ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

Jonas' voice was emotionless. "Why go any further?" he asked. "I'm satisfied with the way things are. You've eliminated your operating losses and from now on, you should be in the black."

"We won't stay in the black for long. The unions are demanding increases or they'll strike. That will absorb any profits."

"Let them," Jonas said, his voice still emotionless. "You don't have to give it to them."

"I already did," David answered.

Rosa could almost hear the moment's silence. She looked from one to the other, though she couldn't see their faces.

"You did?" Jonas said quietly, but an undercurrent of coldness had come into his voice. "I thought union negotiations were Dan's province.''

David's voice was steady. There was a cautious note in it but it was the caution used by a man seeking his way through unknown territory, not that of fear. "It was, until tonight," he said. "Until it affected the welfare of the company. Then it became my business."

"Why couldn't Dan settle it?"

"Because you never replied to his messages," David said quietly. "He felt he couldn't make a deal without your approval."

"And you felt differently?"

"Yes."

Jonas' voice grew colder. "What makes you think you don't need my approval any more than he does?"

She heard a click as David flicked his lighter and held the flame to his cigarette. Light danced across his face for a moment, then went out. The cigarette glowed in the dark. "Because I assumed that if you'd wanted me to bankrupt the company, you'd have told me so two years ago."

Jonas ignored the answer. "What else did you want to see me about?"

"The government's starting that antitrust business again," David said. "They want us to separate the theaters from the studio. I sent you all the pertinent data some time ago. We'll have to give them an answer."

Jonas sounded uninterested. "I've already told Mac what to do about that. We'll be able to stall until after the war, when we ought to get a good price for the theaters. There's always an inflation in real estate after a war."

"What if we don't have a war?"

"We'll have a war," Jonas said flatly. "Sometime within the next few years. Hitler is going to find himself in a bind. He'll have to expand or bust the whole phony prosperity he's brought to Germany."

Rosa felt a knot in her stomach. It was one thing to feel that it was inevitable because you always kept hoping you were wrong. But to put it as simply and concisely as Jonas… Sans emotion; one plus one equals two. War. And then there would be no place left to go. Germany would rule the world. Even her father said that the Fatherland was so far ahead of the rest of the world that it would take them a century to catch up.

She stared at David. How could Americans know so little? Did they honestly believe that they could escape this war unscathed? How could he sit there talking business as if nothing were going to happen? He was a Jew. Didn't he, too, feel the shadow of Hitler falling across him?

She heard David chuckle. "Then we're in the same boat," he said. She stared at him in shocked surprise as he went on talking. "What we've done by virtue of enforced economies is to build a false economy for ourselves. One in which we count as profit the savings produced by eliminating the waste from our own body. But we haven't created any new sources of real profit."

"And that's why you've been talking to Bonner?"

She felt David start in surprise. For the first time that evening, his voice wasn't assured. "Yes," he answered.

"I suppose you felt it was quite within your authority to initiate such discussions without prior consultations with me?" Jonas' voice was still quiet.

"As far back as a year ago, I sent you a note asking your permission to talk to Zanuck. I never received a reply and Zanuck signed with Fox."

"If I’d wanted you to talk to him, I’d have let you know," Jonas said sharply. "What makes you think Dan can't do what Bonner can?"

David hesitated. He ground his cigarette out in the ash tray on the arm rest beside him. "Two things," he said cautiously. "I’m not knocking Dan. He's proved himself an extremely able administrator and studio executive. He has developed a program that keeps the factory working at maximum efficiency, but one of the things he lacks is the creative conceit of men like Bonner and Zanuck. The ability to seize an idea and personally turn it into a great motion picture."

He stared at Jonas in the dark. They passed a street lamp, which revealed Jonas for a moment, his eyes hooded, his face impassive. "Lack of creative conceit is the difference between a real producer and a studio executive, which Dan really is. The creative conceit to make him believe he can make pictures better than anyone else and the ability to make others believe it, too. To my mind, you showed more of it in the two pictures you made than Dan has in the fifty-odd pictures he's produced in the last two years."

"And what's the second?" Jonas asked, ignoring the implied flattery of David's words. Rosa smiled to herself as she realized that he'd accepted the remark as fact.

"The second is money," David replied. "Assuming Dan could develop this quality, it would take money to find out. Five million dollars, to make two or three big pictures. Money which you don't want to invest. Bonner brings his own financing. He'll make four pictures a year, and our own investment is minimal only the overhead on each. Between distribution fees and profit-sharing, we can't get hurt, no matter what happens. And his supervision of the rest of the program can do nothing but help us."

"You've thought about what this would do to Dan?" Jonas asked.

David took a deep breath. "Dan is your responsibility, not mine. My responsibility is to the company." He hesitated a moment. "There'd still be a lot Dan could do."

"Not the way you want it," Jonas said flatly. "No business can run with two heads."

David was silent.

Jonas' words cut sharply through the dark like a knife. "All right, make your deal with Bonner," he said. "But it'll be up to you to get rid of Dan."

He turned in the jump seat. "You can take us back to Mr. Woolf's car now, Robair."

"Yes, Mr. Cord."

Jonas turned back to them. "I saw Nevada earlier," he said. "He'll make that series for us."

"Good. We'll begin checking story properties right away."

"You don't have to," Jonas said. "We settled that already. I suggested to him we pick up the character Max Sand from The Renegade and take it from there."

"How can we? At the end of the picture, he rode off into the hills to die."

Jonas smiled. "We'll presume he didn't. Suppose he lived, took another name and got religion. And that he spends the rest of his life helping people who have no one else to turn to. He uses his gun only as a last resort. Nevada liked it."

David stared at Jonas. Why shouldn't Nevada like it? It captured the imagination immediately. There wasn't a Western star in the business who wouldn't jump at the chance of making a series like that. That was what he'd meant by creative conceit. Jonas really had it.

The car came to a stop in front of the hospital. Jonas leaned over and opened the door. "You get off here," he said quietly.

The meeting was over.

They stood in front of his car and watched the big black limousine disappear down the driveway. David opened the door and Rosa looked up at him. "It's been a big night, hasn't it?" she asked softly.

He nodded. "A very big night."

"You don't have to take me back. I can get a cab here. I’ll understand."

He looked down at her, his face serious, then he smiled. "What do you say we go someplace for a drink?"

She hesitated a moment. "I have a cottage at Malibu," she said. "It's not far from here. We could go there if you'd like."