The Inheritors (30 page)

“Then I will have dinner alone. Watch some television and go to bed. The day after will be better though. I am working then. It is always better when I am working.”

“Don’t you go out? To the movies? Anyplace?”

She shook her head. “No. How would it look? Marilu Barzini, the star, going out alone? But it’s all right. I am used to it.”

“It’s not good,” he said. “To lock yourself up like that.”

“It will not be for long,” she said. “I have made up my mind. I am not signing the contracts for those other two pictures. I am going back to Italy. There I can be free. I am at home.”

“Does Sam know that?”

“No. How could he? I just made up my mind tonight.”

“Will you come through New York on your way back?”

“If you ask me to,” she said.

“I’m asking you.”

“Then I will come.”

He moved toward her and she came into his arms. She rested her head against his chest and they stood together for a long time. Then he turned her face up to him and kissed her gently. “Good night, Italian Girl.”

“Good night, Stephen Gaunt.”

He picked up his tie from the couch. She gave him his jacket. Silently, without another word, he left. She stood there looking at the closed door for a long time. Then she went into the bedroom, feeling better than she had in a long long time.

***

“Did you see this, Sam?”

He looked up from his bacon and eggs. “See what?” he asked, his mouth half full.

Denise gave him the
Reporter
. She pointed to the small story on the front page: BARZINI TO RETURN TO ROME AFTER
RIDERS
.

He glanced at it and nodded. He resumed eating.

“I thought you had her signed to two more pictures,” Denise said.

“We agreed to skip them. She’s not happy here. She prefers working in Rome.”

Denise tried to keep the sudden lightening of her heart from showing in her voice. “Will it affect your plans in any way?”

“Sure,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of food. “Maybe I’ll be able to get home early some nights now that I don’t have to follow her around holding a can every time she wants to take a pee.”

“Like tonight?”

He put down his knife and fork and took her hand. “Yes, Mama,” he said. “Like tonight.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Steve came into the apartment just after midnight and the telephone was ringing. He picked it up. “Hello.”

The faint accent echoed in his ear. “Stephen Gaunt?”

“Yes.”

“You told me to call you when I am coming to New York.”

“Italian Girl, when are you coming in?”

“I am in New York,” she said. “At the airport. My plane just landed.”

“The picture finished?”

“Yesterday. I had a few scenes to dub this morning or I would have been in earlier.”

“Does Sam know you’ve left?”

“No.” She hesitated. “I thought it would be better if I just went off quietly. I tried to call you, but you were never there.”

“Do you have a car meeting you?”

“No,” she answered. “I decided to leave this morning. I left my maid there to finish packing and follow me.”

“I’ll have a car there in thirty minutes.”

“It’s all right. I can get a taxi.”

“Don’t forget you’re a star, Italian Girl,” he said. “Taxis are for the common people.”

She laughed. “I’ll wait then. I’ll be in the lounge at United Airlines.”

He put down the telephone and picked up the house phone. “The front door, please.

“Tell my chauffeur I want to speak to him.” He hesitated. “No. Tell him to wait for me. I’ll be right down.”

***

The press and the photographers beat him to her. Despite the late hour they seemed to come from out of nowhere. She was sitting on a railing that gave them a chance to photograph her legs, the short skirt seeming even shorter.

He stopped behind them and waited patiently.

She saw him and waved. “Stephen Gaunt!”

They turned to look and made a path for him to walk through. She came off the railing into his arms. They kissed and the flashbulbs went off like Chinese firecrackers.

“Once again,” a photographer called. “My camera jammed.”

She looked at him questioningly.

He grinned. “Why not?”

They repeated the kiss for the photographer. He turned to them. “I could keep this up all night,” he said. “But Miss Barzini just came off a long flight and she is tired.”

They began to walk out. Some of the reporters followed them. “Is it a romance?” one asked.

“We’re old friends,” he said.

“How long did you know each other?” another called.

“How about a month?”

They laughed. The luggage was already in the car. His chauffeur opened the door for them.

