(1982) The Almighty

by Irving Wallace

  ‘The bastard!’ Armstead burst out. He was livid. ‘I knew it was too good to be true. There had to be a zinger. I knew E. J. had to shiv me somewhere. He knew what that paper means to me. He knew it hasn’t topped the Times once since 1954. He set a condition that he knew couldn’t be met. He didn’t want to appear the bastard that he was. He wanted to show the world he was the good parent, leaving me what I wanted most, but then to be sure I lost it. He wanted to show the world what he always believed - that I am incompetent, not worthy -‘

  ‘Wait a minute. Hold on, Edward,’ Liddington broke in, trying to placate him. ‘Even if you lost the paper, you’d get the money from its sale. You could start another newspaper in Xew York.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Armstead angrily. ‘You didn’t know him the way I did. After a point, he never cared about money, and neither do I. He cared about his newspaper. It had made him - made him internationally famous. I was raised on it. I wanted the Record above

  everything else. Having it would give me my chance to prove myself, prove I was worthy. But he didn’t want me to have the paper. He didn’t want me to have my chance.’

  ‘Edward, perhaps you are being somewhat unreasonable. I repeat, you could start your own newspaper -‘

  ‘You can’t start a newspaper, not these days. A newspaper has to be there. It is like a person. It has a heart and soul. It’s a friend, a part of every reader’s family and life. The Record is part of the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people here, and I could have carried it on, made it more, returned it to its highest glory - but no, he wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘You can still do so, Edward,’ Liddington said. ‘The paper is entirely yours for a year.’

  ‘A year,’ repeated Armstead bitterly. ‘He’s given me a year to do what he was unable to do in decades. He knew it couldn’t be done. The bastard.’

  The lawyer made one more effort at reason. ‘Edward, he must have thought highly of you. He left you almost everything. He left you the television stations, the big one here in New York. Everyone watches television.’

  ‘Fuck television,’ said Armstead. ‘A picture book for illiterates and morons. Two or three minutes on any one subject. No time for in-depth, for understanding, for absorbing and reflecting. The only things treated with care are the commercials. He left me television?’

  ‘And a billion dollars.’

  Armstead ground his cigar into a pewter tray. He stood up. ‘He left me shit,’ he said bitterly. He shook his head. ‘You’ll never understand.’ He cast about him. ‘Is there a telephone where I can make a call privately?’

  Liddington came to his feet. ‘Let me take you to the conference room next door. It’s not in use. Can I put through the call for you?’

  ‘It’s personal. It’s something I want to do myself.’ He had brought a small address book out of his jacket pocket. ‘There’s someone I have to see.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d keep your appointment today,’ said Dr. Carl Scharf, closing the office door and directing Edward Armstead to the cracked and faded brown leather chair directly across from his own sand-colored armchair.

  Usually when he sat down for one of his three-times-a-week sessions Armstead made some derogatory comment about the leather chair - that it looked as if it had come secondhand from a garage sale. Always he made some critical comment about Dr. Scharf’s cramped and untidy office. Once he had even offered to lease and pay for a more commodious and modern suite in a better neighborhood for his psychoanalyst, but Dr. Scharf had politely declined. Armstead had then suspected that the analyst retained his Black Hole of Calcutta because it was contrary chic. To headquarter in a rotting and dangerous ancient building on Thirty-sixth Street off Broadway and there receive famous and wealthy patients showed a certain individuality, eccentricity, and disregard for facades that would finally impress overindulged neurotics.

  Armstead had given up on Dr. Scharfs shameful apparel long ago. True, the analyst was not built to be a Beau Brummel, and apparently from early on had decided to go with what he had. Dr. Scharf was a short, round man - round bald pate circled by a fringe of thinning hair, and fat round physique. A disgrace to the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Armstead was sure, a psychiatrist who did not like to listen. But he was insightful, he was warm, he was brilliant. He had tried for years to get Armstead to break away from his father, to swim on his own, but that had been asking too much. This afternoon, as ever, he was attired in a rumpled and worn tweed sport jacket, turtleneck sweater, and unpressed slacks.

