(1982) The Almighty (2 page)

Armstead dismissed her with a gesture. ‘Hannah’s no problem.’

‘Very well. The other six homes went to you. There are some token bequests - mainly minor shares in the magazines and syndicate - to some of the old-timers who have been in his employ for years. Perhaps a dozen bequests to various distant relatives.’

‘But the rest to me? The ranches -‘

‘Just about everything will be yours, Edward. The mines in Utah and Nevada. Oil wells in Oklahoma and Texas. The chain of markets. The New York real estate. The merchant ships. The art works, except for a few he left to the Metropolitan Museum.’

A sudden curiosity prickled Armstead. ‘What about Kim?’ he inquired. ‘Kim Nesbit.’

Liddington appeared hesitant. ‘What about her?’

‘Is she in the will?’

The attorney was still hesitant. ‘No - not exactly.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, the will is a public document, you know. It can be read by anyone after probate. I - I don’t think Ezra wanted to invite speculation about his relationship with Miss Nesbit.’

‘Speculation,’ Armstead snorted. ‘The old hypocrite. Everyone knows he kept her from day one. He must have left her something.’

‘I did not say he left her nothing,’ said Liddington. T was merely saying she was not in the will. Miss Nesbit was provided for a year before his death, at the beginning of his last illness.’

‘What did he give her?’ Armstead wanted to know.

Liddington was reticent about replying. ‘I’m not sure it would be right for me to go into that, Edward. There is a

confidentiality in a relationship between -‘

‘I know, I know,’ Armstead interrupted. He finished his cognac, and raised himself to his feet to take a cigar from the humidor on the walnut desk. He bit off the end of the cigar. ‘I just wondered how he felt about Kim at the end. Did he leave her flat?’

‘Oh, no, no -‘

‘Did he let her keep her condo?’

‘He gave it to her years ago. And he made her a cash settlement. A generous arrangement. She will always live in comfort.’

‘I see.’ Armstead put a lighter to his cigar, and puffed. ‘Now back to me, Horace. How much of the estate did he leave me?’

‘As I said, the bulk of it. About three quarters of it.’

‘I only understand numbers, Horace. How much?’

‘I should estimate - a worth of over a billion dollars.’

Armstead sat down. After a brief silence, he spoke. ‘Horace, where’s the zinger?’ he inquired placidly.

‘The zinger?’

‘The needle, the shiv. You can’t tell me the old man went to the grave and just left me everything without trying to needle me some way, exert some influence on me after he was gone, make something difficult?’

‘Well…’ Liddington hesitated momentarily. ‘I repeat, he left you the bulk of his estate.’

‘Clean?’ persisted Armstead. ‘No ifs, ands, or buts?’ He had a sudden intuition. ‘The newspaper,’ he said. ‘Does the estate include the newspaper?’

‘The newspapers,’ Liddington corrected him. ‘He had liquidated most of them, as you know. But there are still five left.’

‘I’m interested in only one,’ said Armstead sharply. ‘The New York Record, his flagship paper. The others are rags. But the Record, that could be important.’ He held on the attorney’s face, and detected a certain evasiveness. ‘He left me the Record, didn’t he?’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Liddington. He fumbled with the pages of the document. ‘Yes, I was about to get to that.’

‘What’s there to get to?’ said Armstead impatiently. ‘It’s his one possession that matters to me. That paper made him

famous, until he became inattentive. I grew up on that paper. I know what to do with it. It is mine now, isn’t it?’

Liddington was turning the pages of the will. ‘Well, yes and no,’ he said. He found what he wanted and reread it to himself. ‘Concerning the New York Record, there is a restrictive clause -‘

‘What kind of clause?’

‘He bequeathed the newspaper to you but there is a restrictive condition.’

‘What condition?’

‘It’s - it’s an odd clause. I remember when he inserted it. I didn’t understand his reasoning, but I did as I was told, I included it.’

‘Will you tell me what the damn thing says?’

