"I can see my father's faults," said Bat. "Among them is that he is not very well educated and has a limited perspective."
"Don't underestimate him. Above all, you must always remember that he is capable of lying," she said.
"So am I," said Bat.
"But you must be able to tell the difference, to know when he is and when he isn't. And let me ask you this: Do you have any personal feeling toward him at all?"
Bat drew a breath and blew it out. "I suppose so," he said without conviction. "I can't ignore the genes, can I? Not entirely. No. They're in me. Which means I can out-Jonas Jonas. Maybe. He never had to contend with the likes of me before: a man who's got the same stuff in him as he's got in him."
"'Out-Jonas Jonas,'" she repeated quietly. "Do you really think you can?"
"Why not?"
14
1
JO-ANN WAS ANGRY AND RESENTFUL. LIFE HAD CRAPPED on her. For fourteen years her father had refused even to acknowledge she was his daughter. Then he had. There had been a few halfway good years. Then he'd walked away from her and her mother to duck a subpoena, and the next thing they knew he had acquired a grown son.
On Christmas night she lay alone in bed. The next room was shared by her newfound half brother and his girlfriend, and Jo-Ann could hear their exuberant coupling — humping was the word that came to her mind. In the master bedroom her father was no doubt doing the same with his girlfriend.
Jo-Ann could see the attraction this Angie had for her father. The woman was of course a great deal younger than her mother, and she was superficially glamorous, with a hard edge to her that spoke "hooker" to the girl. If Angie wasn't that, she was something like. Jo-Ann could see it on her face.
She did not hate her father for divorcing her mother once, then getting himself divorced by her, and now bedding with this Angie. Monica had never slept alone. Two nights after Jonas left the house in Bel Air another man — What was his name? Alex — had slept in Monica's bed.
Without even letting her finish her year at Pepperdine, her mother had moved them to New York, so she could be closer to her work and closer to the men she had known for years and now once more was free to welcome to her bedroom. Jo-Ann was able to transfer some credits to Smith, but she had an anomalous status there and could not be sure exactly when she would graduate.
Monica had meant to live in the Cord apartment in the Waldorf Towers, but after she and Jo-Ann had stayed there only a week the lawyers informed them they would have to get out. The lease did not belong to Mr. Cord but to Cord Explosives, which was not a party to the divorce suit. Mrs. Cord could raise her cash settlement demands, since she was not going to get the apartment, but she could not remain there. Besides, Mr. Cord's attorneys had come up with some embarrassing evidence. So, out again. They moved into a furnished apartment on East fifty-ninth Street.
That was one of the problems. They had moved too much. Sometimes they had tried to follow after her grandfather, whose name was Winthrop. She remembered that old man: a nauseating drunk. He had done only one good thing — he had died saving her father's life. The good thing he'd done was die; saving her father's life had been extra.
The brother. The newfound brother. Her father was ecstatic to have found a third Jonas, even if he did call himself Bat. He was what she wasn't and could never be: a male. Her father was not subtle about what he had in mind. This son who had dropped on him like something from heaven was going to be his heir-in-chief and the next head of the family business.
She had never imagined she would be the head. Her mother had explained to her that, although she would probably inherit most of the Cord stock, her father would arrange a voting trust or something of the kind so that she would not be able to control the business, not even to exercise much influence over it.
In her naivete she had speculated on how her father might react if she married well — well, that is, in terms of a young man with demonstrated intelligence and maybe an MBA from Harvard. Would he take him into the business and confide in him? When she dated, she appraised young men in terms of how her father might react to them. So ... She need not worry about that anymore. She would date for fun now. She'd find herself a stud and have a good time.
She would not go on sleeping alone, either. Nobody else did. This house tonight was a goddamned whorehouse! As she pressed fingers into herself and tried to find some relief, she was glad she had hit the Scotch and brandy bottles every chance she got. For the time being bottles were damned important to her. At least she would go to sleep. At least she could go to sleep ...
2
Nevada understood her feelings, and maybe he was the only one who did. Nevada understood more than most people — and more certainly than either her father or her mother. She was glad she'd had a chance to talk with him. Glad and ... then for a different reason, not glad.
The family hadn't even flown out here together. Her flight had landed at San Francisco, where Nevada met her at the airport. An Inter-Continental Airlines company plane, a Beech Baron, had flown them to the ranch landing strip. She had been the first to arrive. The Beech went back to pick up her new brother and his girlfriend, and she had been alone at the ranch with Nevada.
They'd had horses saddled and had gone out to ride across the sandy, rocky countryside.
"You always was a natural in the saddle. Shame your parents decided to move you to California."
"I think I could have been happy here."
"Uhmm. That mean you're not, where you are?"
"I might be. But who knows how long I'll be there before I'm packed up and sent somewhere else? There's nothing permanent, Nevada."
"Don't feel like you got no roots down," he said.
Jo-Ann shrugged. She frowned at a coyote limping across the ground in front of them. It had been bitten by a rattlesnake apparently and was dying. Nevada pulled a .30-30 Winchester from its scabbard on his saddle, took aim, and put the creature out of its misery.
"I'm shoved this way and the other," she said. "Obviously, I've got nothing of my own. I'm so — Nevada, I'm so goddamned dependent!"
"Who ain't, your age? Of course me, I had to go out younger. But that was another time, another place. You're the daughter of Jonas and Monica. You gotta get your education and be smart and sophisticated-like. Who's not dependent at that time of life?"
"Do you believe that man he found in Mexico is really his son?" she asked.
"I expect he is," said Nevada. "I remember the girl. Sonja Batista. First thing he had to do after he sudden-like inherited everything was go to Germany to see how they made plastics, since that was what his daddy had bought into. He took Sonja Batista with him. I was surprised when he didn't marry her. Pretty thing, she was. All this was before he met your mother."
"That wouldn't have made any difference. They never really loved each other. She was a piece of ass. He was a cock. That's all either of them ever wanted."
"Young lady," said Nevada sternly, "you shouldn't use them kind of words. Anyhow, you're wrong. I don't know what happened, but they did love each other. At least twice. Once when they made you. Once when they got together again. I didn't see the first part. I saw the second. You got a point if you wanta say they're not the kind of folks that fall in love in the romantic way. But don't put 'em down, Jo-Ann. Love ain't always a lifetime thing."