JC2 The Raiders (28 page)

"Open the door, Chandler!" Bat yelled. When Chandler
hesitated, Bat yelled again.

Chandler opened the door. Bat grabbed the reeling Hoffa by the nape
of the neck and seat of the pants and threw him into the hall. Hoffa
rolled across the floor and against the elevator doors.

Dave Beck, crimson-faced, shrieked at Jonas, "You'll regret this
till the day you die!"

Jonas snapped a punch against his nose, splattering blood. "That's
just a sample of what you'll get if you try calling a strike on me,
you sleazy tub of lard," he said. "You get out of town. I
don't want to see you here again."

TONI SOMETIMES FORGOT ABOUT THE TIME ZONES AND
phoned Bat as soon as she arrived at her office. Her calls woke him.

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked at six-fifteen in the
morning.

"Yeah ... Yeah, sure. What you got in mind, honey?"

"Is this phone line clear?"

"Clear. Clear. What you got in mind?"

"A federal grand jury has returned a secret indictment. It will
be announced this afternoon. They've charged Dave Beck under enough
specifications to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life!"

"What about Hoffa?"

"Not Hoffa. But the whole damned gang will be tied up in knots,
trying to keep their boss out of the slammer. I don't think you have
to worry about them for a while, Bat. That is ... until Beck is gone
and Hoffa takes over."

"Well, thanks. I guess there's nothing like having a girlfriend
in the Senate."

"That's something else, Bat. In the spring I'll have been a
Senate aide four years. I'm leaving. I've given the senator my
resignation."

"
And
... ?"

"I'm going to work for
The Washington
Post.
As a political reporter."

"I see."

"For a while, Bat. For a while."

"Okay."

"Bat, I —"

"I couldn't ask you to come and live in Vegas," he
interrupted. "You hate it more than I do."

"Bat ... We're not yet thirty years old!
There's
time
!"

"Sure, babe. When will I see you?"

"If you don't come East in the next month, I'll come out there.
Deal?"

"Deal," he grunted. He turned over and went back to sleep.

During her spring break in 1954, Jo-Ann flew to Las Vegas. She said
she would like to drive her Porsche, and she didn't care if she ever
went back to Smith College, but Jonas, Monica, and Bat all
discouraged her from that plan and insisted she fly.

"You bastard," she said. "Oops! Sorry, Bat. I mean,
you son of a — Well, that's not so good either. Why in hell did
you have me put in a suite on the second floor, when ..."

They were standing in the living room of the suite
he used as an office, embracing, kissing. "Little sister,"
he said. "Get this straight. We are not going to sleep
together." He ran a hand through her silky dark hair and down
her cheek. "I'm not saying I wouldn't like to. But I told you
the one time was all the times, and that's the way it's got to be.
You're my
sister
, goddammit!"

"Pretty good piece of pussy, too, aren't I?"

Her warm young body, bound up in nylon and rubber
bra and panty girdle, was firm and pointy and all but irresistible.
But he resisted it. "Ruin your life, ruin mine," he said.
"I'm
glad
we were together once, but we can't do it
anymore."

"Coward."

"Jo-Ann ... You drink too much."

"I'm the daughter of Jonas and Monica. If that didn't make a
girl drink, what would?"

He sighed. "We'll talk about that later. I've got an agent and
his girl dancer coming in for an audition. Why don't you sit down and
watch?"

"Audition?"

"For the show. In the show room downstairs. I've started booking
the shows myself. You know how it is. I was supposed to be a company
lawyer. Instead I find myself managing a hotel."

"What about Chandler?"

"Chandler does his job. Booking talent isn't part of it. I took
that away from him. Relax. Sit down and have a light Scotch. An agent
named Sam Stein is bringing up a dancer named Margit Little. The girl
is going to show us what she can do."

Sam Stein was a small man, wearing a faultlessly tailored gray
double-breasted suit. He was bald, and his face was cherubic and
looked as if it had been drawn in sharp, unshaded lines by a skillful
cartoonist.

