Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

"Oh, you have to understand I can't tell you that."

"Yes, you can. You face two alternatives, Miss Rawls. I think you know that playing games with the Cords is not wise. If my father can't defeat you in a libel suit, he might just buy your newspaper. He's done it before, you know. It's not a freedom of the press issue. My father might decide to convert the Hollywood Sketch into the weekly Dairy Reporter. What do you know about cows, Miss Rawls?"

Cynthia Rawls tried at first to play the bold reporter. She shrugged and smirked. Then she licked her lips, deflated, and asked, "What is the second alternative?"

"Give me the name of your source," said Jo-Ann, "and I might be able to cooperate with you. You've got a little story. I might be able to make it a big one."

As the reporter pondered, Jo-Ann congratulated herself. She was a by-God Cord! This was the way Cords played it. And she'd destroy Ben Parrish — for she had no doubt that what this girl reporter had written was true.

"Miss ... Miss Cord, I— "

" Who is your source? "

"Miss Cord ... You've got me between a rock and a hard place."

Jo-Ann raised her chin. "When you get a few more years behind you, Miss Rawls, you will become accustomed to that. This is an easy one. You've got alternatives. Most people don't."

"It's more difficult than you realize. The source called my editor. He recorded the call, like he records all that kind of calls. He played the tape for me. You're not gonna believe who it was."

"Well, try me," said Jo-Ann icily.

"Miss Cord ... It was your father!"

Jo-Ann could not dissemble. The reporter saw her flush and stiffen. "So," she muttered. "My father. You think it was my father on the phone."

"Do you deny it?"

Jo-Ann considered for a brief moment, then shook her head. Of course she wouldn't deny it. It made sense more than one way. "I don't deny it. More than that, I can tell you that everything he said is absolutely true. I can tell you something more. Ben Parrish has a certain, uh, reputation . I'm sure you know what that is."

"That he's hung like a horse?"

"He'd make a stallion jealous. Do you want to know how I can testify to that?"

"I'm afraid to ask," said Cynthia Rawls.

"You can guess. At the same time, I'm glad you came here today. I'd suspected somebody was leaking a story, but I didn't know for sure. Especially, I didn't know who."

"But your father knew. How could he know what you didn't know?"

"I told you it's always a mistake to mess around with Jonas Cord. He finds out what he's interested in finding out. He didn't tell me. He wanted me to read it in the newspaper."

"How's he gonna react when he reads this extra stuff I'll be putting in the story?"

"He won't buy out the paper over that."

"Well gee, thanks, Miss Cord. I'm glad we met."

"He told her he was in love with her. She believed him."

Jo-Ann would meet Ben only over lunch, only in a public place where there could not be a scene. There was a scene anyway, of sorts. People stared at them. Some laughed. They were surrounded in the restaurant by people who would have sworn they never looked at a supermarket tabloid, but they glanced at Ben Parrish and Jo-Ann Cord and recognized them as two of the people shown on the front page of this week's Sketch .

The story had made front page, complete with photographs, none flattering. The picture of Glenda Grayson was one that Gib Dugan had distributed of her fourteen years ago, wearing her signature black hat and nothing more but bra and panties. The picture of Jo-Ann was one taken the night she was led under arrest and handcuffed into a Los Angeles police station. The one of Ben showed him at a swimming pool, paunch spilling out over the top of his trunks, cigarette in one hand, martini glass in the other.

The reporter was more clever, more devious than Jo-Ann had realized. If she had seemed deferential toward the end of the interview, nothing of the sort carried over into her story. She had treated none of them kindly. She called Glenda Grayson "a one-time stripper," Ben a "Hollywood hustler," and Jo-Ann a "swinging rich kid." She called the three of them "a libidinous trio" — libidinous being one of the Sketch 's favorite words.

"I believed you ," said Jo-Ann, carefully holding her voice down. She had drunk more Scotch than her limit allowed, but she was in control of herself. "I was stupid. I hate myself for that. Cords are supposed to be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them."

"Bat told Glenda he loved her and wanted to marry her," said Ben, equally quietly. "Then he went off to New York and began to find excuses not to come back out here to spend weekends with her. She found out he was seeing Toni again, in fact that Toni was living part of the time in the Waldorf Towers apartment. Glenda was upset. I was upset. And you were in jail!"

"Yeah. I recommend that for a short, restful vacation sometime. It beats the drying-out clinic. A cellmate is not holier than thou. Mine was in for the same thing I was and could hardly look down her nose at me."

"We're the same kind of people, you and I," said Ben.

"Is that a suggestion that I forgive and forget?"

"We are the same kind. We enjoy the same things. We— "

"What are you saying to Glenda?" Jo-Ann asked.

"Nothing. She won't take my phone calls. She's moved out of the beach house, you know. Sam Stein is furious. I suppose your father is even more furious."

Jo-Ann smiled and shook her head. "Not at all." She had decided not to tell him who had initiated the Sketch story. "I can think of a way to make him furious."

"Hey! He's not a guy to be played around with."

"What's he gonna do to me ? Shut off my friggin' allowance? Make Bat fire me? What'd you say — that we're the same kind of guys?" She lifted her glass and gulped down Scotch. "Damn right we are. And I'm not going to let that son of a bitch dominate my whole life. I can handle you, stud , and I can handle him, too."

"The Consolidated deal went down the drain yesterday," said Ben.

"Sure. Of course. The fine hand of Jonas. We can screw him ."

"Honey, he's not a man to— "

"We fly over to Reno," she said. "Tonight. See how he likes that ."

Jonas paced the living-room-office in his suite in The Seven Voyages, his talk fast and angry. Bat, sitting on a couch with his legs stretched out before him, watched and listened. He had begun to worry about his father. Jonas, though as fully recovered from his heart attack as he would ever be, isolated himself more and more in the hotel and rarely ventured out. In the ten months since the attack he had not returned once to New York and had flown to Los Angeles only twice. He managed his businesses from the suite, using half a dozen telephone lines. In the suite across the hall, converted into offices for staff, a teletype chattered constantly, sending and receiving. The long coffee table that served as his desk was strewn with the yellow paper torn off the machine.

For a few weeks he had let his beard grow but had shaved it off when it came out grayer than his hair. He didn't wear business suits anymore, or even jackets and slacks. He wore wrinkled khakis with golf shirts and sometimes cardigan sweaters.

"How the hell can a man focus his attention on business when he has to contend with damned foolishness like this?" he barked.

The damned foolishness he referred to was the newspaper story reporting Jo-Ann's marriage to Ben Parrish. It was a short, factual story in the Los Angeles Times . Probably he had not seen the coverage in the Sketch , which featured a photo of the newlyweds strolling hand-in-hand on the beach, he in a pair of boxer trunks, she in a spectacularly brief bikini. The beach was the one below Bat's beach house. Since Glenda had moved out, he had turned the house over to Jo-Ann.