Jack grinned. “When it’s all in, you’ll frown and say, ‘Is that all there is?’”
She managed a nervous little laugh.
After they had hugged and kissed a few minutes more, he helped her out of her nightgown. As he stared at her naked body, Diane actually blushed.
She was painfully self-conscious about her breasts, which were big and soft. Freed from the confines of a brassiere, they hung like two soft grapefruits almost to her lowest ribs. Jack bent forward and kissed each nipple, then lifted and squeezed each breast. He murmured appreciatively.
He put a hand between her legs and rubbed her pubes. She grunted and closed her eyes. She was quite dry, and when they lay down together on the bed he continued to stroke her gently there, inserting a finger just a little, until her fluids came and made her slippery.
He encouraged her to lie on her back and spread her legs. He used his penis as he had used his finger, to stroke and stimulate her. When he judged she was ready he paused and smiled at her, as if to let her say no if she was not ready. She didn’t, and he pressed himself into her. She stiffened. She sighed then and relaxed, and he gently pushed in until their bellies touched.
At first she lay passive with her eyes closed, accepting him, learning; but a little later she began to squirm and to spread her legs wider and welcome him in deeper. He had not been certain this woman would enjoy the carnal pleasures, but plainly she did, which gladdened him immensely.
“Am I a good woman, husband?” she whispered when they lay side by side.
“You are a delight.”
Four
DIANE WAS AWARE THAT JACK’S FIRST TWO WIVES HAD BEEN rare beauties and that Anne had been repeatedly named one of America’s ten best-dressed women. He told her again and again that she was not competing with anyone, or with anyone’s memory, but she was determined to make herself as cherished as any woman in his life had ever been. One way to do it, she seemed to imagine, was to be more adventuresome in their intimate life than any other woman had ever been.
In shops on the Ginza she bought daring lingerie. “Back home, if I were even seen in a shop like this, the scandal would probably cost me dear. So let’s buy what we can while we can.”
In a shop in Bangkok they saw and bought something that neither of them had ever seen before and had not known existed: nipple clips. They were exactly like small battery clips, except that the springs were not nearly as strong and the tips were coated with rubber. A little knurled screw adjusted them for size and tightness. They came in pairs with a chain between them.
That night in their hotel room, Jack rolled Diane’s nipples between his fingers until they hardened, and then he pinched the handles and let the clips close on her wrinkled buds. One fell off, and Diane herself tightened the adjusting screws. After that, she could walk around the room with the chain swinging between her nipples.
Jack admitted that the sight of the clips on her breasts aroused him. She said they weren’t painful; to the contrary, they aroused her. She laughed as she moved her breasts and swung the chain.
The shop had also offered labial clips. Since the nipple clips had proved painless and stimulating, Diane and Jack returned and bought a pair. These were much larger and heavier. The clips were as broad as index fingers and were made of cold stainless steel, without rubber. They were not adjustable but simply squeezed tight on her fleshy lips. They too were connected by a short length of chain, that hung between her legs. The weight of the clips and chain stretched her visibly. She admitted that they hurt a little, but she insisted she would wear them for a while. As it turned out, Diane wore them until they left for dinner and asked Jack to put them on her again as soon as they returned.
Except when she tightened the adjusting screws on the nipple clips the first time she wore them, Diane would not touch the clips. She wanted Jack to put them on her, and she wanted Jack to take them off. They were novelties that she wore every night for the rest of their trip.
Five
THE MANHATTAN PLACE WAS PERHAPS THE PLACE THAT MOST reflected the late Anne Lear’s tastes and background and interests. Diane sensed that but had made no effort to change it.
The fragment of Grünewald altarpiece was still there, as was Dürer’s sketch of himself nude. The plump teenage nude by Boucher, gift of the Tenth Earl of Weldon, was there—though Jack had advised the Earl that it would be returned when he died. The Calder mobile still hung from the ceiling, and the erotic pre-Columbian jug still stood on the Empire writing table.
Diane knew she was not the exquisite woman her predecessor had been, and she did not try to compete. Jack could not help but compare the two women occasionally. When he did, it pained him to be reminded of what Anne had been, but it also distressed him to think that Diane could even imagine she might be expected to replace his deceased wife. He didn’t expect that of Diane; he didn’t want her to try to be Anne. She was Diane, and she was more than he could possibly have asked of her.
