JC2 The Raiders (24 page)

Bat frowned. "
My god
, what are you
saying?"

"What's it sound like? I want you to come into the business. If
you're not interested in it, everything's going to wind up in the
hands of somebody not named Cord, somebody that's got nothing of me
in him and nothing of my father. No Cord genes. Lawyers, accountants
... pencil pushers."

"I want to practice law a few years at least. Long enough to
prove I can do it."

"I won't say no to that. But we may not have all the time in the
world. I'm forty-eight years old. I'm coming into — What do
they call it? The hurricane years. I'm reminded all the time that I
don't take very good care of myself. Anyway, if you came into the
business, you could be a lawyer at first. Corporate law. Anti-trust.
Securities. Tax problems. It will take time to learn what you'd need
to know if ... Well, if —"

"I'll have to think about it."

"You do that. I'm offering you a
goddamned
world
, and you'll 'think about it.' Okay. I won't offer a second
time. I won't shove it down your throat. But you better make a pretty
careful appraisal of what you're accepting or rejecting ... a pretty
thorough goddamned appraisal."

"I'll keep it in mind," said Bat. He
wondered what Toni would say to
this
.

Using the excuse that he wanted to drive his new Porsche, Bat drove
into town and placed a call from a pay telephone in a gasoline
station. On the way, he told Toni what Jonas had said. She was
predictably appalled. Toni sat impatiently in the car, waiting while
he made his call. She knew who he was calling: his mother in Mexico
City.

They spoke Spanish, so the man in the station would not understand.
Virgilio picked up an extension phone and listened. Bat told his
mother what Jonas was offering.

"I knew from the day you met him that you would give up your
career in law and take employment with your father," said Sonja
gravely.

"It is an immense opportunity," said Virgilio Escalante.
"You may become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men on
the continent."

"But you must be realistic about your father," said Sonja.
"He is not a modest man. He is not an honest man. Don't forget
that he had a motive for telephoning me. He wanted to make a
connection with Uncle Fulgencio."

"I can see my father's faults," said Bat. "Among them
is that he is not very well educated and has a limited perspective."

"Don't underestimate him. Above all, you must always remember
that he is capable of lying," she said.

"So am I," said Bat.

"But you must be able to tell the difference, to know when he is
and when he isn't. And let me ask you this: Do you have any personal
feeling toward him at all?"

Bat drew a breath and blew it out. "I suppose so," he said
without conviction. "I can't ignore the genes, can I? Not
entirely. No. They're in me. Which means I can out-Jonas Jonas.
Maybe. He never had to contend with the likes of me before: a man
who's got the same stuff in him as he's got in him."

"'Out-Jonas Jonas,'" she repeated quietly. "Do you
really think you can?"

"Why not?"

JO-ANN WAS ANGRY AND RESENTFUL. LIFE HAD CRAPPED on her. For fourteen
years her father had refused even to acknowledge she was his
daughter. Then he had. There had been a few halfway good years. Then
he'd walked away from her and her mother to duck a subpoena, and the
next thing they knew he had acquired a grown son.

On Christmas night she lay alone in bed. The next
room was shared by her newfound half brother and his girlfriend, and
Jo-Ann could hear their exuberant coupling — humping was the
word that came to her mind. In the master bedroom her father was no
doubt doing the same with
his
girlfriend.

Jo-Ann could see the attraction this Angie had for her father. The
woman was of course a great deal younger than her mother, and she was
superficially glamorous, with a hard edge to her that spoke "hooker"
to the girl. If Angie wasn't that, she was something like. Jo-Ann
could see it on her face.

She did not hate her father for divorcing her mother once, then
getting himself divorced by her, and now bedding with this Angie.
Monica had never slept alone. Two nights after Jonas left the house
in Bel Air another man — What was his name? Alex — had
slept in Monica's bed.

Without even letting her finish her year at Pepperdine, her mother
had moved them to New York, so she could be closer to her work and
closer to the men she had known for years and now once more was free
to welcome to her bedroom. Jo-Ann was able to transfer some credits
to Smith, but she had an anomalous status there and could not be sure
exactly when she would graduate.

