JC2 The Raiders (44 page)

"And shoot us a finger," Jonas interrupted. "How'd you
think you were going to prevent her from doing that? By humpin' her?
Well, it didn't work, did it?"

"That doesn't work very often, does it?"
Bat challenged. "You haven't made it work any better than I
have. You think you've sewed up Margit Little's loyalty by — to
use your term — humping
her?
"

"Margit— "

"The
Margit Little Show
will not
replace the
Glenda Grayson Show
," Bat interrupted. "Not
in ratings, not in revenue. Hell, she's got talent, she's appealing,
and in time she'll be a winner. But next season we don't have a major
show."

"Are you telling me I fucked it up?" Jonas asked irritably.

"I'm not saying it.
You
say it, if you
think it's possible."

"You humped our star, then dropped her," said Jonas.

"You're humping Margit," said Bat grimly. "That's the
problem. You started humping Margit, then you announced you were
going to build a new show around her, and when Glenda asked for more
money, you said no. What'd you think she'd do?"

"Son," Jonas murmured with mock
patience, "Glenda didn't go off the reservation because I'm
humping Margit and am going to make a new star of her. She'd have
gone off, no matter what.
Two days
, just two goddamned days,
after we broke off negotiations, she announced her nightclub
schedule. She and Sam Stein didn't arrange that in two days. That
took time to set up. When they came in to negotiate, they already
knew she was going to do nightclubs all next season. Face it, Bat.
The bitch sold out."

Bat drew a deep breath. "Margit is damaged goods," he said.
"When the word got out that you were sleeping with her, the
whole goddamned world took that as an explanation as to why you
wanted to build a show for her."

"I told you last year to build her up, in anticipation that
Glenda would jump. And you didn't do it."

"I had a few other things to do, if you recall. Anyway, we
didn't announce a plan to build her up until the word was out that
you and Margit— "

He paused for a moment. Senator Jacob Javits had come in, spotted
Bat, and was coming toward their table. Bat introduced him to Jonas,
and the three men chatted for a moment. When the senator moved on,
Jonas and Bat picked up their conversation.

"There's more to this than just a performer
with a wounded ego," said Jonas. "Sam Stein has been
talking to Lennie Hirschberg about a new
Glenda Grayson Show
,
for the '59 season. That's going to take a lot of money, and guess
who's coming up with it."

"Who?"

"The Teamsters Union. Central States Pension Fund. Jimmy Hoffa."

"Yeah, and they're funding a Vegas hotel," said Bat.

"You have any idea how much money is in that fund?" Jonas
asked. "Billions."

"But that's a trust fund," said Bat. "How can they
invest it in a television show?"

"They play fast and loose with their fiduciary obligations,"
said Jonas. "Dave Beck did, and now Hoffa does. They don't
invest just to make the fund grow; they invest to wield power. And
they've formed an alliance with some damned unsavory guys."

"You think they approached Glenda Grayson, rather than the other
way around?"

Jonas nodded. "And I hardly need tell you why. Problems are
beginning to show up at the construction site. They don't want the
InterContinental built."

"Strikes?"

"No. That would tip their hand too much.
Delays in delivery. After three days preparation for pouring a
concrete floor, we couldn't pour because one of the five mixer trucks
failed to show up. You can't pour four and add one later; that would
make layers and seriously weaken the structure. The driver said the
truck broke down on the road. I suspect he
made
it break
down."

"Well ... maybe," said Bat skeptically.

"If that was the only thing that's happened, I wouldn't be
suspicious. Last week a load of steel fasteners disappeared from a
warehouse in San Francisco, and our men had to stop work until we
could get a load from another source. The warehouse said they'd
accidentally delivered our fasteners to the wrong job. And so on and
so on and so on. Too many coincidences. We're falling more and more
behind. I don't need to tell you how much it's costing."

Jonas stood up to greet an auburn-haired woman who had literally
trotted across the room to his table.

"Jonas,
dah
-ling!" she boomed in
her all-but-patented smoky voice. "Back in town! And this is
that mysterious son of yours who doesn't
go
where people
go
— which has deprived me of the pleasure of meeting him."

