JC2 The Raiders (43 page)

"Uhmm ... Well, I'm told you're a good boy. We thought that
being related to her you might be able to do more than the usual
thing. But— Go now, Eddie. Go back to New York. I will not
speak ill of you."

Eddie Latham wondered if he should not kiss the hand of the Don, but
it wasn't offered to him, and already Don Carlo Vulcano was summoning
others to his table. Eddie hurried out of the restaurant.

4

The
Glenda Grayson Show
was broadcast live,
and when the star came off the set after her final number she was
drenched with sweat. She was also high with exhilaration. She needed
a shower, and she needed a drink.

Danny Kaye had come off the set just ahead of her and waited for her.
He threw his arms around her. "We work good together, huh?"
He laughed. "Hey!" He, too, was sweating and high. He
seemed about to break into another song and dance.

"C'm in and have a drink, ol' buddy," she said, leading him
toward her dressing room.

"What? Two more shows this season?" he asked as he walked
beside her, holding her arm.

"Two more. Then, by God, contract," she said.

"Your producer was in the booth," said Kaye. "I
thought he looked kinda grim. Does anything ever satisfy the man?"

"Nothing in this world ever entirely satisfies Jonas Cord,"
she said. "Bat you could satisfy. Not Jonas. Tomorrow I'll get a
memo telling me it was a great performance but also telling me how it
could have been better."

"Like a sponsor," said Kaye.

She threw open the dressing room door. "Scotch!" she cried.
"Something for Danny!"

Sam Stein was sitting on the small couch in her dressing room,
waiting for her to come off the set. Sitting beside him was a
handsome, swarthy man she did not recognize. He was smoking a cigar
and lounged comfortably on the couch, with his legs crossed. Glenda
had no idea who he was, but if Sam had brought him he was okay with
her.

Amelia had served as Glenda's dresser for the past two years. She was
a handsome, formidable, slender black woman, maybe forty years old,
so far as Glenda could estimate, and Glenda had learned to place
confidence in her. She had a light Scotch with plenty of ice and soda
waiting, and she handed it to the star and stepped behind her to
begin unfastening her finale gown.

"It came down very well, Glenda," said Sam Stein. "The
ratings will be— "

"Danny brings the good ratings," said Glenda. "Pour
him a drink, for Christ's sake, and hand him a wet towel."

Glenda let Amelia take off her dress, leaving her standing in the
middle of the dressing room in white nylon panties and bra. She took
a gulp from her drink and stepped inside the shower. Her underclothes
were wet with sweat, and usually she soaped herself and them
together, then took them off, rinsed them, and hung them over the top
of the glass door. The shower water steamed the glass, and a blurred
image of her showed through the door.

"Didn't give you a chance to introduce your friend, Sam,"
she said.

"He's John Stefano," said Sam. "Got some ideas for
us."

"Joke writer?" she asked.

"Not exactly."

"Well, nice to meet ya, John Stefano. Congratulate Danny on a
great performance. When he comes on, we do the best show of the
year."

Stefano nodded and smiled at Danny Kaye. "I've admired your work
for many years," he said.

"Thank you," said Kaye. "Well ... Sam says you're not
a joke writer — which I didn't think you were. What is your
business, Mr. Stefano, if I may ask?"

"Investments," said Stefano.

"The very best line of business," said Danny Kaye. He took
the answer as ominously uncommunicative and retreated from the
subject. "Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the show."

"Oh, yes," said Stefano.

Kaye took a sip from the Scotch Sam handed him. "I have to get
on to my dressing room," he said.

"Don't you dare leave before I get outa here and give you a big
kiss," said Glenda. "Time for a towel, Amelia."

Amelia handed her one towel and held up another while Glenda dried
herself and pulled on a flowered silk dressing gown. She picked up
the bottle and strengthened her drink.

"Well, you say Mr. Stefano has some ideas for us," she said
to Sam.

"Some business ideas," said Sam.

"I'll be going," said Danny Kaye. "You'll want to talk
in private."

Glenda threw her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth. "Thank
you, lover," she said. "Give my best to Sylvia."

Glenda turned to Amelia. "Thanks," she said. "You can
go get yourself some dinner now."