Monica had meant to live in the Cord apartment in the Waldorf Towers,
but after she and Jo-Ann had stayed there only a week the lawyers
informed them they would have to get out. The lease did not belong to
Mr. Cord but to Cord Explosives, which was not a party to the divorce
suit. Mrs. Cord could raise her cash settlement demands, since she
was not going to get the apartment, but she could not remain there.
Besides, Mr. Cord's attorneys had come up with some embarrassing
evidence. So, out again. They moved into a furnished apartment on
East fifty-ninth Street.

That was one of the problems. They had moved too much. Sometimes they
had tried to follow after her grandfather, whose name was Winthrop.
She remembered that old man: a nauseating drunk. He had done only one
good thing — he had died saving her father's life. The good
thing he'd done was die; saving her father's life had been extra.

The brother. The newfound brother. Her father was
ecstatic to have found a third Jonas, even if he did call himself
Bat. He was what
she
wasn't and could never be: a male. Her
father was not subtle about what he had in mind. This son who had
dropped on him like something from heaven was going to be his
heir-in-chief and the next head of the family business.

She had never imagined she would be the head. Her mother had
explained to her that, although she would probably inherit most of
the Cord stock, her father would arrange a voting trust or something
of the kind so that she would not be able to control the business,
not even to exercise much influence over it.

In her naivete she had speculated on how her
father might react if she married well — well, that is, in
terms of a young man with demonstrated intelligence and maybe an MBA
from Harvard. Would he take
him
into the business and confide
in him? When she dated, she appraised young men in terms of how her
father might react to them. So ... She need not worry about that
anymore. She would date for fun now. She'd find herself a stud and
have a good time.

She would not go on sleeping alone, either. Nobody else did. This
house tonight was a goddamned whorehouse! As she pressed fingers into
herself and tried to find some relief, she was glad she had hit the
Scotch and brandy bottles every chance she got. For the time being
bottles were damned important to her. At least she would go to sleep.
At least she could go to sleep ...

Nevada understood her feelings, and maybe he was the only one who
did. Nevada understood more than most people — and more
certainly than either her father or her mother. She was glad she'd
had a chance to talk with him. Glad and ... then for a different
reason, not glad.

The family hadn't even flown out here together. Her flight had landed
at San Francisco, where Nevada met her at the airport. An
Inter-Continental Airlines company plane, a Beech Baron, had flown
them to the ranch landing strip. She had been the first to arrive.
The Beech went back to pick up her new brother and his girlfriend,
and she had been alone at the ranch with Nevada.

They'd had horses saddled and had gone out to ride across the sandy,
rocky countryside.

"You always was a natural in the saddle. Shame your parents
decided to move you to California."

"I think I could have been happy here."

"Uhmm. That mean you're not, where you are?"

"I might be. But who knows how long I'll be there before I'm
packed up and sent somewhere else? There's nothing permanent,
Nevada."

"Don't feel like you got no roots down," he said.

Jo-Ann shrugged. She frowned at a coyote limping across the ground in
front of them. It had been bitten by a rattlesnake apparently and was
dying. Nevada pulled a .30-30 Winchester from its scabbard on his
saddle, took aim, and put the creature out of its misery.

"I'm shoved this way and the other," she
said. "Obviously, I've got nothing of my own. I'm so —
Nevada, I'm so goddamned
dependent
!"

"Who ain't, your age? Of course me, I had to go out younger. But
that was another time, another place. You're the daughter of Jonas
and Monica. You gotta get your education and be smart and
sophisticated-like. Who's not dependent at that time of life?"

"Do you believe that man he found in Mexico is really his son?"
she asked.

"I expect he is," said Nevada. "I remember the girl.
Sonja Batista. First thing he had to do after he sudden-like
inherited everything was go to Germany to see how they made plastics,
since that was what his daddy had bought into. He took Sonja Batista
with him. I was surprised when he didn't marry her. Pretty thing, she
was. All this was before he met your mother."

"That wouldn't have made any difference. They never really loved
each other. She was a piece of ass. He was a cock. That's all either
of them ever wanted."

