The Dream Merchants Part 41

Farber flushed a little at my answer, but Ronsen grimly ignored it. "What we-uh, I mean-I have in mind," he stammered a little, "is to have him elected vice-president. He will be in charge of production."

I looked at him. "That's a very nice-sounding t.i.tle." I nodded my head. "Vice-president in charge of production. A guy named Thalberg once had it over at Metro. Zanuck's got it over at Twentieth Century-Fox." I stopped for a moment to let them get my point and then continued: "But those guys knew their business. What the h.e.l.l does this kid know? He doesn't know the front end of a camera from his a.s.shole." I shook my head sadly. "Besides, gentlemen, we've got a production manager who does know his business. If you want to make a vee pee out of him, that will be all right with me, but I can't see Dave in the job. He doesn't know enough about it."

Ronsen glanced uncomfortably at Farber. Farber returned his look implacably. Ronsen turned back to me. His voice was conciliatory. "There's really nothing to get excited about, Johnny. It will only be a working t.i.tle. Roth won't really be in charge of production. Gordon will still stay in that job, but we have to give him a t.i.tle of some importance."

I didn't answer for a moment. I looked at him steadily. I could see he was uncomfortable under my gaze; he s.h.i.+fted slightly in his seat. "Why?" I asked gently.

For the first time since he came into the office Farber spoke. "That's part of the price you have to pay for a million dollars," he said, his eyes staring into mine.

I turned my chair toward him. The chips were down and the cards were beginning to turn up on the table. This was it and I might as well get it over with as quickly as possible. "What's the rest of the price we gotta pay, Stan?" I asked softly.

He didn't answer; again it was Larry who did the talking, but I kept looking at Stan.

"Stanley will be elected to the board at that meeting along with Dave. He will be given a special authority to revamp the sales department along the lines of certain ideas he has."

My voice was sarcastic as I answered. "And what ideas has he got, may I ask, or are there some relatives of his around that I don't know about?"

"Wait a minute, Johnny," Ronsen said quickly. "You haven't heard his plans yet. You're prejudiced, but the board has already agreed with them in principle."

I turned and looked at him. "How come I haven't heard about them? I'm on the board too, remember?"

His eyes s.h.i.+fted behind his gla.s.ses. "This came up the day after you left and we had to act right away. We tried to get in touch with you, but couldn't."

In a pig's eye, they tried. I settled back in my chair comfortably and looked at them. "As president of this outfit I'm responsible for its operations. Those operations include sales policy and production policy. In other words, anything that pertains to the particular industry that this company is operating in. Your responsibility, Larry, is financial-to see that the company is always on a sound financial basis. When you start meddling in operations that are not your concern, you are endangering its financial standing and so imperiling your responsibility. I can well appreciate your concern and that of the board to protect the investment you have made thus far in the company. But an important factor to be considered is the qualifications of you people to pa.s.s upon any changes in how the company is to be run."

My cigarette had gone out and I lit another. I looked at them in the manner a teacher looks at his cla.s.s. "Let us examine those qualifications. Yours first. Your previous experience in this business has been confined to an a.s.sociation with the bankers who are presently in control of the Borden Company. These bankers, upon gaining control, tried for a while to run it along their lines of thinking. In the time they did so, they lost millions of dollars and were forced to turn to the industry to find a man that could operate the company profitably for them. They found one-George Pappas. And from there on out the responsibility was clearly his. The correctness of that decision is apparent in their financial position today.

"And our other estimable members of the board-what do they know about the picture business? As little or less than you. One is a member of a banking concern. One a member of a brokerage house on Wall Street." I was ticking them off on my fingers as I spoke. "One is a member of a wholesale food-packing company, and still another a hotel man. And the last, but not least, is a sweet retired gentleman of means whose inherited fortune allows him to maintain residences in all the socially correct places, to which he shuttles back and forth as the seasons demand and serves on various boards of directors of companies in which his money is invested. He brings to all these boards the same sweetness and general lack of knowledge that he brings to ours."

They were staring at my fingers, fascinated as I held my hand on the desk in front of them. I looked at them. "Shall I continue, gentlemen?" I asked gently. "Or is that enough?"

My voice grew cold. "I will not permit the same degree of incompetence to the operating management of this company that characterizes its board. This is a motion-picture company that at present faces a difficult and uncertain future. It needs experienced personnel, not amateurs. If your desire is to protect the money you have already invested, my advice to you people is simple. Proceed cautiously before you try to apply your experience to this business. It's like nothing else you've ever come in contact with before."

