JC2 The Raiders (50 page)

Jonas grinned. "One of the things I most like
about you," he said, "is that you're a first-rate bullshit
artist. I wish Bat would learn something of that art from you. But
I'm serious. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman. And, for
God's sake, quit calling me Mr. Cord. To be called that by the most
beautiful woman in a party — with the
possible
exception
of my Angie — is a complete put-down."

"Jonas ... Do you really think so? Most beautiful— "

"Absolutely. The dress is exquisite."

"Bat bought it for me, for tonight."

"The boy learns ... gradually."

In their bedroom before they came out for the ceremony, Bat had
unpacked a peach-colored cocktail dress embroidered with silver
thread. She was not so obsessed with modesty as to deny it was
beautiful and she was beautiful in it.

Bat was as protective of Toni tonight as his father was of Angie, and
seeing her in earnest conversation with Jonas, he broke away from
Jo-Ann, Monica, and her friend Bill Toller, picked up two fresh
Scotches, and crossed the room toward his father.

"I know where Chandler is," he said to Jonas, adding to
Toni, "Sorry. A word about business."

"What about Chandler?" Jonas asked, not disguising that he
didn't want to know this evening but was compelled to now, since his
son had so insensitively mentioned it.

"He's in Rhode Island," said Bat. "Since gambling is
not legal in Rhode Island, there's no such thing as a gaming license,
and his felony record is no impediment to his managing a joint some
people have there. It's quite a place. People come from Boston, even
from as far away as Hartford to gamble and consort with the hookers."

"He landed on his feet," said Jonas.

"If you want to call becoming a big duck in a very little pond
landing on your feet, I suppose he did."

Monica joined them. Toni renewed her judgment that Monica was a
brittle bitch. "I love your dress," she said to Toni with
the same condescending edge in her voice she had used when she said
the same thing to Angie. She herself wore a black dress of
undistinguished style — unless showing extraordinary cleavage
was style. "Where's your bride, Jonas?"

Angie was at the bar pouring a small new drink of bourbon for Jonas.
She came to Jonas and handed him the glass. She wore pink brocade and
was easily the most beautiful woman in the house, Jonas's compliment
to Toni notwithstanding. "I appreciate your all being here this
evening," she said, directing the comment particularly toward
Monica.

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said Monica.

"I'm taking Angie to London and Paris for a wedding trip,"
said Jonas.

"I haven't been to Paris in
ages
,"
said Monica.

Bat had noticed his mother standing near the
buffet table, glancing around, apparently briefly at a loss to know
who to talk to, though she had already clearly demonstrated she was
not in the least discomfited by the company. He broke away from the
group around his father and led Toni toward his mother. "
Madre
,"
he said opening his arms. She smiled and entered between his
outstretched arms for a warm embrace.

"Boston," Sonja said to Toni.

"Yes, it's been a long time since we've seen each other,"
said Toni. "Too long."

"I'm very happy about your news," she said quietly. "You
haven't told Jonas, though, have you?"

Toni shook her head. "Not yet."

Toni had met Sonja when she came to the States to visit Bat when he
was at Harvard. She'd been in her forties then and was in her fifties
now: a woman of presence and poise and possessed of a rare, almost
unique beauty. With her form-fitting silver lamé cocktail
dress she wore a massive turquoise-and-silver squash-blossom
necklace. Toni had watched her talking with Jonas earlier. She
yielded nothing to him but treated him as an old friend.

Jonas walked away from Monica and brought Angie to the buffet table.
"I'm about to be made a grandfather," he said to Sonja. He
nodded toward Jo-Ann.

"Congratulations to both of you," said Sonja.

During the flight to Nevada, Bat had told Toni that Jo-Ann was a
defeated woman. She had married as an act of defiance, only to see
her husband captured by the gravity of Jonas and now dutifully
circling him like a satellite. He had said he wasn't sure she wanted
to be pregnant, either. "The name is cursed," Bat had said
bitterly.

Monica said something similar to Jo-Ann a little later, when they
stood apart by the window, looking out over a bleak landscape where
no snow lay.

The next thing she said was "He dotes on his bastard."

