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"Robbins has the ability to hold his readers absorbed."

� The Chicago Tribune
"Hi Cooper."

I stiffened and turned. The voice was that of a man
I recognized as soon as I saw him: Lou Chieppa, the
greaseball hood who had held a knife to my throat in
Philly and told me the big man was Napolitano, Ice
Cream, not the Chef. This morning he was dressed in
cutoff shorts and a blue Izod shirt.

He stood, legs apart, menacing me with that ugly
switchblade I had seen before.

"Careful Lou. He's no pushover," muttered Filly.

"Heh-heh, heh-heh. Pushover. Yeah, push him over
is exactly what I'm going to do. Just stand clear, Fil."
Filly. She'd set me up. My God, how long had they
been planning this?

I looked at her and shook my head. I'd been stupidl

The bitch smirked.

Chieppa moved forward, cautiously, on the balls of
his feet.
They'd made a fatal mistake. . ..

"His characters are compelling, his dialogue is dramatic,
and his style is simple and straightforward."

� The Los Angeles Times

Forge Books by Harold Robbins

The Predators
The Secret



HAROLD
ROBBINS


THE

SECRET



ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK



NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed"
to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this
book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.


THE SECRET

Copyright � 2000 by the Estate of Harold Robbins

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.

A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Forge* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-57179-7

First edition: April 2000
First mass market edition: June 2001

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321


THE

SECRET



1


LEN

We were not supposed to play cards for money in our
dorm rooms. We were not supposed to drink or smoke.
We were not supposed to have copies of Playboy or Penthouse.
We were not supposed to jerk off. We were not
supposed to sit around in our underwear, without robes.

In fact, we were not supposed to gather in groups of
more than three.

When the loud knock sounded on the door, this is how
we were�

� I was playing poker with Joe and Lou and Bill,
which was not allowed, even if we had almost no money
on the table, and we sat in our T-shirts and shorts, without
robes.
� Gus and Ted had their cocks in their hands while
staring at a copy of Hustler. They were talking about how
far they had gotten with girls the last time they were
home � lying, of course, but making it sound very exciting,
how they had touched this one's bare tit and that
one's curly crotch hair. Ted claimed he had some pussy
hair in an envelope at home but had not brought it to
school. When they heard that awful knock, Ted had just

2 HAROLD ROBBINS

come and had to jam his spurting cock down in his underpants.


� A bottle of gin sat on the poker table.
Knock! The gin went out the window. Hustler went
under the mattress. Robes were tossed in all directions,
one in mine, fortunately.

Bill opened the door, confronting Brad, the dorm monitor
for our floor.

"Cooper. Headmaster's office, on the double. Get your
goddamn clothes on."

Called so abruptly to the office of the headmaster, I
knew something was terribly wrong. I went over in my
mind what I might have done this time but couldn't think
of anything so bad as to have me called from the dorm
to confront the headmaster.

I mean, having been reported for masturbating in a toilet
stall would not have produced such a summons. Besides,
I had put a dark blue lump on the forehead of the
last boy who had pretended he had seen me doing that.
The word had gone around � beware of your back if you
make bad words about Len Cooper; don't bend over the
faucet when brushing your teeth; you may find your forehead
slammed hard against the plumbing.

I was in my final year at Lodge. It was a boarding
school, good enough I guess, but not in a class with
schools like Choate, Groton, and Andover � the famed
New England prep schools that my father held in contempt.
Some Lodge graduates claimed the title "preppie."
Most didn't. I didn't and wouldn't.

Anyway, the headmaster liked to be called Dr. Billings.
He also liked to appear in academic regalia for chapel and
assemblies � gaudy hood and mortarboard with gold tassel.


Chapel. That I was a Jew didn't excuse me from compulsory
chapel. It was an excuse, though, for reading during
the prayers. I had made peace with Episcopal


THE SECRET

Christianity, and Episcopal Christianity had made peace
with me. So long as I read textbooks and not novels.
Catcher in the Rye was okay classroom reading but not
chapel reading.

I arrived at the walnut-paneled office of Dr. Billings, a
big fellow with a square face and looming eyebrows. He
tried to affect a mixed persona of kind and understanding,
plus stern and disciplining. He did not entirely succeed in
affecting either, much less the difficult mixture.

He wasn't wearing his academic gown now but only a
dark gray suit spattered with cigarette ash. He came out
from behind his desk and shook my hand: also an ominous
sign.

"My dear boy," he said. "I am afraid I have the most
terrible news for you." That oversized old man was on
the verge of tears. He handed me a telegram:

PLEASE ADVISE MY SON THAT HIS MOTHER

PASSED AWAY THIS AFTERNOON IN LYON

STOP ADVISE HIM ALSO THAT I WILL FLY TO

NEW YORK ON THE EARLIEST AVAILABLE

FLIGHT AND THENCE ON TO VERMONT TO

BE WITH HIM STOP COMFORT THE BOY AS

BEST YOU CAN UNTIL I CAN BE THERE STOP

JEROME COOPER

Lodge School kept a VIP suite on the second floor
above the commons. Officially it was for the bishop when
he made his occasional visit. Mostly it was for distinguished
commencement speakers and for generous contributors.
But it had a more ominous use. When a boy
suffered the death of a parent, or both parents, he would be
moved into the VIP suite, where he could cry alone,
absent his roommates. We called it the funeral parlor.

I was moved into the funeral parlor. My masters came.
My friends came. The boy whose head I'd banged on the
bathroom faucet came. I had to hold back my tears, which
was no easy thing to do; I was genuinely devastated by


4 HAROLD ROBBINS

the death of my mother, which would force me to live
with just one parent: my forbidding father.

I was in shock. My mother couldn't be dead! I was
young. I should have been more sensitive. I should have
understood the symptoms that had been there for me to
see.

I should have read them more in my formidable father
than I read them in her. Formidable. Yes, he was. She
weakened before my eyes, but she was brave and did not
let it occur to me mat I was about to lose her. He was
brave, but this required more than courage. When they
went off to France on that final visit, I had no idea it was
a final visit to her homeland and her family.

I suppose it was something my mother and father meant
to spare me. I would learn of it soon enough, and it would
be bad enough when it came; no need for me to suffer
until it was necessary.

"Got somethin' for ya, Len,"

He had something for me, all right. His name was�
God help him!�Beauregard, of course called Bo. He was
not one of my roommates, but he was the only boy I ever
mutually jerked off with. You know what I mean?
Boarding-school ha-ha. Boys thinking they were being
bad.

Anyway, Bo had brought me something. It looked like
a bottle of hair tonic. It wasn't. It was a little bottle of
Scotch! And, God, did I need that!

Old Dr. Latrobe came. The school chaplain. He was an
Episcopal divine and offered to pray with me�and took
no offense when I said thank you, no. He was well meaning
but I couldn't take him right now. His doctorate, as I
learned later, was phony. He was a D.D., doctor of divinity.


He had brought a tray with a pot of tea, cups and saucers,
sugar and cream. I hadn't drunk my Scotch, but I
was compelled to sit there and listen to that old man talk
about life and death. I shouldn't be too hard on him. He
was inoffensive.


THE SECRET

"Death, you see, is only a part of life. It awaits us all.
Mourning is painful. Sometimes it seems more than we
can bear. But think of this�there is a certain way that
we can avoid the agony of mourning, and that is never to
love. Because we don't mourn because our loved one is
dead; we mourn because we loved that person. So, if you
would never mourn, you can escape it easily. All you have
to do is never love. But, you know, we will go on loving
and go on mourning, and we wouldn't have it any other
way."

I thanked him when he left. It was the only decent thing
to do.


2


I know something about funeral customs, now. They are
designed to keep people from being alone in their grief.
You can't very well cry in the company of others. So .. .
wakes and all the rest of it. The religions know something.

They brought me dinner in the suite�pot roast and
mashed potatoes, string beans, tossed salad, and chocolate
cake. With milk. They did not suppose I drank coffee.

What the hell? I'd tossed off half the Scotch in the hairtonic
bottle as soon as the chaplain left�saving the rest
for later when it would help me sleep.

The headmaster came, and two masters�so called. My
roommates came and sat uncomfortably.

The headmaster encouraged me to talk about my
mother. It would be good for me to talk, he said. I did
talk, if only to get rid of these intrusive men.

I could tell them this much�

She was French, from Lyon. Her name was Giselle. My
father was her second husband, and I have half-siblings
in France named Martin�pronounced Mai-teen in the
French manner, not Mar-tun, � l'Am�ricain. The French
Martins were quite wealthy. They were, in fact, the original
bottlers and exporters of Plescassier Water, which


THE SECRET

rivaled Perrier and Evian and was sworn to by many, as
a benefit to the skin and overall good health, not just when
drank but when poured over the face and body. I have
tried it. In my experience, Plescassier Water has a mildly
laxative effect, and if that is what you need for your overall
good health, God bless you.

At one point in his life, my father had been the American
importer of Plescassier Water. That is how he came
to know my mother's first husband, Jean Pierre Martin,
and how he came to know her and marry her after M.
Martin died. They never really told me much about it, and
there was a great deal more to the story that I didn't know.

"I loved my mother," I said tearfully. "She was a saint!
My mother was a saint."

When all of them had gone and I was at last alone and
free to sob, I tossed down the remainder of the Scotch
from the hair-tonic bottle. It did little good. More might
have done better.

A saint... Yes. She was, really. My mother had been
a saint. But how little I knew!

I would rather have been on my own cot, with my
roommates, in the dormitory. But that choice was not
open to me. Bereaved boys were condemned to the VTP
suite.

I undressed. All my life I have slept nude, except in
those dreary pajama days in dormitories.

I lay down.

Knock, knock. A knock so quiet and discreet I decided
to answer it.

It was Brad. I never did know Brad's last name, though
I could have learned it easily enough from the school
catalog. He was a master�which is to say an instructor
without academic standing, which he could not have attained
in a boarding school�in history and political science.
His ambition, I knew, was to achieve academic


HAROLD ROBBINS

status in a college, any college�to be, in time, a professor.


Fat chance!

He was what he thought a boarding-school academic
should be: tweedy, toady, and chummy.
He was also a fairy, as we then called them�something
the naively straight Dr. Billings did not suspect.
Brad was nervous. He glanced up and down the hall
before he entered my room.

Brad was a handsome blond guy. If I saw him today
I'd write him off in an instant. Not because he was a fag.
Because he was a professional failure.

He was wearing a robe and slippers and pajamas. He
was the proctor on my floor in the dorm.

As a proctor he was entitled to administer minor
punishment�meaning he could paddle us. Which he
did, often. He was proud of the fraternity paddle he had
brought from college. I remember it well. It bore the
Greek letters�

AY

�of which he was, for some unfathomable reason, proud.
Anyway, he loved to use it, and he never used it on
anything but a bare ass.

He'd take us to his room, order us to take down our
pants and underpants, and have us grasp our knees with
our hands. With our cheeks in the air and our balls and
pricks in view, he would walk around us and lecture us
on the advantages of upright conduct and the penalties
that awaited the unrighteous. Three or four whacks followed.
He never hit hard. We would dutifully sob and
whimper. Then we had to stand and face him with hangdog
expressions, with our clothes around our ankles, and
promise to be better boys in future.

Not one of us above the age of ten failed to understand
the true meaning of these sessions. That he did it to boys
as young as eight told us something.


THE SECRET 9

"My poor boy!" he whispered hoarsely as soon as he
was inside the VIP suite and I had closed the door.
I knew what was coming. The only question for me
was would I resist it?
"I brought you something," he said. "You must never
tell anyone about it."

From the pocket of his robe he took a flask of brandy.
He screwed off the cap, and I took the first swig of brandy
I had ever tasted. I think he was surprised. In the past I'd
swigged Scotch and bourbon and gin, and the brandy did
not make me choke or turn red in the face.

"Feel better?" he asked.

I surprised him again. I tipped back the flask and
slugged down about half of what he'd brought.
Well.. . what then? What to be expected?
As I said, he wasjweedy, toady, and chummy. He ex


plained to me he was going to do something for me because
he was my friend and wanted to comfort me. He
was bigger than I was and led me rather firmly to my bed.
He shoved down my pajama pants, shoved me back on
the bed, and took my half-erect dick into his mouth.

I was fourteen. His educated tongue ran around and
around my eager glans, he sucked, and he needed only
minutes to bring me to raging spasms of ejaculation. I
filled his mouth, apparently, because my come ran down
his chin.

Oh, more ignorant than that. He wiped his chin on his
pajama shirt and said, "Now you do it for me, Len. That's
how it goes. Two guys. One does it for one, then the other
does it�I mean, that's the way it goes: total friendship,
one man for another."

"Forget that," I interrupted.
"You can't say that to me! I've already done it for you.
You can't refuse me!"
"The hell I can't. How do you think Dr. Billings
would�?"
"He wouldn't believe you! You little piece of shit, you
think you can�?"


HAROLD ROBBINS

"My father will be here tomorrow or the next day," I
said. "You want to argue it out with Jerry Cooper?"

He ran the back of his hand over his mouth, wiping off
more of my come; or maybe not, maybe he imagined it
was there. His eyes bugged. He shook his head.

"You don't need me to make you come, Brad," I said.
"You get it off pounding some poor kid's bare ass. Well
.. . you can forget that with me. Never again. I may want
you to suck me off once in a while, now that I know you
do it. When I want you, I'll let you know. But don't expect
me to take your cock in my mouth."

I got away with it. I didn't know what my father would
have said or done. Neither did Brad. But he would take
no chances.

That's the way it is, always. Some have got guts. Most
don't.


JERRY

When Uncle Harry handed me the cashier's check for two
million dollars, he was a happy man. He figured he'd
fucked me. Again.

It was nothing personal. Uncle Harry fucked everybody.
Everybody he did business with. People he worked
for, people who worked for him especially; Uncle Harry
fucked them all. He might have been a bigger man if he
hadn't been so blatant about it.

That I was family gave him more satisfaction, not less.

To start with, he fucked me out of what my father had
left me. He even fucked me out of the life insurance.
When my Aunt Lila died, Uncle Harry married my girl�
whom he'd been fucking in the other sense for some
time�and encouraged her to screw me out of the little
bit of money I'd let her deposit into her account for me.

He fucked the Kastenbergs, Fat Rita and her brother,
out of their seltzer-water bottling business. In the process
he fucked me out of a little money I'd invested with them.

Hey, I was no innocent, always getting fucked. My father
had been a numbers runner, and Uncle Harry ran a
numbers store and a bookie besides. I was a hustler from
the word go. What else could I be? I worked for Harry. I


HAROLD ROBBINS

fucked him a little. He fucked me big-time.

While I was away in the army, first in Detroit, then in
Paris, he got himself affiliated with the Carlino family. He
was not a Sicilian, though, and to the Honored Society
that fucked him. He was a condemned small-timer.

I'm a veteran, I was in the war, but I never saw or
heard a shot fired in anger. In Paris in '4 4 and '4 5 I cooperated
with a hustler colonel in a small-time racket that
made both of us good money. It was then that I met Paul
Renard, who introduced me to the great love of my life:
the beautiful, then-seventeen-year-old Giselle. She was a
nude dancer, but she was not a hooker, not a bar girl. It
seems odd to say, maybe, but a nude dancer can remain
entirely innocent.

I stayed in France after the war with my darling Giselle,
and spent months and years learning the ins and outs of
the French spring-water business.

Hey! There was a day, once, when if you wanted a
bucket of Plescassier water, you just walked over to the
spring and dipped it out. I suppose it was the same with
Perrier and Evian.

Promotion was what made spring water as pricey as
wine. I saw the opportunity to import it into the States.
Perrier and Evian would, and Plescassier could.

We tried twice. Once in New York. Once in L.A. Each
time we were screwed by.. . oh, all kinds of things,
chiefly union problems, dock theft, and once by straight
muscle applied to our vendors, threatening death if they
continued to sell Plescassier water.

It took me a little time to figure this out, but the problem
was, once more, Uncle Harry. He'd stolen the Kastenbergs'
seltzer-water business, and knew something
about selling designer water.

Finally I had a chance to fuck Uncle Harry�and fuck
him good. I sold him my company, Plescassier America,
for two million dollars. Plescassier America had just one
valuable asset: its contract with the Martin family to sell
the water to us. I assigned that contract to him.


THE SECRET

Only Uncle Harry didn't understand one thing. Under
French law that contract bound the Martins only, not their
successors if they sold the company. And they were selling
the company. The buyer would not be in the least
bound by the Martins' contract.

Uncle Harry paid me two million dollars for nothing.
Worse for him, it wasn't his money. It was the Carlinos'
money. When the Carlinos figured it out that Uncle Harry
had been screwed out of their two mill, they put muscle
on him for the money, out of his own pocket. He had it
and paid it, but it ruined him.

Uncle Harry never recovered. The Five Families
scorned him more than ever after that. They never trusted
him again. He was a small-time punk once more, just like
he'd been when he stole my inheritance. There is something
like justice in this world.

I'd got him good. And the best part of it was, Uncle
Harry knew it.

Actually, that was the second-best part. I was not yet
forty and had two million dollars. What could I buy with
two million dollars? I would have a little problem with
that.

I got a summons, one I had expected. I was to meet
Frank Costello for lunch, again in the Norse Room at the
Waldorf, again at twelve-thirty. People who never met
Frank Costello personally remember a raspy-voiced witness
taking the Fifth before the Kefauver Committee and
think of him as a menacing mafioso, like Lucky Luciano.
In fact, Costello disliked violence and was known to Cosa
Nostra as a conciliator. He was a rather good-looking
man, black hair, a tan.

"Sit down, Jerry," he said. He was always one who
went straight to the point. "Somebody tried to do us dirt,"
he said.

"I know. They were gonna do me dirt. I didn't know
it, but they had it all figured. They knew when they sold
Plescassier, its contract to sell water to Plescassier Amer



HAROLD ROBBINS

ica would be null and void. But I swear to you, Mr. Costello,
I didn't know that."

I'd never lied so skillfully in my life. I'd never had so
much at stake in a lie. I didn't have to wait to hear what
he said to know he believed me. I could see he believed
me.

"I've got a cashier's check for the two million, made
out to you," I said to him.

Costello shook his head. "We got the two mill off your
uncle." Then he shrugged. "You wanta hand the money
to Harry, that's your business. We don't need to double
up."

I smiled. "I don't think I'll offer it to Uncle Harry. He
owes me that much, all things considered."
Costello laughed. "Didn't figure you would. Harry's a
small-time grifter from the word go."

"Exactly."

"Which you're not," said Costello. "That two million
ought to set you up in something good. I have an idea
you'll come up with something. When you do, let me
know. Partners can do a lot better than a guy working
alone."

There was the problem I'd figured would come. Partners.
An affiliation, whether I wanted it or not.
"Uhh .. . this French guy .. . Jean Pierre Martin. Was

he giving us a screwing all along?"

"Hard to say," I bed.

Costello fastened on me a look of amused skepticism.
"I hear he married your girl."

I nodded. "He did that."

"I hear he's a fairy."

Again, I nodded.

"A Frog fairy mixed up in a scheme to screw us, who's
already screwed you. I'll have to pass the word along."

I didn't really guess the significance of that. I should
have. I was still naive.


4


Having the two million dollars was fine. But it was nothing
compared to what I wanted much, much more. Giselle.
My darling Giselle. I had to endure for a long time, and
then . ..

Giselle was the mother of my son, Len.

But almost wasn't.

I arrived in Paris shortly after it was liberated and immediately
became involved in the kind of racket that hustlers
like me always found. Briefly said, because this is
history, the army had scores of thousands of Jeeps in Europe.
When* a vehicle became too badly damaged to be
repaired, the army would authorize its destruction. But if
you had enough of these Jeeps, plus skilled mechanics,
you could salvage parts from them and build a few serviceable
Jeeps. Which you could sell for good money. The
French automobile industry was down and would be a
long time recovering, and the French wanted cars. Jeeps
were perfect for them. They were rugged, dependable, and
burned little gas. Europeans thought they were the greatest
thing since sliced bread. Well, no, since that was a cliche
that Europeans didn't know and didn't use.

Because I'd lost an eardrum somewhere along my way,


16 HAROLD ROBBINS

I was disqualified for combat service. That's why the
army made a mechanic out of a dumb New York kid
who'd known nothing about machinery. And I, with some
others, built a profitable business out of scrounging parts
from damaged Jeeps and making condemned Jeeps run.
The business involved little risk and very respectable
profit.

Of course, it did involve certain problems, chiefly officers.
I learned a new level of corruption. Officers, when
they found out about this illegal racket, did not want to
prosecute; what they wanted was a share. Pretty soon I
was sharing too much, but it kept me in business. I made
less and less but still did all right.

I learned, too, that the Corsicans were the most dangerous
mob in the world. Even the Mafia was afraid of
them. And still is.

Other guys ran crap games, smuggled, forged orders,
and did a whole lot of other things. Some guys actually
fought the war.

In connection with my business I met a man named
Paul Renard, a Corsican hustler, who was the proprietor
of a sex club on Montmartre. Giselle was a stripper there.
She was not involved in the S-M things that went on in
that club, and she was not for sale. She just stripped and
danced nude.

As an American I was naive about these things. When
I say Giselle danced nude, I mean she danced naked, one
hundred percent, stark, staring naked, without even shoes.
It was not so much a strip�she came out wearing a little
but soon rid herself of that little�as it was simply a nude
dance. Not under dim lights. Not under colored lights. Her
dance was so completely naked and so completely bold
that it was innocent.

And she was an angel! She was beautiful! God, I had
never seen such beauty. And�I had never before been,
and would never again be, so fascinated with a woman,
so drawn to her.

Well... My good fortune. I was working with Renard


THE SECRET

in the Jeeps business. He owned the club. He introduced
me to Giselle. More than introduced. He suggested we
should become a pair. He owned an apartment we could
share, for rent a little high for either of us but not high at
all for us together.

We shared that homey apartment, simply as a practical
matter at first; then, shortly, we were in love. I couldn't
help myself about that. The French are an eminently practical
people, and maybe she could have stayed out of love.
But she didn't.

Through Renard I also met the Martin family, whose
fortune was the mineral-water spring that produced Plescassier
water. Generation after generation, the Martin men
were homosexual. They married women only as much as
needed to generate the heirs that were necessary to keep
the family going. Otherwise, they were strictly homo. The
Martins loved their boyfriends and made babies with their
women. It was a practical arrangement, typically French.

What happened is difficult to understand. It was difficult
for me to understand, and I lived it. The French are
different from us. They have their ways.

Under the French law of inheritance, seventy-five percent
of the stock in Plescassier would go to the government
if Jean Pierre Martin did not father an heir. When
his father died, that made the matter absolutely urgent.

Jean Pierre solved his problem in a very direct, very
French style. He married Giselle. That I loved her made
no great difference. That she loved me made no difference
at all. It was business. We would enter into a highly practicable,
reasonable arrangement that would satisfy everybody.


It would all be very cozy. She would continue to love
me. Jean Pierre would continue to love his boyfriend,
Jack. And we would be four good friends.

It was okay if you were French, I suppose. It was not
okay with me. We didn't have a screaming confrontation.
I was not so much angry as sad. I left France, settled in
the United States, and tried to introduce Plescassier water


HAROLD ROBBINS

on the American market�with the difficulties I have already
mentioned.

Which is where things stood when the Carlinos funded
dear Uncle Harry in buying Plescassier America.

About a month passed after Frank Costello's comment
that he'd have to pass along the word about the Frog fairy,
during which time I didn't think about it much. Then word
came from Paul Renard in Paris. Jean Pierre Martin was
dead!

The news came in the form of a wire from Turin. It
read�

JPM EST MORT. IMPORTANTE! NE VENISSEZ
PAS VOUS A FRANCE. J'APPORTEREZ G ET
LES ENFANTS A NEW YORK. RESTEZ VOUS
LA. PAUL.

It meant: Jean Pierre Martin is dead. Important! Do not
come to France. I will bring Giselle and the children to
New York. Stay there. Paul.

I didn't see that I had any alternative.


5


LEN

I went from the Lodge School to Amherst, remaining always
a dormitory student. I met more than a few guys
who didn't know who their fathers were. I was odd, in
that I always knew full well who my father was�indeed,
as in the matter of Brad, well enough to use his name as
a threat�but I never had the remotest idea what my father
did for a living.

I did not press the question. My father was to me too
formidable a figure to be questioned. When I had asked
my mother, she told me my father was an honest man in
an honest business�and when he wanted me to know
more, he'd tell me.

My first memory of a home was a brick house in Scarsdale,
in Westchester County, some fifteen miles out of
New York City. Five of us lived there�father and
mother, my half-sister Jacqueline, and half-sister Jeanne.
The girls were three and two years older than I was. They
were the daughters of Jean Pierre Martin, mother's first
husband. When he died suddenly, not having reached his
sixtieth year, my mother and father married, and my birth
followed a year or so later.

I was not easy for my mother. She was nearly forty


HAROLD ROBBINS

when I was born. The ordeal was so dangerous that she
and my father decided I would be their only child.

I remember her as a stunning beauty. Everyone who
knew her remembered her as a stunning beauty. In spite
of the sudden, tragic death of her first husband, she was
a bright, optimistic personality. And a loving mother.

She loved me, and I never doubted it for an instant.
But she loved Jacqueline and Jeanne, too. Embraces and
caresses were a big part of our lives. People wondered
about us, always embracing and kissing one another. I
don't know if that was a French characteristic or just a
family characteristic. My father probably would have
called it French, since to him "the French they are a funny
race."

He had grown up in a Jewish family in New York City,
but their ways of expressing their love were not as exuberant
as my mother's.

My father never spoke much about his parents. They
were killed in an automobile accident when he was in high
school. He talked a litde about his Uncle Harry, who was
apparently a cheap little crook who stole everything he
could lay hands on, including my father's modest inheritance.


"One thing I learned from Uncle Harry," he said more
than once. "It's always better to be the fucker than the
fuckee."

He struggled not to show me more affection than he
showed M. Martin's daughters, but he not could help favoring
me. Even with me, though, something was always
held in reserve. He was more likely to shake hands than
hug, and remains that way to this day. I had to study him
for a while before I came to understand that he had loved
me as much as my mother did but had a different way of
expressing it. I suppose I was in college, or maybe out of
college, before I got that straight in my head.

French was my first language. The Martin girls spoke
French almost exclusively. They had begun their English


THE SECRET 21

studies, but they struggled to say anything more than "No,
thank you," or "Well, maybe a bit more."

When they were eight and seven, the decision was
made to send them back to France for their education.
The extended Martin family accepted that with enthusiasm.
I have to wonder if the two girls did not leave the
States with a sense of relief. I have rarely seen them since.

Mother wanted me to continue to speak French. I
worked with her on it. I do speak French.

With only three of us now, my father sold the house in
Scarsdale and we moved into an apartment on East
Seventy-second Street. The apartment was comfortable. It
was, in fact, luxurious.

Seet down here, Lennie, on the edge of the bed." She
took my hand in hers. "Now your daddy is going to go
on with what he was doing. You will see it does not hurt
me. It is how your father shows me he loves me."

When I was old enough, I was enrolled in The Friends
School, which was a distinguished secondary school, one
of the best in New York, if not the best.

I was an urban child. I knew the streets, though they
were very different streets from the ones my father had
known. There was another lesson I had to learn. When I
was at Friends, I didn't know the meaning of the term
"mean streets," and I never guessed that my father had
grown up on them.

My father�Let's start with this: When the time came
to send me to a boarding school, my father adamantly
rejected the New England prep schools, though my
mother thought they would be good for me. He consented
to a boarding school, not to a prep school. Why? He grew
up on the streets. To him, preppies were nauseating snobs.
I think if he'd had his way absolutely, he would have
wanted me to serve an apprenticeship with him and learn
life as he had learned it. He had a sense that he knew
more of life than one could ever learn in any school.


HAROLD ROBBINS

My mother said school. And a good school.
Hey! I don't speak of my father in the past tense. He's


very much alive. He's one shrewd, tough son of a .. .
The more I know of him, the more I respect him.
It's been my ambition to be a son he can respect.
I wonder if my mother would not have demanded of

me a better ambition.


6


I could write memoirs about the people I saw in our apartment
in those all-too-few years before I went off to boarding
school. They were lessons in life.

To begin with, there was a black guy named Buddy. If
he has a last name, I never heard it. His wife was named
Ulla, and she was Norwegian.

Buddy may be my father's best friend. They go back a
long way. Buddy's weapon of choice was a razor, and he
taught my father to use one, though I don't believe my
father ever did. Buddy might have done a lot of things
with his life, but he chose to stay close to his roots in
Harlem, where he was a bookmaker, a numbers book, and
so on. He was a skilled player of the main chance who
knew the streets as well as any man ever did. He was also
smoothly handsome and appealing to women. In certain
senses he was my father's mentor.

I was wholly unable to understand the relationship between
my father and Buddy. Two men could hardly have
been more different. But something between them drew
them close. Some secret I would work to penetrate for a
long time.

I remember being introduced to other visitors, the


HAROLD ROBBINS

meaning of whose names I would learn later.

"Len, say hello to the Prime Minister." It was, of
course, Frank Costello. In Cosa Nostra he was known as
"the prime minister," meaning he used brains, not muscle
and smoothly accomplished what others failed to accomplish.
Remembering him later, I was surprised to know
that my father had a friend in Frank Costello.

"Len, say hello to the Little Man." Meyer Lansky,
known as "Little Man" and "Chairman of the Board," was
the mob's banker and strategist. I remember an appealing,
even charismatic man who always had time to say a cordial
hello to a little boy and sometimes produced a paper
bag of candies from his overcoat pocket.

"Len, say hello to Mr. Hoffa." Costello and Lansky had
manners and pretended for a moment to take an interest
in a little boy. But even as a child I detected in Jimmy
Hoffa a crude bully, a menacing man I hoped I would not
meet again.

I knew nothing of these men but those impressions I
gathered. It would be years before I identified them and
began to wonder what connection they had with my father.


I didn't worry about it much. I relied on my mother's
assurance that my father was an honest man in an honest
business. Her word was all I needed to settle any unease
I later felt about my father's association with these men.
And I must say, even now, that not everyone who befriended
men like Costello and Lansky were criminals.

When I was nine and home from school for summer
vacation, my mother's family came to visit. Her father
was old, fragile, and very French. When he sat down, his
suit only reluctantly sat down with him. It was of stiff
fabric and seemed to have been built around him like a
cardboard box, to pack him in.

He was my grandfather. I have almost no memory of
my French grandmother. I do remember my Aunt Therese,
because my father confided in me about her.

"You're old enough to know this," he said. "But don't


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tell your mother I told you. Therese, who is your mother's
elder sister, lived with a German officer during the war.
She was what we call a collaborator. When the Germans
were driven out of Lyon, the people of the Resistance
stripped her naked, shaved her head, and marched her
through the streets�she and half a dozen or so others.
And.. . well, let me tell you for sure, your mother never
did anything of the kind and was never treated that way.
Your mother had no relationship whatever with any
German, of any kind. She did not betray her country. I
don't judge Therese. But that's in her history."

Whenever I looked at Aunt Therese during the remaining
few days the family visited, the image came to my
mind of her bald and naked, and that image made my
little dick stiffen and stand. Aunt Therese gave me the
first erections I ever had.

I would see Therese again. One evening over chocolate
and cognac she talked to me about her punishment�

"Eet ees relief, you must understand. We are afraid they
are going to shoot us. We are afraid they are going to flog
us. In some town, like in Corsica, they streeped girls naked,
shaved them, and drove them out of the town, throwing
rocks at them as they ran along the road. We feared
zees, and when all they did was march us through the
street and let us go home, we shook and cried because we
have escape such thing."

"And how did you live in Lyon after that?" I asked.

"Weeth scorn. Weeth some hate. But alive and let to
leef in our house."
"My mother..."
"She has nothing to do with thees. She never deed what

I deed. But.. . she ate the sugar and drank the coffee my
Boche brought. And so deed my family. I performed a
service for zem."


7


When my father arrived at the Lodge School, I was still
in the VIP suite being cosseted as the poor boy who had
lost his mother. I was, in fact, a poor boy. I was in shock.
I couldn't imagine what life would be like without my
mother. She had been my stabilizing influence, and I had
loved her deeply.

I loved my father, too. But that had been different. He
was a giant figure, to be respected�actually even to be
feared�and he had been absent much of the time. When
he talked to me, usually it was to give me words of advice,
which he expected me to remember. I respected him, but
my mother had stood as a buffer between us, and I had
to wonder how it would go between us without her.

He had begun to treat me like a man before I was old
enough to be treated like a man. He did it because he
didn't know how to deal with a little boy. When he told
me about Aunt Therese, for example, he told me something
a boy of nine didn't need to know.

He had the good sense not to tell me certain other
things I definitely didn't need to know.

He told me a funeral was a burdensome thing, and that
my mother had left specific instructions that she was not


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to have one. He'd had her buried in France according to
Jewish custom, though she wasn't a Jew, so by the time
he arrived at Lodge she was in the ground. That was how
he operated�decisively, abruptly. He decided I did not
need to see my mother's body�in which he was absolutely
right.

He took me to dinner and saw to it that I drank wine.
He talked to me about women.
"Do you understand why I loved your mother so very
much?" he asked me.

"I loved her, too."

"Yes, but.. . the love between a man and woman, a
husband and wife .. . is not the same. How much do you
know about what men and women do?"

"I know what they do."

"I'll arrange for you to have an experience," he said.
"What you boys do in dorms is not the kind of experience
I want you to have. I want you to have the kind of experience
your mother and I shared, though for the first
time you may have to share it without the love she and I
felt for each other."

"Then is it any good?" I asked him. "If it's just.. .
physical, is it any good? Have you done it with a woman
you didn't love?"

"Yes. And so will you."

I nodded and said nothing.

"I don't want you to imagine that what boys do in
dorms in boarding schools is�"
"I haven't had that kind of experience either�except

once."

"Tell me."

I told him about Brad.

In a minute he was on the phone. He summoned Brad,
gave him twenty minutes to be at our room in the inn. I
could hear only our end of the conversation, but I understood
that Brad's protest only made my father angry.

A timid knock on the door. Brad. Flushed. Afraid.

"I swear before God Almighty, Mr. Cooper, that I�"


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Strip down, fag," my father said coldly. "I don't talk
to faggots with their clothes on."

"Mr. Cooper, I swear to you, nothing improper happened
between me and Len. The boy was and is distraught�"


"We can discuss it when you're naked."

"Mr. Cooper, please!"

My father had a bottle of Scotch on the desk. He went
to it and poured himself a drink, standing with his back
to Brad.

I'd threatened Brad with my father, but I'd had no idea
what fear the name Jerry Cooper could invoke. In the next
few minutes I learned to know my father in a very different
way.

Brad hurried to strip out of his somewhat shabby,
tweedy clothes and in a moment stood stark naked.

My father poured a stiff drink and handed it to him.

Brad accepted the glass and, hands shaking, drank the
Scotch.

"I wanted my son to have his first experience with a
nice little girl, a nice little girl showing pink knees at the
hem of her plaid skirt, with a navy blue cashmere sweater
and a single strand of pearls. Who gets his virginity instead?
Your

"I gave it to him," Brad muttered tearfully. "I didn't
take anything from him."
"Oh, perfect," my father said with the most complete
scorn I have ever heard come from anyone's mouth.

"Mr. Cooper..."

"Not much of a cock, you got there. Hold it up. Pull
on it. Let's see the best you can show."

Brad tried. It was true he wasn't well hung, and being
terrified didn't help.

"Let's see you make it come, queer. Jerk off. Here.
Have another drink. Then let's see you jerk off."

My father poured me a splash of Scotch, too, and another
drink for himself. Then we sat on the couch and
watched Brad struggle to masturbate.


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He did not manage to come. Instead he began to sob.
I had not expected to feel sorry for Brad, not anytime, for
any reason, but I felt sorry for him then.

I spoke to my father. "Let him go," I said.

My father shrugged. "Okay, fairy. Get your clothes on
and get out of here. And don't you ever come anywhere
near my son again. Don't even say hello to him."

When Brad was gone, my father looked down at me
and said, "Sympathy is a fine sentiment. But it's like
money. Be hesitant about spending money and also about
extending sympathy. When that fag gets to thinking about
it, he'll conclude you were weak. Count on it. But I don't
think he'll bother you again."


8


JERRY

Paul brought Giselle and her two girls to New York. He
told me why he had urged me to stay put and not fly to
France.

"In France we put a suspect in jail and keep him there
until the authorities can figure out whether there is enough
evidence to bring him to trial."

"Do you mean to tell me that I am a suspect in the
death of Jean Pierre?"
Paul nodded. "The Martins accuse you. And you may
not be surprised to hear that Jack accuses you."
Jack had been Jean Pierre's lover for many years. "I
suppose I need not be surprised at that," I said dryly.
Paul went on. "They think, of course, that you hired
someone to do it."

I hadn't, of course, but Frank Costello's words sprang
to my mind�"A Frog fairy mixed up in a scheme to
screw us, who's already screwed you. I'll have to pass
the word along."

"I sent the telegram from Turin," Paul continued, "because
I knew any telegram sent to you from France would
almost certainly be intercepted and read by GIGN�"

"GIGN?"


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"Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale.

A tough police organization."
"It's their goddamned counter-terrorist organization!" I
said. "What the hell..:? '

"Just police nastiness," Paul said with a Gallic shrug.
"Their suspicion was all the more aroused because I'd
driven Giselle and her girls across the Italian frontier almost
before J. P.'s body was discovered. I thought that a
wise precaution. They thought it was something other than
a precaution."

"You're a resourceful man."
"I'm Corsican. Anyway, I hope you don't forget that
Giselle is my niece."
"So you told me, finally, after letting me believe for
years that you were just a friend of the family."
"Anyway, Vaffaire J. P. is over. He left heirs, and
you'll have to send them back to France sooner or later."

Giselle and I slept together her first night in New York.
Things were the way they'd been before. Almost. She
remained a delicately beautiful woman, adroit at lovemaking
and filled with enthusiasm to be in my bed once
more. It was a memorable night, maybe the most memorable
of my life.

Giselle was not a typical Frenchwoman. In the first
place, she was blond. There was no way to tell if that was
natural or not, since she kept her pussy shaved, always
had. When she was dancing naked in Paris, her pussy was
naked. Also, in my observation, Frenchwomen tend to be
flat-chested, or at least have small, firm breasts. Giselle's
were not huge, but they were more than the typical
Frenchwoman had. They were pendulous, too�which is
to say, they hung rather loose from her chest and swung
a little, this way and that, as she moved. She had a flat
belly, broad hips, and gorgeous legs. Her face was perfect:
perky nose, luscious lips, a strong chin. She was an acknowledged
beauty. Everyone thought she was beautiful.

We took no precautions against pregnancy because we


HAROLD ROBBINS

had already agreed that we would marry and start a family
as soon as possible. We both wanted mat.

After her two girls were asleep that night, we put on
records, and Giselle did an erotic strip for me. She had
not forgotten how to do it. She was thirty-four years old.
My God, she'd been only seventeen when I first saw her
dancing nude in Paris!

Later she told me my cock tasted good. "Jerr-ee .. . I
never have taste a cock that taste like yours. You should
have come to me in France. When we had two daughter,
no son, J. P. lost interest. It could have been that I would
have been licking your balls many time. Like this."

I couldn't honestly tell her that her cunt felt better to
my cock than any other cunt I'd ever put it in. I couldn't
even tell her it felt different, or that it felt familiar. They
say all cats are gray in the dark, but that is not so. They
say it's not how much cock a man has but how he uses
it that makes the difference, and that is so. Well, it's true
with a woman, too. The equipment is the same, but how
they handle it is not. She knew how to welcome me in,
then to tighten her muscles and grip me. I don't think I
could have pulled out if I wanted to, sometimes.

She was a vocal lover. Frenchwomen often are. I don't
mean she heaved and panted and shrieked like those bimbos
who fake orgasms on porno tapes. I mean, she
moaned softly and purred and let me know what pleasure
she was taking. I always knew when I was doing what
she liked most.

There was another way in which she was no Frenchwoman.
She was clean. She showered at least once a day.
On the other hand, she had lived in this country several
years before she began to experiment with deodorants.
And she, who shaved her pussy at least once a week,
didn't shave her armpits. Her pungent, musty odor was
part of her attraction. I think she knew it.

I thought I'd settled into the love and marriage that
would last the rest of my life. We'd have two or three
kids. I bought a house in Scarsdale. We'd need it for the


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family. We would need more than a city apartment, Giselle
and I.

After some discussion, we invited Uncle Harry and Lila
to our wedding. They didn't come. Not long after that,
Harry was found with his throat cut. They found him,
sprawled half on the sidewalk, half in the gutter on the
street outside a small-time book-and-crap game he was
running. The police didn't press the investigation very
hard. Too many people wanted him dead.

I went to his funeral. Somebody said to me that he'd
been a broken man, anguished by disappointment and
frustration, having seen everything he'd built during his
life come crashing down. The man who said it knew part
of the story. I told him not to waste his sympathy. Harry
had fucked everybody, and finally life fucked him.


So there I was, sitting with two million dollars spread out
in six banks and with no sure idea what I was going to
do with it.

Buddy had ideas. I could fund the biggest numbers operation
in town. The biggest bookie.

"C'mon, Buddy. The Families got all that. Even if I
invest in partnership with the Carlinos, the other Families
are going to come after me. What I need is a business the
Families haven't thought of and don't want."

In fact, the Families hadn't forgotten me. I had a call
summoning me to another meeting with Frank Costello at
the Waldorf, in the same room at the same time. But when
I sat down with him this time, I had a real surprise coming.


Sitting at the table with Costello was a pallid, wizened
little man with bushy black eyebrows, deep lines around
his eyes and mouth, and a wide mouth with a fleshy lower
lip.

Direct as always, Costello opened the conversation by
saying, "Here's the man who can tell you how to invest
that two mill wisely. Meet Meyer Lansky."

It was big-time to sit down over lunch with Meyer Lan



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sky. Costello was big, but Lansky, who was sometimes
called the Chairman of the Board, was bigger. A Russian
or Polish Jew, he could not be a member of the Honored
Society, exactly, but he was acknowledged to be the
brains behind a wide variety of highly profitable businesses.
A story was told of him that he was once overheard
saying in an FBI-bugged room, "My God, we're
bigger than United States Steel!"

Big. Not physically. He was also called the Little Man.
Reputed nearly all his life to be a major gangster, he had
never spent any major time in any pen. His personal specialty
for a long time had been what were called "carpet
joints"�that is, illegal gambling houses fancy enough to
have carpets on the floors, in towns all the way from Florida
to upstate New York. He had achieved his ambition
in Cuba, where he had established a plush casino hotel.
Gamblers flew into Havana on flying boats from Miami
and played at the high-stakes tables of Lansky's Riviera
Hotel.

I knew he had just been expelled from Cuba and his
casino hotel had been confiscated by the new Communist
regime of Fidel Castro. I assumed, wrongly as it turned
out, that he had plenty of other assets stashed here, there,
or somewhere.

Lansky looked tired, exhausted in fact. He would suffer
a near-fatal heart attack not long after. The sudden loss
of the Riviera had damaged him.

He did propose an investment, but in a half-hearted way
that inspired no confidence. The term was not yet in use,
but what he suggested was that I buy into a moneylaundering
scheme. I didn't understand it at the time, and
I don't understand it now. I said as much, and Frank Costello
said, "Hey, that's just the point, Jerry. Meyer does
understand these things. I figured, you being a Jew like
him, the two of you would get along just great."

"There's heavy risk in this kind of thing, isn't there,
Mr. Lansky?" I asked.
"All profitable enterprises involve risk," said Lansky.


HAROLD ROBBINS

"The man who is not ready to take a risk condemns himself
to being a small-timer all his life."

"My problem is that I've worked all my life to get this
two million dollars, and if I'm going to risk it, I think I'd
rather risk it in something I understand."

"Put in a hundred thousand, Jerry," Costello suggested.
"You can afford that."

I did. Then Lansky had his heart attack and nearly died,
and I wrote off my hundred thousand. But after almost a
year there came a knock on the door one evening at my
place in Scarsdale. A young man handed me a package.

"That's from Mr. Lansky," he said. "You should count
it. It's $165,000, what you got coming from your investment.
Mr. Lansky suggests you take the $65,000 and reinvest
the $100,000."

I handed the package back. "Tell Mr. Lansky I'll reinvest
the whole schmear," I said.

I got another payoff a year later. It didn't come to
$272,250, as it would have if my investment had done as
well the second time as the first, but it came to $205,000,
which still wasn't bad at all.

I figured this couldn't go on forever, and I was right,
it couldn't. But I stuck with Lansky, and the next time I
got a payout I sent $100,000 to Frank Costello.

All well and good, but I wasn't in a business of my
own, and I damn well had to have a business of my own.


Buddy was a smart fellow. "The way to make money in
business," he said, "is to sell people something they
want."

What he meant was sell them opportunities to gamble,
sell them prostitutes, sell them protection, or�the coming
business in the 1960s�sell them narcotics.

Fine. Except that the Five Families had gambling and
prostitution tied up in New York, and other families of
Cosa Nostra had it tied up in other cities. I think Frank
Costello could have arranged to let me buy into a piece
of the gambling action in Manhattan, but the Families
were fighting turf wars, which meant a chance of losing
everything, including your life, in one hellish night.

So far as prostitution was concerned, I didn't want anything
to do with it. Exploiting girls was not my idea of a
way of turning a profit. I had scruples. You could never
be sure if a girl came to the life because she wanted to,
or because necessity pushed her, or�worse�because
some guy forced her. I didn't want to have to worry about
that. Besides, more and more, girls were entering the life
because of addiction. It was the worst of all possible combinations.



HAROLD ROBBINS

Narcotics? No way. The problem there was that dope
had been sold to the dregs of the community for years,
and as long as that was where it was sold nobody much
cared, but in the sixties, the trade was expanding into the
good neighborhoods and the suburbs, which meant that
the law was going to turn fanatical. Ohio, for example,
had already made it law that a guy would go up for life
for selling just one hit. Imagine that! Life in the slammer
for selling just one hit of heroin! And I'm not saying that
was wrong. Bad chemicals make people into animals.
Worse, it makes them into walking corpses.

Buddy suggested a chop shop�that is, a garage where
stolen cars were modified, numbers filed off, repainted,
and so on. Sure. Okay. A small profit. A small-time operation.


I wanted a legit business.

Okay. Sell people something they want. Better than
that, make them want something they didn't know they
wanted, and then sell them that. A thousand billion-dollar
businesses had been built on selling people what they
didn't know they would ever want�what, in fact, they
didn't want when they bought it, and had no need for.

My idea came to me when I wanted to buy Giselle a
present, as much for me as for her, something very sexy
to wear on her gorgeous body. Remember the fifties?
Where would you have bought a really brief bikini or a
G-string or a pair of crotchless panties? Department stores
did not carry much in the way of intimate apparel. Neither
did women's shops. White rayon panties and white cotton
bras from Wool worth's or Penney's were standard underwear.
I remember a nylon panty-and-bra set based on a
leopard-skin print. It was considered daring, even though
the waistband covered the navel.

You might try a sex shop, almost all of which were so
sleazy a man or woman would be embarrassed to be seen
coming out of one. You could order something by mail
from Frederick's of Hollywood, but that was about it.

It's unbelievable, when you think about it. In those


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years young women still wore girdles! Also panty-girdles.
And rigid bras of nylon and rubber that forced their
breasts into unnatural pointy shapes that were ogled on
television. Nothing was too hideous for women to force
their suffering flesh into in those years. Giselle wore no
bras most of the time, and seeing her breasts moving naturally
under a blouse or sweater caused some men to ogle
and some women to cluck.

The fifties ended, the sixties began, and it didn't get
much better. We were on the verge of the so-called Sexual
Revolution, but�okay, I've made my point.

It occurred to me that here was a business: selling sexy
scanties in respectable shops in silk-stocking neighborhoods.
Men would buy to please their wives and girlfriends.
Women would buy to please their husbands and
boyfriends. We could go into that business on the basis
of a cautious investment, and who could guess what
would follow?�utter failure, modest success, or a big
business all our own that the Families had not thought of
and didn't want.

Giselle thought a fine name for the shops would be
Presque Nu�almost naked. I liked her idea of using
French words. In those years, "French" still connoted
something naughty. I liked the idea but knew Americans
wouldn't understand its meaning. Finally, we came up
with a name. It was simple, yet carried a suggestive double
entendre. We would call our shops Cheeks. The fashion
was chic, a woman might need cheek to wear it, and
she might show something of her nether cheeks to anyone
who saw her from behind.

Buddy thought the idea was insane. "Oh, man! You
want to open a buttons-and-ribbons store? What kind of
man sells ladies' undies? What kind of business is that?"

It is a business that last year had almost eleven billion
dollars in gross sales, through almost seven hundred
stores, plus catalog sales.

Not bad. But it didn't come easy.

Giselle and I talked about it. She would be my partner


HAROLD ROBBINS

in Cheeks, in every sense of the word. I talked to Frank
Costello. All he could do was shrug. "It's an original idea,
I gotta say."

"Nobody's gonna object?"
"Nobody's gonna object. You could go into other lines
and nobody would object. You got friends, Jerry."

Giselle heard him say that. She had no idea what he
meant. In Paris, I had learned, there was an organization
vaguely referred to as les Messieurs, and she'd had contact
with it through Paul and still knew nothing of it.

Anyway, we had to define what we would sell. We
ordered a substantial shipment from Frederick's of Hollywood
and decided, essentially, that what Frederick's offered
was not what we would offer.

Remember, it was still the era of nylon and rubber. By
no means everything offered by Frederick's was like that,
but some of it was; and we were firm in our commitment
to offer something different.

Giselle and I made some of the signature items of our
early line. When I say made, I mean we sewed together
and dyed items that we could show to makers and suppliers.
It seemed the best way to give them the idea.

Giselle bought one of the leopard-print panty-and-bra
sets that seemed so bold. At home we snipped holes in
the bra so as to expose the nipples. Then we dyed the
thing black. Then we photographed it, on Giselle. When
we showed that to prospective suppliers, they understood
what we wanted.

We didn't cut down the panties, just dyed them black
and folded them to make a bikini style.

Giselle put on the black bra with her nipples bared, the
panties, a black garter belt, and dark sheer stockings, and
she posed for my camera. That outfit became one of the
pilot styles for Cheeks.

Nighties were not so difficult. The only problem was
that most of them included modesty panels. A woman in
those days might wear a nightgown that displayed her
legs, her hips, even her butt through sheer nylon but ex



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pected a modest covering over her pubes and her breasts.
We could easily induce manufacturers to omit the modesty
panels. Our sheer nightgowns were sheer all over.

Those became another one of our pilot styles.

We couldn't know yet how the public would receive
our merchandise, but we had a philosophy�if it can be
dignified by that name�and meant to venture on the market
with it.


11

Apart from merchandise, the first problem was real estate.
No point in opening one shop. I opted for three, one on
the Upper West Side, one on the Upper East Side, and
one in Midtown.

Merchandise. I knew we would have to design and
manufacture our own. For the moment, I hoped to import
from France, where women no longer walked around in
hip-length panty-girdles and bras of. .. well, there was
something called a "whirlpool bra," a contraption so horrid
it was almost beyond imagination.

I called on Paul Renard. Lingerie was not one of his
many interests, but he had contacts in every business in
France. Shortly, crates of "unmentionables" were aboard
cargo planes destined for Cheeks, U.S.A. I also asked him
to find me a supply of the briefest possible bikinis. Nothing
flimsy. Only high-quality merchandise.

We rented a ballroom in the Lexington Hotel and ar


range d a style show to introduce our line. The hotel was
accustomed to fashion shows and set up a catwalk for our
models. The hotel supplied the bright, dramatic lighting.
I hired a rock band.

Most of the guests for the show were people from the


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news media: fashion writers, commentators on city life.

We made them comfortable with generous drinks, and

then started our show.

I employed six models. To my surprise, Giselle decided

that she wanted to model, so she made seven.

Immediately I had a decision to make.

