JC2 The Raiders (39 page)

"What makes you think she won't go right back to her old
habits?" Jonas asked.

"She might very well do just that if nobody gives her a chance,"
said Bat.

"You should have checked with me first."

"What good is it to be number-two man in the company if I can't
hire a public relations girl?"

"It's not a business matter," said Jonas. "It's a
personal matter, a family matter."

"Are you telling me to butt out of family matters?"

"She's my
daughter!
"

"She's my sister."

"Half sister."

Bat nodded. "So. Not good enough?"

Jonas got up and walked to the window. He had learned Morris
Chandler's little trick of staring through the telescope while he
took a moment to control his emotions and put his thoughts in order.

Not good enough? What kind of question was that?
Unhappily, he
knew
what kind of question it was. He knew what
his son implied. What was he supposed to do? Apologize? He changed
the subject.

"I have some information for you," he said, turning away
from the telescope and returning to the couch where he had been
sitting. "Your television star has been shacking up in your
beach house."

"How do you know?"

"It's my
business
to know. It's
your
business to know. She works for us. I've had men watching her. And
you haven't? You don't
know
she shacks up in
your
house?"

"Well ... That's
her
business."

"No. It's not her business. It's your business. It's our
business. She works for us. She's a property. Besides, I thought you
had some kind of personal commitment from her."

Bat shook his head.

"Okay. I don't care who she lets hump her. Except— Guess
who the guy is?"

"Who?"

"Jo-Ann's friend Ben Parrish."

"Parrish! For God's sake! That son of a bitch!"

"Right. The guy who's screwin' Glenda Grayson is also screwin'
Jo-Ann and also screwin' you."

"That son of a bitch," Bat muttered.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there's not more to it," said
Jonas. "Parrish has a reputation for hustling. What you want to
bet he's trying to get her agency contract or something like that?"

"What can we do about it?" asked Bat.

"I've already done something about it," said Jonas.

The offices for Cord Productions were on the
grounds of the Cord soundstages in West Hollywood. Jo-Ann had a small
office with a window overlooking the parking lot. Arthur Mawson,
producer for the
Glenda Grayson Show
, was accustomed to
handling his own public relations, but he had his orders from the
younger Mr. Cord and gave Jo-Ann as much responsibility as he could.
What she did mostly was take telephone calls from reporters and
answer fan letters.

Glenda Grayson's interviews and mail were handled by her agent Sam
Stein and his PR staff. Guest stars also had their own staffs.
Jo-Ann's responsibilities involved only inquiries and mail directed
to the production company. It was not a demanding job, and she looked
for ways to give it more stature, to give herself a more active role
in the business.

Whether she improved the job or not, Jo-Ann felt good about herself.
For the first time since she was in school, she had a reason for
getting up every morning, a reason for bathing and doing her makeup
and dressing. She had lost weight during her stay in the clinic. They
had insisted she play tennis and swim, and they served planned meals
with calories counted.

She was still fond of Scotch, but for the time being she was able to
recognize her limit and stop. "If you can stop when you should
stop, you're not an alcoholic," she said. She'd be damned if
she'd call for orange juice when everyone else was having a drink.
That would be too humiliating. She wouldn't go to AA either, though
the doctors at the clinic had urged her to. She'd gone to one meeting
and decided AA was a cult.

Her father hadn't seen her, but at twenty-three she'd made a new
image for herself. She had bought new clothes, and they fit her
sleekly. She'd had her hair redone, too: cut shorter and curling
under her ears. This morning she was wearing a cream-white flared
linen skirt and a tight baby-blue cashmere sweater. Her bra lifted
her breasts and thrust them out. Ben liked this outfit, so she wore
it often, particularly when she expected to see him during the day.

Her telephone rang. The receptionist told her a
young woman who had no appointment was asking to see her: a Cynthia
Rawls, who said she was a reporter for the Hollywood
Sketch
.
Jo-Ann was glad enough to have a call from a reporter and told the
receptionist to send her in.

Cynthia Rawls was a gum-chewing bespectacled girl who seemed to think
she played reporter by wearing a pencil in her hair above her right
ear and carrying a steno pad in her left hand.

She handed Jo-Ann a card. "You know our paper?" she asked.

Jo-Ann nodded. The
Sketch
was a supermarket
tabloid. "I've seen it," she said. "I'm not a regular
reader."

Cynthia Rawls nodded. If she read derision in Jo-Ann's comment, she
showed no reaction. "We like to check our facts," she said
earnestly. "Believe it or not, we check our facts closer than
most any other paper. In our line, you can't afford to publish if you
don't check your facts."

"I can understand," said Jo-Ann.

"So ... I tried to check with Mr. Stein, but he just won't talk.
This has to do with Glenda Grayson, you understand. Your star?"

"What makes you think I can — or will — tell you
anything Sam Stein won't tell you?"

"Maybe you can't — or won't," said Cynthia Rawls.
"But I figure I have an obligation to run the story by you."
She handed Jo-Ann a couple of typewritten pages. "If you want to
deny any of that, we'll check the facts further."

Jo-Ann scanned the sheets.

Cozy, cozy, cozzy! Things have gotten really cozy between TV
superstar /// Glemnda Grayson and Hollywood hiustler Benjamimn
Parrish, otherwizse known as agent, sometime smalltime producer, and
all-around man-about-town.

No more "quickies" in hot-sheet motels for the one-time
stripper and her new man. She madkes Benny-boy welcome these days in
the beachfront house she used to sheare with money-boy Jonas "Bat"
Cord.

So far as we know, Mr. Cord has raised no objection. Like his
notorious father, Jeonas Cord II, "Bat" has many irons in
the fire. Monogany is not a Cord family tradition.

Our sources for this story are beyond question. Our informer nails it
cold.

"I'm sorry about the way I use your family name," said
Cynthia Rawls. "I guess it can't be any surprise, though, can
it?"

Jo-Ann stared at the young woman with cold eyes, for the better part
of a minute, before she said, "I want to know the name of your
informer."

"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.