Jo-Ann shrugged. "A blessing from heaven."

"Remember something," said Monica. "More bastards may
show up, especially when he dies. But you're the only legitimate
child he has. He can't shut you out of your inheritance."

"Yes, he can," said Jo-Ann. "I've talked with lawyers
about it. By will. If it's drafted right, and executed right, he can
leave everything he's got to Angie, or to Bat, or to whoever he
wants."

"You mean he can leave you to the tender mercies of his
bastard?"

"You're not very observant," said Jo-Ann.

"Meaning what?"

"He doesn't like Bat as well as you think he does. Can't you see
the tension between them? If it weren't for this wedding, this joyous
occasion, they'd be at each other's throats. They may be heading
toward a complete breakup."

Monica laughed. "We can always hope so."

Jo-Ann shook her head. "I'm not sure
I
hope so."

"A few minutes," Jonas said to Bat. "I want to talk to
you alone for a few minutes."

Jonas ushered Bat into the little office he kept in the ranch house.
He closed and latched the door. "This ought to be a happy day
for me," he said as he sat down in a chair covered with cracked
black leather. "I don't want anybody out there to see it isn't."

"What's wrong with it?" Bat asked. "You've just
married an extravagantly beautiful, conspicuously devoted woman."

Jonas shrugged. "And the fourth-quarter
figures are good, and we're going to sell a sponsor a TV production
starring a cute little girl we've both screwed. So ... ?" He
blew a loud sigh. "Maybe I don't want to go to Europe for just
two or three weeks. What if I kept Angie over there for six weeks
instead of two? What if we stayed six
months?
What would
happen?"

"You'd go nuts, is what would happen," said Bat. "You're
playing games with me."

"The point is, do you think you could handle
it?" Jonas asked. "You got it all in your head now? You
wouldn't pass up any more Phoenix Aircraft deals? You wouldn't make
any TV shows we have to sponsor ourselves? You wouldn't make dumb
changes in the
Margit Show
?"

"In other words, I wouldn't make any decisions while you're
gone."

"Put it in a confrontational way. You always
do. All right. I won't kid you. I'm tired. And I've got a great new
wife. And maybe I haven't got unlimited time ahead of me. But I've
gotta hurry home in two weeks because I'm not sure if you can run the
whole thing for any longer than that. So, tell me the truth. You
think you
can
handle it?"

Bat's face was flushed. "My idea was that
we'd run it
together
for a while."

"That's what we've
been
doing."

"No," said Bat firmly, shaking his head. "I'm an
errand boy. I'm sick of it."

"
You haven't ever been a fuckin' errand
boy!
" Jonas yelled. "I can hire errand boys for twenty
percent of what I pay you. I let you restructure the whole damned
business. What the hell do you think you are?"

"I'm what
you'd
have been if your
father had lived," said Bat. "A son who can make
suggestions but had better not make decisions."

"You never pass up a chance to unload my father on me, do you?
No— Let's get back to the question. Suppose I decide to retire
at the age of fifty-five. You ready to run the whole goddamned
works?"

"I— "

"I'm not saying without mistakes. I made mine. But are you ready
to tell me, honestly, that you're ready to take over all the stuff we
call CE and run it without me? I'll take your word on it."

"What do
you
think?" Bat asked.

"What I think isn't the point. Whatta
you
think?"

"You put me in— "

"
Right
," Jonas interrupted.
"That's the whole point. I put you between a rock and a hard
place. Which is where you'll be put every goddamned day when you run
the business. And then you gotta be smart. And then you gotta have
guts."

"You're smart, and you've got guts," said Bat tentatively.

Jonas shrugged. "I'm here. I haven't lost it."

Bat lifted his chin high. "I've got in me what you've got in
you. You put it in my mother, and it came out in me."

"Okay. You think you're ready?"

Bat nodded, "Yeah. Right. I'm ready."

Jonas's faced hardened. "Well, I don't think
you are — and the fact you think you are is the best proof you
aren't. When my father died, I knew better than to think I was ready.
But I didn't have any choice; I
had
to do it. Every day of my
life, almost, I've wished I had the old man's help and advice. But
not you. You throw it away. You resent it. You're an egomaniac, Bat."

