The Carpetbaggers Page 2

  I walked past the mixing vats, the presses and the molds and reached the back stairway to my father's office. I started up the steps and looked back at them. A hundred faces smiled up at me. I waved my hand and smiled back at them in the same way I had always done, ever since I first climbed those steps when I was a kid.

  I went through the door at the top of the stairway and the noise was gone as soon as the door closed behind me. I walked down the short corridor and into my father's outer office.

  Denby was sitting at his desk, scribbling a note in his usual fluttery fashion. A girl sat at a desk across from him, beating hell out of a typewriter. Two other persons were seated on the visitor's couch. A man and a woman.

  The woman was dressed in black and she was twisting a small white handkerchief in her hands. She looked up at me as I stood in the doorway. I didn't have to be told who she was. The girl looked enough like her mother. I met her eyes and she turned her head away.

  Denby got up nervously. "Your father's waiting."

  I didn't answer. He opened the door to my father's office and I walked through. He closed the door behind me. I looked around the office.

  Nevada was leaning against the left wall bookcase, his eyes half closed in that deceptive manner of alertness peculiar to him. McAllister was seated in a chair across from my father. He turned his head to look at me. My father sat behind the immense old oak desk and glared. Outside of that, the office was just as I remembered it.

  The dark oak-paneled walls, the heavy leather chairs. The green velvet drapes on the windows and the picture of my father and President Wilson on the wall behind the desk. At my father's side was the telephone table with the three telephones and right next to it was the table with the ever present carafe of water, bottle of bourbon whisky and two glasses. The whisky bottle was about one-third filled. That made it about three o'clock. I checked my watch. It was ten after three. My father was a bottle-a-day man.

  I crossed the office and stopped in front of him. I looked down and met his angry glare. "Hello, Father."

  His ruddy face grew even redder. The cords on his neck stood out as he shouted, "Is that all you got to say after ruining a day's production and scaring the shit out of half the help with your crazy stunts?"

  "Your message was to get down here in a hurry. I got here as quickly as I could, sir."

  But there was no stopping him now. He was raging. My father had that kind of a temper. One moment he would be still and quiet, and the next, higher than a kite.

  "Why the hell didn't you get out of that hotel room when McAllister told you? What did you go to the hospital for? Do you know what you've done? Left yourself wide open for criminal charges as an accomplice abetting an abortion."

  I was angry now. I had every bit as much of a temper as my father. "What was I supposed to do? The girl was bleeding to death and afraid. Was I supposed to just walk out of there and leave her to die alone?"

  "Yes. If you had any brains at all, that's just what you'd have done. The girl died, anyway, and your staying there didn't make any difference. Now those goddam bastards outside want twenty thousand dollars or they'll call for the police! You think I've got twenty thousand dollars for every bitch you plug? This is the third girl in a year you got caught with!"

  It didn't make any difference to him that the girl had died. It was the twenty grand. But then I realized it wasn't the money, either. It went far deeper than that.

  The bitterness that had crept into his voice was the tip-off. I looked at him with a sudden understanding. My father was getting old and it was eating out his gut. Rina must have been at him again. More than a year had passed since the big wedding in Reno and nothing had happened.

  I turned and started for the door without speaking. Father yelled after me. "Where do you think you're going?"

  I looked back at him. "Back to L.A. You don't need me to make up your mind. You're either going to pay them off or you're not. It doesn't make any difference to me. Besides, I got a date."

  He came around the desk after me. "What for?" he shouted. "To knock up another girl?"

  I faced him squarely. I had enough of his crap. "Stop complaining, old man. You ought to be glad that someone in your family still has balls. Otherwise, Rina might think there was something wrong with all of us!"

  His face twisted with rage. He lifted both hands as if to strike me. His lips drew back tightly across his teeth in a snarl, the veins in his forehead stood out in red, angry welts. Then, suddenly, as an electric switch cuts off the light, all expression on his face vanished. He staggered and pitched forward against me.

