Authors: Robbins Harold
"Speaking of challenges. The Cords are being challenged to get
out of Las Vegas."
"Mafia turf," said Kennedy.
"Hoffa," said Toni. "The Teamsters are making it
difficult for Cord Hotels to build the InterContinental. No strikes.
Just ... coincidences."
"My brother Bobby would be interested. So would Senator
McClellan. I'll talk to Bobby about it."
"Do that, will you, Jack? I'd appreciate it. And have Bobby keep
me informed, okay?"
Ben Parrish enjoyed driving Jo-Ann's Porsche 356. He appreciated fine
cars. It was the only car he'd ever driven in which you might
actually turn off music on the radio and just listen to the engine.
It handled beautifully, too. You didn't have to steer it around a
turn; you just pointed it where you wanted it to go, and the little
coupe would obediently slip through the curve — provided you
didn't ask too much of it and make the rear end come around.
Because he was driving the Porsche, Ben had decided to return to
Santa Monica by way of Mulholland Highway and Topanga Canyon Road. He
was doing just fine, too, pushing seventy most of the time, up to
eighty occasionally, and conceding sixty or below only when he had
to.
His mind was on his wife. She was waiting for him, ready with an
ice-cold vodka martini, for sure, and something more besides that
would melt the ice in that martini.
He'd fallen into shit and come out smelling like roses. He could
stand the old man: Jonas. He had to grit his teeth to be polite and
deferential, but he could do it. He could function as a Cord errand
boy. There was money in it. And status. And there'd be an
inheritance. The girl — Jo-Ann — was a handful in more
ways than one; but she was the most eager to satisfy of any piece of
tail he'd ever had; and whether she'd married him for his long
schlong or to shoot a finger at her father, she was a good wife in
most senses of the term.
She was—
What the hell was this? A car had come up behind him and was blinking
its lights. The guy wanted to pass. Yeah? Well, he'd play hell, too.
Whatever that was back there, it was what men who knew cars called
Detroit Iron, and no Plymouth or Dodge was gonna pass this Porsche,
no matter how much somebody had souped it up.
On the other hand— He was in no condition to
race, really, Porsche or no Porsche. He was in firm control of it,
for sure, but he'd had too much vodka to stretch the car or himself.
What the hell? Let the guy pass. If he had any brains, he'd know he'd
been
let
past.
Ben slowed a little and edged to the right. The car came up on his
left. It was a Plymouth — what a car to be passing a Porsche! —
but obviously modified, its unmuffled engine roaring. He glanced,
trying to get a look at the driver. What? Some crazy kid?
Crazy! Running alongside of him, the Plymouth suddenly lurched right
and slammed the Porsche. Ben fought for control and kept away from
the guardrail. He floored the accelerator, knowing he could, if he
had to, outrun any goddamned Plymouth ever modified; but as the
Porsche gained speed the Plymouth veered right again and slammed
hard. Ben couldn't control it. The Porsche rammed the guardrail.
Metal flew. Glass flew. He hurtled forward and felt his arm break
against the steering wheel.
Jonas sat across the desk from a thirty-two-year-old assistant
district attorney named Carter. The bespectacled young black man was
sufficiently awed to have crushed his cigarette when he noticed that
Mr. Cord did not smoke.
"Have you heard my name, maybe?" Jonas asked.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Cord. Absolutely."
"Well, don't think of me as a guy who's come in your office to
throw his weight around. That's not why I'm here. You're going to do
what you have to do, your duty, and I didn't come to suggest you do
anything else. I'm hoping, though, that my name suggests to you that
I'm not the kind of man who'd come to your office and make wild,
stupid statements he couldn't back up."
"Your name suggests anything but that, Mr. Cord."
"So, what was his blood-alcohol percent?"
"Point-one-seven."
"Drunk," said Jonas.
"Yes. The statute says you shouldn't drive if you've got
point-one-five."
"Marginal?"
"I took part in a test, drinking and blowing
in the meter, so I could relate to those numbers when I have to
present a case to a court," said Carter. "Frankly, Mr.
