The Inheritors (12 page)

I smiled to myself. Sam loved table magic. Sometimes I wondered whether he was a frustrated performer, actor, or publicity man, or maybe a combination of all three. In a kind of way, that was how I came to meet him.

***

Jack and I had just finished lunch at the Norse Room in the Waldorf and were walking back to the Park Avenue entrance when we saw the crowd in front of the Empire Room. Then I saw the four Brinks men with drawn revolvers. Behind them were two more guards, carrying a big aluminum trunk that was fastened with two giant gold padlocks. Four more guards brought up the rear.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I’ll find out,” Jack said quickly. He charged up the steps to the Empire Room and stopped to talk to a man at the door. A moment later he was back.

“It’s a publicity stunt,” he said. “Some new producer invited the press and every important exhibitor in the country to show how a picture should be sold.”

I looked at the crowd and recognized some of them. They were among the toughest and most cynical men in the business. “It’s got to be a pretty good stunt to get them out.”

“It is,” Jack said. “My friend told me there’s a million dollars in cash in that trunk.”

“This I gotta see.” No one at the door stopped us. Everyone had his eyes on the trunk, now standing on a table.

I looked around the room. It was plastered with signs and buntings. They all said the same thing.

SAMUEL BENJAMIN PRESENTS
Icarus
THE EXHIBITOR’S MILLION-DOLLAR MOVIE

I grinned to myself. At least here was a motion picture distributor who wasn’t lying down for television. He was fighting back with their own language. He was also fighting with more than that. There were giant blowups in color: a magnificent half-nude male, whose muscles shimmered under his skin, holding an almost naked girl in one arm while with the other he fought off armies. Other blowups had the same figure soaring over the massed warriors in a curious harness of feathered wings but never without the naked girl.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the PA system boomed.

All eyes turned to the stage. This was the first time I saw him. He was small and seemed almost as broad as he was tall. He wore a black suit and a white shirt. He had black hair and a ruddy face that seemed to be sweating.

“Most of you don’t know me,” he said. “My name is Sam Benjamin. And most of you don’t know my picture. Its name is
Icarus
. But I promise you just one thing.” He paused to wipe his face with a white handkerchief that was already sopping wet. “After today, you won’t forget either of us.”

He gestured and the guards picked up the trunk and turned it toward him. He took an immense gold key from his pocket and opened the locks, then stepped back.

The guards knew what they were supposed to do. They picked up the trunk and turned it over. Bundles and stacks of bills tumbled out onto the table, overflowing the edges and spilling to the floor. It seemed as if it would never stop. A deep collective sigh rose from the crowd.

I looked at them. There was an expression of rapt absorption on their faces. They could not take their eyes from the pile of money.

I looked back at the little man on the platform. Suddenly he was not that small anymore. He had been right. They would never forget him.

“Let’s go,” I whispered.

Jack turned to me when we reached the lobby. “The guy’s nuts. To take a chance with a million bucks like that. What if—”

I cut him off. “Get me a rundown on him.”

“You’re serious?”

I nodded. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.” There was only one kind of person who would pull a stunt like that. He had to be either a man who had everything, or a man who had nothing and was gambling everything. And it didn’t matter how it turned up. The man had guts.

What I learned made me ever more curious, and the next morning I went over to his office to see what he was really like. It was a small four-room office in one of the Rockefeller Center buildings. There were people running around, desks everywhere, even in the corridors, papers on the floor.

I stood there in the middle of what passed for the reception room and watched the confusion. After a moment, a man came up to me. He wore a worried expression. I didn’t know it then but he was Roger Cohen, Sam’s brother-in-law and principal source of finance.

“Are you an exhibitor or a salesman?” he asked.

“In a kind of way, I’m both.”

“What I want to know,” he said hoarsely, “is—are you buying, selling, or collecting?”

“Buying,” I said.

A smile came over his face. “In that case, come right in. Mr. Benjamin will see you right away.”

Sam was on the telephone when we came in. He looked up and waved me to a seat. There were papers on it. Roger hurriedly took them off.

