Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  Hal Rainer got up from the floor, helped Cleo to her feet. “Thanks. I’d have got some of that in the back of the head if you hadn’t—” Then he looked at Apollo lying face down in the bloodstained bread- and-butter custard. “Well, we got a story. Not the one we came looking for—”

  “Better,” said Cleo, alive and no longer afraid of dying.

  Then she looked at Frank Apollo and wanted to be sick. She turned away and, apart from her heaving stomach, felt nothing. Pity was something you didn’t waste in certain terr’tories.

  V

  The killing of Apollo and his henchman, the legal adviser whose only advice, it turned out, was the gun in the armpit holster that he did not get out in time, was a Page One story in every newspaper in town. Under Cleo’s and Hal’s joint by-line in the Courier it ran over to a further two full columns on Page Two. The photographer who had followed them up from the Courier and had been fretting to his driver about wasted time, had got the only pictures of the bodies that appeared in any New York paper. Hal had rung the police and ambulance before any of the restaurant staff or guests had got over their shock; then he had stood by the phone to see that no smart waiter, anxious to earn an extra buck or two, rang any rival newspaper. By the time other photographers did arrive on the scene the bodies were already covered with tablecloths and on stretchers waiting to be wheeled out to the ambulance. Jake Lintas, conservative as always, had demurred about running the graphic pictures, but Carl Fishburg and Bill Puskas convinced him they were too good to throw out.

  The story, as Cleo and Hal told it, meant the recall before the Senate committee of all the leading figures of the past week. But the mobsters denied any knowledge of Frank Apollo; to hear them tell it, they lived in a Garden of Eden where all they knew was innocence. In the end the police decided the killers were out-of-towners, probably sent in from Chicago. The one thing that worried Cleo was that Tony Rossano had disappeared and she began to wonder if it was he who had set up the killing of Apollo and Sirio, hoping that she and Hal might be killed in the crossfire.

  “The thought occurred to me, too,” said Hal.

  “Does it make you sweat?”

  “Naturally.” Then he put his hand on her arm, one of the few times he ever had; he kept gestures of affection to a minimum. “Don’t worry, girl. He won’t come back.”

  Claudine did not like the way the story had been featured, but she made no complaint to Jake Lintas. She did, however, bring it up at the next board meeting. “It sold a few extra copies for a week or so, but sales have dropped back again.”

  “Maybe we should run more stories like it,” said Stephen Jensen.

  “One can’t keep manufacturing sensations day after day.”

  “Mr. Lintas doesn’t even seem capable of manufacturing news. If I may suggest it, Claudine, I think you should spend more time as publisher and less as chairman of the board.”

  Lately, she had noticed, Stephen had begun to show a degree of opposition to her. Several years ago she had had an affair with him that had lasted a year, one that they had discreetly kept from their respective children and their friends. She had terminated it when she had discovered that he was having another affair with a much younger woman at the same time. She had complimented him on his stamina, since her own appetite had not been diminished by her age, and told him to concentrate it on the other woman. Since then she had had no lover, though she still felt the urge for one occasionally and remembered Stephen’s talents with some satisfaction. But she had never loved him, nor he her. Nonetheless, she had never expected him to start opposing her, at least in business, the way he had been for several months.

  “I am satisfied with the way Mr. Lintas is running things. There is something else that causes me more concern. I am told that someone has been buying up stock in the paper. Something like twenty per cent has already changed hands. Who is buying and, more importantly, for the moment anyway, who is selling?”

  There were seven other board members besides Claudine and Jensen, all men, all around Claudine’s age. Glances passed round the table like mice looking for a way out of a maze. Then one man said, “I was going to bring it up later in the meeting. I’ve sold my stock. I have my letter here and my resignation from the board.”

  “Which I’ll accept unread, Charles,” said Claudine, as if through a mouthful of dry ice. “Whom have you sold to?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. I think it’s just a front company. I feel bad about this—”

  “As you should,” said Claudine.

  “—but part of the deal was that I told no one until the stock had changed hands. The price was too good to ignore, Claudine.”

  “I shan’t ask you what you got, that would only bring me down to your mercenary level. Why didn’t you come to me and see if I would buy the stock if you were so eager to get out?”

  “Would you have paid me five dollars above the current market price?” The man, fat and florid, seemed to be growing bigger and redder with Claudine’s curtness. He knew he had done an unethical thing, but business was business and any offer that got him out of the newspaper business had its own absolution.

  “No,” said Claudine; then looked around the table. “Has anyone else sold his stock?”

  A tall bald-headed man said, “As you know, Claudine, I have no stock of my own. I am here representing the Hilliard family. We received an offer and I recommended they accept it. The price was the same as Charles got.”

  “I’ll accept your resignation too, David. Anyone else?”

  Two other men, one a lawyer, the other a banker, each of them representing outside stockholders, said, yes, they had sold out. She was far from being as composed as she looked; she was deeply shocked. She knew that certain members of the board had been very dissatisfied with the paper’s performance over the past few years; she was as aware as they that newspapers were dying all over the United States. If the stockholders wanted to sell out, she had expected they would warn her. Instead, they had presented her with a fait accompli.