I smiled gently at Larry. His face was white and strained. "The one thing that you bring to this business that is needed is capital. You people either have money or know where you can get it. I do not underestimate its importance when I tell you: you work at your end of the business and let me work at mine."

Larry's voice was trembling with fury as he answered. He had probably never been spoken to so bluntly since he had been a baby. The veneer of politeness had been stripped from him. His words were savage. "Contrary to your stated opinion, Johnny, the board has already approved Stan's suggestions and will proceed to make it official. They are running the company, not you. This is no longer a one-man concern as it was in Kessler's day, and if you have any ideas of trying to run it on that basis, forget them." he had risen to his feet in anger as he spoke.

I looked up at him easily. This was the kind of language I could understand. Plain talk. To h.e.l.l with this business of being subtle and beating around the bush. My voice was calm, matter-of-fact. I smiled slowly. "You and your boys lost three million bucks s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with this outfit before you called on me to pull your nuts out of the fire. Well, if I'm gonna pull 'em out, I'm gonna do it in my way. I'm not gonna try to carry an added load of incompetent people who will only throw more monkey wrenches into the works."

He stopped short as he started to sit down again. I almost laughed aloud at the way he looked, suspended in the air over his chair. A flash of fear crossed his face and quickly disappeared. He hadn't thought I would go as far as I intimated. He thought I wanted the job more than anything else in the world. It was good he didn't know how right he was. He searched for words and finally found them. His control had returned, his voice was once more bland and smooth. "What are we getting upset about?" he asked in a conciliatory voice. "It's just a difference of opinion. I'm sure we can work something out that will be satisfactory to all of us." I could see the three million dollars working around in his mind as he turned to Stanley with a placating look on his face. "Can't we, Stan?"

Farber looked at me. My face was expressionless. He looked at Ronsen again. There was a familiar whine in his voice; I had heard it a long time before. "Then what do I get out of it? After all, I'm putting up the million dollars."

Ronsen looked at me. His voice was reasonable, persuasive. When he spoke, I knew I had them temporarily. That was the trouble. I knew it would be temporary, that it wouldn't last. It would become more difficult to deal with once they entrenched themselves. I knew what would happen. Sooner or later I would be out. The only way I was sure of winning was to keep them out now, but I couldn't do that. I'd already agreed to accept the million dollars. The best I could hope for was to keep the pay-off price down as much as possible.

I leaned toward them as I spoke. "I'm not an unreasonable man," I said gently. "I mind my own business and all I ask of people is to mind their own. I'm perfectly willing to have Stan elected to the board as an ordinary member without any special authority and I'm willing to give Dave a chance here at the studio. When there is time for him to develop, I'll even be willing to give him a chance at running it, but not right now. There is too much at stake for us to take any risks."

Ronsen looked at Farber. "That sounds fair enough, Stan. What do you say?" His voice was smooth enough to wrap around a baby's behind.

Farber looked at me. I could see the desire well up into his eyes to tell me to go to h.e.l.l, but his lips were pressed tightly together. His million bucks were in the pot already and there was nothing he could do about that. He got twenty-five thousand shares of common stock for it, which was all he could get-on paper. The new S.E.C. rules would not let any written agreement go further than just that. I could almost see him make up his mind to go along with my proposal and I knew that the fight had only started. I could see, too, that his mind was made up to get me out. He would wait for the right time, though. He felt certain it would come.

He got to his feet. From the look on his face I knew he had thought of something else. "I'll think about it," he said, and started out of the office.

Ronsen jumped to his feet quickly. He looked at me and then at Farber, who was walking to the door. I almost felt sorry for him. He was in the middle of it. For the moment it was a fight between Farber and me and he was out of his depth completely. The door closed behind Farber.

I smiled at Larry. For the first time I was in a position to give an order. "You better chase after your boy, Larry," I said patronizingly. "And see if you can make him see the light."

He didn't answer. The veil dropped from his eyes again for a second and his blazing resentment shone through; then he turned and hurried after Farber.

I watched the door close behind him and I knew I had made him an enemy as well as Farber. But somehow I didn't care about it any more. I would rather have them face me in the open light of day than have to look out for them in the dark. And yet inside me I knew that I was wrong. For whatever we could agree on during the day would have to be canceled when night fell. That was the kind of business this was.

