Spearfield's Daughter (52 page)

“I don't think they would go to all that expense just to shut me up, Mrs. Roux.”

“I wasn't suggesting that,” said Claudine. “Please don't be so vain. What I am suggesting is that their attention may have been drawn to the
Courier
by your story, they learned there were certain people willing to sell their stock, and they bought. I am told they launder their dirty money through many channels. Radio stations, television stations, motion picture studios. Why not a newspaper?”

“The other three make money, newspapers don't,” said Alain. “Not the
Courier,
anyway.”

“Perhaps they were looking for a tax loss,” said Claudine. “Well, we shall just have to wait and see.”

Cleo went home that night, declining to stay with Alain in his apartment. She had a disturbed night's sleep, wondering if she had indeed drawn the Mafia's attention to the easy entry into the
Courier.
She could not see herself working for the killers of Frank Apollo, no matter how remote they might be from the paper's boardroom.

She would have been even more disturbed if she had known who the real buyer was, but Claudine kept that information from her to suit her own convenience.

Two nights after she had had Alain and Cleo to dinner, Claudine got a phone call. “Claudine? It's Jack Cruze. I'd like to come and see you.”

They hadn't seen each other in she had forgotten how many years and here he was inviting himself up as if he were a regular visitor. “What is it, Jack—business? I never bring business into my home. I'll meet you at the
Courier—”

“No, Claudine, I don't want to go near the
Courier.
Though you have obviously guessed why I want to see you. I own twenty-two per cent of you now.”

“
Not me,” said Claudine, wholly owned by herself. “The paper perhaps. But not me, Jack. To think I thought you might be the Mafia!”

He sounded puzzled. “The Mafia?”

“Never mind. But what you have done was underhanded and unfriendly. It's not the way I conduct business.”

“Only because you employ lawyers to do the dirty work for you. You may like to turn a blind eye to all of it, but ninety per cent of business is underhand and unfriendly.”

“What a world you must live in.”

“The same as you, Claudine, only I don't wear blinkers.”

No one had ever accused her of that before. “Where are you?”

“At the Pierre.”

“Come up now. Don't bring anyone with you, Jack. No lawyers or accountants, just yourself.”

When he arrived it took her, a normally quick observer, several minutes to notice that he had changed. He had aged, the years had crept up and smeared their marks on him; but she hadn't seen him in too long and she knew how quickly some people could age once they had passed a certain milestone. The major change in him, however, was a certain hesitancy with her, something she had never expected. He was one man she had never awed.

“I'm going down to Charleston—you ever been there? I come over regularly—I try to miss New York. I like the South—”

“Out with it, Jack. You're beating about the bush, that's not your style. Why have you bought
Courier
stock and why did you pay so much for it?”

He seemed to relax when he saw that she was going to lead; as if they were dancers whose polka had become creaky through lack of practice. “First, my name is never to be mentioned.
I
didn't buy the stock, not personally. It was bought by a Bahamian company.”

“I know that, Jack. If you want to play charades for tax purposes, all right—”

“It's not just for tax purposes. There are private reasons.” He pulled at his collar and his tie slid round towards one ear. He was as untidy as she remembered him, a walking laundry heap. “I want two places on the board. One of them will be filled by Jerry Kibler, the banker—you know him. The other place
I
want kept open till I've talked to the person I have in mind.”

She had a flash of intuition. But she was too well bred to flash anything, even her intuition. She said blandly, “That's your private reason for keeping your name out of the matter?”

“Yes.” Then he grinned and abruptly looked years younger. “Claudine, why didn't you and I marry? We could have turned the Atlantic into our own little pond, you on one side and me on the other.”

“Marriages with that much distance between the partners never work.” Then she led again: “It's Miss Spearfield, isn't it?”

He did not move for a moment; then he relaxed, glad to be led again. “Yes. I suppose you think there's no fool like an old fool.”

“I never thought of you as old, Jack.” But the way she said it, it didn't sound like a compliment. “Foolish, yes. But Miss Spearfield seems to have that effect on a number of men.”

He squinted at her from under the heavy brows. “She hasn't been playing around. She's been going out with only the one chap.”

“My son. Have you been having her watched?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “Just for business reasons.”

“Of course. Have you been having me watched for the same reasons?”

“I've had Jerry Kibler watching the
Courier.
” He looked into the drink in his hand, a large Scotch and soda. “Claudine, I'm in love with the girl, have been for seven damned years now. We had a bust-up about four years ago and I tried to get over it, put her out of my mind—”

“I know. I heard about you and your countess and the several others since her. You do choose them from the top, don't you?”

“You know that isn't hard for a man in my position, with my money. So long as I don't look like King Kong and pick my nose at the table, there are always women willing to go out with me. It's the magnetism of power.”

“You have a becoming modesty, too, that I'm sure appeals to that sort of woman.” But she wasn't interested in his women on the other side of the Atlantic. She was concerned with the one closer to home: “What do you have in mind for Miss Spearfield?”

He looked again at his drink. Claudine had noticed that he had barely touched it. “I haven't seen
her
in four years, except once. I was here in New York on business a year or so ago. I knew she was working at the
Courier
and I went down and stood on the opposite side of the street hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Like a bloody schoolboy. I did that once when I was fourteen and thought I was in love with the headmaster's daughter. Cleo came out of the building with some chap, another reporter I suppose, got into a taxi and off she went. I got dizzy, I thought I was going to keel over. I don't know whether you've ever felt like that about anyone.”

“Jack, I really don't want to know about your love affairs.” She had once felt like he had, but that had been when she was in love with her husband in the first years of their marriage. “What have you got in mind for her with the
Courier
?”

