JC2 The Raiders (22 page)

Jonas smiled, almost imperceptibly. So — His son. Formidable.
He had backed his father — not just his father but Jonas Cord —
into a corner.

Almost. "I will give you my word on a condition," said
Jonas.

"Which is?"

"Which is that you take this money and this
note back. Virgilio will repay me. If he doesn't, it's a business
risk
I
took, for reasons that are sufficient for me —
and which have nothing to do with you."

Bat nodded. "All right," he muttered. He reached for and
accepted the envelope.

Jonas looked up and met Bat's eyes with his. "I did not pay off
Virgilio Escalante for what he did for your mother, for you, or for
me."

"What choice do I have, but to believe you? I used to think I
didn't want to meet you until I was in a position to tell you to go
to hell. So now I'm in that position."

"Are you telling me to go to hell?" asked Jonas. Bat
shrugged scornfully. "'What's the difference?"

IN THE LAW FIRM OF WILSON, CLARK & YORK THERE WAS no Wilson and
no York. There was a Clark: the great-grandson of Depew Clark. The
founders were all long since dead, none of them having lived past
1930. The custom was to keep their names on the firm letterhead,
giving the dates of their lives to solve any possible ethical problem
that might arise if someone was naive enough to believe his law
business might be handled by one of the founders.

The firm's twenty-nine active partners were listed in a column down
the left margin of the letterhead. A column down the right margin
listed the associates. One of these was Jonas E. Cord.

He was spending a year in the offices of Wilson,
Clark & York by reason of the agreement between that firm and
Gurza y Aroza in Mexico City to exchange junior associates for
one-year terms. Two Wilson, Clark & York lawyers were in Mexico
City. Two Gurza y Aroza
abogados
were in New York.

The fall crop of associates were traditionally welcomed at a cocktail
party held at the Harvard Club. There they met all the partners and
all the more senior associates and were welcomed into the fraternity
of the firm. The partners kept keen eyes on their new associates.
They wanted to see how much the boys would drink and how drunk they
got. In point of fact, the test didn't work, and everybody knew it
didn't. Among the senior associates there was invariably someone
disloyal enough to warn the new associates, so the boys drank
sparingly. Usually it was the partners who got drunk.

Occasionally, lawyers from other firms came to the party. They came
to see how well Wilson, Clark & York had done with its
recruiting, but they were welcome.

Dave Amory came. "Bat!" he exclaimed as he strode across
the threadbare carpet that was an clement of the dignity and cachet
of the Harvard Club and seized Bat's hand. "I heard these
pettifoggers had got you. Welcome to New York!"

"Bat?" asked one of the firm's junior partners.

"Well, you aren't going to call him
Jonas
,
for Christ's sake," said Dave. "Bat and I go back a long
way. He was my platoon leader during the late unpleasantness."

"Dave saved my life," said Bat solemnly.

"Bull," said Dave. "If I had anything to do with it,
it was only because he was fool enough to run across the Ludendorff
Bridge as if it were the Brooklyn Bridge."

"I was in the Pacific," said the junior partner. "Anyway,
we're glad to have another name for this guy, also to know we've got
a genuine hero in the office."

"Hero — Oh, come on!" Bat complained. "Dave,
you've got a big mouth."

A little later, as Bat and Dave stood at a window looking down on the
street, Dave said, "Take the opportunity while you're in New
York and get yourself admitted to the New York bar."

"I'm already admitted," said Bat. "I took the New York
bar exam before I went back to Mexico."

"Good. Get all the admissions you can. And, hey, it's none of my
business, but have you seen your father yet?"

Bat nodded. "He has an apartment in the Waldorf Towers, would
you believe? I met him in Mexico, actually. He's not in town very
often, but when he was here, a week or so ago, he invited me to
dinner at '21'."

"How 'bout Toni?"

Bat drew a breath and sighed. "I suppose I ought to go down to
Washington and see her."

"When did you see her last?"

"Well, it's been ... a year."

Dave shook his head. "Maybe you better stay away from her. After
all that time, she's probably made other arrangements."