The bikinis were brief. So were the panties. In those

days it was unusual for a girl to trim or shave her pubic
hair. Few of the bikinis of the fifties required it. When
the first model came out of the dressing room in an iridescent
white bikini, she was grinning and pointing down.
At least a quarter of an inch of her thick, dark bush overhung
her bikini.

Her name was Melissa Lamb. "Do you want me to trim
it, Mr. Cooper?" she asked in mock innocence, giggling.
She was a charming girl. I would know her for many years
and would never forget that day when she offered to trim
her dark pubic hair.

For a moment I could not answer. My attention was
focused on her luscious breasts, which were spilling out
of her bikini top.

"I don't know," I said. "How do you feel about it?"
"I don't care. I've posed nude a lot. My pussy doesn't
embarrass me."

I may have been influenced by Giselle. I will never
forget the first time I saw her nude on the stage. She'd
been shaved, and her fleshy nether lips showed. She
spread her legs without hesitation or embarrassment,
showing her dark slit and the shiny pink parts outside it.
Strippers today are close-trimmed, if not shaved, and

flaunt their pink and glossy parts. The mere suggestion of

it was shocking when we opened our stores. So has the

world changed.

"No, Melissa," I said. "If it doesn't bother you, it
doesn't bother me."

I had to see the reaction. If it had been negative, I
would have sent the girls scurrying back to the dressing
room to shave.


44 HAROLD ROBBINS

But it was not negative. The style columnists and suchlike
people gasped when Melissa appeared with that generous
blossom of dark hair showing above her bikini
bottom, plus strands showing around the sides. But then
.. . then they applauded!

As model after model appeared, each showing more or
less, interest grew. The musicians, who had been blase
about this gig, became spirited, as did their playing. Their
beat dominated the room. I had a microphone, but I didn't
have to say anything.

Each model showed a bikini. Then they began to show
lingerie. When Giselle appeared in the black bra-andpanty
set, with her shiny nipples peeking out through the
holes in the bra, some in the audience actually stood�
though whether it was to pay tribute or to see better, I
couldn't say.

The next day the models gathered in a photographer's
studio and were photographed in the things they had modeled.


I had invited Buddy to stop by during the shoot. He
was no innocent, but he was rattled when he found himself
sitting in a huge room, sipping Scotch, and watching
naked girls running around, changing in and out of things
and having body makeup patted on their skin. He had, of
course, seen Giselle nude in Paris, but she was thirty-five
now, and my wife, and I think it made him a little uncomfortable.


I ordered big color prints made of the photographs.
They would become the basis of the decor in our first
shops. Notice I say they were the basis of the decor in
our first shops. We did not put them in the windows, and
in fact they were not visible from the streets.

My wife's photo appeared in each of our shops.

We were demure. We kept drapes closed over our show
windows and displayed nothing in them but walnut
plaques with carved, gilded lettering. It said:

CHEEKS

LINGERIE FRAN�AISE


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Anyway . .. there are problems with starting a business
in New York City.

My first confrontation came in the Upper East Side
shop. I was paid a visit by a tall, slender, coffee-withcream
complexioned man sharply dressed in a camel overcoat
over a natty black suit. He strolled around the shop,
taking an interest in the merchandise and in the big color
photographs of models.

"Nice new business you got here," he said.
I nodded. I guessed what he wanted, but I played it
cool. "I figured there'd be a market for this kind of stuff."
"I'm sure there is. I'm sure there is. Uh . . . you got the
place well insured?"
"Oh, sure," I said. I'd expected this visit and knew what
was coming. "Fire, theft, the works."

He nodded, then walked around the store again, pretending
to take an interest in some sheer and skimpy black
panties. "Tough town, don't you think?" he asked.

"I've lived here all my life," I said.

"Really, now? Then you know the score. Who's insuring
you against accidents?"
"What's your name?" I asked.
"I don't give that information out very readily."
"Then when somebody else comes in to sell me insur


ance, who am I gonna tell them insures me against accidents?
I mean, I can't just say, 'I got insurance.' I gotta
say 'I got insurance with Doug or Mike or somebody.'
Otherwise, your insurance isn't going to do me any good,
is it?"

"Okay. You tell 'em you're insured with Leroy."

"And what does your insurance cost, Leroy?"

"Oh, let's say a C and a half a week. If your business
goes real good, the insurance might be worth more. But
we can start that way. Okay?"

"Okay." I reached in my pocket, pulled out a wad, and
peeled off three fifties. "Tuesday," I said. "This covers me
till next Tuesday. Figure I'll see you then. Right?"

I called Buddy. He'd heard of Leroy.


HAROLD ROBBINS

Leroy did not return for another $150 on Tuesday. He
did not return any other Tuesday.

A body that washed up on a Jersey beach a couple of
months later might have been Leroy, but it was hard to
say; too many fish had nibbled on it. The camel coat and
black suit suggested Leroy.

"Anybody else tries to sell you protection, you tell them
you're covered by Buddy."

Which I did. For some reason all his own, Buddy had
become a sort of big brother to me. I thought I knew the
city. He knew it better.


12


LEN

My father said to Brad that he had wanted me to give my
virginity to some nice little girl with pink knees showing
under a pleated plaid skirt. I did, if my virginity could be
said to be intact after I was sucked off by Brad.

Sue Ellen did not want to be called Sue or Ellen. She
was Sue Ellen. I met her at Amherst, of course. We met
at a dance and at first didn't much care for each other. I
don't know why, exactly. She was all too ready to tell
anyone who would listen that her father was a senior partner
in Hale & Dorr, in Boston, and was a friend of Joseph
Welch. I didn't tell her exactly what my father did for a
living�I honestly didn't know�which made her think I
was either standoffish or was the son of someone in a
dishonest racket. She didn't find this attractive, and so
didn't find me attractive.

It is odd to say this about a young woman, but I am
going to say it because it was true. Sue Ellen was defined
by her boobs. They were beautiful but so extraordinarily
large that she was almost a freak. Her mother hired a
woman in Boston to make bras especially for Sue Ellen.
The things were expensive, and their purpose was not to
thrust her up and out but to contain and support her. More


HAROLD ROBBINS

than that, they were made to relieve her of the discomfort
she experienced with off-the-shelf brassieres, whose straps
cut into her shoulders and left red marks.

There were cruel jokes about Sue Ellen. She didn't pick
the lint from her navel because she didn't know it was
there. She couldn't play the piano or type because she
couldn't see the keyboard. She couldn't drive because her
tits would get caught in the steering wheel. She couldn't
play basketball because someone would confuse her
boobs for the ball. And so on. I say cruel. I mean cruel.
And I know she heard some of these jokes.

Naturally, every boy who dated her tried to grope her.
They couldn't wait to get their hands on those enormous
jugs. They were a disadvantage for her�though I must
add that she never considered having them surgically reduced.
In fact, she was proud of them.

As for the rest of her, she was simply an attractive,
appealing girl, no raving beauty, maybe, but regular in her
features and taut in the remaining elements of her figure.
I well remember watching her walk away, her tight little
butt twitching. I supposed she was unconscious of that.
She wasn't. Sue Ellen was not unconscious of anything
about herself.

She was bright and personable and warm. I liked her.
I persisted in asking her for dates, and she began to accept.

When I graduated from Lodge, my father bought me
an automobile for a graduation present. It was a brandnew
black Oldsmobile Cutlass with a real leather interior.
Maybe one of the reasons Sue Ellen accepted me was that
I could drive her to Boston, or to Hartford, or other places
she might want to go.

Anyway, inevitably we began to park and kiss. And so,
one night�

"Len, I have to ask you a question."

"Sure."

"You're the only boy I've ever gone out with who
didn't try to feel me up. Why?"
"Because I figure you've had to put up with enough of


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that. Sometime, when we .. . respect each other enough,
then I'd like to�Sue Ellen. I don't want to just feel you
up. I want to kiss you there."

It was the right thing to say. In a minute she had pulled
off her sweater, unhooked the corsetiere's masterwork,
and bared those magnificent hooters.

I kissed them, believe it. I sucked her nipples into my
mouth, caressed them with my tongue, and felt them harden.
She had been the victim of too much crude groping
and was eagerly waiting for a guy to treat her right. Sue
Ellen moaned with exhilarated pleasure.

So did I.

I kept licking and sucking. She kept thrusting her big,
soft knockers against my face until she all but smothered
me with them. I was painfully hard. She fumbled with my
erection. I rubbed her panties. They were wet. Still, we
didn't do it that night. We knew we would another night.
Unless something awful happens between two people, you
don't go that far and decide to go no farther.

Well.. . inevitably, she got pregnant. Inevitably because
we were a pair of stupid kids. We knew what would
happen, but when you are that age you think you are
invincible, that nothing bad can happen to you. Besides,
it didn't feel as good through condoms, not to either one
of us.

We couldn't tell her parents in Boston. One Saturday
morning we drove to New York and faced my father. He
was at home. Nonreligious though he was, he usually took
a day's rest on the Sabbath.

"Well, for Christ's sake, kids," he said.

He was living at the time with a former model named
Melissa Lamb. It was interesting. They were friends. He'd
met her some years before my mother died. She was not
just a romp in the sack�though for damn sure she must
have been one: a brunette with a body that would have
given Cardinal O'Connor an erection. She was a little vacant
in the brains department, but she was good-hearted,
as they say, and devoted to my father. I could tell by the


HAROLD ROBBINS

way they looked at each other that they made each other
happy.
"How far are you gone?" my father asked, using an
expression Sue Ellen had never heard before.
She understood him, all the same. "Two months, two
and a half," she said.
She was painfully embarrassed. Besides the two of us
and her doctor, my father was the only person who knew.

"Well, it looks to me like you got a decision to make,
Sue Ellen," he said. "It's a decision nobody else can make
for you. Len can't make it. I can't make it. Your parents
can't make it. The church can't make it. You'll have to
make the decision all by yourself. Other people can advise
you, but it's the woman's decision."

"What would you advise, Mr. Cooper?"
"Have the baby and put it up for adoption," my father
said without so much as an instant of hesitation.
"I can't do that," she said tearfully. "People would see
I was pregnant. My parents would find out."

Things like that just came out of him now and then. I
am sure it genuinely surprised him when Sue Ellen began
to shake with sobs.

"There are places where you can go," he said. He didn't
apologize but he tried to relieve the situation by being
rational. "Places where you can�I mean in total confidence."


She shook her head. "My father and mother would have
to know," she wept.

"Well then ..."

Well then was what happened. He called her dormitory
and spoke to the house mother. He introduced himself and
told the woman that he had managed to get tickets for
Amadeus�a very difficult ticket to get�and would like
for Sue Ellen to stay so he could take her and me to the
show. It was not the house mother's responsibility and
she suggested he should call her parents.

"Oh, of course. I haven't reached her parents yet, but
I'll keep trying until I get them."


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Sue Ellen pondered for three hours, then made her decision.
The abortion�at that stage in a pregnancy a very
simple procedure�was performed Saturday evening. She
had all day Sunday and Monday to rest, before we drove
back to Massachusetts on Tuesday morning.

She wept softly for hours on end. During the drive she
was silent. I wasn't sure she wouldn't break it off with
me and never let me see her again. It was during that
weekend and that drive that I decided I loved her. I had
hurt her, after all, and there is some perverse instinct in a
man that drives him to love a woman he has injured.


It is difficult to believe there was a time when a woman
could not get a prescription for the Pill unless she showed
the doctor proof that she was married. Naturally, that sort
of thing continued in Massachusetts when it had died elsewhere.
At the very least, the doctor might insist on notifying
the girl's parents. My father saw to it that Sue Ellen
got a prescription in New York and had it filled in a New
York pharmacy before we went back to Amherst.

"You can make her your woman, if that's what you
want to do," he said to me. "But don't worry about her.
She can take care of herself. With knockers like that, she
can have any man she wants. And she knows it."

/ was the man she wanted. She was the woman I
wanted. Our shared experience of the abortion drew us
closer together, rather man alienating us as we had been
warned. My feeling for her was not just the old ache in
the crotch but tenderness. She saw that and was drawn to
me.

I don't mean to say that we weren't horny anymore.
We were, for damn sure, and the Pill made it possible for
us to be carefree in our lovemaking. It was a great time


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53

to be alive, what with the ardor of kids and the prescription
protecting us.

When we left Amherst, we married and moved to New
Haven where I would study law and she would study Chinese.


Why Chinese, for God's sake? Because, she said, it "
would be an intellectual challenge.

That was Sue Ellen. She could think up the most hairshirt
things to do. For example, she played a musical instrument.
An accordion maybe? The piano? No. She
played the violin. Never very well. I thought she could
have played the piano very well, but to her the violin was
the most challenging instrument, so that was what she
wanted to play, and she struggled with it until she did
manage to generate tunes that were at least recognizable.

By now I knew what my father's business was. He'd
told me and shown me the summer after I graduated from
Lodge. The partner at Hale & Dorr was damn well not
going to allow his daughter to marry the son of a man
who sold women's undies for a living�and not only that
but sold erotic undies that a respectable woman would not
wear, in his judgment. He changed his mind when he
found out what a big business Cheeks was.

By the time I married Sue Ellen, there were forty-seven
Cheeks stores, all in cities on the Atlantic seaboard. Her
father scowled and harrumphed but had to concede that
my father ran an immensely successful business and was
a wealthy man.

One Sunday evening in New York my father took Sue
Ellen and me to a Cheeks shop on Madison Avenue. It
was, of course, closed, and we explored it privately.

As always, the fa�ade of the shop was discreet. The
show window was dominated by a small cast-metal sign
that stood on a pedestal and was lighted by low-wattage
spotlights:

CHEEKS

LINGERIE FRAN�AISE


HAROLD ROBBINS

Behind the little sign, a dark blue curtain hid the interior
of the store, as did a matching curtain on the door.
From the street you knew this was a shop that sold intimate
apparel, and did so discreetly. In the daytime
passers-by could not glance in and see someone they
knew shopping for scanties.

Otherwise the window displayed a few�a very few�
posters advertising concerts and art exhibits and the like,
all nonprofit and for the benefit of various causes. The
posters were not enough to clutter the window but did
suggest the store management's commitment to culture
and good works.

Inside, Sue Ellen was astonished to find a marble floor,
subdued lighting, gilded showcases, and racks and hangers
of negligees, nightgowns, corselets, teddies, bra-artdpanty
sets, bikini bathing suits, and so on, all
conspicuously high-quality merchandise offered for high
prices. Displayed in the showcases were G-strings, crotchless
panties, and bras with holes cut to display the nipples.
One showcase was given to leather goods: leather corselets
with no bras, leather pants, and leather collars that
could be fastened with little padlocks.

" 'Supermarket Sweep,' " my father laughed. "Take
anything you want. You'll find something very different
for your wedding present�that is, different from what
will be on display at the wedding as your gift from me."

Sue Ellen was not bashful. She chose a sheer black
shorty nightgown and a pair of black crotchless panties.
But she grinned. "Great bras and..." she said. She
cupped her hands over her bosom. "I only wish . .."

"Let me show you something, then," my father said.
He pulled a tray from under a counter and displayed an
assortment of nipple clips, most of them in pairs attached
by fine chains. "I guess you can figure out how they
work."

Sue Ellen was fascinated with the nipple clips and
chose a pair of wire loops that would fit over erect nipples
and be fastened in place by slide rings that tightened the


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loops. My father nodded his approval of her choice, then
disappeared into a back room for a moment and returned
with the identical item in platinum, with a square-cut emerald
hanging from the chain.

"Slip back there and try them," my father said. "You
get them on right, it takes a pretty good tug to pull one
off. Try them."

We did. I used my tongue to bring her right nipple
erect, then helped her slip the loop over the rigid, wrinkled
bud. She pulled the slide ring up until the platinum loop
was snug. She tugged experimentally and found that my
father had been right: The loop would not easily slip off.

I helped her put the loop on her left nipple.

I pulled down on the emerald. Her nipples stretched but
did not yield the loops.
"Oh ... Len!"
"Feel good?"
"Like you can't believe. Pull more. And so sexy!"
I never knew the price, but I guessed that my young

wife would be wearing two thousand dollars worth of
platinum and emerald on her nipples. She took great pride
in her clips and wore them often. She showed them to her
girlfriends.


14


JERRY

We didn't discuss our business with our neighbors in
Scarsdale. I suppose it was Buddy who discouraged me
from identifying myself as the owner of Cheeks. He persisted
in sneering that I'd gone into "the ladies' undergarments
business." He actually made me reluctant to talk
about it. It was difficult to live with the self-image of a
merchant of women's underwear.

Even Giselle didn't broadcast the definition of our line
of business. Our son didn't really learn what it was until
long after his mother was gone�and he was surprised
and I think a little distressed at first to know what his
father's business was. He'd thought of me as a tough guy,
and selling erotic lingerie contradicted that image.

Anyway .. . I remember a cocktail party in Scarsdale.
It was the first to which we were invited. Giselle always
attracted invitations. Her beauty attracted attention. Her
accent charmed. Besides, our country had not yet matured
enough to have ceased assuming a Frenchwoman was especially
erotic. We all remember President Kennedy saying
in Paris, "I am the man who brought Jacqueline
Kennedy to France." Well, at parties in Scarsdale I was
usually the man who brought Giselle Cooper.


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She drank well, she ate well, she talked well. She didn't
smoke. She was elegant in simple black dresses and single
strands of pearls. She was admired.

"And what business is your husband in?" a woman
asked her that evening of our first Scarsdale cocktail party.

It was a small-town question. People in the city were
less likely to ask what you did for a living or what was
your religion. Scarsdale was a Jewish town, and maybe
that had something to do with it. People there had a sense
of community and imagined they had a right to know just
who their neighbors were and what they did. Around their
swimming pools, everybody knew all about everybody�
or thought they did.

"My husband is in a business we don't very much talk
about," Giselle said.

The woman who had asked her was shocked and offended.
She was offended because she took herself as
having just been emphatically put down. She was shocked
because to her Giselle's answer meant that I was in a
criminal business. Visions of Mafia danced in her head�
visions of guns and blood.

Giselle understood instantly. "He is in a completely
lawful business," she said. "But it is one involving confidentiality.
I am sorry."

That exchange gave us cachet in Scarsdale. In a community
of suits�stockbrokers, bankers, lawyers, and a
variety of corporate hacks�I was in some mysterious
business we would not discuss.

No one went to any great effort to find out what that
business was. Okay, not the Mafia. But a few people actually
suspected I worked for the CIA. Or something like
it.

Oddly, though Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky were
in our house from time to time, as was once or twice
Jimmy Hoffa, no one ever seemed to recognize them. We
were damn lucky about that.

Today I am proud of the business Giselle and I built.
Why I wasn't proud from the beginning, I don't know. It


HAROLD ROBBINS

is something from our past, that is from the culture of our
past. When I was growing up in America, a photographer
was prosecuted for pornography after he showed photographs
that displayed a model's underarm hair. When the
first bikinis appeared on public beaches, girls were arrested.
In television studios, silk handkerchiefs or silk
flowers were fastened to the necklines of dresses, lest the
audience should see on those black-and-white sets the
shadow in the cleft between a woman's breasts. Faye Emerson
was condemned for refusing to tolerate this and so
showing a modest little suggestion of cleavage. Audiences
ogled�supposedly�a blonde called Dagmar because her
breasts were big. Operators of carnivals attracted crowds
by arranging for jets of air to blow up women's skirts,
and in many towns the law closed shows down for that�
this, of course, before Marilyn Monroe laughed before the
cameras while air from a grating blew up her skirt and
showed her panties.

I could go on. We were an uptight society. By the time
we opened the first Cheeks store the country was well on
its way out of that, but remnants of old attitudes hung
on�and, though diminishing, would hold on�and sometimes
cause us worry.

I've said before that launching Cheeks wasn't easy.
Worry about anal-retentives was the least of our problems.

Acquiring merchandise to stock the stores was a far
bigger problem. For the most part, the kind of stuff we
wanted just wasn't manufactured in America. Not in any
quantity. Not so that you could place an order and expect
delivery.

For the first year or so, almost everything we sold came
from France. The merchandise came in through Idlewild
Airport, as it was then named. That is to say, 90 percent
or so of what we bought in France arrived at our stores
in Manhattan. Some 10 percent was pilfered at the airport.
Not just ours. Everybody's.

If you didn't like the cost of air freight, you could use


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ocean freight�and pay the cost in pilferage off the Jersey
docks.

For decades, maybe for a century, the longshoremen
had lifted what they regarded as their share of every shipment
they handled. They took a relatively modest percentage
and heard few complaints. When freight shifted
to the airports, the freight handlers there mimicked the old
dock custom.

It was a "tax" for doing business in New York, just as
protection was another tax, and every business understood
it. You paid more for having your trash hauled than a
business in, say, Scarsdale paid�and in Scarsdale you
paid more than someone in, say, Springfield, Illinois.

If you wanted to do a little remodeling or have part of
your store repainted, the contractors ripped you off for
inflated labor costs, plus a little extra profit on the side
for the contractor himself.

How many times did I hear something like this?�
"That'll come to twenty thou, even. 'Course, if you could
give me fifteen by check and, say, three in cash, the eighteen
thou will cover it." That meant he was going to pay
income tax on fifteen. It also meant that I was going to
pay eighteen and be able to claim only fifteen as a business
expense. Another tax on doing business in New
York.

All you could do was raise your prices to cover this
element of the cost of doing business.

But my losses on air freight rose and got out of hand.

I talked with Buddy. I always talked with Buddy. Since
the day not long after my parents' death when he had
mysteriously appeared and made himself my friend and
mentor in street smarts, I had always talked with Buddy.

"Your problem is like this," he said. "Stock of your
merchandise shows up in a shop in, say, Philly, how's
anybody, including the cops, going to lay an identification
on that an' say, 'Hey, these here scanties belong
t'Cooper!' Y'follow me?"

"I follow you," I said bitterly.


60 HAROLD ROBBINS

" 'Nother thing. You ain' got no affiliation. I'd like to
affiliate with you, but affiliation with me is gonna bust no
balls at Idlewild or on the Jersey docks. You got two ways
of doin' business, Jerry. One is straight, an' you gonna
get ripped off good. The other is affiliation."

I knew what he meant. All I wanted from Buddy was
confirmation of what I already understood.

I had two options, just like he said. I could work
straight and take my lumps, be ripped off by every twobit
racketeer that preyed on business in the city, or I
could�as Buddy put it�affiliate.

Well, what the hell? Tens of thousands of businesses
survived without affiliating. Some, actually, were pressured
into affiliating. Most were not. They paid their tribute
and raised their prices and made a profit.

But I was just hard-nosed enough to prefer having muscle
to being muscled. I have never been content to be a
victim. It had taken me time to settle with Uncle Harry,
but I had, eventually�and found great satisfaction in it.

I called Frank Costello, naturally. We met again in the
Norse Room, in the Waldorf. I was not entirely surprised
to find Meyer Lansky with him.

"A neat little business," Lansky said quietly, with that
sly small smile that characterized him. "A lot of potential."


"If I'm not nickeled-and-dimed to death," I said.

"That can happen," said Costello.

Understand that I'm sitting here with two statesmen of
Cosa Nostra. Albert Anastasia, whom I had met once, was
called the Executioner, for good reason. I'd met Crazy
Joey Gallo and Tony Pro Provenzano. When you're a hustler
around New York, you do meet these characters. But
Frank Costello, so far as I know, never killed anyone and
never arranged a hit�and neither did Meyer Lansky.
These two men were peacemakers, conciliators. They understood
there was more money in the insidious invasion


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of businesses than there had ever been in violence, particularly
in gang wars.

On the other hand, they represented muscle. It was not
wise to get crosswise with men like them. They might not
kill you, but they could break you, for damn sure.

"You're looking for a partner," Lansky suggested.
'That's how I figure."
"You think so? Well... I suppose I am. I don't want
a partner, but I suppose I should have one."

Lansky stubbed out his cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray
on the lunch table. "It damages a man's pride to have
to take a partner he doesn't want," he said in a soft, sympathetic
voice. "But pride is not all that important, Jerry.
I've been arrested, handcuffed, made to stand in a lineup."
He shrugged. "None of that hurt me. I did a few months
in jail, once. It didn't hurt me. A man who puts too much
emphasis on his pride is looking for a sure fall."

"I'd like to keep control of my business, Mr. Lansky.
I built it and ... "

"Understood," said Costello. "And that's how it'll be.
But like you said, they nickel-and-dime you, nickel-anddime
you. Suppose you were to turn over, let's say
twenty-five percent of Cheeks to a partner with
connections. And the nickel-and-diming stops. Not only
that. This partner can help you expand your business. I
have a man in mind who can also help you solve a problem
you're going to have sooner or later."

"Which is?" I asked.

"You can't always import all your merchandise. You're
going to have to start manufacturing it here. So, what do
you know about the garment district, Jerry?"

"Nothing," I admitted.

"The boys that rip you off at the airports and on the
waterfront are nothing compared to what you'll meet up
with in the garment district," said Lansky. "It's a special
culture, all its own. They have their ways that have been
goin' on for all of this century and even before. It's more
subtle, but it's more effective."


15


So it happened that I met Sal Nero: Salamon Nero.
I won't play around with this the way he did with me.
His name, really, was Solomon Schwartz. He was a

" nephew of Arnold Rothstein, one-time kingpin of New
York rackets who was whacked out in the late twenties.
He was also a cousin of Bugsy Siegel, who is credited
with having opened up Las Vegas. Violence was part of
his background. Rothstein was murdered in 1928, Siegel
in 1947. They�and Lansky�were relics of the day when
Jews controlled the rackets that came to be controlled by
Cosa Nostra.

Sal was a sort of Lansky writ small. Well.. . Lansky
was only five feet four and a half, so of course I don't
mean physically small. What Sal had was a trigger mind
and a photographic memory. Some people compared him
to Abbadabba Berman, the mathematical genius behind
some of Dutch Schultz's most profitable scams. Writ
small? No, he wasn't. He was writ large, a tall, muscular,
handsome man who was irresistible to women. A flashy
dresser.

I'll add one more fact. He was hung like a horse. Like
a friggin' horse! It was amazing. I remember standing at


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a urinal and glancing over at Sal's cock. Men are not
supposed to do that and will deny they do, but I've yet
to meet a man who didn't, sometimes anyway. Sal was
absolutely unbelievable!

What is more, he was connected. Officially�if there
could be such a thing as officially�he was with the Carlino
family. But he had always been careful to avoid doing
things that would offend the other families, and no one
despised him.

He was one year older than I was, and he had�to use
words everybody will recognize but I never in my life
heard seriously used�made his bones.

In 1947, when I was learning the Plescassier Water
business, Sal found out that a Carlino underboss was
messing with his wife. He went to Joseph Carlino, as the
story is told, and complained that the underboss was
screwing his wife, the mother of his children. He humbly
asked Carlino's permission to whack the guy out. Sicilians
are sensitive about that sort of thing: family relations.
They have very little tolerance for guys who mess around
with other guys' marriages. It's like the way Masons
pledge on their souls never to fuck the wife or daughter
of another Mason.

"Very well, my friend," Carlino said, as the story is
told. "I will take no offense. But you must know that
Vince has friends and will be well protected."

"I am only concerned that I do not offend you, Don
Carlino," said Sal�as the story is told; I am always skeptical
of things like this.

Carlino thought little more of it, apparently. But within
a week the underboss was dead.

As the story is told, he got out of his car one night at
his home on Staten Island. Two men were with him: his
protection. As the three of them walked toward his front
porch, huge blasts erupted from the shrubbery near the
steps.

Vince went down first, nearly cut in two by the blast
from a twelve-gauge shotgun. As the story is told, red and


HAROLD ROBBINS

yellow bits of his gaudy silk necktie were found between
his vertebrae. At short range, a twelve-gauge can do that.

The second blast took off the head of the first bodyguard,
and the third blast cut through the knees of the
second bodyguard, leaving him crippled for life but alive
to tell a cautionary tale.

Sal had bought an automatic shotgun and cut down the
barrel and the stock. He drilled a hole in the remaining
wood of the stock and put in a leather strap. That way he
could carry the shotgun hanging under his left arm and
hidden by his raincoat. It was as dangerous as any weapon
ever used.

What was more, it was used once. No trace of it was
ever found. The New York cops know how to find guns
tossed in the saltwater, but they didn't find this one.

Nothing happened. If the cops suspected who whacked
out Vince, they didn't care. But after that Sal Nero was
known as a man who could be crossed a little but not bigtime.


My partner.


16


The advantages of having Sal Nero for a partner made
themselves apparent quickly.

Pilferage at Idlewild did not stop, but it went down to
the standard take. Nobody said a word, but the pilferage
diminished. That was just one thing. What was more, the
cost of having trash hauled went down a little, as did the
cost of minor repairs and major remodeling.

Things like this happened�

A wise guy came into my West Side store one morning.
"Figured you'd want to send flowers as a tribute," he said
to Giselle. "Everybody else is."

"Flowers?" she asked. "For what?"

"Well... You know Paulie died. Paulie C. All the
neighbors are sending floral tributes. Figured you'd want
to send�What you want to send? I mean, like five hundred.
Five buys a real nice tribute. Everybody'11 notice.
Everybody'll appreciate the way you're making your business
a part of the neighborhood. Be good for your business.
Be very good."

People who didn't know Giselle took her for an innocent
because of her French accent. Giselle was as innocent
as Sal. "Five hundred dollars," she mused, frowning. "I


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don't know.... Man like Paulie ought to get at least a
thousand."

She said it, though she had not the remotest idea who
Paulie C. might have been�if indeed there had been a
Paulie C, and if indeed he had passed to his great reward.

"Oh, yeah, well..."

Giselle nodded solemnly. "All this kind of thing is handled
by my husband's partner. Yes. You speak to him,
and I am sure he will do what is right."

"Well, lady, who is your husband's partner, and where
do I find him?"

"My husband's partner is Sal Nero."

"Uh .. . right. Okay. I'll talk to Sal. Right. I'll take it
up with Sal."
Of course, that was the last we ever heard about sending
money to buy flowers for Paulie's funeral.

Sal had a formidable reputation among the smalltimers.
They were afraid of him. They had heard the story
of the twelve-gauge. He had a respectable reputation
among the bigger fry, but his reputation among the smalltimers
served us well.

He was like Meyer Lansky. He wasn't a capo, and he
didn't have any soldiers. He didn't work that way. So far
as I have ever been able to find out, he never killed anyone
or had anyone killed after the incident with the Carlino
capo in 1947�with one very big exception. But the
word on him was that he had done it, so he might do it
again. He was a smart man, a wheeler and dealer who
made things happen by brains and not muscle�but don't
get seriously crosswise with him.

He drank nothing stronger than wine, and of wine he
drank only the best. He cared nothing for champagne or,
in fact, for any white wine, but he knew French and Italian
reds and could order them by year.

I was amused at how wise he was to the specialty waters.
If he wanted fizz water, he ordered Canada Dry or
Adirondack water that was just as good but even cheaper.


THE SECRET 67

He laughed at the people who made it a point of honor
to have little green bottles on their tables.

"Shows what you can do with the right advertising," he
said. "With the right kind of promotion we could bottle
and sell horse piss."

His taste in women was entertaining.

He liked heavyset women. He explained why:

"Y'know, when y'got a whang like mine, y'gotta do it
with a big gal; I mean, one with plenty of flesh around
her pussy. Hell, with a little thin woman I'd go through
her and come out the backside."

I was already curious about his whang, of which I'd
had a glimpse as we'd stood side by side at two urinals.
One day we were in my office. He stepped to the door
and latched it. "Go ahead and have a look," he said, and
he pulled on his penis to bring it all out of his pants.

As God is my witness, the man had a ten-inch penis!
It was formidable.
"I'm a friggin' freak," he said. "But what can I do? I
can't have it cut down."

When I met him, his current girlfriend was a chubby
twenty-five-year-old named Truda. She was not obese, but
she was oversized in all dimensions. She was fascinated
with the line of merchandise we stocked in our Cheeks
shops, but we had almost nothing she could wear, which
caused Sal to offer his first idea about our business.

"Y'know," he said, "there's a lot of girls like Truda.
We oughta offer a bigger choice of sizes."
He was right, and our next shipment from Paris included
merchandise in larger sizes.

His next idea had to do with advertising that we carried
the larger sizes. We couldn't put up signs saying "SCANTIES
FOR BIG GIRLS, TOO!" We could, though, Sal suggested,
feature bigger girls in some of our color photos.
That would get the message across. All we needed was
one or two fat models.

"Hell," he said, "why not my Truda? She'd be flattered.
I mean flattered."


HAROLD ROBBINS

So we took Truda to the photographer and had her pose
in bra-and-panty sets; also in skimpy nighties and bikinis.
Sal bought her a blond wig, which was so conspicuously
a wig that there could be no doubt that was what it was�
which made her even cuter. Within two weeks at least
one photo poster in each of our shops was a picture of
Truda showing a lot of skin.

This inspired her to think she could become a model.
Her hair was red, so she took to calling herself Ginger.
She had a portfolio of pictures taken and began to offer
herself as a model. Sal and I thought it was strange, but
a number of photographers hired her. She never became
the fashion model she had dreamed of being, but her picture
appeared from time to time in magazines given to
photo art. One caption suggested a fat girl like her had to
have a lot of courage to pose in the nude. That showed
how much the caption writer understood about a woman
like Truda. She wasn't ashamed of herself. She was proud.


17


Frank Costello had suggested that Sal's chief value to
Cheeks would be his contacts in the garment district. And
so it turned out. He knew his way around in that business.

When we went to the district, I expected to meet a bald,
cigar-chewing man in a soiled shirt and vest, sitting at a
scarred old desk, probably with his feet up�an Uncle
Harry come back to life.

What I met instead was an emaciated Chinese named
Charlie Han, dressed in fashionable faded blue jeans and
a light blue flannel shirt with white buttons. Charlie was
a chain smoker of unfiltered Camels, and a pack of them
always stood in his shirt pocket. He did not put his feet
on a desk. If he had a desk. If he had a desk, I never saw
it. In fact, I never saw any room that might have been his
office. If you didn't find him in one of his shops, walking
around, supervising, you would find him sitting in a booth
in a coffee shop on Thirty-eighth Street. As I would learn,
Charlie did business in cash and kept no records, so the
tax authorities could find no way to audit him. Well.. .
actually, they could have, but he also made it his business
to be inconspicuous, and I doubt that the agencies who


70 HAROLD ROBBINS

might have wanted to look into his operations were even
aware he existed.

Everyone has heard the word sweatshop. Few have ever
seen one. Charlie's employees were almost all Hispanic
women, from a variety of Latin-American nations. Few
of them were legal immigrants. They worked at sewing
machines on the upper floors of district buildings, in conditions
that even I�who thought of myself as reasonably
knowledgeable about how things were on the streets�
found unbelievable.

For example, there was just one toilet for as many as
fifty women. They had one ten-minute toilet break in the
morning and one in the afternoon, at which time a line
naturally formed and most of them did not return to their
machines by the end of the break. When they didn't�or
if they went to the toilet at another time�they were
docked an hour's wages. An hour!

These women were young, most of them, and many of
them were conspicuously pregnant. Abused by the sweatshop
all day, they went home to some hovel at night to
be abused by the man who had gotten them into this country,
and who took their money from them. They were
slaves; there was no other way to put it.

Charlie paid his people cash. That way there was no
record of how much he paid to whom, so he paid no social
security, no workers' compensation premiums, no unemployment
compensation tax. God knows what other taxes
or charges he did not pay. Of course he paid nothing like
the minimum wage. Very few of the women who worked
for him knew there was such a thing.

Once in a while a union organizer came around and
tried to organize the women. Those fellows were in a risky
business. They had a way of... disappearing. Various
kinds of reformers came around from time to time, representing
organizations as lofty as the United Nations. An
operator like Charlie could move his sweatshop in a matter
of hours, so that when inspectors came in response to


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a reformer complaint all they found was a bunch of empty
floors.

"That's the garment industry," Sal told me. "Forget
you ever saw this shop. The most upscale stores in the
country sell name brands that come from sweatshops like
Charlie Han's. Their buyers have no idea�or can pretend
they have no idea�about the conditions in which
the clothes they buy for their stores are made. Charlie is
a contractor. He gets a contract�an oral contract, nothing
in writing�to make a thousand dozen skirts, let's
say, for Big Store chain. That contract comes from a
middleman who may have got it from another middleman,
and only the middlemen deal directly with Big
Store. Big Store defines design and fabric, Charlie buys
the fabric and thread and zipper for, say, a dollar seventyfive
per skirt, has the sewing done in his sweatshop at a
cost of a dollar twenty-five per skirt, and sells the skirt to
Middleman One for seven-fifty. Middleman One sells it
to Middleman Two for eleven twenty-five, and Middleman
Two sells wholesale to Big Store Corporation for,
say twenty-one dollars�"

"Why two middlemen?" I asked.

"Levels of insulation," Sal explained. "It's illegal to sell
sweatshop merchandise, so they build a barrier between
Charlie and Big Store. Now, Middleman Two sells the
skirt to Big Store for twenty-one dollars, and Big Store
sells it to the public for seventy-five fifty. Sometimes Big
Store has a sale and sells the Leigh skirt for fifty-six fifty.
Customer thinks she's got a great deal!"

"So we ... ?"

"We make a deal with Charlie Han to make stuff for
us. We don't want to get in trouble with the law, so we
deal with Charlie through a guy I know by the name of
Murray. That way we don't sell stuff we know is
sweatshop-made. Murray insulates us from Charlie. That's
his business. He's an insurance broker, so to speak. He
takes the risk of getting in trouble with the law for dealing


HAROLD ROBBINS

in sweatshop merchandise. He takes the fall if shit happens,
and we're protected."

"Jesus!"

"Hey, don't think you can reform the garment industry.
That's the way it is. That's the way it's always been�
hell, for a century at least, and more than that I imagine.
And let me tell you something else: Charlie will deliver
quality merchandise. Forget how it gets made. From the
standpoint of quality and cleanliness, it's made right."

Okay. If I didn't take a profit out of this way of doing
business, somebody else would. And, of course, if Herr
Standartenf�hrer Schultz hadn't had his squads shoot all
those Jews down there in the woods, somebody else
would have. It's a common rationalization, one that covers
a multitude of sins. The unsubtle don't even realize they
are rationalizing and soldier on with clear consciences.

But Charlie Han would only do the sewing. We had to
provide the designs, and as it turned out we would have
to provide the fabrics.

For Cheeks, design would be everything.

In this, Sal was not at all helpful. Giselle tried to be
helpful. But she knew little about American designers.
Help came from an unexpected source.

Melissa Lamb, whose hair had shown above the top of
her bikini when we took the first photographs for the
shops, was a professional model and modeled for many
sales campaigns for my lines. I had kept in touch with
her. When I mentioned to her that I was looking for a
designer, she named a name. He was good, she said, and
he specialized in the sort of thing I wanted.

So, with some reservations, I contacted the designer she
recommended: Larkin Albert.

I took him for a flaming fag, a swish. God knows I'd
had my fill of fairies, having had to work with a whole
family of them and their cutie-boys for almost two decades.
But Larkin was something else. And I was wrong
about him. He was not homosexual. He was a crossdresser.
What's more, he was damn good at it.


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Often he went on the streets as a woman, wearing a
wig, falsies, and high-heeled shoes, carefully limited
makeup, and a miniskirt. I hardly need say that men tried
to pick him up. They could experience not just one but
sometimes two most unpleasant surprises. Discovering
that the woman they had the hots for was in fact a man
was only the first surprise. Occasionally one of them
would turn aggressive, which generated the second surprise:
Larkin Albert held a black belt in karate. He had
made for himself an interesting life.

In his studio, he wore one of his many wigs, skin-tight
leggings, high heels, and stuffed-bra T-shirts. He smoked
cigarettes in a holder, which he brandished effeminately,
even with people who knew full well that he was a man.

But he was a genius designer, as Melissa had promised.
I was soon to learn how much a genius.

I talked to him about a design for a swimsuit.

"You know, Jerry," he said. "We've gone about as far
as we can go with the bikini. Some beaches girls can go
with tits bare. But not with pussy bare. I.. . a lot of
women are uncomfortable with the bikini, anyway. On the
other hand, the maillot looks like an old maid's suit, like
something a candidate for Miss America would wear.
So�I've been thinking. I have an idea in mind."

What he was thinking of was a one-piece, form-fitting
nylon swimsuit cut out all the way to the waist, exposing
all of the thighs and a broad expanse of the backside.
Being one-piece and covering the navel, it seemed modest.
One had to look a second time to see that on each
side it bared what no bikini designer had ever yet exposed:
everything from knee to waist. The crotch was covered
by a narrow strip of fabric, just enough to cover the pubes
themselves, while in the rear only the actual cleft was
covered, leaving the fleshy butt bare.

I told him to go ahead, make me a prototype. And make
it to fit Melissa.

A week later I went back to his studio to see Melissa
model the first Cheeks original design. Larkin had chosen


HAROLD ROBBINS

international orange for the first suit, the color of a traffic
cone. He pronounced it stunning. That was a word I didn't
use, but I agreed that it was stunning. I judged it would
make a real splash in the market. Giselle agreed.

Whether or not stunning was the word for it, it was an
instant success. I hardly have to say that newspapers and
magazines made much of the inevitable play on words�
that Cheeks was putting female cheeks on show. At first
the cut of the suit was dramatized by the fact that the skin
newly exposed was white, showing the boundaries of the
bikini the woman had been wearing before.

Newsweek ran a quarter-page color photo showing the
tan, the white, the orange.

Of course the white skin, too, tanned in a little while,
but while the contrast lasted it was to our advantage. It
sold suits.

It didn't hurt either that a crew of Florida beach cops
arrested three spring-weekend beachgoers for appearing
on the sand in "indecent" swimsuits.

The orange Cheeks suit became an international symbol.
They began to appear on beaches from Florida to
Maine, at country-club pools from New York to Ohio.
Because of the distinctive orange, they were identified at
a distance.

The quality didn't hurt us. As Sal had promised, Charlie
had things sewn right. There were no incidents of seams
opening. The suits did not fade in saltwater and chlorine
water, plus sunlight.

We couldn't make the things fast enough. When the
word got around that if you wanted a Cheeks suit you had
better buy it while you could, that didn't hurt us either.
We got calls from Big Store Corporation, wanting to
know if they could stock our suits. In cities where we had
a store, we let no one else sell the suit. When we did let
other stores handle our swimsuits, they were sportinggoods
stores, not Big Store department stores. If you
wanted a Cheeks suit, you had to go where they were
sold.


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Naturally, that meant a new flow of traffic through our
stores. People came in and discovered our line of merchandise.
I can't say that many people who came in for
swimsuits left with packages of scanties, but their visits
did help our reputation. Some bought other things. Many
came back and bought something else later.

We were on our way.


18


LEN

During the years when my father was turning his little
string of shops into the major chain that would be selling
scores of millions of dollars worth of Cheeks products by
the time I was old enough even to know what his business
was, I was blissfully living in the care of my mother, then
in good schools, having no idea what kind of struggles
were going on. Those were my years of oblivion. I have
memories, but the highlights are rare, and the rest is
foggy.

�I remember that one summer we rented a house in
Greenwich, Connecticut, so that we�that is, my mother
and I�could go to the beach every day. I remember that
the house was grand but the floors were deeply scarred.
Last summer's tenants had roller-skated over the parquet.

�I remember that Aunt Therese came to Greenwich
and stayed with us for two or three weeks that summer�
Therese, the collaborator who had been stripped and
shaved. By the time she wore her Cheeks internationalorange
maillot on the beach in Greenwich, it was no
longer scandalous, though she turned heads. I had no idea
my father manufactured and sold it.

�I am too young to remember the assassination of


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President Kennedy. I do remember the election of Richard
Nixon and what my mother said about it. She said, "Well,
that's the end of optimism in America. The country has
been taken over by the pancake eaters."

�I remember Nixon's resignation. I remember with
what quiet, tearful horror the event was noted in the halls
of Lodge, in contrast with the amused satisfaction I saw
in my father and mother when I went home.

�I remember a lot of dumb things, like my fascination
with the first color television set in our home; my pride
in learning that my father went to business meetings in
his own corporate airplane, a twin-engine Beechcraft
Baron�named Cheeks, of course; understanding that my
father and mother could, well, do it at eight thousand feet
over some obscure town in Pennsylvania, and did, behind
a curtain that hid them from the pilot.

It dawned on me, slowly, that my father was somebody.

�I remember trips to Europe�to Paris, chiefly, but
also to Lyon and to Nice and St. Tropez, where for the
first time I saw topless girls on the beach. I remember
eating hamburger au cheval without realizing it was
horsemeat. (And why not? If we slaughter a steer to eat
as flesh, why not a gelding?) I remember Paul Renard and
visits to the Lido and Folies Berg�re. I would learn only
much later that my mother had once danced on the stage
of a Paris nightclub as naked as those girls who gave me
erections.

I should remember the symptoms of my mother's fatal
illness. I loved her, and I was not insensitive to her, but
I suppose I thought�like many children�that my parents
were invincible. You are so dependent on them when you
are young that you cannot imagine what it might be like
to have to try to live without them.

My father lost both his parents at once, in a car crash,
when he was about the same age I was when I lost my
mother. Both! I shuddered. I couldn't even think about it.

Anyway, if I had been a more realistic boy I might have
realized that it was not natural for my mother to be losing


HAROLD ROBBINS

weight so fast. She turned into a pallid wraith within a
few months. Suddenly she was delicate and vulnerable. I
saw that, but still I had no idea that when my parents left
for Europe that fall that it was for her last visit to her
native land, her sister, and her friends. I guess they knew
she would not return alive from that last visit.

Before I went to Amherst my father educated me a
little.

"Len," he told me, "we are Jews. Some people are
proud of that. Some are ashamed of it. I am neither. It is
a part of life. I am a Jew just as I am a male. Nobody
asked me if I wanted to be. I am. Your mother was a
Catholic. Same thing. She just was. There are some things
you can't change, and I would be disappointed in you if
you tried. You can renounce Judaism, and you don't need
to practice it, but you are a Jew. Look at your pecker.
The God of Israel commanded us to cut off our foreskins,
which we do because we were so commanded. Many
Christians do it, too, but they don't have our excuse."

Then he handed me a slender book: the annual report
of Cheeks, a Partnership. I had no idea how to read a
balance sheet or a profit-and-loss statement, but even to
me it was apparent that I was scanning the report of a
highly profitable business.

He left me alone with it for half an hour, then came to
me and asked, "Have you ever heard of Cheeks stores?
Your mother and I built the business together. We don't
compete, exactly, with Victoria's Secret or with Frederick's
of Hollywood, but we sell a daring line of merchandise
to daring customers."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Do Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky have anything
to do with your business?"

"I take your point," my father said. "The answer is no.
Those two men have helped me, mostly by giving me
valuable advice. If you are asking me if I am involved in


THE SECRET

Cosa Nostra, the Mafia, that sort of thing, the answer is

definitely no."

I nodded�skeptically, I am afraid.

"I've known gangsters, Len," my father said soberly.
"Albert Anastasia, called The Executioner, who was murdered.
Crazy Joey Gallo, who was murdered. When you
start a new business in this city, you meet these people.
You have to come to terms with them. I've come to terms
with them. I might have been found floating facedown
under a dock, otherwise. But I never joined them."

I nodded. I glanced at the numbers he had shown me.
I remembered the private plane named Cheeks. I had to
say something. I didn't know my father very well yet. But
I was unable to believe my mother could have been involved
in anything that involved the men my father said
he wasn't involved with.

I'd met Sal Nero, but knew nothing about him.

To me, he was Uncle Sal�though my father told me
he was really Solomon Schwartz and as much a Jew as
we were. He had a wife and children, but he was divorced
as I recall, and his children were grown and saw him
seldom.

I would hear many stories about Sal Nero as the years
passed by, but I did doubt and do doubt that many of
them were true.

He took an interest in his partner's son�me�and
when I was at home he would take me to baseball games.
I suppose I went to half a dozen Yankees games with
Uncle Sal. Usually his girlfriend, Truda, went with us.
Always, we had box seats on the first-base line.

One evening I will never forget. Sal wrote a note and
handed it to an usher with a twenty-dollar bill. In a few
minutes a baseball player appeared just outside our box
and greeted Sal with a hearty hello.

"Hey, ol' buddy," said Sal. "Meet Len Cooper, son of
my business partner."
I stretched out over the fence and shook hands with the


BO HAROLD ROBBINS

player, Number 15, whom I could not identify. I had no
idea who he was.
"Thought you might sign a ball for my little buddy,"
said Sal.

"Sure thing," said the baseball player. He summoned a
bat boy and got from him a brand-new baseball. He scribbled
on it and handed it to me.

The player saluted and returned to the field.

I read what he had written on the ball:

To Len with best wishes�
Thurman Munson


I still didn't know who Thurman Munson was, and had
to look it up when I got home. He was the catcher for the
New York Yankees�and a very big baseball star. He had
less than twelve months to live when he signed the baseball
I now display inside a Lucite box. He was killed in
the crash of an airplane he was flying, in Canton, Ohio,
the next year.

So .. . that's the kind of guy Uncle Sal was. He was a
guy who could walk into Yankee Stadium and call one of
its all-time great players to come to his box and sign a
baseball for a kid who didn't know who he was.


19


When I was at Amherst and Yale I was conscious of my
father's fortune and how he had earned it. It was while I
was at Friends School in New York and then at Lodge
that I was ignorant of all he'd gone through, and my
mother, to build their small chain of lingerie shops into a
big business.

The problem was, there was no one to tell me. My
mother would have, I am sure, if she had lived. My
mother was open and honest. She told me what she
wanted to tell me when she thought I was old enough to
know it.

So has my father, though he has a very different idea
of what I should know and when I should know it. My
father has been honest with me�but in a different way,
his own way.

I've had to pick up bits and pieces from here and there.
From wherever I could get it.

I have never liked Buddy. He knows it. Still, when my
father met my mother, Buddy had already been his best
friend for many years, since my dad was a kid. Why
Buddy so closely befriended my father was a mystery to
me�and to my father, really. Inevitably I am thrown into


HAROLD ROBBINS

Buddy's company, and when that happens I encourage
him to talk about the years when they were not just
friends, but partners. Buddy knows more about my father
than even my mother knew.

The sudden death of both his parents was a defining
event in my father's life. How could it not have been?
Then he discovered that his Uncle Harry had snookered
him out of what little inheritance he might have had.
Though he had reason to hate Uncle Harry, he had to work
for him. In 1941 jobs were not easy to come by for a kid
just leaving high school. He was forced to work for a
pittance and watch his uncle cheat everyone who came
near him.

My father became a husder. Buddy was a hustler. A
certain bitterness lay behind it�Buddy's probably because
he was a victim of racism, my father's because he
was a victim of his Uncle Harry and also, in a far larger
sense, because he was a victim of the way too many people
had to five in New York City in those years. I know
about poor people. But poor people today don't live the
way poor people did when my father was a boy�with no
so-called "safety net" offered by welfare, and no hope.

Why Buddy chose to befriend my father is a complete
mystery to me�and I wonder if it's not a mystery to my
father.

But then came Pearl Harbor Day. There was something
irregular about the way the two friends went into the service.
I am not sure what happened. It was even a scam
when my father was given noncombat status and somehow
managed to get the same for Buddy, though Buddy
didn't deserve it. The two of them had all kinds of resources
and knew how to use them. They were hustlers.
Not only that, they were hustlers who were willing to take
risks.

They wound up in Paris, which is where my father met
Paul Renard and Giselle, my mother.

* * *


THE SECRET 83

My father liked to eat at the Palm. I went there to meet
him one day and found Buddy waiting for me. He said
my father would be a little late, but we would have a glass
of wine and wait for him.

As we sat I made a few comments about Sal Nero,
specifically that I found him an bad character. "In fact,"
I said, "I'd think he was Mafia connected, except for one
thing."

"What thing is that, Lenny?"

"Well... when he joined my father in the business, my
mother was still alive and active. My mother would never
have consented to be associated with�"

"Lenny, for Christ's sake! What do you think your
mother was, some kind of plaster saint?"
"She was a good woman," I said truculently. "She was
a good woman."

