Tycoon (2 page)

“Was it as bad as I warned you it would be?” Jack asked.

Kimberly chuckled and shrugged.

They had been married for two months. Although they had sent invitations to his family, none of them had come to Boston for the wedding. Jack and Kimberly had made this trip to Los Angeles to meet—or rather, to
confront
—the Lears.

“I told you my grandfather would like you. I can tell he thinks that it's odd, and maybe amusing, that I married a
shiksa.”

“You said your father wouldn't like me, and obviously he doesn't.”

“If my mother were alive, she'd make him like you. Actually, he doesn't dislike you. It's just that he sees you as disrupting his plans for me. My father is accustomed to having his own way.”

“It's also obvious there's no love lost between him and your brother,” said Kimberly.

“He thinks Robert has gone into a silly business, one that may be a fad and may not last. Motion-picture production.
Leichtgewicht
he calls him. Lightweight. He talks that way, but I happen to know he's put money into Bob's business.”

“Wait till he finds out what business
you're
going into!”

“That will produce a frothing fit.”

Jack picked up a bottle of Black Label—real stuff, “off the boat,” as they said—and replenished her glass and his. He used silver tongs to lift ice cubes from the silver bucket

Jack Lear was not one of America's handsomest young men. He was characterized by a straightforward open face, with eyes that looked directly at you, and a heavy-lipped mouth that smiled readily and ingenuously. Already, when he was only twenty-five years old, his black hair was making a slow retreat, and he was at pains to comb it forward and try to cover the widow's peaks that were developing. He had not bothered to shove his Camel into a holder and held it between two fingers as he pulled smoke deep into his lungs.

“I really don't think I could live in California,” Kimberly murmured. “It's sparse. It's barren. With a gaudy palace stuck up here and there to house the moguls.”

“You don't have to live in California,” said Jack. “We're not even talking about living in California. We don't belong here.”

“You grew up here.”

“Yeah, but
nobody
belongs here.”

“Nobody
we
would want to know,” she said with a grin.

Jack stared at his wife with unalloyed pleasure. He had never known anyone else whose mind ran so closely in the same channel as his. He could have anticipated her comment.

She shrugged out of the teddy, pulling it down and stepping out of it. That left her nude except for her stockings and the garters that held them up, plus her shoes. He drew her down on the bed beside him and began to fondle her breasts. He loved her breasts. They were small and firm, with deep-pink nipples. He bent over her and sucked her left nipple between his lips.

“Fuck soon, but talk first,” she said. “Your father still thinks we're going to live in Los Angeles. Even when he talked about houses you could buy, you didn't tell him we are not going to live here. You didn't tell him you're not going into his business.”

“Can you imagine me in his business? He's called a ship breaker, but what he is is a glorified
junkman
—as my grandfather occasionally reminds him. I can't even think of it, Kimberly.”

“Well, we did talk it out, didn't we? It's not just the business that's wrong for you. It's the idea of living under him! You warned me that your father is crude and . . . and—”

“Ruthless.”

“All right. He
is
your father, and I wasn't going to use a word like that. But you
can't
work for him, Jack. You're too good a man. He means to dominate you. Besides, you're too
intellectual
to go into—all right,
your
words—to go into the junk business. An intellectual needs a career that offers a chance to be creative.”

Her words didn't surprise or trouble Jack. He considered himself an intellectual. His father and his brother were intelligent—one might even say aggressively intelligent—but they were not deep thinkers who were given to study, reflection, and speculation. Maybe he had inherited his intellectuality from his grandfather, Johann Lehrer, who had been a professor before he left Germany.

Kimberly had also inherited an intellectual bent. There was a Yale professor of rhetoric on the maternal side of her family.
And on her father's side, her great-great-grandfather had been an inspired Yankee tinkerer who had invented the simple device that extracted and expelled spent cartridges from firearms when they were opened after firing, thereby sparing the shooter the task of pulling each hot empty casing out with his fingernails. On this invention the Wolcott family fortune had been established. It was the foundation of Kettering Arms, Incorporated, of which Kimberly's father was president.

“You are headed for a bitter confrontation,” Kimberly warned. “When are you going to tell him?”

“Tomorrow.”

“For sure?”

“For sure.”

“He's not going to take it kindly. He's not going to take it temperately.”

Jack shrugged. “He can take it any way he wants, Kimberly. Our decision is made.”

T
HEY FLUFFED UP THE PILLOWS.
J
ACK TUNED THE RADIO TO A
station that was playing music and set the volume low. They lay back against the pillows and snuggled.

“I've told you a little but not enough about my grandfather,” Jack said. “I told you the family name is not Lear but Lehrer, and I told you
Lehrer
is the German word for 'teacher.' Well, my grandfather was a professor of revealed and rational religion. He was an intellectual by anyone's definition: a brilliant man.

“What I didn't tell you is that he was also an eminent rabbi. Even though he was young, men came to him with questions of Judaic law and abided by his decisions. He was a learned man, Kimberly. In 1888 he fled Germany because he was subject to Prussian universal military conscription and lived in fear of being called into the army. Can you imagine a Jewish professor
and rabbi, wearing earlocks, as a private in a Prussian regiment? He couldn't. He left his home and country rather than risk it. And in America he wound up being what he called a ‘junkman.'”

“A scrap collector,” she suggested.

“A junkman. He couldn't find work as a professor in this country. He didn't speak English. So he became a junkman, at first with a pushcart. But he made a hell of a lot of money. My father runs the business now.”

“As a ship breaker,” said Kimberly.
“My
father checked to find out who Erich Lear is.”

Jack nodded. “Being a ship breaker only means he sells scrap metal in thousand-ton lots. When my grandfather retired, the last suggestion of ethics went out of the business. Among other things, my father is a union-buster. Like Henry Ford, he hires thugs.”