Toni had cheered herself hoarse, but when she sat down over a Scotch
and soda later with Nick Gargagliano she shook her head and sighed
and admitted, "We don't have a chance."

They had driven from Washington to Baltimore to be present at a
campaign rally for Adlai Stevenson. She couldn't think of a man in
public life that she admired more, but she knew he would not be
elected President of the United States.

"It's not
that
bad," said Nick,
who was always the optimist.

"Not? It's worse. The great war hero is going to be elected
President — and that slimy little creature from California will
be elected with him. There's not a goddamned thing we can do to stop
it."

Nick had ordered a plate of steamers and a mug of beer. Toni didn't
feel like eating and was sipping Scotch and glancing around for the
waiter who would bring her another one. She had started smoking again
since she didn't see Bat anymore, and she inhaled the thick smoke
from a Chesterfield.

They sat side by side in a high-backed wooden booth painted with
shiny red enamel, facing a table painted the same way but blackened
with dozens of cigarette burns. They had privacy, and Nick was
casually fondling her left breast. She allowed this. She allowed
more, though she had never done with him some of the things she had
done with Bat.

Nicholas Gargagliano was assistant to the director of the Bureau of
Apprenticeship and Training, Department of Labor. He was an
exceptionally handsome man, with dark curly hair, a long jaw with the
blue shadow of a beard always showing, active brown eyes, and a
puckish smile. He was about forty years old and came from a county in
southern Oklahoma known as an Italian enclave where wonderful red
wine was somehow made, to the amazement of the Oklahomans.

"I just can't believe the voters would trust the country to
those people," said Nick.

"Neither can my stepmother," said Toni. "But we have
to face it."

"Toni ... I won't have a job if it happens. I think I can stay
in Washington, though. I've talked with Reuther. I think there'll be
a job for me with the United Auto Workers. I've got no promise, but I
do have encouragement. I'm going to drive out to Oklahoma next week.
I'll be back in two weeks. I was hoping you'd come with me. I'd like
to introduce you to my family."

Toni stared at the table, smiled, and shook her head. "I'll be
spending a lot of time in Florida between now and November. My
senator is on the ballot, after all."

"Besides, I'm getting ahead of things, huh?"

"Nick, I didn't say that. I simply said I have obligations."

"Well — Yeah, sure. Of course. Obligations."

They didn't go back to Washington that night. They spent the night in
a motel on the highway between Baltimore and Washington. She had to
change clothes before she could go to the office, so Nick dropped her
at her apartment, very early in the morning.

She went in. The two young women with whom she shared the apartment
were asleep. She took a shower and stretched out on her bed in her
panties and bra, thinking she might doze a little but not meaning to
go to sleep. She did though.

"Hey, kiddo!"

She came awake and glanced at the clock. Oh, my god, it was after
eight! Time to get moving.

"You had a call last night. You know a guy in New York by the
name of Bat something? He wants you to call him. I left his number on
the back cover of the phone book, the number in a heavy square.
Okay?"

Bat's call to Toni had been prompted by an invitation from his
father. It had been made over dinner in Jonas's apartment in the
Waldorf Towers.

"I haven't yet congratulated you on the way you got the Senate
subpoenas quashed," said Bat.

"Months ago," said Jonas.

"When we had dinner before, I knew they had been withdrawn, but
I didn't know how you did it."

"Phil Wallace is a good lawyer," said
Jonas, "but in all modesty, the way we got the Senate
politicians off our back was
my
idea."

"A triple-damages anti-trust action," said Bat, nodding.

"Right. I figured all along that the senators didn't care about
gate positions for Inter-Continental Airlines. The problem was that
certain senators were in the back pockets of certain airline
executives. Hell, I've got a couple on the string myself. So I had
Phil and his co-counsel dig around a little, looking for evidence of
collusion on the part of three airline companies. They found enough
to justify the suit. I don't know if we would have won, but for the
next three or four years we'd have been dropping subpoena after
subpoena on them and digging through their files. Besides, their
attorney fees —"

"What about your own attorney fees?"