Glenda sat down at her dressing table and went to work on her hair
and makeup. Her back was to Sam Stein and John Stefano, but she could
see them in the mirror. "What ya got in mind, guys?"

"Some different things," said Sam. "To start with,
I've got some news for you. Margit notified me this morning that she
doesn't want me for her agent anymore."

"What the hell?"

"And guess who her new agent is gonna be," Sam continued.
"Ben Parrish. How does that grab ya?"

"It grabs me that Jonas Cord is getting ready to give Glenda's
show to Margit Little," she said angrily.

"No. He won't do that. You're still the only
moneymaker Cord Productions has got. I figure he'll spin her off, set
up a
Margit Little Show
."

"Well, I guess you can't blame the girl if
she takes
that
deal," said Glenda. "She'll get
another deal with it, though — that she may not find
irresistible. Jonas Cord will want in her pants."

"He's already in her pants," said Sam.

"And Ben'll be in 'em next," said Glenda.

"I doubt it. I think the Cords have chewed up Ben Parrish and
spit him out. They queered some of his deals. For a guy like him,
money dries up when the Cords put the word around that anybody who
backs his deals will offend them. He can't do anything they don't
want him to do. They've made him dependent on them."

Glenda turned and smiled over her shoulder.
"Except in one important respect, Ben's a
little
guy.
When he messed around with Jo-Ann, he brought down the wrath of a
family that can buy and sell him out of pocket change."

"Which brings us to another point," said Sam. "John
Stefano is here to offer us a deal."

"Let's say I'm here to do some preliminary
talking about a
possible
deal," said Stefano. Now that he
was going to talk, he put his cigar aside in a heavy glass ashtray.
"When you came in from the set, you said you had to do just two
more shows under your present contract with Cord Productions. When
you go to negotiation with the Cords, it could be very helpful to you
if you had an alternative."

"What might the alternative be?"

"Just thinking out loud," said Stefano. "I can book
you into the best clubs in the United States, not to mention a run in
one of the big rooms in Havana. You can make more money than you're
making in television, and you won't have to work so hard, because you
can use the same show for a whole year."

"The way I used to do," she said.

Sam interjected an idea. "Suppose you were off television for a
year. There would probably be a big demand for you to return."

"Or maybe not," she said. "The public's got a short
memory."

"You're a star," said Sam. "The public won't forget
you."

"We can keep you in the public eye," said Stefano. "Get
you covered in the tabloids. Then maybe we form a production company
— GG Productions, let's say — and package a return show.
We go to one of the networks with a pilot tape. We can orchestrate
everything."

"Where's the money for all this coming from?" Glenda asked.

"We can get it," said Stefano simply.

"I suppose I shouldn't ask where the money will come from?"

"Does it make a difference?" Stefano asked.

"Does it, Sam?" she asked.

Sam Stein shook his head. "Not to me it doesn't. This deal can
be a great career boost for you, Glenda. And it gets the Cord family
off our backs forever."

"Deal, then," said Glenda.

"Tittle Tattle" was a syndicated column, originating in
Hollywood and written when she was sober enough to do it by a onetime
bit player named Lorena Pastor. The column was syndicated in
sixty-eight newspapers, thanks partly to heavy promotion by the
syndicate, thanks also to Lorena's formidable reputation that
persuaded people to confide in her. Gossip was her stock in trade,
but it was also understood in the movie community that mention in
"Tittle Tattle" often goosed new life into fading careers
or into lusterless pictures.

— ("Don't be surprised if you hear
about a bust-up between La Crawford and her current. Her latest ex,
save one, has been seen leaving in the golden light of dawn, and we
hear that an old fire is hot again. After all, old flames often burn
hottest.")

— ("The town is ga-ga about Dan
Armstrong's stellar acting in
The Condemned
. This
little-heralded flick is a sure-fire winner. And don't forget —
nobody else has been telling you.")