  She looked at Stephen Jensen, her only real friend on the board. He shook his head at her unspoken query. “They made me an offer, Claudine, but I declined it. I wasn’t being entirely altruistic or honourable. I just figured that anyone who wanted to pay almost fifteen per cent above the market price for a stock that hasn’t moved in three years must be either crazy or he knows something I don’t know. I don’t think you should be so critical of Charles and the others. They’ve held their stock in the Courier for God knows how many years and I think they’ve been very patient and long suffering.”

  “I hope their suffering is relieved now,” said Claudine, sounding like Florence Nightingale burning herself on her lamp. “Exactly how much stock has gone to this mysterious buyer?”

  “Twenty-two per cent. Enough to give them at least two seats on the board, if they ask for them.”

  “Well, we’ll wait and let them make the approach.” She wasn’t going down the road to meet the tumbrils.

  “I wonder if it’s laundered money from the Mafia?” Jensen said. “Or is it just coincidence that the bids started right after the Courier featured that story on the Apollo killing?”

  The thought troubled Claudine, but she still looked calm. “I’d have no gangster sitting on this board.”

  “You wouldn’t have a gangster,” said Jensen. “He would probably be a perfectly respectable lawyer. Respectable on the surface, anyway.”

  Two nights later Claudine had Alain and Cleo to dinner in the penthouse and told them of the sales of stock. “Stephen Jensen has raised the possibility of its being Mafia money that has bought into the paper. You may regret having pursued that Apollo story, Cleo.”

  “I think that’s unfair, Mother,” said Alain.

  “Do you think so?” Claudine looked at Cleo.

  This was the first time Cleo had been invited up to the penthouse. It was almost as if Claudine had kept her at arm’s length, out of her own private territory; Souillac might
be the palace, but palaces have always been accessible. Cleo had been apprehensive about coming here tonight, wondering if, in her autocratic way, Claudine was going to tell her that she could now marry into the family.

  “I don’t think they would go to all that expense just to shut me up, Mrs. Roux.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that,” said Claudine. “Please don’t be so vain. What I am suggesting is that their attention may have been drawn to the Courier by your story, they learned there were certain people willing to sell their stock, and they bought. I am told they launder their dirty money through many channels. Radio stations, television stations, motion picture studios. Why not a newspaper?”

  “The other three make money, newspapers don’t,” said Alain. “Not the Courier, anyway.”

  “Perhaps they were looking for a tax loss,” said Claudine. “Well, we shall just have to wait and see.”

  Cleo went home that night, declining to stay with Alain in his apartment. She had a disturbed night’s sleep, wondering if she had indeed drawn the Mafia’s attention to the easy entry into the Courier. She could not see herself working for the killers of Frank Apollo, no matter how remote they might be from the paper’s boardroom.

  She would have been even more disturbed if she had known who the real buyer was, but Claudine kept that information from her to suit her own convenience.

  Two nights after she had had Alain and Cleo to dinner, Claudine got a phone call. “Claudine? It’s Jack Cruze. I’d like to come and see you.”

  They hadn’t seen each other in she had forgotten how many years and here he was inviting himself up as if he were a regular visitor. “What is it, Jack—business? I never bring business into my home. I’ll meet you at the Courier—”

  “No, Claudine, I don’t want to go near the Courier. Though you have obviously guessed why I want to see you. I own twenty-two per cent of you now.”

  “Not me,” said Claudine, wholly owned by herself. “The paper perhaps. But not me, Jack. To think I thought you might be the Mafia!”

  He sounded puzzled. “The Mafia?”

  “Never mind. But what you have done was underhanded and unfriendly. It’s not the way I conduct business.”

  “Only because you employ lawyers to do the dirty work for you. You may like to turn a blind eye to all of it, but ninety per cent of business is underhand and unfriendly.”

  “What a world you must live in.”

  “The same as you, Claudine, only I don’t wear blinkers.”

  No one had ever accused her of that before. “Where are you?”

  “At the Pierre.”

  “Come up now. Don’t bring anyone with you, Jack. No lawyers or accountants, just yourself.”

  When he arrived it took her, a normally quick observer, several minutes to notice that he had changed. He had aged, the years had crept up and smeared their marks on him; but she hadn’t seen him in too long and she knew how quickly some people could age once they had passed a certain milestone. The major change in him, however, was a certain hesitancy with her, something she had never expected. He was one man she had never awed.

  “I’m going down to Charleston—you ever been there? I come over regularly—I try to miss New York. I like the South—”

  “Out with it, Jack. You’re beating about the bush, that’s not your style. Why have you bought Courier stock and why did you pay so much for it?”

  He seemed to relax when he saw that she was going to lead; as if they were dancers whose polka had become creaky through lack of practice. “First, my name is never to be mentioned. I didn’t buy the stock, not personally. It was bought by a Bahamian company.”