"Damn right she was," said Buddy. "A good woman.
Brave. Smart. But you want to know what she was the
first time I saw her?"

"What?"

"Stark staring mother naked. She was a stripper in a
Paris club called the Blue Note, which was run by Paul
Renard. A stripper. No funny business. She didn't hustle.
But she danced in the nude. I don't mean in a G-string
and bra: I mean in the nude, showing her.. . well, she
didn't have any. She shaved."

I knew he was telling the truth. Why not? What motive
could he have had for lying to me about that? And that's
how I found out that my mother had been a nude dancer.

It made no difference. I have never thought less of her.
And I have never told my father that I know about the
Blue Note. I have never mentioned either that I also know
that my mother modeled skimpy lingerie in Cheeks stores
during the early years. The truth is, I respect her and regret
her death even more, now that I know she was a whole
person. I'm glad she was not a saint. I'm glad Buddy
didn't tell me until I was old enough not to be judgmental
any longer. But I am glad he told me.


20


JERRY

We were almost wiped out by one colossal foul-up.

To start with, Sal wondered just what American women
would wear. At the beginning we sold lingerie fran�aise�
meaning that we imported our merchandise from France
where, supposedly, the most daring lingerie in the world
was produced and worn. It was bold and brief, when most
American women were still wearing white panties with
waistbands at their navels, with legs cut so that nothing
of their hips or hinder cheeks showed. Most American
women were still wearing bras that were contraptions:
gizmos of nylon and rubber designed to shove the breasts
into unnatural pointy shapes. French women had liberated
themselves from this sort of thing. They wore bikini panties
and soft, sheer bras�if, in fact, any bras at all. Even
so, what was sold in French lingerie shops was timid compared
to what was about to be offered in America.

The time was passing when France was the naughty
nation. When we went into business, to suggest your lingerie
was from France generated a sexy image. Today in
France you can generate a similar image by suggesting
you sell lingerie imported from the States. The picture
keeps getting better.


85

THE SECRET

Larkin Albert designed, and Charlie Han sewed up,
thousands of dozens of sheer bikini-style panties, opaque
only in little triangles in the crotch�until we eliminated
even the little triangles. Giselle modeled for me�and me
alone�one without the triangle. With her shaved pussy,
the panties were exciting. One of the most popular models
of those was studded with rhinestones.

We decided to introduce a new line, holding a style
show: this one at the Hilton. Here again we had a runway �
for the models, dramatic lighting, and music that would
be anything but subdued. Again, most of the invited
guests were from the news media. We did not allow cameras.


Of the models, only one, Melissa Lamb, had appeared
in our first show. Giselle decided not to appear. The girls
were eighteen and nineteen years old, every one of them
stunning, with generous figures. I had specified: no
Twiggy.

The first item we showed was what we called a bridal
nightgown. It was white and sheer and had a long pleated
skirt. As the bride's legs moved inside the pleats her legs
were exposed, then hidden, then exposed, then hidden,
erotically. Depending on how the bride walked, she might
even give brief blurred glimpses of her pubic hair. Nearly
all of the nightgowns sold in America at the time had an
opaque panel across the upper chest, so that even if the
legs and hips and tummy could be seen, the breasts would
remain discreetly hidden. We showed two versions of that
nightgown, one with a sheer panel across the breasts, one
with nothing there at all, showing the breasts bare.

One of the young models blushed and said she just
couldn't wear the version with the breasts bared. She did
consent to modeling the one with her breasts almost as
fully displayed under the sheer panel. Melissa volunteered
to wear the bare model.

As I now anticipated they would, the assembled writers
applauded the two nightgowns, the bare version more than
the other. They published reviews of our show, and we


HAROLD ROBBINS

sold tens of thousands of that nightgown, about half-andhalf
divided between sheer panels and bare breasts.

Melissa and another girl modeled a sheer black babydoll
nightie. The other girl wore skimpy black panties
under it. Melissa wore nothing and showed her hair.

When we were ready to show a red version of the same
nightgown, the girl who had worn panties asked to be
allowed to model this one without panties. "On second
thought," she said, "it's more honest. Why fool around?"

We showed bikini panties that were nothing but triangles
of fabric fore and aft, attached by strings over the
hips.

We showed bras with circles cut out to expose the nipples.
Things like that are common enough now, but they
were once brazenly lewd.

The hit of the show was the first crotchless panties I
ever saw. Albert Larkin had designed them. They were
slit from just below the waistband, and the model's most
private parts were exposed. It had been our plan that the
show's finale would be a parade of all our models, wearing
bras that displayed the nipples and crotchless panties.

Two of our models refused. One of them wept. "Oh,
Mr. Cooper, I just can't! I just can't! I'm engaged to be
married, and�" I excused her without reproach. The
other girl offered no excuse, and I didn't ask for one.

Four girls appeared: one in black, one in white, one in
red, and one in green. The writers loved them.

Giselle and I took the models out for drinks after the
show. "I never thought I'd ever�" one of them said.
"Well, hell," said another, "we knew what kind of show
it was. It's something for my diary!" And another said,
"So long as it's anonymous and my name isn't mentioned,
I'd walk out there in the altogethers, for the money. My
mother doesn't see me, but if I appear in an underwear
ad for Macy's, she sees me in the paper."


THE SECRET 87

We sold a lot of cutout bras and crotchless panties, and
it brought a question to Sal's mind. "Okay, they aren't
going to wear that stuff under their clothes all day. This
kind of stuff is what you might call boudoir lingerie, to
wear only in the privacy of the bedroom. So, okay, I wonder
if they'd buy G-strings and like that. Maybe not, but
their boyfriends and husbands might buy them, hoping the
gals would wear them. It might be worth a try, to see."

Larkin Albert would not design a G-string. There was
no challenge in it, he said. Giselle and I designed our first
ones ourselves. We bought black nylon and cut a variety
of triangles, ranging from large enough really to cover the
pubic region to small enough barely to cover the trench.
Giselle was no seamstress, but she could sew well enough
to put G-strings together.

We settled on one sample�not the one that covered
most or the one that covered least�and I took it to Charlie
Han and asked him if he could run me up a hundred
dozen of them. He laughed and said of course he could,
but that G-strings would hardly sell except as part of a
set that would have to include a totally sheer bra. Even
women who did not wear bras would want sheer ones if
they were pretending to be strippers. He didn't need a
design for that from us; he would make it up from his
own idea.

We decided not to make big posters to advertise the
strip sets in the stores. Instead we bought Lucite frames
and put eight-by-ten black-and-white prints on the counters.


Giselle wanted to pose for those photos. She was fortyone
years old that year. She didn't look like a woman in
her forties, but she didn't look like a girl in her twenties,
either. She thought we should make the point�and she
was right!�that Cheeks merchandise was not just for
chicks, but for women. So she did pose, and her pictures
were displayed: a mature woman dressed to please her
husband in the privacy of their bedroom.

That simple strip set�strip panels they were called,


HAROLD ROBBINS

believe it or not�became the basis of a complete new
line of merchandise for Cheeks stores.

And there is where the trouble began.

Giselle and I had opened three initial stores in New
York. By the time Sal came in, we had eleven. We had
five in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn, two on Long Island,
one in White Plains, one in Greenwich, Connecticut, and
one in Ridgefield, New Jersey.

I spent a hell of a lot of my time traveling from one of
these stores to another, trying to be sure they operated the
way we wanted them.

When we tried to open a store in SoNo, a restored waterfront
area of pricey shops and restaurants in South Norwalk,
Connecticut, the town fathers found all kinds of
ways to discourage us�zoning problems to start with,
then expensive renovations to the building that would be
required by fire laws, sanitary laws. The truth was, they
simply didn't want scandalous undies being sold on the
main drag in SoNo, no matter that our store would show
nothing to the street and would generally be a good municipal
citizen.

We almost had to close the Ridgefield store when our
manager put some of our photo posters in the window.
That brought pickets from the religious community. We
fired that manager and cleared that window just in time
to avoid irate regulators coming in, thinking up all kinds
of problems, and shutting us down.

When we tried to open a store in Rye, New York, we
came under fire from a local Bible-banger who declared
that "this kind of filth" had no place in a Christian town.

"Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat," Sal
said to me when we were talking about the problem in
my Manhattan office. "I've done a little checking. And
guess what? The Reverend Mr. Wright is not so cool and
clean as he makes out. Lemme show you something."

Sal rarely carried a briefcase, but he was carrying one
that morning, and he took from it a bundle of papers. The
first thing he showed me was a Denver newspaper. With


THE SECRET

his hand he covered everything of a certain story except

a picture.
"Know Mm?"
The photo was of the Reverend Mr. Wright, beyond

question.
He uncovered the rest of the story. It read:

JR. HI CAGE COACH CHARGED WITH
SEXUAL ASSAULT, STATUTORY RAPE


A junior-high school basketball coach has been
charged with assault and statutory rape after three
cheerleaders charged that he had improper intimate
relations with them. The girls, two of them fourteen
and one fifteen, whose names are being withheld because
of their ages, allege that the coach groped one
of them, partially undressed another, and sexually entered
the third. Arrested last night and held without
bail is Theodore "Ted" Bligh, 29, a teacher and
coach at Blair Junior High School.

The story went on to say that Bligh had been arrested
on the complaint of three fathers. And so on.

Later issues of the newspaper reported that Bligh had
been found guilty of the charge and sentenced to five
years in the penitentiary.

Sal also had a copy of Bligh's�Wright's�FBI record,
including mug shots and fingerprints.
"Where do you come up with stuff like this, Sal?" I
asked. I was genuinely surprised.

"There are ways of doin' things, and there are ways of
doin' things," he said. "I laid a little dough around. I'll
give you an expense account."

A week later Sal met with the Reverend Mr. "Wright"
in his pastoral study. We showed him photocopies of the
newspapers.

He grinned almost insanely. "You can't stick this filth


HAROLD ROBBINS

to me," he said with a brittle laugh. "Sure, the picture
looks like me, but�"
"Maybe your fingerprints look like or don't look like,"
said Sal with grim calm.

"I know what you're trying to do! And why!"

"You're licensed to marry people," said Sal. "Your application
for that license is a public record. When a man
has a church, the state doesn't ask questions particularly;
it just issues the license. Well, you got a church, buster,
but you don't got a degree, and you were never ordained."

"The board of my church�"

"Is a little gang of ignoramus boobs," Sal interrupted
harshly.
"I know what you're trying to do!"
"And we know what you 're trying to do. I got an idea

the Rye police are going to find your FBI sheet very, very
interesting. Not to mention the newspapers."

In this episode, Sal showed how effective he could be.
It was also evidence of a problem we would have with
him. After he left, two enforcers arrived. They gave the
Bible-banger forty-eight hours to get out of the State of
New York. Forty-eight hours! Or they would hand over
to the local police and newspapers their evidence of his
Colorado crimes. To place emphasis on their demands,
they thumped him a little.

After he was gone�within his forty-eight hours�they
gave the police and newspapers the whole story, anyway.

Sal believed in direct action. And he took no prisoners.

But that wouldn't help us in what was coming up.


21


The big problem came in New Haven.

It seemed like a good town for us. We figured Yale
students might buy some of our stuff, and faculty people
would have open minds and might be receptive to Cheeks
merchandise. Besides, New Haven was a good-sized
town, and prosperous. It had a certain cachet, also, that
we figured would be good for us. Greenwich was like that.
Ridgefield was like that, too. Prestige locations.

The way we opened a store in a new town was to hold
a preview evening for invited guests, and that is what we
did in New Haven.

We invited the mayor, members of the council, people
from the chamber of commerce, newspaper editors and
writers, the president of the university, and a few senior
faculty members�all with their wives, of course. Obviously,
not all these people came. But half an hour after
the announced time of opening, we had twenty-five or so
people in the store.

On four tables covered with white linen, set up in the
middle of the sales floor, we had bottles of red and white
wine and platters of assorted yellow and white cheeses,
with crackers, melba toast, and bread sticks. Our caterer


92 HAROLD ROBBINS

had been told to supply glasses and real plates, no paper
cups or plates. Candles burned on each table.

At these parties we didn't display our more daring
items, such as crotchless panties, and focused on highquality
lingerie and bathing suits. The identity we wanted
was one that would allow people to be seen coming out
of our store and not be embarrassed. We wanted it understood
that we were not a sleaze operation.

We offered no speeches. I circulated among the guests
and tried to get my message across conversationally.
"We like your show window, Mr. Cooper," one man
said. The "we" he referred to was himself and his wife.

- A heavyset man, he was a member of the city council.
"Will it stay that way?"
"Absolutely. We never display underthings to the passersby
on the street. The window will always be just as
it is�with the exception that civic organizations can bring
in a limited number of posters announcing concerts, plays,
and the like, and we will display those in the window.
Otherwise�"

The show window had only our signature cast-metal
sign that said nothing but�

CHEEKS

INTIMATE APPAREL

When just about all the guests we could expect were in
the store and it seemed unlikely that more would come,
we had girls model a few of our more modest items, especially
our orange maillot swimsuits. Giselle modeled
negligees and nightgowns. I would always introduce her
as my wife. Melissa, who continued to work with us from
time to time, modeled panty-and-bra sets, with garter belts
and stockings.

We got our point across, as we almost always did. The
people we shocked were amused-shocked. Clearly we
were no threat to the town's morals.

As the guests left, each woman was presented a


THE SECRET

wrapped gift box. They opened them in their cars, we
knew. They expected to find. . . God knows what. What
they found in each box was a handsome silk scarf.

e had employed a woman from Hartford to manage the
store. Betty Logan. She was a woman in her fifties, with
graying hair and eyeglasses she wore hanging from a
chain around her neck. She was widowed, and had managed
a boutique in Hartford to put her son through the
University of Connecticut.

"I've hired two girls to model for the party," she said.
"They are Yale coeds, and that will make a good impression."


"Ordinarily we bring along our own models."

Betty shrugged. "I can cancel them."

"No. Maybe you got an idea. Two Yale girls will make
an impression."

The two Yale girls had glorious figures, but were not
otherwise outstanding beauties. One of them modeled our
international-orange maillot and the other a couple of our
bikinis. I had still brought along Giselle and Melissa, who
modeled the lingerie.

I should have figured it out when�

Giselle suggested we go down to the hotel bar and have
a nightcap. I said okay, and I said I'd stop by Sal's room
and ask him to join us. Giselle told me to go ahead; she
needed to use the bathroom and would catch up with us
in five minutes.

I went to Sal's room on the floor below and knocked.

"Who's it?"

"Me, Jerry."

"C'mon in. It's not locked."

He was right; the door was ajar, so I walked into the
parlor of his suite.

"In here, Jer'," he said from the bedroom. "C'mon in."

He was lying on his back on the bed, with his pants
down around his ankles, and one of the Yale girls, the


HAROLD ROBBINS

one who had modeled the maillot, was naked and lay with
her face in his lap, her head vigorously pumping up and
down as she worked on that ten-inch cock of his. She
couldn't get much more than half of it in, but she obviously
wanted all of it.

"Siddown," said Sal. "You can watch her finish me,
and then I'll watch her do you."
"Giselle is waiting for me in the bar. I came to ask you
to join us for a drink."
"Oh.... Well, okay. Gimme five minutes. Will five
minutes do it, Val?"

"Oom-hoom. Better had."

When he came down to the bar, he brought her with
him. Her name was Valerie, and she was in fact a Yale
student, majoring in economics. She had a gorgeous figure,
as I've said, but otherwise she was no raving beauty.
She had absolutely no sense of embarrassment or shame.
She saw that I was sitting with Giselle and could guess
that I'd told Giselle about her, but that didn't bother her
either. She accepted a Scotch and soda and sat glancing
around the room, as if judging her chances of finding another
cock to suck, another hundred dollars to pocket.

When we got back to the room, I called Betty Logan
and told her she was not to hire Valerie as a model again.

"What's the problem?"

"She's a hooker."

"That little girl? My God!"

The fact was, Betty knew full well that Valerie was a
hooker. So was the other girl who had modeled at the
preview. Betty was a panderer. Her specialty was college
girls, and New England colleges supplied her plenty of
inventory for her trade. There were always college girls
who were short of money or who longed for adventure.
There were plenty of men, most of them well educated,
secure, and prosperous, who were not interested in bar
hookers but entertained fantasies of bedding a college girl.
That she was not flashy-beautiful made her all the more
attractive to these men. Betty hadfound a market. It was


THE SECRET

like Buddy said: sell something people want, maybe
something they didn't know they wanted.

Betty had a stable of four or five girls she could call
on anytime, plus a list of maybe ten others she could call
for occasions. They had to show up dressed like college
girls: skirts, sweaters, subdued makeup; and they had to
be able to talk like college girls, whether they really were
or not.

When I hired her to manage my store, Betty was in the
process of renewing her stable. If she was going to be in
New Haven, Yale could be her prime source. Her clientele
would be intrigued by the idea of bedding down with a
coed. But there were other schools. I discovered eventually
that she had two girls from Fairfield, two from Quinnipiac,
one from Bridgeport, and one from the University
of Connecticut�among others.

Except for the Yale ones, these girls had to have cars!
Well. . . they charged a hundred dollars a visit. Betty took
twenty. Sal had handed Valerie a hundred dollars. If I had
let her suck me off while he watched, that would have
cost me a hundred. This was no small-time trade. It was,
as the old story went, the carriage trade. Like Buddy said,
sell people what they want. . . .

The New Haven Cheeks store was to be Betty's showroom.
Her girls came to the store and hung around there,
ostensibly as clerks. Sometimes they stimulated interest
by modeling pieces of our merchandise.

Betty damn near ran us out of business.


She used our store as a showroom for her hookers. Then
she did something more.

Generally, we didn't go for this kind of thing, but in a
few towns we did cooperate with a local restaurant to put
on a weekly lunchtime lingerie show for businessmen.
The restaurant had to be respectable, not just a bar, and
it could not be a joint that offered strippers in the evening.
We preferred a restaurant that had a separate room for our
show, like the room where the local Rotarians or Kiwanians
met for lunch or dinner. That way, only people who
wanted to see a lingerie show with their lunch saw a lingerie
show. And, finally, we allowed only our less daring
merchandise to be shown.

It wasn't a bad deal in the towns where it worked. The
nighties, bikinis, and lingerie they modeled were for sale,
and typically we sold several hundred dollars worth each
show. Better yet, it was a perfect form of advertising for
us.

It was also a perfect form of advertising for Betty's
business. She brought her hookers�some of them college
girls�to model lingerie. With something less than sub



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tlety, she let it be known that her models might be receptive
to a profitable proposition.

"You like that nightie? Laura would be glad to model
it for you at your office. There's a scantier version, too,
that we don't show in these public appearances. In fact,
we have a lot of merchandise that we don't show publicly,
that might interest a gentieman like you. Of course, the
model doesn't have to be Laura. We have several other
models who'll be glad to come to your office, or your
home for that matter, to model for you."

Pimping was not our business. "Hell," said Sal. "If we
wanted to do that, we could organize it a whole lot better
and make a hell of a lot more money."

It also had its hazards.

Sal didn't like to meet in the office. He preferred to sit
down over a nice lunch or dinner to talk business. We
met at Sparks. We had thick steaks and plenty of rich red
wine.

"That bitch in New Haven is giving us a problem," he
said when our steaks were in front of us.

"I figured she would."

"Gonna have to do something about it," he said.

"Gimme the problem."

"Okay. Remember the little gal you saw blowin' me?
Valerie? You told Betty to get rid of her, but she didn't.
Valerie has been working for Betty right along. I mean,
hey, you have to figure the little bitch is too good to just
shove out the door."

"Well, Betty is not that good. Maybe we gotta shove
her out the door."

"You don't know what the problem is."

"Okay. What's the problem?"

"Well... Valerie specializes in .. . you know what she
specializes in. So, okay, one night she's givin' it to a guy
named Earhart, who's president of one of the New Haven
Rotary clubs. For some reason she starts to bite the guy.
I don't know what he did or said, but he swears she started


HAROLD ROBBINS

bitin' him. He couldn't stand that, so he slugged her hard
and broke her nose."

"It could happen," I said. "A long time ago, in the thirties,
I think, a professor at Ohio State University, by the
name of Dr. Snook, had beaten coed Theora Hix to death
with a ball-peen hammer, with the same justification, that
she was biting him. Years later Robert Chambers claimed
he killed Jennifer Chambers for the same reason, that she
was causing him unbearable pain."

"Well, everybody in New Haven knows about it and
attaches it to our store. It's a great big joke in New Haven,
and we're part of it."

"So what do we do about it?" I asked.

"Lemme finish telling you the problem. Valerie's parents
haven't seen her yet. But they will, and when they
do they're gonna wanta know why the busted nose. Valerie's
threatening to sue Earhart. Betty is in a tizzy. Only
thing I can think of to do is go up there and visit the
parties."

"I'll go," I said. I was concerned about just what Sal
might do.

"We'll both go."

I called Betty and had her arrange a meeting with Earhart
and Valerie. Sal and I rented a hotel suite, had a bar
stocked in it, and ordered a display of hors d'oeuvres to
be displayed.

Earhart arrived first. I had called him after Betty spoke
with him and asked him to meet us earlier than she had
specified. I wanted to talk with him before Betty and Valerie
arrived.

He was a small man, maybe fifty years old, afflicted
with male-pattern baldness, so much that his head was
shiny. He was a realtor. I think he had a sense that he was
in the presence of the Mafia. He accepted a Scotch and
soda and chose a few nibbles from the table.

"Have you recovered, Mr. Earhart?" I asked.

"Not entirely," he said wryly. He sat on the couch,
looked down at his lap, and frowned. "Painful..."


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"I can imagine," I said. "How did you make the connection
with Valerie?"

"It was the third time. Betty had brought her to the
restaurant where our Rotary Club meets. They were sitting
at the bar when our meeting broke up, and I came out,
and Betty introduced her, said she was majoring in economics
at Yale. We talked awhile and�"

"And Betty offered her for�"

"We talked awhile, and Betty said Valerie knew how
to make men feel good. She'd make me feel good for a
hundred dollars. And that's how it got started."

Sal, who was standing at the window looking down on
the street, grinned.

"I want you to understand something, Mr. Earhart," I
said. "Valerie doesn't work for us. She doesn't work for
Cheeks."

"She's around the store a lot."

"I know. She works for Betty Logan."

"And Betty Logan works for you."

"Not after today she doesn't."

Betty arrived a few minutes later, with Valerie in tow.
The girl had been no great beauty before, but now, with
her nose flattened, she was anything but. She took a
Scotch, drank it, and poured herself another.

"What we have here is a nasty incident, followed by a
nasty scandal," I said. "It's in everybody's interest to settle
it."

"I want my plastic surgery paid for," said Valerie.

"By me, you mean?" Earhart asked. "Forget it."

"Did you bite him, Valerie?" I asked.

"Damn right I did."

"Why?"

"He started to complain I wasn't doing it right, wasn't
making him feel good the way I'd done before. That was
his imagination. I was doing exactly what I'd done before."


"No, you weren't."

"So he grabbed me by the hair, pulled my face up, and


HAROLD ROBBINS

slapped me. Then he shoved my face down again. And I
bit him. What'd he expect?"

Now Sal intervened. "Would you want the details of
this thing, which still is just a rumor, covered in the newspapers?"
he asked.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Sal Nero."

"Who's Sal Nero?"

"Ask Al Patrioto."

Earhart drew a deep breath. "Uh .. . okay." He turned
to me. "You used the word 'settle.' What's it take to settle
this thing?"

"Five thousand," said Sal.

Valerie shook her head. "Five thousand! No way!"

"It'll buy your new nose," said Sal coldly. "With some
left over for bent feelings. That's the deal, Valerie. You
wanta deal with me instead?"
"/ might have something to say about this," Betty interjected.
"You don't have anything to say about anything," Sal
told her roughly. "You're fired."

So that's how it worked out. Earhart paid Valerie five
thousand dollars in cash. Valerie's parents accepted the
story that she had broken her nose playing touch football,
and the authorities heard nothing of the whole deal.

Or did they? Of course they did. They just stood aside
and waited to see how it would turn out.

Firing Betty didn't solve our problem. The word was
around New Haven and Connecticut that the Cheeks store
was where you went to arrange for a first-class piece of
tail.

An element of the problem was that Betty's girls were
first-class. Think of it. You're a Bridgeport lawyer, a Hartford
doctor, a New Haven realtor, a Groton engineer...
you've got a failed marriage, or no marriage, and you've
got the hots. What you might pick up in a bar risks mugging,
to start with, and a multitude of other complications
besides. So how about a cute little girl working her way


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through college? No great beauty maybe, but ready to earn
her money and able to carry on an intelligent conversation,
too, if that's what you want. She doesn't look like a
hooker. She shows up in a pleated plaid skirt, a cardigan
sweater, a single strand of pearls, wearing undies she
didn't get at Cheeks .. . and she does a job of play-acting
that she enjoys what you do to her as much as you enjoy
it yourself.

But�hey!�how long can the cops and the district attorney
let this go on in a town that prides itself on a
degree of propriety?

Which, in the end, was still not the problem.

I'm sitting in my office in Manhattan, only half aware of
what was going on in New Haven, now absent Betty Logan,
when I'm visited by a guy who introduces himself
as Alberto Patrioto.

I'd heard the name. The Five Families ran New York.
The Patriotos ran New England.

Oh, he was a caricature! Camel coat. Gray hat. Black
suit. Paisley handkerchief carefully folded in his breast
pocket. Cigar.

He was direct. "I supposed," he said, "that we did not
intrude on each other's territory."
"I am agreeable to that," I said, though I had no idea
what he might think my territory might be.

"You agree that New Haven is not in your territory?"

"It is not in my territory, Mr. Patrioto."

"Then why the hell you runnin' a first-class whorehouse
in my family's territory?"

I remember that I closed my eyes and nodded. I should
have known. "Mr. Patrioto... All I'm trying to run in
New Haven is a lingerie shop. Betty Logan turned it into
a whorehouse entirely against my wishes and my instructions.
When I found out about it, I fired her."

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded, to my
relief. "I can believe it. The woman has always been a


HAROLD ROBBINS

bitch. But she makes money. She's always done that.
What I got in mind is a little deal. You take her back and
let her run her little business on the side. You hand us,
say, twenty-five percent of the take from your store�and
we'll make sure that includes twenty-five percent of what
Betty's takin' in. We'll excuse you for hornin' in on our
territory. We'll take care of a couple little problems that
might be comin' your way, like with the cops. And everybody'll
be happy."

"Everybody but me," I said. "All I want to do is run a
chain of lingerie shops. I didn't check with you before I
opened my store in New Haven because I didn't think
you would be interested in selling women's underwear. If
word gets around that my Cheeks store in New Haven is
a whorehouse, that could ruin my whole chain. So, let me
suggest a different deal. I'll tarn the store over to you,
one hundred percent, the whole schmear. You can run it
any way you want, with Betty and her girls or without.
I'll supply you with merchandise at my cost. And all I
ask is that you take the name Cheeks off the store."

I didn't tell him but would let him discover that the
Cheeks label wouldn't be in the merchandise I supplied
him and that the international-orange maillot, which was
the only item distinctly identified with our name, would
not be supplied.

Patrioto shook his head. "What my family has in mind
is that we work together."

"Well... I'll have to check it out with my partner and
my business advisers."

"Okay. Who's them?"

"My partner is Sal Nero."

"Sal.. . ?" He pinched up his face. "Of the Carlino
family?"

I nodded. "Right."

"And who're your advisers?"

"Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky."

"You're shittin' me," he said, turning uglier than he
already was.


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I shrugged. "Call 'em."

I did not advise my twenty-five-percent partner why I
had sold the store in New Haven. I told him the town had
become unfriendly and that we'd be lucky to get out of
there without taking a beating. I mean, literally a beating.

And we were.


23


LEN

I realize that what I am telling of this story is set in a
very different time frame from what my father is telling.
I was as unconscious of the trials he and my mother endured
to get their business going and expand it as I was
of their experiences in World War II�until at last I prodded
someone to tell me.

Sue Ellen and I were married and moved to New Haven.
We rented an apartment and enrolled at Yale. I was
a law student. She studied Chinese. We lived comfortably
but not luxuriously in a furnished apartment. Sue Ellen
was confident in my father's generosity and was never
surprised when his monthly check arrived. Her family
were generous with gifts that arrived irregularly, but we
lived on my father's subsidy.

I was curious as to why there was no Cheeks store in
New Haven. There was one in Hartford, one in Providence,
three in Boston, but none in New Haven, which I
would have thought an ideal market. I asked my father
why, and he told me.

I went to the location where the store had been. It was
occupied by a pool hall. I made a few casual inquiries
and learned that�


THE SECRET 105

�The store had changed its name and operated under
new management for about a year, at which time it
closed�which pleased me because it demonstrated that
my father and mother had not just achieved something
anyone could achieve but had used their brains and built
a business others could not build.

�Betty Logan, now a woman of sixty-five or so, was
still a procuress. She worked under the dominion of the
Patrioto family, which appreciated her expertise and took
half her earnings. She made her living in a way that afforded
her no Social Security, no medical insurance, no retirement
benefits, and no future but to do what she could
as best as she could as long as she could. Her girls were
not terribly pretty, but they were skilled at what they did
and were happy with the money. What was more, she had
taught them her specialty: making a John believe he had
a Yale or Quinnipiac girl in the sack and glad to do anything
he might want of her. Betty Logan was a merchandising
genius. If she had chosen to sell some other line,
God knows what she could have been. I never met her,
though later I would have a most indirect contact with
her. I have not ceased to be curious about her and regret
that my father so airily dismissed her when he was telling
bis story. She must have been a smart, brave woman.

�Since his contact with my father, Alberto Patrioto
had served a four-year term in the federal prison in Danbury,
for tax evasion, but was now the Patrioto godfather,
with authority over all New England. His term in prison
had not diminished his authority. If anything, it had augmented
it, and no one questioned him.

I didn't press my father on why he didn't open a new
store in New Haven. He had a personal distaste for the
town. He disliked New Haven for reasons beyond his
Bertty Logan experience. I never have learned what they
were.

* * *


HAROLD ROBBINS

I had to warn Sue Ellen about Betty. My wife's conspicuous
boobs and taut, bouncy butt, plus the fact that she
was genuinely a Yale graduate student and could talk
about what she was studying, made her a prime target for
Betty Logan. She would fetch a premium price.

I didn't have to worry about Sue Ellen going into the
trade. She had firm ideas about that. Happy to give and
receive much and varied sex herself, she obsessively condemned
merchandising it. In fact, she reserved�but I
knew it was there�a nagging doubt about the Cheeks
merchandising operation. Clearly Sue Ellen would never
go into the trade. And I mean never.

On the other hand . . .

Betty Logan paid her girls to recruit others. "I've always
got more trade than I can serve," she assured them,
"so earn the pay for a trick you didn't turn by bringing
me a new girl."

When Sue Ellen first told me she had been talked to
very solemnly by a girl who suggested she think about
making a whole lot of money by doing something that
was not difficult at all, she laughed about it. Then suddenly
the crusader in her reared its head.

"How could she?"

She meant, how could her new friend�like herself, a
student of Chinese�sell her body? It was unthinkable!
The whole idea was abhorrent to Sue Ellen.

She decided to save Mollie from Mollie�actually,
from Betty Logan, though she had not yet heard of her.

When I met Mollie, I judged that what she looked for
from the men who bought her was not so much the money
but acceptance and approval, even admiration. She was a
graduate student, as was Sue Ellen, and she had come to
Yale from Mount Holyoke, to there from Sacred Heart in
Greenwich. You could see when you looked at her that
she had never attracted dates.

If two words could describe Mollie, those words would
have to be small and square. Her little face was square,
framed by carelessly cut, dishwater-blond hair. Her eyes


THE SECRET 107

behind her little, round steel-rimmed spectacles were blue,
her nose short and flat, her mouth wide and thin. She wore
blue jeans stretched tight over her broad hips and generous
ass, with sweatshirts draped over her round breasts.

She had a pleasant personality. That she was anxious
to please came across from the moment you met her. It
was an appealing anxiety, and it would have been difficult
not to like her. It was difficult to think that this innocentlooking,
small, square girl turned tricks. That it was difficult
to imagine was part of her appeal. A John could
fantasize that he was seducing a horny, adventuresome
virgin.

Sue Ellen and I had our apartment. So did Mollie, sharing
hers with another woman graduate student. Sue Ellen
took to inviting Mollie for dinner one evening a week,
usually Friday. Mollie would bring wine and a dessert,
and Sue Ellen, typically, would prepare a platter of one
or another type of pasta. Sue Ellen had made herself a
close friend to Mollie and was trying with some degree
of subtlety to lure her out of prostitution.

Mollie was no fool. She knew what Sue Ellen was trying
to do and was amused by it.

I came in from the law library early one Friday evening
to find my wife and her new best friend bare-breasted.
Sue Ellen's nipple clips were on Mollie's nipples, and her
emerald pendant hung between Mollie's melonlike boobs.

"When I told her about them, she asked if she could
try them."

Mollie was not embarrassed. She had no sense of modesty
whatever. We were friends, and she knew that I knew
she played for pay. If she was flustered, it was not because
I was staring at her naked tits but because she was wearing
Sue Ellen's clips, chain, and pendant, which she knew
were a gift from my father.

For myself, I was dumbfounded, not just to see my
wife's jeweled clips hanging between another woman's
tits but to see both of them with their hooters naked.

She started to take one of the clips off, but I shook my


108 HAROLD ROBBINS

head and said, "No. Leave them on awhile. It looks almost
as good on you as it does on Sue Ellen."

I reached down and gave a short, gentle tug on the
chain. Her nipple stretched, but the clip did not come off,
as I had known it wouldn't.

"They're nice, Len. I'd give anything to have a pair of
my own."

I called my father and asked him to send me another
set of nipple clips and chain. I told him why. A package
arrived a couple of days later. These clips were not like
the loops of platinum wire, tightened by little slide rings,
that Sue Ellen wore. These were clamps, spring-loaded.
They did not loop around the erect nipple the way the
wire clips did. No. They were alligator clips with soft
rubber sheathing over the teeth, and they pinched. The
chain between them was not fine jewelry chain but stainless
steel chain with links almost a quarter of an inch in
diameter.

Mollie took off her sweater and bra, squeezed the
clamps to open them, and let them close, pinching her
nipples and distorting them. Sue Ellen winced, but Mollie
threw back her shoulders and shoved her boobs forward.
Mollie was game. These clips hurt�though not very
much�and I wonder if in fact the pain didn't arouse Mollie.


That evening at dinner my wife and her new best friend
sat at the table with tits out, chains swinging between their
nipples. What was coming was obvious.

I had mixed feelings. It was some kind of privilege to
have two bare-titted young women at dinner. I can't deny
it gave me a hard-on. But it was going to change the
nature of my marriage. That was unavoidable, and I had
to wonder what was coming and what I should do.


I came home one afternoon and found Sue Ellen wearing
a dog collar. It was a heavy leather collar, suitable maybe
for a Great Dane or some such breed: a dog big and strong
and heavy. The prong of the buckle ended in a little loop,
through which passed the shackle of a tiny laminated padlock.
The collar could not be removed except by opening
the lock�or cutting the leather. She smiled coyly and
handed me a key.

"There y'are, lover."
It was Mollie's idea. Whenever Mollie went out to meet
a john she wore a dog collar. It turned them on. It would
turn me on, she had promised Sue Ellen�
"Hey! Every guy dreams of making a slave of his girl.
So .. . let 'em think so! I guarantee it'll turn him on."
Well.. . I have to admit it did. And after that Sue Ellen
wore the collar whenever we were at home alone. She
pen wore it outside the apartment sometimes�under a
turtleneck. It turned her on more than it did me.
The simple truth was, Sue Ellen's erotic tastes were
more varied than mine.
Sue Ellen was determined to exert an influence over
Mollie, to get her to quit turning tricks. Mollie didn't need


HAROLD ROBBINS

the money. She did it for her personal satisfaction. She
mistook the passion men showed her for affection.

Well.. . they had their fantasies about Mollie, that they
were seducing an innocent college girl and so on. Why
should she not have hers�that some of them, at least,
really cared for her and were not just using her as a receptacle?


Mollie admitted that she worked for Betty Logan.

"She'd get very upset if I quit," said Mollie. "She
doesn't like to lose her girls, particularly the ones who
make real money�and / make real money."

"Who the hell cares what she likes?" asked Sue Ellen.
"Piss on the old bag. Anyway, what's she gonna do about
it?"

There we sat at another Friday-evening dinner: angel
hair pasta with a cream sauce of shrimp and peppers and
onions, laid out on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth
on our scarred maple table. We ate by candlelight, the
candles in two Chianti bottles we had emptied sometime
earlier. Both girls were bare-titted, with chains swinging
between their nipples.

Sue Ellen could not endure Mollie's clamps for more
than an hour, but Mollie took grim pride in enduring them,
even though they pinched as Sue Ellen's loops did not. I
had become hesitant about expressing sympathy, knowing
it would make no difference.

"Mollie says I don't give you a good blow job," said
Sue Ellen abruptly.

"I haven't complained," I said. The fact was, she didn't
much like to do it and didn't do it often. "I.. . have no
complaint."

"You might have a complaint, if you'd ever had head
from a real pro," said Mollie.
"Okay, I might, but I'm married to Sue Ellen, and
she�"
"Listen to her, Len!" Sue Ellen protested. "Don't talk
so much. Just listen."
"Well. .." said Mollie. She shrugged. "I can teach her,


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but I can't teach her by sucking my thumb. I need a cock."

In my life I have been surprised. I have never been
more surprised than when Sue Ellen agreed to take a cocksucking
lesson from Mollie�I supplying the cock. Imagine,
for God's sake!

"It's all I do, just about," said Mollie. "Hey, I turn two,
three tricks a week, once in a while four. I don't spread
my legs once a month. Which is okay with me. Giving
head .. . no sweaty weight bearing down on my body, no
pounding into me, no sore afterwards. I've suggested to
Betty she tell guys I give blow jobs only."

"Jesus, Mollie ... " Sue Ellen murmured. "I mean�"

"You mean it's humiliating to put your face down in a
guy's crotch and suck and lick his cock. Well�okay, you
better believe it is. It's demeaning. But if you're gonna
sell yourself for money you're better off sucking than
fucking, believe me. Put your goddamned pride away.
There isn't any in what I do."

"But with my husband?"

"Why not make him happy? You can make him happier
this way than by spreading yourself and letting him pound
it into you."

"Well..."

"C'mon."

They guided me down to the floor, pulled my pants and
underpants down below my knees, and Mollie solemnly
lectured Sue Ellen as she worked.

"First thing to do is suck it in, as much of it as you
can. But don't gag yourself. Use your tongue and your
hps. They're your tools, and every skilled worker has to
know how to use the tools of the trade."

I didn't know how my wife, Sue Ellen, would react
when she realized that the square little Mollie could lift
me to heights I hadn't realized were there.

The lecture went on.

"Now lick down here. No man I ever knew came from
having his balls licked, but it does get 'em ready. And up


112 HAROLD ROBBINS

and down the shaft. It's licking, not sucking, that does the
job."

She gently lifted my scrotum and licked it vigorously.
She was right. I wouldn't have come from that, but it did
raise me to a height of readiness.

Then�

"Okay, Sue Ellen, he's all yours. When he comes, make
sure it's inside your mouth. And don't go spitting when
he's squirting. Swallow it! Swallow it!"

Sue Ellen was reluctant. She was an adventurous lover,
but she did this hesitantly at first, her face flushed, tears
glistening around her eyes. Once she gagged. But she
made a rhythm and was soon working at least as well as
Mollie.

She was wetter than Mollie. My parts were wet with
her saliva.

Mollie might be her teacher, and Sue Ellen might work
with less skill, but she was for me a far more satisfying
oral lover. That she was doing what she didn't really want
to do made it more exciting. As I approached my climax,
I felt that I might actually rupture. Also, Sue Ellen
warmed to it and shortly was at me with actual zest�
whether to get it over with sooner or because she was
learning to like it, I couldn't be sure.

Mollie taught Sue Ellen to give a professional blow job.
Sue Ellen gradually weaned Mollie off prostitution. At
first Mollie would just make excuses to Betty Logan�
she was having her period, she didn't feel well, she had
to go home to Greenwich to visit her sick mother, her
confessor was giving her a hard time....

The last was absolutely true. Mollie was Catholic and
confessed regularly to a New Haven priest. Sue Ellen
asked for the name of that priest and went to see him.
The priest would not discuss anything Mollie had told
him�the sanctity of the confessional�but he agreed to
cooperate with Sue Ellen to do what was appropriate for


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the good of Mollie's soul. Between the pressure applied
by the priest and that from Sue Ellen, Mollie determined
to abandon the life and live straight.

She so told Betty Logan, who went into a screeching,
foot-stamping hysteria.

A week or so later, I got a telephone call. It was from
a wise guy. He said his boss would like to buy me lunch
and named an Italian restaurant and a day. I agreed to the
lunch and immediately called my father. He said he would
come to New Haven and join me for the lunch.

The wise guy's boss was Alberto Patrioto. The don
joined us after a few minutes.

Fifteen years had passed since my father and Patrioto
had met and disagreed about the New Haven Cheeks store,
and Patrioto�as my father told me after the meeting�had
aged more than fifteen years. Maybe his years in prison
had done it. Even so, he had the style of a capo de tutti
capi: still the camel coat, still the gray homburg, still the
paisley handkerchief carefully folded in his jacket pocket,
still the cigar.

"It's a real pleasure to meet you again, Don Patrioto,"
my father said.

I have to say, my father and Patrioto were of an age, a
passing age. My father was sixty-one that year. He
showed little gray. He was a trim, muscular man who
dressed well but did not wear clothes conspicuously well
tailored.

Patrioto grinned. " 'Don' Patrioto," he chuckled. "You
do me more honor than I own, Mr. Cooper. I am just a
struggling businessman, as you are."

The conversation went on for some time, with nothing
in particular being said. Patrioto recommended the veal,
which he said was the best available in New Haven. We
ordered it. He ordered the wine, a heavy, dark red of a
type I had never tasted before.

Finally, we got down to business.
"Mr. Cooper, Junior," said Patrioto, "is it your plan to
reform all Mrs. Logan's girls, or just this one?"


114 HAROLD ROBBINS

I glanced at my father, whose face was bland and
seemed just as interested as was Patrioto in hearing what
I would say.

"Mr. Patrioto," I said cautiously, "this girl has become
my wife's best friend. They are students together�
students of Chinese. My wife has, in fact, discouraged
this one girl from�"

"From earning a tidy profit for my friends."

"She is a devout Catholic. Her priest�"

"What priest?"

"Father Benedict. At Holy Mother."

Patrioto turned down the corners of his mouth and nodded
thoughtfully. "Ahh ... "
"How much was she earning for you?" my father asked.
Patrioto shook his head. "No, Mr. Cooper. That will

not be necessary. I would like your son's assurance that
he and his wife do not mean to become moral crusaders
here in New Haven."

"You have it," said my father quickly.

"From him."

"I so assure you, Mr. Patrioto," I said.

"Well, then .. ." said Patrioto with a faint smile, lifting
his wine glass to toast the assurance. "I know your father,
so I know your assurance is good."

That night at home I had to grab Sue Ellen by her dog
collar and demand she join my assurance. That may have
been the beginning of the end of our marriage. Two principles
clashed: hers of high morals and pride, mine of
being practical as I knew my father was, of fighting battles
worth winning when I believed I could win them.

She was the daughter of Hale & Dorr. I was the son of
Jerry Cooper. Like oil and water, we could never mix.


25


JERRY

Giselle and I rarely disagreed, but when she decided our
son should be educated in a prep school, I balked. She
had even chosen the school, a place in Connecticut called
Choate Rosemary Hall.

Now, this was not about to happen. Rosemary Hall, for
Christ's sake! My son would go to a school called Rosemary
Hall? What kind of guy would he turn out to be,
going to a school called�I said no, emphatically. I believe
in education. I wish I'd had a whole lot more than
I've got. But I also believe in street smarts. I wanted my
boy to have both, an education and street smarts. He sure
wasn't going to get any of the latter at a school called
Rosemary Hall.

The years when we had to choose a school for Len were
years when the schools of New York City, and a lot of
other places, were being torn apart by racial hate. I
myself�me, a Jew with a black best friend�was called
"honky" on the street one day. I was waiting for a light,
and this coffee-with-cream-colored smart-ass sneered at
me and hissed. "Honky!" I felt like decking him, but it
would only have caused him to go back to his street and


HAROLD ROBBINS

tell everybody that a honky had busted his nose, for no
reason at all.

Anyway, Giselle set her foot down flat against his going
into the city's public schools. "Okay," I said, "we move
back to Scarsdale or some place like that. I mean, we can
live in the suburbs, where things are peaceful�and boring."


"I will not risk his being cut with a knife, or beaten
senseless, over something he has nothing to do with."

I talked to Buddy.

"You're askin' for what the world ain't got, man," he
said. "You move out to Westchester or up in Connecticut,
who's he goin' to be in school with? Sons and daughters
of real-estate guys, insurance guys, stockbrokers who
commute .. . and so on. You send him to P.S. Whatever
here in town, who's he goin' to be in school with? Not
the sons and daughters of those guys I just mentioned,
'cause they all got sent to private schools some place or
other."

"I want the kid to be smart, Buddy. Educated, sure.
That's one thing. But also smart."

"Educated you can get to be. Smart has got to be born
in ya. The kids I've had with UUa are smart. They better
be�half nigger, half Norwegian. Len's got smarts from
both sides. He'll do okay. Send him to a prep school, if
that's what Giselle wants."

In France I had learned the British word "toff." I didn't
want my son to become a toff. I didn't want him to become
a white version of Buddy, either. Buddy had taught
me to cut, and I always carried a folded straight razor in
my right-hand pants pocket, usually inside a roll of bills.
I didn't want Len to learn that.

I couldn't send my son into a nest of pretty little boys
from pretty little families in pretty little towns�which is
what I thought a prep school was. So we compromised
on a boarding school. We thought we'd compromised.
Giselle looked at several. I guess we were taken in by
some bullshit in the Lodge catalog that said, "Boys from


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every walk of life live together, work together, and share
the values they bring from disparate backgrounds." I had
to look up the word "disparate."

I never met any of the fathers of Len's Lodge friends.
Maybe I figured they'd sneer at me�behind my back.
When he went away to Lodge, I lost him, lost a lot of
him, that is. Hell, I lost something of him when we sent
him to Friends. From that point he was going to be different
from me. Which is what I wanted, up to a point.
He turned into someone I didn't know.

Temporarily.

I suppose I must admit I wasn't the world's greatest
father. I rationalized the way too many other fathers do,
by saying that the demands of building my business and
earning the living that would allow my family to live the
way I wanted them to live were too great and left me too
little time.

Besides that, I had problems. Among them was that I
had to face threats.

1 despised Jimmy Hoffa. If he had not gone to prison in
1971, he might have been a big problem for us.

Anyone whose business involved a lot of shipping
sooner or later came into a confrontation with the Teamsters.
Anyone who came into confrontation with the
Teamsters sooner or later was confronted with their swaggering
arrogance. They cared nothing about the law. They
did things their way, with muscle or the threat of muscle.

I knew a man who went into a business I knew something
about: selling seltzer and soda. He did well and soon
was running about a hundred trucks. One day two guys
from Teamsters came in his office and told him that from
then on their union would represent his drivers. The man
said, okay, get your signatures on the NLRA cards, and
we'll have a sanctioned election. Their answer?

"Don't talk to us about bullshit NLRA elections. We
represent your drivers. You'll take our dues from their


118 HAROLD ROBBINS

paychecks, and we'll write their contracts. That's how it
is, buddy. You wanta argue? We don't usually argue. We
get our way, sooner or later."

Hoffa took pride in being a scrappy little man who
would bounce around on the balls of his feet and shoot
punches at people. He had been a playground bully, I
imagine. Usually he was just playing juvenile games, but
sometimes he hit. He broke noses, knocked out teeth, fractured
ribs.

Some of the men he hit could have cold-cocked him,
easily, but he always had a thug or two with him to protect
him. Like all bullies, he was also a coward.

He called a meeting. To put the matter more accurately,
he summoned a group of us to meet with him. All of us
were in businesses more or less dependent on truck transportation.
We met in a suite in the Waldorf.

I was there. A man was there from a laundry company,
one from a magazine distributor, and so on. Hoffa was
blunt. He was going to represent our drivers�in my case,
it was the drivers for the express company we chiefly
used�and he would give us our terms. He hadn't called
us to negotiate; he had called us to tell us how things
were going to be�that is, the way he wanted them to be.

Knowing Hoffa would be backed by thugs, I had asked
Buddy to come with me. Buddy loved to be menacing.
And he was not easily intimidated.

Hoffa, in an out-of-style double-breasted black suit with
a bow tie, bounced around the room, grinning, swaggering,
dictating terms to our half a dozen companies.

"Okay, fellas," he said. "That's it. That's how it's
gonna be. Anybody got any questions?"

"I have one," I said.

"Oh, yeah? Which is .. . ?"

"Which is .. . who the hell do you think you are?"

He didn't offer to answer. He lurched toward me and
shot out a left jab that would have hurt had it landed. But
he never had a chance of landing it. I was as much a
street tough as he was, and I was bigger. I sidestepped


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his punch and caught it on my right fist. I could have
slugged him with no trouble and flattened his nose�
which had already been flattened more than once.

But Buddy didn't like what Jimmy Hoffa had done. He
moved between me and Hoffa with the sleek grace of the
born street fighter, and he slammed a hard punch into
Hoffa's solar plexus.

Hoffa bent over and began to vomit.

His thugs pulled guns.

Buddy had expected that. By the time their guns were
in their hands, he had a left arm around Hoffa's upper
body, and his right hand pressed the gleaming blade of a
razor against his throat.

'Tell your boys to wait in the lobby," Buddy said.

Hoffa grunted and pointed.

It could have been an interesting battle, I always
thought�the cocky little union gangster with his thousand
thugs against the slick, black, street-smart slasher
whose guys could come out of a thousand doorways on
any street, from between the cars in any parking lot.

The battle was never fought. Hoffa went to the slammer
to wait for his close friend President Nixon to give him
executive clemency. For a while the world had things
other than Jimmy Hoffa to think about.


26


When his good friend the President commuted his sentence,
Jimmy Hoffa showed up again. It was a condition
of his commutation that he could not try to recover the
presidency of the Teamsters. He expected Nixon to cancel
the ban in time. Even after Nixon resigned, Jimmy confidently
expected President Ford would remove the condition.


In the meantime, he drew a pension from the union of
one and a half million dollars a year. The money was
burning holes in his pockets, and he set out to look for
investments.

Coal mining was one of his ideas, and he did ultimately
manage to buy into a mining operation. But he was looking
around, looking for something to raid, and to our bad
fortune his cold, snakelike eyes fell on Cheeks.

I don't know if it was because he remembered and resented
what Buddy had done to defend me�which, incidentally,
Buddy remembered very well�or if someone
had pointed us out to him as a growing company that
could be raided without an immense amount of capital.
All I know is that Jimmy Hoffa began looking for ways
to acquire my company.


THE SECRET 121

He couldn't buy stock. The sole stockholders were myself,
Giselle, and Sal Nero. He couldn't push us through
our creditors. We were by no means overextended. His
connections were no better than ours. Through Sal we had
a good relationship with the Carlinos.

So, being Jimmy Hoffa, he decided to muscle us. He
was no longer the head of the Teamsters, but old Teamster
tactics came into play against us.

Merchandise began to disappear off our trucks. Our
drivers had more accidents than they'd ever had before.
They got cut off in traffic and were forced off the road.
Rocks fell down from overpasses and smashed their windshields.
Their tires were slashed.

Sal was furious. He put wise guys on me and Giselle
as bodyguards. They were unable to be inconspicuous. I
guess he didn't want them to be.

Buddy put bodyguards on Len. They were inconspicuous.
Len never knew they were there.