Now Billy Bob Cotton settled comfortably on the couch and accepted a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. He still wore the snakeskin boots Jack had learned to recognize as his trademark, and he had put aside in the foyer a champagne-colored Stetson. For a minute or two he was just sociable, and then he said, “Y’understand, nobody knows I’ve come to see you.”
Jack glanced at Diane. “That’s ominous,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
“Well, I’ve got something to tell you about business. Uh . . . maybe I shouldn’t bring it up in front of Mrs. Lear.”
“Think of her as my counsel,” Jack said. “She’s an experienced and highly skilled lawyer.”
Billy Bob nodded at Diane. “Ma’am,” he said. “Well, Jack, we’ve been friends for many years. I sometimes think about the time we went out to Oklahoma and watched the tornado working its way south. We’ve done pretty well together, too, haven’t we?”
“Very well, Billy Bob.”
“That’s why I’m going to tell you what some folks figure I won’t tell you. Jack, there’s a plot afoot to kick you upstairs and make you chairman of the board and to put all the operating authority of the corporation in the hands of Mary Carson.”
“I’m not entirely surprised,” Jack said grimly. “She’s been using her father’s money to buy up stock. She’s the largest stockholder now.”
“You have to make a decision,” said Billy Bob. “You going to fight or not? Ray and I want to know.”
“You’re damned right I’m going to fight. Does that cunt think I’d let her take my company away from me?”
“You’re sixty-seven years old. She figures you—”
“When I’m eighty-seven I’ll—”
Billy Bob grinned. “I figure you will.”
“For right now,” said Diane, “let’s go to dinner. We’ve got a big surprise for Mrs. Carson. Mrs. Lear will fight beside her husband—and Mrs. Lear fights dirty!”
Billy Bob’s grin widened. “Figured you would, ma’am. I’d heard your name before Jack met you, and I never had no doubt about you.”
Six
DIANE SAID NOTHING ABOUT WHAT BILLY BOB HAD TOLD them, until they were undressed and had made love.
Diane rolled out of bed and went down to the living room to get a bottle of Scotch. “Let’s start doing a little figuring,” she said. “How are we going to fuck that bitch?”
“I don’t know for sure, babe,” said Jack unhappily. “The numbers don’t look good. And a lot of people are going to be persuaded that at the age of sixty-seven and having had a heart attack, I should let somebody younger take over day-to-day operating responsibility.”
“Mary Carson is betting you’ll give up. I’m betting you won’t.”
The conversation drifted off, and before long they went to sleep.
When Jack awoke it was about three in the morning. He heard Diane’s even breathing and knew she was asleep. He closed his eyes but couldn’t fall back to sleep. He opened them again and stared at the ceiling.
“You’ll n
ever be comfortable watching someone else running the business you built.”
That was what Anne had said when he came back from Texas in 1949—twenty-four years ago—and told her he’d sold most of his stock in Lear Broadcasting to a group of investors headed by Douglas Humphrey.
She had spoken those words here, in this room, though not in this bed, since he could not bear to sleep with another woman in the bed he had shared with Anne and had long ago replaced it.
Twenty-four years ago. He heard her words as clearly as if she had just spoken them, as if she were the woman sleeping beside him.
“You’ll never be comfortable watching someone else running the business you built.”
FORTY
One
1973
DIANE’S WASHINGTON APARTMENT WAS COMFORTABLE, BUT IT had the atmosphere of a hotel suite she did not expect to occupy permanently. Only the bedroom furniture and a couple of chairs she’d brought down from New Jersey were hers. The rest of the furnishings had been there when she leased the apartment.
She had also brought her collection of framed Spy prints clipped from the old London Vanity Fair.
Jack and Diane sat on her couch late in the afternoon. He had taken off his jacket and tie and was comfortable. For the sake of comfort, too, Diane had taken off all her clothes but a half-slip, which she wore pulled up under her armpits, making a sort of teddy. They were sipping sparingly from drinks—his a Scotch, hers a Beefeater martini—because they were going out to dinner that evening at Le Lion d’Or with Cap Durenberger and his wife.
