The Carpetbaggers

"Come off it, Uncle Bernie," David said. "Family's got nothing to do with it. I'm just looking at the facts."

"Facts?" Norman shouted. "Facts is it you want? Well, look at them. Who was it went out and bought Sunspots, a picture that won almost every award? Who? Nobody but me."

"It also lost a million dollars."

That's my fault?" his uncle replied bitterly. "I didn't tell them before I did it? No, prestige they wanted, and prestige they got."

"That's over the dam, Uncle Bernie," David said. "It has nothing to do with today. Nobody cares about that any more."

"I care about it," Norman retorted. "It's my blood they're spilling. I'm the sacrifice they're making to the Golem. But not yet am I dead. When I tell them about the pictures I'm making with Rina Marlowe, I’ll get all the proxies I want."

David stared at his uncle for a moment, then went to the telephone. "Long distance, please," he said. "I want to place a call to the Colton Hospital, Santa Monica, California, room three-o-nine, please."

He glanced at his uncle, who was looking out the window. "Ilene? This is David. How is she?"

"Not good," Ilene said, her voice so low he could scarcely hear her.

"What does the doctor say?"

David heard her begin to sob into the telephone. "Hold on," he said. "This is no time to start breaking down."

"He said – she's dying. That it's a miracle she's lasted this long. He doesn't know what's keeping her alive."

There was a click and the phone went dead in his hand. David turned to his uncle. "Rina won't make another picture for you or anybody else," he said. "She's dying."

The producer stared at him, his face going white. He sank back into a chair. "My God! Then what will happen to the company? She was the one chance we had to stay alive. Without her, the bottom will drop out of the stock, we're finished." He wiped at his face with a handkerchief. "Now even Cord won't bother with us."

David stared at his uncle. "What do you mean?"

"Schmuck!" Norman snapped. "Don't you see it yet? Do I got to draw for you diagrams?"

"See?" David asked, bewildered. "See what?"

"That Cord really don't give a damn about the company," the old man said. "That all he wants is the girl."

"The girl?"

"Sure," Norman said. "Rina Marlowe. Remember that meeting I had with him in the toilet at the Waldorf? Remember I told you what he said? How he wouldn't tell me the courvehs' names because I stole the Marlowe girl from under his nose?"

The light came on suddenly inside David's head. Why hadn't he thought of it? It tied up with the phone call from Cord the night Dunbar killed himself. He looked at his uncle with a new respect. "What are we going to do?"

"Do?" the old man said. "Do? We're going to keep our mouths shut and go down to that meeting. My heart may be breaking but if he offered three million for my stock, he’ll go to five!"

The dream didn't slip away this time when Rina opened her eyes. If anything, it seemed more real than it had ever been. She lay very still for a moment, looking up at the clear plastic tent covering her head and chest. She turned her head slowly.

Ilene was sitting in the chair, watching her. She wished she could tell Ilene not to worry, there really wasn't anything to be afraid of. She had gone through this so many times before in the dream. "Ilene!" she whispered.

Ilene started and got up out of her chair. Rina smiled up at her. "It's really me, Ilene," she whispered. "I'm not out of my head."

"Rina!" She felt Ilene's hand take her own under the sheet. "Rina!"

"Don't cry, Ilene," she whispered. She turned her head to try and see the calendar on the wall but it was too far away. "What day is it?"

"It's Friday."

"The thirteenth?" Rina tried to smile. She saw the smile come to Ilene's face, despite the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. "Call Jonas," Rina said weakly. "I want to see him."

She closed her eyes for a moment and opened them when Ilene came back to the bed. "Did you get him?"

Ilene shook her head. "His office says he's in New York, but they don't know where to reach him."

"You get him, wherever he is!" Rina smiled. "You can't fool me any more," she said. "I’ve played this scene too many times. You call him. I won't die until he gets here." A faint, ironic smile came over her face. "Anyway, nobody dies out here on the weekend. The weekend columns have already gone to press."

JONAS – 1935

____________________

Book Five

1

I pulled the stick back into my belly with a little left rudder. At the same time, I opened the throttle and the CA-4 leaped upward into the sky in a half loop, like an arrow shot from a bow. I felt the G force hold me flat against my seat and bubble the blood racing in my arms. I leveled her off at the top of the loop and when I checked the panel, we were doing three hundred, racing out over the Atlantic with Long Island already far behind us.

I reached forward and tapped the shoulder of the Army flier seated in front of me. "How about that, Colonel?" I shouted over the roar of the twin engines and the shriek of the wind against the plastic bubble over our heads.

I saw him bob his head in answer to my question but he didn't turn around. I knew what he was doing. He was checking out the panel in front of him. Lieutenant Colonel Forrester was one of the real fly boys. He went all the way back to Eddie Rickenbacker and the old Hat in the Ring squadron. Not at all like the old General we'd left on the ground back at Roosevelt Field, that the Army had sent out to check over our plane.

The General flew an armchair back in Purchasing and Procurement in Washington. The closest he ever came to an airplane was when he sat on the trial board at Billy Mitchell's court-martial. But he was the guy who had the O.K. We were lucky that at least he had one Air Corps officer on his staff.

I had tabbed him the minute he came walking into the hangar, with Morrissey, talking up a storm, trotting beside him. There were two aides right behind him – a full colonel and a captain. None of them wore the Air Corps wings on their blouse.

He stood there in the entrance of the hangar, staring in at the CA-4. I could see the frown of disapproval come across his face. "It's ugly," he said. "It looks like a toad."

His voice carried clear across the hangar to where I was, in the cockpit, giving her a final check. I climbed out onto the wing and dropped to the hangar floor in my bare feet. I started toward him. What the hell did he know about streamline and design? His head probably was as square as the desk he sat behind.

"Mr. Cord!" I heard the hissed whisper behind me. I turned around. It was the mechanic. There was a peculiar grin on his face. He had heard the General's remark, too.

"What d'yuh want?"

"I was jus' gettin' ready to roll her out," he said quickly. "An' I didn't want to squash yer shoes."

I stared at him for a moment, then I grinned. "Thanks," I said, walking back and stepping into them. By the time I leached Morrissey and the General, I was cooled off.

Morrissey had a copy of the plans and specs in his hand and was going over them for the benefit of the General. "The Cord Aircraft Four is a revolutionary concept in a two-man fighter-bomber, which has a flight range of better than two thousand miles. It cruises at two forty, with a max of three sixty. It can carry ten machine guns, two cannon, and mounts one thousand pounds of bombs under its wings and in a special bay in its belly."

I looked back at the plane as Morrissey kept on talking. It sure as hell was a revolutionary design. It looked like a big black panther squatting there on the hangar floor with its long nose jutting out in front of the swept-back wings and the plastic bubble over the cockpit shining like a giant cat's eye in the dim light.