Marilu got in and he followed her. “Will you be in town long?” a reporter asked her.

She smiled at him. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Steve signaled his chauffeur and the car moved out into the road, leaving the reporters behind. He pressed the button that raised the glass divider. When it was closed, he turned to her.

“Welcome to New York, Italian Girl,” he said.

She sat there looking at him for a moment. Then she spoke. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I believe you,” she said. “It’s strange.”

“What’s strange?”

“I am so used to not believing what people say. Yet when you say it, I believe you.” She looked into his eyes. “Do you know—since that night we had dinner—I could not wait until the picture was finished. All I thought about was coming here to be with you.”

He was silent.

“Do you believe me?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Why is it you do not speak?”

“I don’t know,” he said hesitantly.

She picked up his hand and brought it to her lips. “I, too,” she whispered against the back of his palm.

***

She clung to him, the heat of her engulfing him like the interior of a furnace, melting in its fierceness. “Stephen Gaunt,” she cried. “I am lost! There is a whole world I never knew and I am afraid.”

He held himself against her fire. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “You’re with me. Give yourself up to it.”

“No!” Suddenly, frantically, she tried to get away from him, her hands striking at his chest and shoulders.

He trapped her against the headboard, his weight against her, his forearm across her throat cutting off her breath. She fought, rolling and squirming. Inexorably he increased the pressure. As suddenly as she had begun to struggle, she stopped.

She looked up at him, her mouth open, gasping for breath.

“You would have killed me,” she said softly. A curious respect came into her voice. “You are not like the others.”

Her body motionless, the sheath that was her being gripped him, tightened around him, pulsed rhythmically as she sought to empty him. He began to rise and fall, responding involuntarily to her demand.

“You like that?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said.

She nodded, sure of herself once again.

He held himself still. “You know all the tricks, don’t you, Italian Girl?”

She smiled. Suddenly, he rolled away from her and was out of the bed, looking down at her.

She followed him swiftly, her hand taking him to her mouth. “My strong, beautiful cock,” she whispered. “Let me make love to it.”

He stood there for a moment, feeling the tiny sharpness of her teeth on him, then tilted her face up toward him. “No. I want you to make love to me, not it.” He picked up his robe from a chair. “And I want to make love to you. If I wanted to just fuck you I would have done it that night in California.”

***

It was Roger Cohen’s voice on the transcontinental wire. “Sam?”

“Yeah,” he said irritably. He was beginning to wish he had never taken him back.

“Do you know where your girl is this morning?” he asked sarcastically.

“Sure I do,” Sam said, annoyed. “Marilu’s at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We just finished shooting yesterday.”

“Sure you’re sure!” Roger then delivered his daily quota of aggravation. “Then how come her picture is in this morning’s newspapers draped all over Stephen Gaunt at Idlewild Airport?”

“She’s not?” Sam’s voice was disbelieving.

“You want me to send you the clips?”

“Okay, okay, I believe you.” Sam stopped for a moment. “The dirty cunt.”

“What about our pictures with her?” Roger asked.

“We canceled them. She said she was unhappy here.”

Roger’s voice grew even more savage. “That’s great. Now you’ve made your five pictures for Trans-World and we’re no closer to one for our own company than we were a year ago. Not even one with her. That one you gave to them also.”

“That million and a quarter producer’s fee I got didn’t hurt our company.”

“How far do you think that will take us without pictures to distribute? Our expenses run more than fifteen thousand a week now. If we don’t get some product real quick, we might as well close up shop.”

“I’m working on some ideas,” Sam said. “I’m just waiting on approvals from Craddock’s office.”

“How long will that take?”

“I should hear today,” Sam said. “It’s just a formality.”

“I hope they’re good ones,” Roger said. “We can use them.”

For a brief moment, Sam was angry when he put down the telephone. He should have known it. She had begun to change ever since that night she made dinner for Steve. She could have told him.

Then he felt the sense of relief. It was just as well. For a while she had him on a roller coaster and he didn’t know how to get off. He was all right for quickies and one-shots, but an affair was too much for him.

