“‘You read the agreement,’ he said. ‘Nobody forced you to sign it.’
“‘But I was doing you a favor,’ I explained. ‘You wanted to make the deal and I helped you out.’
“‘You also made yourself seven and a half million dollars,’ he said. ‘But I’m your friend. If you’re unhappy I’ll let you out of the deal even though it’s still got five more years to run.’”
“What did you say?” Denise asked.
He looked at her as if he just saw her for the first time. “I need a drink,” he said abruptly.
She followed him to the bar and waited while he poured himself a drink and swallowed it in one gulp. He filled his glass again and turned to her.
“‘What about those four and a half million dollars worth of story and play properties that I bought?’ I asked him.
“‘You bought them. We didn’t,’ he says as calm as if he’s talking about the weather. ‘You didn’t notify us as required by the contract.’”
He swallowed half the second drink. “I stared at him, trying to read his face. But there was nothing there. He needed me more than I needed him. I felt it. He had to be bluffing. I called him.”
He finished the drink and put the glass heavily down on the bar. He stared at it morosely.
“What happened then?”
“Nothing. The lawyers are meeting tomorrow.”
He looked at her, the hurt showing in his eyes. “I guessed wrong.”
Hollywood, 1960–1965
BOOK FOUR
STEPHEN GAUNT
CHAPTER ONE
From somewhere in the dark the telephone jangled in my ears. I struggled up through the sleepy abyss and reached for it. “Hello.”
“Steve?” The voice grated in my ear.
“Yes,” I said, still too far off to recognize it.
“Angel, here.”
It all came together and I was awake. Angel Perez was VP Daytime Programming. One time he had been an actor, then he switched to production. He was better behind the camera than in front of it. For the last year I had been using him as my unofficial assistant. I needed a man in New York to listen since I was spending most of my time on the coast now.
“Yes, Angel. What is it?”
“The house is on fire. I think you better get back here.”
I swung my feet over the side of the bed. “What’s happening?”
“The old man called a special meeting of the board yesterday.”
“I know,” I said. “I got the notice.”
“You should have come in for it,” he said. “I got word they blew your ass over the special programs.”
I knew what he meant. They were good television but bad programming. They didn’t get the ratings. I had already heard from the sponsors. They weren’t happy either.
“I told them to expect that,” I said. “But we should do them anyway. You have to put something in once in a while.”
“Southern Products canceled. They didn’t like your equality angle on the labor special. They said that you made a target out of them.”
“I’m not responsible for their own guilt feelings,” I said.
“So you’ll be a dead hero.”
“There’s got to be more to it than just that.”
“There’s also your old friend,” he said.
“I’ve got lots of old friends.”
“Not like this one,” he said. “Dan Ritchie. He came in with another old buddy of yours, Sam Benjamin. They have a whole new idea to revitalize the network. They claim you drifted away from your policy of film and entertainment and that you’re now embarked on a crusade to reform the world. They say that your involvement with the Kennedy’s blew your mind as well as your judgment.”
“You’re remarkably well informed for being down on the thirty-first floor,” I said.
“I’m reading the memos.”
“Where’d you get them?”
“The old man. He called me upstairs and made me a committee of one to study the situation and report back to him.” He paused. “He knows how close we are. Maybe this is his way of warning you.”
“He say anything else?”
“No. You know the way he is. Freezeville.”
It was typical Sinclair. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Ten o’clock here. Seven, your time.”
“I’ll be in this evening. Meet me at my apartment at eight o’clock.”
“Good.” There was obvious relief in his voice. “I got a girl I want you to meet. Out of sight. An actress. Marianne Darling. She’s got the whole town turned on. And she wants to meet you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “When she found out I knew you, she zeroed in on me like a rocket. Made me promise the next time you were in town, I’d set it up. Seems like she’s followed your career in the papers or something. She knows more about you than you do.”
I was interested. “Okay. Bring her with you.”
“I’ll bring Faith too,” he said. “Maybe we’ll swing a little bit.”
Faith was his girl. “Fine. See you tonight.”
I pressed down the bar on the phone, then released it. The operator came on. “Yes, Mr. Gaunt?”
“Get me on the ten a.m. to New York.” I put down the phone and started out of bed. I had another idea. I called Jack Savitt at home and woke him up.
“I’m going into New York this morning,” I said.
“Anything wrong?” he asked quickly.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Want me to drive you out to the airport?”
“No. There’s something else I want you to do for me.”
“Name it.”
“Sam Benjamin. Bring me up to date on him. What and how he’s doing.”
“I haven’t heard much since he moved back to New York last year,” he said. “Only that he’s in constant trouble and is slow paying his bills. He’s had bad luck with his last batch of pictures. Dropped about eleven million.”
“I know that,” I said. “What I want to know is what he’s involved in now.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“You call me at my apartment in New York tonight.”