"Young lady," said Nevada sternly, "you shouldn't use
them kind of words. Anyhow, you're wrong. I don't know what happened,
but they did love each other. At least twice. Once when they made
you. Once when they got together again. I didn't see the first part.
I saw the second. You got a point if you wanta say they're not the
kind of folks that fall in love in the romantic way. But don't put
'em down, Jo-Ann. Love ain't always a lifetime thing."

Jo-Ann loved the kind of country they were riding across. They were
five miles from the house. It smelled good: big and fresh and dry.
The horses spooked occasionally. Living things skittered in the low
dry brush to either side of them. They came across the track left by
a sidewinder. That would spook a horse. The mountains rising in the
distance were more beautiful for their promise from miles away than
they were when you reached them.

"Nevada ..."

"Uh?"

"I'm a virgin."

"I'd sort of hope you was, at your age."

Jo-Ann shook her head. "My mother wasn't when she was eighteen.
My father —"

"Prob'ly was when he was eighteen," Nevada interrupted.
"Th' old man wasn't for foolin' around. 'Course ... your father
made up for it pretty quick, when he got the chance. Uh — Come
to think of it, once he started to drive a car ..."

"Nevada ... I'm very uncomfortable."

The lanky old man shook his head. "Honey, you
ain't got no idea what uncomfortable
is
."

"I'd like a man I trust to — It could be you, Nevada."

"
Missy!
Don't you never say nothin'
like that ag'in!
Jeezuss Christ!
I don't ever wanta hear
nothin' like that ag'in. I won't tell your father, but —"

Jo-Ann sobbed. "But you can see!"

He shook his head. "I can't see."

"Somebody I trust. That was the point."

"I could be — I could be your grandfather. Grandfather?
Hell, I could be your great-grandfather."

"Forgive me?" She sniffed.

"Sure. But look, sis. When you're eighteen it looks like that's
got to be the most wonderful thing in the whole world. It ain't. It's
good, but it's not the best thing in the world. You gotta learn to
live with it, like you do with everything else."

"I heard my father say one time that you were the smartest man
he'd ever met when it came to ... life."

Nevada shook his head. "Maybe that's because he's done some dumb
things in that department. It could be that was what killed his
daddy, findin' out that Junior had done it dumb again and was going
to have to pay hush money."

"Blackmail?"

Nevada shrugged. "Whatever they called it. Oh, hell, it didn't
kill him. He died of bourbon and hot temper and maybe of tryin' to
keep up with the young woman he'd married to keep your father from
marryin' her."

"Rina?"

"You've heard of her. Your daddy wanted to marry her. He was set
on it. Your granddaddy married her and carried her off to Europe on a
honeymoon."

"What a family! No wonder I'm crazy."

"You're not crazy, honey." He chuckled. "Maybe you're
a Cord, though."

Jo-Ann reined her horse to a stop. "Sex," she said. "If
you won't teach me, tell me something, anyway. It ruins lives."

Nevada reined his horse around and sat facing the
beautiful dark-haired girl in the tight blue jeans and wool shirt.
"Blue-eyes lives," he said. "My daddy was a buffalo
hunter. My ma was a Kiowa. The Kiowa were noble people that knowed
how to live. A Kiowa man never dreamt dreams about doin' it. He
didn't have to; he
did
it. A Kiowa woman never worried about
it. She didn't have to; she
did
it. The Kiowa wouldn't-a cared
about
pictures
of people doin' it. What good was that? They
wouldn't-a read in books about people doin' it. What good was that?
They didn't make up stories about it, or make laws about it, or
suppose the Great Unknowable cared how and when they done it. If
children come and nobody could figure out exactly whose they was,
that didn't make no difference; children belonged to the tribe, and
all of 'em was taken care of. You understand?"

"Do it with whoever I want to?"

"Not quite that. Do it with whoever'll take responsibility, the
way the tribe did. Responsibility. That there's the point. An ugly
word with the white man. And forget all the hoodoo-voodoo. This thing
we're talkin' about, it's mine, it's your'n, it's his'n, it's her'n.
It's nobody else's but. And it's not worth moanin' and groanin' and
worryin' and hurryin' about. Live, little girl! Pee when you have to
and fuck when you want to. But you wouldn't pee on the street in
public, so don't fuck where and when it ain't right — and not
with the wrong man. That's all the rules they is about it."