“You got it,” Sam said into the phone. “Fifty percent rentals on the film, I pay all the co-op ads up to one grand per week.”

He put down the telephone and reached his hand over the desk. “Sam Benjamin’s the name.”

I took his hand. It was a fooler. There was nothing soft and fat about his grip. “Stephen Gaunt.”

He looked at me. “That Stephen Gaunt?”

I nodded.

“Why?” he asked.

“You need money,” I said. “We have it.”

“I don’t know where you got your information,” he said quickly. “But it’s all wrong. We’re doing fine.”

I got to my feet. “Then I’m wasting your time.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Not so fast. What have you got on your mind?”

“Two hundred thousand for your picture for TV.”

“Can’t do it. If the word gets out, the exhibitors will boycott me.”

“Money now,” I said. “We’ll announce the deal in two years. Your picture will have played off by then.”

“Did you bring the check?” he grinned. “I gotta pay the rent today or they’ll throw me out of here.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

We turned down the offers of a lift and walked home through the warm summer night. We crossed Fifth Avenue and looked in the windows of Saks. They were bright and filled with color and featured sport and cruise clothes. I looked at her. “It wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked.

“No,” she answered shortly. She seemed lost in her own thoughts and we walked on. She didn’t speak again until we turned the corner on Forty-ninth Street. “What makes him so important to you?”

“Film,” I said. “He may be a way for us to get feature movies.”

“What’s so difficult about that?” she asked. “There’s plenty to be had.”

“Sure,” I answered. “But how long do you think the supply will hold up? Television uses more feature film in one week than Hollywood’s average annual production over the last twenty years.”

“Why don’t you just make them yourselves?”

“We will, in time. But the economics aren’t right just yet. Until then, we’re in an open market and I would like to protect myself against higher prices.”

“What makes you think you’ll get bargains from him? He’s not the type.”

I looked at her with respect. She wasn’t her father’s daughter for nothing. “Right,” I said. “But he needs us. He’s ambitious. He wants his own picture company. And we can help him get it. It works both ways.”

By this time we were at the Towers. We went into the building and got on the elevator. She began to say something, but then glanced at the elevator operator and held it until we had entered the apartment.

She sank exhausted into a chair. “Thank God for air conditioning. You can’t imagine how that heat beats me with all the weight I’m carrying.”

“You were going to say something in the elevator but you didn’t.”

“Oh.” She lit a cigarette. “I still wouldn’t trust him if I were you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Little things. The way he acts.” She ground the cigarette out. “Nothing tastes right.”

“You started something, finish it.”

“He has no sense of loyalty, for one thing,” she said, almost defiantly. “Take the way he acted toward his brother-in-law, Roger, tonight.

“The first time we went out with him, he treated Roger as if he were his partner. It was Roger this, Roger that, Roger what do you think. I didn’t understand that until you told me that it was Roger who financed him all these years.”

“So?” I asked.

“You saw the way he acted tonight,” she said. “As if Roger were his lackey and didn’t exist at all. One tiny little bit of success and he treated Roger with contempt. Every time Roger opened his mouth, Sam shut him up, until Roger just sat there like a poor stupid idiot.”

“Sam was just feeling good,” I said. “He’s entitled to crow a little. It’s not every picture that grabs a three-million-dollar gross in twelve weeks.”

“Sure,” she said. “But not at the expense of the man who’s been carrying him for half his life.”

“I’m positive he means nothing by it,” I said. “Did you see the new Lincoln convertible he bought Roger?”

“I saw it. But I wonder if he’s paid Roger back the money he owed him?” She got heavily to her feet. “I feel all sticky and sweaty. I’m going to shower and go to bed.”

I thought that was the end of it, but she was still awake watching television when I got into bed beside her two hours later.

“I still don’t like him,” she said.

By that time he had long gone from my mind. I had spent the evening in the living room jumping channels. Tuesday night was still a problem for us. “Who?” I asked.

