Tycoon (52 page)

Linda was glad to have the Fredericks in the house for a week or so each month. She put them in the master bedroom suite, knowing Jack would not object—and knowing
he
would not use it. He came out two or three nights whenever they were visiting.

Each hour-long show featured two live interviews. A variety of people were happy to be interviewed by Curt Frederick. He still had a worldwide reputation as a giant of broadcast journalism. President Nixon not only agreed to be interviewed, but came to New York for the purpose. Former Texas governor John Connally appeared and talked about being in the car with President Kennedy on November 22,1963. Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan came to the studio and answered Curt's questions. Among other showbiz personalities, Dinah Shore, Ingrid Bergman, and Marlene Dietrich sat before the cameras and chatted with Curt Frederick.

One evening in Greenwich, Jack offered Curt a suggestion. Curt leaped at it.

On the evening of Wednesday, April 22, the two guests on his show were Averell Harriman and Jason Maxwell.

Harriman was, of course, smooth, suave, and statesmanlike. Everyone expected that Jason, in the second half hour, would offer a dramatic contrast.

Jack sat down in the greenroom where guests waited to go on. Jason had been made up—that is, he had been slightly dusted with powder—and was ready for the cameras, but he was tense with nervous energy.

“I'm gonna have a Scotch, Jason. Join me?”

“Well, maybe one.”

“One Scotch. You got it.”

Jason sat staring at the ceiling, nervously rubbing his hands together as Jack poured their drinks. He did not notice that Jack took a small glass vial from his jacket pocket, shook it, then poured it into a glass. He poured a generous shot of Scotch over it and added ice.

“Here y' go,” he said to Jason as he handed him the glass. He returned to the little bar and poured Scotch over ice for himself. “Cheers!”

Jack tipped back his glass and took his drink all at once. Jason frowned but did the same.

“Well. We
could
have one more,” Jack said. “Two little drinks before you go on—”

Jason nodded. “The problem, you know, is that authors on talk shows usually don't have anything much to say. We pour all we have out on the page.”

“You used to keep Anne and me in stitches with your stories.

“But I can't tell those stories on television.” He glanced up at the monitor, where Averell Harriman was solemnly answering some question put to him by Curt.

“Tell about your new book. What's it gonna be called?”

“Haven't figured that out yet,” Jason said as he downed his second Scotch. “Tha's th' hardest part about writing a book: thinkin' up a . . .
title.”

“You want one more? A little one?” Jack asked.

“Jus' a li'l one.”

Jack was less generous with the third one. He didn't want Jason to pass out before he went before the cameras.

A young woman knocked on the door and said, “Three minutes, Mr. Maxwell!”

Jason straightened his tie and ran a brush over his hair. The director came for him, and they went out into the studio.

Jack picked up Jason's glass with a handkerchief. He took it in the bathroom and rinsed it out. He returned it to the room and poured a tablespoonful of Scotch over two ice cubes. Back in the bathroom he took the little vial from his pocket, put it on his handkerchief, and stepped on it. He flushed the shards of glass down the toilet, together with the tiny plastic cap.

Jason did not stagger into the broadcast studio. He walked to the chair assigned to him and sat down. He wriggled as though it tickled when the sound technician clipped a microphone on his lapel and ran the wire under his jacket and out the back.

“Our second guest this evening is Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jason Maxwell. His credits include the novel
Norma.
Joni Lear, playing the title role, won an Academy Award for best actress. Mr. Maxwell, Miss Lear has personally asked me to thank you for the wonderful role you wrote for her.”

Jason grinned and nodded. “An' I never even slept with her,” he said and then laughed.

“You
have
met her, though?”

“You bet! An' lemme tell ya. Till you've seen tits like hers, you haven' seen tits.”

Curt changed the subject. “It is said of you, Mr. Maxwell, that your novels are romans à clef, which is to say that your
characters are based on real people. I suppose everyone has guessed who Norma was. But do you want to say?”

Jason pursed his lips and nodded, “Sure. Nnnnorma Jean. Maramuh. Maremem
Mum-ROE!”

“Does your character Norma accurately reflect the real Marilyn Monroe?”

“Why not? Idn't it?”

“Mr. Maxwell, it has been suggested that you don't write your novels and stories, that they are in fact written by your cousin Gladys Maxwell. Is there any truth to that?”

“Gladys cou'nt write a letter!”

“Then who wrote
her
novel? It's been well received. Did
you
write it?”

Jason shook his head. “I never even
slept
with Glad—Glad-uss.”

“I suppose not, since she's your cousin.”

Jason began to nod rhythmically. His mouth hung open. “Well . . . Pull th' curtain of
decentness!
De—”

“Mr. Maxwell, don't you feel well?”

The camera was not able to turn away fast enough to avoid sending out over the whole network the image of Jason Maxwell vomiting.

“We'll take a commercial break,” Curt said loftily.

1970

A
FTER TWENTY-ONE SEASONS
T
HE
S
ALLY
A
LLEN
S
HOW WENT
off the air. The American public seemed to have lost its taste for variety shows. Sally was not upset. She was fifty years old, and a little long in the tooth, she thought, for dancing in tights and singing. Even so, Jack was not about to lose her as a talent. He offered to star her in a picture to be made by Carlton House Productions. Since the soundstages were all committed to television production, Jack told Len, who would write the script, to set the entire film on location. He did. He wrote a touching comedy set in a beach house at Malibu. It needed some doctoring, though, and Sara suggested Brent Creighton. The resulting script was a masterpiece. It was a love story about two couples, and Mo Morris offered Joni for the second female lead.

