Tycoon (54 page)

Dr. Hagan vetoed the annual visit to St. Croix. He didn't want Jack flying yet, and he wasn't confident of the hospitals there. He suggested that Jack travel by train to a beach town in Florida.

Newly retired Mickey Sullivan knew of a waterfront house in Deerfield Beach that could be leased. It was big enough so that the also-retired Cap Durenberger and his wife, Naomi, could move in and be alert companions during Jack's stay. What was more, the house had a pool and a room for Joni or Sara.

Jack agreed. He left on an Amtrak train on January 10. Linda rode with him. Her father, now Admiral Hogan, met her in Fort Lauderdale, and she went with him to Pensacola for a few days. Mickey and Cap drove Jack to Deerfield Beach.

He sat on the beach as he had sat on the beach on St. Croix after Anne died, staring out to sea, no longer mourning but wondering what he had left of life. Hemingway had written that when a man loses his optimism it is time to go.

A man came to him there on the beach who took away more of his optimism—or maybe, as he thought about it, gave him new optimism.

Junius Grotius, as he introduced himself, was a wizened man of more than seventy years, wearing an odd flowered sport shirt, slacks, and a straw hat. He sat down in the sand and spoke to Jack in a strange, melodious accent.

He came quickly to his point. “I will not take much of your time. You may have heard my name—”

“I have heard your name, Mr. Grotius.”

“Then you know I am president of Wyncherly-DeVere, Limited.”

Jack did know. WDV was a multinational communications conglomerate, owner of television and radio facilities, newspapers, magazines, two wire services, and other assets.

“I hope I am not being ghoulish to come to you when you have just been ill,” said Grotius. “But at such times a man necessarily thinks about changes, perhaps about lightening his load of responsibilities and moving a little aside so as to enjoy more fully what he has earned.”

“I am not quite ready to sell, Mr. Grotius.”

Grotius nodded. “I didn't expect you would be. But let us resolve to keep in touch. We may wish to explore many alternatives. We may find one that will be attractive to you.”

Jack smiled. “Yes. Let's do keep in touch. But I am not quite ready to think of retiring. I haven't lost
all
my optimism yet.”

1973

J
ACK
L
EAR WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO HAD LOST HIS OPTI
mism in the winter of 1973. Richard Nixon had just been handily reelected President of the United States. To many Americans, Nixon and his administration represented a newly developing mean-spiritedness that was poisoning America. Many Beltway insiders left Washington for a while because they could not face the rites that would attend the second inauguration.

One of those who had fled the capital was New Jersey Congresswoman Diane Hechler. She represented the Sixteenth District, which comprised a number of suburban counties west of metropolitan New Jersey. Although she was a Republican, she despised Richard Nixon. She excused herself from everything associated with the inauguration by pleading that she was suffering persistent bronchitis and had been told to spend some time in the sun.

She was spending the month in the beach house of a family from her district. It was a hundred yards or so south of the house Jack had leased. She walked past him on the beach half a dozen times, then one morning stopped and said hello.

“You're Jack Lear, aren't you? Lear Communications?”

He stood. “Yes, and I understand you are Representative Diane Hechler.”

“Oh, sit back down,” she said. “Relax. That's why we're in this ghastly place, isn't it? So we can relax.”

He laughed” ‘Ghastly.' Thank God I'm not the only one who thinks so.”

She sat down beside him. The waves running up the sand reached their toes. Jack had been thinking of moving back, but he guessed this woman would let the water run up around her. Even before she had stopped to speak to him, he had seen in her a defiant, adventuresome spirit. It was in the way she walked with her shoulders set, in the way she set her pace on the sand.

She was forty-seven years old, tall and thin, though her breasts filled the top of her swimsuit. He guessed her hair was coiffed and frosted by a professional. Her red bikini showed little skin south of her navel and nothing of her butt.

“I read about your cardiac and know why you're here,” she said. “I'm sorry, but I know more about you than you could possibly know about me.”

“Well, let me see,” said Jack. “I know that you're serving your umpteenth term in the House—”

“Fourth.”