‘You are to have the New York Record, of course. But conditionally, for a trial year. During that year you must at some point exceed the daily circulation of the New York Times. If you can do that just once, the paper is yours, permanently. If you fail, the newspaper must perforce be sold to Paul Eldridge of the New York Times. Eldridge had made your father an offer some months before his death. But, of course, that clause is inoperative if -‘

‘The bastard!’ Armstead burst out. He was livid. ‘I knew it was too good to be true. There had to be a zinger. I knew E. J. had to shiv me somewhere. He knew what that paper means to me. He knew it hasn’t topped the Times once since 1954. He set a condition that he knew couldn’t be met. He didn’t want to appear the bastard that he was. He wanted to show the world he was the good parent, leaving me what I wanted most, but then to be sure I lost it. He wanted to show the world what he always believed - that I am incompetent, not worthy -‘

‘Wait a minute. Hold on, Edward,’ Liddington broke in, trying to placate him. ‘Even if you lost the paper, you’d get the money from its sale. You could start another newspaper in Xew York.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Armstead angrily. ‘You didn’t know him the way I did. After a point, he never cared about money, and neither do I. He cared about his newspaper. It had made him - made him internationally famous. I was raised on it. I wanted the Record above

everything else. Having it would give me my chance to prove myself, prove I was worthy. But he didn’t want me to have the paper. He didn’t want me to have my chance.’

‘Edward, perhaps you are being somewhat unreasonable. I repeat, you could start your own newspaper -‘

‘You can’t start a newspaper, not these days. A newspaper has to be there. It is like a person. It has a heart and soul. It’s a friend, a part of every reader’s family and life. The Record is part of the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people here, and I could have carried it on, made it more, returned it to its highest glory - but no, he wouldn’t let me.’

‘You can still do so, Edward,’ Liddington said. ‘The paper is entirely yours for a year.’

‘A year,’ repeated Armstead bitterly. ‘He’s given me a year to do what he was unable to do in decades. He knew it couldn’t be done. The bastard.’

The lawyer made one more effort at reason. ‘Edward, he must have thought highly of you. He left you almost everything. He left you the television stations, the big one here in New York. Everyone watches television.’

‘Fuck television,’ said Armstead. ‘A picture book for illiterates and morons. Two or three minutes on any one subject. No time for in-depth, for understanding, for absorbing and reflecting. The only things treated with care are the commercials. He left me television?’

‘And a billion dollars.’

Armstead ground his cigar into a pewter tray. He stood up. ‘He left me shit,’ he said bitterly. He shook his head. ‘You’ll never understand.’ He cast about him. ‘Is there a telephone where I can make a call privately?’

Liddington came to his feet. ‘Let me take you to the conference room next door. It’s not in use. Can I put through the call for you?’

‘It’s personal. It’s something I want to do myself.’ He had brought a small address book out of his jacket pocket. ‘There’s someone I have to see.’

‘I wasn’t sure you’d keep your appointment today,’ said Dr. Carl Scharf, closing the office door and directing Edward Armstead to the cracked and faded brown leather chair directly across from his own sand-colored armchair.

Usually when he sat down for one of his three-times-a-week sessions Armstead made some derogatory comment about the leather chair - that it looked as if it had come secondhand from a garage sale. Always he made some critical comment about Dr. Scharf’s cramped and untidy office. Once he had even offered to lease and pay for a more commodious and modern suite in a better neighborhood for his psychoanalyst, but Dr. Scharf had politely declined. Armstead had then suspected that the analyst retained his Black Hole of Calcutta because it was contrary chic. To headquarter in a rotting and dangerous ancient building on Thirty-sixth Street off Broadway and there receive famous and wealthy patients showed a certain individuality, eccentricity, and disregard for facades that would finally impress overindulged neurotics.

Armstead had given up on Dr. Scharfs shameful apparel long ago. True, the analyst was not built to be a Beau Brummel, and apparently from early on had decided to go with what he had. Dr. Scharf was a short, round man - round bald pate circled by a fringe of thinning hair, and fat round physique. A disgrace to the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Armstead was sure, a psychiatrist who did not like to listen. But he was insightful, he was warm, he was brilliant. He had tried for years to get Armstead to break away from his father, to swim on his own, but that had been asking too much. This afternoon, as ever, he was attired in a rumpled and worn tweed sport jacket, turtleneck sweater, and unpressed slacks.

Dropping into his armchair, Armstead hardly noticed. Nor was he aware of the shabby office and its disreputable furniture. Armstead was blind, blind with rage.

