Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

"No, he didn't."

"And I bet you're supposed to call him when you get home."

She smiled and nodded.

"All right. I like Sam, but I don't know how he'll react to your leaving the Grayson show. There could be a conflict of interests there, if you see what I mean. He might think it will damage the Grayson show when I take you out of it, and after all Glenda's his chief client."

"I see what you mean. But I don't think Sam would stand in the way of my— "

"No, but he might lose Glenda. I'll talk to him. We'll talk to him together. If the whole thing is okay with him, then it's okay with us. If he has a problem, I think you should get another agent."

"Do you have somebody in mind?" she asked, and he could hear in her muted voice that she guessed he did. Margit was small, and she was quiet and modest, but she was shrewd. Far from being overwhelmed by the proposal he was putting before her, she was even thinking ahead of him.

"Yes, I do. My daughter is married to Ben Parrish. I don't like the guy, and I don't trust him. And you shouldn't either. But we can stick him out front as your ostensible agent. You and I will write the contract ourselves, whether he likes it or not. You can ask Sam to review it in confidence, if you want to. Or get a Hollywood lawyer to look it over. I'm thinking of a two-year contract. If the show flops, we'll put you back on the Glenda Grayson Show , with bigger billing, and I'll see to it that they write better stuff for you."

"Mr.— Jonas. I'm grateful to you."

He put his hand on hers again. This time he closed his fingers around her hand. "Will you do something for me? If you say no, it's okay. A no won't kill the deal we've been talking about. But ever since I first saw you on television I've thought about what a vision it would be if you danced nude. Would you do that for me, Margit?"

Her face flushed, and she nodded.

"I have all kinds of records," he said, pointing to a stereo system. "Pick out something for your music."

She undressed first, pulling the skirt over her head, then pulling off the leotards. She had no pubic hair. She saw his surprised stare at her naked pudenda, and she self-consciously covered herself with her hand. "I can't risk wisps of hair showing around the edges of leotards," she said. "So I shave it."

He nodded. "You're a vision," he said.

She went to the stereo cabinet and looked through his collection of records.

She chose the song "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" from South Pacific . It was lively music, and she performed a lively dance. The next band on the record was "Younger Than Springtime," and to that she danced sinuously. Jonas was enthralled.

She came to the couch, sat down, and took another swallow of Irish whiskey. Her skin gleamed with a trace of perspiration. She made no move toward putting her clothes back on.

"Margit, you are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," Jonas said in complete sincerity.

"I guess it's gonna be just like Sam told me," she said softly.

"Okay, fill me in, Eddie."

Angie sat at a table in the coffee shop of the Flamingo facing a man who had once been her brother-in-law. Eddie Latham. Jerry's brother. Seven years younger than Jerry, he was just thirty-one, and he looked like Jerry, though Jerry had been only twenty-five when he was killed in the Normandy Invasion. Eddie had been only fourteen when she saw him last, not long before she was arrested.

"Ma died a couple years ago," said Eddie. "She always thought you ought to've kept in touch."

"Maybe I should have," said Angie. "But she didn't keep in touch either. I was in jail three months in Manhattan. She came to see me once. I was in the reformatory thirty-nine months, and I got two letters from her. Anyway, I'm sorry you lost her, Eddie. How old was she?"

"She was sixty-four. Had a bad heart the last few years."

"So why have you come to see me?" Angie asked.

"I'd have looked you up a long, long time ago if I could've found you," he said. "I always thought Jerry married the prettiest girl in town. After Jerry was killed, I got the crazy idea I'd go to West Virginia and meet you when you came out of the slammer. But guess where I was: at Fort Dix, drafted, taking basic training. I was sent to the Pacific, but the war ended before I ever fired a shot or anybody fired one at me. I came home. I tried to find you. You won't believe this, but I hired a private eye. The last address the Federal Bureau of Prisons had for you was White Plains. You'd been given final release, and they didn't know where you'd gone. I gave up. Then a couple months ago I saw your picture in the paper: director of a big corporation. I said, Hey, that's Angie! So, first chance I got, I came to Vegas."

Angie smiled and shook her head.

"Simple story," said Eddie. He glanced around and frowned as if the bright bustle of the coffee shop offended him — not the right setting for what he apparently meant to be a solemn and significant conversation. "So where did you go in 1945, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I married again," she said. "Wyatt. We went to California, then came here. I've been here ever since."

"You and Jonas Cord must have a very friendly relationship," said Eddie.

Angie smiled and nodded. "Very friendly," she agreed.

Eddie took a package of Camels and a lighter from his jacket pocket. He offered her a cigarette, and she shook her head. Jonas had smoked little for years and had stopped smoking entirely after the heart attack. She didn't smoke in his presence, which meant in effect that she had stopped, too. Eddie lit the unfiltered Camel, drew the smoke down deep, and blew it out through his nose.

"I figured that," he said. He grinned. "I came along too early and then too late."

"You must be married."

"I was for six years. Two kids. She has them."

"I can't believe you came to Vegas to see me just for old times' sake, just because you're a romantic," said Angie. "What business are you in, Eddie?"

He stared into his coffee cup and took another deep drag on his cigarette. "That's the point, Angie," he said. "Somebody asked me to talk to you."

Captain Frank's was a fish restaurant on Cleveland's Ninth Avenue Pier. On a day on the cusp of spring, the view from the broad windows was of an angry green Lake Erie, its waves whipped up, spray flying and visible like snowflakes against the gray sky. The place was very well known in Cleveland, and well thought of.

A round table for six was saved every day for Carlo Vulcano, and rare was the day when he was not at his table. On days when he was not there, no one sat at his table, even his friends, for fear he would come in and find someone he did not want to talk to that day sitting at his table. People sat at his table only at his specific and personal invitation — usually four or five men, today only one.

That one was Eddie Latham.

"So. You are not able to report success."

Eddie shook his head. "I am sorry, Don Carlo. I did all I could."

"Did you offer to marry her?"

"I promised her what you promised: a villa on a Brazilian beach. I told her it was not too late to have children. But— She is loyal to the man. She thinks of him as her great benefactor. I think she is in love with him, Don Carlo."

"You invoked the memory of your brother?"

"She said we had to face a fact. Jerry was a grifter. That's what she called him, a grifter. She said that's what he was, at best."

"She told you nothing, then?"

"Don Carlo ..." Eddie turned up the palms of his hands. "I did everything I could."

"Did you speak of exposing her criminal record?"

"She says Cord knows about it."

Carlo Vulcano turned his face away from Eddie and for a long moment stared at the pitching gray-green water of the lake. "The newspapers who were so intrigued with her appointment to the CE board of directors did not take the trouble to discover it. I wonder— "