JC2 The Raiders (40 page)

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 hotel, 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."

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.

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 spend
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.

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.

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.