The lights glowing on the clock on the dashboard of Doris's car showed it to be after ten. The radio was playing softly as we rode along. The night was warm and the tiny stars were twinkling in the dark blue-black of the sky.

I looked at her as she turned the car into the driveway and climbed the hill toward her house. She had been silent since we had left the restaurant.

She pulled the car to a stop and turned off the ignition key. We lit cigarettes and sat there silently listening to the music coming from the radio.

We both started to speak at the same time. It was funny and we laughed and the tension that had descended on us ever since we saw Dulcie in the restaurant seemed to fall away.

"What were you going to say?" I asked, still smiling.

Her eyes were serious as she looked at me. "Nothing."

"You were going to say something," I pointed out. "Now come on, what was it?"

She drew on her cigarette. It glowed and I could see the shadows in her eyes. "You loved her very much once."

I looked across the field in front of her house. Did I? I sometimes wondered now. Had I ever really loved Dulcie? Had I ever really known her? I doubted it. But she was such an actress, I had loved what I thought she was, or rather what she let me know of her. Now I was older and I knew more. If I told Doris that I hadn't loved Dulcie or that I didn't know, she wouldn't believe me, so I played it straight. "I did love her-once," I answered.

She was silent again. I watched her smoke her cigarette. I knew there was more coming. I waited. I wasn't wrong.

"Johnny," she asked, her voice very low, "what was she like? I mean really like. I heard so many stories about her, but I never really knew her."

What was she really like? I wondered. Thinking back over all that had happened, I knew now that I didn't know. I shrugged my shoulders. "You heard the stories?"

She nodded her head.

"Well-they were all true," I said.

She was silent again. Her cigarette burned down and she snapped it over the side of the car. We watched it make a glowing spiral in the air as it fell toward the ground. I felt a movement against my side. I looked down. Her hand was in mine. I looked at her and smiled.

Her voice was low. "It must have hurt terribly."

It had, but not as badly as I thought at the time. I remembered how I felt that night when I discovered Warren Craig in her bed. I shut my eyes. I didn't want to remember it. But I could still hear her screaming after me-words I had never thought I would hear from any woman's lips. Then the sudden silence when I hit her. I could remember how she looked lying there nude on the floor, looking up at me with a crazy sort of triumph in her eye, a cold smile on her lips, as she said: "That's what I always expected from-a cripple."

I looked at Doris. Her eyes were on me sympathetically. "No," I said slowly, "I don't think she ever really hurt me. What did hurt, though, came afterwards. Long afterwards. When I learned what I had been missing these many years."

She was watching my face carefully. "What was that?" she asked.

I looked into her eyes. "You," I said softly. "It really hurt then, for I knew that all the years before had been lost and I could never get them back. And I was afraid to try, I didn't know how."

She looked into my eyes searchingly for a long moment; then she turned and rested her head on my shoulder and looked up at the sky. We sat like that for a long time.

At last she spoke, her voice warm and contented. "I was afraid, too," she said.

I smiled down at her. "Afraid of what?" I asked.

She s.h.i.+fted her head on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. They were soft and trusting. "Afraid you would never forget her, afraid you would never come back. I was even afraid you thought of her now." I kissed her. She looked up at me. Her voice was small. "You don't know what it means to be afraid like that. Not to be sure of someone you love."

I kissed her again. Her lips were soft against mine. "You don't have to be afraid any more, sweetheart."

She smiled gently up at me. I could feel her breath against my cheek. "I know that-now," she sighed contentedly.

The night was still again and we could hear the sound of the crickets chirping in the bushes. Occasional fireflies sparkled in the night. Below us in the valley were long lines of lights. They came from homes, from street lamps, from neon signs. They matched the stars in the sky above us.

She sat up suddenly and looked at me. "What's going on at the studio, Johnny?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

I lit a cigarette before I answered. "Nothing important," I answered.

The look on her face was skeptical. She knew too much about this town to believe me. "Don't tell me that, Johnny," she said quietly. "I can read the papers. I saw what the Reporter had to say yesterday. Is it true?"

I shook my head. "Part of it is," I admitted, "but I think I got it licked."

"You did get into trouble because you came out to Papa," she said. She hesitated a moment. "I should have thought of that when I called you."

I looked at her. Her eyes were questioning. She was worried about me. Strangely I felt good about it. With all that she really had to worry about that was more important, she was thinking about me. I picked up her hand and kissed its palm. "I wouldn't have it any other way, sweetheart," I said. "Even if it meant that I had to leave Magnum. Being with you again and seeing Peter is more important than anything I have to do at the picture company."