Hoffa was in the process of making horrible mistakes.
The reason was that he was not smart. He was a thug. He
had bullied his way to the top of his union. He had supposed
he could bully his way past Bobby Kennedy, who
was as tough as he was, only ten times smarter. He had
actually cocked a fist at Bobby one day in a Senate hearing
room. If he had thrown that punch, there where his
thugs couldn't help him, Bobby would have broken his
nose or jaw, maybe both. I'm a little sorry it didn't happen.


Trying to bully Cheeks, he enraged Sal Nero, which
was not a good idea.

But that was not the only bullying he was trying to do.

I was with Sal when we sat down with a few men to
talk over what to do about Jimmy Hoffa. They introduced
themselves by their nicknames. Sal was the Fireman because
his huge penis reminded men of a firehose. Why
Frankie Shots was so called I do not know. The Fat Man


122 HAROLD ROBBINS

had his name for obvious reasons. Tony Pro was so called
because his name was Anthony Provenzano.

Tony Pro presided over the meeting. He was a member
of the Genovese family. Sal was of the Carlino family,
but that didn't make any difference because�as I have
said�Sal had always been careful not to make enemies
in any family.

"He wants what you got, Tony," said the Fat Man. That
meant control of the Teamsters, since Tony Pro was a big
man in the union, with his power based in the New Jersey
Teamsters.

"Soon as he gets the Bum to lift the condition," said
Tony Pro. The Bum was Gerald Ford�the Stumblebum
in their lingo.

"That'll take a big envelope," said Frankie Shots. He
meant it would take a major payoff.

"The question is�" Tony Pro started to say.

"The question is," Sal interrupted him, "what are we
gonna do about Jimmy? I mean, he's tryin' to muscle my
partner here into sellin' his business. I don't like that, and
I'm not going to stand for it. He's not going to muscle
my friends."

That gave me a clue as to why I was sitting there in
that meeting of capos. I was a right guy who was being
muscled by Hoffa, and Sal wanted his pals to see I was
a right guy and a victim. I never thought of myself as a
man who generated sympathy, but that, apparently, was
why I was there.

"It's not just Jerry here," said the Fat Man. "Jimmy's
musclin' an' musclin'. Nobody's business is safe from
that son of a bitch."

"He's threatenin' to talk about what he knows," said
Tony Pro. "So, I guess we know what has to be done. I
mean, does anybody have any doubt about what has to be
done?"

They weren't unanimous�Frankie Shots dissented�
but I sat there that evening and heard Jimmy Hoffa sentenced
to death.


27


Before he died, Sal told me how it was done. I believe
what he told me. Other people have other ideas about
what happened to James Riddle Hoffa, but I think Sal told
me the truth.

For one reason, I had heard the sentence pronounced. I
can think of no reason whatever why Sal would have lied
to me. He wasn't bragging. He wasn't a man given to
bragging, and telling his part in the death of Hoffa was
not something he would brag about. He might brag about
the size of his cock but not about killing a man.

"The big point, y'understand, was that Jimmy had to
back away from union politics. He wanted to be president
of the Teamsters again, and apart from the money he
could throw around, he knew too much. Like, he knew
about how the pension fund had been used, and stuff like
that. He knew where everybody's skeletons were. He
was�What's the words they use? He was a loose cannon.
He had to be whacked out. Dammit, he had to be! Nobody
had no choice. Too many guys were at risk with him
runnin' around loose."

"I was there when you decided," I reminded him.
"Don't you remember? I was there with you and Tony


124 HAROLD ROBBINS

Provenzano and Frankie Shots and the Fat Man."

"Oh . . . yeah, well, sure." Sal frowned. By now there
were some holes in his memory. "Okay. The job fell to
Tony Pro and me. Tony Provenzano was the kind of guy
you could trust with a job like that. Some guys had tough
names but couldn't be trusted when the shit was happenin'.
I trusted Tony Pro, and he trusted me. Can you
guess how surprised I was when he called on me to help
him? I mean, Jerry, I'd made my bones, like you know,
but I was no hit man. Well... neither was Tony. But this
job needed top-notch guys. 'Hey, Fireman,' he said, 'let's
you and me settle this thing. We don't need any help. We
don't want any help. A couple guys like us can solve our
problem. Deal? So we didn't ask anybody's by-yourleave.
We just set out to do it. He called Jimmy Hoffa
and set up a meeting in Detroit, and off to Detroit we
went�just the two of us with nobody's okay."

"Could you have gotten the okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. But it would have taken too long, and too many
guys would have had to know about it. We got us a car,
a titty-pink Cadillac, a pimpmobile. We taped our biscuits
up in the chassis, where they wouldn't be found if we got
stopped for speedin' or somethin'. Mine was a forty-four
magnum, a goddam cannon. Tony's was a what they
called a street-sweeper, a mini-Uzi. We were equipped
like a goddamn army."

This was years later, remember, when he was telling
me this. Sal died in bed. He was not the first guy who
ever wanted to get something off his chest when he knew
he was going. That's another reason why I believe him.

"We took our time driving to Detroit. We stayed overnight
in Youngstown, Ohio, where I got laid but good. I
used to play a game with waitresses. I'd say, 'I'll show
you my cock. If you can honestly tell me you ever saw a
bigger one and will name the guy who's got it, I'll give
you a hundred bucks. If you never saw a bigger one, you
still get the hundred, but you got to put out for me.' Some
of them were so fascinated with the damn thing, they'd


THE SECRET 125

have paid me a hundred. It hasn't always been an advantage,
Jerry. To be honest, I guess it's more often been a
disadvantage. But what could I do? You can't get an inch
or three cut off.

"Anyway, besides gettin' laid, we planned how we'd
do the job. The fact that Hoffa was so damn cocky was
gonna help. He was so cocky he was careless.

"We got to Detroit. Jimmy 'd known Tony was
comin'�though he didn't know I was comin'; I doubt he
knew who I was�and suggested they meet at a steakhouse
called Machus Red Fox, just outside Detroit, on the
road to the airport. Tony told him he was drivin' a tittypink
Caddy and would meet him in the parking lot. He
said they'd talk in the car and then go in for lunch. Which
suited Jimmy just fine. It was one of his favorite eateries,
and he had friends there�in case Tony had any bad ideas.

"Tony let me out up the road, and I walked to the Red
Fox and went in to check it out. Guys there were expectin'
somebody. Hey, I got patted down by a couple of wise
guys, just for comin' through the door. They could tell I
didn't have a biscuit, so I sat at the bar and had a beer.
Then I went out, walked around to where I couldn't be
seen, and got in the back seat of the Cadillac.

"I got down on the floor, out of sight. Tony told me he
was comin', so I was ready when Jimmy Hoffa opens the
door and climbs in on the passenger side.

"He got just one thing said. 'I'm not backin' down,
Tony. I'm gonna do it, and you're gonna help me. You
know why. You're gonna help me or I'm gonna put you
where I was: in a federal slammer. Any doubt about that?'

"At that point I blasted him, right through the seat of
the car. The slug from that cannon went through the seat
back, through Jimmy, and wound up in the dashboard of
the Caddy�along with some small parts of Jimmy. Hey!
Jimmy Hoffa never knew what hit him. We made it easy
for him, truth be known.

"He had two thugs with him, bodyguards. They came
runnin' up just in time to face Tony's Uzi and my forty



126 HAROLD ROBBINS

four mag. They stopped and looked at each other, and
then they shrugged and walked back to their car and drove
off. It was a blue Buick, I remember. They could see their
boss had been whacked out. It had been their job to prevent
that happenin', not to shoot it out with the guys that
did it. There was no percentage for them in tryin' to take
some kinda revenge. They knew exactly who they were
and what they'd been hired for, and revenge was no part
of it�any more than loyalty had been a part of it. Nobody
was loyal to Jimmy. Nobody was sorry he was gone. Hell,
I'd probably left readable fingerprints on my beer bottle,
but nobody said a word to the cops about it�so far as I
know, anyway."

Sal chuckled weakly. "Y'know, all we had to do was
prop him up in the seat and fasten the seat belt and shoulder
harness. He had a hole in him big enough to drive a
truck through, but I covered that with an old raincoat we'd
brought along for the purpose. I pulled on his hair to make
him sit up and look alive, and we drove out of Michigan
with Jimmy sitting there looking natural, almost smiling.
We drove all the way across Ohio with that body sitting
there. Sometimes I had to wonder if he wouldn't open his
mouth and say something. I'll tell ya something, Jerry. It
was spooky."

Sal turned grim.

"You want to know what we did with him? Well, he
ain't in the Meadowlands, and he ain't under the goalpost
in Giants Stadium. We drove him to Youngstown, where
Sal had made arrangements. He handed some guys a
pretty big envelope, and we watched while they dumped
Jimmy into an open-hearth furnace just before a big pour
of molten pig iron. Hell, we didn't even take off his wristwatch.
It melted in two seconds."

Sal grinned. "You wanta know where Jimmy Hoffa is?
Well, he might have been in the fender of your 'seventysix
Chevy. He was just a tiny little bit of excess carbon
in that open-hearth steel.

"The same envelope paid for gettin' rid of the biscuits


THE SECRET 127

and the titty-pink Caddy. The mag and the Uzi went in
the furnace with Jimmy. The Caddy was smashed fiat and
wound up in a furnace itself. The steel industry don't
waste nothin'."


LEN

I am damn lucky Sue Ellen and I did not have a child.
She wanted to, but by the time we were in a position to
think about it�that is to say, by the time I graduated from
law school�I knew I did not want to have a child by her
and be committed to living with her for the rest of my
life.

Blinded by the sex we shared, blinded also by the sympathy
and guilt I felt for getting her pregnant, I had overlooked
our differences and had failed to realize how
difficult marriage was going to be for us. She was a very
different person from me, in fact entirely different from
the woman I had supposed she was when I fell in love
with her.

She was shallow in many ways�though it is difficult
to think of someone as shallow who elected so challenging
a study as Chinese. Still, she was shallow. She bought
fads as if they were eternal truths.

For example, she got interested in Eastern religions. For
a while I thought she was going to shave her head and
become a Krishna. She went around the house humming,
"Hare, hare, krishna, krishna"�until I told her she was
driving me nuts and she didn't believe in it anyway, so


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cool it. I was a little surprised that she did cool it, which
told me that what I had suspected had been right: Like
many other things in Sue Ellen's life, Hare Krishna was
a fad, a little game.

For a brief time she decided that, not only would she
become a vegetarian, she would not wear shoes or belts
made of leather. Somebody promoted this idea to her, and
she bought it. I unsold her pretty damn quick. She began
to make us meals with meat again, and shortly she took
to wearing the dog collar I mentioned before�and it was
sure as hell made of leather.

She was a sexpot. I for damn sure had no complaint
about her in that respect. But that, too, was a little game.
I'm not sure where she found boundaries between reality
and fantasies�or if she found any. I am not sure if she
thought my hard-on was evidence, not just of arousal, but
of love.

In truth, I had a hard time making that distinction myself.


She got into S-M. She would bare her butt, stretch out
across my lap, and tell me to spank her. If I didn't turn
her cheeks red, she'd be petulant, like a child denied
candy. I can't say I liked that. I guess I can't say I disliked
it, either.

I have to say of myself that I was confused. On the one
hand, I was kept aroused and sometimes was lifted to
heights of passion, which would have been damn difficult
to give up. On the other hand, I sensed there was something
mechanical, artificial about it, that it did not represent
as strong or deep a relationship as its surface
appearance suggested.

Mollie had taught her to give head like a pro, which
she did, happily and vigorously and repeatedly, volunteering
to do it even when I had something else in mind,
even when I would rather have gone to sleep. I suppose
guys think life will be heaven if they can just find a
woman willing to suck them off whenever they want it.
Believe me, it isn't so. Fantasy and reality.


HAROLD ROBBINS

When I met her she had been uncomfortably selfconscious
about her outsized breasts, which were not all
she had; she had long legs and a tight, twitchy butt.
Now�under Mollie's tutelage�she had become exorbitantly
proud of her boobs. One night we drove to a beer
joint near the Bridgeport Airport in Stratford, where�
though I hadn't been told what to expect�they were
having a wet T-shirt contest. Sue Ellen happily entered
the competition, went backstage to take off her sweater
and bra, and came out in a white T-shirt, as did Mollie;
and when the master of ceremonies exuberantly sprayed
Sue Ellen's T-shirt with warm water, the room went wild.
She took the applause that won the contest, and when the
man suggested she strip off the T-shirt, she did. She strutted
around the stage, laughing and flaunting, making those
outsized hooters bounce up and down, while guys stood
on chairs to cheer.

That got her arrested. She and Mollie thought it immensely
funny. She even thought it funny when she was
handcuffed and driven to the justice court in a paddy
wagon. I posted a hundred-dollar bond for her in Stratford
and drove her home.

Her comment? "Why shouldn't a woman be allowed to
show her boobs? I'd appeal the damn case if it wouldn't
drive my daddy up the wall."

Fancy that. Fancy Hale & Dorr defending a partner's
daughter on a charge of indecent exposure! I can just see
it now. Joseph Welch's law firm defending�Defending
someone else, maybe. Defending Sue Ellen . ..

Right. I don't want to say anything negative about Hale
& Dorr. I graduated high in my class, not at the top, and
Sue Ellen expected me to be welcomed into her father's
distinguished firm. The firm might have welcomed me.
But her father had, in effect, a veto; and he didn't want a
son of Jerry Cooper in his firm. He was subtle about it
and imagined I would not understand how he had worked
it, vetoing me while expressing the warmest sympathy. I
got the message.


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He had done his homework on my father. His problem
was not so much that my father was in the business of
selling lingerie, some of it boldly erotic. It was that he
didn't like some of my father's history and associates. He
had learned who my great-uncle Harry was. He knew
about the Plescassier Martins. He knew the name Paul
Renard and the name Charlie Han. He associated my father
with the name Betty Logan. He did not know, I guess,
that I myself had one day sat down to lunch with Don
Alberto Patrioto.

What he most disliked was the name Sal Nero. My
father has since told me that Sal was the man who pulled
the trigger that killed Jimmy Hoffa. Sue Ellen's father
obviously did not know that. In point of fact, no one knew
that. It was the subject of endless television "unsolved
mysteries" shows.

Her father spoke in a stilted, fancy language. "You will
perhaps not mind my saying that your father does seem
to have some . . . how shall I say? Some remarkable
friends. You do not mind?"

"Not at all," I said, facing him where he sat by his
enormous fireplace sharing Napoleon brandy with me.
"My father had to struggle for everything he has achieved.
He had no advantages. Family . . . education . . . whatever
he's done, he simply did it. On his own."

"Yes. I quite understand."
But of course he didn't understand that my father made
his own opportunities.

To have become an associate in the firm of Hale &
Dorr was the fondest hope of every man or woman who
ever graduated from any law school. There were betterknown
firms, but none with the quiet dignity of Hale &
Dorr. There were more flamboyant law firms and more
flamboyant lawyers. There were no more lawyers' lawyers
than the partners at Hale & Dorr.

I would gladly have taken an associateship there if it
had been offered me. Realistically, I knew it wouldn't be
offered.


HAROLD ROBBINS

And it wasn't.

I took the bar examinations and got myself admitted to
the practice of law in the states of New York and Connecticut.
That made me a lawyer�in theory, at least.

The question then was, what should I do? My father
immediately suggested that Cheeks needed full-time counsel.
I hope I convinced him I was grateful but that I had
valid reasons not to become counsel to his company.

I hope I don't need to explain that. By then I had complete
respect for my father. But I lived a clich�. I didn't
want to remain dependent on him. I wanted to demonstrate�
or to find out, anyway�that I could make it on
my own.

My father arranged for me to meet for lunches with
several Manhattan lawyers. After two or three weeks one
of them offered me a job. I suspected my father had
placed me with that firm as surely as he could have placed
me as general counsel to Cheeks. But I expected to have
at least a degree of independence, and I accepted.

The firm was named Gottsman, Scheck & Shapiro. Besides
the three partners, there were three associates. I became
the fourth associate. Our offices were in the Empire
State Building. My office was tiny, but it had a northfacing
window, from which I could see all of northern
Manhattan and in fact all the way out to Connecticut. I
could see the planes landing and taking off from La Guardia
and Kennedy.

When my father saw my office, he declared the furniture,
left behind by an associate who had failed to make
partner, inadequate; and he completely refitted that office
with a Herman Miller desk and credenza made of zebra
wood, with an ergonomically designed chair. When Sam
Gottsman, the senior partner, looked at it, he remarked
that furniture like that belonged in the offices of Deveboise,
Plimpton, not at Gottsman, Scheck & Shapiro.

The old story is that a new young lawyer spends his
first six months finding the men's rooms at the courthouses.
In fact, he spends that time learning what paper


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is filed where and why and discovering which clerk will
look over something offered for filing and kindly point
out the minor defect that would render the filing ineffective.
He totes a briefcase and rides the subways, carrying
files here and there. In short, he learns what he did not
learn in law school.

Sue Ellen did not want to live in New York City, so
we leased a small house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and
I became a commuter. I had a lawn to cut, trees to trim,
leaves to rake, gutters to clean, snow to shovel, firewood
to lay up, a fireplace that wouldn't draw, shrubs that
wouldn't blossom, bulbs that wouldn't sprout, tomato
plants that bore no tomatoes, brats who rode their motorbikes
across my lawn or climbed my trees and broke off
limbs ...

I caught the 6:45 express each morning and was in my
office before eight. I rarely reached home before seven
and soon came to wonder if I should not have accepted
the job my father offered, after all. Independence had its
grim side.


29


My father is monogamous. That is, essentially he is,
meaning he has one woman at a time. After my mother
died, he established a relationship with the model Melissa
Lamb. Melissa was absolutely devoted to him, and I could
not object to a companion for him who so perfectly suited
him as she did.

She was beautiful. She was ingenuous, the kind of
woman who had given rise to the silly stereotype that a
beautiful woman is likely dumb. You had to give her a
chance, but given a chance she would establish that she
was not as innocent as your first impression had suggested.
In fact, I don't think my father would have lived
with a dull woman.

He didn't feel comfortable living with her in the apartment
that had been my mother's home, so they moved
into a two-bedroom place on the forty-fifth floor of a
building on Third Avenue.

The apartment was small, but it was luxurious. It had
parquet floors and two marble baths�plus a powder
room, also marble. Their view over the East River was
spectacular. They hired a designer to choose furniture and
art. I know for a certainty that my father had no idea what


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he had paid for�prints and mobiles and forty yards of
books in cases�and that he regarded the art as effete and
ostentatious. He was, in fact, embarrassed by what hung
on his walls and from his ceilings. Since he had left Melissa
to work with the designer, he supposed she liked it
all, never guessing that she was neutral and had no better
idea than he did of what the designer had imposed on
them. He did read many of the books. At this point in life
my father discovered a new source of pleasure�besides
which he hugely increased his store of learning.

Sue Ellen loved it all. It changed her opinion of my
father. I remember her breathlessly telling her father that
my father had an original Calder mobile in his living
room.

"Can you imagine? An original Calder mobile! Hanging
in his living room."
Her father nodded gravely. "That's very impressive. It
shows excellent taste."
My father didn't know Calder from Calder. He didn't

know the artist from the discount chain.

He called me one afternoon at my office.

"I want you for dinner tonight. Be at our apartment.
Seven."

"I'll call Sue Ellen."

"No, no. Don't tell Sue Ellen. Just tell her you'll be
late. In fact, tell her you may be spending the night in our
guest bedroom. I don't want her coming in to be with us
on this particular night. This is a business matter."

"Well, I�"

"Do it, Len. See you at seven."

It was, in fact, a business matter. When I arrived, the
business matter was already there. She was a tall, slender,
black-haired woman of maybe forty or forty-five, wearing
a clinging black dress and a simple strand of pearls. Her
eyes were dark. Her lips were full, colored with red lipstick.
She wore a perfume with a pronounced odor. She
was drinking a martini up, with a twist.

"Let me introduce my son, Leonard. Len, this is Vit



toria Lucchese. She is looking for a lawyer."
"Call me Vicky," she said. "Everyone does, and I much
prefer it."

She offered her hand, not to be shaken, but high, to be
kissed. I did it, and she nodded to the couch. We sat down.
The woman was calm and completely self-possessed.
Lucchese. I had heard the name, of course. I wondered
if�

"Vicky lost her husband a few months ago," my father
said as he poured me a Scotch on the rocks. "This left
her the chief stockholder of Interboro Fruit, Incorporated.
You may know the company. You buy a piece of fruit
imported from overseas, likely it came into this country
through Interboro."

"We don't deal in apples and pears," she said, cooly
picking up the recital. "We deal in pineapples, Israeli oranges
and strawberries, guava, kiwi fruit, mangos .. . We
import from all over and distribute in the tri-state area.
We have warehouses and a fleet of trucks, plus, of course,
all the things that go with running a business: an office
with all the personnel and equipment that takes. We actually
just bought a computer, if you can imagine. I hope
you know what that is good for. I haven't figured it out
yet."

"I have heard the name Interboro Fruit," I said. "And
the name Lucchese."

She nodded, still totally cool. "My late husband retained
as counsel a firm I don't like. I am interested in
finding someone to represent me. You are very young and
inexperienced. I understand your firm includes some experienced
lawyers, shrewd lawyers. If you brought me to
your firm as a client, it would be to your distinct advantage
in the firm, would it not?"

This was how she would always talk. Vicky was direct.
She was never subtle.
I was no less direct. "That would be to my very definite
advantage," I said.


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My father beamed. "Then we can have dinner and talk
about it some more."

We had dinner at Four Seasons. By then my father had
a regular table there, at which no one else was ever seated
either at noon or in the evening until it was plain that Mr.
Cooper was not coming. A telephone was always placed
at his table, though he never used it; I never saw him use
it. People did know who he was, though, and he got a lot
of greetings�not from celebrity types, beaming in their
glow, but from people prominent in business and money.

Melissa was tolerant of the conversation, in which she
could not participate at all, and pretended she found it all
hugely absorbing. Melissa had a talent for that sort of
thing.

"I offered Len the position of general counsel to my
company," my father said to Vicky. "But he wanted to try
his hand at what he calls the real practice of law."

"He wanted to be independent," she said dryly.

"I know," my father said, equally dryly.

"I can respect him for that."

Vicky sat beside and very close to me. Shortly I felt
the heat of her hand on my leg, gently caressing. I looked
at her. She fixed an ingenuous, coquettish gaze on me. I
put my hand on hers. She seized my hand and moved it
to her leg.

My father stared at me, mock-innocently. He knew
what he had gotten me into.

He and I went to the men's room. "The two of you will
sleep in the guest room tonight," he said. "She has a
sixteen-year-old son at home in her apartment, and she
doesn't want him to see her bringing home a man only
ten years older than he is."

"Is this such a good idea?" I asked. "I mean, isn't a lot
of complication implicit in this?"

"You better believe it's a good idea. I've known her
for years, first by name only, then personally. I did some
business with her father. Her maiden name was Castellano.
I imagine she's a first-class piece of ass, to start with,


138 HAROLD ROBBINS

and she likes you. Besides which, she makes you a rainmaker
at Gottsman, Scheck and Shapiro and the way I
understand it, that's what you've got to be if you expect
to go anywhere. Suppose you bring in Interboro Fruit as
a client. Doesn't that make you a rainmaker? They'll kiss
your ass!"

"She's old enough to be my mother."
"Well, she's not your mother," he snapped impatiently.
"You're a big boy. Act like one."

No one was subtle. I doubt that Vicky knew how to be.
In fact, there was no way any of us could have been subtle.
We chatted as we drank final brandies; then Vicky got
up and went to the guest bedroom. I followed her.

The rooms in the apartment were not very large, but
there was space in the guest bedroom for a double bed
and for a love seat, which faced a coffee table. An Impressionist
landscape hung above the love seat. The room
seemed to have been designed for cozy shacking up. I
went immediately to the window and pulled the drapes.

When I turned around, Vicky was on me, clasping me
in her arms and kissing me fervently. She kissed with her
tongue, using it to caress mine and thrusting all the way
to my throat.

"Unzip my dress," she whispered huskily.

I did and helped her pull it over her head. Under her
dress she wore nothing but goodies from Cheeks. Everything
was black, of course: a bra cut to expose her nipples,
crotchless panties over a shaved pussy, and a lacy black
garter belt trimmed with red, holding up sheer dark stockings.


She paraded around the room to show me herself and
her undies. Then she said, "Let's take a shower together.
There's no better way in the world for two people to get
to know each other than to take a shower together."

She helped me out of my clothes, shedding the intimate
Cheeks things at the same time. Then she grabbed my
hand and led me into the bathroom.


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I needed to use the toilet and turned toward it. "Just a
minute," I murmured.

"No, no!"

In a moment we were in the shower stall, under the
stream of warm water. When we were wet she grabbed
the soap, soaped her hands, and soaped my hard and rigid
penis.

Then�"Pee on me, Lenny," she whispered hoarsely.
"Pee all over me."

She stepped away from the stream and faced me. I accommodated
her. I pissed on her belly, her cunt, and her
hips, then on her legs�giving her a thick, hot, yellow
stream. She laughed. She shoved me out of the shower
water, tipped her hips back, and pissed on me.

"You got any left, honey?" she asked.

I nodded. I had a little. She dropped to her knees and
offered her face. She held her eyes tightly closed while I
pissed on her forehead and nose and cheeks and chin.
Some of it went between her lips and into her mouth�
and she was in no great hurry to open her mouth to the
shower stream and rinse it out.

And that was just the beginning.

Before that night was over we had settled a great many
things. I knew in the first place that this would be no
ordinary relationship, that it was going to be a relationship
with levels of complexity I don't think my father had
guessed.

In the intervals between the things we did, Vicky told
me a lot about herself. She was forty-four years old, and
knew that I was twenty-six. She told me her maiden name
was Castellano�which meant that she was connected.
She talked frankly about that:

"It's not like The Godfather. It's not like�People are
family; people are friends. They try to take care of each
other. Look. If we didn't take care of each other, who
would take care of us, in the face of other people who are


HAROLD ROBBINS

taking care of themselves? That's the way of it. It's a
network. It's not just Italians. The Jews did it, the Irish,
and now the blacks�everybody who's scorned and put
down."

"The Boston Brahmins," I said, "came to this country
because they were scorned and put down in England."

Vicky nodded. As I was to learn, she had given a great
deal of attention to this topic. "Well. .. sometimes
mutual-protection societies make wrong turns. Sometimes�
I don't have to name names. The most respectable
of respectables do things they shouldn't do. People get
killed? How many people were killed by the Robber Barons
a century or so ago? So Arnold Rothstein gets
whacked out. Dutch Schultz. Bugsy Siegel. How many
men and women were whacked out on the orders of Andrew
Carnegie? John D. Rockefeller?"

We coupled again. I plunged into her as deep and hard
as I could. Then she sucked me. She was as good as Sue
Ellen or Mollie. I returned the favor. That I did that was
a measure of how enthusiastic I had already become about
Vicky. I pushed my tongue as deeply as I could where
my cock had been. She guided me to her clit, and I licked
that until she stiffened and moaned.

She was obsessed with me, which was staggering. I was
bewitched by her, drawn to her, irresistibly. We were very
different people, but the differences got submerged. This
was no one-night thing. It was not just passion. I knew
that Vicky Lucchese was going to be an important part of
the rest of my life.

Before morning we settled it also that Gottsman,
Scheck would represent Interboro Fruit.


30


Bringing Interboro Fruit to my firm as a client made me
a rainmaker. A rainmaker is a lawyer who brings business
to his firm, and is more valued than one who does competent
work. Getting business is more important than doing
business.

Most of Interboro's work was assigned to other lawyers,
specialists in the various legal problems such a company
would have. We even assigned its problems with
interstate truck licensing to another firm. Under Hugh
Scheck's supervision, I handled the company's corporation
problems. I should have spent another year toting
briefcases, but having brought in a good client I got special
consideration. Scheck took a liking to me and became
my mentor.

Hugh Scheck was one hell of a lawyer. He was one
hell of a man. He'd taken a spinal wound in Vietnam and
lost 70 percent of the use of his legs. But the gutsy bastard
would not sit in a wheelchair. He stumbled around on two
canes, red-faced and huffing and determined. He took no
crap from anybody and was a good enough lawyer that
he didn't have to. He was one of the few men I've ever
seen who could simply stare someone down. The power


142 HAROLD ROBBINS

of his personality, plus the power of his intellect, were
formidable.

"Y'know what this fruit company is, don't you?" he
said to me one day within a month after I brought in the
client. "I mean, I suppose you know its history."

"I've got my suspicions. Suppose you tell me."

"Okay. Selling high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables
has been taken over by the Koreans. Oh, you can get the
same in supermarkets but not like the quality the Koreans
offer. Those bastards work their tails off to run their little
stores. They drive downtown every morning before dawn
to buy their kiwi and mangos and what all, plus the apples
and tomatoes they get from New Jersey. They buy the
very best. They buy the imported stuff from Interboro."

"So?"

Hugh sighed, as if he supposed I should know what he
was about to say. "Louie Lucchese was a Carlino. There
was a time when most grocers didn't buy from anybody
else what they could buy from Louie. You can guess why.
Then he got it through his head he didn't have to use
muscle. Interboro is a respectable business now. I
wouldn't have let it in here as a client if I didn't think so.
But watch out for the widow, Len. Vicky's maiden name
was Castellano�Vittoria Castellano. Do I have to introduce
you to that name?"

I shook my head.

"One of the Five Families. Daughter of a capo. Vicky
is connected like nobody is connected. Which .. . I don't
know if she uses it or not. But she's big, man. Don't cross
her."

I didn't tell him I slept with her, and I don't think he
guessed.

I confronted my father. "What have you done to me?
Vicky Castellano! Jesus Christ... !"

"The world has got two kinds of guys, Len," he said
calmly. "You and I ain't Rockefellers or Vanderbilts. And


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143

we never will be, no matter what we do or don't do. Or
uptown Jews, either. You're Uncle Harry's great-nephew.
Your mother was a .. . I guess you know by now. A nude
dancer. Not a hooker, by God, not anything like, but a
nude dancer. Me, I'm�"

"You're not Mafia!"

He paused for a moment. "No. But I'm not holier than
thou, either�like your father-in-law."

He'd hit me there. I had a failing marriage, and one
reason it was failing was that my wife's family never
ceased to look down on me. The son of Jerry Cooper
would never be good enough�no matter what he
achieved�to be Sue Ellen's husband.

"Vicky can do a hell of a lot for you," he went on.
"Already has. Besides which . .. tell me she's not the
sweetest piece of ass you've ever had."

"She's Sicilian," I grumbled sullenly.

"Hey! Whatsa matter with you? Arnold Rothstein was
not Sicilian. Neither was Dutch Schultz. Neither was
Bugsy Siegel. Neither was Meyer Lansky. And�ha!�
neither is Sol Schwartz."

"There's a relationship," I said. "I mean�"

"Of trust," he interrupted me. "If I'd ever wanted to be
connected, maybe I could have arranged it. I never wanted
it. I don't want it. But Vicky Lucchese is a source. Your
law firm understands that. And if it doesn't, fuck it. Vicky
can do more for you than Gottsman, Scheck and Shapiro.
And a hell of a lot more for you than Sue Ellen and her
father."

I don't know how soon Sue Ellen began to suspect that
I was seeing another woman. When I began to stay in
town overnight three or four nights a week, I suppose.
She called one night after midnight, checking up on me.
I was in my father's guest room, as I'd told her I would
be. I talked to her for ten minutes that night, while Vicky


HAROLD ROBBINS

went in the bathroom, sat on the closed toilet seat, and
read.
"How many nights a week you have to stay in town?"
Sue Ellen asked peevishly.

"It's business, honey," I said.

"What kind of business? I've started to think it's funny
business, lover. You don't come home like a guy who
hasn't had any since night before last."
"Law business," I said. "I was with a client until just
half an hour ago."

Vicky smirked.

"Your voice sounds funny."

"I was with people who smoked."

What was funny was my struggle to speak in a normal
voice, since Vicky had come out of the bathroom and
stood nude, hands on her hips, grinning at me.
"You'll come home some night and there won't be any
for you." She hung up.
"We're gonna have to come to a conclusion," Vicky
said as I put down the telephone.

"I know."

"I'm too old to commit myself to a relationship with
no future."

"Yes."

"Well... we have to think about it."

Anyway, Sue Ellen was jealous without knowing why
she should be. And I was playing with fire.

Sue Ellen continued to study Chinese and became fluent.
So did Mollie. One day she announced that she and
Mollie wanted to go to China for a month. Her father
would put up part of the cost, and she wondered how
much we could afford to pay. I was doing all right at the
firm, but I was not doing well enough to fund an extended
trip to China while meeting all the other obligations we
had. Would my father contribute as her father was? He
contributed enough, and one late-summer day Sue Ellen
and Mollie boarded a plane at Kennedy and flew to Hong


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Kong, from where they would make excursions into
China.

Vicky was pleased. She rented a love nest for us�
complete with a telephone that would ring in my father's
apartment so that he or Melissa could switch the call as
if only sending it to the extension in the guest bedroom.

It was an adventure to live with Vicky.

I was not an experienced lover. I had dated, but I had
never had sex with any woman but Sue Ellen and Mollie
until I met Vicky. Sue Ellen, still in her twenties, had
gained a little weight. She was not heavy, but she was a
little looser than she had been when I married her. Vicky,
who was eighteen years older than Sue Ellen, had a perfect
body. Vicky's body was no longer youthful, but it
was taut and flawlessly proportioned. Sue Ellen, though
the daughter of Boston Brahmins, had a slightly dusky
complexion. Her skin was smooth but not glossy. It was
as if road dust had been used to powder her all over.
Vicky's skin was almost white, and her big, shiny, vividpink
nipples were in distinct contrast to the white skin of
her breasts. Because she shaved her crotch, the darker
pink of her inner parts showed whenever her legs were
more than a little apart.

Three words did not yet pass between Vicky and me.
"I love you." We didn't say it. I wouldn't have dared say
it unless she said it first, though I did, in fact, love her. I
still could not guess exactly what she felt for me. I know
she didn't want her sixteen-year-old son to meet her
twenty-six-year-old lover. Beyond that... she was caring.
She was generous. She was mysterious.

She was also the only woman I ever experienced who
could suck my entire scrotum and testicles into her
mouth�or ever wanted to.


31


JERRY

By early 1978 Giselle and I had to accept the fact that
she was dying. Cancer. I had avoided the specific subject
before because I was not sure I could handle it.

She was not afraid. Her chief worry was that I would
not be able to rear Len properly, and she asked me for
certain promises about that. I was to see to it that he got
a fine education and entered a learned profession. He was
not to become a street hustler. He was not to be like
Buddy. What she meant, of course, was that he was not
to be like me. We might have a fine, successful business,
she and I, but I had started out a street hustler, and, whatever
Len became, he was not to start that way.

The only question was, would we tell him she was dying?
We agreed not to. The shock would be bad enough.
Anticipation would be worse. It was worse for me. It
nearly destroyed me. If not for the knowledge that I had
a son to raise, I think it might have led me to suicide. I
am honestly not at all sure I would be alive today if it
had not been for my son. I couldn't abandon him. I could
readily have abandoned everything and everyone else.

I suppose most people think there is nothing worse than
dying. There is something worse: having to watch some



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one you love die, knowing you are going to have to live
on. That, believe me, is much, much worse.

When the end was near, I took her to France. She
wanted to see her daughters, the ones she'd had by Jean
Pierre Martin. She also wanted to see her sister.

Her daughter Jacqueline was married and the mother of
a little girl. Her daughter Jeanne was not married but was
the mother of a son. Her sister Therese�the one who had
collaborated with the Nazis and had been marched naked
through the streets with a shaved head�lived quietly in
Lyon in the family home, with a wine merchant her own
age, and seemed to have been forgiven by the city. I suppose
people remembered, but by then the whole French
nation, not just its collaborators, knew it had something
to be ashamed of.

Giselle died in Lyon. She was fifty-two years old.

Sometimes I called Sal by his real name, which was Sol.
At first he didn't like it, but when he saw he couldn't
bully me out of it, he accepted it.

He went through girlfriends like shit through a goose.
Truda, the big fat girl who modeled for us, lasted a year
or so. I remember a Jeannie and a Suzie. Most of the
names I don't recall. I didn't even meet all of them.

He was very kind to me when I lost Giselle. He met
me at the airport and drove me up to Lodge. He didn't
even go in. He waited for me in the parking lot. He knew
Len didn't like him and figured the boy was enduring
enough pain without a visit from his Uncle Sal. I was
touched by how sensitive Sal could be.

Oal knew our designer, Larkin Albert, of course. One day
the three of us sat down over lunch at 21.

Albert had become a great deal more�how shall I say
it? He had become more skilled, more artistic, more subtle,
in his cross-dressing. He sat there in 21, smooth and


HAROLD ROBBINS

self-confident, assured that no one in the room guessed he
was a man. He wore an ivory jaquard suit: padded shoulders,
button-front jacket, slim miniskirt. It was entirely
appropriate to 21. His makeup was understated. His wig
was styled to expose half his forehead and his ears and
earrings. I can't guess what he used to suppress his beard
and other hair, but his face and legs were as smooth as
any girl's.

Sal asked the question I would not have asked. "Tell
me, Lark, have you had the operation?"

"No, for Christ's sake," Larkin said in an amused, velvety
voice. "What would I do for fun, if I... ? Well...
Sal, I'm not one of those guys! So far as doin' it is concerned,
I'm as straight as .. . well, as I suppose you two
are."

"I guess there are all kinds of guys," said Sal.
"You better believe it," said Larkin. He glanced across
the room. "See the suit with the big Bloody Mary?"

He had used the term "suit" aptly. Nixon vest. John
Dean haircut. Rep tie. Wing-tips. Smoking a cigarillo.
This . . . creature said Wall Street, said broker, said lawyer.
It could have worked in the Nixon White House.

"She's a broad," said Larkin. "She hasn't noticed me,
but I've noticed her, and I'm here to tell you she's a firstclass
piece of tail."

"Explain this to me," I said.

Larkin smiled. "You're sitting here. Sal's sitting here.
Of the three of us, I'm the only one's who's charged!
Man, if one of you groped me, I'd come! And Mary Beth
over there�which is her name�is wet. I mean, she's
ready! We may be the only ones in the room who are
having a really good time."

"You don't wish you were a woman?" I asked.

"Are you kiddin'? Hell, no, I don't wish I were a
woman. And Mary Beth doesn't wish she were a man.
Guys .. . I get off by dippin' my wick�and I don't mean
by dippin' it between the teeth of some fag."

We changed the subject. Sort of. Larkin led off.


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"Listen to me, guys. I'm wearing a pair of silicone
boobs. I don't mean implants. I mean silicone boobs in
my bra. If I took off my bra, they'd fall off. But if I let
you see them through a sheer bra, you'd think you were
looking at real boobs. You could feel me up, and you
wouldn't immediately feel the difference. If one of you
felt me right now, through my dress and all, you'd swear
you had your hands on real tits. These little babies are
imported from Germany, and they cost me five hundred
bucks a pair. Well, shit, man, why doesn't Cheeks sell
silicone tits?"

It was something Giselle would have objected to. She
loved merchandise that showed off a woman at her best.
Anything that dishonestly enhanced her, Giselle did not
like.

"The krauts got a patent on these things?" Sal asked.

"Can you patent false tits?" Larkin asked. "I don't
know, but I doubt it. If you can, it must be easy enough
to put together a different chemical combination that
would do the same thing in a different way. I can't think
it would be too difficult."

It was a departure for Cheeks, the first of a series that
would change the nature of the business.

The German company did not in fact have a patent on
their silicone breast enhancers. What else to call them?
But they manufactured them beautifully, and we signed a
contract to import them at $186 a pop. We sold them for
$400.

They came in a variety of sizes, ranging from rather
thin ones that changed a girl from an A to a B, all the
way to the kind that Larkin wore, to give a person with
no tits at all a luscious bustline. They could not have
changed, say, Larkin into a Dolly Parton. But they very
convincingly changed him into a believable woman.

"Hell," Larkin had said. "When the word gets around
that we sell these, we'll sell fifty to women for every one
we sell to a man. I guarantee it."

The ratio was more like ten thousand to one. Millions


HAROLD ROBBINS

of women wanted bigger tits, but they didn't want two
things: first, they didn't want to wear those hideous pads
of rubber and kapok called falsies, and, second, they
didn't want surgery.

What a business! But it was, as Giselle would have
emphasized, a departure for us.

I put my foot down against one thing. Silicone boobs,
maybe. Rubber cocks, no. Sal and Larkin couldn't see the
difference, but I could and vetoed merchandising fake penises.


I consented to the sale of a device called an Arab strap.
It was a contraption of straps and buckles that went
around the penis and down under the balls, holding the
penis up in an unnatural erection, caused chiefly by the
constriction of the veins in the shaft. In point of fact, the
thing was a little bit dangerous. Interfering with the circulation
of the blood was not the world's greatest idea,
and after a short time I banished the Arab strap from
Cheeks stores.


32


We continued to import about half our merchandise, most
of it from France but an increasing amount from places
like Hong Kong and Manila and Singapore. What we
didn't import came from contractors hired by Charlie Han.
He was an important element of our success.

Charlie had become almost a partner in Cheeks. He was not
just a small-time sweatshop manager anymore. He was
an entrepreneur, running a score of sweatshops through
layers of subcontractors. We hadn't made him that. He
had many customers, and he sewed into his clothes the
labels of some of the most prominent chains of stores in
the nation. He also sewed in the labels of important designers.


What is more, he was not just the maker of underwear
and swimsuits; his laborers assembled blouses and skirts,
jeans and jackets, dresses and suits.

He didn't do business any longer from a table in a
coffee shop. His office was in a building on Twentyseventh
Street�isolated and well insulated from the
grimy lofts where his employees worked under the tyrannical
supervision of his managers. He had the kind of


152 HAROLD ROBBINS

smarts that Buddy admired, and he had used them to
grow.

By now Charlie could have made a colorable case that
he didn't know the working conditions in his shops�and
in fact he would, when he had to.

And if he could make the case, we could make it. This
was the deal. This was the way it worked. We could pretend
innocence. In truth, I had visited Charlie's sweatshops
once or twice, and that had been enough; I had not
gone back anymore. I could testify, if need be, that we
bought our merchandise from various makers, including
Charlie Han, and had no idea what were the working conditions
in the shops where our clothes were sewn. We
were not obligated, under the law, to inspect the factories
of our suppliers.

As Sal kept reminding me, this was the garment industry,
and Cheeks wasn't big enough to change it. Other
companies might be, but they had no interest in changing
it.

Charlie did get in trouble once. Federal inspectors
found a lot of violations of various laws in a loft on
Thirty-fifth Street, and they traced the ownership to Charhe
Han�that is, they thought they had traced the
ownership.

Charlie was arrested, hustled out of his office in handcuffs,
taken before a federal magistrate, jailed briefly, and
then released on bond�protesting all the while that he
did not own or manage the loft where they found all the
violations.

He was indicted on six counts nevertheless, and in the
fall of 1979 his case came to trial.
I was shaking. Among the merchandise found in the
sweatshop were things we sold in Cheeks stores.

I sent a lawyer to observe the trial. He bought a copy
of the transcript on the testimony I would be interested
in.

MR. JULIUS: Mr. Han, I hand you an article of clothing.
I suppose we must call it a pair of panties. What


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had you to do with the manufacture of that article?
JUDGE GRIFFITH: There will be no laughter or other
noise from the spectators in the courtroom.
MR. HAN: Nothing.
MR. JULIUS: Please read the label in that article of
clothing.
MR. HAN: It reads, "Cheeks. Intimate apparel."
MR. JULIUS: What is Cheeks?
MR. HAN: It is a seller of women's intimate apparel.
MR. JULIUS: Have you ever been involved in the manufacture
of merchandise for Cheeks?
MR. HAN: I was at one time, briefly. Some years ago.
MR. JULIUS: How many years ago?
MR. HAN: TO the best of my recollection, twelve or
fifteen years ago. About that. Something like that.
MR. JULIUS: Do you do any business with Cheeks
today?


MR. HAN: Yes.
MR. JULIUS: What kind of business?
MR. HAN: I am a manufacturers' representative; in
other words, a salesman. When one of my manufacturers
comes up with something I think might appeal
to Cheeks, I show it to them.
MR. JULIUS: Obviously this pair of panties was manufactured
for this Cheeks company. It has their label ^
sewn in it.


MR. HAN: Cheeks bought the entire supply of that
item. That's what it usually does, buys all of an item,
together with the exclusive right to merchandise it.
MR. JULIUS: HOW many pairs of these panties did
Cheeks buy?
MR. HAN: I think a thousand dozen.
MR. JULIUS: YOU have said you never saw the sweatshop
in which these panties and a lot of other items
were made. Is that your testimony?
MR. HAN: I deal with the executives of the companies
I represent, in their offices or mine. I never go to
their manufacturing facilities.



MR. JULIUS: With whom did you deal in securing a

thousand dozen pairs of these panties for sale to

Cheeks?

MR. HAN: I dealt with Mr. George Alexander, vice

president for sales, Alexander and Company. It is a

family business.

MR. JULIUS: Where is Mr. Alexander now?

MR. HAN: I haven't seen him for some time.

MR. JULIUS: A family business, you say. Where are

the other members of the Alexander family?

MR. HAN: I never met any of them but George.

MR. JULIUS: They are all missing, disappeared.

MR. HAN: If they were running an illegal sweatshop,

I am not surprised.

That was Charlie Han. He had covered his tracks extremely
well. He always did. And he carefully kept my
name out of the case. How could I be anything but grateful?


The crotchless panties handled by the prosecutor as if
they were dirty and would soil his hands drew a lot of
media attention. The publicity didn't hurt us.

George Alexander was like Murray. He was insulation
between Charlie and his businesses. We would encounter
him again later, in a surprising way.

Melissa waited two months after Giselle died before she
made it plain to me that she would not mind doing what
she could to relieve my horniness. My God! What a piece
of luck! To have lost Giselle and then so soon to be able
to form a relationship with a woman like Melissa.. ..

Melissa had been around in one capacity and another
since that day when, as a twenty-year-old model, she had
offered to trim her pubic hair so it wouldn't show over
the top of one of our bikinis. She was the one who had
recommended Larkin Albert as a designer. We had used
her as a model often.

She had married. She had divorced. She had no children.



THE SECRET

For a short time she was in tough circumstances, and
we made work for her. One year I sent her to Paris to tour
the shops that supplied what we imported, to identify what
she thought would sell in the States. She turned out to be
good at it. She had a very good sense of what American
women would wear.

She was never a top model. There was too much of her
for that. But she appeared in hundreds of department-store
ads for bras and panties. Twice she appeared in ads in
The New York Times Magazine, once in Vanity Fair, and
then in catalogs, modeling very ordinary American-style
white undies. Her name remained unknown. Her face and
figure were familiar to people who had no idea who she
might be.

Sal tried to put the make on her. She rejected him gently
but emphatically.

Okay. I recognized her subtle suggestion for what it
was and took her up on it, gladly. She spent the night in
my apartment. Then some more nights.

Winter settled things for Melissa and me. One morning
we left the apartment and went down to try for a cab.
New York can be a terrible place when the weather is
bad. Snow had fallen overnight, leaving the streets curbfull
with slush and filthy water. Sleet was falling now.
New Yorkers, taking their quirky, surly pride in the myth
that they can't be defeated, were fighting each other for
cabs and scrambling along the slippery sidewalks toward
the subway entrances.

Melissa and I stood in the foyer of our building, looking
at the challenge.

"What the hell are we doing?" I asked her.

She shook her head and shrugged. "Damned'f I know,"
she said. "I'm really damned if I know."

I remember how she looked. She was wearing a leopard
hat and coat that had Dupont, not Africa, in their ancestry,
plus vinyl boots against the slush. Her brown hair turned
under her chin. Her skin already glowed from the harsh,
cold wind. She was thirty-five years old.


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Let's go back upstairs," I said. "Make a pot of coffee.
Scramble some eggs. Eat and go back to bed."

She shook her head. "I have to be at�"

"No, you don't."

"I do if I expect to make a living."

"You don't have to make a living, Melissa. Or you can
make one in my business. And it's silly, isn't it, for you
to keep a separate apartment?"

We went back upstairs. She called the photographer�
who thought she was twenty-seven, not thirty-five�and
said she could not come in to model underwear because
of the weather. I called my office and said I was not coming
in because of the weather. That was it. From that day,
we lived together.

We slept in the guest bedroom. She understood why
and one night suggested I should replace the furniture in
the master bedroom. We did, together, and after that slept
in a room that was ours�until we moved into a new
apartment with decor done for us by a designer.

That place�Ha! I owned art done by guys I'd never
heard of. Hey! By me an artist was Norman Rockwell.
Him I knew. His stuff I liked. In the new place I lived
with things that dangled from the ceiling and made no
sense at all.

Melissa was thirty-five. Hell. I was fifty-six. I was robbing
the cradle, and I was like the cat who swallowed the
canary.

Melissa was not just an easy piece of ass. That had
been Sal's mistake: to imagine she was. I mean, Melissa
sometimes said no. She didn't lie back and spread her legs
just because I said I wanted it, any more than Giselle had.

I never compared Melissa to Giselle. In my mind, they
occupied two separate compartments. They were the ornaments
and the comforts�no, more than that; they were
my help and support�in two different times in my life.

If I have been a success in this life, I owe a lot of it to
a pair of fine women: Giselle and Melissa.


33


By the time my son married Sue Ellen, I had forty-seven
stores. Twelve of them were in the five boroughs. I had
a store in Scarsdale and one in White Plains, one in
Greenwich, Connecticut, and one in Stamford. I had one
in Westport, one in Bridgeport, and two in Hartford.
Two in Providence, one at Newport, four in Boston, and
one in Springfield. We had stores on Martha's Vineyard
and Nantucket that were open only in the summer. In New
Jersey, I had two stores in Jersey City, and one each in
Trenton, Camden, and Atlantic City. There were five
Cheeks stores in Philadelphia and its suburbs. We had two
stores in Baltimore, one in Wilmington, Delaware, and
four stores in Washington.

Look at a map, and you will see that not one of our
stores was more than a hundred miles from the Atlantic
Ocean. None was as much as three hundred miles from
New York. We weren't even regional. We were provincial.


The reason was that I insisted on dropping in on any
one of the stores unannounced, anytime. I now know the
term for the way I ran my business. It is called hands-on
management. I did not choose to be a hands-on manager.


HAROLD ROBBINS

I simply didn't know any other way. Len would know a
better way, but I didn't know it.

I've heard that managers of Howard Johnson's restaurants
sometimes discovered that the inconspicuous old
man sitting in a booth eating a platter of fried clams was
Howard Johnson himself, who would afterward sit down
with the manager and deliver a quiet appraisal of the franchise.
I'm sure that was effective management, whether
the Harvard MBAs thought it was or not.

The limits of our province were defined, essentially,
by the range and speed of our Beech airplane. We kept
it at Teterboro initially, then at Westchester County Airport.
I would call the airport. One or more qualified pilots
was always hanging around, waiting for a call, and
he�occasionally she�would fly me where I wanted to
go. While I was on my way to the airport, the pilot would
plot the navigation and check out the airplane. Word got
around that I would pay a pilot $50 just for discovering
and telling me that the weather was not suitable for the
flight. I accepted their word for that: the word of the pros.
So I took no chances and had no trouble.

In the air.

"It can be a very different game in Philadelphia," Sal
warned me. "They play by their own rules in Philly. Very
different rules. Not what we're used to."

"Like?"

"Well. .. here in New York we sort of put the quiet on
things. I know some guys have been whacked out, even
recently, but you do that regularly here you're gonna
come up against the Council. In Philly . .." He shook his
head. "They still do things the old way. Like�The chief
family in Philadelphia is the Boiardo Family. Sicilians.
Old-timey Sicilians, from a town called Partanna, where
they were members of the Honored Society. They came
over here in the 1890s, first to New York and then moved
on to Philly."

"Right. I know the name."

"Don Enrico Boiardo is called the Chef, because the


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name sounds like the name on Chef Boyardee Italian food
packages. Don Enrico is an old Mustache Pete. He's a
grandson of Don Vittorio Boiardo, the original one that
came on the boat."

