Whether she improved the job or not, Jo-Ann felt good about herself. For the first time since she was in school, she had a reason for getting up every morning, a reason for bathing and doing her makeup and dressing. She had lost weight during her stay in the clinic. They had insisted she play tennis and swim, and they served planned meals with calories counted.
She was still fond of Scotch, but for the time being she was able to recognize her limit and stop. "If you can stop when you should stop, you're not an alcoholic," she said. She'd be damned if she'd call for orange juice when everyone else was having a drink. That would be too humiliating. She wouldn't go to AA either, though the doctors at the clinic had urged her to. She'd gone to one meeting and decided AA was a cult.
Her father hadn't seen her, but at twenty-three she'd made a new image for herself. She had bought new clothes, and they fit her sleekly. She'd had her hair redone, too: cut shorter and curling under her ears. This morning she was wearing a cream-white flared linen skirt and a tight baby-blue cashmere sweater. Her bra lifted her breasts and thrust them out. Ben liked this outfit, so she wore it often, particularly when she expected to see him during the day.
Her telephone rang. The receptionist told her a young woman who had no appointment was asking to see her: a Cynthia Rawls, who said she was a reporter for the Hollywood Sketch. Jo-Ann was glad enough to have a call from a reporter and told the receptionist to send her in.
Cynthia Rawls was a gum-chewing bespectacled girl who seemed to think she played reporter by wearing a pencil in her hair above her right ear and carrying a steno pad in her left hand.
She handed Jo-Ann a card. "You know our paper?" she asked.
Jo-Ann nodded. The Sketch was a supermarket tabloid. "I've seen it," she said. "I'm not a regular reader."
Cynthia Rawls nodded. If she read derision in Jo-Ann's comment, she showed no reaction. "We like to check our facts," she said earnestly. "Believe it or not, we check our facts closer than most any other paper. In our line, you can't afford to publish if you don't check your facts."
"I can understand," said Jo-Ann.
"So ... I tried to check with Mr. Stein, but he just won't talk. This has to do with Glenda Grayson, you understand. Your star?"
"What makes you think I can — or will — tell you anything Sam Stein won't tell you?"
"Maybe you can't — or won't," said Cynthia Rawls. "But I figure I have an obligation to run the story by you." She handed Jo-Ann a couple of typewritten pages. "If you want to deny any of that, we'll check the facts further."
Jo-Ann scanned the sheets.
Cozy, cozy, cozzy! Things have gotten really cozy between TV superstar /// Glemnda Grayson and Hollywood hiustler Benjamimn Parrish, otherwizse known as agent, sometime smalltime producer, and all-around man-about-town.
No more "quickies" in hot-sheet motels for the one-time stripper and her new man. She madkes Benny-boy welcome these days in the beachfront house she used to sheare with money-boy Jonas "Bat" Cord.
So far as we know, Mr. Cord has raised no objection. Like his notorious father, Jeonas Cord II, "Bat" has many irons in the fire. Monogany is not a Cord family tradition.
Our sources for this story are beyond question. Our informer nails it cold.
"I'm sorry about the way I use your family name," said Cynthia Rawls. "I guess it can't be any surprise, though, can it?"
Jo-Ann stared at the young woman with cold eyes, for the better part of a minute, before she said, "I want to know the name of your informer."
"Oh, you have to understand I can't tell you that."
"Yes, you can. You face two alternatives, Miss Rawls. I think you know that playing games with the Cords is not wise. If my father can't defeat you in a libel suit, he might just buy your newspaper. He's done it before, you know. It's not a freedom of the press issue. My father might decide to convert the Hollywood Sketch into the weekly Dairy Reporter. What do you know about cows, Miss Rawls?"
Cynthia Rawls tried at first to play the bold reporter. She shrugged and smirked. Then she licked her lips, deflated, and asked, "What is the second alternative?"
"Give me the name of your source," said Jo-Ann, "and I might be able to cooperate with you. You've got a little story. I might be able to make it a big one."
As the reporter pondered, Jo-Ann congratulated herself. She was a by-God Cord! This was the way Cords played it. And she'd destroy Ben Parrish — for she had no doubt that what this girl reporter had written was true.
"Miss ... Miss Cord, I— "
"Who is your source?"
"Miss Cord ... You've got me between a rock and a hard place."
Jo-Ann raised her chin. "When you get a few more years behind you, Miss Rawls, you will become accustomed to that. This is an easy one. You've got alternatives. Most people don't."
"It's more difficult than you realize. The source called my editor. He recorded the call, like he records all that kind of calls. He played the tape for me. You're not gonna believe who it was."
"Well, try me," said Jo-Ann icily.
"Miss Cord ... It was your father!"
Jo-Ann could not dissemble. The reporter saw her flush and stiffen. "So," she muttered. "My father. You think it was my father on the phone."
"Do you deny it?"
Jo-Ann considered for a brief moment, then shook her head. Of course she wouldn't deny it. It made sense more than one way. "I don't deny it. More than that, I can tell you that everything he said is absolutely true. I can tell you something more. Ben Parrish has a certain, uh, reputation. I'm sure you know what that is."
"That he's hung like a horse?"
"He'd make a stallion jealous. Do you want to know how I can testify to that?"
"I'm afraid to ask," said Cynthia Rawls.
"You can guess. At the same time, I'm glad you came here today. I'd suspected somebody was leaking a story, but I didn't know for sure. Especially, I didn't know who."
"But your father knew. How could he know what you didn't know?"
"I told you it's always a mistake to mess around with Jonas Cord. He finds out what he's interested in finding out. He didn't tell me. He wanted me to read it in the newspaper."
"How's he gonna react when he reads this extra stuff I'll be putting in the story?"
"He won't buy out the paper over that."
"Well gee, thanks, Miss Cord. I'm glad we met."
4
"He told her he was in love with her. She believed him."
Jo-Ann would meet Ben only over lunch, only in a public place where there could not be a scene. There was a scene anyway, of sorts. People stared at them. Some laughed. They were surrounded in the restaurant by people who would have sworn they never looked at a supermarket tabloid, but they glanced at Ben Parrish and Jo-Ann Cord and recognized them as two of the people shown on the front page of this week's Sketch.
The story had made front page, complete with photographs, none flattering. The picture of Glenda Grayson was one that Gib Dugan had distributed of her fourteen years ago, wearing her signature black hat and nothing more but bra and panties. The picture of Jo-Ann was one taken the night she was led under arrest and handcuffed into a Los Angeles police station. The one of Ben showed him at a swimming pool, paunch spilling out over the top of his trunks, cigarette in one hand, martini glass in the other.
The reporter was more clever, more devious than Jo-Ann had realized. If she had seemed deferential toward the end of the interview, nothing of the sort carried over into her story. She had treated none of them kindly. She called Glenda Grayson "a one-time stripper," Ben a "Hollywood hustler," and Jo-Ann a "swinging rich kid." She called the three of them "a libidinous trio" — libidinous being one of the Sketch's favorite words.