Cord, if I had point-one-seven in me, I couldn't
find
my car,
much less get the key in the ignition and start it."
Jonas nodded. "Okay, schnocked."
"Yes, sir. I'm afraid that's what Mr. Parrish was."
"Kinda depends on the man, doesn't it?" Jonas suggested.
"I'd be willing to bet I could drink enough to make the meter
show one-point-seven, and I could take a cop out in the car with me
and pass a driver's license test."
The young district attorney smiled. "I'm skeptical about that,
Mr. Cord," he said. "But what's the point?"
"When a man knocks back as much vodka every day as Ben Parrish
has been doing for years, he develops a certain tolerance for it. I
don't like the son of a bitch much, but I'd be willing to ride in a
car with him after he'd had six drinks. My point is, I don't think
what he had to drink is what caused the accident."
"I'm listening, Mr. Cord."
"I don't mean to put down your investigators. I know they're
honest and did what they believed was right. But I have
investigators, too, and I think yours missed some facts. They missed
some because they'd made up their minds what had happened and only
looked for the facts that sustained their theory. They missed others
because they couldn't have known them and couldn't have found them —
unless they know what I know."
The young lawyer reached for his cigarettes, then quickly put them
back in his pocket.
"Go ahead and smoke," said Jonas. "I quit for good
reasons, but you don't need to be uncomfortable."
"Thank you." Carter lit a cigarette. "So, what facts
have we overlooked, Mr. Cord?"
"Ben Parrish's car was smashed in thoroughly on the right side,
where it hit the guardrail, which your investigators' report
emphasizes. But why was the driver's-side door smashed in, too?
Doesn't that suggest something?"
"I suppose it does," said Carter. "What did you have
in mind?"
"Simple enough. Somebody rammed Ben Parrish and forced him into
the guardrail. The big dent in the left door is at the height of an
automobile bumper. Right above that is a smaller dent, with traces of
green paint in it. Somebody rammed him."
"Why would somebody do that?"
"To kill him," said Jonas. "If that guardrail hadn't
held — held really beyond what they're expected to do —
Ben Parrish would have gone into the ravine."
"And what are the facts we couldn't have known?"
"This is where I ask you to believe I'm not the man to come to
you with wild and stupid accusations. Ben Parrish is my son-in-law,
as I suppose you know. Off the record, I'm not very happy about that,
but that's the way it is. I think somebody may have tried to kill him
to get at me. I've made some tough people very angry."
"Can you be more specific?" Carter asked.
"Well ... How much specificity goes with the
smashed-in door on the left side of the car? If he'd gone through the
guardrail and rolled down into the ravine, no one would have noticed
that left door. Even my guys wouldn't have. It would have been
so
simple. Drunk driver hits guardrail, rolls down rocky bank. The
guardrail fouled somebody up."
Carter used his cigarette to give him a moment to think. He inhaled
deeply and let the white smoke trickle out of his mouth. "What
do you want me to do, Mr. Cord?"
"Whatever is right," said Jonas. "Have your
investigators look at the car again. If they and you conclude the
accident wasn't an accident, then the drinking wasn't so significant.
Was it?"
"He broke the law, Mr. Cord. Drinking and driving is dangerous."
"But if he was a victim of attempted murder, that puts a little
different complexion on the case, doesn't it?"
"You're suggesting I drop the drunk-driving case?"
Jonas shook his head. "I don't want to say
anything that so much as
suggests
I'm trying to exert improper
influence. I brought an additional fact to your attention: the left
door. I brought you an idea as to why someone might have tried to
force Ben Parrish off the road and kill him. I hope you'll agree the
case may not be a simple matter of drunk driving. It may be more."
"All right. I'll look into it."
Dave Amory sat with Bat in the Chrysler Building office. Most of
Bat's endemic clutter was hidden under the covers of the rolltop
desks. He faced Bat across the big table that served as desk for the
chief executive officer of Cord Enterprises.
"It's war now, Bat," said Dave. "Teamsters drivers in
four cities — Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Newark —
have refused to make deliveries to InterContinental loading docks,
claiming they are non-standard and unsafe."
"Let independents haul our air freight," said Bat.