"So ... ?"

"The problem is that the Boiardos don't have internal
peace. The don's heir apparent was called Chef, Junior.
He was killed by his uncle, Plato Boiardo, the Chef's
brother, 'cause he wanted to be the heir. When the Chef
found about that, he had Plato whacked out and also
Plato's wife and two sons, plus the son's wives. I mean,
that kinda stuff doesn't come down in New York. The old
Sicilian tradition is that you can go after guys but you
leave their wives and kids alone. Plato's whole family!"

"Jesus!"

"Jesus is right. That kind of stuff don't come down in
New York. The Families respect wives and kids and never
come after them. The only guys I know who do stuff like
that are the Dominicans in Washington Heights. Man,
they're vicious. When they go after a guy, they go after
him and his whole family and anybody who's got a rep
for bein' a friend of his."

"In Philadelphia�"

"It brought down a war. For a while it looked like all
the Boiardos would die. It got so bad that the Boiardos
of Partanna sent a don over here to settle things down.
That was in the late 'twenties. There's supposed to be
peace, but it's been a blood feud, and some Boiardos still
hate other Boiardos, so who knows how long any peace
is gonna last? A nephew of the Chef was whacked out
only a couple of years ago. Somethin' about turf."

"Are you saying we should stay out of Philadelphia?"
I asked him.
Sal shrugged. "Maybe. I'd think about it. Philly's a
tough damned town."

"Then what other towns do we get scared out of? I hear
they got a pretty rough gang in Cleveland. What about
Chicago? L.A.? We gonna be toughed out? Hey! All we


wanta do is sell scanties. The families haven't shown any
interest in that in our other cities."
He shrugged again. "They show interest in who does
our hauling," he said.

We were sitting over steaks at Sparks. Sal loved Sparks.
He didn't like Four Seasons, for example. Sparks wasn't
the very best steakhouse in the city, but it was close. Sal
was a meat-and-potatoes man. And he loved red wine, lots
of it�which was how Sparks served it: in eight-ounce
water glasses.

"I guess I could talk to Jimmy Lead Eyes," he said.
"He might have an idea or two."

Jimmy "Lead Eyes" Francione was now the head of the
Carlino family. He told Sal we should make our peace
with Don Enrico Boiardo, who wasn't going to take much
interest in whether or not Cheeks opened stores in his city.

Quoting him�"Selling ladies' undies isn't exactly a
business guys want to get into. You guys keep your noses
clean, and nobody's gonna take any notice of you."

I met with Don Enrico Boiardo in an Italian restaurant in
King of Prussia, where they served the best Italian food I
have ever tasted.

He was an elderly man, attended by two thugs who
served as bodyguards and personal servants. He was wearing
a handsome gray overcoat, though it was not overcoat
weather; they helped him out of it and took his hat and
scarf. They sat down at a table nearby and glared at me
for a full ten minutes before they decided I was not about
to draw a gun.

Don Enrico did not have a mustache, but he had great,
gray eyebrows. His hair was gray. His face was lined. His
watery eyes were blue. His voice was thin and tended to
crack. It was impossible to believe that this man had ordered
the murder of his brother and his brother's sons and
their wives.

"I hear from Jimmy Lead Eyes that you want to estab



THE SECRET

lish a new business in Philadelphia," he said.
"A small business, Don Enrico," I said. "I am honored
that you would meet me on so small a matter."

He turned up the palms of his hands and turned down
the corners of his mouth. "I like to know what is going
on," he said. "It is a key to success in business."

I explained to him what Cheeks was and presented to
him a box containing an assortment of Cheeks merchandise.
Tucked among the panties and bras, nighties and
corselets were hundred-dollar bills: a hundred of them.

"I am afraid my wife is beyond wearing these," he said
with a wanful smile.

"Daughters, then, Don Enrico. Or�"

"Yes. Of course. I will find someone who will appreciate
them. Oh, yes."

Over lunch and red wine we talked about all kinds of
things. He expressed admiration for Ronald Reagan, particularly
for how he had handled the air-controller strike.

"Do you have a wife and children, Jerry?" he asked.
He had begun calling me Jerry.

"My wife died four years ago. I have a son. He's at
Amherst and will start law school next year, at Yale."

"I am sorry about your wife. But you have a son who
is going into an honorable profession. You must be very
proud."

"I am, Don Enrico."

"I had a son many, many years ago, who was murdered
by my brother. Can you imagine such a thing? How is a
man supposed to forgive such a thing?"

He did not mention the revenge he had taken, though
I suspect he knew I had heard about it.

"You brought me presents for my"� he paused to
smile slyly �"daughters. I will send something nice for
your son."

He did, in fact. He sent a gift certificate for $1,000,
redeemable at Gucci. That is the origin of Len's habit,
sustained ever since, of wearing Gucci loafers.

When we had finished our lunch, he nodded to his


thugs, who brought his coat and hat. We stood facing each
other. I extended my hand to shake, and to my surprise
the old man embraced me and kissed me on each cheek.
I supposed the kiss was a quaint, old-world Italian custom
and had no idea it had any great significance. I returned
the kisses. I did not guess I had exchanged the ritual abbraccio,
the kiss of peace with the don of the Boiardo
family.

We opened two stores before the trouble began. Flying
down from Westchester, we landed at a small airport outside
Philadelphia�the name of which I don't remember.
A car picked me up and drove me to whichever store I
wanted to visit. Routine. I only flew in good weather. It
was all routine. Sometimes Melissa went with me, and we
pulled a curtain between us and the pilot and made out,
sort of.

It was a joke between Melissa and me, as it had been
between Giselle and me, to wonder what that pilot thought
he was hearing. You know, you really can't do it in those
small plane seats. Armrests are only a part of the problem.
Seats don't recline all that much, either. Of course, you
can find some fun things to do. You can vary the routine.
Flying doesn't have to be boring.

This time it was not routine. I was alone, but my driver
was not alone. He had with him an oily little man who
looked vaguely like Michael Corleone's brother Fredo in
The Godfather. "Fredo" waited until we were just outside
the airport before he turned around and shoved the point
of a switchblade knife to my throat.

"What the shit?"

"Lou Chieppa," he said. "We hear you traded the kiss
of peace with the Chef."

"Don Enrico Boiardi," I agreed as calmly as I could.

"You think he runs this town? He don't."

I shook my head. "Okay. I'm from New York. I don't
know from Philly."


THE SECRET

"Well, you better learn before you come here. We run
it here."

" 'Kay," I said. I was in their car, with the point of
Chieppa's knife within an inch of my throat. "So, how
was I supposed to know who runs what?"

"Well, you knew enough to go see the Chef," said
Chieppa with indignation that may have been genuine.
"How'd you know enough to do that?"

"That's who I was told to see."

"Who told you?"

"Jimmy Lead Eyes."

The name effected a pause. Obviously, Chieppa had
heard of Jimmy. "Well... Jimmy Lead Eyes ain't up to
date. The Chef's days are over. You tell Jimmy that Ice
Cream is the man now."

"Ice Cream ... ?"

"Napolitano Boiardo. He's a cousin. You tell Jimmy
Lead Eyes that Ice Cream is the man to see now. The
Chef is history. Ice Cream has taken over."

"Okay. So what am I supposed to do? Does Ice Cream
want me to get out of Philly?"

"You're gonna get out if you're the Chef's man."

"I'm not anybody's man."

"Then why'd you trade the kiss with the Chef?"

"I didn't know what it meant. I'm not a made guy."

"Then why'd you ask Jimmy Lead Eyes who to see?"

"My partner's a Carlino. Sal Nero. He's a made man.
He's made his bones, too."

My oily little hood frowned. Here was another name
he'd heard. "We'll want you to meet with Ice Cream," he
said. "He's gotta be satisfied you ain't the Chef's man. If
you're not, nobody cares who sells underwear in Philadelphia."



34


Sal was upset. "Goddamned Boiardos! Jesus Christ, man!
Why'd you exchange the kiss of peace with the Chef?
How goddamned stupid can you get?"

"In the first place, I didn't see what was coming. He
shook my hand, pulled me close, and embraced me. Then
he kissed me on each cheek. What was I supposed to do,
pull away and offend him? How good a judgment would
that have been?"

"You pledged your goddamned loyalty to him, is what
you did. You pledged your loyalty to one don in a family
that isn't loyal to just one don at a time."

"You didn't tell me that. You told me to go meet the
Chef and take him a present."

"I shoulda gone with you."

"You should come with me to meet Ice Cream."

"That, my friend, I'm gonna do. For sure. I mean, you
couldn't keep me away."

He explained to me the twisted logic behind the nickname
Ice Cream. That man's name was Napolitano Boiardo.
A popular ice cream flavor was Neapolitan. So .. .
Ice Cream.

We met Ice Cream in a steakhouse on the outskirts of


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Camden, New Jersey, which I should have found ominous.
But Sal didn't�or if he did, he said nothing. The
place was about as uninteresting a restaurant as I ever
entered. The clientele were interesting. They seemed to
be divided into two armies, each glaring at the other. I
wondered if ordinary people ate there at all.

He shook Ice Cream's hand, bowed perfunctorily, and
murmured, "Don Napolitano."

Ice Cream was a fleshy man, nattily dressed in a black
cashmere overcoat and matching cashmere suit. His bald
head glistened. His remaining hair was coal-black. He had
a scar in his right eyebrow, as if someone had just missed
blinding him. The handkerchief in his breast pocket
matched his necktie. He wore a monogrammed white silk
shirt. His pointy black shoes were mirror-shined.

"Mr. Nero. And Mr. Cooper. Sit down. The steaks are
good here. Unfortunately, it's all they have that's good.
Try the filet mignon. That's what I'm having. And they
know how to broil them right, too: just rare enough and
not too rare."

He had already made a heavy inroad on the basket of
crusty French bread and the plate of butter, and on a bottle
of red wine as well. He raised a finger and by gesture
ordered replenishment of the bread and butter and a second
bottle of wine. Obviously they knew him here. His
bodyguards kept eyes like the eyes of snakes on Sal and
me.

"Do you have a wife, Don Napolitano?" Sal asked.

"Yes, of course," said Ice Cream. "And five children,
three boys and two girls. They are the pride of my life. I
tell you, the pleasures of family life are not exceeded by
anything else life can bring us. I accept no dinner invitations.
I gather my little group around our table every
evening, and we enjoy one of life's other great pleasures:
first-class Italian cooking with first-class Italian wine."

"We have brought along a gift box of Cheeks merchandise.
For your wife, or.. . for a friend, as you may
choose."


HAROLD ROBBINS

He would find $10,000 in cash in the package, as the
Chef had. We could figure he knew about that and maybe
the Chef would hear about this, so the amount had to be
the same.

"It is thoughtful of you," said Ice Cream. "It will go to
someone who will appreciate such things."

We knew that meant they would go to a girlfriend. After
he had enjoyed the incomparable pleasures of family
life, he would slip out to know the pleasures of another
life.

Over lunch the talk was about the difficulties of running
a business: union problems, how hard it was to find trustworthy
managers, taxes, regulations.... Ice Cream described
himself as being in the produce business,
supplying fruits and vegetables wholesale to local markets
in Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, Maryland, and
Delaware. He said not a word that suggested he was a
Mafia don. Until�

"Perhaps you understand why I was concerned that you
might be affiliated with my dear friend Don Enrico. He is
a great man, a very great man, but he and his group control
too many things in our city. Of course, who sells what
you sell is not a matter of concern for me. I was only
worried that you might be something different from what
you were represented to be."

"Jerry didn't understand the meaning of the abbraccio,"
Sal explained. "He did not mean to pledge his allegiance."

"Of course. I understand entirely. You do not need my
blessing to do business, but you have it, in any event. For
whatever little it is worth, you have it."

"Thank you, Don Napolitano," I said. "It is our business
to be friends with everyone and to intrude on no one else's
business. We sought out a business we could enter without
intruding on anyone else's business. I hope we have
guessed right about that."

"I tell you, though," Don Napolitano said finally. "I got
more truck capacity than I need. If sometime you need
trucks to deliver your stuff to your stores, I'd appreciate


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your business. Whatever you can give me, you know.
Anything."
"You got it," said Sal. "You understand, it's not a lot
of stuff. But what we got, the business is yours."

"I might have people you could use. You know, store
clerks. Like that. I mean, gals would love to move out of
the produce business and into a fine, perfumed type of
shop like you run. In my business I always have a surplus
of young people looking for good jobs. Besides, it's hard
to find people you can trust."

"You're too good to us, Don Napolitano," said Sal.
Soapy as Sal could be, he could not conceal the sarcasm
behind that statement. He didn't even try.

I interjected. "With an understanding, Don Napolitano,"
I said. "We had a problem in Connecticut with a few girls
who were hustling on the side. We know you would never
send us a girl who intended to hustle out of our stores. If
you knew it. But if one happened to deceive you, we
know you would expect us to send her back."

Ice Cream smiled. "Absolutely. I'd put her to work tearing
the spoiled leaves off the outside of cabbage heads."

We shook hands. Significantly, we did not embrace or
exchange the kiss. If we had, it would have been reported
to Don Enrico within the hour.

"The shit piles deeper and deeper," Sal groused on our
return flight to Westchester Airport. "Don Enrico thinks
you're his man. Don Napolitano has us committed to using
his trucks and taking his gals into our stores. Christ,
Jerry! We better pull out of Philly."

And maybe we should have. Ice Cream's girls began to
appear and apply for jobs. They were attractive, generally,
and intelligent. They asked for more money than we were
paying our other girls. It was only little more, and we
decided to pay all our clerks what the don's girls asked,
to keep peace.

It wasn't so simple. The manager of our downtown


HAROLD ROBBINS

store was a woman named Wanda, and one day Wanda

asked me to go back to her little office for a talk.

"We got a problem," she said.

"Which is?"

"The Boiardos sent us a girl named Franny. Well.. .
Franny calls herself a collector and is telling the non-
Boiardo girls that they have to pay what she calls dues.
It's just five dollars a week, and of course they all got
that five-dollar raise when the Boiardo girls started coming
in, so they're paying it. I've got eleven girls on the
payroll, so the Boiardos are collecting fifty-five dollars a
week."

"A hundred fifteen," I said. "If they're doing it here,
they're doing it at the other store, where we've got twelve
girls on the payroll."

"Nickel-and-dime business," Wanda said scornfully.
"Maybe. How many other businesses do you figure
have got Boiardo people on their payroll and pay dues?"

Sal didn't like it. He said the dues would go up in time.
"It's a classical extortion," he said. "It's just like paying
protection. No difference at all."

"So what can we do about it?" I asked him.

"I don't know. Let me talk to Jimmy Lead Eyes."

I have no idea what he said to Jimmy Lead Eyes or
what Jimmy Lead Eyes said to him. Whatever it was, it
didn't do us any good. Ice Cream kept on collecting dues.

Even so, Philadelphia was a prime market for us. We
did so well there that, after four months, I decided to open
a third store.

So far we had not called on Ice Cream to provide us
any trucking service. Furnishing and stocking a new store
gave us the opportunity to call on Ice Cream. We did. I
figured the shit would be in the fan if we didn't.

There was almost trouble when a Pennsylvania-licensed
truck with the sign BOIARDI PRODUCE showed up in the
garment district to pick up a load of merchandise. The
New York teamsters didn't like that a little bit. But somehow
the driver convinced their muscle man it was cool�


THE SECRET 169

probably by handing over an envelope�and the truck left
for Philly carrying an inventory of scanties and nighties.

It never made it. Between Exits 7a and 7 on the New
Jersey Pike, the truck blew up. The driver, shielded by
the steel between the cab and the cargo compartment, was
not severely injured. Our merchandise was blown out of
the torn-open truck and scattered along half a mile of
highway. Much of it was burned, but much of it was intact.
We did not recover a single carton. Hundreds of cars
stopped, and delighted travelers looted everything in sight.
Worse than that, we learned later that half a dozen state
police cars left the scene with their backseats littered with
panties and bras, garter belts, negligees, nightgowns, strip
sets, and what have you.

I had no chance to ask Ice Cream what insurance he
carried. Two days later his car blew up and scattered bits
of Don Napolitano Boiardo along half a mile of Frankford
Avenue.

Six weeks later, old Don Enrico Boiardo was literally
cut in two by blasts from a twelve-gauge shotgun. I
elected for the time being not to tell Len what had happened
to the man who had bought his Gucci shoes for
him.

The newspaper accounts of the gang war made something
of the fact that the blown-up truck had been delivering
merchandise to stock the city's third Cheeks store.

We were left orphans in Philadelphia, so to speak. What
to do now? For example, did we tell our managers to stop
the business of collecting dues from our employees? I
decided to take a chance on that. I told them to stop it.
We'd find out how badly demoralized the Boiardo family
was. Or if it wasn't.


LEN

Sue Ellen and Mollie returned from China. I went to Kennedy
Airport to pick them up. I had received cards and
even a couple of calls from China and knew they were
having the time of their lives. I had very realistic notions
of just what kind of time that was�bedtime, lover time.

Well.. . I was living with Vicky. On the other hand, I
was a man and Vicky was a woman, for Christ's sake!
Sue Ellen and Mollie had become woman-woman lovers.
I could guess why they were happy with their trip. They
had discovered a new kind of experience, one that suited
them very well.

Both of them had to submit to a strip search at customs.
I think they raised suspicion by their dog collars, which
they were wearing even on their long flight. A customs
agent had me paged in the waiting hall, came to me, and
showed me Sue Ellen's passport.

"That young woman says she's your wife, Sir. Is that
young woman your wife?"

"Yes. What's the difficulty?"

"I'm afraid she fits a profile for people who enter the
country carrying narcotics. That doesn't necessarily mean


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she really is, but we have to search her thoroughly. Also
her companion."

I was pissed. "If she's carrying anything, she's in deep
shit and on her own," I said. "If she's doing that�" I
softened. "I'm pretty damn sure she's not doing that. Not
her thing."

"May I ask what occupation you are in, sir, and where
you live?"
"I am a lawyer in New York, with the firm of Gottsman,
Scheck & Shapiro. I live in Greenwich, Connecticut."

"It's probably nothing, Mr. Cooper. It's just that they
tend to look like the kind of people we have to worry
about."

Ultimately, Sue Ellen and Mollie came out, pulling
their wheeled suitcases and laughing.

"You won't believe this!" Sue Ellen chortled. "Naked.
Nak-ed. The poor Hispanic woman who had to do it was
embarrassed.out of her skull."

"They didn't miss anything," Mollie laughed. "I all but
came. Hell, I thought 1 was going to. To have a stranger's
fingers up�"

"Enough!" I snapped. "I don't think it's funny. If they'd
found anything, it would have hurt me as much as you.
You two are . . . you're half sloshed."

"You're no fun," Sue Ellen protested. "You're more
like my father every day. Lawyer!"
When I told Vicky, she was grim. "Your wife ... It
would have been up to you to prove you weren't. . ."

Sue Ellen and Mollie got in the car. When we were out
on the Van Wyck, I turned to Mollie in the backseat and
asked, "Where do I drop you off?"

She smirked.

Sue Ellen answered my question. "She's going to bunk
in with us for a while."
"Really?"
"We're family, aren't we? I mean, after all, what else

can you call a girl who gave you the best blow job you
ever had and taught me to do it, too?"


!72 HAROLD ROBBINS

I knew what this meant. If not for the fact that I had
been sleeping every night�and would continue to sleep
as often as I could�with Vicky Lucchese, I would have
said flat no. As it was, I simply shrugged.

"Tai-barng-le!" said Sue Ellen. This was something
else I would have to put up with, that this pair would
communicate with each other in Chinese, knowing I
couldn't understand a word of it. They had it on me that
they were fluently bilingual and I wasn't, and they amused
themselves at my expense constantly.

They had no more surprises for me. I had expected that
during their month of living together in hotel rooms they
would not only share sex but would fall in love with each
other. In fact, it had happened before they traveled to
China.

I think of Mollie as my means of escape from my marriage
to Sue Ellen.

Sex is an important part of my life. It always has been.
It had become an overpowering obsession with Sue Ellen.
I thought I had married a somewhat placid little girl who
was embarrassed by her oversized breasts. Not gradually,
but rather abruptly�since, after all, I'd been married to
her only four years when she fell in love with Mollie�
she turned into a lesbian.

But not a very clever one.

I don't know why she wanted to show me what she
and Mollie did. All I know is that she was an exhibitionist,
too. She wanted me to watch while she shoved her face
into Mollie's crotch and vigorously licked Mollie's
woolly pussy. Sometimes she would have to back off and
pull a hair out of her mouth. When Mollie had come two
or three times, they would change positions, and Mollie
would lick Sue Ellen.

They giggled and joked while they did it.

�"Dammit, you need a haircut. I'm getting a mouthful
of cunt hair."

�"So-o-o wet! It's dripping off my chin."

She wanted Mollie to watch when she and I coupled


THE SECRET 173

and wanted to watch when Mollie gave me head.

Sue Ellen and Mollie were kinky and got kinkier.

They wore their dog collars pretty much all the time. I
would come home from New York and find them naked
and chained together by some four feet of chain that ran
from one dog collar to another, locked on them with laminated
padlocks, and they would give me the key. They
thought it was sexy that they were chained together. I was
supposed to think so, too. I might have if they had been
a couple of hookers; but, dammit, Sue Ellen was my wife.

Then .. . I made some kind of excuse and stayed in the
city with Vicky three nights. When I came home, I found
that my wife had had both her nipples pierced�as, of
course, had Mollie. Both of them were in a little pain, and
I had to daub their tits with an antiseptic that stained and
stung. They wore rather crude-looking steel rings, something
like key-chain rings, which they called "training
rings." Fortunately, no infection set in, and shortly they
swore all pain was gone and the rings were comfortable.

After a couple of weeks they went back to the man
who had pierced them and had him install permanent platinum
rings, fastened with solder, that could not be removed
except by cutting them. They were about the size
of a nickel and as thick as the lead in a pencil. They hung
in visible holes in their nipples.

After that they never wore their clips. They didn't have
to. They hung tiny silver chains between their nipples and
suspended ornaments from them. Sue Ellen wore her engagement
ring hanging between her breasts. I am not sure
if she was mocking me or not.

Of course, they went topless all the time. I never
thought I would get tired of looking at women's boobs,
but I got sick of looking at Sue Ellen's and Mollie's.

Then they began to talk about labial rings. The man
who had pierced their nipples would pierce their inner
labia, and they could wear rings there, as described in The
Story of 0. They had read the book, and the idea excited
them. I did not bother to remind them that the rings in



174 HAROLD ROBBINS

stalled on O's most private parts were installed by and for
a man. There was no point in talking to them.
They even asked me to get the skin of my penis pierced
and to wear a pearl stud.

I'd reached a point where I confided a lot in Vicky. I
had to be careful about that. I had to avoid reminding her
that she was eighteen years older than I was�old enough,
as I had objected to my father, to be my mother. I had to
be careful not to treat her as a trusted older adviser.

She shrugged. "I know a young woman who wears
rings in her pussy," she said. "Gross!"
"The only thing worse, that I can think of, is piercing
your tongue," I said.
"If this kid wants to have her cunt pierced, she's weird,
Len."

I nodded.

Vicky smiled. "Hear what I've just said. I called your
wife, who's your own age, I suppose, a kid."

She put her hands to her own shaved crotch and separated
the fleshy lips. "To punch holes in there .. . Too
painful for me."

"I've got to get rid of her, Vicky."

"Both of them," she said.

Suddenly it occurred to me that we'd just said something
significant. If I got rid of Sue Ellen, did that
mean . . . ? I think it occurred to Vicky, too. We dropped
the subject.

My wife was not bright. Or maybe it was Mollie who
was not bright. More likely, neither one of them was.
They simply handed me my opportunity, carelessly. I
imagine they thought I would never act against them.

Maybe I should have tried to evict Mollie and worked
to save my marriage. Maybe I would have, if not for
Vicky. Vicky had taken the place Sue Ellen had once had
and could have had still.

I came home one night to find Sue Ellen and Mollie
naked and making video tapes of each other. They had
bought a camera.


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They put a tape they had made on the VCR and pushed
me down on the couch to watch it.

It was pretty tame. They had not yet figured out a way
to photograph themselves together, so the tape showed
only one of them at a time. Each one stripped. Then she
posed, showing herself off. They had focused on their
crotches, then on their anuses, each spread apart with fingers.
Even they were disappointed in the results.

"What we need is a cameraman," said Mollie.

They made me the cameraman. While I aimed and focused,
my wife shoved her face into Mollie's crotch and
licked her labia and clitoris. The camera recorded sound,
and they recorded talk as well as pictures:

"Oh, God! Oh, God!"

"You taste so good!"

"You gettin' this, Len? You gettin' this?"

"Don't care if he don't. We'll do it again."

"Yeah! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah! Ten times more."

Sue Ellen pulled back, and Mollie set to work on her.

Well... this kind of stuff has a certain sameness about
it. If you've seen one of these, you've seen them all; and
seeing the girls do it is no more a turn-on than the tape.

Hey! I'm not one of those guys that pretends nothing
can turn him on. I've been with guys at strip shows, where
an absolutely gorgeous gal is showing it all, and watched
a guy pretend he was just so, so blase. What's boring is
not the show but him. Who the hell's he think he is?

Sue Ellen turned over, and Mollie ran her tongue up
her ass. Sue Ellen moaned.
Am I gonna say I wasn't turned on? If I said that, who'd
believe me?
The two girls loved it. They loved to watch their tapes.
They commented on them as if they were drama critics:
"What we supposed to think you are there, Mollie? A
virgin?"

"You know, you lick sloppy sometimes."

"I wondered when you were gonna come up for
breath!"


They begged me, literally, to let one of them tape me
taking sex from one of them. I refused. Flatly.

When we had a stack of tape cartridges, maybe a dozen
of them, I began to take them, one at a time, into the city
to a duplicating service. I knew what those bastards would
do. They handed me back my original and my copy, and
they sold the dozen or so other copies they had made. In
a short time, Sue Ellen and Mollie were underground porn
stars, their bodies and faces and voices known to
thousands.

I waited a few weeks. Then I went into a tape-rental
store on East Forty-third Street.

"Have you got the Sue Ellen and Mollie tapes?"

"Sue Ellen and . . . ?"

"Mollie. Two gals doing it to each other. I hear they're
really something."
"Well... yeah, I think we got one or two of those. You
wanta rent one?"

"I want to buy one."

"I'd have to have a hundred bucks."

"How many do you have?"

"I think I got three. Y'understand, they're not new.
They been rented."

"I'll give you two hundred for the three."

"Uh . .. two-forty."

"Two twenty-five."

"Deal."

I went back to Connecticut and talked to a lawyer. I
handed over the tapes and told him to view them. In a
few days I talked with him again.

"What do you want, Mr. Cooper?"

"I want a divorce. Quick, easy, and cheap. I bought
those tapes in a store on East Forty-third Street My wife
won't want her father to find out that she�"

"I get you. Quick, easy, and cheap."

I let Sue Ellen and Mollie live in the Greenwich house
until the lease expired, that is, for a year and a half after
I moved out. I paid the rent for that year and a half. That


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was all she got from me. Her father at Hale & Dorr was
furious, mostly at her for letting me off so easy. He
guessed something was radically wrong, though, and
when Sue Ellen showed up in Boston with Mollie in tow,
he knew what was wrong.

How'd ya pull it off, for Christ's sake?" my father asked.
I told him, and he said, "Blood will tell. Uncle Harry
couldn't have screwed anybody better."

I grabbed his hand and shook it. "You think better of
me? I mean, seriously?"
He squeezed my hand. "Believe it or not, your mother
would think better of you, too. And I mean that seriously."


36


At twenty-seven, I guess I was smug. I thought I had some
reason to be satisfied with myself. I had escaped from my
marriage with little fuss and little cost. I was living with
a forty-five-year-old mistress whose maiden name was
Castellano. I was a rainmaker at Gottsman, Scheck & Shapiro.
Only two years out of law school, I was well on my
way to being made a partner in a law firm that was very
respectable, though it was not one of the preeminent firms
in New York City. No one else in my class had done any
better.

Of course, I was reluctant to admit that contacts and
luck had had a good deal to do with it.

Though we agreed that the firm would not become general
counsel to Cheeks, my father sent me several clients.
I did not get Charlie Han, but through Charlie I got two
of his subcontractors: sweatshop operators. Vicky helped
me bring in business besides Interboro Fruit. I need hardly
say that she had a wide circle of acquaintances.

My relationship with Vicky broadened and deepened.
We vacated the little love-nest apartment where we had
been shacking up and rented�that is to say, she rented,
chiefly�a much bigger place with a handsome view from


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the living-room windows of the East River and Roosevelt
Island.

Her son was seventeen now and knew about me, which
was a little awkward. His name was Anthony, and he was
always so called, never Tony. Vicky's widowed sister
moved into the apartment that had been Vicky's home,
shared the rent, and Anthony lived there with her. He had
dinner with us two or three times a week. Vicky went to
his school functions and took him on his tour of colleges.
The day they went to look at Yale, I drove them to New
Haven.

The relationship between Vicky and me was anomalous,
no getting around it. We had passionate sex together,
but neither of us ever spoke the word love. Our living
arrangements were as much like marriage as could be, but
I never thought of marrying her and was certain she never
thought of marrying me.

We were friends. Very good friends. I suppose we
didn't realize how good friends we were.

Cheeks continued to expand. I said to my father that
he had to learn to delegate authority, that he could never
build the really big business he wanted until he abandoned
his personal, hands-on management style. His response
was to lease a Lear jet, so he could fly farther, faster�a
typical Jerry Cooper reaction.

It was the first time I had any influence on the business.
He opened stores in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit,
Louisville, Raleigh, Durham, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale,
and Miami�all within easy range of the little jet.

Then, shortly, he let me influence the business in a
more important way.

Cheeks was a partnership, based on handshake agreements.
When my mother was alive, she and my father had
had a basic understanding that she owned half of his share
of the business. But no document said so, and when she
died her share was not listed as an asset of her estate. So,
far as my father was concerned, Sal owned maybe twentyfive
percent. He and Sal had drawing accounts and took


HAROLD ROBBINS

money out regularly. So long as neither of them took so
much as to alarm or offend the other, it was a good
enough arrangement.

While he lived, everyone assumed Meyer Lansky had
a small share, maybe five percent. He never demanded
anything, but my father sent him a check from time to
time, which he cashed without comment. When Lansky
died and his estate proved almost insolvent, his heirs made
no claim on Cheeks. My father sent a final large check to
help with the funeral and other expenses.

Anyway, partnership, I explained to my father, was a
dicey way to run a business. It involved too many uncertainties.
I convinced him to form a corporation.

On January 18, 1989, Gazelle, Incorporated was chartered
by the state of Delaware. The name was a play on
Giselle.

It issued ten thousand shares of common stock. My
father would own 5,500, which gave him clear control.
Sal would own 2,500. I would own five hundred. Vicky
bought five hundred. Unknown to my father, she endorsed
her share certificates to me immediately�though we did
not register the transfer on the records of the company.
That left one thousand shares as treasury shares retained
by the corporation.

My father was president and treasurer. Sal was vice
president. Vicky was second vice president. I was secretary.


The board of directors was: Jerry Cooper, Sal Nero,
Vicky Lucchese, Leonard Cooper, and Roger Middleton.
Roger Middleton was a vice president of Allied Chemical
Bank, where my father did his business and personal
banking.

My father was not accustomed to reviewing his decisions
with others, not since my mother died, anyway. Sal
often interfered, but he did not try to take a regular part
in running the business.

Now, I advised my father, he had to at least go through
the motions of doing business as a corporation.


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"Meaning I gotta do what?"

"It means you have to hold annual stockholders' meetings
and monthly meetings of the board of directors. You
report to the stockholders and directors, tell them what is
going on. They can make motions, and votes are taken.
Minutes have to be kept."

"Len . . . that's a lot of bullshit."

"I suppose it is. But it can make an important difference
some ways, some times. Like .. . suppose sometime we
wanted to borrow a lot of money�"

"Not likely."

"Suppose. A bank would run an audit, which would
include a look at the company's minutes."
"Jesus!"
I remember one meeting in particular, which had to do

with expanding our line of merchandise.

Although our signature line was daring, it did not include
much that could be called fetishist merchandise. The
nipple clips were about as close to that as Cheeks stores
came. What was more important, the line did not include
S-M items.

Sal raised the question in a directors meeting. "Hey, I
think we're missin' out on a line of business that could
bring in a bundle." He opened an attache case he was
carrying and took out a pair of shiny, nickel-plated handcuffs,
then a pair of leg irons. "They also come in dull
black," he said. "They sell cheap. For a little more money
you can get leather ones that strap on, with little padlocks
on the buckles. Hey, there's all kinds of stuff like this."

He withdrew more items from the attache case�
battery-powered vibrators, one of them shaped like an
oversized cock, hard-rubber dildos, a red rubber ball with
a strap running through it, to be fastened in a woman's
mouth as a gag ...

"Where'd you get those items?" my father asked.

"I picked this stuff up in a place on Forty-eighth Street.
He does a business in it."

"Stocking that kind of stuff would change the whole


HAROLD ROBBINS

character of the business, wouldn't it, Sal?" I asked.

"The business of a business is makin' money" he answered.
"I'm sayin' that for a small investment we can
add a line that will damn well definitely make money."

"There's lots of things we could do that would make
money, Sal," my father said. "I'm not sure I want to get
into any of them."

"It's related," Sal argued. "Guys that come in to buy
scanties for their girlfriends will�Well, some of them
will buy vibrators or handcuffs."

"There really is a brisk trade in this sort of thing," said
Vicky. She picked up the pair of handcuffs and examined
them intently, distastefully, wrinkling her nose. "But it is
true that getting into it would change the character of the
business."

Vicky did not keep silent in our meetings. She was a
businesswoman in her own right, long accustomed to saying
what she thought and to being heard. My father knew
her character well and listened when she spoke. Sal, who
was used to ignoring the judgments and opinions of
women, had learned not to discount what she said.

I remember what she was wearing that day: a pale orange
cashmere jacket over off-white linen slacks. Everything
under those items was Cheeks merchandise. I had
watched her dress that morning and could testify to that.

"It don't hafta change the character of the business,"
Sal argued. "Ya put this kind of stuff in a separate room.
Some customers will be lookin' for that kinda merchandise,
and they'll find it. They'll ask for it. Lotsa customers
won't."

"Well, I'd like to suggest something," said Roger Middleton.


We had learned that Roger was a great deal more than
a suit. He looked like a suit. He talked like a suit. But he
was a shrewd businessman, with lots of useful ideas. And
he was not unacquainted with our line of business.

"Shoot," my father said. "Let's hear your suggestion."
He was bored with the discussion. He intended to make


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a decision very shortly, and he had patience for just so
much talk.

"This is an expanding business," said Roger. "It has
huge potential. But, Mr. Cooper, you run it like a country
store, if you don't mind my telling you so."

"Even if I do mind, you just told me so."

"Here we have an example. Would offering�" he
paused and pointed at the handcuffs lying on the table.
"�those bring in more customers, or drive away some
who would be offended? We shouldn't guess. We should
find out."

"How we gonna find out?"

"Two ways. First, we offer that kind of merchandise in
a few selected stores and see how it moves. Also, we
should do a demographic study of our customer base.
Who buys in Cheeks stores? Men mostly? Or women?
Young or old? We interview a selected base of customers
and see how they'd feel about finding handcuffs in a
store."

To my surprise, my father agreed to Roger's suggestions.
"Okay," he said. "We'll try it in ten stores, say.
Then, how we gonna do these interviews?"

"We hire a consulting firm to do the demographic
study," said Roger. "That's their business: interviewing
customers. They can do it unobtrusively, and they will
know how to evaluate the answers."

"I wouldn't be surprised you got in mind a firm to do
this study," said my father.

"I do. Andersen, Brisk and Associates. There are other
firms, but I have seen their work, and they are pros."

"What will they charge us?" my father asked.

"That will entirely depend on how thorough we tell
them to be. I am sure it will be less than two-hundred
thousand dollars."

"You think it will be worth it?" he asked Vicky.

"I'd do it, Jerry."

"You wanta call them for us?"

We would be surprised by the outcome of both these
ventures.


37


Andersen, Brisk & Associates did the demographics
study. They conducted discreet interviews with one thousand
of our customers. Their interviewers were innocentlooking
little girls for the most part, but they had been
intensely trained. Every question they asked had been approved
by my father, by Vicky, and by me. The phrasing
was not accidental. Their tone of voice derived from their
training. Gazelle, Inc. paid $175,000 for the survey.

Many of the interviews were taped�after advising the
interviewee that it would be taped "for quality control." I
listened to a good many, and they were very discreet.

"Let me assure you that, though I am audio-taping,
you are not being photographed. I don't want to
know your name or where you are from. At the end
of the interview I will offer you a twenty-dollar gift
certificate. I will not try to sell you anything."

The interviewer then established the age and sex of the
interviewee and whether or not this was the person's first
visit to a Cheeks store.


THE SECRET 185

"When you visit a Cheeks store, do you usually come
alone or with a friend?"
"With a friend. After all, she's the one who's
gonna wear the stuff."

"Not in this store but in a few other Cheeks stores
a new line of merchandise has been offered lately. It
includes steel handcuffs and leather straps to restrain
a person in various ways. Would the presence of such
merchandise in a store make you less likely to go
there?"

"How is it the French say? Chacun a son gout?
Each to his own taste. What somebody else buys is
none of my business."

"Then would you consider buying, say, a pair of

handcuffs?"
"Ask the woman who's going to wear them."
"Would you wear them?"
"Might be interesting."


The results, ready in four months, were immensely in


teresting:
54 percent of our customers were men.
46 percent were women.
7 percent of our customers, men and women, were

twenty-five years of age or younger, 24 percent were in
the range twenty-six through thirty-five, 34 percent were
in the range thirty-six through forty-five, 21 percent were
in the range forty-six through fifty-five, 9 percent were in
the range fifty-six through sixty-five, and 5 percent were
over sixty-five.

In the stores where handcuffs and the like were offered,
11 percent of the customers bought them, and of the 89
percent who did not, only 8 percent said they wished we
did not offer that kind of merchandise.

Of the customers who did not buy handcuffs, etc., 46
percent said they might buy them sometime. Those customers
were about equally divided between men and
women. They also tended toward the higher age groups.


HAROLD ROBBINS

Sal had insisted on a question: If they were offered,
would you consider buying whips? Of men, 4 percent said
they would consider it. Of women, 11 percent said they
would consider it.

12 percent of our customers said they preferred not being
seen at our stores.
38 percent sometimes, or even usually, came with a
friend.

Of those who came to the store with a friend, it was
the friend who was going to wear the merchandise and
that friend took part in selecting what was purchased.

39 percent wished we would offer underclothes for
men.
Well... a lot of it was surprising, particularly that 39
percent thought we should offer sexy things for men.

Larkin Albert was enthralled. To design erotic scanties
for men! I had met him several times and now sat down
over dinner with him and Vicky at Four Seasons. Albert
was dressed as usual, as a woman. Vicky was there at my
father's insistence. Albert, he insisted, was not above
coming on to me.

Actually my father was kidding us, just to get Vicky to
meet the man. Albert was not about to come on to any
man. He might have tried to come on to Vicky, if she'd
been alone.

I suspected at the time that Four Seasons knew who he
was and what he was, and I wondered if he would have
been made welcome there if he had not asked for my
father's table. He was, anyway, among the most glamorous
women in the room, and was maybe the very best
dressed. I remember his "basic little black dress." I remember
that I could not have guessed he was a man. She
wouldn't admit it, but neither could Vicky�though later
she insisted she had known all along that he was a man.

"My! You say thirty-nine percent? Well! What a challenge!"



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"Challenge?" Vicky asked.

Albert grinned. "About seven percent of women�an
unscientific guess, not based on a study like yours�think
their boobs are too big. Maybe another ten percent think
theirs are just right. Which leaves eighty-three percent
who think theirs are too small. Men�I'd guess ninetyfive
percent of men wish their cocks were bigger, no matter
what size they are." He shrugged. "The challenge of
designing men's scanties is to make them think their undies
make them look bigger. And that is one hell of a
challenge."

He would solve the problem.

My father had chosen two stores in Manhattan�Midtown
and the Upper East Side�and one in Stamford, Connecticut,
one in Boston, one in Jersey City, one in Philadelphia,
and one in Washington for our experiment in
selling S-M merchandise.

He stocked them pretty much the way Sal suggested,
with steel handcuffs and leg irons, leather versions of the
same, and leather collars. He expanded each store's stock
of nipple clips. The printed instructions that went with
them suggested they could also be attached to the labia
or the foreskin of an uncircumcised male.

One item he allowed surprised me. It was a gag, consisting
of a soft rubber ball pierced with a narrow strap
that could be buckled behind the neck, making it impossible
to spit out the ball. Of course, the subject's hands
would have to be cuffed behind the back.

We wondered if we would not run into trouble with
local authorities, once we began selling this kind of stuff.
It didn't happen.

Sal visited the stores and asked for volunteers to model
these things. In every store, at least one young woman did
volunteer.

Some of these girls were pretty good actors. I went to
the Midtown store and watched a girl model. She stripped


HAROLD ROBBINS

to Cheeks scanties, black of course, and then the woman
manager cuffed her hands behind her back and locked on
a pair of leg irons. Finally she shoved the bright red ball
into the girl's mouth and tightened and buckled the strap.
The girl took it for a few minutes, stumbling around the
room and showing off. Then she began to struggle and
shake her head and moan. When tears began to run down
her cheeks, the manager unfastened the gag, and the girl
hung her head and wept. Another clerk came in and led
the "victim" out of the showroom. Five minutes later, out
of sight of the customer of course, the girl was laughing
and drinking a Coke.

The customer, embarrassed at having put an innocent
kid through such discomfort, bought a set of cuffs, shackles,
and gag. I wondered how he thought some other
young woman was going to react at being restrained the
same way.

Oddly, this line of merchandise generated curiosity in
Vicky and Melissa. One evening when we were having
dinner in my father's apartment, Melissa went in the bedroom
and came out carrying handcuffs and leg irons,
which my father locked on her. She blushed and grinned
and muttered something to the effect, "Don't knock it if
you haven't tried it."

Vicky volunteered that she would try it, just for a minute.
My father took the things off Melissa and handed
them to me. I fastened them on Vicky. She walked around
the living room, lurching and awkward. The one minute
was enough. She demanded I take them off, and I did.

In our own apartment, later, she told me she wanted to
try them again. I picked up a set at one of the stores. That
night after dinner she stripped to a pair of panties and a
bra, and I locked the chains on her. She tugged at the
cuffs, apparently pretending she really was a prisoner. She
did not stumble in the shackles, quickly gauging the
length of the chain and the length of the steps she could
take. She walked around the apartment. When she sat
down beside me I felt the crotch of her panties and found


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she had soaked them. I pulled them down, and we made
love without removing the cuffs or shackles.
She liked them�within limits. Sometimes she wore the
handcuffs and leg irons for a whole evening.

This kind of stuff sold. It was never a major profit center,
but Cheeks sold handcuffs, leg irons, and gags. The
nature of the business was changing.

Larkin Albert called us to his studio to see what he had
designed. My father, Sal, and I went to his little show.

Larkin�I had begun to call him by his first name�
had hired four models to show us the line he knew would
sell. Charlie Han had worked the items up for him. It was
all of ribbed combed cotton, a sort of knit with some
stretch in it.

Okay. The four models came out wearing Larkin's designs.
Each of them was a young man with a shaved and
lightly oiled body. One of them was muscle-bound.

The underwear was striking. The big-line companies
like Jockey had been selling slingshots for years. No one
would be shocked by bikini styles in men's briefs. Larkin
had designed thongs. Straps circled the hips to attach front
to rear. One of the designs had no rear. A string ran from
the back end of the pouch, up along the anus, and reached
the string coming around from the corners of the pouch.
Most of the styles, though, had a definite pouch in front
and a stretched cover for the butt.

My father shrugged and spoke quietly to me. "Colored
jockstraps."

"Maybe," I whispered. "But... I think there's something
more to it."

There was.

Standing before us at this point was a handsome young
man with an out-of-season tan and a hairless torso. His
male parts filled the pouch of his thong. In fact, they
stretched it.


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Ken," said Larkin. "Pull it down and let the gentlemen
see how you are hung."
Ken smiled nervously, but he pulled the thong down to
his knees.
His penis was nothing unusual. He didn't have a hardon.
He had a normal, circumcised penis.
Larkin gestured to him to pull the thong up again. With
the cotton stretched over him again, he looked huge.

Larkin had solved his problem. And the solution was
simple. The pouch was sewn to capture the scrotum as
well as the penis. In other men's briefs, and in jockstraps,
the scrotum and testicles were allowed to hang between
the legs. In Larkin's designs, the scrotum was lifted like
breasts in a bra. The pouch was filled, overfilled. And this
shoved the penis forward and made it look twice its real
size.

The other three models were told to shove their thongs
down and let us see what they had. One was bigger than
average. The others were average. But with their underpants
in place, they looked like they were hung like
horses.

Cheeks had another line of merchandise. It would prove
highly profitable.


38


JERRY

As my son Len became more and more involved in my
business, I told him more and more of the history until
he knew most of it. I did not tell him much about the
Boiardo feud in Philadelphia. I told him that the man who
paid for his first pair of Gucci loafers was a don. That
was, of course, Don Enrico. I told him the old man was
dead, but not exactly how he got dead.

That whole deal in Philadelphia was a pisser, an absolute
pisser. Don Napolitano�Ice Cream�was whacked
out. Don Enrico�the Chef�was whacked out. And we'd
had, supposedly, a cozy relationship with both of them.
Jimmy Lead Eyes told Sal we had to be nuts. Then Jimmy
Lead Eyes got whacked out. He was found with a cigarillo
between his teeth and a bullet hole between his eyes.

This kind of stuff wasn't supposed to happen anymore.
The problem was that men like Meyer Lansky and Frank
Costello, Cosa Nostra statesmen who had worked to keep
the peace, were gone. A new breed of dons had come
along, cowboys who wanted to make their mark fast�
amateurs compared to the old guard. John Gotti was typical
of them: reckless and flamboyant, impulsive and


HAROLD ROBBINS

cruel, swaggering. Some of the older capi complained he
was giving Cosa Nostra a bad name.

What was more, for the time being there was no capo
di tutti capi and no commission. There was no one who
could demand peace and enforce it. In a real sense, nobody
was in charge. Nobody could make rules and make
them stick.

In Philadelphia there was no one I could go to and say,
"Look, I'm not a made guy and don't belong to nobody.
I'll cooperate with anybody. Just tell me who."

If there had been anyone I could have talked to, I figure
he might have said something like this to me: "Okay,
Cooper. You exchanged the kiss of peace with the Chef.
Then you turned around and let Ice Cream collect dues
from your workers, plus you hired his truck to deliver
your merchandise. You're right when you say you don't
belong to nobody. You're fair game for anybody."

At least we would have known where we stood. As it
was, we didn't know from what direction the knife might
come. It was possible nobody gave a damn about us. The
dons had plenty to worry about without giving much attention
to four little stores selling women's undies. Both
dons had been a little condescending, after all.

We had four stores in Philly. Sal and I talked about
closing them. But to hell with that. We might get run out
of town. We weren't going to just run.

"It may be dangerous," Sal warned me. "Those guys
don't play fair."

"It may be," I agreed.

We weren't about to have other truckloads of merchandise
blown up. I sent Sal over to Jersey City to talk to
the heirs of Tony Provenzano. We arranged that our stuff
would be driven from New York to Jersey in New York
trucks driven by Teamsters. In Jersey the stuff was transferred
to other trucks and driven to Philly in trucks driven
by other Teamsters men who worked for the Provenzanos.
I figured none of the Boiardos, one family or another of
them, would want to provoke a gang war by attacking


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those trucks. And I was right. Our shipments went through
without trouble. The off-loading and reloading ran up our
costs, but it was worth it.

Okay, I was right. But I had fucked the Boiardos, both
clans of them, the Enrico Boiardos and the Napolitano
Boiardos�which were still active families in spite of
the fact that their dons had been whacked out. One time
the Enrico heirs highjacked a truck driven by a Jersey
Teamster�to test the waters, I suppose. The heirs of Tony
Pro took quick and effective revenge, killing a nephew of
Don Enrico.

What the hell? It wasn't my fault. If these people were
animals, they were animals. I didn't make them animals.
They didn't get that way from anything I'd done. You can
rationalize anything, anything at all, with thinking like
that.

Une evening I was sitting at a table in Bookbinder's. I
was negotiating with a painting contractor about repainting
the inside of two stores. He was supposed to meet me
for dinner, and he was late.

"Excuse me. You're Jerry Cooper, aren't you?"

I looked up into the face of the most beautiful girl I
had ever seen in my life, more beautiful even than Giselle,
though I am reluctant ever to say that.

I'm not sure what it was about her that made her the
most beautiful girl I had ever seen; all I knew was that
she was. She had high, visible cheekbones, and her jawbone
clearly defined her chin. Her face was long, her hairline
high, giving her a tall forehead. Her shoulder-length
glossy blond hair was simply styled to hang smooth, with
no sharp lines. She wore no makeup. Her eyes were blue,
light blue with little flecks of green. Her nose was straight
and short. Her lips were full and sensuous.

Her face was, in fact, flawless.

She was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans that rode
her hips and would have revealed her navel except for her


HAROLD ROBBINS

tucked-in yellow Izod shirt. She was, in fact, not dressed
for Bookbinder's, and was a little conspicuous there.

"I'm called Filly�Filly O'Reilly. My name is Philadelphia,
actually, but everybody calls me Filly, like a little
female horse. You wouldn't be aware of this, but I work
for you."

"Really? Where?"

"Walnut Street. Can you spare me a minute? I hope I'm
not interrupting or interfering, but can you spare me just
a minute? You're waiting for someone. I'll get right up
as soon as he�or she�comes in. Okay?"

"Sure. Sit down."

I was already fantasizing about her.

She sat down in the chair to my right. "I have a little
problem," she said, "and�"

She was interrupted by a waiter who asked if she would
like a drink. She hesitated. I said of course she would.
She asked for a martini up, with an olive.

"A problem with your job?" I asked her.
"Sort of. It's embarrassing, Mr. Cooper. My problem is
with Mr. Nero."

I nodded. I could imagine. I knew he banged the help,
and I could understand he would never overlook Filly
O'Reilly. "The problem is?" I asked, trying to sound sympathetic.


"When he comes to Philadelphia, he wants to .. . screw.
Wants to? He insists! And he hurts me, Mr. Cooper. He's
a monster. He's more than I can take. Did you know that?
Did you know he's got. .."

I knew what she meant.

"After he screws me, I'm sore for days," she went on.
"The last time I was bleeding and had to see a doctor.
The doctor said Mr. Nero had torn me. If he'd take it a
little easy, it might not be so bad. But he won't. And he
won't leave me alone, either. Honestly, Mr. Cooper, I'm
afraid of him. I really am."

I believed her. This wasn't the first time a girl had


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complained of Sal's size and vigor�though they usually
didn't complain to me.

"What do you think I can do about it?" I asked.

"I figured you'd have more influence over him than I
do. I've got none, almost."
"Why don't you just tell him no, you won't go out with
him?"

"I'm afraid he'll fire me. Anyway, he knows where I
live. He took me home one night, late. I'm afraid he'll
come to my door. Mr. Nero is a scary guy. I don't think
he'll take no for an answer."

The waiter brought her martini. She took a demure sip.
She was a girl of great contrasts. She sipped her drink so
modestly I wondered if she would not have drunk it
through a straw if she had one.

"How'd you know where to find me?" I asked.

"I overheard Louise calling for your reservation."

"How come I didn't see you?"

"I was in the back room, where we model things. I was
showing off some hard-on undies. You know .. . undies
that give guys hard-ons. Like that. We don't come out in
the main store when we're wearing undies and so on."

I frowned. I didn't know what to do about this, if anything.
What could I do, for that matter?

"You ever see his schlong?" she asked, her eyes widening.
"Did you ever see that thing?"