Jack had left his office at about two that afternoon and been driven to the Manhattan town house. Lately he’d had all his personal mail delivered there. He had stuffed it into his briefcase and carried it with him to Teterboro, where he boarded a company jet for Washington. During the flight he had glanced over the mail, and now he was showing it to Diane.
“Your daughter is a jewel,” Diane murmured as she read a long letter from Joni. “I’m afraid her tour is not going to make a significant difference, but it’s wonderful that she’s doing it.”
Joni had telephoned from the Coast and offered to set aside everything else she was doing in order to help Jack win stockholder votes. He had asked her to visit every stockholder who owned more than five thousand shares; there were about thirty of them. She had visited fourteen so far and had lined up the votes of all but one, who said he’d have to think about it. Having a big movie star visit them, maybe even take them to dinner, was flattering enough to persuade a lot of them. Jack had counted on that.
“I’ve already seen the letter Sally Allen sent out,” Diane said. “How many did she send? A thousand? Whose idea was it to have her say she was signing every letter personally? And did she?”
“She sent fifteen hundred, and, yes, she signed every one of them personally. What she was saying was ‘Here. Here’s a personal autograph from a big star. Now vote for my friend Jack Lear.’ That was Sara’s idea. Mo Morris suggested we send an autographed photo, but I vetoed that. God knows how many votes those fifteen hundred letters will get us.”
“Sara’s idea . . . You’ve got a wonderful family. Liz would have dropped out of school for a semester, if you’d let her. She was ready to address envelopes—Anything.”
“Your family—which has nothing much at stake, really—has been more than kind. George has been tremendously supportive of Liz.”
“Because he’s in love with her.”
Jack smiled and nodded. “Either one of them could have done a lot worse.” His eyes narrowed, and his mien darkened. “The hunk is, of course, too deeply involved in football to give any attention—”
“He’s got the possibility of another Super Bowl ring,” said Diane.
“Super Bowl . . . “Jack muttered. “Super Bowl! Name me something more banal. Of all my kids, he—”
“Don’t say something you’ll later wish you hadn’t said.”
“I . . . Oh, baby! It’s all coming to shit, isn’t it?”
Diane moved toward him and clasped him in her arms. “No way, my lover. No way, my husband. No matter what happens now, your place in history is made.”
“Maybe Lincoln was lucky,” Jack whispered. “Maybe Kennedy was. The fuckin’ endgame!”
Two
THEY MEANT TO HAVE A SHORT NAP BEFORE GOING OUT, BUT the buzzer sounded, and Cap Durenberger announced he was downstairs. Diane dressed as he came up.
“Naomi’s relaxing and putting on her face. She’ll meet us at the restaurant,” Cap said. “Can you spare a man a drink that she won’t know I’ve had. Vodka, so she won’t smell it.”
At eighty-three, Cap was frail and a little hunched but he had lost nothing of his zest for life. If he’d found the opportunity, he would still have been the scrounger he had been thirty years ago. Because Naomi thought he should not fly, they had come up from Florida on a train, which had taken most of two days.
“You know how long it takes to get from Miami to Houston by train? Goddamn!”
“What were you doing in Houston, Cap?” Jack asked, surprised.
“Looking around, boss. Looking around. I never did trust Doug Humphrey, as you will remember. Well, I never trusted Mary Carson, either. So I went to get the skinny on her. People trust an old fart like me. My God! how they trust me.”
Diane handed him a short vodka on the rocks. “What’d you find out, Cap?”
“Let’s start with this: how did Mary Carson come to get divorced from her husband? Out on the west side of Houston, people remember. Nude swimming parties in the Carsons’ pool. And key parties. Know what those are?”
Diane nodded. “People toss their house keys in a bag and—”
“And draw,” said Cap. “Man draws a key and goes home with the woman whose key it is. They fuck their heads off all night, and in the morning everybody meets someplace for breakfast so husbands and wives can be sorted out and put together again. I was born too soon.”
“So?” asked Jack.