  Dropping into his armchair, Armstead hardly noticed. Nor was he aware of the shabby office and its disreputable furniture. Armstead was blind, blind with rage.

  While Armstead sat fuming, the analyst rearranged some back copies of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association on top of the ottoman before his own chair. Then he wriggled more comfortably into his shallow seat, propped his feet up on the magazines, put a match to his smelly briar pipe and said again, T didn’t think you’d come by today.’

  T didn’t intend to. But I just heard his will, and I got so pissed off I had to see someone - even you.’

  Dr. Scharf puffed placidly on his pipe. ‘You did go to the funeral, Edward, didn’t you?’

  ‘Just to make sure he was dead.’

  Dr. Scharf nodded gently. ‘Reminds me of the old Harry Cohn story. You know, Harry Cohn, who was head of Columbia Pictures -‘

  ‘For chrissakes, Carl, I know who he was.’

  ‘When he died, a great crowd turned up for the funeral. Observing the crowd, someone said, “Just give people what they want, and they’ll show up.” I guess that’s it.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Armstead.

  ‘So you saw that he was dead.’

  ‘He was dead as a doornail. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘And still you don’t feel free?’

  ‘How can I? He won’t let go. You should have heard what he put in his will, the bastard.’

  ‘Okay, Edward, what did he put in his will that’s upset you so much?’

  ‘He left me everything, except what I wanted.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Armstead launched into a recital of his visit to Horace Liddington, the contents of the will and the conditional clause about the New York Record. When he finished he was almost asthmatic with anger. He stared at Dr. Scharf, waiting for his reaction.

  ‘You’re a rich man,’ said Dr. Scharf. ‘He made you a rich man. It could have been worse. He could have left it all to the Salvation Army.’

  ‘Come on, Carl, you know what this is all about.’

  ‘Of course I know,’ said Dr. Scharf mildly. Tmjust trying to give you some objectivity about your situation.’

  ‘He always looked down on me, he never respected me,’ said Armstead. ‘Never once did he show confidence in me.’

  ‘It’s hard for big men, self-made men who have everything, to consider their puny sons as their equals, and to trust them.’

  ‘I don’t want to keep repeating myself,’ said Armstead, ‘but this last will of his caps it off. He couldn’t resist, even after he was in the ground, letting me know how he felt. I wanted to be a journalist, a publisher, right from the start, just like he was. He could never find a place for me. When I was a kid, he gave me a menial job on the Record when it was the leading paper, and I was proud and happy and loved it. But instead of moving me up, he moved me away. Shipped me off to his San

  Francisco tabloid. Then to that rag he had in Denver. Then to Chicago, which was better. Just when I thought I’d got going, he brought me back here to New York. Did he give me a position of responsibility? No. He trusted others. Me he made Special Projects officer. What was that? I never did find out. Whenever I came up with a new idea - and in recent years the Record needed new ideas - he would ignore it. When I protested to him - you know, I did stand up and protest to him-‘

  Dr. Scharf nodded. ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘It got me nowhere. He always
exiled me to secondary jobs. He forever had me learning the business - that’s what he’d tell me when I protested: You’ve got to learn the business, Edward, he’d say - but Jesus, here I am fifty-six years old and he still had me learning the business. When he died, I was never more excited or happy. At last I’d have the paper. At last I could show the world. Then, an hour ago, I heard his will, and the provision that unless I could improve the paper he’d destroyed through neglect - unless I could do the impossible -I couldn’t keep the paper. It would be sold off. It would be gone. That was his good-bye message to me.’

  Dr. Scharf tried to speak, but Armstead would not let him. The venom in him was running over. He could not stop spilling out his poisoned past. He remembered how well he had started doing on the Chicago paper, and just when he was getting his identity, his father had recalled him to New York. He had been certain that this was a promotion and a reward, that his father had finally recognized his worth, but instead his father had refused him advancement, had relegated him to a back room with a couple of assistants, and had made believe he didn’t exist.

  ‘That’s when I came to you, Carl. I was desperate. I needed help.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He had real contempt for me, you know.’

