JC2 The Raiders (42 page)

"Yes, and you're full of tension. I've got a present for you.
Just lie back and loosen up."

She put a pillow on his legs and laid her head on it, pressing her
face against his belly. "I want to be comfy," she said in a
low voice. "I figure on this taking a long time."

She opened her mouth and took his penis in. He saw what she meant by
taking a long time. She licked very gently for a minute or so, then
stopped licking and lazily nibbled his foreskin with her lips. She
turned her big brown liquid eyes upward and watched his reaction. She
smiled. Bat relaxed. She bent his penis to one side so she could lick
along its length without having to lift her head from the pillow.

Bat moaned. He wouldn't think about his father anymore tonight.

JONAS ASSUMED PERSONAL CONTROL OF TELEVISION
production. He began to fly regularly to Los Angeles, where he stayed
in the Cord hotel suite and spent days at the studio. He did not fire
Jo-Ann as Bat had thought he would. He ordered Arthur Mawson, now
executive producer of the
Glenda Grayson Show
, to give him
frequent and detailed reports on what she did, but he kept her in her
job. He did not stop by her office to see her every time he came to
Los Angeles — only occasionally.

Sometimes Angela came to Los Angeles with him. Usually she did not.

St. Patrick's Day fell on a Monday. Jonas did not celebrate it as a
holiday, but he was conscious of it and regretted being alone in the
suite on an evening when most people were drinking Irish whiskey,
eating corned beef and cabbage, and pretending to be Irish. He had
arranged not to be alone. Margit Little was with him.

They sat on a couch, where he had invited her to sit, with a bottle
of Old Bushmill's, two glasses, and some crackers and cheese. Margit
was wearing what was characteristic of her: black dance leotards with
a maroon skirt. Her light-brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She
frowned over the whiskey in her glass.

He had been working on this for some time —
that is, on getting her to come alone to his suite. She had been just
eighteen when Bat signed her up for the
Glenda Grayson Show
,
and she was not yet twenty-two now. She looked sixteen, which was the
age she was represented to be on the show. She had the lithe body of
a dancer and a pretty, open, innocent face. It was hard to believe
Bat had not had this girl, but he swore he hadn't.

"It's traditional," he said of the Irish whiskey.

She pinched her lips and wrinkled her nose. "It's strong,"
she said.

"Well ... just a toast and then you can have something more to
your liking. A toast— To you, Margit. To your career."

"Thank you," she said softly after she took a small and
cautious sip.

"Can we talk in confidence?" he asked. "I mean in
complete confidence. Neither of us will ever tell anybody anything we
may say in the next few minutes."

"Yes ..." she said hesitantly.

"Fine," he said, nodding. "In
confidence. I took over Cord Productions because I decided my son had
run out of ideas. The
Glenda Grayson Show
is a success, and it
makes some money, but it's getting a little stale. Glenda is getting
a little stale. And her money demands are becoming unreasonable."

"Mr. Cord— "

"Jonas," he interrupted.

"Oh, sir, I couldn't!"

"Please. Hearing you call me Mr. Cord or, worse yet, sir makes
me feel a hundred years old." He put a hand on hers. "Please,
Margit."

She nodded. "Jonas."

"Okay," he said with a reassuring smile.
"Now. In any case, Cord Productions can't go on forever with all
its eggs in one basket. Whatever we do about the
Glenda Grayson
Show
, we've got to start producing new shows. Can you guess what
I've got in mind?"

She shook her head, but her widened eyes suggested she had guessed
what he was about to say.

"The
Margit Little Show
," said
Jonas. "Maybe a half hour weekly. Say you did a comedy skit
every week, with a guest star. Not a continuing family situation like
on the old show but a different idea with you as a different
character each week. With dancing, of course. I'm thinking of you as
a solo, in a simple classic dance number to open the show, then
something of a production number with your guest to close the show —
with the sketch in between. I bet you can sing, too, huh?"

"Well ... I have taken voice lessons."

"Okay. The
Margit Little Show
. You
know, when I say I'm going to produce something, I'm going to produce
it. I don't just play around."