Dave shook his head. "We tried it in Chicago, figuring that
would be the safest. They hit the trucks. Somebody dropped concrete
blocks on them as they went under overpasses. Non-union companies are
afraid to touch our air freight."
"Well, Hoffa is not the only guy who can play that game,"
said Bat grimly.
"Be goddamned careful, Bat," said Dave Amory. "Be
goddamned careful."
Detroit
Free Press
:
Jay Fulton, vice president of the International Union of Teamsters
and Warehousemen, was seriously injured last night when a concrete
block, dropped from an overpass on the Jeffries Freeway, shattered
the windshield of his limousine and disabled his driver, causing the
car to veer across the center divider and into the path of an
oncoming sixteen-wheeler.
Fulton, 46, is also a trustee of the Central States Pension Fund.
Hospital officials removed him from the critical list early this
morning, but he remains in guarded condition with fractured ribs, a
punctured lung, a concussion, and a broken arm.
Teamsters President James Hoffa described the attack as "A
cowardly attempt on the part of certain bosses to prevent this union
from protecting its members. Such outrages will never succeed."
Detroit
News
:
Early arrivers at the executive offices of the International Union of
Teamsters and Warehousemen knew something was wrong as soon as they
entered the building this morning.
That smell—
It was the stench from a gooey mixture of tar and kerosene and maybe
some other things, that had been poured into all the drawers in some
sixty file cabinets.
Left atop one of the cabinets was a box of wooden kitchen matches,
suggesting that the files could have been burned if the intruders had
so intended. One secretary, who asked not to be quoted by name, said
the files would not have been any more completely destroyed if they
had been burned. "Who can separate one paper from another?"
she asked. "Who can read anything?"
The Teamsters Union takes some pride in its security. An official who
similarly asked to be unnamed said it was apparent to him that
someone had been paid more to let the files be destroyed than that
someone was being paid to protect them.
"If the bosses can do this to us," he asked plaintively,
"what can't they do?"
"Bat ... Did you do it?"
Bat drew a deep breath and blew it out noisily. They were in bed. In
the past she had not wanted to bring up things like this when they
were in bed. Priorities. Why now?
"Bat ... ?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I just want to know if— Off the record. I'm not asking as
a newspaper reporter. I'm asking as the woman who loves you."
He sighed again. "Look. Jimmy Hoffa is a
thug
. Am I supposed to let thugs destroy my business?"
"Would you kill him?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I won't have to."
"That's not the answer.
Would
you?
Could
you?'
"No."
Toni lay silent for a moment, not sure if she believed what he had
just said. "What does your father think?"
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. She was lying on
her back, staring at the ceiling. "I had a Catholic friend once
who used rubbers so his girlfriend wouldn't get pregnant. I asked him
if that wasn't against the rules, and he said, 'The pope doesn't know
everything.' "
"So ... You out-Jonas Jonas."
Bat reached for the glass that sat on the nightstand and took a sip
of Scotch. "Toni," he said. "Don't try to make
judgments about what I do in business. Sure I mean to out-Jonas
Jonas. I'm gonna out-Jonas him. I'm going to take it away from him.
When he dies. Or sooner."
"Which would you rather?" she asked.
"Sooner," he said.
JONAS SAT ON THE COUCH IN HIS SEVEN VOYAGES SUITE facing a stack of
files and two telephones on the coffee table that by now had become
his favorite of all the desks he'd ever had. It was ten at night, and
the suite was closed now to everyone but him and Angie. He still wore
the blue blazer and crisply creased slacks he had worn during the
business day. Angie was naked. That was what he wanted. He still had
Bat on the telephone from New York, where it was 1 a.m., but his eyes
were on her.
"He's gone," he said to Bat. "Gone like the legendary
Arab who folds his tent and disappears in the night. It's good
riddance, of course, but I imagine it has some meaning."
He was talking about Morris Chandler. During the day, Chandler had
simply disappeared. His clothes were gone from his suite. He had
taken little from his office, but Jonas surmised he had copied any
papers he wanted. He had left no word. His departure had been abrupt
and unexpected.