“Have a good flight,” he said.
I went into the shower. I turned it on hot, then ice cold, then hot again, and when I got out at least I wasn’t asleep. But I was still logy and tired, so I took a benny before I shaved and by the time the shave was over I was alive.
There was a foul-up and the limo never got there so it was nearly six o’clock and dark by the time I caught the cab at Kennedy International. I was surprised to see the snow piled against the sides of the roads. Then I remembered. It was Christmas week in New York.
In L.A. it wasn’t real. Not the snow; it was white plastic. Even Santa Claus wore a summer-weight costume. I pulled the topcoat around me.
“Where you in from?” the hackie asked.
“California,” I said.
“Shmulck,” he said. “You needed this weather?”
“I like it,” I said. “It’s a change.”
“I’d move out there,” he said. “Only my old woman won’t leave the children. The grandchildren, I mean. She couldn’t wait to get our own kids out of the house and now the grandchildren run around screaming all day and she’s in seventh heaven. I can’t figure it out. I’ll never understand women.”
“That makes two of us,” I said.
He grunted and settled into the driving. For the rest of the trip he was silent until I gave him a tip. He looked at the fiver and grinned. “Happy Chanukah.”
“Buy the grandchildren a Christmas present,” I said.
I let myself into the apartment and turned on the lights. Everything was just the way I left it three months ago. Even to the fresh ice in the bucket on the bar.
I fixed myself a drink and picked up the phone just as it began to ring. Sheila’s voice echoed in my ear. “Welcome home, boss. I’m downstairs in the lobby with your messag
es.”
“Come on up.” I fixed another drink. By the time I finished, the door chime rang.
She stood there, the snow still clinging to her black coat. She smiled. “Hello, Stephen.”
I kissed her cheek. “One of the nice things about coming home is you.” I took her coat. “There’s a Scotch on the bar for you.”
We went to the bar and she picked up her drink. “Oh, boy,” she said.
I didn’t speak.
She finished her drink and put down the glass. “I’m glad you’re back. Everything’s gone peculiar.”
“Tell me.”
“There’s an undercurrent. I can’t put my finger on it. Earnings are off. Everybody’s uptight. You’re not there to cool it off and Sinclair sits in his tower and fires memos down the floors like paper airplanes, scaring the shit out of everybody.” She stopped for breath. “I think I could use another drink.”
I fixed it for her. “It was you who got Angel to call me?”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
“I guessed,” I said. “Angel’s no angel. And he’s ambitious. Somebody had to convince him it was better to go with me than against me.”
“Your being at the coast all the time is no help,” she said. “The staff keeps churning.”
“Someday I’m going to move the executive offices out there. The only thing we need in New York is a sales office. The rest is crap and tradition.”
“You call it what you like, Stephen. The fact remains it’s still here.” She didn’t say the rest of it, but I knew what she was thinking.
This was where I belonged. I was president of the company. I had to be here, not so much to do anything but to defend my job. That is, if I still wanted it.
And that was at the heart of it all.
I didn’t know anymore whether I wanted it or not.
CHAPTER TWO
The years turn you on. The years turn you off. I had them all. I had been running up the hill for so long it became a habit. If I slowed down a little, it looked to everybody like I was beginning to slide. So off I would go again.
I didn’t blame Spencer. He had his own job to do. To watch the machine with a critical eye, to goose it if he felt it dragging. And I was the only one there for him to goose. I was the man in charge.
“Who knows I came in?”
“Pretty much the whole office by now,” she said. “There were lots of lights still burning when I left. They want to be ready for you tomorrow.”
“I won’t be in tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll work the phones from here. Set up the auxiliary board.”
She knew what I meant. I had a special multiple-line hookup direct from my office. Everything came through just as if I was in the office. The caller never knew that I wasn’t there.
“Anything special?” she asked.
“Yes. Just keep Sinclair away from me. I don’t want to talk to him.”
“What if he insists?”
“Tell him exactly what I said. I’m too old to play any more games. And he should be too.”
She gave me the rest of the messages and closed her notebook. I walked back to the door with her and helped her into her coat. She looked up at me, a strange expression on her face. “Are you all right, Stephen?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem a little strange. As if you don’t really care that much.”
“I’m a little bored with it. I’ve made this trip too many times before.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Maybe I’m tired. I’ll be all right in the morning.”
She let it go at that. “Good night, Stephen.”
I closed the door behind her and went back to the bar. I made myself another drink and sat there. Fogarty was no fool. She knew me. Maybe better than I knew myself. Could be she saw something in me that I didn’t. I swallowed some of the drink and began to go through the pile of memorandums she left for me.
I lost track of the time. It could have been about a half hour before the doorbell rang. I finished the last memo before I got up to answer it.