I nodded, quickly adding, "At a urinal," in case she
might get another idea.

She sighed heavily and shook her head. "Hey, I'm not
a virgin, Mr. Cooper. I've had 'em in me, plenty. And . . .
if you say anything to him, he'll probably tell you he
always gives me a nice present afterward. Which doesn't
make me a hooker. I'm not that, goddamnit. If he just
wasn't so fuckin' big! Or if he'd just take it a little easy.
And he . .. he's connected, isn't he? He's�well, he's one
of those guys. Isn't he?"

I had a dumb idea. "Tell you what," I said to Filly.
"When you see him next, tell him you're my girl and I


196 HAROLD ROBBINS

don't like it when you do it with anybody else."

She grinned. "Mr. Cooperrrr. .." she purred.

The painting contractor never appeared. I had dinner
with Filly, then took her to my room in the Rittenhouse.

When she was naked and I dropped my underpants, she
reached for my cock and squeezed it lightly, gently. "Now
there," she said, "is a schlong a girl could learn to love!"

I ran my fingertips over her boobs. They were big, but
not awkwardly big; firm, yet soft. They seemed to welcome
my hands, and when I squeezed them she arched
her back and chuckled. She had a great bush of pubic hair
that had never been trimmed, and when I ran a finger
through it and into her moist, slippery crevice she grabbed
my hand and led me to her clit. It was engorged. I mean.
Filly had an erection, about like what I had.

"I want you to fuck me out of my mind," she said.
"And I'm going to give it to you like you never had before."


Giselle and Melissa were by no means the only women
I'd ever had, but generally I stayed faithful to the women
who satisfied me. I had no formal obligation to Melissa.
We were not married and had never talked about marrying.
I cherished her, but I did not love her.

Before that night in the Rittenhouse Hotel was over, I
had fantasies of settling a nice piece of money on Melissa
and moving Filly into a new apartment in Manhattan.

I could smooth some of her rough edges... me, a
rough-edged guy if ever there was one smoothing off a
girl! But I could march her around New York, my twentytwo-
year-old chick with the perfect, youthful face and the
luscious body, dressed in style the way I could dress her.
Hell, I was sixty years old that year. I could put aside my
forty-year-old mistress and take a twenty-two-year-old.

Or maybe I could keep both of them! How about that?
Melissa and Filly, both! It was the dumbest idea I ever
had, but that was how much I wanted this girl. I thought
of myself as a sort of worldly guy, who knew his way
around. Filly needed no great skill to make a fool of me.


I had no great difficulty in getting Sal off Filly. To him,
she was just another piece of ass. He could have cared
less.

"Kiddo. When a cunt takes money, that makes her a
whore. I was dropping a couple hundred on her every
time. Not bangles and beads�cash."

"She claims you hurt her. And you know why, and
how. She says her doctor told her you�"
"She never said any such thing to me. I've had gals say
that. She never did."

I didn't know which of them to believe. I had never
entirely trusted Sal. To tell the truth, I wasn't even sure
he had really fired the shot that killed Jimmy Hoffa. At
that point I was ready to believe the girl, and I forgot
what Sal had said.

"Tell you something else," he said. "Some guy called
me. Name of Spencer. He told me the broad was bad
news. I told him to mind his own fuckin' business. What
was I gonna do, be intimidated by a piece of tail? Anyway,
I figured the guy had something in mind, so I
brushed him off."

I guess I had a little smarts. I did not move Filly to


198


New York to take Melissa's place. I set her up in aa
apartment on the Jersey side of the Walt Whitman Bridge,
and I made reasons to go down there often. In fact, when
I was on my way to Washington or Baltimore I would
pick her up and take her with me. I'd have the pilot land,
take Filly on board, and we'd take off again.

When Len married Sue Ellen, Melissa sat in the church
beside me, as if she was my wife. She went to the receptions
and parties with me, as if she was my wife. Modestly
and appropriately dressed for the occasion, she made a
favorable impression even on the partners from Hale &
Dorr. I know it surprised Sue Ellen's father to see how
the woman with me was not a model from a Cheeks
store�though I wish he could have known!�but a well
spoken, dignified woman. I might have wished it were
Giselle there beside me, but I could be proud of Melissa,
and I was.

Even so . .. Filly was waiting in a motel room near the
airport, and the day after the wedding and reception I sent
Melissa back to New York on the Metroliner and flew
Filly to Martha's Vineyard. So much for respectability.

There was on the Vineyard�and still is, for all I
know�what was called a "free beach," meaning clothing
optional. I had a camera with me, and I took the best
photograph I've ever taken in my life. It was of Filly
standing at the edge of the water on a foggy morning
when there was no surf. The water is visible behind her
but quickly vanishes in the fog so the background is grayish
white, even though it is a color photograph. She was
wearing only a pair of cutoff blue jeans that hung across
her hips and left her navel exposed. Her bare breasts
rested on her arms that were folded over her stomach. She
had raised her chin and was staring with half a frown at
something out of sight to the camera�maybe another
photographer behind me.

I had a magnificent color print made from that slide
and had it framed. It hangs in my apartment to this day.
I took Filly with me when I went out to Pittsburgh and


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Cleveland. Giselle and I had had a heavy curtain installed
behind the front seats of the Beech so we could have some
privacy back in the passenger seats. In a Lear jet you don't
need that curtain; the passenger compartment is separated
from the cockpit by a wall. Anyone who has ever flown
in a bizjet, though, knows you can't really screw, not
comfortably�unless you reconfigure the passenger space
for the purpose. In fact, we did it on the floor. That was
some great sex, too, on that hard floor. The plane was
almost always moving, up and down, side to side, or
both�which added to the fun.

Well, there's something else a girl can do for a guy.
Giselle did. It's said that Frenchwomen have an instinct
for giving head. I don't know if Giselle had an instinct or
not. I only know it was entirely natural to her, something
she expected to do and did without hesitation. Melissa did
it, too, though for her it was a concession. She didn't like
it, especially not on her knees, which she thought was
demeaning, though that was by far the best way to do it
in an airplane. Filly... ? I don't think she could have
faked the enthusiasm she brought to sucking cock. She
loved it! She'd lick my balls for ten minutes before she
ever moved her tongue up my shaft�until I was ready to
beg her. Then she licked my shaft, all of it, especially the
tip. Suck? It was only when she sensed that I was about
to come that she took me inside her mouth and licked and
sucked and swallowed.

In Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and other places I introduced
her as my chief model, and she did model the Cheeks
product line, especially to politicians who wondered if
they should oppose the introduction of this kind of store
into their cities.

Introducing the product line to a meeting of politicians
and "community leaders" had become a routine. We held
shows in hotel suites, all very much alike. Before Filly I
had hired a local model or two. Now I used her and hired
just one. They modeled a few of our more conservative
lines�nightgowns and teddies, bra-and-panty sets. No


200 HAROLD R08BINS

crotchless panties, no strip panels, no nipple clips.

Then we ran a film or videotape showing our stores�
showing how they were elegant and dignified. We showed
our windows, with nothing on display but our signature
cast-metal signs. We showed our counters and displays.

We presented each guest a small gift package.

The gifts were items that would fit any woman, unless
the fellow had a hugely oversized woman at home, and
we figured if he had that he would have a girlfriend somewhere
who would get the gift.

We did run into a problem. Occasionally a pol or community
leader was a woman. We gave her the same gift,
and usually they were flattered. In Baltimore one evening
we encountered a woman who must have weighed two
hundred pounds. After that we were careful to take along
a few gifts in our large-size line.

We encountered a different problem in Cincinnati.
There, an organization of women decided a Cheeks store
would be degrading to women, and they set up a picket
line outside our store on the night when we meant to
introduce it to the civic leaders. I went out on the sidewalk
to talk to these women, expecting to find a group of hefty,
blue-haired, bespectacled women. They were nothing of
the kind. Some were students from the University of Cincinnati.
Some were young wives. Most of them were attractive.


I spoke to them. "I would be very grateful if you would
come inside," I said. "I'd like for you to see the line of
merchandise we expect to sell. If you find it degrades
women, I will be very sorry. I sell the same line in most
of the major cities of the United States. I'm not going to
tell you that nobody objects, but very few do. Please come
in and let me show you."

For an opening like this we displayed no restraints, no
whips, no crotchless panties. That was routine with us.
The women came in, some of them reluctantly, and saw
our line of lingerie and swimsuits.

"Maybe," I said, "you would like to come in the back


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room and try on some of these items. I would like to tell
you that my late wife, who died of cancer some years
ago, wore Cheeks lingerie and wore it proudly."

A young woman�I have no idea who she was�spoke
up and said, "I'll try it"

In ten minutes about half the women who had come to
protest were walking around in our merchandise, posturing
in front of mirrors, and asking the prices of what they
had on. We sold them what they were wearing. We didn't
give any of them anything, so it would not seem as if we
were trying to buy them off. The young woman who had
volunteered appeared before our civic leaders a httle later,
wearing one of our international-orange swimsuits. She
turned out to be the wife of a city councilman.

A late-middle-aged woman I would not have thought
to be interested in revealing lingerie bought a sheer black
nightgown that exposed every square inch of her body.
She was wearing it when she said to me, "I never
thought�It's going to be like our wedding night, all
over."

As we went around doing the shows, I had to restrain
Filly from talking too much. Unrestrained, she would innocently
say things like, "I guess it shows a lot of ass,
but what it shows is what I'd want my boyfriend to see,"
or "Y'notice, it covers your twat okay."

One night in Cleveland a prominent Democrat and
clubwoman laughed nervously and said to Filly, "I'm not
sure I could show myself to my husband in that."

"He'll love it," said Filly.

"Well... I'm not sure. You see, my husband is a Presbyterian
pastor."
"If he's not a priest, he'll love it," said Filly.
She had a talent for saying things that, coming from

anyone else's mouth, could have been offensive. But she
seemed the very embodiment of youthful innocence�
with, even so, a vague suggestion of narrow-eyed sensuality.
Her figure was exactly right: newly ripened and as


HAROLD ROBBINS

nearly ideal as any I ever saw since the night in 1944
when I first saw Giselle on the stage.

She got propositions. She fended them off by saying
she was my girl. Most of the people who saw us had
figured that out anyway. Chief model. Anyone who believed
that believed in the tooth fairy.

Some nights we never slept at all, not at all, and
crawled out of bed in the morning exhausted. We learned
to hate linen sheets. They were abrasive.

For six or seven months I maintained my balancing act
between Filly and Melissa. I had fallen in love with Filly,
but like any love affair, this one had matured. Cracks
began to appear.

Her crude vocabulary, which had seemed so refreshing
when I first heard it, turned boring, then actually offensive.
Filly wanted to fuck. She wanted my dick in her
cunt. She liked to suck me off, and she liked to swallow
my come, but she also wanted me to eat her pussy, which
I did, and I loved every minute. She wanted me to grease
my schlong with Vaseline and ram it up her ass. She
wanted to do everything imaginable�some of it really
placing on me demands I could barely meet�and she
used the grossest conceivable words to express it. She was
Kitty all over again.

I don't know. I was sixty years old, then sixty-one. She
was twenty-two, then twenty-three. Thirty-eight years was
too much difference. Filly made me feel old! I couldn't
maintain the pace.

I could wish that had been all the problem.

For some reason, I took her fishing. We rented a boat
with crew on Cape Cod and went out to the end of the
Cape, where the fish all but jumped into your boat.

Filly loved it, or said she did. Her enthusiasm was infectious.
After that, whenever we traveled where a boat
could be rented and we could go fishing, we went. Later
that year I began to open stores in south Florida, and


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boating and fishing became a bigger part of our lives.
After sessions where I sold the idea of a Cheeks store and
Filly modeled, we chartered boats and went out into the
Gulf Stream to fish. We soon learned enough about boats
that in time we didn't charter anymore but just rented
boats and ran them ourselves. Eventually I leased a boat.
It was called the Key Princess.

At Key Largo. Yes, the same Key Largo as in the film
with Bogart and Bacall and Robinson. The guy who
leased to me kept the boat fueled and maintained. I had
to provide the food and drink, the fishing rods and bait,
and so on. Sometimes we got into Key Largo late and
slept on the boat, so as to get out early in the morning.

Fishing out of Key Largo, you had to go out to sea
some twenty-five miles so as to be outside the federal
marine sanctuary. I was very much an amateur with boats
and went out only when good weather was forecast, relying
on my compass and my marine radio to make sure
I was where I was supposed to be. If the radio advised us
of deteriorating weather, we reeled in our lines and made
for the Key.

I remember the morning of January 27.

We had arrived after ten the previous night and carried
our food and gear aboard. Then we fucked. I remember
that night as one of the few when Filly was easily satisfied.
We fucked only once, and we went to sleep. She was
edgy and restless. I might have taken note and been suspicious.
Yeah. I might have.

At dawn we cranked up the diesels and set out to sea.

There was little wind and only gentle swells on the
surface of the Atlantic as we headed eastward to get beyond
the sanctuary. My thoughts were of tarpon and sailfish,
though we had on one occasion hooked and lost an
eight-foot shark.

Filly was happy, and to make things more interesting
she tossed aside her white T-shirt and stood topless beside
me at the wheel. After a little while she broke out the rods
and reels. The drill was that I would lower the engine


HAROLD ROBBINS

revolutions to trolling speed, lock the wheel, and we
would sit in the fishing chairs and hope for a bite. It was
a routine we had followed many times, and we had
brought in bonito, typically, and redfish, and one decentsize
sailfish.

I throttled back, locked the wheel, and walked into the
stern. The bait was in a box there, and I opened the box
and bent over, ready to bait both hooks.

"Hi, Cooper."

I stiffened and turned. The voice was that of a man I
recognized as soon as I saw him: Lou Chieppa, the greaseball
hood who had held a knife to my throat in Philly
and told me the big man was Ice Cream, not the Chef.
This morning he was dressed in cutoff shorts and a blue
Izod shirt.

He stood, legs apart, menacing me with that ugly
switchblade I had seen before.

"Careful, Lou. He's no pushover," muttered Filly.

"Heh-heh, heh-heh. Pushover. Yeah. Push him over is
exactly what I'm gonna do. Just stand clear, Fil."
Filly. She'd set me up. My God, how long had they
been planning this?

Not from the beginning. I couldn't believe it had been
from the beginning. On the other hand, why had the painting
contractor not shown up at Bookbinder's? I knew why
she 'd shown up: the overheard phone call and so on. But
the contractor... ?

I looked at her and shook my head. I'd been stupid!

The bitch smirked.

Chieppa moved forward, cautiously, on the balls of his
feet.

They'd made a fatal mistake. Buddy had taught me to
fight with a razor, and over all these years I had always
carried a folded straight razor in my right pocket, the way
some men carry a penknife or a Swiss Army knife. Buddy
had rehearsed me a thousand times in the movement I
now had to make. It was like riding a bicycle�once
you've learned, you can always do it.


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Chieppa struck. Or he meant to. But I stepped aside.
And in one quick, well-learned, long-practiced movement,
taught me years ago by Buddy and practiced a thousand
times, I ran the razor across his throat, slitting it deep,
cutting off his breath as he choked on his own gushing
blood.

He staggered against the gunwale, where he was unbalanced
and half over the side. I grabbed him by the seat
of his shorts and heaved him overboard.

Filly screamed. Chieppa couldn't swim. He floundered,
splashing and throwing water�and, of course, gushing
blood in great black-red gouts. The boat, though moving
only at trolling speed, had opened ten or fifteen yards
distance from him. Filly threw herself into the ocean and
swam toward him as fast as she could.

I ran into the cabin and reversed the engines. I backed
toward them cautiously, aware that the propellers were as
great a danger as drowning. I was already wondering how
I was going to explain, back on the dock at Key Largo.

Filly shrieked. Chieppa was gone. He had disappeared
below the surface. Then she disappeared.
My God! One moment she was there, searching frantically,
and in the next moment she was gone!

Chieppa's blood and his thrashing had attracted sharks.
They were in a feeding frenzy. I didn't see what was
happening underwater. I am glad I didn't.

I, too, screamed. I stopped the propellers and slumped
over the wheel, sobbing.

I had to think. Nobody had seen us come aboard last
night. No one had been stirring when we eased away from
the dock. The owner of the boat would see that it was
out. He had no way to know if Filly was with me or not.

Chieppa? I guess he had been hidden somewhere all
night. Or maybe Filly had gotten up while I was asleep
and signaled him to come aboard. He couldn't make his
move until we were well out at sea. He could kill me then
and throw me overboard.


So far as anyone knew, I had taken the Key Princess
out alone. No one could know.

Still sobbing, I tossed Filly's fishing tackle overboard.
And her shirt. And her handbag. Finally, her clothes and
brush and cosmetics, which were in my bag. I dragged up
buckets of seawater and sluiced Chieppa's blood off the
gunwale.

I stayed at sea for eight more hours, crying and drinking
beer.

Then I went in.

My friend, the owner of the boat, took charge of the
Key Princess at the dock.
"The young lady not with you this time, Mr. Cooper?"
"Naah. You know how it is. She's off someplace with
her new boyfriend."

"I thought she really enjoyed fishing."

"I got another gal in mind who'll enjoy it even more."

Just to be sure of the appearance of things, I flew Melissa
to Florida a week later, and we went fishing off Key
Largo.

"Oh, this is marvelous, Jerry. Why did we never do it
before? You've got to take time off for fishing. I love this
place and this boat!"

She caught a respectable sailfish, and the owner saluted
me meaningfully when he saw Melissa and her fish. We
returned to fish three more times before I let the lease on
the boat expire.

I felt guilt. For Melissa. I'd betrayed her, and I couldn't
imagine she didn't know it. I resolved to make it up to
her, somehow.


40


All of which," Sal said when I told him, "doesn't tell us
who in Philadelphia was all that interested in having you
whacked out�that is the fuckin' question."

"Or why."

"Or why," he agreed.

"The guy who tried it�Chieppa�was with Don Napolitano,
Ice Cream," I said.

"Ice Cream has been dead so long that God knows who
Chieppa was with. Maybe he was just trying to make his
bones. Maybe he was just trying to make himself a big
guy. Incidentally, I've heard that he'd worked his way up
some. Not everybody gave him any respect. For a lot of
guys he was still the cheap little hustler. Some people
called him Don Cheap."

"Well, Don Cheap sleeps with the fishes," I said, nodding.
"Inside the fishes."

'Too bad about the piece of tail."

"I couldn't save her, Sal. No way. I couldn't. I couldn't.
I thought too much of her, and who knows what dumb
thing I might have done if I'd had a chance? But I didn't!
She was just... gone."

Sal put a gentle hand on my shoulder and offered com



HAROLD ROBBINS

fort. "Hey. She was something. But... me ... I'd have
slashed her, too." Then he grinned. "Any time I get it in
mind to whack out somebody, I'll come to you. You did
it great! Nobody's ever going to figure out what happened
to Don Cheap."

"He set himself up for it," I said glumly. "And she did,
too."

"They worked hard to set you up for it."

"What's next?" I asked.

"We gotta find out who and why," said Sal.

I went back down to Philadelphia and discovered that
my store managers regarded me with awe. That was a
strange and unexpected development.

Maybe they hadn't known that Chieppa had gone to
Florida to kill me, but they knew he had not come back
from Florida. His rented car was found in a parking lot
not far from the docks at Key Largo. In his one small bag
was an airline ticket from Miami to Philadelphia.

Maybe they hadn't known that Filly was supposed to
set me up for a hit, but they did know she had disappeared
just as Chieppa had disappeared.

The Dade County sheriff's office noted the finding of
an abandoned automobile and returned it to Avis. They
notified the Philadelphia police that a resident of that city
had abandoned a car in a parking lot at Key Largo. Philadelphia
notified Dade County that Chieppa had a criminal
record, including one felony for which he had done
time. And that was pretty much the end of that.

The disappearance of Filly O'Reilly was something
else. I was asked to talk to a Philadelphia homicide detective.
I sat down beside his desk, he smoked and drank
coffee, I drank coffee, and we talked.

"The story is that she was your girl. That you lived
together, in fact."

"She lived in my apartment. I didn't live there. I came
there once in a while. Not an unusual arrangement,
hmm?"

"Her name was not Filly O'Reilly. It was Filomena


THE SECRET

Florio. As a juvenile she did some time in the Detention
Home. The boys in Vice think she may have been a
hooker, but small-time and not enough to worry about.
Anyway . . . when did you see her last?"

I sighed. "I saw her at the Homestead airport. We'd
flown down there in my company plane, planning to
spend a couple of days fishing out of Key Largo, where
I have a boat leased. On the way down she talked about
how I was sixty-one years old and she was only twentythree
and how we didn't suit each other so much anymore."


"Cliche," said the detective dryly.

"Right. I was halfway relieved, to tell you the truth. I'd
started to wonder how I was going to break it off with
her. Anyway, she said her boyfriend was waiting for her
and she was going with him. That was a shock, but I
accepted it. I asked her who this boyfriend was and how
he knew she'd be at the Homestead airport that evening.
She said she'd called him. She said she was in love with
him."

"Who was the boyfriend? Did she name him?"

"No. But I saw him. That is, I had a glimpse of him.
While I was renting a car, I saw her through the window
with this guy. I was shocked. I'd suppose she'd be off
with some kind of big, handsome beach boy. This guy
was�well, he looked something like Fredo, Michael's
brother in The Godfather."

This was true. Lou Chieppa did look something like
Fredo�that is, like the talented actor who had played
Fredo.

The detective frowned. "I'd like to know where they
went," he said.

Which was the end of the intervention of the law in the
disappearance of Lou Chieppa and Filomena Florio. Actually,
they didn't much give a damn. You can get yourself
in that kind of circumstance: where nobody gives a
damn what happens to you.


210 HAROLD ROBBINS

But I did give a damn about why somebody had put a
hit man on me.

Something hung in the back of my mind and nagged
me. She'd come to me complaining that Sal was hurting
her with his enormous cock. He never denied he'd had
her; in fact, he said he'd paid her. So Filly�Filomena�
had started out seeing Sal, then switched to me. Why?

I asked my store managers. Louise, at the store on Walnut
Street, had hired Filly.

"She came from Don Napolitano. You know, the one
they called Ice Cream. I think she was his girl, to tell you
the truth. When he was killed, she was left without protection.
Mr. Nero saw her and decided he wanted her. I
mean .. . Mr. Cooper, she was something else again,
wasn't she? She's missing. Does that mean she's . ..
dead? Did she get herself into something too deep?"

"I wouldn't know," I said. "What about Chieppa?"

She snickered. " 'Don Cheap.' He came around. Listen,
Filly wouldn't look at him. What would a beautiful, sexy
girl want with the likes of him?"

"Didn't he get to be a pretty big boy lately?" I asked.
It was a shot in the dark. I had no idea if Chieppa had
become a big boy. Maybe the woman knew.

"Well... he tried to float the story that he was the hitter
who whacked out Don Enrico�revenge for the killing of
Don Napolitano. But nobody believed it. He'd have been
a dead man overnight if Don Enrico's family had believed
it. They satisfied themselves for his big talk by having the
crap beat out of him. It's just possible, though, that
Chieppa did have something to do with the death of Don
Enrico. The Napolitano Boiardos gave him a little business.
For example, the girls who work here are paying
him ten bucks a week."

"I thought I put a stop to that."

"You did. But Don Cheap was a bully. What's more,
he was here, and you were in New York."

"Why didn't you tell me?"


THE SECRET 211

"Same reason. He was here, and you were in New
York. Hey man ... "

I did a quick mental calculation. I had maybe forty
employees that Chieppa could have collected "dues" from.
Four hundred a week. Sixteen hundred a month. He
wouldn't have tried to kill me for that. No. Something
more had to be involved.

I don't believe in private detectives. In fact, I despise
them as a breed. But I hired one in Philadelphia, a woman
named Morgana Brock. What I wanted her to do was
check some entries in public records. She did, and we met
for lunch.

"Filomena Florio. . ." she said. "Also known as Filly,
with various last names."

"O'Reilly," I said.

Morgana Brock smoked as heavily as anyone I had ever
seen, even the Frenchmen I'd known in years long past.
While I was having a couple of drinks, she smoked four
cigarettes. Naturally she reeked of smoke.

"O'Reilly," she agreed. "She had a telephone listed as
Filly O'Reilly. I don't know what your interest in her is,
so I don't know if you'll care to know that she was in
and out of juvenile detention centers from the time she
was twelve. She grew up in the slammer, you might say."

"Why?"

"The first time it was just for being incorrigible. Truancy
and so on. Then, when she was just short of fourteen
she pulled a switchblade and cut a guy, nearly killed him.
So back she went."

"So what did she do?"

"She got married."

"Who to?"

"It's on record. Filomena Florio, retail clerk, to Louis
Chieppa, insurance salesman."

"Chieppa..." I said, trying to seem calm.

"Insurance!" she sneered. "He was a button man of the
Napolitano Boiardos."

"What kind of record did he have?"


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Well, she married him when she was eighteen. It
couldn't have been much of a marriage. I get the sense
they didn't acknowledge it. She rented a place in the name
O'Reilly, listed herself in the phone book as O'Reilly, and
so on. As long as she looked single, they could ran various
scams, blackmail and the like, and in a pinch sell her
as a hooker. Then about a year ago he went to jail for a
year�felonious assault. He was a knife man."

So. Since he put a knife to my throat, he'd spent a year
in jail, likely for doing the same thing to somebody else.

"With Chieppa in jail what'd she live on?"

"She was married to a soldier for Don Napolitano. They
take care of their own, no matter how small the guy. For
a price. I can't imagine what the price may have been."

I could. I talked it over with Sal and this time with Buddy.
"The Philadelphia families are nuts," said Buddy.
"There's no restraint down there."
"But, hey, what did I do to them that would make them
want to kill me?"
"I wondered about that," said Sal. "Until Thursday.

Thursday I think I got a clue."

"Which is?"

"I've been makin' some calls, tryin' to find out. Thursday
I talked to a Teamsters guy in Newark, one of the
old Provenzano crowd. There's been a sort of rannin' feud
between them and the Napolitano branch of the Boiardos
ever since we started haulin' our merchandise with Jersey
tracks. There's a lot of bad feelin' in the Napolitano
crowd."

"Enough to�?"
"It wouldn't take much," Buddy interrupted. "Not with
that bunch."
I sighed and shook my head. "While her husband was
in jail, she lived off me. But�"
"So why'd she want to kill her meal ticket?" Sal asked.
"My guess would be that Chieppa talked the Napolitanos


THE SECRET

into givin' him a big contract on you. A big contract.
Retirement. And it would have been without her. That
broad would never have settled in a little house in Fort
Lauderdoodle and contented herself with walking her dog
and playing bingo."

"So why'd she throw herself in with the sharks to try
to save Don Cheap?"

Sal grinned. "You knew her. She was one of those
broads whose emotions get in the way of their judgment
sometimes. Ten seconds in the water, and I bet she wished
she was back on the boat. Then the first shark grabbed
her."

"So now?"

"Who knows. They know you whacked out their hitter�
plus his wife. One of two things. If there's a next
time, you won't get it from a sleazeball with a knife;
you'll get it from a big guy. Or, could be this is the end
of it. How much are you worth to them, after all?"

Great! Something more to worry about.


41


LEN

When we formed the corporation my father was in his
sixties. He showed no sign of slowing down, certainly
none of retiring. I was not yet thirty. Vicky was in her
forties, as was Melissa. Of all of us, I think I was the only
one who was acutely conscious of our ages. When you
are thirteen or fourteen, someone seventeen or eighteen is
awesomely older than you. When you are twenty-two a
person of thirty is a little older than you. After, say, thirtyfive,
you feel contemporary with anyone within twenty
years of you, either way.

As I approached thirty I was happily aware that I was
involved in a devoted and passionate affair with a woman
eighteen years my elder. Her son, Anthony, had accepted
me and visited us often. He was only ten years younger
than I was and treated me like a brother�certainly not
like a stepfather.

Vicky showed no sign of growing bored, and certainly
she was the most exciting woman I had ever known.

She tried almost everything Cheeks sold. I remember
one outfit in particular. It was fire-engine red lambskin.
Bras that exposed nipples had been a staple of the business
for a long time. Now we sold what were called shelf


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bras, that is to say, underwire bras that shoved the breasts
up and out while leaving them entirely exposed. Panties
with slit crotches were common by the eighties, but the
red panties that went with this outfit had no crotch at all
and left the entire pubic area exposed. A silver chain decorated
with ornaments hung from the waistband, then disappeared
between the labia, emerging from the anus
where more ornaments appeared, then attached to the
waistband at the rear. The sheer red stockings were held
up by a red lambskin garter belt decorated with loops of
silver chain. Her shoes matched. It was a Larkin design,
and so far as erotica was concerned, he had outdone himself.


In fact, he was outdoing himself a bit much, of late. I
guess erotic imagination has its limits. The distinction between
erotic and grotesque is subtle.

Knowing the red outfit was one of my favorites, Vicky
wore it around the apartment many evenings. She loved
giving me access to her anytime and anywhere.

Well, what was sauce for the goose... By now we
stocked erotic items for men, not just the thong briefs but
blatantly lascivious straps in soft black leather that bound
the male parts and either forced them to fill a tight pouch
or simply to stand up, thrust forward, bare and displayed.
Vicky liked those things. I wore things like that for her�
rings or straps around the penis, leather cages for the cock
and balls, and so on. My father had long ago banned the
Arab strap, because he thought it could cause a dangerous
interruption of blood flow, but they were available, and I
had one. I wore it, never more than half an hour at a time.
It did interfere with circulation, and the organ hardened
and swelled unnaturally. We took it off before entry.

Two years after we began to live together, Vicky and
I were still as horny about each other as we had been that
first night.

So�

I came home one evening about seven. Vicky had been
at my father's office part of the afternoon, where she was


HAROLD ROBBINS

playing an ever-bigger role in the management of the
company. She had changed and was wearing a simple
white-lace teddy, not one of our radically daring models.
It exposed her hips and butt but otherwise was mostly
modest.

She poured me a Scotch and soda as usual, and poured
for herself something unusual: a glass of white wine.
"Sit down, lover," she said. "I have to tell you something."


I heard something ominous in her voice. I accepted my
drink and sat on the couch. She sat in a chair opposite
me, on the other side of the heavy glass coffee table.

"I have some news for you," she said. She drew a
breath. "To be blunt... I am pregnant."

She was forty-six years old. I knew she took the Pill. I
had seen her take it, many times. How could she be pregnant?
And . .. was a pregnancy safe for a woman her age?

I had never said I loved her, and she had never told me
she loved me.

I just sat there with my mouth open, stunned. I should
have said, "How very wonderful!" or "I couldn't be happier."


"We don't have to have it," she said quietly, solemnly.
"I'm not that good a Catholic."

I shook my head. "You know my wife and I�what we
did. I told you. I don't want to do that again, Vicky. If it
won't harm you .. . I want to have it."

"We're an odd pair to be having a baby," she said.

I stood up, went behind her chair, embraced her, and
kissed her neck. "There's something I've never said to
you," I whispered in her ear. Tears were running down
my cheeks. "At first I was afraid to, for fear it might...
spoil things. Then the failure got to be a habit. But I hope
you know. I hope you've known�"

"Yes," she whispered. "And I love you, too."

"Then that settles it, doesn't it? I love you, and you
love me, and we've made a baby. The decision is up to
you. But my choice is to go ahead and have it."


THE SECRET

Vicky nodded. "If it's okay," she said. "I mean healthy.
If the tests show it's okay."
"Vicky," I said, "if you and I are going to be mommy
and daddy, I think we better get married."

My father couldn't believe it. "I threw her at you�or
maybe I threw you at her�to get your mind off Tinkerbell.
But.. . Christ, Lenny! Didn't Vicky use the Pill?"

"A woman can take the Pill only so many years, and
she'd taken it a great many. Then her periods�well, they
became irregular. I mean, for a while she didn't have any.
So she stopped taking it. Then they came again, and she
started taking it again. So�"

"Well I think you're lucky. She's a whole lot older than
you, but she's one hell of a woman."

We were married by a justice of the peace. I don't have
to say why. The ceremony was held on the terrace of a
country club in Westchester County, witnessed by a hundred
invited guests and all the people in the swimming
pool.

Vicky was married in a rose-colored dress, since this
was not her first wedding. I wore black tie, as did my
father and Vicky's son. Melissa was bridesmaid and wore
yellow.

The presence of the Friends of Friends could not be
denied. Twenty times I was clasped in an enthusiastic abbraccio
by men I had never met. A score of other times
it was a painfully tight handshake, with a fervent "Mazel
tov." The Jews and Italians embraced each other and
traded greetings and jokes as if they had been best friends
all their lives.

Everyone was relieved, I think, by the simplicity of the
ceremony. We declared our love, and that was it.

The Jews adopted the Italian custom of putting an envelope
in the bride's purse, a copious silk bag she carried
for die purpose. After the reception and dinner and joyous
dancing, Vicky and I retired to our bridal suite in a Scars



218 HAROLD ROBBINS

dale hotel. We poured the envelopes out on the bed. To
my utter astonishment, we counted $58,000 in cash. No
glassware. No silver. No toasters. Money.

Our little daughter was born squalling-healthy. A new set
of envelopes appeared, containing enough money to pay
for the girl's college education�after it had lain in an
investment account for eighteen years.

We discussed her name. Vicky's maternal grandmother
had been Filomena, and she favored that name. For some
reason I will never fathom, that produced a hard emotional
negative from my father. He all but begged Vicky to name
the little girl something else. Vicky's mother was Katerina.
We settled on Catherine. Catherine Cooper.

Though we had other resources, we used the $58,000
as a down payment on a house in Greenwich, Connecticut.
If it had been understood that I was a Jew and Vicky was
Italian we would have been limited to one or two neighborhoods.
As it was, nobody knew it, and we bought a
house in the Riverside neighborhood, between the railroad
tracks and the beaches of Long Island Sound. Catherine
Cooper would grow up on a WASP street, apparently a
WASP herself.

My father glanced at the tall old trees, at the manicured
lawns, at the saltbox houses and the Saabs and Volvos in
the driveways. He shook his head. "Shit," he muttered.


42


Four years out of law school, I was made a partner at
Gottsman, Scheck & Shapiro. A man who had been there
seven years and was passed over left the firm. Others resented
me. But I was a rainmaker.

I was elected to the board of directors of Interboro
Fruit. Anthony Lucchese didn't like that, but Vicky spoke
to him as she spoke to everybody, in direct terms. "You
expect a gift. Well, you're going to get it, so don't sulk
if it doesn't come as soon as you'd like. It was your father's
business. Now it's my business. You're in line to
inherit it. But graduate from college first. I want an

M.B.A.
in administration."
Nothing else that I did in business was as interesting
as my small role with Cheeks. It was not just the line of
merchandise, which God knew was interesting, but I was
watching�now participating in�the growth of a major
new business that would soon explode into a billion-dollar
enterprise.
The number of stores grew. By late in 1991 there were
a hundred eighteen stores and national coverage. The line
had broadened immensely. I didn't like it, and my father
didn't like it, but the line of sado-masochistic merchandise


HAROLD ROBBINS

we offered became a big profit center, as Sal had insisted
it would.

Besides handcuffs and leg irons and thumb cuffs and
toe cuffs, blindfolds and gags, cock rings and spreader
bars, we sold an assortment of whips, including riding
crops and cat-o'-nine-tails.

The cat-o'-nine-tails was especially popular. Since it
was not a single-strand whip, it did not usually cut the
way a whip was all too likely to do. Users could develop
a skill for using it, causing just enough pain to be sensual
without risking injury. The flat strands landed across the
naked buttocks or across the shoulders, spreading the impact
over six inches or more of flesh, causing pain and
raising welts, yet not cutting the skin, drawing blood, or
making scars. Though some men took whippings, most of
the victims were women, and they were more likely to
show bruises on their wrists from tugging on their cuffs
than they were to show welts.

Personally, I couldn't imagine buying and using cats or
whips or crops. Vicky liked to be chained, but she would
not have submitted to flogging�and I would not have
flogged her. But�the world has all kinds of people. I tried
not to be judgmental.

"You're naive, kid," Sal told me. "It's a kinky world,
like it or not. Hey, you wanta see this kind of stuff in
use? I can take you and show you."

He did. One night he took me to an establishment in
Brooklyn. It was an ordinary-looking bar on the ground
floor, though occupied by more gays and transvestites
than was ordinary. He spoke to the bartender, who called
out the manager. Sal handed the man a couple of bills,
and he led us along a hallway to a door that looked like
the door to a supplies closet but was the entrance to the
cellar under the bar.

It was a cellar: damp and dark, with brick floors and
walls. It was divided into six or seven medium-size rooms.
The manager took us to one of those rooms.

A naked man hung by his wrists from the ceiling. He


THE SECRET 221

could have stood, actually, but his knees had buckled, and
so he hung. His ankles were chained together. He was
gagged with a rubber ball strapped in his mouth. Short,
narrow straps were buckled around his cock. A dog chain
some eight feet long was clipped to one of those straps.

He was being "disciplined" by a dominatrix who wore
a motorcycle cap with white bill and a pair of knee-high
boots, and that was all. She held the chain, and as we
walked in she gave a yank on it. The guy grunted deep
in his throat.

"Stand up!" she barked. "Stand up, you bastard."

He straightened his knees and stood.

She handed the chain to a man standing with his back
to the wall. This guy didn't work there. He was a spectator,
the same as I was. There were maybe ten of us, men
and women.

"Don't pull too hard. We don't want to pull it off."
The man gave it a tentative pull, just enough to elicit
a moan.
The dominatrix picked up a cat-o'-nine-tails. "Want a
whack?" she asked.
"Uhmm-huhmm," the guy muttered through the rubber
ball. He seemed to be begging for it.

She didn't pretend. She spread her legs, brought the cat
back across her shoulder, and gave the man a backhand
lash across his butt. The sound of the impact of leather
on flesh was sickening. A choking scream was stifled by
the rubber ball.

"Want some more?"
He was crying, but he grunted an affirmative and nodded
his head. She obliged him.

Well.. . the same kind of thing was going on in two
other rooms. Spectators watched in dumb fascination.
Whatever / might think of what I was seeing, these people
were turned on by it; and I knew some of them were
wondering if they could take it, or if they should volunteer.


A mannish-looking redheaded girl was being flogged


222 HAROLD ROBBINS

by another woman. Her back and butt were criss-crossed

with red welts.
"Lovers," the manager said. "They take turns. Next
week Wilma will be doing the flogging, and Carla will be
taking it." I could believe it. Carta's back and butt showed
white scars.
As we left, a lovely blond girl was being led in hand


cuffs toward one of the rooms.
"A lot of those people watching will get ideas from

what they're seeing," Sal told me. "They'll go home and

make a lot of sore butts."
In fact, we got a letter about how people used the cat.

Dear Sirs,

I thought you might like to read a story about how
my husband and I use our cat-o'-nine-tails. Weekends
we watch a lot of TV football. He likes it more
than I do, and we've found a great way to make sure
it's not boring for me.

What we do is bet on one of the Saturday college
games, one of the Sunday pro games, and the Monday
night pro game. We pick our teams. Whenever
my team scores, my husband has to give me five dollars
for every point scored. A field goal costs him
$15, and a touchdown with extra point costs him $35.
I'm building one hell of a Christmas fund.

But / have to take a whack from the cat for every
point his team scores. For a field goal I have to take
3 across the shoulders. For a touchdown with extra
point I get seven across my bottom. This makes the
games a hell of a lot more interesting. You can imagine
me rooting for my team's defense!

Notre Dame didn 't score at all Saturday, so I got
off with nothing. But on Monday night he had the
Vikes, and they scored 42! With the 17 whacks I'd
taken Sunday afternoon, I didn't sit down comfortably
until about Thursday.


THE SECRET

We like your handcuffs too, and I wear them dur


ing the games.

I don't know what we '11 do after the football sea


son is over. Basketball scores are too high. Baseball

we can work out.

Sincerely,

Matty L.

It was my suggestion that we publish a catalog and mail
it widely. Frederick's of Hollywood did. Victoria's Secret
did. So did a few other merchants of erotic merchandise,
some of them sleazy. They knew what they were doing,
though, even the sleazeballs. Their catalogs were printed
on slick paper, and the finest color reproduction was used.

We didn't list everything. In point of fact, we couldn't
have. We selected about two dozen of our best items, had
them photographed on handsome models by professional
photographers, and listed them in the catalog. We flew
models to Paris and London and to beaches in the Caribbean.
We spared little expense on this catalog. It was
erotic and classy and won widespread attention.

For the best example, we offered a black fishnet teddy
trimmed with black satin, with attached garters, to be
worn with lace-top fishnet stockings. We pictured it with
black panties, but obviously they were optional. Black,
patent-leather, stiletto-heel shoes completed the outfit. We
used two models to show this set. They were twins, and
one seemed to be looking out from a mirror�except that
she was reaching out and beginning to embrace her sister.

In the month after the catalog was mailed, we sold
35,786 of the teddies and almost as many of the stockings.
Just 10,449 of the customers who ordered the teddy also
ordered the panties. The shoes sold for $149, and we sold
just 8,337 pairs.

Other merchandise offered in the catalog also sold well.
Catalog selling was a whole new line of business.
From that point on, I received a salary as a director�
$40,000 per annum for my part-time participation.


224 HAROLD ROBBINS

My partner share of the firm's income drew me $54,000
from Gottsman, Scheck & Shapiro.

If I had been taken in by Hale & Dorr, I wouldn't have
been doing that well.

Roger Middleton, our director from Allied Chemical
Bank, lived in Greenwich as Vicky and I did�though in
what was called Back Country, a far spiffier neighborhood
than ours in Riverside.

He and his wife invited Vicky and me to dinner. Catherine
was by now old enough to be left with a baby-sitter,
so we accepted the invitation gratefully and showed up at
seven on a Saturday evening at an Edwardian stone house
that would have been called a mansion anywhere else but
Greenwich.

We sat down on the stone-paved terrace for cocktails,
and after a little discussion about the weather and so on,
Roger remarked, "Well, the three of us make almost a
quorum of the Gazelle board of directors."

His wife, Ariana�a tall, slender, blond woman with
prominent teeth�was unable to conceal her skepticism
over inviting into her home an upwardly mobile New
York Jew whose family business was intimate undergarments
and a woman who was as connected as a person
could get.

Roger quickly made it plain that he had not invited us
simply to be social. He had something on his mind.

"How much attention have you given," he asked, "to
our suppliers? I mean, are you aware of who makes our
merchandise?"

"We've got a very wide variety of suppliers," I said.
"Most of our merchandise is, in fact, made for us on special
orders."

"Much of it by Charlie Han," said Roger. "Or by
friends of his."
I nodded. "And you are going to tell me he's a sweatshop
operator. Actually, Charlie owns no shops at all


THE SECRET

anymore. He takes contracts for merchandise and subcontracts
to others."

"Yes, and those subcontractors subcontract to still others.
They try to build a barrier of insulation between the
sweatshops and the ultimate seller of the goods. But that
barrier is being broken. New York State inspectors and
federal inspectors are tracing the line from sweatshop to
seller."

Ariana joined the conversation. I was to learn that she
was an anti-sweatshop activist. She was on a crusade and
had influenced Roger to join her. "They violate every law
on the books," she said. "Wages and hours, sanitary conditions,
immigration .. . The only way to enforce the laws
effectively is to trace the merchandise up the line to the
ultimate retailer. And that's the tack that's going to be
taken."

"Are you saying we're liable to criminal prosecution?"

"It's possible," said Roger. "Of course we can always
defend on the rationale that we didn't know about working
conditions at the manufacturing end."

"Okay."

"But how much bad publicity can we take? The news
media will savage us. They don't much like our line of
business anyway."

He was right. Before long Kathie Lee Gifford would
be savaged, and her line was not erotic lingerie and S-M
devices.

"I'll take the matter up with my father," I said.

You think I'm dumb?" my father asked irritably when I
raised the subject. We were having dinner in Vicky's and
my house in Greenwich. Our Connecticut address had not
ceased to annoy him. I knew by then how he had vetoed
a prep school for me, and he thought our home in the
Riverside section of Greenwich was no suitable place for
his son, much less for Vittoria Castellano Lucchese Cooper.
(One evening when we were grilling steaks over char



HAROLD ROBBINS

coal on the patio�this was an enterprise he scorned, since
he believed that Peter Luger's Steak House was the only
place where you could get a steak really cooked right�
he took note of the friendly wave of a neighbor and asked,
"Y'think he'll wave hello when he finds out who you
are?")

"You've never seen a sweatshop, have you? Well, I
have, but I can't take you to see one because we don't
have anything to do with them anymore. New York
wages-and-hours laws? New York sanitary laws? New
York fire laws? U.S. immigration laws? None of that has
anything to do with us. Hey. The handcuffs and stuff like
that are made in this country, in little factories that meet
every requirement of those laws you're talking about.
Hell, police departments buy the same things from the
same shops, and so do the FBI and federal marshals. I
figured out the dangers in dealing with sweatshops a long
time ago. Hey, Melissa, pull off your panties and hand
them here."

The ever-complaisant Melissa reached beneath the table,
pulled off her G-string panties, and handed them to
my father.

He stared at the label, then handed them to me. The
label read:

CHEEKS

Made in U.S.A.
Exclusively for Cheeks


" 'Made in U.S.A.,' " he said. "Now, where in the

U.S.A.
you figure?"
I shook my head. I knew he was driving at something
significant, but I couldn't imagine what.
"Okay. Made on the Island of Saipan, part of the Commonwealth
of the Northern Marianas .. . a United States
protectorate. That's way-the-hell out in the Pacific, and I
don't know what kind of conditions their workers work
under�except this, except that I know they work under


THE SECRET 227

the laws of the Commonwealth. What's more, the U.S.
granted their legislature the right to make their own immigration
laws, so their workers don't need green cards.
They sell stuff cheap, and there's no import tax."

"It's stretching things a little to say this stuff is made
in the U.S.A.," Vicky said wryly as she squinted at the
label.

"Folks like that good ol' 'Made in U.S.A.' label," my
father said, smiling slyly. "Hey, Vicky, if you don't mind,
let's see what label you're wearing."

Vicky glanced at me. Since she could pull down her
panties under the table, she did and handed them to me.
That label read:

CHEEKS

Made in Hong Kong
Exclusively for Cheeks


My father glanced at the label. "See? We don't deal in
sweatshop merchandise. Everything we import is perfectly
legal under the laws of its place of origin."

"Legal, maybe," I said. "But when word gets out that
girls and women work twelve hours a day, seven days a
week, for thirty cents an hour�which sometimes isn't
even paid�and live in filthy barracks under armed guard,
like prisoners in a reformatory, the publicity may be ruinous."


"Son, you worry too much," he said.

Ihree weeks after that evening, our bedside telephone
rang after two in the morning.

I picked it up, and at first I couldn't imagine who was
on the line. All I could hear was uncontrolled sobbing. A
voice tried to break through, and I realized it was my
father.

I couldn't understand his words at first. Then I did.

"Melissa is dead!"


HAROLD ROBBINS

I drove to New York. Vicky would follow after she arranged
for a baby-sitter.

He had wakened to go to the bathroom and had returned
to bed to discover that Melissa was not breathing. She had
suffered a sudden, massive brain hemorrhage.

It was almost as if he had suffered it himself. My father
would never again be the same.


43


It was Vicky who conceived the idea of our flying out to
Saipan, then down to Hong Kong, to see if sweatshop
conditions were as bad as Ariana Middleton said they
were�so bad as to risk our becoming involved in a damaging
scandal. Actually, what she had in mind was that
my father should spend two or three weeks away from
home, to help him recover from the loss of Melissa. Traveling
to such an outlandishly remote place as Saipan, then
to so exotic a place as Hong Kong, would claim all his
attention for a while.

He and I were alone together for more time than we
had ever been since my mother died, and I learned more
about my father than I had ever known before.

He told me how his Uncle Harry had stolen his girlfriend
Kitty Benson and married her. He told me how
Harry had stolen the money from his parents' lifeinsurance
policies. He told me about rebuilding Jeeps in
Paris.

I asked him about my mother.

"Well.. . you have to understand it was tough times in
Europe. Even after / got to Paris, after the war had moved
on north, I saw girls scrounging in garbage cans for scraps


230 HAROLD ROBBINS

of food. I mean regular girls, trying to go to school and
so on. Your Aunt Therese had let a Kraut soldier feed her
and had suffered painful consequences. Your mother
made her living the best way she could. Yes, she danced
nude. The first time I ever saw her she was naked and
gorgeous, and I thought she was the most beautiful girl
I'd ever seen. But there was no funny business on the
side. We shared an apartment. At first that was just because
it was the only way we could afford such nice digs.
Then�well, you know."

During the flight I told him that Vicky was pregnant
again. "You've got to stop that," he said to me rather
gruffly. "She's too old for it. You'll kill her."

"I offered to have a vasectomy," I said. "She wouldn't
hear of it, said I was too young. But she had her tubes
tied."

"You listen to what she says. She's got good sense. I
knew when I introduced you to her that she'd be good for
you."

"I'll always be grateful that you introduced me to her."

"Okay. So don't mess around. It was all right to mess
around with Tinkerbell, but don't you do it with Vicky."
"I never have."
"I messed around on Melissa once. I regret it more than

anything that's ever happened to me except your mother's
death."

The travel was a burden on me, let alone on my father.
Too many hours in the air, even if we did go first class.
We spent one night in Tokyo, which was no great privilege,
and then flew down to Saipan.

Sweatshop conditions there were worse than Ariana
Middleton had described. Or so we assumed, since we
were denied access to the shops where goods that would
have our label sewn in were manufactured. The shops
were surrounded by barbed wire, as were the barracks
where the workers lived�young women, many from the
Philippines, others from wherever work was scarce.
Sweatshops. In New York, temperatures usually did not


THE SECRET

rise much above eighty. On Saipan they rose as high as
a hundred ten and sometimes higher.

But we stayed in a luxurious modern hotel, comfortably
air-conditioned, and took a late-afternoon dip in a pool
shaded by palms and other tropical vegetation. We could
have strolled on a white-sand beach.

I was conscious of the island's history, all but invisible
now. It had been a League of Nations mandate, assigned
to Japan. The Japanese had fortified it heavily. United
States forces had blasted it from the air and from the sea,
had come ashore, and had killed the tens of thousands of
Japanese in its bunkers. I remembered TV documentaries
showing flame throwers filling bunkers with fire, then seeing
burning Japanese running out. I could not remember
the numbers but knew that very many young Americans
had died taking Saipan.

After the war, the United States had governed it as a
United Nations trusteeship. In 1986 a Commonwealth of
the Northern Marianas was formed. Saipan and Tinian�
from where the Bomb was flown to Hiroshima�were
parts of this commonwealth. It elected its own governor
and legislature, but it was a United States protectorate.
That was what gave it the special status that allowed it to
produce goods in slave-labor conditions and ship them to
the States without restriction.

We were guests for dinner with George Alexander,
president of a company called Alexander Products. He
was the same man Charlie Han had mentioned in his testimony
when he was on trial for labor-law violations.
Charlie had testified he didn't know where Alexander
was, and maybe he didn't. Anyway, we now knew where
he was.

George Alexander was a cue-ball bald man and appeared
for dinner in a linen blue blazer, white shirt, and
rep tie. For him, Saipan was an exile. He lived well there,
making big money. It was a haven for George Alexander.

It had been he, that afternoon, who had refused to allow
us to see his working people at work. "They're excitable,"


232 HAROLD ROBBINS

he had said. "A visitor slows them down for an hour."

We had been sitting in his spartan office. An air conditioner
had been laboring in a window, but it was still
stifling hot, and we were sweating.

"Are the workshops air-conditioned?" I had asked.

He had smiled broadly. "These are tropical people," he
had said. "Air-conditioning gives them colds, sinusitis,
bronchitis, even pneumonia. They refuse to work in airconditioned
rooms. They think there is something unnatural
about air-conditioning."

"Why the barbed wire?" I had asked.

"Predators," he said. "Our workers are primitive young
women, and every pilot or ship crewman can take advantage
of them."