  By reflex, my arms came out and I caught him. For a brief moment, his eyes were clear, looking into mine. His lips moved. "Jonas – my son."

  Then his eyes clouded and his full weight came on me and he slid to the floor. I looked down at him. I knew he was dead even before Nevada rolled him over and tore open his shirt.

  Nevada was kneeling on the floor beside my father's body, McAllister was on the telephone calling for a doctor and I was picking up the bottle of Jack Daniel's when Denby came in through the door.

  He shrank back against the door, the papers in his hand trembling. "My God, Junior," he said in a horrified voice. His eyes lifted from the floor to me. "Who's going to sign the German contracts?"

  I glanced over at McAllister. He nodded imperceptibly. "I am," I answered.

  Down on the floor, Nevada was closing my father's eyes. I put down the bottle of whisky unopened and looked back at Denby.

  "And stop calling me Junior," I said.

  4

  BY THE TIME THE DOCTOR CAME, WE HAD LIFTED my father's body to the couch and covered it with a blanket. The doctor was a thin, sturdy man, bald, with thick glasses. He lifted the blanket and looked. He dropped the blanket. "He's dead, all right."

  I didn't speak. It was McAllister who asked the question while I swung to and fro in my father's chair. "Why?"

  The doctor came toward the desk. "Encephalic embolism. Stroke. Blood clot hit the brain, from the looks of him." He looked at me. "You can be thankful it was quick. He didn't suffer."

  It was certainly quick. One minute my father was alive, the next moment he was nothing, without even the power to brush off the curious fly that was crawling over the edge of the blanket onto his covered face. I didn't speak.

  The doctor sat down heavily in the chair opposite me. He took out a pen and a sheet of paper. He laid the paper on the desk. Upside down, I could read the heading across the top in bold type. Death Certificate. The pen began to scratch across the paper. After a moment, he looked up. "O.K. if I put down embolism as the cause of death or do you want an autopsy?"

  I shook my head. "Embolism's O.K. An autopsy wouldn't make any difference now."

  The doctor wrote again. A moment later, he had finished and he pushed the certificate over to me. "Check it over and see if I got everything right."

  I picked it up. He had everything right. Pretty good for a doctor who had never seen any of us before today. But everybody in Nevada knew everything about the Cords. Age 67. Survivors: Wife, Rina Marlowe Cord; Son, Jonas Cord, Jr. I slid it back across the desk to him. "It's all right."

  He picked it up and got to his feet. "I'll file it and have my girl send you copies." He stood there hesitantly, as if trying to make up his mind as to whether he should offer some expression of sympathy. Evidently, he decided against it, for he went out the door without another word.

  Then Denby came in again. "What about those people outside? Shall I send them away?"

  I shook my head. They'd only come back again. "Send them in."

  They came in the door, the girl's father and mother, their faces wearing a fixed expression that was a strange mixture of grief and sympathy.

  Her father looked at me. "I'm sorry we couldn't meet under happier circumstances, Mr. Cord."

  I looked at him. The man's face was honest. I believe he really meant it. "I am, too," I said.

  His wife immediately b
roke into sobs. "It's terrible, terrible," she wailed, looking at my father's covered body on the couch.

  I looked at her. Her daughter had resembled her but the resemblance stopped at the surface. The kid had had a refreshing honesty about her; this woman was a born harpy.

  "What are you crying about?" I asked. "You never even knew him before today. And only then to ask him for money."

  She stared at me in shock. Her voice grew shrill. "How can you say such a thing? Your own father lying there on the couch and after what you did to my daughter."

  I got to my feet. The one thing I can't stand is a phony. "After what I did to your daughter?" I shouted. "I didn't do anything to your daughter that she didn't want me to. Maybe if you hadn't told her to stop at nothing to catch me, she'd be alive today. But no, you told her to get Jonas Cord, Jr, at any cost. She told me you were already planning the wedding!"