As he had promised, Margit Little was cute. Her big round blue eyes
spoke wondering innocence. Her light-brown hair was tied down tight.
She was probably nineteen years old, maybe only eighteen.

"Margit has real talent," said Stein. "I don't want
for her just a place in the chorus. She should be a featured dancer.
She can sing a little also, nothing too challenging. She has brought
a record. You have a player?"

Bat had a high-fidelity record player in the suite. He put the
seven-inch record the girl offered on the turntable. She removed her
skirt and shoes to dance, and danced barefoot in black leotards cut
high on her hips. Her first number was classical, akin to ballet.
When she was finished she asked Bat to turn the record over, and she
danced then to a fast, rhythmic jazz number.

When she finished and bent over to retrieve her skirt and shoes,
Stein rubbed his hands together. "She has talent, yes?"

"She has talent, yes," Bat agreed.

"When did you become a judge of talent, big brother?" asked
Jo-Ann.

Bat smiled at the little girl and said, "You don't have to be a
judge to know talent when you see it." He turned and spoke to
Stein. "I'd like to have her in a show, Mr. Stein. My only
problem is, I'm not sure where I put her. She can't dance in the bar.
I can only use singers there. In the show room I've got a revue. I
can't slot her into it, I don't think."

"I have a bigger proposition for you, Mr. Cord," said
Stein. "Your revue has been running a long time. Have you
thought about a new production?"

"Proposition," said Bat.

"Glenda Grayson," said Stein. "And Margit. An
unforgettable show."

Brother, sister, and Sam Stein sat at a table in The Roman Circus in
Los Angeles watching a loud and colorful production number on the big
stage. A brash blonde wearing a rhinestone-studded pink dress was
energetically belting out a song, dancing at the same time. She was
Glenda Grayson.

"Jonas won't like her," said Jo-Ann flatly. "She's too
frenetic. She bounces around too much."

"He's given me authority — "

"Which he'll withdraw in a moment, if he wants to," she
said. "Don't count on him to give you a free hand. There are
guys lying bleeding on the floor who thought they had a free hand
from our father."

Bat did not respond. He turned his attention to Glenda Grayson.

The show ended. The lights came up. Bat reached for the bottle of
Johnnie Walker Black and poured for himself and Jo-Ann. He and his
father shared a habit: They poured for others without asking if they
wanted any more.

Sam Stein had overheard the exchange between brother and sister. "I
also represent Doug Howell," he said. "He's looking for
somebody to produce a series of Westerns, hour-long shows probably.
He wants to do realistic Westerns — no singing, no guitars, no
comic sidekick, no embroidered shirts. Actually, he's thinking of
shows along the lines of the old Nevada Smith films."

"There are a lot of Westerns on television already," said
Bat.

"The American public never tires of them," said Stein. "The
archetypal American morality play."

Bat frowned and shook his head. "What you say may well be right
— I mean, that there may be room for another Western. But I
don't think I'll want to produce it."

"Oh?"

"My chief interest in getting back into film production —
that is, videotape production — is to utilize the facility we
already own. Cord Studios. We've got soundstages there that we've
been renting to other people. I want to use them myself."

Jo-Ann listened to her brother and was surprised. He didn't talk
about what his father might want, or even what "we" might
want, but about what "I" want. She wondered if his father
knew that was how he expressed himself. Big brother was taking a big
risk. God knew how his father would react if word got to him that his
son talked this way.

"I can understand that, Mr. Cord," said Stein. "But —
"

Bat interrupted. "If I make Westerns, a lot of the shooting will
have to be on outdoor locations, which means I'll be losing the
economy of using an asset we already own. No, Mr. Stein, I think our
first ventures into television production will be sitcoms or variety
shows, where we can shoot on our soundstages and not have to go out.
That's why I came here to see Glenda Grayson."

Stein drew a deep breath. "Well, how did you like Glenda? I'm
sorry you don't like her, Miss Cord."

"I'd like to meet her," said Bat.

"She has to do another show," said Stein. "After that
she'll be totally exhausted. I'll go back and speak to her. She might
meet with you for five minutes tonight. Tomorrow ... maybe for
lunch."