“Fourth. Well, I knew it was not your first. And I believe you're a Republican.”

“An
independent
Republican.”

“The very best kind. And . . . And I guess I do run out of information right about there.”

“I'm in my forties,” she said. “I have never been married and have no children. I am a lawyer as well as a politician, and I like baseball and football. I love to visit art galleries but can't stand sitting quietly and fidgeting through a concert. I don't mind walking on the beach for an hour or so, but I'm looking forward to a nap, followed by a civilized cocktail hour and a nice dinner.”

T
HEY SAT AT A TABLE FACING A BROAD WINDOW THAT OVER
looked the angry surf pounding hard on the sand of a Fort Lauderdale beach, sending water up to the pilings that supported the restaurant.

Diane drank a dry Beefeater martini, and Jack drank Scotch.

They talked about the politics of the 1970s. Jack was surprised by some of her opinions and was forced to acknowledge he had never given enough attention to some of the issues she raised. She spoke of the Dolphins' undefeated season and said she'd seen LJ on television. Jack told her LJ would be coming to Deerfield Beach to visit, after the Super Bowl, and Diane expressed regret that she wouldn't get to meet him because she would be back in Washington by then.

She swallowed the last of her martini and signaled the waiter. She was wearing a simple white off-the-shoulder dress that showed off her cleavage. The matching jacket was on the back of the chair. “Jack,” she said. “I'd like to go out fishing. Want to go?”

“How?”

“Oh, we charter a boat with a captain and a deckhand and head out to the Gulf Stream to see what we can hook. I've never done it, and it would relieve the boredom of ten days in Florida.”

Jack sighed. “I'm not sure how my cardiologist would like it.”

“Fuck your cardiologist,” she said with a big smile. “Look, Jack, life is to be cherished, for sure. But life is to be enjoyed, too. It's not to be hoarded like a miser's money. What do you want to do? Stop living so you can keep on living?”

Jack nodded. “My wife Anne knew for almost three years that she was dying. She kept it from us and lived her life as if it wasn't happening, until almost the last.”

His lips and chin stiffened, and he stopped, holding back tears. Diane touched his hand.

“When can we get this boat?” he whispered.

T
HE BOAT RUMBLED OUT OF THE INLET AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE
next morning. Diane had chosen it: a rugged, unglamorous little boat with a sixty-year-old captain and a teenage deckhand. It was painted white with light-blue trim, and the deck was not varnished but painted. One icebox was filled with bait, another with beer and sandwiches. They wore what they had been told to wear: knit shirts with long sleeves to protect their arms from the sun, and hats with wide brims to protect their foreheads and necks.

The captain gave Jack and Diane brief instructions on how to handle a fish if they got a strike. The boy baited their hooks and cast them overboard.

For an hour they trolled without a strike. Then Jack got the first strike. He reeled in a bonito about thirty inches long—not an exciting catch. The boy sliced off fillets for bait and threw the rest overboard.

Diane got a strike and pulled aboard a mackerel, another lackluster catch. The boy put it in the bait box. It was edible and would wind up on his family's table or on the captain's.

Diane and Jack popped beers. The captain changed course, chasing something he thought he saw in the water that would lead to fish. By now the coastline was out of sight.

Jack tossed his beer can overboard. A minute later he got a hard strike. The captain grabbed his pole and gave it a jerk to set the hook.

“Good'n,” he said. “Y' got work to do. Ma'am, reel in so's the fish don't tangle lines with you.”

It was more strenuous work than Jack had imagined. The fish broached, and he saw a big sailfish that was determined to fight the hook that was painfully lodged in its mouth. The boy took the wheel, and the captain stood anxiously beside Jack, instructing him on how to play the fish. It was arduous. Jack had to haul up on the pole, dragging the fish a few feet closer, then reel in line. Again and again. He began to sweat.

Diane unstrapped herself from her chair and came to stand behind Jack. She wiped the sweat from his forehead on the sleeve of her shirt.

He began to gasp for breath.

