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  “Grossvater . . .”

  “Ja, ja, ja. Kimberly . . . Shiksa . . . Marrying you, my grandson has done well. But not so well if he does not escape from my son. Erich is a good man. But he thinks he has made all Jack’s decisions for him. He has laid out his life for him. He cares little what Robert does. It is Jack that he cares about. He wants you to become a junkman. It is the family business. You don’t like that, huh, shiksa? Well, why should you? The daughter of Boston Common does not want her husband to be a junkman.”

  “I don’t scorn your business, Herr Professor,” said Kimberly. Her German accent was perfect, her vocabulary small. “Ich bin in Boston geboren. Das ist richtig. Aber—”

  “We have nothing for which to apologize to each other, Kimberly. I like you.”

  “Danke schön, Herr Professor.”

  “I decided so this evening. My son Erich means to compel both of you to accept his idea as to what you should be. He was willing to let Robert go into the film business without interfering, even lending him some support. But Robert is the younger son. You, Jack, are the elder. He expects you to—”

  “I won’t do it, Grossvater!”

  “—to become his successor, to serve an apprenticeship, then to succeed him eventually.”

  “Eventually,” Jack muttered wryly.

  The old man shook his head sorrowfully. “You should live so long.”

  “I don’t want to live under his domination,” said Jack.

  “No,” said Johann Lehrer. “So I make for you an option, Jack. I trust you to choose well.” He withdrew an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jack. “This will make a choice possible. Add it to what your grandmother left you. Deposit it before your father learns of it. He may claim I’ve lost my mind.”

  Jack glanced at the check inside the envelope. “Grossvater!”

  Johann Lehrer rose from his chair. He stepped toward Kimberly and embraced her. “Take good care of him, Kimberly. A man needs a good woman. I judge you are a good woman, pretty little shiksa.”

  The old man moved to the door. Jack kissed his hand before Johann Lehrer stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Kimberly rushed to Jack. “My God, Jack! How much?”

  “He matched what my grandmother left me. Half a million dollars.”

  Kimberly shrieked. “Oh, my God! We’re rich! We can live the rest of our lives on it. That and what your grandmother left you makes a million! You don’t have to go into any business!”

  Jack tipped his head to one side. “Oh, yes, I do. We’ll do great things. We’ll go into the business your father is offering me. I’m not willing to die of boredom, Kimberly. And, if you think about it, neither are you.”

  Kimberly reached inside his robe and seized his cock. “A man with this is never going to be bored,” she said. “Neither is his woman. And he’s going to do great things, for sure.”

  Jack laughed. “Let’s get back to it. We should have more such interruptions!”

  Four

  IN 1931 ERICH LEAR WAS FORTY-SIX YEARS OLD. TWENTY years before he could have been the model for the strongjawed, cleft-chin, wavy-haired male who courted the handsome girl in drawings by Charles Dana Gibson. He was a Gibson male no more. The Lear men developed receding hairlines early in life, and in Erich’s case the retreat had been abrupt and complete. Where wavy black hair had once flourished, a bulbous dome now gleamed. The strong cleft chin had been softened by added flesh. His dark eyes remained penetrating and still had the ability to switch instantaneously from a warm, caressing gaze to a glowering stare. His mouth still had a sensual look about it, and he continued to smoke Marsh Wheeling stogies: strong, thin, cheap black cigars that emitted a formidable stench.

  On the morning after the dinner party at which he had gotten better acquainted with his new daughter-in-law, he received Jack in his office. He waved him toward the couch. He himself sat down behind his desk, in the huge high-back judge’s chair that was meant to intimidate. He lit a stogie. His black double-breasted suit was already streaked with ash from the last one he’d smoked.

  Jack sat down.

  “I meant to take you aside last night and say a word to you about your new wife. The opportunity did not present itself. So now—I need hardly tell you that I was not pleased when you announced your intention to marry a shiksa. From Boston, too. What was wrong with all the nubile girls of our own kind? I had in mind one or two I wanted you to consider—fleshy, heavy-titted girls taught by their mothers to be good wives. This one you chose . . . Well, she is sleek. She is smart—maybe too smart. She contradicted you twice last night.”

  “Kimberly is intelligent. I respect her opinions. I don’t always agree with them, and I don’t always accept them but I respect them.”

  Erich Lear flipped his right hand in front of him. “This is immaterial. But what kind of wife is she going to make? I wanted for you a wife who would be appropriately deferential, as your mother was to me. This goyish girl from Boston will defer to no one—not to you, not to me, not to anyone. Is she good on her back? Does she suck you off? A woman has got to learn to suck cock—and like it.”

  “I’d be grateful if you would speak of my wife with a degree of respect,” Jack said solemnly.

  “Respect . . . You get that started, and you’ll be respecting her for the rest of your life. Well, it’s done. I suppose Kim is all right. She can be made all right.”

  “Please don’t call her Kim, as you did last night. Her name is Kimberly, and she doesn’t like to be called Kim.”

  “Already she has taught you what she likes and doesn’t like! How well does she know your likes and dislikes?”

  Jack decided to try to lighten the conversation. He smiled at his father. “I’ve got something she likes,” he said.