Sam was wrong. Glenda Grayson came to their table after her second
show, sat down, and accepted a Scotch from Bat. They could not talk,
though. People in the nightclub came to their table to say they had
enjoyed her performance or to ask for her autograph.

"Let's go up to my suite," she said. "We can have a
drink there without all this."

"Aren't you tired?" asked Sam.

"I want to talk to this man," said Glenda. "After all,
he came all the way to Los Angeles to see me. I'll see you at lunch,
Sam."

Jo-Ann was insightful enough to understand that she was being
dismissed, too.

In her suite, Glenda poured Scotch for Bat and poured a shot of vodka
into a large glass of orange juice. She was not wearing a costume
from her act, just a rather ordinary white blouse and a black skirt.

"You are supposed to be totally exhausted," said Bat.

"I am," she said. "You might not
believe this, Bat, but I lose two or three pounds during an evening.
Then I gain it back the next day. It's loss of fluid, mostly. I
sweat
. Then I drink a quart of orange juice and — "

Glenda Grayson was a slender blonde with a good figure and an
extraordinarily expressive face. Jo-Ann had called her performance on
the stage frenetic, which it had been, and now, being alone with her,
Bat saw that the woman was incapable of relaxation. She was possessed
by a sort of irrepressible tension that perhaps released her only
when she was asleep. It was difficult to think she was comfortable,
or ever could be.

Her performance on the nightclub stage had been
dynamic, as she danced, sang, and delivered comic one-liners in
rapid-fire succession. When she began a line with her catch phrase "V
wouldn'
b'lieve
it," her audiences began to laugh before
she told them what it was they wouldn't believe.

She used no coarse language in her act. Her comedy did not rely on
titillating or scatological references, but a heady eroticism was
never far beneath the surface, meticulously contrived to achieve the
maximum effect from subtlety. She was good at that. She changed
costumes twice during each performance. The final costume was a
form-fitting red dress that was fastened up the back with Velcro and
could be torn off in one movement. At the end she tore it off and
sang and danced in a red corselette with garters holding up dark
stockings. People seeing her act for the first time felt sure she
would tear off the corselette, too, and stand revealed at the end
either naked or in something sensationally brief. But she didn't.

She was thirty-two years old and had been a star nightclub performer
for thirteen years. She had appeared on network television a score of
times, always as a guest on someone else's variety hour or talk show.
She'd wanted a special of her own but had never had one. She had
wanted a movie of her own but had never had one. Her name was known
to nearly everyone — but at a level well below that of
superstar. She was one of the top fifty performers in the United
States, maybe, but certainly not one of the top ten.

"You like the act?" she asked Bat. She was not accustomed
to having to ask the question, but he had not said anything.

"Oh, sure. You've got a lot of talent. I've just been wondering
how it can be packaged for a television series — assuming it
can be packaged."

"Cord Television?"

"No. Cord Productions."

"What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about a weekly show. The
Glenda
Grayson Show
. But I'm thinking about how to do it. You can't
repeat the act once a week. Even if you could stand the strain, we
couldn't come up with enough material to let you do a forty-minute
performance once a week. You've got a great act. But you can't do it
time and again, time and again, week after week."

She nodded. "I don't repackage at intervals,"
she said. "If you see my shtick a month from now, you'll see
it's different. Next month, more different. By the time I get back to
The Roman Circus for next year's show, it will be
all
different. Different songs, different dancing, new costumes —
but all worked in gradually over the course of the year. That's how I
work. I may try something different tomorrow night, just to see how
it works. If it bombs, I fix it or drop it. That's the great thing
about club acts. You can tinker with them. TV — " She
shrugged. "You go on the air with a bit and it falls flat,
you've
fallen flat. You don't have a chance to fix it. Tough
damned medium, TV."

She poured more orange juice into her glass, without adding vodka.

"Does Sam make your decisions?" he asked.

"Sam finds opportunities," she said. "I choose. I make
my own career decisions."