Tycoon (48 page)

“Not very. It could be worse. She's in jail in a town called Grant, Nebraska.”

“In jail, for Christ's sake!
Why?”

“Nothing terribly serious. It seems she walked out of a café without paying. She's serving out a fine at the rate of three dollars a day. I spoke with the sheriff. She's still got a bus ticket for Los Angeles and a few dollars in cash, which she won't apply to her fine. What's more, she refuses to tell them who she is or allow them to contact her family.”

“What'll it take to get her out?”

“About eighty dollars, at this point. I can transfer funds to—”

“No. Then we lose her again. I'll fly up there and take care of it. I'll take her home. Don't call the Horans or anyone else.”

J
ACK HAD FLOWN TO
H
OUSTON IN A
B
EECHCRAFT
S
UPER
H18 that cruised at nearly three hundred miles per hour. He called the pilot before he left Humphrey's and told him to plan a flight to the airport nearest to Grant, Nebraska, and also to arrange for a rental car at the airport.

They took off at 10:30
A.M
. and landed at Ogallala in midafternoon. From there it was a short drive to Grant, the county seat of an adjoining county.

Elmer Hastings, the sheriff, was tall, tanned, and rawboned.
He sat behind a scarred yellow-oak desk wearing a khaki uniform with badge and a straw hat.

Jack introduced himself. “I understand you've spoken with my private investigator, Miss Murphy.”

“Yes. Quite a gal, that one. Piece of work to find out where Miss Horan is. You say you're her father, but Miss Murphy told me the girl's name is Horan. Yours is Lear.”

“Long story,” said Jack. “I can tell you the details if you want. What I'd like to do is pay off her fine and take her with me. I've got a company plane on the field at Ogallala. I hope to be able to get Kathleen to New York tonight.”

“Well, let's see here. Her fine was a hundred dollars, plus court costs of $14.75. She's been here eleven days.” The sheriff figured on a pad. “That's $114.75 less $33.00. Comes to $81.75. How you figure on payin'? Cash, I hope.”

“Cash,” Jack agreed.

“Jerry,” the sheriff said to a deputy who seemed to be listening to this conversation with great interest, “you go back and tell Miss Horan to get her stuff together. Her daddy's here and bailin' her out.”

Jack put four twenties, a one, and three quarters on the desk.

“May have a little problem here,” said the sheriff.

“What's that?” Jack asked skeptically.

“She may not want to go. She's a stubborn girl. Before I write you a receipt, maybe you better talk to her and make sure she'll go. She's said she's goin' to California and not back east, no matter what. In eleven days she hasn't changed her mind, and she knows she's got twenty-seven more. Maybe—”

“I'd like to talk to her.”

The women's jail was not a line of cells, just a cage some ten feet square with steel bars on three sides. It was furnished with two cots, a toilet, and a basin. Kathleen was the only prisoner, and she sat hunched forward on a cot, staring apprehensively through the bars. She wore a tartan skirt, white blouse, and dark-blue cardigan sweater. She was the mature, graceful blond he had seen on the stage at the convent school. But she was marred. Her face was hollow and thin and colorless. He looked at her for only a moment before he made a vow to himself.

Jack nodded and smiled at Kathleen. She rose and came to
the bars. “Who are—Mr.
Lear?
They said
my father
was here.”

“They said right, Kathleen. I
am
your father.”

Her mouth dropped open. She gripped the bars with both hands as if to steady herself. Then she nodded and began to cry. “I
knew
something was wrong,” she said. “I've always known they were lying to me. About something. I always knew there was something different about me.” She drew a deep breath and stifled her sobs.
“You!
Why didn't you come to me years ago?”

“I couldn't. We have a lot to talk about. I have a private plane waiting. We'll be in the air for hours and can talk and talk.”

“I'm not going back to Boston. I'm not going back to that school!”

“That's right. You're not going back to Boston, and you're not going back to that school.”

Kathleen slipped her right hand higher on the bar. She dropped her left hand and let it lie on the crosspiece. “You and my mother?”

“That's right. She is your mother.”

“They say you're a Jew. I mean . . . Connie and Dan say—”

“They would, wouldn't they? That's important to them.”

Kathleen grinned. “If you're a Jew, then
I'm a Jew!
That's why they shoved their religion— Have I got a surprise for them!”

“Don't make any big decisions right now, Kathleen. You've got a lot of time to think. I love you, and I'm going to take you home, and we can work out something good for you.”

1965

C
HRISTMAS WAS A STRANGE BUT JOYOUS HOLIDAY AT THE
L
EAR
house in Greenwich. Priscilla, who was still with the family, declared she had never seen anything so grand.

Jack and Anne presided happily over three separate parties and an expanded household.

In the spring, Linda would receive her Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia. She had applied for faculty positions at several universities. She was dating and would not live with Jack and Anne after this academic year. Nelly was eight and had announced her goal in life: to play the cello.

Joni and David Breck came from Los Angeles. Joni had been nominated for an Academy Award again, this time for her role in
Dandelion.
She was four months pregnant. It did not show yet. She and David said they would marry before the baby was born, but they were uncertain as to when. Harry Klein had given David a strong supporting role in
Dandelion,
and he had a nomination for Supporting Actor. News of her pregnancy out of wedlock would kill enough votes to deny both of them an Oscar, so they were playing the situation very carefully.