“Jack, maybe you ought to let the captain cut it loose.”

He glanced up at her. His eyes were wide. “No way,” he grunted. “This sumbitch's not gonna beat
me.”

He fought the sailfish for half an hour. And defeated it. But it defeated him, too. Once it was aboard, he struggled out of the chair and dropped to his back on the deck, lying parallel to the fish. The captain screamed at the boy to head for home, throttles open.

“No,” Jack muttered. “Just a little short of breath. It's okay. Be okay in two minutes. Diane hasn't caught hers yet.”

She knelt over him and kissed him.

In the two minutes he had specified, Jack rose and sat in his chair. “Turn around,” he said, pointing out to sea. “What's the matter? Never see an old man get tired before?”

The captain looked at Diane. She nodded. The captain told the boy to turn again. Diane took sandwiches and beers from the cooler and sat down on the deck beside Jack's chair. The captain measured the sailfish and announced it was six feet eleven inches long, by no means a record fish but a very respectable one for sure.

Jack did not put out a line again. He sat in his chair and watched Diane. She caught another bonito, then a five-foot barracuda that gave her a long struggle and was another very respectable catch.

In the middle of the afternoon they turned toward shore. The captain suggested that Jack and Diane get in out of the sun. They went inside the Spartan cabin and sat on a bunk where, seized by impulse, Jack threw his arms around Diane and kissed her hard. She had been seized by the same impulse and hugged him and returned his kiss.

“Oh, Jesus, lady,” he muttered in her ear. “You know what? You've brought me back something I'd lost and needed bad.”

“What's that?” she whispered.

“My optimism,” he said. “You're a flowing spring of it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it . . . appreciate
you.”

Diane felt she could not stay in Florida beyond the end of January. Jack was supposed to stay through February. He summoned a corporate jet to the airport at Fort Lauderdale. On Thursday, February 1, it took off for Washington, carrying him and Diane. Before she left the plane at Washington, they kissed, and he promised her he would be back in Washington within two weeks.

M
ARY
C
ARSON CALLED A MEETING AT THE
P
ETROLEUM
C
LUB
in Houston. On an evening in March she sat down with Billy Bob Cotton and Raymond l'Enfant

When they'd had drinks and had chatted socially for a few minutes, she asked a question: “Has either of you seen Jack Lear lately?”

“No, not since the heart attack,” said Ray.

Billy Bob shook his head.

“Well, he was away from the office, away from the business, for three months. When his wife died, he was away longer than that. To be brutally honest, I think Jack has lost it. He's going to be sixty-seven this year, he's had a big heart attack, and he's looking over his shoulder for the Grim Reaper.”

“I wish you wouldn't say that,” said Billy Bob. “I'm gonna be sixty-five shortly myself.”

“But you haven't had a major heart attack,” Mary retorted. “What's more to the point, he's lost interest. If you want to face the truth, gentlemen, Jack Lear has never been wholly devoted to LCI. The fact is, he has always devoted too much of himself to outside interests.”

“Carlton House,” said Ray.

“Well, that and his personal life,” said Mary. “Jason Maxwell didn't call him Le Maître for nothing. You know who he's sleeping with now? Cathy McCormack, Dick Painter's former secretary. Christ, she's sixty-two years old! I'm surprised he hasn't tried to hit on
me!”

“Disappointed?” Ray asked with an amused smile.

“Sort of,” she said, smiling as broadly as he was. “But he's away from the office a lot now for another reason. He's got a girlfriend. I mean, it looks like something serious. She's a congresswoman from New Jersey named Hechler. He flies a company plane to Washington twice a week.”

“Why are we sitting here talking about this, Mary?” Billy Bob asked impatiently. “You asked us to come. You must have something in mind.”

“I do. I think we had better start thinking of alternatives to Jack as CEO.”

Billy Bob shook his head and frowned. “You mean, take the company away from him?”

“Keep him as chairman of the board. Let him have his office and perks. Give someone else day-to-day operational control.”

“‘Someone else,'” said Ray. “Meaning you.”