  ‘Well -‘

  ‘He did. Everybody saw how he treated me, and they treated me with the same contempt. On every one of his papers, his editors treated me like a fool, a relative they had to endure. Only in Chicago, there were one or two people - well, mainly one, the managing editor, Hugh Weston, the old-timer who became the President’s press secretary last year -who gave me some respect, knew I was intelligent and creative, tried to give me a chance. But then E. J. yanked me back to New York and degraded me, and his editors here, they too treated me like a retarded son.’

  Dr. Scharf noisily emptied his pipe bowl of ash, filled itwith fresh tobacco and lighted it. He peered through the smoke at Armstead.

  ‘Edward,’ he said, ‘you own the newspaper now.’

  ‘For a year,’ said Armstead angrily.

  ‘Even for a year. Those editors, they are your editors now. You can show them who’s in charge.’

  ‘You mean, get rid of them?’

  ‘Build your own team of loyalists from scratch. Are there any experienced newsmen you’d trust?’

  ‘Harry Dietz, of course. You’ve heard me speak about him. And Bruce - Bruce Harmston. They were with me in Chicago. They were on Special Projects with me here in New York. They believe in me. They’d do anything for me.’

  ‘Then take them to the top with you, and do something about the paper. Yes, you always said the paper was the most important thing you wanted from your father.’

  ‘In fact, I used to tell you my father had only two things I ever wanted - the paper… and Kim - Kim Nesbit.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve got the paper.’

  ‘And Kim - well, of course, she’s my father’s -‘

  ‘Your father is dead, Edward.’

  Armstead blinked at Dr. Scharf through the smoke. He was silent a long time. ‘I guess you’re right,’ he said finally. ‘He is dead. It takes time to get used to.’ He paused. ‘What about Kim? Does she ever come to see you anymore?’

  What Armstead had remembered was that five years earlier, during one of the rare times he had seen her, Kim Nesbit had noticed and been aware of his own depressed state. She had spoken kindly to him, almost as a momentary ally against his father, and she had admitted that his father had driven her to see an analyst. She had found a good man, a wonderful man named Dr. Carl Scharf, and if Edward ever needed someone to talk to, he might do well to see Dr. Scharf. So Armstead had come to Dr. Scharf.

  ‘Do I see Kim Nesbit anymore?’ Dr. Scharf was saying.

  ‘No. She drifted away. She felt I couldn’t really help her. Actually, she did come here one last time, about a year ago.’ Dr. Scharf thought about it. ‘She wasn’t in good shape. Loneliness can be devastating. She was drinking too much. I hoped to see her again, but she never came back.’

  ‘How did she look?’

  Dr. Scharf rubbed the pipe bowl against his nose. ‘Why ask me?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’

  She herself had opened the door.

  Armstead stood stock still. All that he had imagined and fantasized for so long was there before him.

  And she was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

  She gave a little shout. ‘Edward! This is so unexpected. I’m so glad you came by.’ She offered up her arms, and he stepped into her embrace and kissed her on each cheek. The sweet smell of her flesh mingled with the smell of whisky. ‘Come in, do come in,’ she insisted, gripping his arm and pulling him through the entry hall into the vast living room.

  Momentarily, the lightness and brightness of the room made him feel giddy. His eyes passed over the multicolored pillows on the lime green sofas - three sofas that surrounded a coffee table - across the patchwork carpet to the cream-colored grand piano. Near it stood an elaborate television set airing a soap opera, and near that a portable bar.

  Kim Nesbit had come into view again. She was trying to draw together her white lace negligee, and apologizing. ‘Sorry the room’s such a mess, but the maid’s off today.’ Starting across the room to the television set, she staggered slightly, then walked with deliberate care to the set and shut if off.

  She moved to the portable bar. ‘Can I make you a drink, Edward?’

  ‘If you’ll join me,’ he said politely.

  ‘Oh, I’ll join you,’ she said, holding up an almost empty glass. ‘I’ve had a head start.’ She touched a half-filled bottle of J & B scotch. ‘I’m having scotch. I don’t remember - what do you drink?’

