JC2 The Raiders (23 page)

"I don't remember that I even told you her name. She's none of
your business."

Jonas smiled. "I plead guilty to a little snooping. She's a fine
girl. You could hardly do better. Well — Okay, it's none of my
business. But I'd like for you to spend a few days with me in Nevada,
and Toni Maxim is invited too, if you want to ask her."

Bat hesitated for a moment, then said, "I'll think about it."

"About both parts of the invitation?"

"Well, I accept for myself. Whether or not I invite Toni is what
I'll think about."

Christmas Eve. Toni had never before felt such an energy on such an
occasion. The Cords. They made an electricity. The vigor of these
people and the tension among them was unique in her experience.

Standing in the living room of the ranch house, Toni wondered where
Jonas Cord really did live, since it was apparent he did not live
here. She had seen the apartment in the Waldorf Towers twice since
November, and it was apparent he did not live there. The places where
he was supposed to live were too tidy, too sleek; they looked like
hotel suites. He had an office in the Towers apartment and one here,
and in those she could see some mark of the man; but she saw none in
the living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms.

The decor was too resolutely Western, saying this was not really a
Western home lived in by a man of the desert and mountains, but was
the simulacrum of a ranch house, its furnishings assembled to make
the effect.

Only one item said something. Sitting on the crude mantel above the
huge smoke-stained fieldstone fireplace was a small framed
photograph, a snapshot actually, of a grim, solid man in his fifties
or sixties. He wore a no-nonsense expression, glaring disapprovingly
at the world but not at the photographer. He wore a dark three-piece
suit, not very well tailored and not well cared for, plus a gray hat
set squarely on his head. He sat at a rolltop desk in a wooden swivel
chair. If you knew what you were looking for in the picture, or used
a magnifying glass, you could identify a bottle of bourbon on the
desk. On a table at his side were two candlestick telephones. That
was Jonas Cord the First.

She sipped Scotch and spoke to Bat and his half sister Jo-Ann. "Your
father is not what I imagined he would be."

She had seen pictures of Jonas Cord, so his appearance was no
surprise. What she had not seen in his newspaper and magazine
pictures was that he swaggered. Yet ... he carried it off well, and
it was not offensive. A man who had achieved what he had achieved had
to be engaging; an ugly, aggressive man could not have won the kind
of success he had won, could not have enticed all the women he was
said to have seduced. He was aggressive, beyond doubt, but besides
that he was easily, naturally charismatic.

"Our father is no end of surprises," said Jo-Ann
acerbically.

Bat hadn't been able to take his eyes off his half sister, from the
moment they arrived. Toni could have become jealous, except that she
understood his fascination had its origin and motive strictly in
curiosity. She knew Bat was struggling to read Jo-Ann. The girl had
reason to resent him, but if she did she concealed it.

Jo-Ann was about eighteen years old, as Toni understood it; and she
was extraordinarily beautiful. She was a student at Smith College.
From her father she had inherited poise and self-confidence,
obviously. What she had inherited from her mother would be difficult
for Toni to guess, since she had never met Monica Cord. She could
guess that an element of it was a sense of style, since Jo-Ann wore a
cherry-red cocktail dress with bold decolletage and a flared skirt
that was shorter than this year's styles dictated.

"For example," said Jo-Ann, continuing her response to
Toni's comment that Jonas was not what she had expected, "look
at the dish he's brought with him. I don't know what made me think he
wouldn't bring his new girlfriend to this party. But I didn't. I
didn't think he'd have the nerve. Jesus! Look at her!"

Toni had decided that Angie Wyatt was the most beautiful woman at the
party, in her thirties and older than Toni or Jo-Ann. If she was not
the most beautiful, she was the most self-possessed —
conspicuously pleased with herself and with her place in life. She
worked for Jonas Cord and slept with him, too, as Bat had confided.
She was handsomely dressed, from the spike-heeled shoes that
tightened the muscles in her sleek legs, to the tight cream-white
silk brocade dress that clung to her figure, to the emerald necklace
— likely a gift from Jonas — that hung around her neck.

