Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

She never showed her breasts again. What was more, she had decided the garter belt, stockings, and hat costume was brazen and inelegant. It imposed a limit.

"The tits got you the good jobs, baby," Gib argued. "Don't be so damned determined to put 'em away. Without the tits, you could still be working the Catskills summers, waiting tables at noon and getting paid five percent of what you've been making. The guy at Casa Pantera was right about the garter-belt outfit, too. With your skin, it's sensational."

The night of September 20, 1946, a man knocked on the door of her dressing room. She let him in, and he introduced himself.

"My name is Sam Stein," he said. "Here is my card."

Samuel L. Stein

Talent Agency

Los Angeles New York London

She met with him for lunch the next day. Gib Dugan came with her.

The little man with the bald head and tiny face was blunt and specific. "I can book you into a club in Dallas," he said. "For sure. Three weeks. A thousand a week. After that I've got a place in Houston in mind. And after that New Orleans. By the time you do those three you should be ready for Los Angeles. Get your act really straightened out and tuned up, I can book you into just about any club in the country."

"Just what needs to be 'straightened out'?" Gib asked, almost indignant.

"In the first place, we put clothes on her," said Sam Stein. "A girl with her talent doesn't need to run around half naked. That's in the first place."

"What else?" Glenda asked.

"Your funny-girl stuff is too bland. No bite in it. It sparks once in a while, but I have a sense you're holding something back. It's too Hollywoodish. Your bio says you worked the comedy clubs in New York. You didn't work them with this kind of stuff."

"I used to have a tough little monologue," said Glenda.

"I'd like to hear it," said Sam. "Could we go up to my suite?"

"She was difficult to book with that act," said Gib.

"Are you her agent?"

"Well, not formally. I've been helping her with bookings."

"Then suppose you let me worry about where I can book her with what kind of act."

In the Dallas club, two months later, Glenda came on stage in a tight white dress glittering with spangles. She delivered a few sharp lines of monologue, then carried her microphone around the stage as she sang. "I Got Rhythm" from Girl Crazy. "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" from Porgy and Bess. "The Lady Is a Tramp" from Babes in Arms. "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat. And from Anything Goes, "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" and the title song.

Tossing the microphone to the piano player, who usually deftly caught it, she snatched off her dress and draped it over the piano, revealing a spangled red leotard in which she danced to "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" from On Your Toes. Winded, she climbed on a stool and did her monologue, using the line "Golda, for the sake of your family change your name! Please! " She finished with a spirited, energetic reprise of "Anything Goes."

Sam Stein had secured all the permissions she needed to use this music. He brought her records and let her hear how the stars of the shows had done the songs. The first-night audience loved her. The club owners loved her. But the next morning Sam called her to his suite, and they went to work. He pulled a song and substituted another. He pulled lines from her monologue and suggested replacements.

He changed the costume. When she unzipped and stepped out of the dress the second night, she was wearing a simple black dance leotard and dark sheer stockings held up by blood-red garters. Her upper legs were bare, once again taking advantage of the dramatic contrast between her white skin and the dark fabrics of her costume. Also, Sam had recalled the black hat. She picked it up off the piano and set it on her blond head.

The owners would have extended her contract for an additional three weeks, but she was already under contract to the club in Houston. She did three weeks there and went on to New Orleans, as Sam had promised.

"I only got one more problem, Glenda," he said to her over lunch in New Orleans. He gestured with his hand, indicating the tipping back of a bottle, with a clucking of his tongue to suggest the liquor chugging out.

"I got nerves, Sam," she said.

"You're supposed to have nerves. You can't do what you do without nerves. When do you suppose you stop having nerves? When you get to be a number-one star? No. I can tell you. You'll always have nerves. It goes with the territory."

"You weren't at your best last Wednesday night in Houston," said Gib. "In fact, you were a hell of a lot off your best."

"Oh, fuck off!" she snapped at Gib. "What'm I supposed to do?" she asked Sam. "Go on the wagon?"

Sam shook his head. "Airplane pilots have a rule," he said. "I think it's 'Eight hours bottle to throttle.' Let's say four. Or five. Then have enough to help you come down after the night's shows. Have a drink or two at lunch. But —"

"All right ," she interrupted. "Do it right, Glenda. So you guys can make money off me."

"Sam ... ?"

"Glenda."

"Come help me, Sam. You're the only friend I've got. Gib bugged out. Not only that ... He stole my lucky hat!"

Sam took her home.

"So, Rabbi Graustein," he said to her father. "You are a holy man. Wiser than God. Hmm?"

"You are a shegetz ," said Rabbi Mordecai Graustein.

Sam shrugged. "And you are a klutz. None of us are perfect."

"I obey the Law," said the rabbi stiffly.

"Where does the Law tell you to throw away a daughter?" Sam asked. "Why should a daughter honor a father when the father does not honor her? Golda is a fine young woman. For every man, woman, and child who has heard of you, a thousand have heard of her. And soon it will be more."

"Is this a value?" asked Rabbi Graustein. "Being widely heard of?"

"I wish she were my daughter," said Sam.

Glenda smiled shyly. "You're not old enough, Sam," she said.

Rabbi Mordecai Graustein glared at his daughter. By her little smile, her little joke, she had trivialized the conversation, trivialized him . "So," he said curtly. He stood.

"Uriel Acosta," said Glenda to her father, "was made to lie down across the doorway of the Amsterdam synagogue, and all the men of the congregation stepped over him as they walked out. If you think you can do that to me, you are the klutz Sam says you are."

BAT TOOK TIME OFF FROM THE PROBLEMS OF producing and selling the first Glenda Grayson show to fly to Northampton, Massachusetts, for Jo-Ann's graduation.

He met Monica Cord for the first time. She came to Northampton in the company of a syndicated political cartoonist named Bill Toller, whose work appeared in more than a hundred newspapers. Like Norman Rockwell he sometimes drew himself and so had fashioned his own image: that of a broad-shouldered, heavy-set man in a cardigan sweater, sitting over his drafting table, smoking a pipe, and peering at blank paper with an expression of comic frustration. In person he was a better-looking man than his self-caricature. He did smoke a pipe and had one in his pocket as he sat beside Monica at the graduation ceremony.

Anticipating the appearance of Bill Toller at the graduation — and not to be compelled to face his ex-wife in the company of a man while he was alone — Jonas brought Angie. She drew stares and comments as always.

Bat called Toni Maxim in Washington and asked her to come to Northampton. His father liked Toni. So did Jo-Ann, he thought. If he had shown up in Northampton with Glenda Grayson, he would have made tension and a scandal. Anyway, he wanted to keep his relationship with Toni, and inviting her to be with him on an important family occasion made up for half a dozen occasions when he might have seen her and didn't. Toni was the right choice for this weekend.