  “I know that, Jack. If you want to play charades for tax purposes, all right—”

  “It’s not just for tax purposes. There are private reasons.” He pulled at his collar and his tie slid round towards one ear. He was as untidy as she remembered him, a walking laundry heap. “I want two places on the board. One of them will be filled by Jerry Kibler, the banker—you know him. The other place I want kept open till I’ve talked to the person I have in mind.”

  She had a flash of intuition. But she was too well bred to flash anything, even her intuition. She said blandly, “That’s your private reason for keeping your name out of the matter?”

  “Yes.” Then he grinned and abruptly looked years younger. “Claudine, why didn’t you and I marry? We could have turned the Atlantic into our own little pond, you on one side and me on the other.”

  “Marriages with that much distance between the partners never work.” Then she led again: “It’s Miss Spearfield, isn’t it?”

  He did not move for a moment; then he relaxed, glad to be led again. “Yes. I suppose you think there’s no fool like an old fool.”

  “I never thought of you as old, Jack.” But the way she said it, it didn’t sound like a compliment. “Foolish, yes. But Miss Spearfield seems to have that effect on a number of men.”

  He squinted at her from under the heavy brows. “She hasn’t been playing around. She’s been going out with only the one chap.”

  “My son. Have you been having her watched?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “Just for business reasons.”

  “Of course. Have you been having me watched for the same reasons?”

  “I’ve had Jerry Kibler watching the Courier.” He looked into the drink in his hand, a large Scotch and soda. “Claudine, I’m in love with the girl, have been for seven damned years now. We had a bust-up about four years ago and I tried to get over it, put her out of my mind—”

  “I know. I heard about you and your countess and the several others since her. You do choose them from the top, don’t you?”

  “You know that isn’t hard for a man in my position, with my money. So long as I don’t look like King Kong and pick my nose at the table, there are always women willing to go out with me. It’s the magnetism of power.”

  “You have a becoming modesty, too, that I’m sure appeals to that sort of woman.” But she wasn’t interested in his women on the other side of the Atlantic. She was concerned with the one closer to home: “What do you have in mind for Miss Spearfield?”

  He looked again at his drink. Claudine had noticed that he had barely touched it. “I haven’t seen her in four years, except once. I was here in New York on business a year or so ago. I knew she was working at the Courier and I went down and stood on the opposite side of the street hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Like a bloody schoolboy. I did that once when I was fourteen and thought I was in love with the headmaster’s daughter. Cleo came out of the building with some chap, another reporter I suppose, got into a taxi and off she went. I got dizzy, I thought I was going to keel over. I don’t know whether you’ve ever felt like that about anyone.”

  “Jack, I really don’t want to know about your love affairs.” She had once felt like he had, but that had been when she was in love with her husband in the first years of their marriage. “What have you got in mind for her with the Courier?”

  “I have to talk to her first.” He was suddenly embarrassed at how much he had revealed of himself. “She may give me the bum’s rush, as you Americans say.”

  “Not this American. But she may, indeed.”

  The matter of Cleo Spearfield, she could see, was becoming complicated. She knew that Alain was still seeing her, still carrying a torch (how that dates me, she thought, glad that she hadn’t voiced the phrase); they were probably going to bed together, but Cleo still appeared independent. She did not want Cleo as a daughter-in-law; even married, the girl would always be independent, at least of her. If Jack Cruze persuaded Cleo to take up with him again, that would solve the possible problem of Alain’s marrying her. But there would be other problems. Jack hadn’t bought the Courier stock as an investment, he had bought it as a gift, a peace offering.

  “Well, let me know when you’ve come to an understanding with her. She is a very good newspaperwoman, my son tells me.”

  “I’m
glad to hear of it. She takes risks, though—we used to argue about that. I read about that gangster killing. She was lucky to come out of that unscathed. She gives me heartburn.”

  “I don’t think she’ll change. Now you can take me out to dinner. I have a very good French place where I go regularly.”

  “Delighted,” he said unenthusiastically. “But I like plain cooking myself.”

  “They can boil you an egg,” she said and gathered up him, her wrap and her handbag and swept out of the apartment. As their elevator went down, the other elevator rose, carrying with it Cleo and Alain on their way to bed before dinner. It was an old French custom, cinq à sept, but neither Claudine, the French-American mother, nor Jack, the English ex-lover, would have been happy if they had known where the objects of their concern were heading.

  14

  I

  CLEO HAD bought a copy of Tom’s new novel, The Vacant Mirror, the day it appeared in the stores and began reading it that night, getting halfway through it before she fell asleep at two in the morning. Though the names had been changed to protect the guilty, she recognized herself, Jack and Tom. It had taken Tom eighteen months to write, but she did not know that. He had suffered enough writer’s block to have turned him illiterate; but he had always returned to the typewriter, determined to get the story, like a sweetly painful abscess, out of himself. Nevertheless, the book was slight, which was what the critics said during the next couple of weeks; but it might have been a whole library, so heavily did it press down on Cleo. She felt miserable for a week and Alain hopefully asked her if she was pregnant. He was willing and eager to marry her and any reason, even an honourable one, would do.