ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

I turned and walked back to the window.

"That's fine, Jonas," McAllister said. "But you haven't told us who the officers will be."

"You're chairman of the board, Mac," I said. "Dan, president. David, executive vice-president." I took a swallow from my glass. "Any more questions?"

They looked at each other, then Mac turned back to me. "While you were away, David had a study made. The company needs about three million dollars of revolving credit to get through this year if we're to maintain the current level of production."

"You'll get a million dollars," I said. "You'll have to make do with that."

"But Jonas," Dan protested. "How do you expect me to make the kind of pictures I want to make if you won't let us have the money?"

"If you can't do it," I snarled, "then get the hell out and I'll get someone who can."

I could see Dan's face whiten. He closed his lips grimly and didn't answer. I looked from him to the others. "The same thing goes for all of you. From now on, I’m through playing wet nurse to the world. Any man that doesn't deliver can get out. From now on, nobody bothers me about anything. If I want you, I’ll get in touch with you. If you have anything to report put it in writing and send it to my office. That's all, gentlemen. Good night."

As the door closed behind them, I could feel the hard, angry knot tightening in my gut. I looked out the window. Forest Hills. I wondered what kind of schools they had out there that a kid like Jo-Ann could go to.

I swallowed the rest of my drink. It didn't untie the knot; it only pulled it tighter. Suddenly I wanted a woman.

I picked up the phone and called Jose, the headwaiter down at the Rio Club. "Yes, Mr. Cord."

"Jose," I said. "That singer with the rumba band. The one with the big- "

"Eyes," he interrupted, laughing quietly. "Yes, Mr. Cord. I know. She'll be at your place in half an hour."

I put down the telephone and walked back to the table. I took the bottle to the window with me while I filled my glass. I'd learned something tonight.

People would pay any price for what they really wanted. Monica would live in Queens so she could keep her daughter. Dan would swallow my insults so he could make pictures. Woolf would do anything to prove he could run the company better than his uncle Bernie. And Mac kept on paying the price for the security I'd given him.

When you got down to it, people all had their price. The currency might differ. It could be money, power, glory, sex. Anything. All you needed to know was what they wanted.

A knock came on the door. "Come in," I called.

She came into the room, her dark eyes bright, her long black hair falling down her back almost to her hips, the black gown cut way down in front showing white almost to her navel. She smiled at me. "Hello, Mr. Cord," she said, without the accent she used in the cafe. "How nice of you to ask me up."

"Take off your dress and have a drink," I said.

"I’m not that kind of girl," she snapped, turning and starting for the door.

"I’ve got five hundred dollars that says you are."

She turned back to me, a smile on her lips, her fingers already busy with the zipper at the back of her dress. I turned and looked out the window while she undressed.

There weren't as many lights in Queens as there were in Manhattan. And what few lights there were weren't as bright. Suddenly, I was angry and I yanked the cord releasing the Venetian blind. It came down the window with a crash and shut out the city. I turned back to the girl.

She was staring at me with wide eyes. All she had on was a pair of skin-tight black sheer panties, and her hands were crossed over her bosom, hiding only the nipples of her large breasts. "What did you do that for?" she said. "No one out there can see in here."

"I'm tired of looking at Queens," I said and started across the room toward her.

____________________

1

David Woolf walked into the hotel room and threw himself down on the bed fully clothed, staring up at the dark ceiling. The night felt as if it were a thousand years old, even though he knew it was only a little past one o'clock. He was tired and yet he wasn't tired; he was elated and yet, somehow, depressed; triumphant and yet there was the faint bitter taste of intangible defeat stirring within him.

This was the beginning of opportunity, the first faint dawn of his secret ambitions, hopes and dreams. Then why this baffling mixture of emotions? It had never been like this before. He'd always known exactly what he wanted. It had been very simple. A straight line reaching from himself to the ultimate.

It must be Cord, he thought. It had to be Cord. There could be no other reason. He wondered if Cord affected the others in the same way. He still felt the shock that had gone through him when he entered the suite and saw him for the first time since the night Cord had left the board meeting to fly to the Coast.

Fifteen days had passed, two weeks during which panic had set in and the company had begun to disintegrate before his eyes. The whispering of the employees in the New York office still echoed in his ears, the furtive, frightened, worried glances cast as he passed them in the corridor. And there had been nothing he could do about it, nothing he could tell them. It was as if the corporation lay suspended in shock, awaiting the transfusion that would send new vitality coursing through its veins.

And now, at last, Cord sat there, a half-empty bottle of bourbon in front of him, a tortured, hollow shell of the man they had seen just a few short weeks ago. He was thinner and exhaustion had etched its weary lines deeply into his cheeks. But it was only when you looked into his eyes that you realized it wasn't a physical change that had taken place. The man himself had changed.

At first, David couldn't put his finger on it. Then, for a brief moment, the veil lifted and suddenly he understood. He sensed the man's unique aloneness. It was as if he were a visitor from another world. The rest of them had become alien to him, almost like children, whose simple desires he had long ago outgrown. He would tolerate them so long as he found a use for them, but once that purpose was served he would withdraw again into that world in which he existed alone.

The three of them had been silent as they came down in the elevator after leaving Cord's suite. It wasn't until they stepped out into the lobby and mingled with the crowd that was coming in for the midnight show on the Starlight Roof that McAllister spoke. "I think we'd better find a quiet spot and have a little talk."

"The Men's Bar downstairs. If it's still open," Pierce suggested.

It was and when the waiter brought their drinks, McAllister lifted his glass. "Good luck," they echoed, then drank and placed their glasses back on the table.

McAllister looked from one to the other before he spoke. 'Well, from here on in, it's up to us. I wish I could be more direct in my contribution," he said in his somewhat stilted, formal manner. "But I'm an attorney and know almost nothing about motion pictures. What I can do, though, is to explain the reorganization plan for the company that Jonas approved before the deal was actually consummated."

It wasn't until then that David had got any idea of how farseeing Jonas had been – retiring the old common stock in exchange for new shares, the issuance of preferred stock to meet certain outstanding debts of the corporation and debentures constituting a mortgage lien on all the real properties of the company, including the studio and theaters, in exchange for his putting up a million dollars' working capital.

The next item McAllister covered was their compensation. David and Dan Pierce would be offered seven-year employment contracts with a salary starting at sixty-five thousand dollars and increasing thirteen thousand dollars each year until the expiration of the agreement. In addition, each would be reimbursed completely for his expenses and bonused, if there were profits, to the amount of two and one half per cent, which could be taken either in stock or in cash.