Over dinner he said something a little different. "I
wasn't exactly honest with you when I said you couldn't
see inside our shops. You see ... it is hot in the shops.
The girls don't want air-conditioning, but they do what
they do on their home islands�which is that they strip
down to the minimum. Men fly down here from Tokyo
just to see the naked girls working in our shops. Needless
to say, I do not put our girls on display. I guess some
operators do, but Alexander does not."

Bullshitting my father was not a good idea. We were
in Tokyo only one night before flying on to Hong Kong,
but that was long enough for him to wire New York to
cancel every contract with Alexander.

On the flight to Hong Kong he talked about Melissa.

"She was just the finest kind of girl you could imagine.
I swear to you, as God is my witness, that I never touched
her while your mother was alive. That's a tribute to your
mother, not to me. You know by now how things get. I
mean, domestic. I should have married her. We loved each
other. Why do the women I love die so young?"

He told me a lot more about his days in Paris. He made
me understand why Buddy was so good a friend.
"Every man would like to think there's somebody he
could count on if everything went to shit. Buddy and I


THE SECRET

don't have much in common, except some life experiences
I wouldn't trade for anything, but I know if the shit
hit the fan Buddy would be there for me. And I'd be there
for him. It's been an odd friendship, some ways. Buddy
just showed up one day when I was still very young, and
he befriended me instantly. I've often wondered why. My
good luck, as far as I'm concerned."

We landed at Hong Kong's adventurous airport, Kai
Tak, coming in on an approach so low over the city that,
as they used to say, you could look in apartment windows
and see what TV shows people were watching. That is an
exaggeration. But you could see if they were watching
TV or not.

We checked into the plush Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

I wish I could have spent more time in Hong Kong on
that visit. I have never seen a more fascinating city. It was
at that time still a British colony, but it was emphatically
a Chinese city. If we define a building over fifty stories
as a high-rise, there were at least two in Hong Kong for
every one in Manhattan. The harbor was one of the busiest
in the world, crowded with cruise ships, container ships,
and tankers, among which the little Star Ferries hurried
back and forth between Hong Kong and Kowloon. The
streets, subtropical and hot, were jammed with traffic. The
population exceeded six million people, the vast, vast majority
of them busy, well-dressed Chinese, jostling each
other as they hurried purposefully, uj^ajid^cJpJvJlA^pTnd

lmiiuw streets and along broad boulevards as well. No

one knew really how many people lived there because the

so-called I.I.s, illegal immigrants, were an uncountable ad


ditional element of the population. One had a sense that

anything was for sale there, anything, in a community

more cosmopolitan than any other I have ever seen.

But that was the impression of a mere three days in
Hong Kong.

My father was not so impressed. "Goddamned anthill,"
he grumbled. He did not understand that the city had one
of the most active stock exchanges in Asia, some of the


HAROLD ROBBINS

biggest banks in the world, and that half the world's billionaires
lived there. He did not understand, either, that
Cheeks, though an important customer to a few makers
of clothing, was small-time in Hong Kong business terms.

Our contact was Henry Wu, owner of a shop that made
some of our most exotic merchandise. Everything from
Wu was of meticulously high quality�and cost twice
what we had imported from Saipan. We met him for lunch
at Luk Yu Tea Shop, a dim sum restaurant. Dim sum were
little dumplings filled with all kinds of things: shrimp,
vegetables, chicken, fish, and so on. It was a typical Hong
Kong lunch.

Though my father and I did not guess it at the time,
Wu was honoring us to meet us there. I began to understand
it as I observed the businessmen at nearby tables.
So far as my father was concerned, we might as well have
been eating at McDonald's. But Luk Yu had stayed open
during the Japanese occupation and had been, for seventy
years and more, a distinguished Hong Kong restaurant.

"You are anxious to know the conditions in which our
goods are made," Wu said when we�that is, my father
and I�were struggling to conquer slippery dim sum with
chopsticks. "We will visit some shops tomorrow."

The next morning he took us in his car for a tour of
Hong Kong. They drive on the left there, in the British
fashion�which took a little getting used to. We had lunch
in a caf� on the Peak, the highest point on the island. We
spent the afternoon visiting three workshops.

Hong Kong sweatshops were nothing like the barbedwire
camps on Saipan. They were certainly not luxurious,
and they would not have begun to meet U.S. federal or
state standards, but the young women who worked in
them were not slaves.

"Any of these girls can quit her job at any time if she
doesn't like it," said Wu.

"As a practical matter�" I started to say.

"As a practical matter, she has to earn a living, but there
are many shops, and she can try others."


THE SECRET

"Looks pretty rough to me," my father said. We were
looking at a room where twenty or so young women
worked at sewing machines. The windows were open, and
oscillating fans blew air across the workbenches, but the
temperature had to be in the high eighties.

"They come here from the Philippines, typically," said
Wu. "A girl works five or six years and then goes home.
She may come back after a few months, for another five
or six years. Anyway, she talks about the working conditions
and the wages in Hong Kong, and her sisters and
friends come here looking for this kind of work. So, they
must not think it too bad."

"Don't they want to get married?" my father asked.

Henry Wu nodded. "They come here at age seventeen,
typically, work five or six years, then maybe another five
or six years, and go home to marry before they are
thirty�holding a dowry a young man has been glad to
wait for. They are paid in Hong Kong dollars, one of the
world's most stable currencies, and they deposit their savings
in Hong Kong banks."

"But when they go home�"

"They leave their money here, where the banks can be
trusted absolutely."
"Then how do they get their money out?"
Wu smiled. "Bank-machine cards. ATM cards. They

work the same as they do in the States. Internationally.
These are the nineties. We've had ATM cards for years."

My father thought he had been subtle and had not
shown his growing impatience with Chinese food and
chopsticks. Apparently he had not succeeded in concealing
his wish for Western-style food eaten with silverware,
since that evening Henry Wu took us to an excellent Austrian
restaurant called Mozart Stub'n, all but hidden on an
out-of-the-way street in the part of Hong Kong called
Mid-Levels. There we dined on asparagus for an opener,
followed by green salad, then beef and potatoes with turnips�
cooked so you could eat them, as my father put it
to me later�followed by a rich chocolate torte and coffee.


HAROLD ROBBINS

We drank two bottles of an excellent Austrian red wine,
then generous splashes of Courvoisier with our coffee.
"You don't run things the way they do in Saipan," my

father said to Henry Wu as we contemplated our brandy.
"That's a very different thing," said Wu.
"I've canceled our contracts with Alexander on Saipan.

I'm looking for someone to take them up."
"I can't match Saipan prices," said Wu frankly.
"We can negotiate," said my father brusquely.
"You don't want to risk the wretched publicity that's

going to come out of Saipan."

My father ignored the comment. "I'm going to have to
put someone out here for a time to talk about designs and
quality, shipments, and so on."

Henry Wu nodded toward me. My father looked at me
quizzically.
"I wish I could," I said. "But there's no way."


44


JERRY

I hired Charlie Han and sent him to Hong Kong. It was
a great choice. As a New York Chinatown Chinese, he
spoke the Cantonese that was spoken in Hong Kong and
southern China, not the Mandarin that was spoken in Beijing.
He knew the garment business and did his job well.
On the other hand, as I'd had to expect, word came back
before long that he was establishing a business of his own.
Next the word came that he had married a young Hong
Kong Chinese girl and had become a father. Charlie was
a professional hustler.

I couldn't leave him out there on his own, with no
supervision, so I leased a furnished apartment in Mid-
Levels. We used it as a headquarters. I would go out and
live in it for a week. Len would go. After Vicky had her
second child�a rambunctious boy they named Jerry�
she went out, too. Hong Kong became a sort of second
home for us, each visit an adventure.

None of us ever learned a damned word of Chinese. It
made Len think of Sue Ellen and remember the struggle
she had gone through to learn the language of a quarter
of the world's population. He tried to learn a few words
at least, as did Vicky. I never tried.


238 HAROLD ROBBINS

Something very strange�I got so I could read some of
the Chinese characters, even when I could not understand
the words. I learned the character for "exit," for example,
and could identify it without looking at the English word
below it.

I learned to do something I had done in New York
decades ago and had never done in recent years: ride the
subway. The Hong Kong underground was so clean and
efficient that I chose it often, even over the cheap little
taxis whose drivers often refused a tip.

I should not exaggerate my Hong Kong experience. Len
came to spend a great deal more time there than I did.

An odd thing happened. When I returned from Hong
Kong, a letter from Lyon was waiting for me. It was from
Giselle's sister, Therese.

Dear Jerry,

You will my bad English excuse as always. I am

think it is bad for us no seeing each other no time.

Giselle would have wished. I not see little Len since

he was small boy. I no family here no more. Could

you come and bring boy? Please? Write to say.

Therese

I did not write. I put through a telephone call to her.

"Therese . . . Len is a married man with two children.
Right now he's in Hong Kong on business. I'd like for
you to meet his wife and children. But I don't see how I
can bring them all to France. It has big problems."

"No? Soiree, Jerree. I had hope . . ."

"I've got a better idea. Let me fly you here, Therese.
Trip to the States, first class, at my expense. I'd like to
see you again. Len would like to. Plan on staying a month
at least. I'm alone, too. You can live in my apartment
with me."

"You would do this for me?"


THE SECRET

I arranged for her a first-class ticket to Kennedy. When
I finally recognized her coming out, I was amazed. Some
Frenchwomen age badly, growing fat and mustachioed.
Giselle, of course, had never done that. Well.. . neither
had her sister.

Therese had lines on her face, especially around her
eyes, and the flesh under her chin was loose. She was
sixty-five years old that year, two years younger than I
was. But she was slender and walked with a spring in her
step; and, wearing a rose print silk minidress, she had a
figure many women would have died for. She was
blond�not naturally so, I knew�and had had her hair
styled quite short. She had a flair for makeup, knowing
what was enough and what was not quite enough. Coming
toward me, carrying a small, simple case and letting a
porter push a cart with the rest of her luggage, Therese
was a vision of a self-confident, mature woman.

We kissed as we met there in the airport. I supposed
some of the kids who saw us smiled, even laughed at us
old people, but that kid rekindled a passion I had felt for
Therese long ago. We had spent an erotic night together,
years before I married Giselle.

"Zheree .. ." she whispered.

"Therese. It is so very good to see you!"

The second night in my apartment we slept together.
We had wonderful sex together. Therese had a flair for it.
I was ready to think it was a Frenchwoman's special flair,
but I don't think so anymore; I think she shared with
Giselle simply a healthy woman's flair. Maybe being
French subdued some inhibitions.

My wife's sister. I don't think Giselle would have objected
To the contrary. She had set me up to spend a
night with her kid sister, who had all but fucked me out
of my mind�back in France, in the old days.

Therese had not been entirely straightforward with me.
I needed only a few days to figure out that she did not
intend to return to France, unless she had to. She had
brought with her everything she very much cared about.


HAROLD ROBBINS

One night in the bedroom she opened an old, cracked
leather photo album and showed me some faded, browning
photographs.

"You know about zis thing," she said. The pictures
were of a brick-paved street in an apparently middle-class
neighborhood. A boulangerie and a boucherie were visible;
also, in one picture, the doorway of a church where
two priests stood laughing. I had walked on such French
streets a thousand times. But in these pictures a heckling
mob herded five crying, cringing, stark naked girls, heads
shaved, down the middle of the street. "Iss me," she said,
laying her finger on one image. "I am ninezeen year old.
Zey take sousands of picture."

If ever a girl looked utterly miserable, in whatever circumstance,
Therese looked agonized in those pictures. I
could not understand why she had preserved them all
these years.

"You have heard of zis thing, no? You know what I
have done and what they have done to me?"

I took her hands in mine. "I have heard of it, Therese.
The war. Many of us did odd things. A lot of time has
passed. I did things I'm not proud of. We all do."

"You heard," she murmured. "For all zese years I have
live where everybody knows about zis."

"And nearly everybody has forgiven," I suggested.

"Uhh .. . zey say. I not know."

We talked a lot and reached a decision that she would
stay in New York. Not only that. When Len came home
from Hong Kong, we confronted him with our decision
that we would marry.

I was going to marry his mother's sister. I didn't ask
Len if he liked it. I suspected he did not. I liked it, and
Therese liked it, and that was all that counted.

Therese and I left on a wedding trip. We flew Cathay
Pacific to Hong Kong, settled into my apartment there,
and made Hong Kong our base for visits to Bangkok,
Singapore, and Beijing.

I did not turn our wedding trip into a business trip.


THE SECRET 241

Except in Hong Kong, where we lived in our apartment,
we stayed in the best hotels. I had a sense that this might
be my last great romantic fling, and Therese had the same
sense for herself. We wanted to savor and cherish every
moment.

We did not carry cameras. Our eyes were our cameras,
our memories our film.

Therese was the only woman I ever knew who had
utterly no interest in Cheeks merchandise. She was a direct,
earthy Frenchwoman, and when the time came to be
intimate she simply stripped and that was that. The time
to be intimate might begin at six and go on till midnight,
and she might be naked all that time; but naked was the
way to think about love, work up to love, and make
love�not wearing some odd, impractical garment.

I could not complain, even if the erotica she scorned
were my business and my living.
"Ah, Zherree, you want I should wear zees, I wear zees,
but ees more beauty zan zee skeen?"
She called my cock "beauty." "He is very beauty. He
look good, feel good, taste good."

She told me about the German lieutenant who got her
in trouble. "He want marry me," she said. "He say he
send for me as soon as war is over. We live in Germany,
he say. On day when I was shamed I didn't know he
already dead. Shot by Resistance sniper in streets of Paris.
Zis I learn only in 1946. His family invite me to come,
live with them. I could not."

She knew more about me than I had imagined. Giselle
had told her. "She lucky girl," Therese said of Giselle.
"She dance tout nu, but she no fuck with Boches, not
never. Never enough hungry. Fortune always smile on
Giselle."

We stayed in the Far East for a month, then went home
to find that my son had created a problem.


242 HAROLD ROBBINS

By now our gross sales, stores and catalogs, exceeded
five billion dollars a year. Something like 60 percent of
our merchandise was imported, a little of it from France,
still, but most of it from Asia, chiefly Hong Kong.

As if anticipating my visits to Bangkok and Singapore�
and skimming off a little for himself, I am sure�
Charlie Han had arranged for some of the goods labeled
"Made in Hong Kong" to be manufactured actually in
some other places. The old Chinese city of Canton, now
called by its real name, Guangzhou, was a center for the
manufacture of knock-offs. Name a famous brand, and
likely you could buy a replica made in Guangzhou. The
Chinese factories in Guangzhou were especially good at
making vinyl and latex clothing. Black vinyl miniskirts
were a specialty, and were seen on girls astride motorcycles
all over the world. Latex clothes were a fetishist
line, not just for us but for others in our business, and
most of them were made in Guangzhou and sent all over
the world with labels saying they were made in Hong
Kong.

Our merchandise entered the United States across the
docks supposedly regulated by the New York Port Authority.
Other merchandise landed at Kennedy.

Returning from my wedding trip, I learned that my son
had executed contracts moving most of our imports into
container shipping.

I had seen the ships moving out of Hong Kong. I had
seen them arriving in New York. Huge, squarish ships
loaded with hundreds of sealed containers.

Sealed containers. That was the point. Since time began
the longshoremen and others had pilfered a certain amount
of merchandise off every shipment arriving in the port. It
was a tradition. With sealed containers�

'Wo, by God!" Len was a fanatic about it. "The time is
past! The time is past when every fuckin' dockworker can
dip his hands into our shipments and help himself to what
he wants. Business isn't being done that way anymore."

> We sat over dinner in Therese's and my apartment on


THE SECRET 243

Third Avenue. Things were more like they had been when
Giselle was alive: good wines, good food. Therese knows
the difference. We were four: Vicky and Therese, Len and

I.
My son was taller than I was, lean and muscular, with
dark-brown hair and intent blue eyes. His hair was thin.
He was going to show male-pattern baldness by his thirties.
He was personable and self-confident. He also had a
very clear vision of what he wanted his world to be. I
was proud of him. I was proud of the part I had played
in making him what he was. He was the best thing I ever did.


"What way is it different, Len?" I asked. "What's
changed?"

"Letting ourselves be ripped off by�"

"Longshoremen who pilfer a little out of the shipments,"
I said. "How many television sets do they take
out of a hundred arriving from Japan? I can tell you�
one. Doesn't a Toyota disappear off the dock occasionally?
How many fur coats disappear? How many cases of
wine? Len! It's the way business is done!"

"Not anymore," he said stubbornly. "It's changing. The
prosecutors are moving against this kind of stuff."

"Oh. Against the longshoremen who rip us off for less
than half of one percent. What do you think we pay to
inspectors to overlook all kinds of things? What do you
think we pay assessors to undervalue our merchandise?
What do we pay cops? Fire inspectors? And so on. How
many bottles of booze do we give away every year? My
Uncle Harry, a cheap grifter if ever there was one, used
to give a box of cigars and a bushel of apples to every
cop in his precinct at Christmas."

"We're not cheap grifters," said Len. "We don't have
to do business that way. We're big now, Dad. We don't
have to�"

I don't remember that he had ever called me Dad before.
It caught at me. But I had�for the moment�to
continue the argument. "We don't, huh?" I said. "We're


244 HAROLD ROBBINS

too big to make payoffs? Len, we don't own any congressmen.
Maybe we should. A company our size ought
to own a few. Some companies ought to depreciate senators
and representad ves on their tax returns�they're assets,
and they own them."

"Hey! This kind of cynicism�You're living in the
past."

"Okay," I said. "Let's put bribery out of the discussion.
Let's look at regular daily business. Every time you pay
an insurance premium you're paying off a scam artist. I
don't see any difference between paying our friends the
longshoremen a pittance to see that our merchandise
makes it across the docks safe and paying an insurance
company more than a pittance for guaranteeing the same.
Given a choice, I'll take the longshoremen. Then we pay
the Teamsters to see to safe delivery at our stores. And
we pay the goddamned insurers for the same thing. I can
walk down to the docks and say to the longshoremen guy,
'Hey, I got a little package comin' through. See it gets
through, okay?' And he says, 'Okay, Jerry, you got it.'
At the same time your fuckin' pious insurance guy will
screw me. And, son, business will continue this way. It's
not a thing of the past."

"You bringing in narcotics?" Len asked me.

"You think that, fuck you!"

"I didn't mean that. I'm sorry."

Our two women looked at us in dead silence. They
sensed that something was happening, something more
than just an angry argument. Father and son .. .


45


It was tough talk, I suppose. But, goddamn him, during
my wedding trip he had made a major decision about my
business without consulting me. He could have reached
me by phone, but he was so goddamned certain of himself
that he didn't think it necessary.

From that day something became certain: Either Len
was going to be a lawyer or he was going to be my heir
at Cheeks and take over the business as I, inevitably,
would have to give it up. The flesh is heir to a thousand
ills, of which life is one. Anyway, there wasn't room in
the business for both of us.

Sal was furious. "We've had cooperation from the longshoremen
from day one," he growled at Len. "Now you
tell me we're gonna cut 'em off. No way, little man. No
way."

"It's done, Sal," Len said, his blue eyes turning to ice.

"Then undone it. A man doesn't screw his friends."

"Friends don't steal from each other," said Len.

"One hand washes the other," said Sal.

"And picks the other's pocket while doing it?"

For a moment I thought my seventy-year-old partner
was going to take a punch at my thirty-year-old son. And


246 HAROLD ROBBINS

I realized Len would have decked him if he'd tried it.
I suppose I should have realized that my son was my
son. What else should I have expected?

How should I define myself? I'm the kid of a royal fucking.
I loved my parents, but I came from nothing. I shoved
my way into every opportunity I could find, and I made
the best of it. I got lucky in the end and took my larcenous,
heartless Uncle Harry for two million. I turned the
tables. Still, who can guess what other ways Harry fucked
me, that I didn't even know?

With only one or two exceptions, I suppose I've never
done anything I'm really ashamed of. And I've done only
one or two things that I've regretted. Like the way I fell
for Filly and cheated on Melissa.

But, Christ, am I going to let my son take over from
me, just like that?

He had a powerful ally in Vittoria Castellano Lucchese
Cooper. To start with, she was his fuck-off money. He
could walk away from his law firm or walk away from
me. With Vicky he had a comfortable living available to
him. And he had connections�connections independent
of me, independent of his law firm, and independent of
Sal.

I understood that he had not fucked the longshoremen
without Vicky's advice and approval.

"It's not the same anymore," she said to me quietly one
night over an after-dinner cognac and coffee. Len was still
at his law office, deeply involved in the immense amount
of paperwork necessary to register a new issue of corporate
securities. Therese listened but could not understand
the talk.

"Nobody is afraid anymore," Vicky went on. "I mean,
not in a big way. It's just street-corner stuff now. The day
has passed when Meyer Lansky could say 'We're as big
as United States Steel.' Oh, billions go through the rackets,
but it's a few thousand here, a few thousand there,


THE SECRET

selling coke and crack. The sellers use the stuff, too, and
are not usually victims of their own product. Only the
small boys are. The day of the really big boys is over.
Where would you find an Arnold Rothstein now? A
Lucky Luciano? A Carlo Gambino?"

"Gotti?" I suggested.

Vicky sniffed. "Don't kid yourself."

"Why?"

I knew she was aware of my attention on her sleek legs,
crossed under a Cheeks black vinyl miniskirt. She wore
things like that at home but never on the streets of Greenwich.


"It all depended on the omerta. Where would you find
today a man who'd die before he'd tell the secrets? They
testify and go into the witness protection program. They
write books! The omerta meant trust. When nobody trusts
anybody, there is no honored society, no men of respect."

"The longshoremen ... "

"The longshoremen can strike. And they will, too,
against container shipping. But where do they stand?
They'll be saying, 'We're striking for the right to steal off
the docks.' What kind of sympathy is that going to get?"

"And .. . you so advised Len."

"Len has to function in the real world. And the new
real world is different from the old real world."
"Sal?"
"Sal's an antique. He always reminded me of Bugsy
Siegel. He's an artifact of a gone world."

"Am I?"

She frowned at me. "No, Jerry, you're not. Unless you
choose to be."

Ohe was right about container shipping. There were
strikes, but the longshoremen and Teamsters lacked an
appealing case.

Residence in Greenwich carried with it access to
beaches on Long Island Sound. Therese and I could go to


HAROLD ROBBINS

the beach as guests. Neither of us could swim, but Therese
loved the beach and the gentle surf that the Sound offered.

We made a domestic scene. Little Catherine would toddle
in the edge of the surf, thinking she was chasing seagulls.
My grandson, Jerry, was still an infant. Vicky pretty
much stayed on the blanket with the baby. Therese wandered
along the beach, staying close to Catherine. Vicky
and Therese wore our international-orange swimsuits that
had seemed so scandalous when they first exposed
women's hips and butts on the beaches and at pools�a
cut that was now so common. Those suits had been the
sensation of our business at the beginning. When we went
to the Greenwich beaches, our wives weren't the only
women on the beach so outfitted. That damned swimsuit
was our impact on the world.

Len and I would go walking. He had discovered a tiny
rocky promontory that was submerged at high tide and
was left with clear tidal pools when the tide was out. Saw
grass grew thick on the whole area; it, too, was submerged
twice a day by the tide. Len enjoyed looking at the tiny
shrimps and crabs that lived in the tidal pools, protected
there against fish large enough to eat them�though not
protected against gulls and nasty little boys with nets.

We talked.

I said to him one day, "You were right about the unions
and container shipping. We don't lose merchandise to pilfering
anymore. But did you ever think of the other side
of that?"

"What other side?"

"In the old days, thousands of men went down to the
waterfront every morning and got day-jobs wrestling
crates across the docks by the sheer force of their muscles.
Now, the containers are moved by machinery. What do
you suppose happened to all those men? What happened
to them and their families?"

My son looked at me as though I were insane. "Have
you developed a social conscience?" he asked, almost
scornfully; and I recognized then that he shared the genes


THE SECRET 249

that had produced me�the genes, indeed, that had produced
Uncle Harry.

My father was a small-timer, and he always would have
been, kept that way by Harry if not by his own limitations.
Harry was a grifter, never big; he never could have been;
he didn't have the guts or the brains. That I had built a
billion-dollar business had been�luck? I couldn't think
of myself as cold, unfeeling ruthless. Luck had to have
had something to do with it.

The kid had had luck, the luck to be born to parents
who loved him�though I'd had that luck, too�and who
had the resources to get him a first-class education. But I
could see now that he was also a hard, self-focused man.

Fool!" Buddy said when I talked to him about it. "You've
always been shrewd, man. You've always seen where the
main chance was. Me, I couldn't see it. But you did. It's
smarts that got you where you are. So don't be surprised
if the kid's got smarts and is ruthless enough to use 'em."

"The kid's as cold as a whore's tit," Sal said to me.
"They always are, when everything's been handed to them
on a plate. He's a spoiled brat, Jerry. He never had to
work for anything, never had to take a chance. He'll never
cut some asshole's throat and dump him to the sharks.

Cause he hasn't got guts, either."

"He's a different sort of guy from what we are, Sal," I
said. "I've talked with Vicky about the different way
things are. Maybe it's a better way. Guys with smarts,
suys with education�"

Sal shrugged. "Yeah. Educated greed."


46


I was seventy years old. I didn't feel seventy. I'd quit
smoking a long time ago. I drank, but not all that much.
I'd never had a physical. I didn't want to know what a
doctor might find.

Maybe it was time to start taking it a little easier,
though.

Len pushed me. "Look," he said. "You've got no
second-level management. There's just you and then employees.
Personal, hands-on management is great for small
business. It doesn't work for a billion-dollar business like
Cheeks."

"We've got lawyers and accountants, designers and�"

He nodded impatiently. "And artists. And store managers�"
"And regional managers," I added.
"Uh-huh. Suppose you have a heart attack tomorrow.

Who runs the business while you're in the hospital?"

There was no point in arguing with him. He was right,
of course. And he anticipated what I was going to say. It
was inevitable. "You do, I guess."

"Until you're out of the hospital. And then?"

I had to make the concession. "I can't ask you to leave


THE SECRET 251

your law practice and come into the business anything like
full-time .. . unless I'm willing to .. . to give you control."


"And I can't afford to do it," he said bluntly. "You're
the head man. You could change your mind any time and
shove me out in the cold."

"You think I'd do that?"

"No, I don't think you would. But you could. Did you
ever put your entire life in the hands of one man? No
matter how much I trust you, I'd still be putting myself
in the hands of one man."

"We'll talk about it some other time," I said.

We reorganized. I stepped down as president of Gazelle,
Incorporated, and took the title chairman of the board of
directors and chief executive officer. Len became president
and chief operating officer. Sal continued to be a vice
president, though with no specific duties, as it had always
been. Roger Middleton left his bank and became vice
president of finance. Len contracted with a headhunter and
hired away from another company a man named Richard
Pincus to be vice president of the mail-order division; Len
also persuaded the lawyer he most admired, Hugh Scheck,
to leave their firm and become general counsel. Since the
loss of Len and Hugh all but ruined Gottsman, Scheck &
Shapiro, Len retained the firm as our outside lawyers,
which turned out to be a good deal for all concerned.

Len was a shrewd and sometimes ruthless executive. I
remember an incident that happened only a few months
after he became president:

Roger Middleton had persuaded Len to contract with
his wife, Ariana, as a consultant on sweatshops. I suspect
Vicky had something to do with it, too, since the two
women had become friends in Greenwich. Len put her on
with small compensation.

"Look," he said to me. "If we get some kind of shit


252 HAROLD ROBBINS

about buying sweatshop merchandise, we can say, 'Hey,
we've got a known anti-sweatshop activist looking into
things like that for us. Does any other company retain an
outside expert to check this kind of stuff?' "

But Ariana didn't take long to become a nuisance. For
one thing, she wanted an expense-paid trip to the Far East
to look into shop conditions. I was in Len's office when
he confronted her.

I should say that Len laid stress on having an imposing
office. From his several visits to Hong Kong he had become
interested in feng shui, the Chinese art of situating
buildings and arranging furniture to gain the most restful
and pleasing effects, plus taking the best effects of chi,
the mysterious Chinese life force I cannot begin to define.

Anyway, in his office, nothing sat parallel to the walls.
His desk was at an angle. He kept a big saltwater aquarium
filled with colorful fish that glided around in the clear
water. In a much smaller freshwater tank he had two piranhas.
Oddly, two small catfish prowled the bottom of
that tank, eating debris. The piranhas never attacked those
little fellows. One of them was missing a fin it had lost
when it tried. The water being pumped through the filters
splashed and gurgled. He had a profusion of plants. Two
parakeets chattered away in a huge wicker cage in one
corner of the room. The office was comfortable for him
and weird for me but, I imagine, formidable for others.

He had before him Ariana's memorandum asking for a
trip to the Far East.

"Why should we send you to Saipan?" he asked. "We
do no business with Saipan. We haven't since my father
and I went there and saw the kind of conditions you deplore.
Why should we send you to Hong Kong? My father
and I go there from time to time and inspect those shops
ourselves."

"Some of the merchandise labeled 'Hong Kong' actually
originates in Bangkok, Singapore, and cities on the
Chinese mainland. What are the conditions in shops in
those places?"


THE SECRET

"Thread is spun in shops around the world," said Len.
"Fabric is woven. Vinyl is brewed. Leather is tanned and
dyed. Buttons are manufactured. Steel is made. Handcuffs
are forged. And so on. Are we to look into working conditions
in every place where some component of our products
is made? Be practical, Ariana!"

"People are enslaved!" she shrieked.

"Not... by .. . us," he said coldly. "Where we've
found deplorable conditions, we've withdrawn our business,
in New York and in Asia. And . . . and now, Ariana,
I have another appointment." He tore up her letter and
tossed it in the trash. He smiled and locked his blue eyes
on hers. "Keep up the good work. Find out what you can.
I know you can learn a whole lot without going out to
the Pacific at the company's expense. Keep me informed.
I do read your memos."

He stood. The interview was over.

After I was, in effect, retired from the business, I bought
a home in Fort Lauderdale, on a canal, and Therese and
I went down for the winter. I really had enjoyed fishing,
and I took up surf casting. One night I had a chilling
nightmare that I reeled in the corpse of Filly. But I did
not give up fishing.

Len was on the telephone to me almost daily. He replaced
eighteen store managers and three regional managers.
He bought four stores that competed with us, at
least in a sense, turned two of them into Cheeks stores,
and closed the other two. He began to talk about going
public with.a stock issue�a subject on which I had to
defer to him, since I knew little about it.

Len had become single-focused. He lived and breathed
me business. He had developed an incredible discipline�
which he had not inherited from me.

In January I went up to New York for a few days to
Mend the annual meetings of the stockholders and directors
of Gazelle, Incorporated. It was nothing very fancy,


254 HAROLD ROBBINS

since I owned 5,500 of the ten thousand shares of stock.
Sal owned 2,500, Len and Vicky owned one thousand and
one thousand were retained by the company as treasun.
shares. We sat down at a table in a small conference room
Roger Middleton, Richard Pincus, and Hugh Scheck were
also present.

Len could vote 3,500 shares, actually, since before I
went to Florida I had given him my proxy to vote 2,500
of my shares�so Sal could not outvote him in a stockholders'
meeting, in case one had to be held suddenly or
in case one had to be held with me in a hospital. Though
I was present at the January meeting, I did not revoke the
proxy. If Len was going to run the company, let him run
the company.

As soon as the formalities of a stockholders' meeting
were finished, Len nominated a slate of directors. There
had always been five directors: he and I, Vicky, Sal, and
Roger. He nominated a slate of seven, adding Pincus and
Scheck. The slate was elected.

We adjourned the stockholders' meeting and convened
a meeting of the board of directors.
Len nominated a slate of officers. He omitted nominating
Sal as a vice president.
"What is this?" Sal asked angrily. "You squeezin' me
out, son?"
Len shook his head. "Sal, you've never functioned as
an officer of this company�"

"I was a partner."

"When it was a partnership, which it hasn't been since
1989. You rarely take part in anything. You rarely even
come to the offices. What difference does it make? You'll
still get your dividends."

"But my name won't be on the fuckin' door!"
"Neither will mine," said Len calmly. "Nobody's name
is on the fuckin' door."

Sal turned to me. "Proxy or no fuckin' proxy, you can
vote three thousand shares, and I can vote twenty-five
hundred. You goin' along with this?"


THE SECRET

"Sal. .." Len said with the air of a man whose patience
endures but is being tried. "Stockholders elect directors.
Directors elect officers. We've already elected the directors.
If they want you to continue as a vice president,
they'll elect you."

"Fat fuckin' chance," Sal grunted, glancing at the directors
seated around the table. Then he glared at me.
"Thanks, partner."

Son of a bitch! I'd been had by my own son. I had not
realized that the majority stockholder in a corporation
might lose the power to elect its officers.

I could have called for a special stockholders' meeting
a little later. But I didn't.

Late that night Sal was hauled to the Columbia-
Presbyterian Hospital in an emergency-squad ambulance.
By the time I heard of it and arrived the next morning,
he was going. It wasn't a heart attack. It was a stroke.

I sat down beside his bed. That was when he told me
he was the man who had pulled the trigger on Jimmy
Hoffa. That's when he told me that whole story, in a weak
voice but with an apparently lucid mind.

"Len's fucked me," he whispered. "Maybe you let
him."

"I didn't mean to fuck you, partner," I said quietly.
"You were right about one thing, wrong about another.
Len's as cold as a whore's tit. But he's got guts."

I wasn't sure Sal was conscious and heard me, but he
said, "Wait'n see."

"We've always been very different guys, Sal."

"Not so different. They will say kaddish for me. I hope
you can be there."

I was there. He was lowered into a simple earth grave,
in a simple pine box, and the mourners did our best to
follow and join in the words of the kaddish, the Jewish
prayer for the dead.


256 HAROLD ROBBINS

By now I was not sure if I could take control of my
company back from my son. Well... of course I could
have, but it would have involved a bitter confrontation,
not just with Len but with Vicky.

She and I sat down over a steak at Peter Luger's one
day when Len was in a meeting with the lawyers.
"There's no point in a bitter fight, Jerry," she said.
"You'd win, but you'd lose."

"Meaning?"

"Oh, you can take back control of the business. There's
no question about that. And then what? You know Len.
You know he won't sit in an office and draw a salary and
not run things. Not anymore. If you take back control,
he'll leave the company. And he won't go back to his law
firm, because its best men now work for the company."

"So, he'll�?"

"He'll come with me at Interboro Fruit."

"And be bitter," I said.

She nodded.

"He'll hate me."

"No, he'll never hate you. But he will be bitter."

"Meaning I won't see him and you as much, meaning
I won't see the grandkids."
"Meaning you'll have won but you'll have lost," she
said.

"I've already done something he won't like," I told her.
"I bought Sal's stock from his sons. Len bid for them, but
I bid higher. Tell him he'll get them in my will. Maybe
he'll get them sooner."

So Len stayed where he was. I didn't try to put him down.

He and Hugh explained to me their plan to take our
shares public. The more they explained it, the more I
didn't understand it. They wanted to raise capital. I understood
that. Why? Because they had plans for Gazelle,
Incorporated, to buy new businesses. They had targets.
Some of them, as I pointed out, were in no business even


THE SECRET 257

vaguely related to ours. Among the businesses they were
thinking of buying was the foundry that stamped out our
handcuffs, along with a hundred totally unrelated products
such as a respected brand of kitchen knives. They had
eyes on a chain of health-food stores�most of whose
merchandise was, in my judgment, nothing but scams. I
couldn't believe that they were also looking at a small,
Midwestern commuter airline.

Well, why not? I had tried to sell French spring water.

I felt control slipping away from me. It was damn
tough. I'm not the kind of guy who gives up on things.
But I supposed I could let my son have his head, so long
as he used good judgment.

Then suddenly I learned he wasn't using good judgment.


Her name was Susan Gillis. She was a thirty-four-yearold
public-relations expert who had worked for us for a
while and then had been brought into the company by
Len, who said he valued her skills.

She had skills, I have no doubt. But they weren't the
skills he admitted to admiring.

She had smoothly styled blond hair. Her eyes were dark
green with flecks of brown. Her lips were sensual. Her
understated makeup enhanced her beauty. She wore knit
dresses, short and tight, clinging to a voluptuous figure.
Damn her. She was an uncomfortable reminder of Filly.
It looked as if Len and I had similar tastes in women.

I had only to observe the significant glances that passed
between them to know what was going on. What was
more, I wasn't the only one who could see it.

I made myself comfortable in a chair facing his desk
and accepted a cup of coffee. Then I asked him, "What's
between you and Ms. Gillis?"

"Look," Len said. He loved to begin conversations by
saying "look," as if he were about to explain something
so someone he was not sure could understand it. "When
?iour chief business is Cheeks stores�"

"Our only business," I corrected him.


258 HAROLD ROBBINS

"When your business is selling our lines, you need to
build respectability. I mean .. . on Wall Street, we are
only tolerated."

"They like our money."

"Okay. But to build a diversified business, you need a
better image. That's what Susan is for. I send her to meetings
of bankers, brokers, and so on. She is our image.
And I like the image she's helping us build."

"You're fuckin' her, Len."

His eyes turned hard and cold. "That's none of your
business."
"You're fuckin' her."
"Dad. . . yeah, okay, I've been with her once or twice.

Just for fun."

"I was married to your mother for eighteen years. During
that time I never once had 'fun' with another woman."
"We're of different generations," he said, as if that

closed the conversation.

"You've been married to Vicky for three years. She's
the mother of your children. Of course . . . she's fifty years
old. Doesn't she take care of you anymore?"

"It's not that."

"What's gonna happen when she finds out? You think
she's not gonna find out?"
"You going to tell her?"
"I won't have to."
"What'11 she do, put out a contract on me?"
I threw my coffee cup across the room. It left a trail of

coffee across his white carpet, and shards of cup scattered
at the base of the wall where it hit. "Sal said something
to me about you," I growled at Len. "I deeply resented it
at the time, but he was right. He said you were a spoiled
brat who'd been given everything and never had to work
or take a risk for anything. He also said you were colder
than a whore's tit. It doesn't even occur to you, does it,
how much this is gonna hurt Vicky? I know she came on
to you hard when she met you, but she married you and
has been as good a wife as a man could ask for, and�"


THE SECRET 259

"You think you can run my life the way you've always
run the business�hands-on personal management."

"Until you're man enough to run it yourself," I said
coldly.

He was silent for a moment, then asked, "What do you
expect me to do?"

"Go out there and tell Ms. Gillis that she's fired. Tell
her the chief executive officer ordered you to fire her."

"/ can't do that!"

"Then the chief executive officer gives you another order.
Clean out your desk and be out of here in an hour."

"You can't do that."

"I own eighty percent of the stock in this company. If
I can't get you out of here in an hour, I sure as hell can
get you out a little later. You might use corporation law
to frustrate me for a little while, but not for long."

Len was tough. I had seen that when he faced down
the fag proctor-instructor at Lodge. The man had been a
bully, but Len literally destroyed him. I remembered that
now. I should have judged that correctly at the time�that
there is no honor in beating up cripples.

Len conceded nothing. "If you turn me out of the company,
how will either one of us explain that to Vicky?"

"I'll leave that to you," I said.

"But Susan ... I can't. Jesus Christ!"

I was adamant.

"If we fire her, she might sue for sexual harassment."

"Let's hear what Hugh has to say about that. He's our
general counsel."

Hugh Scheck lumbered in, walking with his two canes,
and dropped on a couch. Len described the situation very
briefly. It was apparent to me that Hugh already knew
about Miss Gillis

"There is a perfectly simple solution," said Hugh, fixing
a quizzical eye on the trail of spilled coffee and the shattered
cup. "We get rid of the young woman by promoting
her. You fired your regional manager in San Francisco.


HAROLD ROBBINS

Send Ms. Gillis out there as his replacement. She's capable.
She can handle it."

And so it was done.

Len remained as the company's chief operating officer.
But he understood which side his bread was buttered on.
I figured by the time I had to stop interfering he would
have matured; he would be ready to run the business on
his own.

Therese and I had dinner with Vicky and Len that evening.
A heavy snow was falling in New York, and I was
glad we had two tickets for Fort Lauderdale on a flight
leaving before noon the next day.

Len was glum, but I was in a jolly mood. When we
had our before-dinner drinks in hand, I raised my glass
and proposed a toast. "To the business that's gonna grow
beyond any dream I ever had. To my son, who's gonna
lead that growth. And�" I paused and laughed. "To my
Uncle Harry! Thank you, Uncle Harry, for teaching your
nephew to be a fucker and not a fuckee/"

The three others frowned. Vicky and Therese had no
idea what I meant. Len did, sort of. Vicky would insist
that he explain, and he'd have to use what was in his
genes to put a gloss on what I'd said. It was a good test.

I knew he could do it. He'd better use what was in his
genes, because he was going to face other problems
damned soon.


47


LEN

As more and more of our manufacturing shifted to the Far
East, I spent more and more time in Hong Kong. Our
apartment there was in Mid-Levels, a name that refers to
the mountainous nature of Hong Kong. The waterfront
districts of the city are called Sheung Wan, Admiralty,
Central, Wan Chair, and Causeway Bay. Upward there is
Mid-Levels, and far above is the Peak. The Peak is the
home of the beyond-luxurious estates of Hong Kong's �
many billionaires.

Our apartment was in a building on Arbuthnot Street,
about a hundred yards up the street from a grim, gray
stone building called Victoria Prison. A little more down
the slope one came to Hollywood Road. A short walk on
that brought one to an interesting feature of Hong Kong: a
mile-long escalator that carries people up and down
from the upper ends of Mid-Levels to the waterfront.

The apartment was on the twenty-third floor of a thirtystory
building. It was nicely appointed, with parquet floors
and modern appliances. Real estate is grotesquely expensive
per square foot in Hong Kong, so what was really a
luxury apartment had only one bathroom. The building
had just two apartments on each floor, and when the apart



262

HAROLD ROBBINS

ment across the hall became available, we took it too.

That gave us room for something we very much
needed: a maid and nanny. The girl we hired was, naturally,
a Filipino. She spoke fluent Spanish, reasonably
good English, and a bit of Chinese. We gave her a room
in the second apartment and generally left the doors open
between the two, though we locked them at night and
when all of us were away, since the elevator did stop in
the foyer between the apartments. The children played
happily back and forth between the apartments.

I converted the living room of the second apartment
into an office.
We also had enough space for Therese and my father
to live with us when they came out.

Our quarters were idiosyncratic but comfortable. We
spent four months of the year in Hong Kong at first, then
more.

We tried to avoid the summer months, when the heat

- and humidity were oppressive. We had to remember that
this was a subtropical city, with a climate not unlike Miami's.
Naturally, I spent much time with Charlie Han. He was
our man in Hong Kong, to begin with, but he was also
my entry into Hong Kong business.
Speaking Chinese was not the point. Every businessman
in Hong Kong spoke perfect English. Their secretaries
spoke English. The clerks in stores spoke English. The
only language inconvenience I ever had was with cab
drivers. Sometimes Charlie would scribble where I wanted
to go in Chinese characters, and I would show his note to
the driver.

Though my son Jerry, whom we called J. J., was not
yet three years old, Vicky decided he should learn Chinese.
The earlier a child begins to learn a language, the
easier it is for him. Therese thought he should learn
French, but Vicky pointed out that for every one person
who could speak French, fifty could speak Chinese. En



THE SECRET 263

glish and Chinese, she said, were the languages of the
future and would be essential in business.

I won't go into the next big question: whether J. J.
should be introduced to Cantonese or Mandarin. Vicky
decided that, too. It was to be Mandarin Chinese, which
eighty or ninety percent of the Chinese spoke.

Vicky began to absorb herself in Chinese culture�
something unhappily reminiscent to me of Sue Ellen.

"We've got to see something of that country, Len."

"We'll go on a tour sometime," I said.

"Sometime soon."

"Sometime soon."

I had business in China. With Charlie Han along to be
my interpreter, I made my first venture onto the Mainland
by boarding a train at Kowloon Station and traveling
about forty minutes through the New Territories and
across the border to Shenzhen.

That city was astonishing. In the course of no more than
five years it had grown from a town of a few thousand
people to a city of three and a half million. This was the
result of Deng Xiaoping's creation of the New Economic
Zone, a free-enterprise and free-trade zone in Guangzhou
Province. Capitalism flourished there as it flourished nowhere
else in the world�for the time being.

Shenzhen was a city of high-rise buildings and luxury
hotels, plus of course gridlock traffic made more difficult
by tens of thousands of motorbikes and bicycles weaving
through the lines of cars and trucks.

We had come there to meet a businessman by the name
of Bai Fuyuan, and we did meet him in the dining room
of our hotel. The Guangdong Hotel is as luxurious as the
Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, which means as luxurious
as any hotel in the States or Europe.

Bai Fuyuan was a rather ordinary-looking Chinese man,
with a great mole on his cheek a la Chairman Mao. I
guessed his age as fifty, though I had difficulty judging

ages of Chinese people. He wore an impeccably tailored,
tropical-weight, double-breasted white suit, with a


HAROLD ROBBINS

maroon paisley handkerchief in his breast pocket.

He ordered champagne, and champagne is all we had
to drink throughout the dinner. The very finest French
champagne, Dom Perignon Rose. Bottle after bottle. Bai
was paying, and we drank it like water.

"You have a highly successful merchandising operation
in the States," he said. "It is so successful that you have
a large amount of accumulated capital and are looking for
investment opportunities."

He then proceeded to review our financial position. A
Wall Street investment banker could not have known
more about us than Bai Fuyuan knew. He knew our gross
sales, our net profit, the details of our balance sheet, the
names and some of the characters of our officers and directors.
He knew where we were most successful�the
Northeast�and where we were least�the Southwest. He
guessed why:

"The Cowboy girls... how do you call them? You
have just made a deal to outfit Cowboy cheerleaders. A
very good move." I was astonished. No one was supposed
to know about that deal, which we had just made. "The
Cheeks merchandise is not suitable for wearing under
tight blue jeans. Incidentally, I would be interested in
hearing from you an offer to sell me, say, a thousand
dozen pairs of skintight blue denim jeans. I think I have
a market for them. If you have not a good, economical
source, then let us talk about a deal whereby we make the
jeans here and sew in the Cheeks label. The label is not
unknown here, you know."

Charlie Han spoke. "I understand there are Cheeks
knockoffs for sale in Shanghai."

"You should be flattered," said Bai. "Only the best is
knocked off for the Chinese market. Gucci, Hermes, Versace
. . . Hart, Schaffner & Marx .. . Rolex. The government
tries to control that. It is not easy."

"I imagine there is little market for Cheeks merchandise
in China," I said.
"Ah! Forgive me, but you are wrong. We are a nation


THE SECRET 265

of a billion and a quarter people. There are Chinese living
in the hinterlands who still live as Pearl Buck described.
There are men and women here and there who still wear
Mao suits�though have you seen any on the streets of
Shenzhen? Ours is a confusingly complex country. But I
can tell you there are scores of millions of Chinese who
make a market for Cheeks lingerie. Look at the girls on
the streets! What are they wearing? Black vinyl miniskirts,
Izod shirts. What do you think they want to wear under?
There is a market here for your line."

I had to admit I had not seen a Mao suit since I arrived
in China�though that had been only hours ago. I had not
seen oppressed people trudging to their jobs. I had seen
girls with helmets on their heads, clinging to the young
men at the handlebars of motorcycles. This was young
China. Somewhere, I suppose, there were girls wading in
the rice paddies. Not here.

"You were thinking about investment, Mr. Bai," said
Charlie Han.

"Yes. Investment," said Bai. "In the old days, the days
of Mao Tse-tung, we used to hear on the radio the endless
repetition of a.. . I suppose we could call it a mantra. It
went, 'A handful of Party persons in power, taking the
capitalist road...' They were criminals, as Mao would
have had it. But today, Little Bottle�"

Little Bottle was the meaning of Xiaoping.

"�has turned us all into capitalists. I can offer you
investments, gentlemen. For example, you considered investing
in a little feeder airline serving three or four states
in the American Midwest. Suppose I offer the chance to
invest in a regional airline that will serve Guangzhou
Province, with service to Hong Kong and Beijing?"

"We know nothing about how airlines are licensed and
controlled in China," I said.

Bai Fuyuan smiled. "Everything in China is licensed
and controlled by . .. how say? .. . dollars."

"Meaning?"

"Capitalism is a new idea for us�new, that is, since


266 HAROLD R O B BIN S

1949. We run by no rules. The only rule is: make money!
We have no labor rights, no women's rights, no worries
about pollution rules.... We make money the way your
robber barons did a century ago. Today, China is the best
investment opportunity anyone ever dreamed of."

"Difficulties in getting your profits out?" I asked.

"Well... some controls. Like all others, they can be
avoided. It is usually a matter of some money placed correctly."


"An airline," said Charlie Han. 'That impresses me as
a very big commitment for a company just ready to dip
its toes. What else can you offer, Mr. Bai?"

Bai shrugged. "I own a company that copies American
videotapes. Our government and yours has agreed that
will not happen." He shrugged. "If I don't, somebody else
will."

"I'm not quite ready," I said, "to get into that kind of
business."

"Or CD disks?"

"Or CD disks."

"We weave wool and manufacture lovely sweaters.
They are without labels. You can put in whatever label
you like. I can sell you as many as you wish, quality
assured."

I glanced at Charlie. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"It is something we can consider," I said.

"The label must, however, read, 'Made in Hong Kong.'
There are certain, shall we say, prejudices to overcome.
To Americans, 'Made in China' means made in Taiwan."
"Which means made in China," said Charlie. He was a
diplomat.

Bai smiled and nodded. "There will be some small
problems in getting the unlabeled sweaters from here to
Hong Kong. We can overcome those. And we can negotiate
a mutually agreeable price."


THE SECRET

After dinner and half a dozen bottles of Dom Perignon
among the three of us, Bai suggested a visit to a nightclub.
We went to a very expensive club, designed to separate
suckers from as much cash as possible. The lighting, the
decor, the furnishings, the food, the drink, the personnel:
all were superb and conspicuously costly. That club compared
to the Lido in Paris for elaborately staged shows.
Businessmen�a few Europeans and Americans, but
mostly Japanese�sat on couches with hostesses cuddling
up to them, drank champagne and tea, and ate hors
d'oeuvres, mostly fruit, from platters placed on low tables.
Though most of the hostesses were Chinese, a few were
Australians and even Brits. Blondes were especially
prized.

Though I didn't ask for her, I found myself attended
by a lovely Eurasian girl in a microskirt and halter. The
other men were also attended to by Chinese beauties. We
sat on a pair of facing, leather-upholstered couches, with
a knee-high table between.

"You American, yes?"

"I am American, yes."

"My father American. GI. You believe?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Many do not. Many .. . well, you know. Where in
America you from?"
"New York."
"Ah, New York! Is the most American place!"
She wasn't there to make conversation. She never said

her name. She let her skirt hike back until I could see her
panties. They were not from Cheeks.

Bai explained the whole deal. She could leave the club
with me and go with me to a hot-sheet hotel, or even to
the Guangzhou Hotel, if I paid the club a fee to release
her for the evening and then paid her whatever we might
negotiate. I would also have to pay the floor woman in
the hotel a fee for allowing me to bring a girl to my room.

"What a hell of a way to make a living," I muttered to
Charlie.


HAROLD ROBBINS

He was not concerned. He had already made a deal with
his girl, who was, oddly, a natural blonde, an Australian.

"It's the way the world goes, Len," he said. "You may
as well take advantage of it. If you don't, somebody else
will. You can't change anything."

What kind of guy am I? I don't know. Here was a pretty
little girl available to me for not a lot of money. Did I
handle it the way I did because of loyalty to Vicky? I'd
like to think so.

I paid the club's fee for taking out one of its girls. I
took her out on the street, where I hailed a cab. Before
she got in, I pushed into her hands a thousand Hong Kong
dollars�say a hundred and thirty American�and I got
in alone and closed the door.

I looked back as the cab pulled away. The girl turned
and went immediately back into the club.


48


From Shenzhen we went on to Guangzhou, the old Chinese
port city Europeans called Canton.