Lorena had the facial complexion of an Indian elephant: a tangle of
wrinkles that lotions would not soften, sanding could not remove. She
could only try to distract attention from it by wearing exaggerated
lipstick and mascara, all obscured by veils that hung from her hats.
She affected also an air of giddy ebullience: grinning widely,
fluttering her hands, dancing about on her feet as if she were a girl
of twenty, not a woman of seventy. Privately, people in the movie
industry called her a viper, a harridan, and a lush.

Her usual turf was a table at the Brown Derby or another restaurant
or watering hole, but this noon she ate a box lunch in the office of
her publisher, Walter Richard Hamilton, Junior. He had accommodated
her known penchant by providing her a pint of Beefeater gin, a bucket
of ice cubes, and half a lime.

"I've got a story for you, Lorena," he said.

"Let's hope it's
true
, Walt," she
said. "You know my policy — only to publish what can be—
"

"Right, Lorena. Dad respected you for that. So do I. I can
assure you this story is true."

"Well,
tell
me then!"

"Okay. You know the cute little dancer —
ballerina-type dancer — who plays the teenage daughter on the
Glenda Grayson Show?
Margit Little? Okay. She sleeps with
Jonas Cord."

"Oh, my dear! So did
I
once —
when I was twenty-five years younger. How many women in America
haven't— "

"Lorena. I want you to run the story. Not only that, I want you
to give it big play."

She lifted the glass into which she had poured gin
over ice and squeezed lime juice. "Of course, dear Walt! Don't
forget, though, the man is a
menace!
You aren't ordering me to
buy us a libel suit?"

"Let me worry about that," said Hamilton.

"You're the boss," she said simply.

"Here's the story. Her agent Sam Stein warned the girl not to go
to Cord's hotel suite alone. She did anyway. She was supposed to call
him when she got home. She called the next day. Sam's had her
watched. When Cord is in town, she is not home nights."

"Sam's pissed," said Lorena Pastor. "You know he lost
Margit Little as a client. To Ben Parrish. He might be— "

"Don't worry about it," said Hamilton. "I want you to
play it. I'll run pictures with the column — sick old man and
fresh young girl. That's the theme: old lecher taking the bloom of
youth off pretty little dancer."

"Jonas Cord an old letch?" She shook her
head. "I was in my forties. He was in his late twenties. Not a
letch, Walt — a
stud!
"

"Write the story my way, Lorena," said Hamilton firmly.
"Either that, or I'll write it and insert it in your column."

"Understood," she said sadly.

"Okay. Drink up. You see, your onetime friend Mr. Cord has run
his ass up against some people who aren't afraid of him."

An hour later Hamilton was on the telephone to Detroit. "Done,
my friend," he said. "No, I didn't have to; she'll write it
herself, in her own inimitable style. Sixty-eight papers, Jimmy! Plus
others that'll pick up the story as news. Sunday in thirty-five
papers, Monday in the rest. This time next week every other American
will know that Jonas Cord is screwing Margit Little. So— We got
a deal, right? Your local will sign the contract. Right. Right. Sure,
I know it's peanuts to what your pension fund is putting into the new
Glenda Grayson. But you can understand a man's interest in—
Right. Your word's good. I know that. So's mine. Look for the story
on Sunday."

JONAS HAD RECONSIDERED HIS DECISION ABOUT A BEARD. It was gray, no
question about that, but he had retained not just a barber but a hair
stylist to trim it, and the man came to the suite twice a week to
clip both beard and hair. With a straight razor he cut the hair low
on Jonas's cheeks, to give him a beard and chin whiskers reminiscent
of Abraham Lincoln's in the final Brady photograph — which
indeed he acknowledged was his model. Unlike Lincoln, though, Jonas
wore a mustache, which was the most difficult part of the trimming
job.

Lest the beard seem to have turned him into some sort of bohemian
character, Jonas returned to wearing jackets, white shirts, and
neckties. A tailor came to the suite and measured him for half a
dozen conservative single-breasted business suits. He abandoned the
rumpled khaki slacks and golf shirts.

In April he flew to New York. In the Waldorf Towers apartment he did
not reclaim his office but left it to Bat. Father and son met for
lunch at The Four Seasons.

"I can break the bitch," Jonas said.

"No, you can't," said Bat. "She doesn't need us.
Besides, she's got money behind her. She can walk away from us—
"