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

Management,” he said with satisfaction.
    “Stop bragging,” I said. “Now I’m looking for insurance.”
    “Come on, Steve. You got to be joking. With those pictures all you need is—”
    I cut him off. “A lead-in show. Something that will hook them before they get trapped by the other nets.” I thought for a moment. “Any big star around that’s willing to do an hour a week?”
    “You’re out of your skull,” he said. “Anybody good is already signed.”
    “WAM! Go find me one.” I put down the telephone.
    Almost immediately, the phone signaled again. “Miss Sinclair on the wire,” Fogarty said.
    I hit the button. “Barbara.”
    “I love you,” she said.
    “You’re nuts,” I laughed.
    “No, I mean it. I love you,” she said earnestly. “You’re there. Like you’re solid. Always there.”
    “How are you feeling?”
    “Great!” she answered. “I’m having a ball.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Right now I’m having breakfast in your bed. I hope you don’t mind crumbs. And I had them roll in the TV and I’m watching it.”
    I was curious. “What are you watching?”
    “An old Jana Reynolds movie. God, she could really sing.”
    “Yeah,” I said. Absently I hit the remote on my desk. Sinclair TV came on. A quiz show. I hit the other button. The next set came on. The Lone Ranger. Par for midday. “What channel?”
    “Don’t tell Daddy,” she laughed. “ABC.”
    I hit the button twice and Jana Reynolds came on just in time to be cut by the commercial. I turned off the sound.
    “I like it here,” she said. “One of the waiters even called me Mrs. Gaunt. I may never go home.”
    “Sure,” I said, watching the screen.
    “What time are you coming home?”
    “Why?”
    “I ordered a special dinner for us,” she said. “Caviar, Chateaubriand, pommes soufflés, Dom Perignon, candlelight, the works.” She giggled. “I even ordered a fantastic negligee from one of the shops in the hotel.”
    “You sound very domestic,” I said, my eyes still on the screen. The commercial went on, forever. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
    “None at all. As a matter of fact, I think I boosted your prestige a hundred percent in this place.”
    “At room service prices, baby, I could live without it.”
    “Put it on your expense account,” she said. “Tell Daddy that you’re entertaining someone very special to the network. A big stockholder. After all, mother left me fifteen percent of Sinclair Broadcasting.”
    “You twisted my arm. Now get off the line, I’ve got to get back to work.”
    “I love you,” she said, and the phone clicked off.
    I put down the receiver as Jana Reynolds came back on. The movie was about fifteen years old and she was in her prime then, about twenty-five years old but still playing nineteen and making you believe it. Too bad she couldn’t go on playing nineteen forever.
    But time caught up with her. Time, and three bad marriages, and booze, and drugs, and near suicides. It’s like at a certain point someone turned off the juice. You got too much talent, baby, now take some of the shit. And she got it all.
    Films were out. They passed her by. There were other nineteen-year-olds now. But somehow in spite of everything, her voice held up. Occasionally, she did concerts and nightclubs. The public still loved her and would come out in droves to see her in person, but then something would happen and the whole thing would blow in a front-page blast of headlines. She was bombed and wouldn’t show up or if she did, she was falling down and in no condition to perform. But the headlines were there. They were always there. She was still a star. Even her discharge in bankruptcy was front page.
    I stared up at the screen. She was still a star. I was reaching for the phone even before the thought crystallized in my head. A star. Wasn’t that just what I was asking Jack to find for me?
    “Now I know you’re crazy!” he yelled.
    “Who’s her