  “Yes, I imagine. Your mother and I were astonished by it. Aside from that, what about you does she respect?”

  Jack blew a loud sigh. “What’s the point? What are you driving at?”

  Erich blew a blast of heavy blue smoke from his stogie. “You ever hear of a ship called Kaiserin Luise, later called Erie? I will recover approximately forty-five thousand tons of steel from her, plus miles of lead and copper pipe, and . . . But that’s not the half of it. She is fitted out with gorgeous woodwork, tons of oak flooring, crystal chandeliers, bath fixtures plated with gold, elevators, staircases, and so on. In years past, assets like that got away from us because we didn’t know how to appraise them and so let subcontractors remove them. I’m not taking bids from subcontractors on this job. This becomes your role in the business. I want you to go through the ship and make an inventory and appraisal. With your fine Harvard education and the elevated tastes you acquired in Boston, you’ll know what’s valuable and what’s not; you’ll be able to distinguish the good stuff from the schlock and dreck. That’s your assignment: to strip these old liners of their treasures, find a market, and sell them. If you think being a junk dealer is beneath your dignity, you can be an antique dealer.”

  “Father—”

  “I’ll make you an executive vice president, at a thousand dollars a week. I’ll get you a secretary who fucks and sucks. You need a little time to find a home and settle in. Then I want you to go aboard that ship and—”

  “Father! I am not going into the business. I will not accept a vice presidency. I am going into an entirely different line of business.”

  “Oh? And what line of business is this?”

  “I am buying a radio station.”

  Erich stared at his stogie for a moment, then flung it across the room, where sparks set the rug smoldering in two places. Jack did not stand up and stamp on the fire; he just sat calmly and watched as his father poured a carafe of water on it.

  “You haven’t got the money to buy a radio station,” he grumbled. “If you came here to ask me for a loan—”

  “I have the money.”

  “What your grandmother left you. You mean to sink all you’ve got into—”
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br />   “I don’t have to do that. Mr. Wolcott is forming a corporation that will buy the station. He’s giving Kimberly and me a block of the stock and an option to buy more.”

  “You’re going to work for your father-in-law? What kind of a man does that make you?”

  “What kind of man would I be working for you?” Jack asked.

  “You’d be the son of the founder of the business, getting ready to take over when the time comes!”

  “Well, I’m going to take over the station right now. And maybe other stations if I can make this one work.”

  “Radio! Like your brother a—”

  “I know. A Luftmensch. Well, Bob is a fool, but even Bob understands there are better things than the junk business.”

  “The junk business was not beneath the dignity of Der Herr Professor Lehrer. But—Oh, I understand. It is beneath the dignity of the Wolcotts of Boston, beneath the dignity of the outstanding debutante of 1929. Oh, yes, I understand these things. The cunt, I imagine, doubts that a kike junk dealer could even know the definition of a Boston debutante.”

  “You’ve called my wife a cunt for the last time.”

  “I will call her anything I wish!”

  Jack stood. “Good-bye, Father.”

  Erich raised his chin high. “My son . . . Fuck the shiksa!”

  “I already have. She’s pregnant.”

  His father glowered at him. “You walk out of here, you will never see me again!”

  “Good-bye, Father.”

  TWO

  One

  1931

  THEIR HOUSE WAS NOT GRAND, BUT IT WAS OLD AND GRACEful. Jack and Kimberly were proud of it. It was located on Chestnut Street, not far from the Quaker Meeting House, and was one of six red-brick houses that stood in a row, sharing walls. These houses had been built in 1832 as homes for two intermarried families, the Hallowells and the Lowells, so that the elder generations could live in close proximity to the younger and conveniently supervise their lives. A century of rain and wind—plus the aggressive tendrils of the ivy that had to be torn off from time to time—had softened the severe lines of the old brick. And at night, the greenish glow from the mantles in the gas lamps on either side of each front door made them look quaint and inviting.

  Inside, the rooms were of modest size but sumptuously furnished, almost entirely in antiques. Kimberly’s mother had found the house and had proposed to buy it with its contents intact. While Kimberly and Jack were in California, Mrs. Wolcott had overseen the sorting and hauling away of a truckload of the clothing and other very personal possessions of the late owner, retaining only the furniture, curtains, and rugs, all of which she had subjected to professional cleaning. She had bought new mattresses and new bedding. For two autumn days the house had stood with every window wide open, to air before the young couple returned to occupy it.

  In California, Jack had known all this activity was going on in Boston. His father had never had a chance of talking him into staying in Los Angeles.

  Jack had invested $60,000 of the money from his grandmother in the purchase and renovation of the house. It was an investment. A house like this, in this part of Boston, would always be marketable, Depression or no Depression.

  “You agree to the Christmas party, then?” Kimberly asked, as she sat on the bed and watched him dress for the evening.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She was inviting more guests than could be squeezed into the house at one time: her parents, her brother and his wife, her sister and her husband, and a score of couples, some of whom were her friends, some only acquaintances. He knew what she was doing. She was testing the waters, to see who would accept and who would not accept an invitation from her now that she was married to Jack Lear.

