Jonas ushered Bat into the little office he kept in the ranch house. He closed and latched the door. "This ought to be a happy day for me," he said as he sat down in a chair covered with cracked black leather. "I don't want anybody out there to see it isn't."
"What's wrong with it?" Bat asked. "You've just married an extravagantly beautiful, conspicuously devoted woman."
Jonas shrugged. "And the fourth-quarter figures are good, and we're going to sell a sponsor a TV production starring a cute little girl we've both screwed. So ... ?" He blew a loud sigh. "Maybe I don't want to go to Europe for just two or three weeks. What if I kept Angie over there for six weeks instead of two? What if we stayed six months? What would happen?"
"You'd go nuts, is what would happen," said Bat. "You're playing games with me."
"The point is, do you think you could handle it?" Jonas asked. "You got it all in your head now? You wouldn't pass up any more Phoenix Aircraft deals? You wouldn't make any TV shows we have to sponsor ourselves? You wouldn't make dumb changes in the Margit Show?"
"In other words, I wouldn't make any decisions while you're gone."
"Put it in a confrontational way. You always do. All right. I won't kid you. I'm tired. And I've got a great new wife. And maybe I haven't got unlimited time ahead of me. But I've gotta hurry home in two weeks because I'm not sure if you can run the whole thing for any longer than that. So, tell me the truth. You think you can handle it?"
Bat's face was flushed. "My idea was that we'd run it together for a while."
"That's what we've been doing."
"No," said Bat firmly, shaking his head. "I'm an errand boy. I'm sick of it."
"You haven't ever been a fuckin' errand boy!" Jonas yelled. "I can hire errand boys for twenty percent of what I pay you. I let you restructure the whole damned business. What the hell do you think you are?"
"I'm what you'd have been if your father had lived," said Bat. "A son who can make suggestions but had better not make decisions."
"You never pass up a chance to unload my father on me, do you? No— Let's get back to the question. Suppose I decide to retire at the age of fifty-five. You ready to run the whole goddamned works?"
"I— "
"I'm not saying without mistakes. I made mine. But are you ready to tell me, honestly, that you're ready to take over all the stuff we call CE and run it without me? I'll take your word on it."
"What do you think?" Bat asked.
"What I think isn't the point. Whatta you think?"
"You put me in— "
"Right," Jonas interrupted. "That's the whole point. I put you between a rock and a hard place. Which is where you'll be put every goddamned day when you run the business. And then you gotta be smart. And then you gotta have guts."
"You're smart, and you've got guts," said Bat tentatively.
Jonas shrugged. "I'm here. I haven't lost it."
Bat lifted his chin high. "I've got in me what you've got in you. You put it in my mother, and it came out in me."
"Okay. You think you're ready?"
Bat nodded, "Yeah. Right. I'm ready."
Jonas's faced hardened. "Well, I don't think you are — and the fact you think you are is the best proof you aren't. When my father died, I knew better than to think I was ready. But I didn't have any choice; I had to do it. Every day of my life, almost, I've wished I had the old man's help and advice. But not you. You throw it away. You resent it. You're an egomaniac, Bat."
"Where could I have acquired that gene?" Bat sneered.
Jonas reached for a bottle of bourbon. His hand trembled as he poured a shot. "Go on," he said. "Go get your cock sucked. Before I leave for Europe with Angie, we're gonna settle this. Tomorrow. Christmas day or no Christmas day, we're going to settle it. We're going to have a modus operandi, you and me. We're gonna be father and son. Or you're through."
4
Not long after midnight, Jonas led Angie to their bedroom; then Bat led Toni to theirs.
The room was warm, and Toni was not reluctant to undress, except as always for her panties. They had a bottle of Courvoisier in the room, and Toni poured them tiny final drinks as Bat stirred the fire and put on more wood. They lay down side by side in bed. Only when a blanket was pulled up over them did Toni slip the panties down and lay them on the nightstand. Bat laid his thirty-eight snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
"Are things that bad?" she asked.
"No. Just insurance."
"I don't want to have to think about it now," she said.
For an hour they thought of nothing but each other, and then they went to sleep.
She went to sleep. Only rarely did Bat suffer any pain in his old wound scars, but occasionally he did. It happened after he had lifted too much weight with his right arm. He had lain sleepless in this house once before after lifting luggage off an airplane out on the landing strip. He'd done it again today, and he felt sharp twinges in the permanently damaged musculature of his chest.
He slipped off the bed and took a heavy shot of brandy.
Sitting in a chair, he stared at the flickering darts of flame rising from the red-hot crumbling coals on the andirons. He had said nothing to Toni about the confrontation he'd had with his father. He wouldn't, not until they were away from here. Fort Lauderdale ... Maybe.
A twinge stabbed him. Dave Amory had them, too. He'd been hit in the leg. It was the price you paid for being an infantryman, Dave said. And he said, too—
Maybe for the price you bought something. Bat remembered nights in Belgium when they had sensed something was wrong, just sensed it, without any real evidence. One night he had rolled quietly out of his foxhole, two minutes before an infiltrating German had struck into it with a dagger. The German died because an infantryman developed a sense— Oh, yeah. The Kraut was not an infantryman.
Like that night ... Bat heard nothing. But he sensed something. Something was goddamned wrong, just like it had been the night the German struck into an empty foxhole with a rune-marked SS ceremonial dagger.
He didn't take time to pull on his pants. He didn't have a robe. He grabbed the thirty-eight and slipped quietly out of the bedroom, wearing only slingshot underpants.
The household was asleep. It was dark. A few smoldering coals glowed in the big fieldstone fireplace. No electric lights burned. The silence was complete. Even so. Bat needed only a minute outside his room to confirm his suspicion that something was horribly wrong— The front door was open.
5
Jonas slipped a nitroglycerine tablet under his tongue. He clutched his chest.
The man in the brown overcoat, wearing a brown hat, holding a small-caliber silenced automatic pistol leveled on Jonas and Angie, shrugged and said, "Maybe God's gonna do it for me. Maybe I have to do nothing."
"I can make you a better deal," Jonas whispered hoarsely.
"You'd be surprised how many men offer me a better deal," said the man. He was Malditesta. "The first time I bought that, I'd be the dead man." He shook his head. "I already made the deal."
Angie was naked. She had thrown herself across Jonas, to block a shot. She was sobbing.
"What's your deal?" Jonas asked. "Just me? Not her?"
Malditesta shook his head. "Just you, Mr. Cord. Not even your son."
"You'll do it and leave?" Jonas asked. "Can I believe that?"
"I am paid for one," said the hit man. "If they want another one, they pay again. And— I'm a pro. It won't hurt. If the little lady will get out of the way, I can make it very easy — easier than that heart attack you seem to be havin'. Push the little lady off, Mr. Cord."