"Where could I have acquired that gene?" Bat sneered.

Jonas reached for a bottle of bourbon. His hand trembled as he poured
a shot. "Go on," he said. "Go get your cock sucked.
Before I leave for Europe with Angie, we're gonna settle this.
Tomorrow. Christmas day or no Christmas day, we're going to settle
it. We're going to have a modus operandi, you and me. We're gonna be
father and son. Or you're through."

Not long after midnight, Jonas led Angie to their bedroom; then Bat
led Toni to theirs.

The room was warm, and Toni was not reluctant to undress, except as
always for her panties. They had a bottle of Courvoisier in the room,
and Toni poured them tiny final drinks as Bat stirred the fire and
put on more wood. They lay down side by side in bed. Only when a
blanket was pulled up over them did Toni slip the panties down and
lay them on the nightstand. Bat laid his thirty-eight snub-nose Smith
& Wesson revolver on the nightstand on his side of the bed.

"Are things that bad?" she asked.

"No. Just insurance."

"I don't want to have to think about it now," she said.

For an hour they thought of nothing but each other, and then they
went to sleep.

She
went to sleep. Only rarely did Bat
suffer any pain in his old wound scars, but occasionally he did. It
happened after he had lifted too much weight with his right arm. He
had lain sleepless in this house once before after lifting luggage
off an airplane out on the landing strip. He'd done it again today,
and he felt sharp twinges in the permanently damaged musculature of
his chest.

He slipped off the bed and took a heavy shot of brandy.

Sitting in a chair, he stared at the flickering darts of flame rising
from the red-hot crumbling coals on the andirons. He had said nothing
to Toni about the confrontation he'd had with his father. He
wouldn't, not until they were away from here. Fort Lauderdale ...
Maybe.

A twinge stabbed him. Dave Amory had them, too. He'd been hit in the
leg. It was the price you paid for being an infantryman, Dave said.
And he said, too—

Maybe for the price you bought something. Bat remembered nights in
Belgium when they had sensed something was wrong, just sensed it,
without any real evidence. One night he had rolled quietly out of his
foxhole, two minutes before an infiltrating German had struck into it
with a dagger. The German died because an infantryman developed a
sense— Oh, yeah. The Kraut was not an infantryman.

Like that night ... Bat heard nothing. But he sensed something.
Something was goddamned wrong, just like it had been the night the
German struck into an empty foxhole with a rune-marked SS ceremonial
dagger.

He didn't take time to pull on his pants. He didn't have a robe. He
grabbed the thirty-eight and slipped quietly out of the bedroom,
wearing only slingshot underpants.

The household was asleep. It was dark. A few smoldering coals glowed
in the big fieldstone fireplace. No electric lights burned. The
silence was complete. Even so. Bat needed only a minute outside his
room to confirm his suspicion that something was horribly wrong—
The front door was open.

Jonas slipped a nitroglycerine tablet under his tongue. He clutched
his chest.

The man in the brown overcoat, wearing a brown hat, holding a
small-caliber silenced automatic pistol leveled on Jonas and Angie,
shrugged and said, "Maybe God's gonna do it for me. Maybe I have
to do nothing."

"I can make you a better deal," Jonas whispered hoarsely.

"You'd be surprised how many men offer me a
better deal," said the man. He was Malditesta. "The first
time I bought that,
I'd
be the dead man." He shook his
head. "I already made the deal."

Angie was naked. She had thrown herself across Jonas, to block a
shot. She was sobbing.

"What's your deal?" Jonas asked. "Just me? Not her?"

Malditesta shook his head. "Just you, Mr. Cord. Not even your
son."

"You'll do it and leave?" Jonas asked. "Can I believe
that?"

"I am paid for one," said the hit man. "If they want
another one, they pay again. And— I'm a pro. It won't hurt. If
the little lady will get out of the way, I can make it very easy —
easier than that heart attack you seem to be havin'. Push the little
lady off, Mr. Cord."

"Do what he says, Angie," Jonas pleaded.

"
NO
!" she shrieked.