Jo-Ann spoke to Bat. "Make a point of getting to know Nevada
Smith. Nevada knows more about the Cord family than anybody,
including Jonas himself. If he chooses to talk to you, he'll give you
plenty of ammunition to use when you have to deal with our father."

"Ammunition?" Bat asked. "Will I need ammunition?"

"The way I see it," said Jo-Ann, "you have three
choices: to let him run your life the way he runs everybody else's,
to back away from him and go your own way, or to fight him. Nevada
knows his weaknesses ... but probably won't tell you."

Nevada Smith fascinated Toni even more than Jonas did. As a little
girl she had gone to as many of his movies as she could. He was
everything anyone might have expected of him: the tall, rawboned,
sun-wrinkled Westerner, probably seventy years old. He dressed like
the movie cowboy he had been — more like William Boyd as
Hopalong Cassidy than like one of the singing cowboys.

Smith was a neighbor, with a ranch of his own not far away. The
connection between him and the Cords was greater than that, but what
it was was not apparent. Bat himself didn't know what it was.

Bat had explained who Robair was. Tonight he was a guest. He had come
to Nevada from New York two days ahead of everyone else and had
decorated the house for Christmas. A tree, which reached the ceiling,
was strung with popcorn and hung with dried fruits and simple paper
ornaments, no silvered glass balls, no colored lights. Complimented
on it, Robair said that Nevada had helped him. It was amusing to
think of those two old men solemnly stringing popcorn.

They sat down for dinner. A pair of ranch hands in white jackets
served awkwardly.

When the wine was poured, Jonas rose and offered a toast. "To my
daughter and my newfound son." He nodded at Nevada and Robair.
"To old friends." He nodded at Toni and Angie. "And
new. I'm happy we're all together."

After dinner the evening turned painful for Toni. Not knowing who
would be there, she had come with small presents for Bat and his
father but none for anyone else. Jo-Ann was in the same situation.
So, for that matter, was Angie, though she seemed comfortable with
it.

It was embarrassing to receive gifts from the hands of people you had
just met — particularly such gifts as they were. Nevada Smith
gave her a .30-30 Winchester lever-action carbine, telling her he
would take her out and teach her to shoot before she left Nevada. The
old man's innocence in giving such a gift was endearing and at the
same time ominous — in that it meant he expected she would be
spending a lot of time in Nevada.

Robair gave her a pair of tight, tapered blue jeans, a
blue-and-white-checked wool shirt, and a Stetson hat: riding clothes.
This, too, assumed she was not just a one-time guest.

Jonas Cord gave her a pair of handmade snakeskin Western boots. And a
bracelet set with rubies and diamonds. For a moment she was tempted
to say no, she couldn't accept it.

Bat gave her a silver and turquoise squash-blossom necklace.

Her father and stepmother, apart from disliking her being in Nevada
and not in Florida for Christmas, had warned her that going out there
implied a commitment. Apparently the Cords thought so, too. She was
being treated like a Cord.

Jonas gave Bat a Porsche automobile, saying he ought to have one in
the States, since he drove so well. He gave another one to Jo-Ann,
telling her Bat would teach her to drive it. He gave a third one to
Angie. They were identical, and they carried Nevada license plates:
CORD ONE, CORD TWO, CORD THREE.

Toni had brought "the basic little black
dress," this one of silk satin, supported by spaghetti straps,
with a skirt ending exactly at her knees. The heavy silver
squash-blossom necklace would be incongruous with the dress, but Bat
wanted her to put it on. His father wanted her to wear his gift, too:
the jeweled bracelet. She went to their room — and it was
their
room, not hers alone: another manifestation of the assumption behind
her invitation — to leave the little string of cultivated
pearls and don her extravagant new jewelry.

Bat followed her to the room.

"Bat ... You and your father are more alike than I could have
dreamed."

"What do you mean?"

"You arrange things. So that people can hardly back away from
them. He is manipulative. And so are you."

"We can talk later," he said.

"I am not your fiancée, Bat," she said when they
were in bed, a little after midnight. "Your father has made an
assumption. Have you?"