  Her husband turned to her. His voice was trembling. "You mean to tell me you knew she was pregnant?"

  She looked at him, frightened. "No, Henry, no. I didn't know. I only said to her it would be nice if she could marry him, that's all I said."

  His lips tightened, and for a second I thought he was about to strike her. But he didn't. Instead, he turned back to me. "I'm sorry, Mr. Cord. We won't trouble you any more."

  He started proudly for the door. His wife hurried after him. "But, Henry," she cried. "Henry."

  "Shut up!" he snapped, opening the door and almost pushing her through it in front of him. "Haven't you said enough already?"

  The door closed behind them and I turned to McAllister. "I'm not in the clear yet, am I?"

  He shook his head.

  I thought for a moment. "Better go down to see him tomorrow at his place of business. I think he'll give you a release now. He seems like an honest man."

  McAllister smiled slowly. "And that's how you figure an honest man will act?"

  "That's one thing I learned from my father." Involuntarily I glanced at the couch. "He used to say every man has his price. For some it's money, for some it's women, for others glory. But the honest man you don't have to buy – he winds up costing you nothing."

  "Your father was a practical man," McAllister said.

  I stared at the lawyer. "My father was a selfish, greedy son of a bitch who wanted to grab everything in the world," I said. "I only hope I'm man enough to fill his shoes."

  McAllister rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You'll do all right."

  I gestured toward the couch. "I won't always have him there to help me."

  McAllister didn't speak. I glanced over at Nevada. He had been leaning against the wall silently all the time. His eyes flickered under the veiled lids. He took out a pack of makin's and began to roll a cigarette. I turned back to McAllister.

  "I'm going to need a lot of help," I said.

  McAllister showed his interest with his eyes. He didn't speak.

  "I’ll need an adviser, a consultant and a lawyer," I continued. "Are you available?"

  He spoke slowly. "I don't know whether I can find the time, Jonas," he said. "I've got a pretty heavy practice."

  "How heavy?"

  "I gross about sixty thousand a year."

  "Would a hundred thousand move you to Nevada?"

  His answer came quick. "If you let me draw the contract."

  I took out a pack of cigarettes and offered him one. He took it and I stuck one in my mouth. I struck a match and held it for him. "O.K.," I said.

  He stopped in the middle of the light. He looked at me quizzically. "How do you know you can afford to pay me that kind of money?"

  I lit my own cigarette and smiled. "I didn't know until you took the job. Then I was sure."

  A returning smile flashed across his face and vanished. Then he was all business. "The first thing we have to do is call a meeting of the board of directors and have you officially elected president of the company. Do you think there might be any trouble on that score?"

  I shook my head. "I don't think so. My father didn't believe in sharing. He kept ninety per cent of the stock in his own name and according to his will, it comes to me on his death."

  "Do you have a copy of the will?"

  "No," I answered. "But Denby must. He has a record of everything my father ever did."

  I hit the buzzer and Denby came in.

  "Get me a copy of my father's will," I ordered.

  A moment later, it was on the desk – all official, with a blue lawyer's binding. I pushed it over to McAllister. He flipped through it quickly.

  "It's in order," he said. "The stock is yours all right. We better get it probated right away."

  I turned to Denby questioningly. Denby couldn't wait to answer. The words came tumbling out. "Judge Haskell in Reno has it on file."

  "Call him and tell him to move on it right away," I said. Denby started out. I stopped him. "And when you get through with him, call the directors and tell him I'm having a special meeting of the board at breakfast tomorrow. At my house."

  Denby went out and I turned back to McAllister. "Is there anything else I ought to do, Mac?"

  He shook his head slowly. "No, not right now. There's only the German contract. I don't know too much about it but I heard your father say it was a great opportunity. It's got something to do with a new kind of product. Plastics, I think he called it."

  I ground out my cigarette in the ash tray on the desk. "Have Denby give you the file on it. You look at it tonight and give me a breakdown tomorrow morning before the board meeting. I’ll be up at five o'clock."

