Free Tycoon by Harold Robbins Page B

coming.”
    â€œShe talked about that, huh?”
    â€œBut there’s another reason, I think, why she married you. I don’t know when she first got a look at, a feel of, the Jack Lear schlong; but I have to suspect it was before the wedding. I mean, Jack, she wasn’t a virgin. You didn’t think she was, did you?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œShe used to talk about sex. Girls talk about those things, but she talked about it more frankly than most. She said she wanted a peter that would go all the way up to her belly button.”
    â€œWell, she’s got it,” he said bitterly. “That’s the one way I satisfy her.”
    â€œJack. Why don’t you get out of it?”
    â€œSame reason as everybody else that’s stuck with—I . . . Bets, I thought it was the perfect marriage. Kimberly’s beautiful. She’s smart. She’s chic. Maybe a Jew from California did think he would move high in the world if he married Kimberly Bayard Wolcott. And, Christ—you should forgive the expression—I thought I was the cat who swallowed the canary. Trouble is, that’s how she thinks of herself, too.”
    â€œI’m divorced, Jack.”
    â€œYeah. But I’ve got two kids. Old, old story, no? People shouldn’t have children until they’ve been married five years.”
Three
    T HEY HAD A ROOM, NOT A SUITE, IN A HOTEL IN W HITE Plains. It had a radio speaker above the door, and the radio was tuned to the station the hotel management had chosen. The first time Betsy switched it on, it blared in a crackly tone:
    Where, oh, where
    Has my little dog gone?
    Where, oh, where can he be?
    With his tail cut short and his ears cut long,
    Oh, where, oh, where can he be?
    Jack called the front desk and ordered a radio brought up. They said they didn’t have one, and he told them to go out and buy a radio and charge it to his bill. Within an hour the radio was in place.
    For a while before they went down to dinner, Jack and Betsy listened to WHPL. Then, while he took a bath, she tried some other stations, wanting to hear what might be coming in from New York City. When Jack came out of the bathroom, she was listening to a newscast from New York.
    Jack frowned. Then his attention was caught by the measured cadence and mellifluous voice of a newscaster.
    â€œMr. Anthony Eden . . . British minister for League of Nations Affairs . . . arrived in Rome today for a series of meetings with Signor Mussolini. They are expected to confer at length on the situation in . . . Ethiopia. It is well known that Signor Mussolini hopes to add the Kingdom of Ethiopia to the Italian empire he wishes to build in Africa.
    â€œMeanwhile, in Washington, President Roosevelt renewed his plea to Congress to move more quickly to pass the Social Security Bill. Calling it the most important legislation before Congress in this decade, he—”
    â€œMy God, listen to the man!” Jack exclaimed. “Who is he?”
    They had to wait through the rest of the broadcast and through its commercials before they finally heard the newscaster say, “This has been Curtis . . . Frederick, reporting from New York. Good . . . night.”
    â€œNow, that’s the way to read news! My God, Bets, compared to that staccato ass Walter Winchell, this man is . . . Well, he has dignity! God, what I’d give to get him to Boston!”
Four
    J ACK ASSIGNED M ICKEY S ULLIVAN TO FIND OUT ALL HE COULD about Curtis Frederick. Mickey reported that Frederick had been a print journalist originally, starting at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, then had moved to New York, where he became a political writer for the Herald Tribune. When the newspaper decided to have its lead stories read on the air, it handed the assignment to Frederick because of his smooth baritone voice. Within six months he switched to the Times station, WQXR, because he felt it was more committed