Cheat and Charmer Read Online Free PDF

suicidal.”
    But you did nothing to stop him, Jake thought. You were in love with Veevi, and sore at her for marrying Ventura; you could have gone to your father and argued with him to keep Ventura on, but you didn’t do a goddamn thing. You let them both go.
    “There was nothing left for him here, Irv.”
    “You know, in this business if you’re patient enough something always turns up.”
    Not true, Jake said again to himself. It’s what everybody out here is terrified of: if you’re finished, you’re finished for good.
    “So,” Jake said, “if Dinah refuses to testify and I’m blacklisted, there’s nothing to worry about? I’ll just sell shoes till I get a phone call from you?”
    “Okay, okay,” said Engel, rearranging paperweights and pens. “Let’s get serious. Let’s talk about you and Dinah. She was in the Party and you weren’t, and they’ve got her number now and you want to know what to do. Is that the situation?”
    “That’s the situation. Now,” said Jake, slapping his thighs with both hands, “you’ve got to understand my wife. She’s—she’s
frighteningly
loyal. She’d do anything for me. If I ask her to testify, she’ll testify. She’s willing to do it. If she could have done it last night at your party she would have. But I don’t want her to go through it if she doesn’t absolutely have to.”
    “Well, what about you, Jake? Can you live with Dinah’s testifying for you?”
    Jake bit his lip, hesitating. “I don’t know, Irv. That’s a tough one.”
    They both knew it meant he could but wasn’t going to say so.
    “So what are you asking, dear boy? You want I should be the heavy?” Engel said, in imitation of his immigrant father.
    “Tell me the truth. What’ll happen if she refuses.”
    “What’ll happen to
her
or to
you
?”
    “Me.”
    Engel looked at his watch. “Tell you what. I have to get tough with a certain director, a friend of yours and mine, though I can’t tell you his name, but I know you know who I mean. I’m supposed to be on his set in five minutes to yell at him about going over-budget—something I rarely have to worry about with you, which is another reason you’re a very valuablecommodity.” He picked up the phone. “Carlotta, set up a call for me with the legal department at exactly one-thirty. And at exactly two o’clock get me Van Zandvoort Aldrich. On his private phone.”
    “
The
V. Z. Aldrich?” Jake asked. “Of the Hudson-Hyde Trust?”
    “The one and only. I’m expecting him out here at the end of the week. He comes to inspect the premises about twice a year,” added Engel, putting the phone back. “Most often when his wife’s in Paris for the spring collections.”
    V. Z. Aldrich was the head of the New York bank behind Marathon. “We met him at your house, Irv, remember? He tried to get me to arrange a date for him with Fiona Henley. I told him she’d gone back to England when we finished shooting. What else could I say? That she’s a dyke and is serviced by her maid?”
    “Very diplomatic of you.”
    “He told me how much he loved
Cousin Jonnycake
,” Jake continued. “ ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘it took real chutzpah to make that picture.’ ” Jake pronounced the word with the
ch
sound in
cheese
, or
chump
.
    “And he also asked you, if I’m not mistaken, whether you’d signed the loyalty oath, and you fudged and said you were planning to, and by God the next day after that dinner in you trotted, and out came your pen, and to a chorus of angels you signed that goddamn loyalty oath and God did not smite you with leprosy. You woke up the next morning and you were still the same talented, successful guy you were the day before. Look, I understand what you’re feeling—you love your wife, you’re edgy, you don’t want to put her through this. Take the day off, play golf, have fun, then meet me back here at five o’clock. I’ll have some answers for you.”
    Jake sighed, slapped his thighs again, and