“I have to talk to her first.” He was suddenly embarrassed at how much he had revealed of himself. “She may give me the bum's rush, as you Americans say.”

“Not this American. But she may, indeed.”

The matter of Cleo Spearfield, she could see, was becoming complicated. She knew that Alain was still seeing her, still carrying a torch (how that dates me, she thought, glad that she hadn't voiced the phrase); they were probably going to bed together, but Cleo still appeared independent. She did not want Cleo as a daughter-in-law; even married, the girl would always be independent, at least of her. If Jack Cruze persuaded Cleo to take up with him again, that would solve the possible problem of Alain's marrying her. But there would be other problems. Jack hadn't bought the
Courier
stock as an investment, he had bought it as a gift, a peace offering.

“Well, let me know when you've come to an understanding with her. She is a very good newspaperwoman, my son tells me.”

“I'm glad to hear of it. She takes risks, though—we used to argue about that. I read about that gangster killing. She was lucky to come out of that unscathed. She gives me heartburn.”

“I don't think she'll change. Now you can take me out to dinner. I have a very good French place where I go regularly.”

“Delighted,” he said unenthusiastically. “But I like plain cooking myself.”

“They can boil you an egg,” she said and gathered up him, her wrap and her handbag and swept out of the apartment. As their elevator went down, the other elevator rose, carrying with it Cleo and Alain
on
their way to bed before dinner. It was an old French custom,
cinq à sept,
but neither Claudine, the French-American mother, nor Jack, the English ex-lover, would have been happy if they had known where the objects of their concern were heading.

14

I

CLEO HAD
bought a copy of Tom's new novel,
The Vacant Mirror,
the day it appeared in the stores and began reading it that night, getting halfway through it before she fell asleep at two in the morning. Though the names had been changed to protect the guilty, she recognized herself, Jack and Tom. It had taken Tom eighteen months to write, but she did not know that. He had suffered enough writer's block to have turned him illiterate; but he had always returned to the typewriter, determined to get the story, like a sweetly painful abscess, out of himself. Nevertheless, the book was slight, which was what the critics said during the next couple of weeks; but it might have been a whole library, so heavily did it press down on Cleo. She felt miserable for a week and Alain hopefully asked her if she was pregnant. He was willing and eager to marry her and any reason, even an honourable one, would do.

“Of course not!” She had never snapped at him before; now she gave him a verbal whack. “What gave you that idea?”

“You've got the mopes. You've hardly looked at me in the office.”

She took his hand, kissed it: the old affectionate gestures that betrayed her. It wasn't his fault she didn't love him. “I'm just a bit homesick, that's all. I'll be all right in a day or two.”

“No, something else is worrying you.” Alain had come to know her better than she knew.

Something else besides her lost love was worrying her: “Yes, it's my visa. It's up in a couple of weeks. I've asked Jake Lintas if the paper is going to renew my contract, but he just keeps hedging. The old bastard would like to see me deported.”

“They can't do that! Look, don't
worry—
I'll get Mother to fix Jake. Why didn't you tell me about this sooner? It just never crossed my mind—I don't know, I just sort of take it for granted that you
belong
here—”

“
The US government doesn't.” Then she realized he had mentioned Claudine. “No, don't go to your mother.”

“Why not? She can have it all fixed without any trouble—”

I don't want to owe her any favours.
“No, leave it for a day or two. I'll bail up Jake.”

But Jake Lintas chose to go on vacation before she could confront him. She went to Carl Fishburg, to the personnel manager; but neither of them felt he could do anything, sympathetic though they tried to sound. She was not the only woman on the staff, but she began to feel that she might as well be. It was as if, with the increasing strength of the women's liberation movement, the male citadel of the
Courier
had raised the drawbridge. They were not going to leave themselves open to attack by a Trojan mare.

“I wouldn't worry, honey,” said Annie Rivkin from the typing pool. “In another year or two the paper's going to be dead and buried. They'll bury all these guys with them and good riddance . . . I already got my eye on a job over at CBS. You oughta get into TV, honey, that's where the money is.”

Alain went to his mother. “Cleo
needs
that visa. The paper can't let her go—there isn't a better writer working for us—”

“You know I never interfere with the running of the paper. Mr. Lintas will attend to it.”

“Jake Lintas is the last guy who'll attend to it!”

“I am not going to interfere.”

Alain knew when his mother was in an obdurate mood; one might as well talk to the faces on Mount Rushmore. “I'm bringing her out to Souillac on Sunday—”

“If you wish. I take it you'd prefer I didn't ask Polly Jensen.”

“Doesn't make any difference. I think Polly has got the message. I don't know why you still keep trying. You're like one of those 18th century European Queen Mothers, always match-making!”

He went back downstairs to his own apartment, slamming the front door of the penthouse as he went out. She sat very still for a while, debating to what lengths she would go to discourage her son from marrying the Spearfield girl. Then she picked up the phone and called the Pierre.

“Jack? Ah, I wondered if you were back from Charleston. I feared you might have decided to go straight back to London. Can you come to luncheon Sunday at my place in the country?”

“Well . . . To tell you the truth, Claudine, I'm hoping to see Cleo tomorrow, Saturday. I haven't
spoken
to her yet, I want to talk to her away from the
Courier—”

“I think she is out of town on an assignment, Jack. I heard my son mention it.” She wondered if Queen Mothers had lied and intrigued like this. It seemed so much more suburban than being an Empress. “I'll send a car to pick you up on Sunday.”

There was silence for a moment, then he chuckled. “How come a woman has never been elected President of this country?”

“We women know that men make better figureheads.”