that he was not a man to be crossed, that he was remorseless when crossed. She wondered if Bat had not acquired that trait, too.
Bat had developed a slight farsightedness and carried in his breast pocket a pair of eyeglasses with dark horn rims, which he pulled out from time to time and settled on his nose, giving him an owlish aspect that was almost always submerged in his facile, active smile. He paid more attention to tailoring than his father did and wore clothes his New York tailors cut precisely to fit him. Time had not ravaged him the way it had Jo-Ann; to the contrary, it had caressed him; he was, if anything, more handsome than he had been before.
They were thirty-one years old. If they were going to marry and have a family, the time was now. But it was anything but certain it was going to happen. She was not certain, in fact, it was what she wanted. The demand he had made in Lexington, Massachusetts, nine years ago still stood. He wanted his wife to be a homemaker and mother. He wanted his wife to be an ornament to his life. He said he'd learned better, but she was not confident he had.
She had said she was willing to be wife and home-maker and ornament, in time. She had said she would in time give up her career and sp
end twenty years rearing children. And no man she had ever met matched Bat Cord. Still— He had too much Jonas in him. He seemed to be filling up with it.
3
Jo-Ann sat beside her father on a couch and drank Scotch. She was pleased with herself. Both her parents were pissed. She had married the man with the biggest cock in California and had made it plain to him that he had better, by God, cleave to her like the Bible said or she would, by Christ, cut it off. She was a Cord. He had better understand that. Jonas might not like it that she was a Cord, but she was, and she was just as much a bitch as he was a son of a bitch, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He was counting her drinks. So was Monica. So was Bat. To hell with all of them.
She was a Cord, but she didn't need the Cords. She had every quality they had, and she was married to a highly competent flimflam artist. Jonas wanted to destroy Ben but obviously was not so sure he wanted to destroy his daughter's husband. Anyway, the hand of Jonas did not reach everywhere.
4
His body rarely reminded Bat of the shattered rib and ripped flesh he had suffered on the Ludendorff Bridge. But occasionally it did: with sharp spasms, then throbbing in his right side. The pain came at odd times, usually not more than once every few weeks. He felt it tonight, and he related it to having lifted a heavy suitcase with his right arm as he left the plane that had delivered him and Toni to the ranch landing strip.
He moved to the fireplace and exchanged idle words with Bill Toller and Ben Parrish, studying the others in the room with the same intensity with which they were observing him and each other. He wore a gray tweed cashmere jacket and charcoal-gray slacks, a white shirt, and a narrow regimental-stripe tie.
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