Margit sampled the Old Bushmill's again, a little more boldly.

Jonas poured himself a second drink. "We will have to address a
little problem," he said.

She nodded solemnly and fixed her eyes on him, waiting to hear what
the problem was.

"What kind of a contract do you have with Sam Stein?"

She frowned. "None. He took me on as a kid and promoted a career
for me, and we've never had a written agreement. I mean, he's been
something like a father to me."

Jonas grinned. "He didn't want you to come up here alone, did
he?"

"No, he didn't."

"And I bet you're supposed to call him when you get home."

She smiled and nodded.

"All right. I like Sam, but I don't know how he'll react to your
leaving the Grayson show. There could be a conflict of interests
there, if you see what I mean. He might think it will damage the
Grayson show when I take you out of it, and after all Glenda's his
chief client."

"I see what you mean. But I don't think Sam would stand in the
way of my— "

"No, but he might lose Glenda. I'll talk to him. We'll talk to
him together. If the whole thing is okay with him, then it's okay
with us. If he has a problem, I think you should get another agent."

"Do you have somebody in mind?" she asked, and he could
hear in her muted voice that she guessed he did. Margit was small,
and she was quiet and modest, but she was shrewd. Far from being
overwhelmed by the proposal he was putting before her, she was even
thinking ahead of him.

"Yes, I do. My daughter is married to Ben
Parrish. I don't like the guy, and I don't trust him. And you
shouldn't either. But we can stick him out front as your ostensible
agent. You and I will write the contract ourselves, whether he likes
it or not. You can ask Sam to review it in confidence, if you want
to. Or get a Hollywood lawyer to look it over. I'm thinking of a
two-year contract. If the show flops, we'll put you back on the
Glenda Grayson Show
, with bigger billing, and I'll see to it
that they write better stuff for you."

"Mr.— Jonas. I'm grateful to you."

He put his hand on hers again. This time he closed his fingers around
her hand. "Will you do something for me? If you say no, it's
okay. A no won't kill the deal we've been talking about. But ever
since I first saw you on television I've thought about what a vision
it would be if you danced nude. Would you do that for me, Margit?"

Her face flushed, and she nodded.

"I have all kinds of records," he said, pointing to a
stereo system. "Pick out something for your music."

She undressed first, pulling the skirt over her head, then pulling
off the leotards. She had no pubic hair. She saw his surprised stare
at her naked pudenda, and she self-consciously covered herself with
her hand. "I can't risk wisps of hair showing around the edges
of leotards," she said. "So I shave it."

He nodded. "You're a vision," he said.

She went to the stereo cabinet and looked through his collection of
records.

She chose the song "I'm in Love with a
Wonderful Guy" from
South Pacific
. It was lively music,
and she performed a lively dance. The next band on the record was
"Younger Than Springtime," and to that she danced
sinuously. Jonas was enthralled.

She came to the couch, sat down, and took another swallow of Irish
whiskey. Her skin gleamed with a trace of perspiration. She made no
move toward putting her clothes back on.

"Margit, you are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen,"
Jonas said in complete sincerity.

"I guess it's gonna be just like Sam told me," she said
softly.

"Okay, fill me in, Eddie."

Angie sat at a table in the coffee shop of the Flamingo facing a man
who had once been her brother-in-law. Eddie Latham. Jerry's brother.
Seven years younger than Jerry, he was just thirty-one, and he looked
like Jerry, though Jerry had been only twenty-five when he was killed
in the Normandy Invasion. Eddie had been only fourteen when she saw
him last, not long before she was arrested.

"Ma died a couple years ago," said Eddie. "She always
thought you ought to've kept in touch."

"Maybe I should have," said Angie. "But she didn't
keep in touch either. I was in jail three months in Manhattan. She
came to see me once. I was in the reformatory thirty-nine months, and
I got two letters from her. Anyway, I'm sorry you lost her, Eddie.
How old was she?"

"She was sixty-four. Had a bad heart the last few years."

"So why have you come to see me?" Angie asked.