The most interesting addition to the household was Kathleen. The Horans came to Greenwich, and the confrontation had been angry, almost violent.

“What in the world can you be thinking of?” Connie had shrieked. “You're a Christopher and a Child of Christ! Some of the sisters still think you have a vocation.”

“Ignorant, dried-up old bitches,” Kathleen had muttered.

“That will be enough of that kind of talk,” Dan had declared darkly.

“I'm going to take instruction in Judaism and have a bat mitzvah,” Kathleen had said.

Dan and Connie had glared at Jack, who had shrugged and said, “I told her I never had a bar mitzvah.”

“What you are going to do, young lady, is come home and go back to school,” Dan had said with an air of finality.

Kathleen had shaken her head with just as strong an air of finality.

“I'll
make
you come!”

Jack had pointed a finger at Dan. “No. That you
won't
do. Persuade her if you can.”

They couldn't.

Later, when Kathleen went to see the rabbi at Temple Shalom, he gently advised her that the decision she proposed to make could not be made in anger and resentment. Even so, he agreed to let her begin instruction in Hebrew and in the Jewish faith. She saw a lawyer. She wanted her name legally changed to Sara Lehrer. He told her they could discuss it again after she'd given the matter more thought.

Kathleen, who asked now that they call her Sara, was a loving and helpful young woman around the house. In spite of her insistence that the convent schools had provided her with a poor education, she was able to help Liz with problems of calculus and to show Nelly what a close relationship existed between music and mathematics.

1966

I
N
M
ARCH
J
ACK WAS SUMMONED TO APPEAR BEFORE A SENATO
rial committee investigating misuse of television broadcasting franchises. He sat down at a table behind a bank of microphones, in the glare of television lights, and faced ten senators and their counsel.

The committee counsel was a young man with a mop of unruly hair and chipmunklike teeth. His name was Roger Simmons, and he asked most of the questions.

“Mr. Lear, is it your opinion that you use the valuable television frequencies assigned to your company in the public interest?”

Jack had been thoroughly coached for this appearance. He wore a handsome dark-blue suit and sat respectfully but confidently at the witness table, his hands clasped in front of him. His lawyer sat to his left. Anne sat behind him. Joni sat behind the lawyer.

“Obviously, Mr. Simmons, a broadcaster would serve the public interest best by broadcasting nothing but educational shows, in the manner of the public television stations. Unfortunately, we can't make money that way, and we must make money if we are to remain in business. I am one of those who deplore the banality of a lot of what is broadcast by the networks, including the Lear Network. We do focus on quality in programming, and I think we do at least as well as any of our competitors.”

“Mr. Lear, at the present time your network is the only one that continues to broadcast quiz shows with big prizes. Egregious cheating on such shows was exposed and all but killed them. How do you explain your network's reviving that format?”

Jack took a sip of water, then said, “I don't try to explain it.
Generally speaking, I don't choose the shows that are broadcast on the Lear Network. That is done by others who are more attuned to the public taste than I am. My impression is that the public enjoys quiz shows and wants to see them.”

“You broadcast a show called
You Bet!
Is that show honest?”

“I have no reason to believe otherwise.”

“Then you are not prepared to testify to a certainty that it
is
honest?”

Jack smiled comfortably. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Simmons, I have never even
seen
it. I signed off on it—meaning that I told my people to go ahead and do it. They wanted to do it, and I said yes. That's the only contact I've had with it.”

“Mr. Lear, if we show evidence that
You Bet!
is rigged, will you deny that it is?”

“I will neither affirm nor deny anything about it,” said Jack smoothly. “I have nothing to do with
You Bet!
It makes money. That's why we broadcast it. Otherwise, I wouldn't put it on the air.”

“Do you think it is banal?”

Jack nodded. “It is one of many shows on television, on my network and others, that are banal.”

J
ACK AND
A
NNE DID NOT RETURN TO
N
EW
Y
ORK IMMEDI
ately. Later that day they sat in their suite in the Mayflower and watched the afternoon session of the Senate committee.

Dick Painter was the witness.

“Is
You Bet!
a rigged show, Mr. Painter?” Simmons asked.

“Absolutely not,” said Painter, adopting an air of indignation. “We all went through that sort of thing a few years ago. We at Lear are not stupid enough to let it happen again.”

Simmons opened a thick file. “A few days ago one of the contestants who won a great deal of money on
You Bet!
testified
in executive session of this committee. We took the testimony in executive session to protect that person's identity. That person testified that the questions to be asked on the show were revealed in advance, so that he or she could learn the answers before airtime. That person testified that before each half-hour broadcast you personally, Mr. Painter, asked the questions and heard the answers, which were then repeated on the air. Is that true? Did you do that?”

Painter's lawyer grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the microphones. They conferred for a minute; then Painter faced the microphones and the committee again and said, “Since I don't know who your witness was, I can't possibly answer your question.”

“Oh, I believe you can, Mr. Painter,” said the committee chairman, Senator Donald Hooper, a Democrat from Kentucky. “Let me rephrase the question. Did you or did anyone else, to your knowledge, ever reveal the questions in advance to
any
contestant on
You BetlT

Painter leaned over and conferred with his lawyer. Then he said, “I respectfully decline to answer the question on the ground that my answer might tend to incriminate me.”

Jack sprang from the couch facing the television set and grabbed a telephone. He put through a call to Cap Durenberger in New York.