Jonas kissed her hand, then introduced her to Bat. "This is
Tallulah Bankhead, in case you hadn't already figured that out."

"In the gossip columns again, naughty boy,"
she said, shaking her head. "Thank
Gawd
that wretched
woman Lorena Pastor never found out about you and
me!
"

"Found out what, Tallulah?" Jonas asked, smiling and
frowning at the same time.

"That we never
did it!
" She
laughed. "That would have been a much more
scandalous
story than if we had." She turned to Bat. "Give me a ring,
dah-ling. Come up to my place and play bridge sometime. Well ...
ta-ta."

As she hurried back to her own table and Bat and Jonas sat down
again, nearly every eye in the room was on them.

"Whatever you do, don't go to her apartment and play bridge with
her," said Jonas.

"Any particular reason?"

"She takes off her clothes and plays bridge nude. Not always,
just when the spirit moves her. She's casual about it, makes no big
drama. She goes on playing bridge as if nothing were different.
Sometimes it's embarrassing as hell — depending who's at the
table with you. She did it in front of David Sarnoff one night. He's
a man not easily embarrassed, but she took him completely unawares,
and he began to cough and turned red, and I thought maybe he was
having a heart attack."

"She mentioned the Lorena Pastor column," said Bat. "How
did Angie react to that?"

"Angie's realistic," said Jonas. "And if your personal
life is none of my business, mine's none of yours."

Angie loved the black Porsche that Jonas had given her for Christmas
in 1952. The hotel garage kept it washed and waxed, and she liked to
go for drives in the desert. She'd had it up to 125 miles per hour
and had sensed it had more in it when she eased off on the
accelerator. Once she'd been chased by a Nevada highway patrolman,
and he had simply given up after a few miles. He was getting all he
could out of his special police Ford, and she was opening more
distance between them. He knew who she was and meant only to give her
a warning anyway, so he pulled off the road, and when she passed him
on her way back to town, he just blinked his lights, and she blinked
hers playfully.

Usually she drove alone, though sometimes Jonas rode with her. Today
Morris Chandler sat in the right seat.

"Haven't you got it figured out?" he asked her. "You
can't trust him. Nobody can trust him."

"He can sleep with another woman if he wants to," said
Angie, staring at the road, not glancing at Chandler. "He never
said he wouldn't. He made no commitment of that kind."

"He's not a nice man," said Chandler. "Nevada Smith
was a good man, a true friend. He asked me to take Jonas in to help
him duck a subpoena, and the next thing I know he owns the hotel and
I'm his employee. And so are you. And you're sleeping with him."

"He's been good to me," she said firmly.

"Yeah, but Jonas giveth and Jonas taketh
away. Whatever you've got from him, he can take away any time he
feels like it. You've got no
security
, honey. What are you,
forty years old? His new girlfriend is barely twenty."

"Twenty-two," said Angie dryly. "Where you gonna be
ten years from now?"

"What are you trying to say, Morris? Spit it out."

"I have friends who could do some very good things for you,
Angie," said Chandler.

"Who are they? And why would they want to do anything for me?"

"Never mind who they are. They're the kind of people that, if
you do something good for them, they'll take care of you for the rest
of your life. Hell, that's what they've done for me. I'm gonna be
seventy-six years old this year. If Jonas fired me, they'd take care
of me. It's what you call loyalty."

"If I do 'something good for them,' huh? Just what do they have
in mind?"

"They want information, that's all. Maybe copies of some
papers."

"In other words, they want me to betray Jonas," she said
coldly.

"The bastard has betrayed
you!
"

She shook her head. "No. He hasn't."

"Be realistic, Angie."

"The answer is no, Morris."

"Better think about somethin'. These guys I'm talking about are
loyal and all that, but they're also the kind of guys you don't say
no to. They have ways of getting what they want."

"That's a threat, I suppose."

"Angie, let's don't use bad words! You're being offered a good
deal."

"The answer is no, Morris."

He sighed. "Jesus ... I suppose you'll tell Jonas about this
conversation."