  “The same.’

  As she poured, she said, ‘It’s been a long time, Edward.’

  ‘Eleven months,’ he said.

  It had happened by chance. His father had planned to take

  her to a play and supper for her birthday, but at the last minute had been forced to fly to Los Angeles. Rather than let Kim spend the evening alone, E. J. had telephoned his son and asked him to escort her. Nervously, Armstead had agreed.

  Her presence that evening, he remembered, had made him feel like an unsure adolescent. After the play, at supper at La Caravelle, he had been mostly mute, unable to take his eyes off her, yet forcing himself not to stare at her. Vividly now, he remembered his mingled discomfort with her and attraction to her… and he remembered how he had envied and hated his father that evening and wondered what she could see in the old man.

  She could not have loved him, Armstead had decided. E. J. had been nearly three times her age, and not particularly good-looking. But he had been a power, a legend, and wealthy.

  Armstead crossed to a sofa and sat down, once again not able to take his eyes off her. Her negligee was flimsy, transparent, and he could make out the outline of one of her naked inner thighs. She was probably wearing nothing underneath, being alone. Armstead studied her at the portable bar. There was something marvelously wanton about her, the way her long flaxen hair fell over an eye, the way one almost bare shoulder moved, the outline of that fleshy thigh.

  It reaffirmed what he had felt when he saw her last. She had retained her beauty, no question - hardly faded, more mature and provocative. She was fairly tall, her lissomely curved body firm yet full at the bosom and hips, her legs long and slim. His father was a lucky bastard - had been a lucky bastard. Had been.

  He tried to calculate Kim’s age. She had been singing and dancing in a mediocre Broadway musical, one that would close in weeks, when his father first set eyes on her and went backstage. When her show closed, his father began seeing her more frequently, and eventually installed her in a small luxury apartment near Carnegie Hall. That had been eighteen years ago. Kim had been twenty-one, his father sixty-three, and he himself thirty-eight. Now she was thirty-nine, and he was fifty-six, and his father was - gone. She was young, much

  younger than he, but he was much y
ounger than his father.

  She was standing over him, handing him his scotch and water. ‘There you are.’

  He took the drink and absently took a swallow, looking up at her. ‘Were you at the funeral?’ he asked. T couldn’t find you.’

  T didn’t think he would have wanted me to go.’ She downed a portion of her drink. ‘How was it, Edward?’

  ‘Let me put it this way -‘ He recalled Dr. Scharfs irreverent story about Harry Cohn’s funeral, and he retold it to Kim, ending with the visitor’s comment, ‘Just give people what they want, and they’ll show up.’ He did not smile and neither did she. He drank some more. ‘He was a bastard, my father,’ Armstead said. ‘Does that offend you?’

  She gave a toss of the bare shoulder. ‘Not at all. He was never very nice to you.’

  She sat down on the sofa a few feet from Armstead, inched back against the corner pillows, and swung her legs up onto the sofa, lifting her knees, nastily making sure the bottom part of her negligee was closed.

  Armstead kept his gaze upon her. ‘Was he nice to you?’

  She was silent a spell, taking a long pull on her drink, contemplating the glass in her hand. ‘Was he nice to me? I don’t know. Yes, I suppose he was, in the beginning. I was just a gangly kid, and he was kind. After that, for some years, he was - well, attentive.’

  Armstead tried to recall those earlier years. His mother, Sadie, had suffered her first stroke and was partially paralyzed. His father had spent more and more time at work, actually with Kim, determined to make Kim a Broadway star. His father had financed five musical comedies to star her. Four had closed within a week. One ran a limping Variety season. Kim did not become a star. But she did become an object of curiosity and gossip.

  It was after his mother’s second stroke, Armstead remembered, a more debilitating one, that his father had bought Kim this new condominium on Sutton Place. He had bought her the entire floor, remodeling two large apartments into one huge one. He had also bought her endless clothes, furs, diamonds, cars. His father had been very possessive of her, concerned about his age and her youth, and he had rarely