“I—Dammit, Jack! You're distracting me. How can we talk about anything serious when your cock's standing up like a sailboat mast?”

Jack grinned as Kimberly reached for his penis and closed her hand around it. She bent forward and gave it a quick, affectionate kiss. “You have to promise to do it at least twice,” she said with a wicked gleam in her eye. “The first time you're going to come before you get it all the way in.”

“Premature ejaculation.”

“Well? But you won't ‘premature' the second time. Or the third. You've got to keep at it till
I
come.”

He grinned. “Deal. I'll work on it.”

They had stopped using condoms because they had decided they wanted a baby. Just the other day, Kimberly's doctor had told her she was in the early stage of her first pregnancy. Although Kimberly was petite and Jack's cock was imposing, they knew by now that she could accommodate all of him, though she did need for him to enter slowly at first, to give her time to stretch. He pushed in a little and then a little more. She grunted, then nodded. He began slow strokes, and she opened gradually, until shortly all of him was in her. Their bellies slapped together as he thrust down and lifted her hips to meet him.

It was as she'd predicted, though. He reached his orgasm
very quickly and ejaculated a great flood, part of which ran out of her and glistened on her legs.

“I'll refresh our drinks before we start again,” he murmured.

W
HILE
J
ACK WAS UP POURING MORE
S
COTCH, THEY HEARD A
knock at the door.

He went to the door and asked, “Who is it?”

“Grossvater!”

Kimberly heard. She tossed Jack his navy-blue robe. She jumped out of bed, snatched up an orange silk wrapper and put it on.

Jack opened the door.
“Willkommen,
Herr Professor,” he said. He had addressed his grandfather that way for years, knowing how much the old man liked it.

Johann Lehrer glanced around the hotel room. He smiled, more with his eyes than with his mouth. “I fear I am interrupting . . . what I am interrupting,” he said.

Kimberly clutched her wrapper closer around her. Pulled tight, it revealed much more than it had when it was loose.

“Ah, so . . .” said Johann Lehrer. “Well, you will have other times. May you have many, many times when you are not interrupted, even by an intruding thought.”

“A drink of Scotch, Herr Professor?”

“A small one.”

While Jack poured the drink, Kimberly fled into the bathroom and returned wearing a terry robe. Johann Lehrer did not pretend he didn't know why she'd changed. His smile widened.

Jack could not cease being surprised, and distressed, by the way the old man had deteriorated physically in recent years. Every year he seemed to wear his trousers higher, until by now his suspenders drew them almost up to his armpits. He was still wearing the light-gray suit with black pinstripes that he had worn at dinner. In the past he had never entirely uncovered
his head. Now, when he put his hat aside, he revealed a bald, liver-spotted pate and no yarmulke. His eyes watered, and his lips trembled.

At Kimberly's insistence, Johann Lehrer sat down in the hotel room's best chair. “I interrupt for good reason,” he said. “My eldest grandson has married a fine goyish girl. I have had your family history researched. Did you know that one of your Yankee ancestors was a peddler, going up and down the roads in a wagon, selling pots and pans, Bibles and almanacs, hats and shoes? Subsequently your family became manufacturers, making guns. Also, later, in your mother's family, a Yale professor. Has Jack told you / was a professor?”

Kimberly nodded. “Yes. He told me.”

“My story he has heard many times, until it bores him. Maybe you it does not yet bore. When I come to America, I was a ragpicker at first. Der Herr Professor Lehrer pushing a handcart! Then scrap metal in a cart pulled by horse.
Junk!
But you know . . . When you collect a little junk, it's junk. When you collect a lot, it's
salvage!
Lehrer Salvage Company! When you tear apart old ships for the scrap metal, then you are a ship breaker. But it's the same thing. We are still in the junk business. But some of us want to move into other things. The movies! Jack's brother has gone into
this
business. Once I thought the younger grandson might become a rabbi or a teacher. But . . .” The old man shook his head.

“Grossvater . . .”

“Ja, ja, ja.
Kimberly . . .
Shiksa
. . . Marrying you, my grandson has done well. But not so well if he does not escape from my son. Erich is a good man. But he thinks he has made all Jack's decisions for him. He has laid out his life for him. He cares little what Robert does. It is Jack that he cares about. He wants you to become a
junkman.
It is the family business. You don't like that, huh,
shiksa?
Well, why should you? The daughter of Boston Common does not want her husband to be a junkman.”

“I don't scorn your business, Herr Professor,” said Kimberly. Her German accent was perfect, her vocabulary small.
“Ich bin in Boston geboren. Das ist richtig. Aber—”

“We have nothing for which to apologize to each other, Kimberly. I like you.”

“Danke schön,
Herr Professor.”

“I decided so this evening. My son Erich means to compel both of you to accept his idea as to what you should be. He was willing to let Robert go into the film business without interfering, even lending him some support. But Robert is the younger son. You, Jack, are the elder. He expects you to—”

“I won't do it, Grossvater!”

“—to become his successor, to serve an apprenticeship, then to succeed him eventually.”

“Eventually,” Jack muttered wryly.

The old man shook his head sorrowfully. “You should live so long.”

“I don't want to live under his domination,” said Jack.

“No,” said Johann Lehrer. “So I make for you an option, Jack. I trust you to choose well.” He withdrew an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jack. “This will make a choice possible. Add it to what your grandmother left you. Deposit it before your father learns of it. He may claim I've lost my mind.”

Jack glanced at the check inside the envelope. “
Grossvater!”

Johann Lehrer rose from his chair. He stepped toward Kimberly and embraced her. “Take good care of him, Kimberly. A man needs a good woman. I judge you are a good woman, pretty little
shiksa.”

The old man moved to the door. Jack kissed his hand before Johann Lehrer stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.