"No. I've been reminded how much I love you."

"But your father assumes —"

"Yes, he assumes we are going to marry. He also told me I was a
fool not to accept the idea you should have a career of your own."

"He did?"

"I grew up in a different tradition," said Bat. "I am
an American in all but the basic things: family and so on. I'm
learning."

She put her hand to his crotch and fondled his erect penis. "I've
missed you, Bat," she said softly. "If we — Are you
going to be in New York? That is, New York and Mexico City?"

"I'm not certain," he said. "I think my father is
going to offer me a retainer as attorney for some part of the family
business."

"My god, you can't take it!"

"That's what I've thought. Give me
your
reasons."

"Your father is a fine man, Bat. He's not
what I expected. But he's like a — What is he like? What can I
say? Everything that comes within his reach becomes
his
. If
you go to work for him, you'll belong to him."

"But I'm his son. If he and I can get along together, I could
inherit —"

"Forget what you'll inherit! Think about what you can be and
what you can build on your own. Think what you will give your own
children, not what you'll get from him!"

"Toni, he's not exactly what you think."

"Okay, he's a great warm-hearted, generous
spirit — and he'll
crush
you. You've got ability of your
own, Bat. You don't need him."

"Maybe he needs me."

"Sure he does. The question is, do you need him?"

"I can cope with him," said Bat grimly. "I know more
about him than you do, and I can cope with the son of a bitch."

"You'd better read the history," she said. "The fields
are strewn with the corpses of people who thought they could cope
with your father and grandfather. What a horrible cliché! But
there's truth in it. You can't cope with him. Nobody ever did."

"Maybe you underestimate me," said Bat somberly.

"If you let him drag you into his business, it will be a
lifelong fight," she said. "And you'll lose."

"Maybe not. If you'll help me —"

"I'll help you, Bat. I love you."

"Then we can marry?"

"Not yet. Being married to you will be a full-time job, and I'm
not finished with my other job yet."

"Toni, goddammit —"

"Patience, Bat. Besides ... Let's don't waste a night in bed
arguing. I've got something better in mind."

They didn't have a night to waste. At six on Christmas morning they
were wakened by a knock on the door. Robair had come to tell Bat his
father wanted to see him.

The usual heavy Cord breakfast was not yet on the dining table, but a
small table in Jonas's office was set with a breakfast of sausage,
scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Already, this early in the
morning, Jonas had a bottle at hand and was sipping bourbon. He wore
a heavy gray turtleneck sweater and blue jeans.

"Before the girl's up, before anybody else is up," he said
to Bat, "I want to talk to you alone."

"You summoned me out of a warm bed with a warm body," said
Bat ruefully.

"There are more important things. I've got something I want to
talk with you about. As we might put it ... your future. I hear
you're a good lawyer. You've got a promising career ahead of you. On
the other hand, you're an heir. In due time you will inherit ...
probably half of my estate."

"I never expected anything like that," said Bat. "I'm
surprised even now that you should say it."

"Who else is going to get it? What do you think of your half
sister? Jo-Ann's a smart girl. But her talents, if I'm any judge, lie
more toward the artistic. Her mother has encouraged her in that.
Anyhow, she can't take over the business after I'm gone or have got
too old to run it anymore."

"I wouldn't underestimate her," said Bat.

"When I was twenty-five years old and my father died suddenly, I
came into possession of the whole shebang. One minute I was a
careless kid having a good time. The next minute I was one of the
wealthiest young men in America — but also one saddled with a
heavy and complex burden. I could have lost it all. Almost did. The
various Cord businesses, what some people call the Cord empire, are
worth ten times and more what they were worth when my father died.
People say I did it by being tough, not by being smart."

"The word about you is that you're both tough and smart. That's
what I've always heard about you," said Bat.

"Yeah? Well, you've also heard that I'm a ruthless, rapacious
son of a bitch. Right?"

Bat nodded. "I've heard that."

"Okay. Well, I've done something, too; I've
built
something. But where does it all go if what happened to
my father happens to me? And of course it's gonna happen, eventually.
What I need is a son to take over the way I did."