While Armstead sat fuming, the analyst rearranged some back copies of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association on top of the ottoman before his own chair. Then he wriggled more comfortably into his shallow seat, propped his feet up on the magazines, put a match to his smelly briar pipe and said again, T didn’t think you’d come by today.’

T didn’t intend to. But I just heard his will, and I got so pissed off I had to see someone - even you.’

Dr. Scharf puffed placidly on his pipe. ‘You did go to the funeral, Edward, didn’t you?’

‘Just to make sure he was dead.’

Dr. Scharf nodded gently. ‘Reminds me of the old Harry Cohn story. You know, Harry Cohn, who was head of Columbia Pictures -‘

‘For chrissakes, Carl, I know who he was.’

‘When he died, a great crowd turned up for the funeral. Observing the crowd, someone said, “Just give people what they want, and they’ll show up.” I guess that’s it.’

‘That’s it,’ said Armstead.

‘So you saw that he was dead.’

‘He was dead as a doornail. I’m sure of that.’

‘And still you don’t feel free?’

‘How can I? He won’t let go. You should have heard what he put in his will, the bastard.’

‘Okay, Edward, what did he put in his will that’s upset you so much?’

‘He left me everything, except what I wanted.’

‘Tell me.’

Armstead launched into a recital of his visit to Horace Liddington, the contents of the will and the conditional clause about the New York Record. When he finished he was almost asthmatic with anger. He stared at Dr. Scharf, waiting for his reaction.

‘You’re a rich man,’ said Dr. Scharf. ‘He made you a rich man. It could have been worse. He could have left it all to the Salvation Army.’

‘Come on, Carl, you know what this is all about.’

‘Of course I know,’ said Dr. Scharf mildly. Tmjust trying to give you some objectivity about your situation.’

‘He always looked down on me, he never respected me,’ said Armstead. ‘Never once did he show confidence in me.’

‘It’s hard for big men, self-made men who have everything, to consider their puny sons as their equals, and to trust them.’

‘I don’t want to keep repeating myself,’ said Armstead, ‘but this last will of his caps it off. He couldn’t resist, even after he was in the ground, letting me know how he felt. I wanted to be a journalist, a publisher, right from the start, just like he was. He could never find a place for me. When I was a kid, he gave me a menial job on the Record when it was the leading paper, and I was proud and happy and loved it. But instead of moving me up, he moved me away. Shipped me off to his San

Francisco tabloid. Then to that rag he had in Denver. Then to Chicago, which was better. Just when I thought I’d got going, he brought me back here to New York. Did he give me a position of responsibility? No. He trusted others. Me he made Special Projects officer. What was that? I never did find out. Whenever I came up with a new idea - and in recent years the Record needed new ideas - he would ignore it. When I protested to him - you know, I did stand up and protest to him-‘

Dr. Scharf nodded. ‘Yes, you did.’

‘It got me nowhere. He always exiled me to secondary jobs. He forever had me learning the business - that’s what he’d tell me when I protested: You’ve got to learn the business, Edward, he’d say - but Jesus, here I am fifty-six years old and he still had me learning the business. When he died, I was never more excited or happy. At last I’d have the paper. At last I could show the world. Then, an hour ago, I heard his will, and the provision that unless I could improve the paper he’d destroyed through neglect - unless I could do the impossible -I couldn’t keep the paper. It would be sold off. It would be gone. That was his good-bye message to me.’

Dr. Scharf tried to speak, but Armstead would not let him. The venom in him was running over. He could not stop spilling out his poisoned past. He remembered how well he had started doing on the Chicago paper, and just when he was getting his identity, his father had recalled him to New York. He had been certain that this was a promotion and a reward, that his father had finally recognized his worth, but instead his father had refused him advancement, had relegated him to a back room with a couple of assistants, and had made believe he didn’t exist.

‘That’s when I came to you, Carl. I was desperate. I needed help.’

‘Yes.’

‘He had real contempt for me, you know.’

‘Well -‘

‘He did. Everybody saw how he treated me, and they treated me with the same contempt. On every one of his papers, his editors treated me like a fool, a relative they had to endure. Only in Chicago, there were one or two people - well, mainly one, the managing editor, Hugh Weston, the old-timer who became the President’s press secretary last year -who gave me some respect, knew I was intelligent and creative, tried to give me a chance. But then E. J. yanked me back to New York and degraded me, and his editors here, they too treated me like a retarded son.’