"I don't pay fees," said Jonas. "I pay retainers. Phil
Wallace and his partners get a flat one million dollars a year from
me, whether they do any work for me or not — though I always
have plenty of work for them. I've got other firms on smaller
retainers, like Wilson, Clark and York and Gurza y Aroza. Besides
which, I've got a dozen staff lawyers on my payroll. The antitrust
suit wouldn't have increased my legal costs much."

"Anyway, you scared them off," said Bat.

"Anyway, I scared them off. They asked the senators to drop the
investigation, which the senators were glad to do."

"Everybody in the office talks about it," said Bat. "With
a certain amount of — Awe, I guess I'd call it."

"I guess you're entitled to congratulations yourself, in a
sense," said Jonas. "Your great-uncle is President of Cuba
again."

"I'd like it better if he'd been elected," said Bat. "It
was a military coup d'etat, or as the Germans would call it, a
putsch. He'll loot the country."

"That's the way things are done in Latin America, isn't it?"
Jonas asked.

"All too often," said Bat.

They were served at the table by a tall, spare black man named
Robair. Jonas had explained earlier that Robair had been houseman to
the first Jonas, so had served the family for something like forty
years. Now, as Robair was pouring wine, Jonas remarked that he knew
more about the Cords than the Cords knew about themselves.

"No man is a hero to his valet," said Bat.

"Lord Chesterfield," said Jonas.

"Excuse me, Mr. Jonas," said Robair.
"Actually, that was written in a letter by a Frenchwoman named
Madame Comuel. '
Il n'y a point de heros pour les valets de
chambre
.' "

"Damn! My
valet de chambre
is better
educated than I am."

"No, Mr. Jonas," said Robair with a faint smile. "I've
just made a point of studying my trade."

They sat at the table after dinner. Jonas sipped bourbon. Bat sipped
Courvoisier brandy.

"I've got several things I want to talk to you about,"
Jonas said. "First, and simplest, why don't you move into this
apartment? I'm only here two or three nights a month and sometimes
not that much. It's here, available to you."

"I couldn't afford to keep it clean," said Bat.

"Look. I leased it because Monica wanted it,
because she spent so much time in New York. She asked for it in the
divorce, but she didn't get it. I keep suites in hotels in Chicago
and Los Angeles, so when I come to a city I'll find things the way I
want them. Like, I've got my own telephone scramblers on the phones
in all these places. I've got safes with papers locked inside —
with combinations only I know." He shrugged. "I've got my
brand of bourbon. I've got clothes. You don't have to clean the
place. It
is
cleaned. You can save whatever you're paying.
Besides" — he grinned — "think of what
impression you'll make on a broad if you ask her to shack up and this
is the shack."

Jonas and Monica had not put much of a mark on the apartment. Bat
reflected. Likely they had bought the furniture from the previous
occupant. The apartment was handsome but impersonal.

"Well?"

"Let me think about it," said Bat.

"Your gratitude is overwhelming," said Jonas sarcastically.

"I — Well, all right. And thanks." He didn't want to
be beholden to his father, didn't want to be drawn within his orbit
either, but it was true he could use the money he would save. Wilson,
Clark & York didn't pay generously, and he didn't want to have to
ask his mother to send him money. "I do appreciate it."

Jonas lifted his glass, looked at the remaining bourbon for a moment,
then put it down. "Which brings up the next thing I want to talk
to you about. Are you going to Cordoba for Christmas?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, I have a proposition. Come out to the home place, the
ranch in Nevada. I'd like for you to see where we come from. I want
you to meet Nevada Smith. Uh ... I was wondering about that girl.
Suppose you could talk her into coming, too?"

"I don't know. I doubt it."

"Her senator will be reelected. She's been working her ass off
and is entitled to a vacation. Also, she isn't committed to anybody
else."

"How do you know about her?
What the hell
have you done
?"

"Easy, son, easy. Phil Wallace knows Senator Holland. To use an
expression you seem to favor, we asked straight questions and got
straight answers."