“Isn’t that where this whole thing started?” Karen asked.
“Right?” Polly asked.
Candy nodded vigorously.
“If the NOW meeting is over…” Neal said.
“What’s NOW?” asked Polly.
“The National Organization of Women,” Karen explained.
Polly said, “That’s a good idea.”
“You ain’t kidding.”
The exchange stopped at the sound of Neal’s head rhythmically smacking into his hands.
“Polly,” Neal said. “Two million dollars. Two… million… dollars.”
All in all, Neal thought, it’s a good settlement, hammered out over a long night. Polly would get the $2 million in exchange for dropping the suit. Neither she nor Jack would discuss the affair, the paternity, or the alleged rape with the press.
On the business level, Jack would sell enough shares at fair market price to give Peter Hathaway majority ownership, but Jack and Candy would own their show and sell it to FCN at top dollar.
As for Candyland, Hathaway would agree to let the project continue. Foglio would retain his contracts but perform real work at reasonable costs. He would also acquire certain maintenance contracts on the same terms. Kitteredge and Bascaglia would appoint a mutually agreeable comptroller to monitor costs.
It was a good settlement and Neal could see Kitteredge’s careful fingerprints all over it.
“All you talk about is money,” Polly said.
“You launched a civil suit,” Neal reminded her.
“Because he should pay for what he did,” Polly argued.
“Two million freaking dollars!” Neal said. “And he loses control of his company! That’s paying!”
Polly chewed on her bottom lip and thought.
Please take it, Neal thought. So I can go back to my life. So Carmine Bascaglia doesn’t kill us all.
His eyes caught Candy’s.
He wondered what she could be thinking, having okayed a deal that would send her back to her scummy husband for two years. She was apparently willing to trade two years of misery to save her life’s work. Such are life’s bargains.
He didn’t have to wonder what Karen was thinking. She reminded him at every private moment. She was pissed off. She thought the whole thing stank. She was a cowgirl who thought they should just shoot it out, in the courtroom or wherever, and take their chances. He loved her madly, but she just didn’t realize that they didn’t have a chance against Bascaglia.
Polly seemed to be wavering.
“I’ll try to get two-five,” Neal said, hoping to push her over the edge.
Karen grunted in disgust.
“I’ll take it,” Polly said.
Thank you, God.
“If he says he raped me.”
Thanks, God. Thanks a lot.
Karen applauded.
“Good for you,” she said.
“Polly,” Neal started again, “if he admits he raped you, ‘The Jack and Candy Family Hour’ will fall off the charts. The network will lose millions of dollars and Candyland will never be built. There won’t be enough money to finance the deal. Jack might as well take his chances in front of a jury.”
And we can take our chances in front of a firing squad.
“That’s fine with me,” Polly said. “That’s what I wanted in the first place. That’s what you were supposed to be helping me with, wasn’t it?”
“We didn’t know the mob was involved,” Neal said.
“So the mob is involved, that makes it okay to rape me?”
“And keep raping her?” Karen asked.
That’s a damn good point, Neal thought.
“This is not the time for tired feminist cant,” he said. “The point is-”
“Oh, goodie,” Karen said. “Neal’s going to tell us what the point is.”
“The point is that we can talk right and wrong, fair and unfair until the sun goes down, but at the end of the day we have to look at what is possible,” Neal said. “This is about the best deal we’re going to get.”
“What do you think?” Polly asked Candy.
Swell, Neal thought. First she’s boffing her husband, now she thinks the woman is her big sister.
“I’m not the one who was raped,” Candy said.
“I don’t know about that,” said Karen.
“Will you stop?” Neal asked her.
Karen shrugged.
“I don’t know,” said Candy. She watched herself whip up a low-fat noncholesterol ‘His First Night Home from the Hospital Dinner’ while Jack made funny faces to the camera. “I’m kind of tired of cooking for the son of a bitch.”
“Will you talk to them?” Neal asked Karen. “Tell them it’s a great deal.”
Karen talked to them.
“This deal sucks,” Neal said into the telephone a few minutes later.
“It doesn’t suck,” Ed answered tightly as he watched Kitteredge look quizzical and Hathaway turn pale. “It’s a terrific deal.”
“It sucks!” Neal repeated. “Two million lousy dollars! He forks over some chump change and walks away from raping her? It’s a terrific deal all right-for Jack! How am I supposed to sell this to her?”
Please tell me, Ed. Nothing I’ve tried so far has worked.
“I’m putting you on speaker phone, Neal,” Ed answered. That would help settle Neal down, if he knew he was talking directly to Kitteredge. “Could you summarize her objections to this proposal for Mr. Kitteredge and Mr. Hathaway?”
“Yeah, it sucks!” Neal bellowed. He repeated the rationale.
“Neal, Ethan Kitteredge here!” Kitteredge shouted. Kitteredge thought the speaker phone was yet another symptom of societal decline. “How are you?”
Oh, I’m trapped in a hotel room in the wise guy capital of the world with three women who want to take on both the Merolla and Bascaglia crime families, the entire Family Cable Network, and you. One of the women is pregnant, another is discovering herself, and the third one is just nuts.
“Fine, sir. And yourself?”
“I’m a bit puzzled. Perhaps you can enlighten me,” Kitteredge said, “as to why Ms. Paget feels this arrangement-how did she phrase it…?”
“Sucks, sir.”
“Yes… sucks.”
“It eats shit!” Polly yelled.
“Was that Ms. Paget?” Kitteredge asked.
“Yes it was.”
“Your tutorials aren’t going especially well, are they?” Kitteredge asked.
Neal filled him in on Polly’s demand that Jack confess to raping her.
Kitteredge listened and said, “I’m afraid that’s just not possible, Neal. Perhaps she would consider another million as an alternative.”
You’re afraid? You’re not sitting next to the human bull’s-eye here. And you’ve been lowballing us?!
“Three million, no confession,” he said to Polly.
“Eat shit,” Polly answered.
“She declined the offer, sir.”
“I heard her, Neal.”
“Because she pronounced her t’s,” Neal said. Let’s not be defaming my tutorials. “A week ago, she would have said, ‘Eeh shih.’”
“Ask this jerk who he thinks he is,” Hathaway demanded.
“He can hear you,” Ed said.
“Who do you think you are?” Hathaway asked.
“There is some confusion on that score,” Neal admitted.
“I mean, are you her agent now?” Hathaway asked. Now that Polly had served her purpose, he wanted this matter settled quietly. The scandal that was such an asset was becoming a liability. “Are you getting a piece of her settlement?”
“No, Mr. Hathaway,” Neal answered. “The only person who is gaining financially from Ms. Paget’s rape is you. And by the way-”
Ed flicked off the speaker.
“-eat shit,” Neal concluded. “Hi, Ed.”
“Hi, Neal,” Ed said pleasantly. “Neal, a number of highly placed people have worked very hard to put this package together. Just in case you’ve forgotten, we don’t represent Polly Paget; we represent Mr. Hathaway. Mr. Hathaway is satisfied with this arrangement. If Ms. Paget persists in being stubborn, we will just have to walk away from her. She can hire her own lawyer, her own speech coach, and her own security. You can go back to doing whatever the hell it is that you do. Got it?”
“Got it,” Neal said.