“Carson got another woman pregnant. Besides that, they’re not sure Mary’s daughter, Emily, is Carson’s daughter. Doug Humphrey went into orbit about it. He arranged the divorce. Maybe Mary and Carson didn’t want it, but when Doug said they were going to get divorced, they got divorced. He was of the old school, a paterfamilias, and took no guff. When he wanted something done, it was done. Anyway, it was all accomplished very neatly. Except for one little thing. It left the horny Mary single and a threat to every marriage in Bayou Oaks. But Doug clamped down on her. He made her live with him, and he cut her off from every dime but the little allowance he gave her. She learned to hate the old buzzard.”
“What’s this got to do with our problem?” Jack asked curtly.
“You ain’t heard it all yet,” said Durenberger. “You know where Mary’s daughter, Emily, is?”
Jack frowned.
“Doug Humphrey had a talent for keeping stuff out of the newspapers, off television. But his granddaughter”—Cap stopped to grin—“is in the fourth year of a five-to ten-year sentence in a federal slammer. Oh, it’s a long story. It has to do with Emily escaping her mother and grandfather, getting hooked on heroin, and turning tricks to get the money to buy fixes.” He lowered his voice and shook his head. “I mean it, guys. That’s what I was told in Houston: that Emily went on the street and hustled.”
“Jesus Christ, Cap!” Diane cried.
“She was rescued,” Cap went on. “By guess who? The Weathermen. They dried her out—as you might say, forced her to go through withdrawal cold turkey—and then recruited her. She became a bomb chemist. It was just luck that none of her bombs ever killed anybody. But she did get nailed eventually, and she’s doing five to ten in the federal women’s prison out in the boonies in West Virginia. There’s a clackety skeleton in Mary Carson’s closet.”
Jack pressed his hands together and ran them down his nose, over his mouth, and down his chin. “Cap . . . So what?”
Cap grinned a little hesitantly, se
nsing that Jack did not like what he had said and was not going to like the rest of it. “Okay. We’ve got stockholders with Southern Baptist morals who aren’t going to like the Bayou Oaks parties even a little bit. We’ve got stockholders who believe in law and order who are going to shudder at the word ‘Weatherman’—not to mention the news that their proposed new CEO has a daughter who did hard drugs and now is doing hard time. You don’t want to use this?”
Jack shook his head. “I already knew all that,” he said. “Give the lady her due; she told me herself.
“No, Cap,” Jack said in a quiet but dead firm voice. “No. If we lose, we lose, but I promised not to use that.”
FORTY - ONE
One
1973
ON MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 19, THE NIGHT BEFORE THE stockholders meeting, Jack and Diane held a dinner in their suite in the New York Hilton. Joni and David were there. So were Liz and her boyfriend George, Diane’s nephew. Little Jack was there, as was Sara. The cheerleader Gloria and Brent Creighton, Sara’s friend, were having dinner downstairs, since Jack and Diane had decided they didn’t want to talk business in front of them. Similarly, the wives of Herb Morrill, Mickey Sullivan, and Cap Durenberger were dining downstairs, not because they were not trusted to hear the discussion but because they would probably be bored by business talk. Curt and Betsy Frederick had come from Arizona. Sally Allen had come from Los Angeles.
Sitting in the living room of the suite after dinner, the group reviewed the situation and found it gloomy.
From shares owned by himself, his family, and his friends, plus shares he could vote through proxies, Jack could count on 275,000 votes—27.5 percent of the outstanding common stock of LCI. If Billy Bob Cotton and Ray l’Enfant voted with him, he would have 37.5 percent.
“I want to read some names on a few of the proxies,” said Diane, unfolding a list. “Taken together, they don’t change the total much, but they’re evidence of some cherished friendships. We have a proxy, fifty shares, from Constance Horan. We have proxies for a hundred shares apiece from Harry Klein and Benjamin Lang, Joni’s producer and director on several films. Thank you, Joni. I suspect they bought the shares just so they could vote on this. We have a proxy, one hundred shares, from Mo Morris, Joni’s agent and Sara’s partner. We have a proxy for five shares from Edward Martin, a farmer in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, who sent along a good-luck letter with his proxy. Rebecca Murphy, a private investigator in Boston, ten shares. Arthur, Earl of Weldon, two hundred shares. Finally”—Diane grinned at Jack—“we have a proxy from Valerie Latham Field, who apparently bought a hundred shares not long ago, for reasons on which we need not speculate.”
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