"I believed you," said Jo-Ann, carefully holding her voice down. She had drunk more Scotch than her limit allowed, but she was in control of herself. "I was stupid. I hate myself for that. Cords are supposed to be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them."
"Bat told Glenda he loved her and wanted to marry her," said Ben, equally quietly. "Then he went off to New York and began to find excuses not to come back out here to spend weekends with her. She found out he was seeing Toni again, in fact that Toni was living part of the time in the Waldorf Towers apartment. Glenda was upset. I was upset. And you were in jail!"
"Yeah. I recommend that for a short, restful vacation sometime. It beats the drying-out clinic. A cellmate is not holier than thou. Mine was in for the same thing I was and could hardly look down her nose at me."
"We're the same kind of people, you and I," said Ben.
"Is that a suggestion that I forgive and forget?"
"We are the same kind. We enjoy the same things. We— "
"What are you saying to Glenda?" Jo-Ann asked.
"Nothing. She won't take my phone calls. She's moved out of the beach house, you know. Sam Stein is furious. I suppose your father is even more furious."
Jo-Ann smiled and shook her head. "Not at all." She had decided not to tell him who had initiated the Sketch story. "I can think of a way to make him furious."
"Hey! He's not a guy to be played around with."
"What's he gonna do to me? Shut off my friggin' allowance? Make Bat fire me? What'd you say — that we're the same kind of guys?" She lifted her glass and gulped down Scotch. "Damn right we are. And I'm not going to let that son of a bitch dominate my whole life. I can handle you, stud, and I can handle him, too."
"The Consolidated deal went down the drain yesterday," said Ben.
"Sure. Of course. The fine hand of Jonas. We can screw him."
"Honey, he's not a man to— "
"We fly over to Reno," she said. "Tonight. See how he likes that."
5
Jonas paced the living-room-office in his suite in The Seven Voyages, his talk fast and angry. Bat, sitting on a couch with his legs stretched out before him, watched and listened. He had begun to worry about his father. Jonas, though as fully recovered from his heart attack as he would ever be, isolated himself more and more in the hotel and rarely ventured out. In the ten months since the attack he had not returned once to New York and had flown to Los Angeles only twice. He managed his businesses from the suite, using half a dozen telephone lines. In the suite across the hall, converted into offices for staff, a teletype chattered constantly, sending and receiving. The long coffee table that served as his desk was strewn with the yellow paper torn off the machine.
For a few weeks he had let his beard grow but had shaved it off when it came out grayer than his hair. He didn't wear business suits anymore, or even jackets and slacks. He wore wrinkled khakis with golf shirts and sometimes cardigan sweaters.
"How the hell can a man focus his attention on business when he has to contend with damned foolishness like this?" he barked.
The damned foolishness he referred to was the newspaper story reporting Jo-Ann's marriage to Ben Parrish. It was a short, factual story in the Los Angeles Times. Probably he had not seen the coverage in the Sketch, which featured a photo of the newlyweds strolling hand-in-hand on the beach, he in a pair of boxer trunks, she in a spectacularly brief bikini. The beach was the one below Bat's beach house. Since Glenda had moved out, he had turned the house over to Jo-Ann.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Jonas went on. "The next word I'll get, she'll be pregnant."
"It happens," said Bat. "People do live their lives. I don't like Ben Parrish. But we've got to face it; he's Jo-Ann's husband. And Jo-Ann is not to be taken for a dummy. I don't know what she thought she was doing, marrying that man. But there it is; she did it."
"She did it to defy me. And you."
"Well ... maybe. Why not?"
"Whose side are you on?" asked Jonas sullenly.
"Are there sides? Do there have to be sides?"
"I am placed — you are placed — in a hell of a position," said Jonas.
"You didn't have to send the story to the Sketch."
"Who says I did?"
"Do you deny it?" Bat asked.
Jonas stiffened and flared with indignation. "I don't have to deny things," he said. "When did it get started that you hit me with challenges and I have to deny them?"
Bat shrugged. "Describe this hell of a position that we're in," he said.
"I didn't want her to have any part in the business," said Jonas. "Now she's married to that worthless son of a bitch, and anything she finds out he'll find out. Pillow talk. She's got to go."
"Why do you think she married him?"
"To shoot me a finger."
Bat grinned. "Why would she want to do that?"
"Why the hell do you think?" Jonas asked. "You know Parrish was trying to make a big deal with Consolidated. Well, I queered that for him. I let Goldish know I wouldn't take it kindly if Consolidated let Benjamin Parrish in on anything. So now where am I? The bastard is my son-in-law!"
"It'll have to be worked out," said Bat. "I've got a worse problem."
"Worse than that?"
"We've got one successful television production," said Bat. "The Glenda Grayson Show. It's showing a profit, and we're starting to get your investment back. But I've got one seriously unhappy star."
"You screwed the girl. It's a dumb dog that shits in his own bed."
"Forgive me," said Bat. "A chip off the old block."
"How much is it gonna take to make her happy?"
Bat nodded. "You have it figured."
"A word of advice," said Jonas. "Glenda Grayson is thirty-five years old and getting a little shopworn. Get your guys to write better stuff for Margit Little. Build her up. One of these days we can tell Glenda Grayson to go screw."
"Great minds run in one direction," said Bat. "If you'll forgive the cliché."
Jonas had stopped pacing and now he sat down. "Got something to show you," he said. He picked up a telephone and dialed a number. "Angie, have the guys wheel in that model." He spoke to Bat. "The new hotel."
Angie came in, and two young men wheeled in an architect's model of a new casino-hotel. "The Cord Intercontinental Vegas," she said.
Bat stood and looked at the model. Since he had last involved himself personally with the new hotel, his father had authorized a substantial increase in its size. He had obviously acquired more land, since this hotel would not stand on the land they had originally bought.
"Okay?" asked Jonas.
"Beautiful," said Bat. It would have been pointless to say anything else. Except— "But it looks like a hell of a lot of money." His thought was that it was his father's plaything, but it would have been a major mistake to suggest it.
"Sixteen floors," said Jonas as if he didn't detect Bat's thought. "The executive offices of the company will occupy the top floor, the way they do here — only four times as big. A stage that can accommodate the most spectacular nightclub shows in the world. I've been in touch with the Folies-Bergère in Paris. It may be that we can stage an authentic Folies right here in Las Vegas."