Read Online The Inheritors by Harold Robbins - Free Book Online Page A

ought to get a summer job. It’s not good for you to be hanging around here all the time with nothing to do.”
    “That’s an idea,” I said. It was dull lying around on the beach all day.
    “I spoke to Mr. Lefferts. He said he can use you down at the radio station afternoons. It won’t pay much, but it’s something to do.”
    And that was how it all began. Before the summer was over I was running programming and sales for Lefferts. And by the time I went back to school I knew what I wanted to be.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The television set came on with a blast of sound and woke me up. I stared at it stupidly. Channel 7. I got up and turned it to Sinclair. I called downstairs for orange juice and coffee, then got under a hot shower until the aches in my bones went away. When I came out, the orange juice, coffee, and morning paper were on the breakfast table. Barbara was still sound asleep when I left for work. Those three sleeping pills had finally caught up with her.
    I was in early, but Fogarty was there before me. I dumped the papers I had taken home on her desk. She gave me the appointment schedule for the day. I made only one change. I moved Winant of engineering up to nine o’clock and made him the first appointment of the morning.
    He was a tall, pipe-smoking man whose eyes looked out at me from behind steel-rimmed glasses. “Good morning, Mr. Gaunt,” he said, placing a paper on my desk.
    I picked it up. It was his resignation just as I had asked the day before. I looked at him.
    “I thought since I was coming up here,” he said easily, “I would deliver it in person.”
    I grinned at him. “Thank you.”
    Fogarty came in with my coffee. There was a cup on the tray for him.
    “Hold all calls,” I said as she left. I sipped my coffee and looked at him. “Mr. Winant, how do we stand in relation to color?”
    “We’ve made all the surveys,” he said.
    “And?”
    “We’re waiting.”
    “For what?” I asked.
    “To see how it’s accepted,” he said, uncomfortably. “NBC—”
    “I’m not interested in NBC,” I snapped. “I’m interested in Sinclair. Why are we waiting?”
    “I’m an engineer,” he said finally. “I don’t make policy.”
    I smiled at him. “Now we’re beginning to understand each other.”
    He was bewildered.
    I made it easy for him. “If I tell you the policy is color now, how fast can we get it on the air?”
    He began to look interested. “I can have the whole network in color by next September.”
    “Can you give me New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles by New Year’s?”
    “That’s not much time.”
    “I know that.”
    He thought for a moment, tapping his pipe with his finger. He looked up at me. “If I get the go-ahead now, I can do it.”
    “Do it,” I said. “You got the go-ahead.”
    He rose to his feet, relieved. “You’ve got yourself color. Do you want to know what it will cost?”
    “If I wanted to know I would have asked,” I said. “You just send up the estimate. I’ll okay it.”
    He started for the door. I called him back, holding up his resignation. “Just one thing, Mr. Winant.”
    “Yes, Mr. Gaunt?”
    “You said I would have it by New Year’s, right?”
    “New York, Chicago, L.A., right?”
    “Okay. You deliver. I tear this up.”
    He stood there a moment, then he smiled. “It’s as good as torn up right now, Mr. Gaunt.”
    I watched the door close behind him. I had a feeling he would deliver. Slowly I tore it in half, then put the two pieces in an envelope and wrote his name across it. I called Fogarty into the office and had her send it down to him.
    It was time I began to build my own team. And he was as good a man to start with as any.
    It was almost one o’clock when Jack called. “I just put down the phone to my coast office. They got the deal wrapped up. When can you get out there to sign?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Great.” He laughed. “How’s that for service? WAM!”
    “Yeah, WAM,” I said.
    “World Artists