Angie shrugged.

Dr. Maxim was at the wheel of
Maxim's III
,
taking the boat home at the end of a half day's fishing, during which
nobody had caught anything but a bonito. Nobody was unhappy about
that. They had come out to fish, but their real purpose, of getting
to know each other better, had been accomplished.

Morgana Maxim had arranged the afternoon. As a prominent Democrat,
she wanted to know all other prominent Democrats so far as possible
and be influenced by personal judgment, not by what she read in the
newspapers. Tanned and sun-bleached as always, she sat in the rear of
the boat, relaxed and sipping from a gin and tonic.

Toni sat beside her stepmother, dressed almost identically in a red
polo shirt and brief white shorts.

Sitting in one of the two fishing chairs, wearing tennis whites —
shorts and shirt — with a Red Sox baseball cap and aviator
sunglasses, smoking a small cigar, his face deeply wrinkled from
squinting into the sun, was the man Morgana had wanted to meet:
Senator Jack Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Senator Kennedy had barely failed to take the 1956 vice-presidential
nomination away from the farcical Estes Kefauver, and it was widely
supposed he would claim a spot on the 1960 Democratic ticket. He had
only one hurdle to leap: reelection in Massachusetts in the fall.

Morgana had been impressed, as Toni had told her
she would be. Toni had known Jack Kennedy from the time of his
arrival in the Senate in 1953, when she was still an aide to Senator
Holland. More recently she met with him from time to time as a
political reporter for
The Washington Post
. She had learned to
mimic his Boston-Harvard accent, and one time he had overheard her
doing it. From that time, they counted each other as friends.

"You should hear Toni do
me
," he
had said to Dr. and Morgana Maxim just after they came aboard the
boat. "If I wanted to do a radio speech, I could let her do it,
and I could take a day off."

Toni had laughed. "Let him explain to you that there's no such
thing as a Harvard campus, just the 'Haa-v'd yaad,' " she had
said. "Sometimes he takes his daag for a ride in the caa."

Kennedy had laughed heartily. "See? A little change in voice,
and she could take my place at any microphone."

He had caught the bonito. They had tossed it back.

"Plans?" Morgana asked Kennedy.

He shrugged. "Life is short," he said. "Art is long.
Who knows?"

Jack Kennedy remained astride Toni, though he had withdrawn from her
and his drooping penis gleamed with their fluids.

"Would Dr. Maxim and Morgana be angry if they knew about this?"
he asked.

"Morgana'd be disappointed if we didn't," said Toni.
"She'll be a delegate for you, and she'll lead other delegates."

"What about, uh, Jonas Cord the Third?"

"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. I don't ask you—
"

"No, you don't, and I appreciate that, Toni." This was the
third time they had been together this way, and each time it had been
a completely satisfying experience, made more satisfying by their
mutual understanding that they did it honestly: for the pleasure of
the moment, with no thought of any kind of commitment. He was a
handsome, personable, virile man, and her pleasure in him was
enhanced by her hunch that one day she would look back on these hours
and be glad she had fucked with one of the century's preeminent
leaders, maybe even a President.

Another reason for their satisfaction was the certainty that they
could trust each other.

"What can I do for you, Toni?" he asked.

"Uhhmm ..." She chuckled. "You've done quite enough,
thank you."

He grinned broadly, showing his teeth. "I had something, uh,
different in mind. A different kind of thing. I mean— "

"Jack ... I'm not from Massachusetts. You don't have to do me
favors."

"You've done some very nice favors for me," he said.

"Meaning I did something I didn't enjoy so you could enjoy it?"
she asked. "C'mon, Jack. Women like to play the old game:
pretending they can hardly bear to do it and are making a big
sacrifice for you, making themselves martyrs. But don't kid yourself.
Women like it just as much as men do. Anyway, this woman does."

"I'm glad to hear it."

She nudged him playfully.

"Are you going to marry Jonas Cord the Third?" he asked.

"I haven't decided," she said.

"His father is like my father," said Jack Kennedy. "Life
in that family would be exciting ... but tough and demanding.
Challenging, Toni. Challenging."