  A strange look began to come over McAllister's face. For a moment, I didn't know what it was, then I recognized it. Respect. "I'll be there at five, Jonas."

  He got up and started for the door. I called to him before he reached it, "While you're at it, Mac, have Denby give you a list of the other stockholders in the company. I think I ought to know their names before the meeting."

  The look of respect on his face grew deeper. "Yes, Jonas," he said, going out the door.

  I swung around to Nevada and looked up at him. "What do you think?" I asked.

  He waited a long moment before he answered. Then he spit away a piece of cigarette paper that clung to his lip. "I think your old man is resting real easy."

  That reminded me. I had almost forgotten. I got up from the chair and walked around the desk and over to the couch. I picked up the blanket and looked down at him.

  His eyes were closed and his mouth was grim. There was a slightly blue stain under the skin of his right temple, going on up into the hairline. That must be the embolism, I thought.

  Somehow, deep inside of me, I wanted some tears to come out for him. But there weren't any. He had abandoned me too long ago – that day on the porch when he threw me to Nevada.

  I heard the door behind me open and I dropped the blanket back and turned around. Denby was standing in the doorway.

  "Jake Platt wants to see you, sir."

  Jake was the plant manager. He kept the wheels turning. He also listened to the wind and by now the word must be racing all over the plant.

  "Send him in," I said.

  He appeared in the doorway beside Denby as soon as the words were out of my mouth. He was a big, heavy man. He even walked heavy. He came into the office, his hand outstretched. "I just heard the sad news." He crossed over to the couch and looked down at my father's body, his face assuming his best Irish-wake air. "It's a sad loss, indeed. Your father was a great man." He shook his head mournfully. "A great man."

  I walked back behind the desk. And you're a great actor, Jake Platt, I thought. Aloud I said, "Thank you, Jake."

  He turned to me, his face brightening at the thought of his act going over. "And I want you to know if there's anything you want of me, anything at all, just call on me."

  "Thank you, Jake," I said again. "It's good to know there are men like you in my corner."

  He preened almost visibly at my words. His voice lowered to a confidential tone. "The word's all
over the plant now. D'ya think I ought to say something to them? You know them Mexicans and Indians. They're a might touchy and nervous and need a little calming down."

  I looked at him. He was probably right. "That's a good idea, Jake. But I think it would seem better if I talk to them myself."

  Jake had to agree with me whether he liked it or not. That was his policy. Not to disagree with the boss. "That's true, Jonas," he said, masking his disappointment. "If you feel up to it."

  "I feel up to it," I said, starting for the door.

  Nevada's voice came after me. "What about him?"

  I turned back and followed his glance to the couch. "Call the undertakers and have them take care of him. Tell them we want the best casket in the state."

  Nevada nodded.

  "Then meet me out in front with the car and we'll go home." I went out the door without waiting for his reply. Jake trotted after me as I turned down the back corridor and went out onto the stairway leading to the plant.

  Every eye in the factory turned toward me as I came through that doorway onto the little platform at the top of the staircase. Jake held up his hands and quiet began to fall in the factory. I waited until every machine in the place had come to a stop before I spoke. There was something eerie about it. It was the first time I had ever heard the factory completely silent. I began to speak and my voice echoed crazily through the building.

  "Mi padre ha muerto." I spoke in Spanish. My Spanish wasn't very good but it was their language and I continued in it. "But I, his son, am here and hope to continue in his good work. It is indeed too bad that my father is not here to express his appreciation to all you good workers himself for everything you have done to make this company a success. I hope it is enough for you to know that just before he passed away, he authorized a five-per-cent increase in wages for every one of you who work in the plant."

  Jake grabbed my arm frantically. I shook his hand off and continued. "It is my earnest wish that I continue to have the same willing support that you gave to my father. I trust you will be patient with me for I have much to learn. Many thanks and may you all go with God."