He was perfectly happy to be too old for it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“We’ve got a tiger by the tail,” Steve said. “We have to go into production ourselves. If we don’t, we’re at the mercy of every picture company in the business.”

“We’re not in the motion picture business,” Spencer Sinclair said. “We’re in broadcasting.”

“We
are
the picture business,” Steve declared. “And the newspaper business, and the publishing business, and baseball, football, and even in the politics business. We had as much to do with electing Kennedy as anyone.”

Sinclair looked at him without speaking.

“What I’m saying, Spencer, is that we’re in communications. And that covers everything. Our little twenty-one-inch screen feeds on the world with the appetite of a thousand tigers and if we don’t provide for its food, there will soon be none left for us.”

The older man moved the papers on his desk and looked at them. After a few moments, he glanced up at Steve. “What is it you think we should do?”

“We start now by going into the picture business,” Steve said. “There are two ways we can approach it. By setting up our own production company or buying one.”

“I suppose you have one in mind.”

Steve nodded. “Trans-World.”

“I thought your friend was taking that one over.”

“More the other way around. Sam’s a producer and a salesman, he’s not really a businessman.”

“What makes you think they’ll be ready to sell?”

“I’ve studied their annual reports for the last five years. It’s been four years since they’ve shown a profit and their losses amount to over twenty million dollars. Its principal asset is its film library which they estimate is worth one hundred and fifty million dollars.”

“How many shares of stock do they have out?”

“Three million odd shares at about twenty-two. If we make a tender of thirty dollars a share I think we would have control in a week. Management went to sleep. They own next to nothing.”

“That could be ninety million dollars,” Sinclair said.

“It doesn’t have to be cash,” Steve said. “We can offer stock.”

“No. I’ve no intention of diluting my equity. If I consider it at all, it will be for cash.”

“That’s up to you,” Steve said. “You’re the boss.”

The older man smiled suddenly. “So why do I feel like I’m being pushed all over the place?”

Steve returned his smile with warmth. “Maybe it’s because you don’t get into the office enough, Spencer. And when you do, you’re always faced with a major decision.”

Sinclair laughed. “You never stop, do you?”

Steve was silent.

“Have the legal department look into this,” Sinclair said. “There might be complications. Antitrust, FCC.”

“They’re already working on it.”

“How about Trans-World operating losses? Will that affect our profit picture?”

“It would if we kept it,” Steve said. “But all I really want is the library and the studio. I’ll spin the distribution company off.”

“Got an idea as to who might want it?”

Steve nodded.

“Who?”

“Sam Benjamin,” he said. “He dreams of making Samarkand a major distributor and the one thing he hasn’t got is a ready-made organization.”

“What makes you think he’ll go for it?” Sinclair said. “The way it looks we’ll be skimming the cream.”

“Not really,” Steve said. “We’ll still need a distributor for the pictures we make. The right kind of an arrangement and neither of us can go wrong. He’s the best salesman in the business.”

“Except one,” Sinclair said.

Steve looked at him. “Who’s that?”

“You.” Sinclair laughed and got to his feet. “Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to come in at all.”

“You know you wouldn’t be happy if you didn’t,” Steve said.

“I guess so.” Sinclair was thoughtful. “Well, in time I can let go. Then it will really be up to you.”

Steve knew what he meant. There was a mandatory retirement age in the corporation. “Meanwhile, stick around,” he said. “We need you.”

“Thank you,” Sinclair returned to his chair. “That was a pretty girl with you in that picture in the paper this morning. The Italian actress.” He paused. “Anything serious?”

Steve shook his head. “Just a friend.”

“I thought I heard somewhere she was a friend of Sam Benjamin’s.”

The old man didn’t miss very much. “She might have been.”

“I hope it’s nothing that will affect your relationship with Benjamin,” the older man said. “Especially if you have plans to work with him. I’ve always found it much more dangerous to fool with a man’s mistress than his wife.”