“Sam,” she said. She turned on her side away from me still watching the TV screen. “Rub my back.”

I moved my hand in a circular motion over the middle of her back. “How’s that?”

“Just a little bit lower.” I did what she wanted. “That’s better.” She was silent for a moment. “Did you see the way he took that hundred-dollar bill from that actress? He stuck his hand so far down her dress I thought he was going to pull her tits out along with the money. Not that she didn’t have them right up there for everybody to look at.”

I laughed. “If it’s tits he was interested in, he went after the wrong girl.”

“You were looking at them too. I saw the expression on your face. On all your faces. You all wanted to fuck her. I could tell.”

“You’re jealous,” I said.

“You’re damn right I am! If you think I like looking like this while cunts like her push their titties at you, practically begging you to fuck them, you’re crazy.”

“I wasn’t interested,” I said. “Anyway, it wasn’t me she was after, it was Sam.”

“Yes.” She giggled suddenly. “It was really funny. He’s so crass and vulgar. At one point when he thought no one could see him, he took her hand and put it under the tablecloth on his cock. From the expression on his face I thought he was going to come.”

I laughed, continuing to rub her back. “Good for him.”

She was quiet for a moment. I started to remove my hand. “Don’t stop. You’re making me deliciously horny.”

“How do you think I feel?” I asked.

She reached behind her and found me. “Hey!” she exclaimed. She began to turn toward me.

“Don’t move,” I said, putting my hands under her hips and moving her back toward me. She was wide open for me and I drove all the way in.

I heard her gasp. “I can’t breathe!” she cried. “I feel you up in my throat!”

I laughed and moved my hands up to hold each breast. I leaned over her shoulder and ran my tongue down the side of her cheek to her throat. Her buttocks were hard and grinding against my groin. A blare of sound came from the television set. Involuntarily I glanced at it.

She turned her face back toward me just at that moment. “Damn! I knew it had to happen sometimes,” she said. But her voice was warm and pleased and she didn’t stop trying to take more of me into her. “I knew you would find a way to fuck and work at the same time.”

***

I got out of bed and turned off the television set. She put her head against my shoulder when I came back.

“It was good, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It didn’t make any difference that I’m bigger now, did it?”

“No.”

She raised her head and looked at me. “My cunt is still the same? I mean—it isn’t stretched or—”

“It’s better,” I said. “It’s tighter, and wetter, and hotter.”

“I’m glad,” she said. She put her head back on my shoulders. “I’m sorry I was such a drag. But the last few weeks everything seemed to get to me. Your working late, my not being able to move around, the heat of the city and the noise. I’m even tired of the air conditioning. If only once I could get some fresh air to breathe—”

“That’s easy,” I interrupted.

“In this city?” she asked. “Where can you go? Central Park?”

“How about the Cape?” I asked. “Aunt Prue would be glad to have you. And you wouldn’t be bored. There is always something going on up there.”

“But what about you?”

“I can come up on weekends.” Suddenly I wanted her to go. It would make things easier all around. “During the week I have to work and I’m not much use to you. At least, this way, we’ll both get some time in the sun.”

But I was wrong. The first weekend she was away, I was in California, the second weekend I spent in the office going over the annual report to the stockholders, which had to be at the printers by Monday.

And the third weekend was too late.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I had just begun a meeting with the sales managers when Fogarty came into the office. “I know you said hold all calls, Mr. Gaunt,” she apologized. “But your aunt is calling from Rockport. She says it’s very important.”

I picked up the telephone. Aunt Prue spoke before I had a chance to utter a word. “Barbara is ill, Stephen. I think you had better come up here right away.”

My stomach began to tighten. “What happened?”

“We don’t know yet,” she answered. “I brought her breakfast as usual and found her on the floor in a pool of blood.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s on her way to the hospital in an ambulance,” she answered. Her voice began to crack. “You come up here as quick as you can.”

The phone went dead in my hand. I looked over at Fogarty. I didn’t have to say a word, she could read the news on my face. She picked up the telephone. I was there in less than two hours by chartered plane.