Free The Inheritors by Harold Robbins

agent?”
    “She hasn’t any,” he answered. “There isn’t one that would touch her. She’s involved in lawsuits with everyone she’s ever had.”
    “What’s the packaging fee on a hundred-thousand-dollar show every week?”
    “Ten grand per,” he answered promptly.
    “For ten thousand dollars a week you won’t handle her?”
    There was a pause. “I’m your boy,” he said. “For ten thousand a week I’d handle Adolf Hitler.”
    Spoken like a true agent. If nothing else, he was dependable. I never got to that dinner Barbara had planned for us. Instead, that night, I was on a plane to the coast.

CHAPTER NINE
    It was three months later when I ducked into the alley behind the theater on Vine Street where the show would be broadcast. It was five minutes to five, Pacific Standard Time. In five minutes it would be eight o’clock in New York and we would be on the air.
    Inside was a madhouse. Tension was crackling like the whip in a jockey’s hand on the home stretch. I cut behind several men who were moving scenery and made my way to the wings. There were men and wires and cameras everywhere. The stage manager was whispering into his chest mike to the director up in the booth.
    I peeked out into the theater. It was jammed. The curtain was still down, but they watched the stage with an air of expectancy.
    The call came while I was still peering at the house. “Three minutes to airtime. Places everybody.” I turned back.
    The stagehands who had been adjusting the set came running off. The wing cameras rolled into place and set.
    The director came out of the booth for a final check. He nodded, but I don’t think he even saw me.
    He came to a dead stop. “Where’s Jana?”
    The stage manager stared at him. He half turned, then turned back to him. “She was here a minute ago.”
    “You fool!” the director screamed in a shrill voice. “She’s not here now. Get her!”
    A stagehand stopped. “I just saw her go back into her dressing room.”
    “Get her! Get her!” The director was hysterical now.
    “Two minutes to airtime,” the overhead speakers blared.
    The stage manager pulled off his headset, dropping it on the floor, ran toward her dressing room. Several of the grips followed him. I was right behind them.
    The stage manager was knocking on the door. “Two minutes to airtime, Miss Reynolds.”
    There was no answer.
    He knocked again. “Two minutes—”
    I pushed my way through the crowd in front of the door. “Open it,” I snapped.
    He tried the door. He turned toward me, a sick look on his face. “I—I can’t. It’s locked.”
    I pushed him out of the way. I put my foot against the door and kicked it off its lock. I followed the door into the room.
    She stood there, staring at me, a bottle in one hand, a glassful of liquor in the other. “Get out!” she screamed. “I’m not going on!”
    I knocked the glass from her hand as she raised it toward her lips and the bottle from the other as she tried to put it behind her. I caught her hand as it came wildly at me with an outstretched claw and pulled her to me.
    “Let me go, you son of a bitch!” she screamed, twisting viciously, kicking at me. “I want a drink!”
    I held on to her. “No booze. That was our deal. You’re going on!”
    “I will not, you cocksucker!” she spit into my face. “I’m not going out there. You tricked me! They didn’t come to hear me sing, they came to eat me alive! They came to see a freak.”
    I let her have it. Open palm, right across the face. It made a crack like thunder in the small room and she spun across it and wound up half on and half off the couch against the wall.
    The overhead speakers blared, “One minute to air time!”
    I crossed the room and pulled her off the couch. She stared up at me, naked fear in her eyes. “You’re going on, you cunt! I didn’t pull you out of the gutter to go to black at airtime. You stand me up you don’t talk to lawyers, you talk to your undertaker!”
    I