Dick Painter, with all his faults and ambition, had been a first-class programmer. In the three seasons since his departure, the network had lost market share. Mary Carson suggested bringing him back. Jack adamantly refused. He did, though, acknowledge the necessity of finding another programmer attuned to what he insisted was the deteriorating taste of the American public. Mary raided CBS and brought over one of their vice presidents, Ted Wellman. A believer in what Jack
called small-minded shows—sitcoms and cop sagas—Wellman soon had LCI's ratings climbing. Jack shook his head and kept his peace. He
still
didn't think Jack Benny was funny.

I
N ONE SENSE
J
ACK WAS A
L
ONELY MAN.
I
N ANOTHER SENSE
he wasn't.

Though he stopped sleeping regularly with Linda, she never ceased to welcome him. He brought Rebecca Murphy down from Boston to spend occasional weekends with him in Manhattan. These women—his thirty-five-year-old daughter-in-law and the fifty-year-old investigator—gave him their sympathy and affection, but it was plain that neither of them would become the third Mrs. Lear, if indeed there was going to be a third Mrs. Lear. Gossip columns suggested there would be, but Jack had no intention of marrying again.

In the summer of 1970 he began to see a woman the columnists immediately fastened on as the successor to Kimberly and Anne.

Valerie Latham Field was heir to a quarter of the Latham fortune and half of the estate left by her late husband Ralph Wiggams Field, which made her a multimillionaire. In the stuffy tradition of the more conservative society pages she was called Mrs. Latham Field. Otherwise she was known as Val.

Every summer a charity match was played on a polo field in Greenwich. The sponsors served a champagne luncheon under a tent, and the wealthiest and most notable people in the town gathered.

Jack and Anne had attended for many years. In 1969 he hadn't gone. In 1970 Linda urged him to. So, on a Sunny Sunday afternoon he appeared under the big tent, with Linda on his arm.

Val was selling raffle tickets and so was circulating through the crowd. They had met before, several times. “Jack,” she said, “I'm glad to see you.”

“Val, this is my daughter-in-law, Linda.”

“Oh, yes,” said Val. “Make Jack buy you lots of tickets. This necklace is one of the prizes.”

Val was wearing a spectacular emerald-and-diamond necklace. At fifty-six, she had a few small wrinkles at her throat, which the necklace covered nicely. She also wore diamond earrings and a diamond-studded bracelet. Her blond hair stood out in a bouffant style. Her face was long and thin. Her mouth was wide. She was a handsome woman, and she was dressed handsomely in an off-white linen jacket and a burnt-orange skirt, not quite mini but well above her knees. She was obviously a woman who was content with herself and who didn't look to anyone else for approval.

Jack bought a dozen raffle tickets at fifty dollars apiece. He gave them to Linda, and during the drawing she won the necklace.

Beaming, Val took off the necklace and fastened it around Linda's neck, as everyone applauded.

Val sat down beside Jack. They began to chat and laugh. That was all it took for the rumors to start. Before the afternoon was over, there was talk under the tent that Valerie Latham Field and Jack Lear were a pair.

He didn't know. But Val was sensitive to these things and guessed what was being said. It amused her. When he asked her to dinner, she promptly agreed. They left the tent, Linda on one arm, Val on the other.

T
HEY SAW EACH OTHER FIVE TIMES IN
A
UGUST, USUALLY FOR
dinner, though once he took her to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. He decided to fly to Los Angeles in September, to see how things were going on the location at Malibu, and he asked Val to come with him.

It was aboard a company jet forty thousand feet above the Mississippi River that Jack kissed Val for the first time. He'd
been under no compulsion to press her—after all, he could sleep with Linda or Rebecca whenever he wanted to—and had allowed the relationship to develop slowly. She was a woman of presence and dignity, he felt, and to have pawed at her would have driven her away, for sure. They had discovered they shared certain interests. He admired her and enjoyed her company but was not certain he felt romantically inclined toward her.

Then on the plane he was driven by a sudden impulse to draw her into his arms and kiss her.

She put her arms around him and participated in the kiss. “I hope we won't be sorry about that,” she said quietly.

They sat close together, and Jack kept his arm around her, but they did not kiss again during the flight.

He asked her if she would mind sharing his two-bedroom suite. She smiled and shrugged.

They went on the set and watched a shoot. Early in the evening they went to dinner with Joni, David, Sara, and Brent. At the end of a pleasant day they retired to their suite.

As Val opened the door to her bedroom, Jack kissed her again. She returned his kiss by gently nibbling on his lips. She relaxed in his arms.

“Jack . . . this is kind of silly, isn't it?” she whispered, pointing at the doors to the two bedrooms. She pushed her own door wide open. “Come on in.”

Val was unique. At least she was in
his
experience. She undressed. She lay back on the bed and waited for him. She welcomed him into her. With her eyes wide open, studying his face, showing no particular expression on her own, she thrust upward to meet his downward thrusts. She grunted a few times, and her breathing became heavier; otherwise she stared into his eyes and smiled faintly until she felt him come, when her smile broadened and she used her arms to draw him down on her. He was reluctant to let all his weight settle on her, but she pulled him down and seemed to luxuriate in being pinned beneath him.

She reached up and tousled his hair. “So far, so good,” she said. “Monsieur Le Maître, you live up to your billing.”

“Oh no, Val! I'm not Le Maître.”

“Of course you are. How'd you manage to get that slimy little creep so drunk before he went on the air? Nembutal?”

1971

W
HEN THE FAMILY GATHERED ON
S
T.
C
ROIX BETWEEN
Christmas and New Year's, Val was there. She was the only one in the party who could water-ski. Jack tried but consistently went over on his face.