  She knew that a few of the people she had invited would not come. They refused to accept or understand the fact that Kimberly Bayard Wolcott had married a Jew—and not only that but a Jew from California, the son of a salvage baron. The party was to be a challenge flung in the face of Boston society.

  Kimberly went into the bathroom, which in this house was not adjacent to the bedroom but was down the hall. Jack knew why. She was washing out her mouth with Lavoris. A few minutes ago she had knelt before him and given him a vigorous blow job. She sucked all right. But Erich didn’t need to know that.

  “How long do you think you’ll be with Daddy?” she asked when she returned.

  “Let’s say an hour.”

  She was wearing a powder-blue dressing gown. She stood in front of him and helped him with his shirt studs. He was dressing for a drink with her father at the club bar, then for the dinner they would have later.

  This was one of the reasons he had married Kimberly, and it was one of the reasons she had married him. She was making a gentleman of him. When he’d proposed marriage he had frankly told her he hoped she would consent to make of him the kind of man she would want for a husband, which he certainly wasn’t already. The idea of being invited to make a man over had intrigued her, she had confessed. It was one of the reasons she’d finally consented to become his wife.

  The other reasons, he had deduced. He’d then had half a million dollars of his own and was an up-and-coming man. He had impressed her as limitlessly ambitious. He had impressed her also as independent, willing to break away from his awful family. Once she got her hands on it, she had been fascinated by his cock, which was the term she had elected to use for it. She insisted still that it was the only one she had ever seen, but Jack figured she must have had some basis for comparison (statues in the Museum of Fine Arts?), since she understood it was extraordinary.

  He only vaguely understood another reason why he had appealed to this exquisite girl. Jack Lear sensed but did not really know that he was singularly charismatic. He had seen the quality work sometimes but had not yet fully learned to appreciate and use it. The truth was that people were inclined to like him. He was now pondering ways to exploit this asset.

  Anyway, Kimberly had exuberantly accepted his invitation to make him over into a proper gentleman. Sometimes he felt he paid a price. Tonight he would not only venture onto the street in white tie but would wear a cape and a silk hat and carry a stick as well. He knew that was how her father and the other men at the club would be dressed. Even so, Jack found it difficult to feel comfortable in such rigging.

  He had been accepted into the Common Club as Harrison Wolcott’s son-in-law, not as a Jew from California. He suspected that his father-in-law had called in a few IOUs to get him into the club. It was by no means the most distinguished gentlemen’s club in Boston, but it was a gentlemen’s club, and acceptance there clearly implied acceptance in Boston society.

  As he walked to the club, along streets paved with brick as old and worn as those of his house, some of them green and slippery with decades’ accumulation of algae, lichens, and moss, he noticed he was not the only man on the street dressed in formal evening attire.

  At the club he checked his hat, cape, and stick and mounted the broad carpeted stairway to the second floor.

  With the coming of Prohibition, the bar had been moved to the second floor. In the event of a visit by Prohibition agents, someone downstairs would step on a button and sound an alarm in the bar. By the time the agents climbed the stairs, all of the drinks on the bar would have been poured into buckets and the buckets emptied into a sink. The agents would face the hostile glares of gentlemen sipping ginger ale or lemonade.

  It had never happened. Prohibition might have altered the drinking habits of the common folk in the Midwest, but it had required only minor adjustments among the Boston Brahmins and the Boston Irish.

  Harrison Wolcott was at the bar, an Old-Fashioned before him.

  “Ah, Jack! Scotch?”

  Jack nodded. The bartender saw the nod and took a bottle from the cabinet behind the bar.

  “How’s the little mother-to-be?”

  “She’s doing fine,” Jack said.

  “When is it due, exactly?”
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br />   “The middle of April, we think.”

  “She’s not very big yet,” Harrison Wolcott observed.

  “She’s petite. She may not get very big. The doctor doesn’t want her to gain any more weight than necessary.”

  “Well, then . . .”

  Harrison Wolcott was a comfortable and self-confident man—whose self-confidence had been reinforced when the Depression had hardly touched him. His company, Kettering Arms, Incorporated, had worked to capacity between 1914 and 1919 and had made huge profits. He had been prescient enough to retrench drastically in 1919 and 1920, and the company remained only big enough to supply its specialized market for high-quality hunting and target rifles. That market had diminished only slightly when the Depression came. Moguls and magnates still prized Kettering rifles and bought about as many of them in 1930 as they had bought in 1928.

  What was mote, Harrison Wolcott had invested conservatively and diversely. His book value was no more than half of what it had been in 1929, but he was satisfied his investments were sound, and he kept them.

  He was just fifty years old, but his hair had turned white. It lay thick and smooth across his head. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes pale blue, his mouth wide, his chin square. He was, in short, a handsome man.

  “How are the bridge lessons going? Kimberly tells me you have a real flair for it.”

  Jack grinned. “I’ve learned not to trump my partner’s ace.”

  “Kimberly says you’re better than that.”

  “Kimberly has her enthusiasms.”

  “I won’t ask how things are going at WCHS. I’ll rely on you to tell me when you want to tell me.”