Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

"The word about you is that you're both tough and smart. That's what I've always heard about you," said Bat.

"Yeah? Well, you've also heard that I'm a ruthless, rapacious son of a bitch. Right?"

Bat nodded. "I've heard that."

"Okay. Well, I've done something, too; I've built something. But where does it all go if what happened to my father happens to me? And of course it's gonna happen, eventually. What I need is a son to take over the way I did."

Bat frowned. " My god , what are you saying?"

"What's it sound like? I want you to come into the business. If you're not interested in it, everything's going to wind up in the hands of somebody not named Cord, somebody that's got nothing of me in him and nothing of my father. No Cord genes. Lawyers, accountants ... pencil pushers."

"I want to practice law a few years at least. Long enough to prove I can do it."

"I won't say no to that. But we may not have all the time in the world. I'm forty-eight years old. I'm coming into — What do they call it? The hurricane years. I'm reminded all the time that I don't take very good care of myself. Anyway, if you came into the business, you could be a lawyer at first. Corporate law. Anti-trust. Securities. Tax problems. It will take time to learn what you'd need to know if ... Well, if —"

"I'll have to think about it."

"You do that. I'm offering you a goddamned world , and you'll 'think about it.' Okay. I won't offer a second time. I won't shove it down your throat. But you better make a pretty careful appraisal of what you're accepting or rejecting ... a pretty thorough goddamned appraisal."

"I'll keep it in mind," said Bat. He wondered what Toni would say to this .

Using the excuse that he wanted to drive his new Porsche, Bat drove into town and placed a call from a pay telephone in a gasoline station. On the way, he told Toni what Jonas had said. She was predictably appalled. Toni sat impatiently in the car, waiting while he made his call. She knew who he was calling: his mother in Mexico City.

They spoke Spanish, so the man in the station would not understand. Virgilio picked up an extension phone and listened. Bat told his mother what Jonas was offering.

"I knew from the day you met him that you would give up your career in law and take employment with your father," said Sonja gravely.

"It is an immense opportunity," said Virgilio Escalante. "You may become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men on the continent."

"But you must be realistic about your father," said Sonja. "He is not a modest man. He is not an honest man. Don't forget that he had a motive for telephoning me. He wanted to make a connection with Uncle Fulgencio."

"I can see my father's faults," said Bat. "Among them is that he is not very well educated and has a limited perspective."

"Don't underestimate him. Above all, you must always remember that he is capable of lying," she said.

"So am I," said Bat.

"But you must be able to tell the difference, to know when he is and when he isn't. And let me ask you this: Do you have any personal feeling toward him at all?"

Bat drew a breath and blew it out. "I suppose so," he said without conviction. "I can't ignore the genes, can I? Not entirely. No. They're in me. Which means I can out-Jonas Jonas. Maybe. He never had to contend with the likes of me before: a man who's got the same stuff in him as he's got in him."

"'Out-Jonas Jonas,'" she repeated quietly. "Do you really think you can?"

"Why not?"

JO-ANN WAS ANGRY AND RESENTFUL. LIFE HAD CRAPPED on her. For fourteen years her father had refused even to acknowledge she was his daughter. Then he had. There had been a few halfway good years. Then he'd walked away from her and her mother to duck a subpoena, and the next thing they knew he had acquired a grown son.

On Christmas night she lay alone in bed. The next room was shared by her newfound half brother and his girlfriend, and Jo-Ann could hear their exuberant coupling — humping was the word that came to her mind. In the master bedroom her father was no doubt doing the same with his girlfriend.

Jo-Ann could see the attraction this Angie had for her father. The woman was of course a great deal younger than her mother, and she was superficially glamorous, with a hard edge to her that spoke "hooker" to the girl. If Angie wasn't that, she was something like. Jo-Ann could see it on her face.

She did not hate her father for divorcing her mother once, then getting himself divorced by her, and now bedding with this Angie. Monica had never slept alone. Two nights after Jonas left the house in Bel Air another man — What was his name? Alex — had slept in Monica's bed.

Without even letting her finish her year at Pepperdine, her mother had moved them to New York, so she could be closer to her work and closer to the men she had known for years and now once more was free to welcome to her bedroom. Jo-Ann was able to transfer some credits to Smith, but she had an anomalous status there and could not be sure exactly when she would graduate.

Monica had meant to live in the Cord apartment in the Waldorf Towers, but after she and Jo-Ann had stayed there only a week the lawyers informed them they would have to get out. The lease did not belong to Mr. Cord but to Cord Explosives, which was not a party to the divorce suit. Mrs. Cord could raise her cash settlement demands, since she was not going to get the apartment, but she could not remain there. Besides, Mr. Cord's attorneys had come up with some embarrassing evidence. So, out again. They moved into a furnished apartment on East fifty-ninth Street.

That was one of the problems. They had moved too much. Sometimes they had tried to follow after her grandfather, whose name was Winthrop. She remembered that old man: a nauseating drunk. He had done only one good thing — he had died saving her father's life. The good thing he'd done was die; saving her father's life had been extra.

The brother. The newfound brother. Her father was ecstatic to have found a third Jonas, even if he did call himself Bat. He was what she wasn't and could never be: a male. Her father was not subtle about what he had in mind. This son who had dropped on him like something from heaven was going to be his heir-in-chief and the next head of the family business.

She had never imagined she would be the head. Her mother had explained to her that, although she would probably inherit most of the Cord stock, her father would arrange a voting trust or something of the kind so that she would not be able to control the business, not even to exercise much influence over it.

In her naivete she had speculated on how her father might react if she married well — well, that is, in terms of a young man with demonstrated intelligence and maybe an MBA from Harvard. Would he take him into the business and confide in him? When she dated, she appraised young men in terms of how her father might react to them. So ... She need not worry about that anymore. She would date for fun now. She'd find herself a stud and have a good time.

She would not go on sleeping alone, either. Nobody else did. This house tonight was a goddamned whorehouse! As she pressed fingers into herself and tried to find some relief, she was glad she had hit the Scotch and brandy bottles every chance she got. For the time being bottles were damned important to her. At least she would go to sleep. At least she could go to sleep ...

Nevada understood her feelings, and maybe he was the only one who did. Nevada understood more than most people — and more certainly than either her father or her mother. She was glad she'd had a chance to talk with him. Glad and ... then for a different reason, not glad.