Her eyes were clouded with a sort of mist. "I hope you won't have any trouble on account of it."

I squeezed her hand rea.s.suringly. "Don't worry about your old Uncle Johnny, sweetheart," I said more confidently than I felt. "He's got the situation under control."

I don't think it was more than ten minutes later that I found out how wrong I was. We heard the sound of a motor coming toward us in the driveway.

Doris looked at me puzzledly. "I wonder who that is," she said.

"It's Christopher," I said, glancing back at the headlights and recognizing the car. "I told him to pick me up here a little after eleven."

The car pulled alongside ours. Christopher stuck his head out the side. "That you, Mr. John?" he called.

"Yes, Christopher," I answered.

"I got a special message for you from Mr. Gordon. He says for you to call him right away. It's most important."

"Thanks, Christopher," I said, getting out of the car. I turned to Doris. "I'll use your phone."

She nodded and I hurried off to the house, wondering what he wanted now. I could hear Christopher's pleased voice behind me: "h.e.l.lo, Miss Doris. How is Mr. Peter?"

I didn't hear her reply because I was already in the hall and picking up the phone. I dialed Bob's number and waited. I could hear the buzz of the phone at the other end. It rang only once, then he picked it up. He must have been waiting for the call. "Bob," I said, "this is Johnny."

His voice sounded angry. "I thought you told me everything was going to be jake," he shouted into the phone.

What the h.e.l.l was he sore about? "Pipe down, pal," I said dryly, "or I won't need a phone to hear you. Sure I told you everything was going to be jake. Now what's wrong?"

He was still shouting. "Everything's wrong. You've been feeding me a line of bull, that's all. I just want to tell you I'm not gonna take it any more. I quit."

Now I was sore. "What the h.e.l.l's going on?" I asked. "Stop the c.r.a.ppin' around and tell me what happened. I still don't know."

"You don't know?" There was a sound of skepticism in his voice.

"I don't know," I answered.

He was silent for a minute. When he spoke again, there was a new tone in his voice. "Then we're both getting jobbed," he said. "I just got a call from Billy at the Reporter. He said an announcement just came from Ronsen's office that at a special board-of-directors meeting held in New York tonight Roth and Farber were elected to the board and that Roth was also elected vice-president in charge of production!"

It was my turn to be silent. The sons of b.i.t.c.hes had called my bluff. Farber must have done some fast talking to get Larry to pull a stunt like this. I could just imagine his arguing: "Take a chance and do it. Edge won't pull out. He's with this company too long. It's his baby." And he would be right too. He knew I wouldn't pull out even if Larry didn't. I found my voice. "Don't do anything until I see you, Bob. Sit tight, and if I don't see you over the week-end, I'll see you at the office Monday."

I hung up the phone. I waited a minute, then picked it up again and called the long-distance operator. "Get me New York," I said, and gave her Janey's number.

It was almost two o'clock in New York, but I had to find out what had happened.

Rocco answered the phone; his voice was fuzzy with sleep. "h.e.l.lo," he growled.

"Rock, this is Johnny," I said quickly. "I'm sorry to disturb you so late, but I gotta talk to Janey."

He was awake in a moment. "Okay," he said. "Hold on."

Janey's voice came on. "Yes, Johnny."

"What time did that directors meeting take place tonight?" I asked.

"About nine o'clock," she answered. "The Teletype calling for it came through at six, but it was nine before they could get enough of them together for a quorum. I thought you knew about it, but I didn't take any chances. I sent a notice back to you on the night wire."

"I see," I said slowly. I certainly did. There were probably two notices on my desk in the studio right now, placed there after I had left the office. I had left early because I wanted to try to see Peter that afternoon.

"Is there anything else, Johnny?" she asked anxiously.

Suddenly I was tired. "No," I said slowly. "Thanks a lot. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"That's all right, Johnny," she said.

"Good night Janey." I heard her answer and then hung up the phone and turned around.

Doris was standing there looking at me. I looked at her. My face must have told her the bad news. She took a deep breath. "Trouble, Johnny?" she asked.

I nodded my head slowly. Nothing but trouble. It was up to me now. Put up or shut up. If I took it, I was through. If I didn't, I was through anyhow. Slowly I sank into a chair. What a day! Black Friday.

I should've stayed in bed.