I was half a mile away when I opened the door. The girl there brought me home in a hurry. She had long, dark blond hair halfway down her back, an oval face, and blue-violet eyes with four pairs of false eyelashes. She wore a short, fluffy lynx coat on which the snowflakes looked like a decoration. Her nose was pert and tilted just a little and her smile showed small, white, even teeth and a sensual lower lip.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’m Marianne Darling,” she said. “I’ll make it easy for you. You can call me Darling Girl.”
I grinned. “Come in, Darling Girl.”
“I closed the door and took her coat. She wore a purple knit mesh micro and long matching purple boots that climbed up over her knees halfway across her thighs. There was at least six inches of white meat between the top of the boots and the bottom of her dress and from the way it clung to her, she wore nothing beneath it.
She walked ahead of me into the apartment. Her eyes went everywhere at once. I stood there watching her. “What do you think?”
She turned to me. “I like it. It’s all male and leathery.”
“What do you drink?” I asked, leading the way to the bar.
“What are you drinking?”
“Scotch.”
“I’ll take the same,” she said. “It makes life simpler.”
I poured her drink and splashed some more into mine.
She held the glass toward me. “Bang, bang,” she said.
We drank. She saw Fogarty’s glass on the bar with the faint touch of lipstick on the rim. “I’m early,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No interruption. My secretary came over to give me my messages.”
“Oh,” she said.
I took the papers from the bar and put them on the desk near the window. She followed me across the room and looked out. The snow was falling.
“It’s lovely from up here,” she said.
I looked out the window. “Yes.” I had almost forgotten how lovely it could be. I turned back to her. “You make yourself comfortable,” I said. “I want to grab a shower. I’m still sticky from the trip.”
“Okay.” She wandered back to the bar while I went into the bedroom.
I got out of my clothes and left them on the bed. I got into the shower stall and turned on the hot water. The heat eased the pressure, the roar of the water soothed the nerves.
I don’t know how long I stood there when I heard her calling. “Yes?” I shouted back over the water.
“The phone’s ringing. Should I answer it?”
“Please,” I yelled.
A moment later the bathroom door opened. “It’s from the coast. Jack Savitt,” she said.
I cut the water and opened the shower door. “Give me the phone from the wall.”
She came into the bathroom and stood, hesitating.
“Right there,” I said, pointing.
She looked at me doubtfully. “Is it safe?” she asked. “I heard—”
I laughed. “It’s safe.”
She gave me the phone gingerly. I took it. “Jack,” I said.
“Who’s the girl?” he asked. “She’s got a great sound.”
“You don’t know her,” I said. “What did you find out?”
“Pretty much what we figured. He got into a big hole and the banks turned on the heat. They’re getting ready to step in and take over. He put Dan Ritchie on last week to unload everything he could to television for the quick and ready.”
“How does it tie in to the move on us?”
“Ritchie still has friends in the home office. You have twenty-six specials scheduled. That’s twenty-six features that can be shown if he can knock you off.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Not right now. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
I reached around the shower door and gave the
phone back to her. I heard the click as she put it back on the wall. I closed the door and turned the water on again.
Through the opaque glass I could see her standing there, the purple of her dress making an odd design. She didn’t move.
“Anything wrong?” I called.
“No,” she said. “I’m just looking.”
“Looking?”
“At you,” she said. “It’s a wild sight through that glass. It’s like you’re all over the place. Crazy effect.”
I turned off the water. “Better give me a towel,” I said. “Before you do something rash.”
“I already did,” she said. “Twice. Once when I gave you the phone and just now while I was watching.”
“Give me the towel anyway,” I said. “And stop wasting it. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
I stepped out into the towel and wrapped it around me. I pulled another towel from the rack and began to dry myself.
“I’ll get your back,” she volunteered.
I threw her the towel. Her hands were quick and sure. “You’re not Japanese?” I asked.
“Do I rook Japanese?” she laughed.
The bathroom door opened and Angel stood there. A grin split his face. “How cozy. I see you’ve already met.”
“Fix yourself a drink,” I said. “I’ll be right with you.”
“Okay,” he said and disappeared.
I took the towel from her hand. “You too.”
She made a face. “And I thought I would help dress you.”
I laughed and pushed her toward the door. “Go ahead, Darling Girl. I’m a big boy now. I can dress myself.”
They were draped around the bar when I came out. I said hello to Angel’s girl and fixed myself a drink. “Any of you kids had dinner?” I asked.
Angel shook his head. “No.”
I looked at the girls. “Where would you like to eat?”
“Anything wrong with the room service here?” Darling Girl asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Then why fight the snow? When we can be all comfy and cozy here,” she said. “We can stay in, turn on, and ball.”
Angel began to laugh. “What did I tell you, boss? Isn’t she too much?”
I stared at her while I picked up the phone. “Maybe,” I said. I saw the flush creeping into her face and the operator came on. “Give me room service,” I said.
The Inheritors Page 28