"I'd have looked you up a long, long time ago if I could've
found you," he said. "I always thought Jerry married the
prettiest girl in town. After Jerry was killed, I got the crazy idea
I'd go to West Virginia and meet you when you came out of the
slammer. But guess where I was: at Fort Dix, drafted, taking basic
training. I was sent to the Pacific, but the war ended before I ever
fired a shot or anybody fired one at me. I came home. I tried to find
you. You won't believe this, but I hired a private eye. The last
address the Federal Bureau of Prisons had for you was White Plains.
You'd been given final release, and they didn't know where you'd
gone. I gave up. Then a couple months ago I saw your picture in the
paper: director of a big corporation. I said, Hey, that's Angie! So,
first chance I got, I came to Vegas."

Angie smiled and shook her head.

"Simple story," said Eddie. He glanced
around and frowned as if the bright bustle of the coffee shop
offended him — not the right setting for what he apparently
meant to be a solemn and significant conversation. "So where
did
you go in 1945, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I married again," she said. "Wyatt. We went to
California, then came here. I've been here ever since."

"You and Jonas Cord must have a very friendly relationship,"
said Eddie.

Angie smiled and nodded. "Very friendly," she agreed.

Eddie took a package of Camels and a lighter from his jacket pocket.
He offered her a cigarette, and she shook her head. Jonas had smoked
little for years and had stopped smoking entirely after the heart
attack. She didn't smoke in his presence, which meant in effect that
she had stopped, too. Eddie lit the unfiltered Camel, drew the smoke
down deep, and blew it out through his nose.

"I figured that," he said. He grinned. "I came along
too early and then too late."

"You must be married."

"I was for six years. Two kids. She has them."

"I can't believe you came to Vegas to see me just for old times'
sake, just because you're a romantic," said Angie. "What
business are you in, Eddie?"

He stared into his coffee cup and took another deep drag on his
cigarette. "That's the point, Angie," he said. "Somebody
asked me to talk to you."

Captain Frank's was a fish restaurant on Cleveland's Ninth Avenue
Pier. On a day on the cusp of spring, the view from the broad windows
was of an angry green Lake Erie, its waves whipped up, spray flying
and visible like snowflakes against the gray sky. The place was very
well known in Cleveland, and well thought of.

A round table for six was saved every day for Carlo Vulcano, and rare
was the day when he was not at his table. On days when he was not
there, no one sat at his table, even his friends, for fear he would
come in and find someone he did not want to talk to that day sitting
at his table. People sat at his table only at his specific and
personal invitation — usually four or five men, today only one.

That one was Eddie Latham.

"So. You are not able to report success."

Eddie shook his head. "I am sorry, Don Carlo. I did all I
could."

"Did you offer to marry her?"

"I promised her what you promised: a villa on a Brazilian beach.
I told her it was not too late to have children. But— She is
loyal to the man. She thinks of him as her great benefactor. I think
she is in love with him, Don Carlo."

"You invoked the memory of your brother?"

"She said we had to face a fact. Jerry was a grifter. That's
what she called him, a grifter. She said that's what he was, at
best."

"She told you nothing, then?"

"Don Carlo ..." Eddie turned up the palms of his hands. "I
did everything I could."

"Did you speak of exposing her criminal record?"

"She says Cord knows about it."

Carlo Vulcano turned his face away from Eddie and for a long moment
stared at the pitching gray-green water of the lake. "The
newspapers who were so intrigued with her appointment to the CE board
of directors did not take the trouble to discover it. I wonder—
"

"She is still a beautiful woman," said Eddie quietly.

"You were taken with her, Eddie. If you had succeeded, you could
have had her."

"Don Carlo, I am afraid she is not the kind of woman who—
"

"
Who what?
That was your problem,
Eddie. You do not understand women. Businessmen trade in women like
they trade in commodities, like oil or wheat or pork bellies. You say
she is beautiful. So is every one of them, to somebody. You were
afraid
of her, Eddie!"

"I did the best I could for you, Don Carlo. I would never think
of doing anything less — for you."