Charlie Han had hired a car with driver to take us there.
We drove along a superhighway as modern as any I had
ever seen in the States. The signs were in English as well
as Chinese. From the car as we drove we could see Chinese
villages that looked like Pearl Buck villages, except
for one thing: Over the roofs of what we would have
called hovels stood television antennas, the kind that used
to rise from the roofs of American homes before we got
cable. God knows how people lived inside those structures,
but they did watch television.

I wondered what kind of television they received. I
knew that in Hong Kong we received Hong Kong stations,
Chinese stations, and cable services such as CNN and the
BBC. I learned later that those flimsy antennae above
those flimsy hovels received only Mainland China stations.
Why not the others? "The others send out too much
false news," a man explained to me.

Well... I am sure the Chinese of Guangzhou Province
worried little, if at all, about the news they received on
their television. I'd watched their stations in Hong Kong


270

HAROLD ROBBINS

and had seen what the kind of programs they saw: a diet
of colorful drama and opera�incomprehensible to me�
that must have been immensely adventuresome and satisfying
to the peasants living in those drab villages. Charlie
Han pointed out to me that those very same peasants
in their hundreds of millions were a market for westernstyle
clothes�the sweaters we were talking about to Bai,
if not the scanties we sold as Cheeks clothes.

"China is a great and wholly confusing market," he
said. "Hey, Len. In the back country they sell girls. I mean
they sell them, as brides. They display them with placards
around their necks, naming their prices. Girls dressed in
Western clothes fetch the best prices. A girl put on sale
hopes to be able to stand in the market in a black skirt
and a white blouse, European style. She gets a better price,
and a husband who will respect her more for what he paid
for her, if she looks like she came from San Francisco or
New York�which of course none of them did. It's a great
market for black skirts and white blouses."

"I don't want any part of it," I said. I must confess I
would have liked to see one of those markets, but seeing
was as much as I wanted of it.

"Me neither. I'm trying to say something to you about
Chinese reality."

lyuangzhou, not Shenzhen, was a typical Chinese city. I
have seen Los Angeles smog. I never before saw anything

^-of the like before I saw Guangzhou. It was apparent from
ten or twenty miles out. It hung above the city like a low
cloud, and when you got into the city it limited visibility.
You had difficulty seeing tall buildings a mile or more
away.

I remember an imposing television broadcasting antenna
on a tall hill. The big clock on the railroad station.
Traffic, traffic, traffic. Homeless living under overpasses.
Guangzhou was a magnet for rural Chinese, who flocked
there to work. The government had essentially given up


THE SECRET 271

trying to regulate people's movements within the country;
the Chinese pretty much went where they wanted, and
coastal cities were where they wanted to go.

And�as at Shenzhen�endless strings of motorcycles
and motorbikes, most of them with helmeted, miniskirted
girls riding behind helmeted young men, white panties
often showing. Vinyl microskirts. Izod shirts�knockoffs
or not.

Then sweaty laborers in vest undershirts and straw hats.
Jobs being done by sweat labor that in the States would
have been done by machines. Little, steel-muscled men.
Grim. You wondered where they went when the workday
was over. What kind of lives did these slim and wiry guys
live? I guessed they were the source.of China's out-ofcontrol
population growth.

Our hotel was as fine as the one in Shenzhen, and in
fact had the same name: Guangdong, the name of the
province. Guangzhou knew how to take care of the foreign
businessman. I learned to drink ginseng tea. A carafe
of hot water, not ice water, waited for me in my room
when I returned at night, with assorted tea bags, including
ginseng. To this day I would rather have a cup of ginseng
tea at bedtime than a cup of coffee.

But we were not there to study China or to enjoy hotels.
In the lobby of the hotel the first evening we met another
businessman, this one by the name of Zhang Feng: a
small, muscular man at least twenty years younger than
Bai Fuyuan, meaning he was much over thirty. He had
been educated in the States, he said, at Oberlin College,
in Ohio. His English, though perfect, tended to sound
Midwestern. He smoked heavily.

We would have dinner together. Guangzhou, Charlie
had suggested to me, was a place to sample authentic and
exotic Chinese cuisine. I confessed a curiosity about
something, and Zhang took us to a restaurant where I
could satisfy that curiosity by eating a snake.

The restaurant was busy and rather noisy. On the way
in I had noticed cages of chickens, tanks of fish, and great


HAROLD ROBBINS

plastic tubs, like kiddie wading pools, containing shrimp
and crabs. To the Chinese�the Hong Kong Chinese,
too�fresh means alive when you order the meal. If it's
already dead, it's not fresh.

We sat down at a round table with a large pot in the
center. Our waitress, a pretty little girl in blue blazer,
white blouse, and blue microskirt, squatted to turn the
valve on a propane tank under the table and lighted a fire
that would shortly have a gallon or so of water boiling
briskly in the pot.

When I said I was interested in a snake, she beckoned
me to come outside. There, in cages I had not noticed
before, was an assortment of squirming snakes. I could
not have chosen an individual snake; my choice was simply
of one of three sizes displayed in the three cages. I
chose a medium-sized one. The girl spoke to the attendant,
and he reached in and grabbed a snake some three
feet long. I suppose it was not venomous, but it might
have been.

As we returned to our table we came upon Charlie and
Zhang Feng looking at the fish in an aquarium. Zhang
pointed at one: a big, dull-colored fellow. An attendant
dipped a net in the tank and captured it. It would be another
part of our meal.

Bottles of beer, white wine, and mineral water were on
our table when we sat down again. The Chinese do not
favor hard liquor.

"I understand you are seeking investments," Zhang
said.

"Not aggressively," I said. "But we are looking around."

"Let me suggest one," said Zhang. "In Houston there
is the remnant of a technology company called Sphere
Corporation. It assembled a desktop computer it called the
Sphere. Unfortunately, it also decided to write its own
operating software, also called Sphere. It rejected everything
Microsoft, including, of course, DOS and Windows.
It wrote its own spreadsheet program, its own word



THE SECRET

processing program, and so on. Its software was rather
ingenious, but it was incompatible with everyone else's.
Well... In the course of time it shared the fate of so
many little start-up companies in the computer field. Today
you can hardly find a Sphere computer�though
many who once used them have fond memories of them,
and the name is worthy."

"So you want�"
The conversation was interrupted by the delivery to the
table of plates of vegetables and meats. The drill was that
you picked up bits of vegetable and meat with your chopsticks
and loaded the little wire basket provided each
diner. The basket, the size of two tablespoons maybe, was
on a handle, and you used it to dip your food in the boiling
water. It would be ready to eat in half a minute or so, and
then you took it to your plate, where you would add your
choice of the sauces that had also been brought, and eat.
I watched Zhang and Charlie to see how it was done.
Zhang and Charlie called it "hot pot." They identified
some of the meats for me: squid, octopus, hare, beef, pork.
The vegetables were more difficult to identify. They were
Chinese. I did boil some mushrooms. I recognized those.
The others were kinds of cabbage and the like, and root
vegetables such as radishes, each with a distinct delicious
flavor. They dumped whole plates of vegetables and meats
into the pot, and soon we were boiling our food in a savory
soup. From time to time the waitress added water
from a teapot.
Everything was eaten without salt, of course.
"I want the Sphere name," said Zhang, returning to our
business conversation.
"You are going to make computers?"
"Nothing so glamorous. Nothing so consuming of capital.
Nothing in so competitive a field. What I want to
export to the States and elsewhere is a variety of microprocessors.
Microprocessors are the future. You know
very well that your automobile engine is governed by microprocessors.
They receive information from sensors and


274 HAROLD ROBBINS

adjust the engine accordingly, for heat and humidity and
a dozen other things, including altitude. All manner of
things will be governed that way in a few years: air conditioners,
furnaces, every type of appliance."

The snake was brought to the table. The head and tail
had been cut off, and it had been slit end to end and
gutted; then it had been washed out with rice wine, cut in
three-inch pieces, and deep-fried. The pieces were
drenched in a sauce. The platter of snake was put in the
center of the table to be shared by the three of us.

Some people say eating a snake is something like eating
chicken. I would say it is more like pork spare ribs. You
have to use your teeth to separate the meat from the ribs
and spine, and the meat you get is lean and a little tough
and has a perfectly agreeable flavor. There is nothing nauseating
about eating snake. If you did not know what it
was, you would eat it without hesitation.

"Sphere still has a very positive reputation in the
States," Zhang went on. "Many people who once used the
Sphere computer remember it very fondly."

"I know people who deeply regret the demise of some
old names that used to be important," I said. "Talk to
someone who used to drive a Studebaker or Packard."

Zhang nodded. "So what does all this have to do with
you? What I want is a license to use the Sphere name and
the Sphere logo. I am looking for a respected American
company to buy a controlling interest in Sphere. I will
supply money to buy the stock, most of it anyway. You
would have a minimal investment in it. You will recover
your investment from my licensing fees."

"Why don't you buy it yourself?"

Zhang smiled. "Texans don't like to sell their stock to
Chinese investors. It goes against the grain, so to speak."

I nodded. "So to speak."

"Something more," he said. "I will ask you to represent
our product to American buyers. The Chinese involvement
can be minimized. You will be able to label our
products 'Made in U.S.A.' Sphere has the capacity to at



THE SECRET 275

tach components to circuit boards. That the components
come from China need not be emphasized. Do you see?"

I did. But at the moment I was seeing something else.
The gas in our propane tank had run out, and our fire had
gone out. Our waitress brought a new tank and hunkered
down to replace old tank with new. As she squatted beside
my chair her microskirt crept up and up. She was wearing
no underwear, and soon she was hiding nothing at all. For
a full two minutes she stayed there, intent on unscrewing
and screwing the hoses. She was showing everything she
wanted to.

"There are details to be worked out, but I wonder if
this proposition has any interest for you," said Zhang. "If
not, I have other ideas to present that may have more
appeal."

"I reserve judgment on the Sphere idea," I said. "Tell
me about your other ideas."

"We can manufacture Cheeks merchandise in China,"
he said smoothly. "We can do it to your quality standards.
I know, however, the difficulties you might have with
American law, at least with the American news media, if
it should get around that you were selling products made
according to our standards of labor relations. So? Suppose
I were to suggest to you that we manufacture Cheeks
products in China for sale only in China?"

"You can do that without my approval," I said. "It's
being done to hundreds of American companies."

"Yes," he said. "I could. But there is a great enthusiasm
in this country for authentic American goods. Our people
know knockoffs from real."

"So what is the proposition?"

"We manufacture here, according to your designs and
standards. The merchandise goes out to sea as if it were being
exported. But the ship goes only from Guangzhou to
Shanghai, say. It enters the port of Shanghai with papers
saying the garments were made in the States. Then�"

"But what have / got to do with this? You can do it


276 HAROLD ROBBINS

without me. Chinese companies do, all the time."

"Except. . ." he said with a new smile. "Except that
you, sir, and maybe your father, make appearances in our
stores, bringing American models, and you endorse this
merchandise as if it had all been made in the States."

"Which makes me a shill," I said. "And my father. I
don't think he'd go for it."
"He's gone for a number of things in his day," said
Zhang. "Do you want to refuse for him?"

"What's in it for us?" I asked.

"We can negotiate," said Zhang. "Obviously you are
going to get a percentage off every sale of every item.
Let me assure you right now, I can sell twenty million
pairs of crotchless panties in one year. Twenty million!
That's only one pair for every thirty women in China. Mr.
Cooper, I can sell more than that. Look at those girls
riding on the backs of motorbikes. How they'd love to be
wearing Cheeks panties instead of Sears ones! We've got
a hell of a market here. What would you want? Five percent?
Six? Seven?"

'Ten," I said.

Zhang grinned. "We can negotiate."

"Frankly," I told him, "I am more interested in your
microprocessors than I am in this. There is too much politics
involved in it."

Zhang nodded. "Let us, then, focus on technology."

The fish he had chosen in the tank came now. I'd had
more than I wanted to eat, but the tender white meat of
that fish was irresistible. I was glad I'd tried the snake,
but the fish was superior.

When we had finished, Zhang leaned across the table
toward me. "Mei-ling let you see her pussy a little while
ago. Would you like her for dessert?"

Maybe I was a fool to decline, but I did. Charlie took
her. She spent the night in his room.

It was afternoon in Fort Lauderdale. I spent an hour on
the telephone with my father.


49


JERRY

Maybe I shouldn't have sent the kid out to the Far East.
Maybe he wasn't old enough. Maybe he wasn't mature
enough.

On the other hand, hell, what had I been doing when I
was his age�that is, in his very early thirties? Trying to
sell Plescassier Water�better said, trying to establish a
United States franchise for it. Still being screwed by Uncle
Harry but already arranging the great final fucking of
that old bastard.

Anyway, Len went over to China and called me to tell
me all this stuff about propositions he was getting. I might
have just said, "Use your own judgment, son," except for
one thing he told me. Christ Jesus, he ate a snake! What
the fuck had happened to lox and bagels with cream
cheese?

Well, what is it they say about the Chinese? That
they're the Jews of the Orient? We hadn't educated
enough Jewishness into Len. His mother's idea. I'm a
Jew. Len understands that and understands he's a Jew.
But...

Well, what am I talking about? It's a new world. I suppose
it's got something to do with being treated like Jews


HAROLD ROBBINS

over many, many centuries. We had to get cautious. We
had to use our brains. That's what it means to me: being
careful, being shrewd. Not getting blindsided. Oh, it happens!
We get screwed, like anybody. But maybe it's a
little tougher to screw us than it is to screw most other
people, because we've got centuries of caution in our
genes.

Therese was fishing off our dock, in the canal.

"I think we better make a run out to Hong Kong," I
told her.
"I am not so much like the place," she said.
"I got an idea Len needs help."
"Len .. . how we fly? What airline?"
We flew to New York and caught a Cathay Pacific

flight. Len was back in Hong Kong and met us at the
airport.

Though the two apartments we leased had two kitchens,
Vicky rarely cooked dinner and rarely asked the maid to.
Instead, they ate out almost every evening, leaving the
children* with Maria, the faithful Filipino maid and nanny.

That night Len introduced Therese and me to a hot-pot
restaurant in Kowloon. He did not order a snake or anything
of the kind�though I could not help being curious
about some of the things that were served to us.

"I talked to Roger Middleton and Hugh Scheck about
Sphere," I told Len. "I talked to them from Florida, and
during our layover at Kennedy, Roger came out and
briefed us. There'll be some more info, E-mail or fax,
tomorrow. It's an interesting company. You're way beyond
me when you talk about acquisitions. You know
that. And you're certainly way beyond me when you talk
about computers. But Roger and Hugh don't think the idea
is impossible. They think it may just be possible to acquire
control of Sphere. They think Sphere's people might
actually welcome it. They've been looking for an infusion
of capital."

"It's not so much the acquisition as it is what Zhang
Feng wants to do with it that bothers me," Len said.


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"You mean, just use the name and logo. Well... I'd
have to give that a lot of thought, too."

"The problem we have in China," Len said, "is that
these new millionaires operate like our own old-time robber
barons. There's no regulation in China. Put it another
way. There's no such thing as business ethics."

"Roger and Hugh said pretty much the same thing," I
told him. "It's a different world, they say."

"Could it be as bad as what you encountered with the
Boiardos in Philadelphia?" Vicky asked ingenuously. "Do
they blow each other to pieces, cut each other down with
lupos?"

She might have punched me. "How much do you know
about that, Vicky?" I asked.
"I know about Don Enrico and Don Napolitano," she
said.

"And . . . ?"

She shook her head. Whether that meant she didn't
know about Filly and Chieppa or she did know and didn't
choose to talk about it, I could not guess.

"What are you talking about?" Len asked.

Vicky answered. "A long time ago your father had
some trouble in Philadelphia. It was a long time ago, and
it's all over. It's not worth talking about."

I decided to change the subject. "The other idea .. . our
letting them manufacture our line in China and sew in our
labels. I could buy it if we had quality control."

'They'd find ways around that," Len said.
"So what do we do, turn down all these guys? I thought
the Far East was supposed to be our future."

Len had been thinking. "I figure the Sphere idea may
have some merit. Suppose we let Zhang Feng put in some
money to help us acquire it. We cooperate on letting him
import components into the States to install on circuit
boards made by Sphere. Sphere can sell the miniprocessors
as 'Made in U.S.A.' because nothing in 'Made in

S.A.' says components don't come from somewhere
dse."


HAROLD ROBB1NS

"I see one big problem," I told him. "You and I don't
know from computers. Either we find a guy at Sphere we
can trust absolutely, or we gotta hire somebody."

"If we are going to diversify, we'll have to build a staff
that can help us with our new businesses," he said. He'd
been thinking about it, plainly.

The chief thing on my mind that night was how much
Vicky knew about Filly and Don Cheap. I had to find a
way to have a private word with her.

I couldn't that night, but in the morning Len took Therese
up Hollywood Road where there were antiques stores
and art shops. Vicky would have gone with them but was
sensitive enough to realize that I wanted to talk with her.

"So," I said. We sat over tea and slices of fruit in the
living room of the first apartment, the one Len had not
converted into an office with computers and fax. "You
know the story of Don Enrico and Don Napolitano."

"You supposed I wouldn't?"

Vicky was dressed that morning in odd leggings�
black-and-white checkered�with a yellow golf shirt.
There were times when I was sorry I had set her up with
my son and not with myself�though that would have
been impossible at the time. Anyway, she was the best
thing I ever did for him.

"What do you know about the rest of it?"

"They meant to kill you, and they underestimated you.
That was a smooth performance, Jerry. I don't know how
you did it, exactly. Neither does anybody else. But
Chieppa and his gorgeous little chippy disappeared. Gone.
A lot of people would have liked to know how you did
it. The cops didn't give a damn, frankly, but I have an
idea they would never have figured it out even if they had
given a damn."

"You knew about this when I introduced you to my
son."
"Everybody knew about it. I mean, everybody who


THE SECRET 281

knows anything. You got a whole new level of respect
after that. Don't tell me you didn't notice."

"Len .. . ?"

"No, my dear friend. He has no idea. And he will never
hear anything from me. It's strange. What does he think?"
"I hope he hasn't stopped thinking. He's out in the
fuckin' world, Vicky. I can't protect him always."

She stood and walked to the window. From the apartment
we could see the Bank of China building and much
of central Hong Kong, plus some of the harbor. "Challenging
damned place to become independent," she said.

Len and Therese came back from Hollywood Road carrying
purchases. Len had introduced her to an art form
called netsuke: a tiny Japanese carving of bone or ivory
once used as a sort of button on a man's sash. Each netsuke
was a highly realistic figure of a man, woman, or
animal. The little people were engaged in daily activities:
business, trades, farming, cooking. Some of them were
completely realistic portrayals of men and women copulating
or enjoying oral sex.

Therese had been fascinated with the netsuke and had
bought four of them, two of which were lascivious.

Len wanted me to meet Bai Fuyuan and Zhang Feng, but
I did not want to go over to China. Not just yet, anyway.
So Zhang Feng came to Hong Kong.

He wanted to talk about Sphere. Neither Vicky nor
Therese were much interested in the details of that, so
they decided not to go with Len and me as we accompanied
Zhang Feng to dinner.

It was an odd evening. Zhang had rented a boat, with
CBCW, and we went out to Lamma Island, south of Hong
Kong and a mile or two out in the ocean. Lamma Island
is a sort of shopping mall for seafood, featuring restaurants
and markets all offering fresh fish.


HAROLD ROBBINS

By now I would have welcomed a steak with french
fries, but still had to concede that the meal was delicious.
We had platters of fish that had been selected from big
glass tanks as we came in. I didn't know what all of it
was: prawns, shrimp, clams, mussels�everything called
by Chinese names, of course. We were favored with an
exotic delicacy I quickly learned to appreciate: shark's-fin
soup. Other bits of meats and spices came in little morsels
of boiled egg white, and I ate them without asking what
they might be.

"The acquisition of Sphere will involve one obstacle,"
Zhang said. "Mr. Tom Malloy. He is like Steve Jobs and
Stephen Wozniak. He created Sphere, company and computer;
and he is most reluctant to surrender even a particle
of control. He has rejected important opportunities."

"I have a question for you, Mr. Zhang," I said. "If we
agree it is a good idea to acquire Sphere as you have
suggested, what part of the necessary capital do you propose
to contribute?"

We smiled. He had anticipated the question. I learned
soon enough that Zhang anticipated most questions and
came to meetings prepared with answers.

He took up on his chopsticks a morsel of deep-fried
fish. "This is calamari," he said. "The junior Mrs. Cooper
would be an afficionado of this Mediterranean speciality,
I am sure, and could tell us if this is good. I am thinking
it will take some seventy or eighty million dollars to acquire
control of Sphere. My own contribution cannot exceed,
let us say, twenty million. We will have to negotiate
detailed contracts to define our several obligations to the
business."

Len interrupted. "When we spoke before you suggested
you would put up most of the money necessary to take
control of Sphere."

Zhang smiled and shrugged. "We can negotiate," he
said, as if so saying were enough to dismiss the subject.

We did agree over that dinner to the general outline of
a deal. Gazelle, Incorporated would acquire a controlling


THE SECRET

interest in Sphere. The acquired company would give up
the computer business and devote its technological resources�
which remained formidable�to the design and
manufacture of microprocessors. The microprocessors
would be assembled in Texas and marketed by Americans.
The components on the boards would come chiefly
from China, from companies controlled by Zhang.

"Boats," said Zhang sadly, "must go out more and more
miles to fish. The coastal waters of Southeast Asia are
becoming more and more polluted. It is a tragedy. This
fish we are eating"� he gestured toward the big son of
a bitch on a platter before us �"may very well have been
taken in the waters of Vietnam."

Back in the apartments, we found that the fax had been
printing away. We were lucky the machine had not run
out of paper.

Part of what had come in from Roger Middleton in New
York read:

Zhang Feng is a billionaire, a beneficiary of the economic
policies of Deng Xiaoping. He was once a
colonel in the People's Liberation Army. Although
he appears for the moment to be financially sound,
having money on deposit in Hong Kong especially
but also in Tokyo, San Francisco, London, and Zurich,
it must be remembered that a radical change in
government could result in worse than his immediate
bankruptcy.

Do not forget that the Handover of Hong Kong to
the government of the PRC is only a few years away.
Deposits in Hong Kong banks promise to be sound
after that change, but they will not necessarily be so.
For this reason, all financial arrangements must be
on the basis of immediate fund transfers to our accounts.



284 HAROLD ROBBINS

Tom Malloy is, above all else, a colossal egomaniac.
Plus a certifiable genius. The latter probably entitles
him to the former.

He will fight anything likely to cost him any control
of Sphere, even to the point of destroying the
company before allowing it to slip out of his hands.

He can afford to do pretty much anything he wants
to. Sphere has made him a millionaire many times
over. If the whole thing went down the tubes tomorrow,
he would land on his feet.

We continue to investigate every aspect and will keep
you informed. Suggest you plan on returning to the
States soon.

I liked the final suggestion. Therese and I flew back a
few days later, and Len and his family returned a week
later. They brought with them their Filipino maid and
nanny, Maria, having arranged after some difficulty to secure
her entry into the States.


50


There was nothing to do but go down to Texas and meet
this Mr. Tom Malloy.
I have to confess I had never before been in Texas, and
neither had Len or Vicky, nor, of course, Therese.
We went with different ideas in mind about what we
were going to encounter.

Therese went expecting to see cowboys and Indians.
She was disappointed when we did not spend an evening
at a rodeo. She was impressed, though, with the size of
everything, and with the conspicuous presence of money.

Vicky went with an antecedent hostility. She couldn't
think of anything positive she had ever heard of Texas,
even though we were doing business with the Cowboy
cheerleaders. As a sports fan, she detested the Cowboys.
For one reason, she found the notion of a "Fellowship of
Christian Athletes" nauseating. I can remember her asking,
"What could those Baptist assholes know about
Christianity?" She didn't like people out-defining other
people. And she didn't like the state where John F. Kennedy
had been murdered.

Len? Well, he had known Texans at Amherst and Yale.
They weren't necessarily such bad fellows, he said. And


HAROLD ROBBINS

what made Texans Texans wasn't necessarily bad. Remember
Lyndon Johnson.
As for myself, I didn't see how it could be much worse
than California, so I went with an open mind.

We flew down on the Lear jet. For people who had
seen Hong Kong and lived there, Houston wasn't much.
On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with it. I
suppose the people who lived there lived rather pleasantly.

We had two suites on the same floor in the Hyatt Regency
Hotel. There were other hotels in Houston, maybe
more distinguished, but none were more comfortable and
convenient, and the Regency suited us fine.

We saw no cowboy hats. We saw no cowboy boots. A
waitress in the bar explained, "Mistah Coopah . . . whut
y'awl must understand ee-is, there are no Texans in HoustonP'


Well. . . I don't know how you define a Texan, but I
guess Tom Malloy was one. He had no education, essentially.
He had about as much as I had. In fact, I suspect
Tom had experienced his own version of Uncle Harry.
And he had taken the bull by the horns, I guessed, and
wrestled it to the ground. He had been, among other
things, a wildcatter�meaning an entrepreneur who had
drilled for oil where oil was not supposed to be, and had
found it.

His wife was with him. She was the Texan of the pair.

His most memorable characteristic was his obsessive
intellectual curiosity. That was what had made him as a
man. Instead of turning his energies to reassembling
Jeeps�in effect, stealing them, as I had done�and then
to selling fraud designer water, Tom Malloy had worried
his way through the mathematics and other theories that
were the foundation of computer science. I suppose the
best thing about him was that he saw the potential in
computers, as he had seen the potential in land that was


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supposed to have no oil under it, and from that had made
opportunity.

I remember the first one I ever saw. I thought it was
wonderful, but I couldn't think of a single useful thing it
could do. Did I need a machine to�?

Over dinner in the Regency that first night, sitting behind
glass that afforded us a view of the lobby two or
three floors below, I listened to Tom Malloy describe his
commitment to a thing that, when he committed to it, was
entirely new, with an uncertain future.

"The thing about it that struck me from the start was
that it was so beautiful, so elegant. The mathematics that
made it work was elegant. That had been there all along,
of course, but we had to wait until the 'seventies, then
'eighties, to have the technology. Look at it this way. No
matter how skilled a carpenter you are, you can't build a
wooden television set. No matter what fine wood you can
get, you can't make a wooden picture tube."

"You have to have transistors," said Len. "And resistors
and capacitors and�"

"Yes, and now chips that have all those components on
chips the size of a postage stamp. They did build 'em
with tubes, but those were in no way practical for most
applications. Too big, too sensitive, too unreliable.... We
had to have transistors. And circuit boards."

Malloy was in his forties. He was six-feet-five, I estimate,
but even so was not the kind of man who would
attract attention. His dark hair was cut short and was accented
by the beginning of gray. He was handsome, with
chiseled features. He read the menu with a pair of halfglasses
which he returned to his pocket as soon as he was
through reading.

He was dressed more conservatively than either Len or
I, in a charcoal-gray three-button suit with narrow lapels,
a white shirt, and a regimental tie. When we had met him
in the lobby he had been wearing an oilman's champagnecolored
Stetson, which was now in the checkroom. I guess
we'd expected a beige suit with fancy stitching.


288 HAROLD ROBBINS

He didn't look like a techie whiz, either. I did detect a
certain excess of enthusiasm when he talked about Sphere,
the company and the computer.

The wife was .. . Len put it that she could have been a
cheerleader. I didn't know from cheerleaders, but when
the facts were disclosed, it turned out that she had been
a cheerleader for the Houston Oilers. She was Tom's second
wife and was maybe fifteen years younger than he,
and she was his trophy. Some guys bought Porsches and
some Ferraris, some bought boats, and some leased Lear
jets. Tom Malloy had married an Oilers cheerleader.

Her hair had been stripped�not bleached, stripped.
She did not have telltale dark eyebrows because she had
almost no eyebrows at all. She did not wear a beehive�
she was not that unstylish�but she had a lot of hair,
artificially curled. She wore shiny pink lipstick. Her figure
was perfect. You could guess that she worked out at a
gym regularly. Her white minidress fit like it had been
spray-painted on her.

Her name was Becky.

"Hong Kong!" she said. "Oh, I'd love to go there! I
suppose a person ought to see it before it's handed over
to the Mainland Chinese. I have friends who despised Tokyo
but loved Hong Kong. How very different is Cantonese
from Mandarin?"

Malloy wanted to talk about bis computer.

"It was the best, Cooper, I swear the Sphere was the
best, for its time. We were, in fact, ahead of our time. We
went to five-and-a-half-inch floppies when everybody else
was still using those great big awkward ones. We began
to offer a mouse when everybody else was still keyboarding
everything."

"What went wrong?" Len asked bluntly.

"Nothing went wrong. The Sphere is still the best�or
could be, if we had the capital to add some refinements
and market it."

"What kind of refinements?" I asked. I wanted him to
open up on this subject because I planned to hire an expert


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to determine whether or not his ideas were still sound.

"Voice recognition," he said. "There are recognition
programs, but they are primitive. Imagine sitting down at
your computer and talking to it. Imagine saying 'Power
on .. . boot... word processor,' and it turns itself on,
boots, and sets up the word processor. Imagine saying,
'Letter format,' and it sets up the word processor to take
a letter. Then you dictate the letter, and your words appear
on the screen as you talk. When you're finished you might
want to make a correction or two with the keyboard. Then
you say, 'Save letter in Acme file and print. Print envelope.'
It does it all. You might have to fold the letter and
stuff it in the envelope, but the computer has printed the
postage on the envelope, which is ready to go."

"How about a laptop?" Len asked.

"We have one. But I think the big future is with the
multifunction, easy-to-use desktop computer. Given a
choice between a computer that can do all the things I
just mentioned, plus hundreds of other jobs, with full automation,
and one you can carry around in your briefcase,
more users will want the functions."

"You're going to run Windows?" Len asked.

"I'm afraid we are."

I changed the subject. "Have you ever been in a Cheeks
store, Mr. Malloy?"

"You bet. When you fellows proposed to come to
Houston and talk, I went to the Cheeks store in the Galleria
and took a look. Bought Becky a nightie, too. Better
than that, I asked my bank to give me a rundown on you.
Hope you won't think that's pushy, Mr. Cooper."

"Not at all. You can bet we've done a study of you.
And .. . let's make it Jerry and Len, also Vicky and Therese."


"Sure. Tom and Becky."
"The nightie is great," said Becky. "I'm going over to
the Galleria and look into that store for myself."
"I hope you won't mind my asking this question so
soon," said Tom, "but why does a company in your line


HAROLD ROBBINS

of business want to acquire a company in my line?"

Len answered. "You just said yourself that one of your
problems is marketing. We are a marketing company.
Sure, we have great designs, but the secret of Gazelle,
Incorporated is marketing."

I took it up. "One of your problems, Tom, is that people
don't know about Sphere. People who do, people who
used to run Spheres, swear by you, but there aren't enough
of them."

My God, what was I saying? We had no intention whatever
of selling his Sphere computer. We were going to
turn Sphere, Incorporated into an assembler of microprocessors,
which would not be sold to the public but to
a limited number of manufacturers who would incorporate
them in their products.

And what the hell was I thinking? I hardly knew what
a microprocessor was.

"I've told Tom," said Becky, "that we ought to look at
how Dell, for example, works. They send out beautiful
catalogs. Tom has tended to believe that was beneath
Sphere's dignity."

"The key to almost every business is marketing," Len
said�surprising me; I had not supposed he had such insights.


We had ordered oysters on the half shell to begin our
dinner, and their delivery interrupted the talk. The table
was silent for a moment as we took oysters and began to
eat them.

When talk resumed�

"It would be a departure for you, though, wouldn't it?"
Tom asked. "I mean, the two lines of business don't seem
to match."

"They don't have to match," said Len. "Mead was a
paper company. Paper! A smokestack industry if ever
there was one. Then they went into the computer business
and eventually sold off that business for one-point-five
billion dollars, cash. The point is, we've got investment
capital, and you need investment capital."


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Tom frowned over an oyster. Someone said it was a
brave man who first ate an oyster. Giselle had taught me
how to eat them: with lemon juice and French bread with
butter, and white wine. A sauce of ketchup and
horseradish was an abomination, she had insisted. None
of that was on the table.

"You'll want control," said Tom.

"Enough to guide the company into a new line of business,"
Len said.
"And what is that?"
Len explained what Zhang Feng had in mind.
"Assemble Chinese components onto circuit boards!

Gentlemen, there is no way Sphere is going to do that."

"Sphere will run quality-control checks on the components,"
Len said, "and assure itself the components are
good. It's a coming line of business."

"I'm inclined to say no to this," said Tom.

"You may not have the luxury," I told him. "You've
got a lot of debt out. If we buy up enough of that, we
will take control of Sphere, Incorporated whether you like
it or not."

I could have sworn I saw a glitter of triumph in Becky's
eyes.
"And what happens to Sphere Four?" Tom asked dole


fully.

"We'll look into it. Maybe�"

Was I saying that maybe even Gazelle was going into
the computer business?


51


LEN

Zhang Feng had gotten us interested in a business about
which my father knew nothing and I knew very little
more. It would be essential for us to bring aboard a computer
guru.

But where to find one?

Middleton put out inquiries. So did Scheck.

Computer types did not flock to the offices of a company
known for selling women's underwear. How would
that look on their precious resumes?

Each one who came in was flawed. One was a drinker.
One smoked�which is a no-no around computers, not to
mention around our offices. References and letters of recommendation
are useless. Who would give as a reference
or solicit a letter from anyone except someone who was
going to endorse the candidate in glowing terms?

I interviewed one candidate who had never in his entire
life associated with anyone or with any enterprise that was
not identified with his religion. He had gone to religious
schools and worked for religious institutions, was a member
of religious organizations, was married in his faith,
and was making certain that his children were being educated
in that faith. I will not say what faith it was; that


THE SECRET

doesn't make any difference. He was too parochial for
Gazelle.

I interviewed a young man who, in spite of his doctorate
in mathematics from an American university, could
not speak English. He had been passed through the public
schools and made his way to his Ph.D. without being able
to read or speak English.

I interviewed candidates who came in with chips on
their shoulders and literally defied me not to hire them. If
they didn't get the job, they would know what I was:
sexist, racist, anti-this, or anti-that.

Hiring is not an easy process, particularly when you
want someone in whom you can place your confidence.

Eventually she showed up: Elizabeth McAllister.

Elizabeth was an unfortunate young woman in an important
respect. It shouldn't have made so damned much
difference, but it did�Elizabeth was an unattractive girl.
And she knew it. She was painfully aware of it.

It would have been difficult to define what was wrong
with her. Actually, nothing was. Her problem simply was
that there was too much of her. She was not obese, but
she was big, and she was gawky. Horsy is the word people
used. A young man in the office told his wife, "You don't
have to worry about my sleeping with Liz. What you have
to worry about is that she will step on my foot."

Her dishwater-blond hair was coarse and frizzy. Her
features were regular but oversized. Her big face was
round and flushed.

She tried to compensate with effervescence. Liz was
enthusiastic. When she heard something she agreed with,
she bubbled over it. She actually broke into little dances
in the office.

She was intelligent. She was articulate. She had a doctorate
in computer science from the University of Michigan.
She should have easily found employment in a
responsible position, but she hadn't; she came to us from
a decidedly minor position in a big company.


294 HAROLD ROBBINS

"What do you think of Sphere computers?" I asked her

during her interview.

"They're obsolete," she said simply.

"Why?"

"Because they ran out of development money, I imagine.
The company made a big mistake. They insisted their
computer must run their own proprietary operating system,
which meant it could not run any off-the-shelf software."


This was exactly what we had been told in Guangzhou
and again in Hong Kong, by Zhang Feng.

"Who wanted a system that could not run Visi-Calc or
WordStar?" she asked. "Or wants one that can't run Windows
today? Or Word or WordPerfect or Quicken? A lot
of people swore by Sphere. I played with one in the lab.
It was a good machine. But it's practically worthless today.
Practically? It is worthless."

"What would it cost to upgrade it?" I asked.

"A lot more than it would be worth," she said. "There's
too much competition out there, already established with
good names. Dell. Hewlett-Packard. Micron. Gateway.
Not to mention IBM and Compaq."

"Well... just suppose."

"You couldn't do it without Tom Malloy," she said.
"And I'm not sure you could do it with him. He could be
a major impediment."

"Why?"

"He might insist on keeping the major features of the
old Sphere. You might have a difficult time weaning him
off his original ideas."

"But you also say we couldn't do it without him."

"Mr. Cooper, computer manufacturing today is mostly
just a matter of buying components and assembling them.
The components come from Intel, Texas Instruments, and
so on."

"Are you saying we could assemble a computer and put
the Sphere name on it?"


THE SECRET 295

Her chin rose. Her big blue eyes opened wider. "Is that
what you're thinking of doing?"
"Well. .. something like that. Maybe. What is the
Sphere name worth?"

"It stands for innovation and quality," she said without
hesitation. "Tom Malloy would campaign against you
fiercely if you tried to change that."

She had said pretty much what we had deduced. I had
to believe she knew her business. I had Middleton and
Scheck interview her. I called my father in Florida. I offered
her a job.

I soon learned more about Liz. She was starved for affection.
She wanted a man, sure, but she wanted respect
from women; she wanted people to like her. She was often
misunderstood. Too often men took her affability for an
invitation.

She called people "honey" and "darling." From others
it might have been taken in a different way, but from her
it was just an element of her personality.

I let her teach me about some computer programs, and
she would stand behind me as I sat at the keyboard and
say things like, "C'mon now, honey babe. You've done
it before, remember? Like last time, sweet." She would
lean forward to point at something on the screen, and I
would feel her big, soft breasts pressing against my neck
and shoulder. I don't know if she was unconscious of that
or did it purposefully. Outwardly, she was happy, exuberant
even. I would understand in time that she was
starved for affection.

Anyway, we made it plain to her what we intended to
do with Sphere if we acquired it. She expressed enthusiasm
for the idea.

She went to Texas to have a look at Sphere and came
back with a report.
"All that's keeping the Sphere company afloat right
now is their laser printer."


296 HAROLD ROBBINS

"Their what?"

"Laser printer. It prints your computer output: your text,
your spreadsheets, your graphs, your pictures. The Sphere
prints fast and with extremely good quality. What's more,
it's in a reasonable price range for that kind of equipment.
Malloy was smart enough to make his printer compatible
with just about anything. It can print from any computer,
even the Apple line. The hardware of it is mostly outside
stuff, but the software that runs it is strictly Malloy and
company."

" 'And company?' "

"A few of their key people have remained loyal to Tom
Malloy and are still there. There's a rumor afloat that a
New York company with more money than good sense is
about to bail Sphere out and make it a comer again."

"Meaning . . . ?"

"Meaning us, of course!" She laughed. "The very rumor
of us is what's holding some of those people. They dream
of returning to the glory days."

She gave us a written report, which Scheck and Middleton
pronounced "competent" and "thorough."

One day I called her into my office.

"Sit down, Liz. I want to talk with you."

She sat down a bit apprehensively, as if she suspected
I had called her in to notify her she was being terminated.

"You haven't been with us long," I said to her. "But
you've become a valued person for us. You've got some
rough edges, though. I'm going to ask you to avoid calling
people 'dear' and 'darling.' You understand why?"

She nodded. I sensed that she was holding back tears.

"Well... I've had some new business cards engraved
for you. Have a look."

I handed her a card from a box of them on my desk. It
read:

ELIZABETH T. MCALLISTER
VICE PRESIDENT, TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS
GAZELLE, INCORPORATED



THE SECRET

I had expected she would be demonstrative. I couldn't
have guessed how much.
She began to cry. She dropped on her knees before me

and seized my legs in her arms.
"Oh, Len! Len! I love you, Len! I simply love you!"
Leaving me to wonder exactly what that meant.

While Liz was in Houston I received two large packages
from Bai Fuyuan in Shenzhen. One contained finely woven
wool sweaters in a variety of styles and colors. The
other contained knockoffs of some of the most popular
Cheeks styles of panties, bras, garter belts, and teddies,
most of them in black.

I also received a letter from Bai�Federal Express.

Dear Mr. Cooper,

I have dispatched to you two cartons containing
goods for your examination and, I hope, approval.
They are examples of the sort of thing we might be
able to work in partnership to manufacture and sell,
both in China and in the United States.

I should very much welcome the opportunity to sit
down with you to discuss this merchandise and explore
the terms on which mutually profitable and mutually
agreeable arrangements might be made.

I could come to the States, but I am wondering if
we might not better meet in Hong Kong, where your
Mr. Chan can join in our conversations.

I would hope, too, that your father might see fit to "

come.
Most sincerely,
Bai Fuyuan

I ordered the Lear and flew to Florida, taking the pack


ages and the letter with me.
"It's good-enough merchandise," my father said.
We sat on the lanai�a word my father considered af



HAROLD ROBBINS

fected and so despised. Just outside its screens was a small
swimming pool, where my father and Therese both swam
regularly. Beyond that was a canal, where yachts passed
by in an almost regular procession. The pool and yard
were surrounded by a strong chain-link fence that was
anchored to the ground by steel stakes every foot or eighteen
inches of its length. The fence was there because
alligators had been known to lunge out of the canal and
seize small dogs or cats, or to take up residence in swimming
pools.

"He suggests you meet him in Hong Kong with Charlie
Han. What I'd do is write him back and tell him to send
Charlie the same samples he's sent us. Charlie he knows
sewn merchandise. This stuff may have defects we don't
see."

"Notice the labels," I said. Each item had a sewn-in
label�MADE IN HONG KONG. "None of this stuff ever saw
Hong Kong. It was made in China."

"And he wants to put in Cheeks labels?"

"Exactly."

"Well... if the merchandise is of high quality�and I
mean we inspect every shipment, in China or on its way
here�I suppose it could be a deal. If we have things
manufactured for us in Hong Kong, why not in China?
It's a matter of politics."

"It's a matter of quality," I said.

"All right. And quality. And we have to work out a
way to be sure Ariana Middleton doesn't find out what
we are doing. I rather imagine we can trust Roger not to
tell her."

"This is going to mean another trip to Hong Kong," I
said.
"You could be doing worse. You could be making business
trips to Cleveland."
"Somebody is going to have to keep an eye on Houston,"
I said.
"You won't be going to Hong Kong for a while. Let's
try to acquire Sphere before you leave. Or drop it."


52


Zhang Feng had said in Guangzhou that Tom Malloy
would resist any effort to acquire Sphere that did not involve
an absolute commitment that the company would
continue to make and sell the Sphere computer. We had
not told him that this was no part of our plans. Liz had
reported that he would rear back and fight if he suspected
we were going to scrap his wonderful machine.

As I had told him, we could do what we wanted
whether he liked it or not. Sphere, Incorporated, and Malloy
personally, owed a lot of money. We could buy up
the paper and call the loans. Much of the debt had been
secured by pledging Sphere stock as security, and by calling
the loans we could acquire the pledged stock that secured
them. We would own controlling interest and could
elect our own directors, who would in turn elect our officers.
We could simply force Malloy out.

Maybe it was a brutal way of doing business, but it was
not uncommon.
Liz also cautioned us, though, that if Malloy left, his
people would very likely leave, too.
"Something you must understand, Len," she said to me.
"The chief asset of a technology-based company is its


HAROLD ROBBINS

people. The chief asset is brains. Otherwise, you've got

a lot of desks and chairs, plus some bins of components,

and probably a small inventory of machines. Absent the

people, the brains, the company is nothing. It's nothing

like a smokestack industry, where the mill, the machinery,

the trucks, and so on loom large on the balance sheet."

"The laser printer... ?"

"Great today. Obsolete tomorrow. I might put it another
way�a big asset of a technology company is its future.
They have got to have a vision of the future and keep
working toward it." She grinned. "Some speech, huh,
sweetie?"

I nodded. "Okay. What about the value of the name?"

"I'm not sure there will be any name without Malloy.
And what if he travels around bad-mouthing the new management
of his company? He could do that."

"That would hurt?"

"You wouldn't find any benefit in it."

I began to wonder if we should not back away from

Sphere. The only one we'd be disappointing would be
Zhang.

Plus Liz. I had to think of her. What good was a vice
president of technology operations if we backed away
from going into technology? And she was being honest.
She could have put a more positive spin on the idea of
acquiring Sphere, to save the new position she cherished
so much.

There was no point in asking my father what to do. He
knew nothing about technology.

I decided I had to have a second opinion. With the help
of Hugh Scheck I identified a reputable professor at MIT
and went up to meet with him.

His name was William Cable, professor of applied
mathematics. We met at Boston's Logan Airport, where I
arrived in the company Lear. He was a tall man, I judged
about forty, with a pink face and a pink pate, which his
sandy hair was rapidly abandoning. He wore round, goldrimmed
eyeglasses and a never-failing little smile.


THE SECRET 301

I had arranged for a limo to take us wherever we
wanted to go. I had supposed his office, but he suggested
a seafood restaurant on the harbor. The driver knew where
it was. In the car we exchanged pleasantries for a minute
or so, and then I moved directly to the point. "Professor,
I have come up from New York to pick your brains. I
don't expect you to allow me to do that free of charge.
Would a fee of one thousand dollars for this first meeting
be satisfactory?"

He was all restraint. I think he would gladly have accepted
a hundred, but he concealed his surprise perfectly.
He nodded. "Yes. That will be entirely satisfactory."

I pulled from my jacket pocket an inexpensive but real
leather black billfold. "For the time being, we can deal in
cash," I said. There were ten one-hundred-dollar bills in
the billfold.

He looked at them but didn't count them. He put the
billfold in his own pocket and folded his hands in his lap.
I knew he wouldn't report the thousand as taxable income.
I'd have been disappointed in him if I learned he had.

"There is one more thing," I told him. "I should like
for our conversation to be entirely confidential, including
the fact that we met at all. You will see from our conversation
that I am not involved in anything illegal or
unethical. You will also see why I want it to be confidential."


He nodded and said nothing.

"My father, over the past forty years, has built a multibillion
dollar corporation. Gazelle, Incorporated owns
and operates the Cheeks stores and its catalog sales. Have
you heard of us?"

His smile broadened. "I know about Cheeks shops. I've
been your customer a few times over the years."

"Good. We are in the fortunate position of holding a
lot of cash, which we need to invest. We also need to
diversify. It has been suggested to us that we acquire
Sphere, Incorporated, of Houston. I understand they make


HAROLD ROBBINS

a fine laser printer but that their computer has become
obsolete. What can you tell me?"

"Have you ever seen a Sphere computer?" he asked me.

"No, I never have. People talk about them in glowing
terms, but I have never seen one."

"I'll show you one, later. A great many experiments
were conducted in the early years of the technology. Many
of the ideas weren't bad. But they failed for a variety of
reasons, often for want of adequate financing. I could recite
a litany of names: intelligently designed computers
that failed."

"Sphere?" I asked.

"Well... looking at them from the outside, a computer
is a computer: a beige box with a screen and keyboard.
The Sphere was not sphere-shaped exactly, but it was
rounded. It was not beige but made mostly of dark green
transparent plastic, and you could see the parts inside: the
circuit boards, transformer, rectifier, and so on. You could
see the disks spinning. You could see the read heads moving
across the disks. Of course, that was the only visible
movement in the computer. For the rest it was just invisible
electrons speeding over the circuits and through the
components. I don't know. Somehow it was exciting to
think you could see the thing working.

"It's what we can't see that is really elegant," he said.
"The circuit design. The redundancies."

"Redundancies?"

"If something fails, usually there is something behind
it, ready to pick up the work and prevent a crash and loss
of data."
"Why did the company fail? Why is the Sphere obsolete?"


The professor looked out across the harbor, at white
gulls soaring on the wind, at fishing boats going and coming,
trailed by hopeful birds.

"Two reasons," he said. "Lack of capital and Tom Malloy's
stubbornness."
"If we acquire the company," I said, "our plan is to use


THE SECRET 303

its expertise to assemble microprocessors, chiefly using
components we'll import from China."
"Where you can get them cheap, but�you hope�with
acceptable quality."

"Exactly."

"And you'll put the Sphere name on the microprocessors,"
he added. "Not a bad idea. The wave of the future.
The possibilities are endless. You get up in the morning
in a bedroom at seventy-two degrees, bathe, dress, and go
downstairs. The microprocessor senses that you have left
the room and lets the temperature in the bedroom drift
down to sixty. You go down to a kitchen where overnight
the temperature has been as low as fifty, but when you
walk in it is seventy-two. That's based on time, not that
you've come into the room. You glance at the refrigerator
door and see a printed inventory of what's inside. You
decide to have eggs, and when you take the two out, the
inventory goes down from eight to six. Your cooktop
knows how you like your eggs and gives the right amount
of heat for die right amount of time. When you are about
ready to leave, you press a button that starts your car, to
let it warm up. A sensor in the garage detects that an
engine is running and opens the garage door to let out
exhaust fumes. And so on. And that's just your house."

'Tom Malloy wants to build Sphere Four," I said.

Professor Cable nodded. "First he'll have to make his
peace with Microsoft�which won't be all that difficult to
do; the antitrust division would never allow Microsoft to
refuse to license to him. But he'll have to give up his old
dream of a proprietary operating system, no matter how
good it might be. The investment in cash may not be
formidable for you. But the commitment to marketing
may be. You are experts at that. But selling computers
will be a very different thing from selling ladies' undergarments."


"Have you ever heard of Elizabeth McAllister?" I
asked.
"No."


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Well, you may. She is going to be our vice president,
technology operations, and she may be calling on you. If
she does, you have never talked to me. She may ask you
to agree to a permanent consulting relationship with us,
in which case it will really be me asking. Here is my card
with my home phone number. If you need to talk with
me for any reason, call that number. Also, here is my
number in Hong Kong. We may be doing some more
business."

"You want me to second-guess your young woman,"
he said. He was no simple academic but was a shrewd
and perceptive man. I wished I could have hired him but
knew I couldn't.

"This meeting has been very helpful to me, Professor.
What you have told me confirms what my Chinese associate
in Guangzhou says and what Liz McAllister says.
Unless it's all just conventional wisdom, I think I'm hearing
three knowledgeable people agreeing on basic points."

Now I called my father�when I could tell him I had
three independent analyses that agreed.
"They sing from the same sheet, hey? Maybe that's
because they're all members of the same fraternity."

I flew to Houston, this time leaving Vicky behind. She'd
had enough of Houston and quite enough of Tom and
Becky Malloy.

Liz did go with me, though, on the Lear. I had decided
that her declaration that she loved me was as innocent as
most of the things she said that were subject to misinterpretation.
She said "I love you" almost�not quite�as
casually as I might say "Good morning." We sipped
champagne on the flight and talked business. We could
see nothing from the windows but the tops of clouds.

After we had shared a bottle of champagne, her "I love
you" took on a slightly different meaning than I had given
it. "Anytime, Len," she whispered. "I don't expect you to
want it.. . but anytime. No obligation attached."


THE SECRET

"I'll remember that, Liz. But I won't be asking you."

I don't know what Malloy had in mind; maybe to overwhelm
us with Texas hospitality. In any case, we found
that he had our schedule worked out for us for our first
evening in Houston. First we would take a dip in his pool,
then eat some barbecue on his patio, and finally we were
going to a rodeo.

"I bet you've never seen a rodeo," he said with enthusiasm
so apparently genuine it was hard to believe it was
not. "The best one is in Vegas, these days: the National
Finals. Used to be Forth Worth. But you're gonna love
this one."

But first we went swimming. Not having anticipated
this at all, neither Liz nor I had brought swimsuits. No
matter. The Malloys kept a supply on hand, all sizes.

Wearing a bikini was not good judgment for Liz, but
that was all they had for women, not even one of our
Cheeks oranges. She came out to the pool in as modest a
bikini as they had. It didn't cover enough�which the
Malloys pretended, at least, not to notice. She was a sport,
though�a game young woman I had to admire. She
swam strongly. And she could dive. Even when she had
to pull up the bikini top after a graceful dive knocked it
down around her belly, she was not conspicuously
daunted.

We hadn't brought clothes suitable for a rodeo either.
But the Malloys entertained people from all over the
�od d and took them to rodeos. As with swimsuits, they
had an assortment of clothes for rodeos. For me it was a
pair of tight blue jeans, a lemon-yellow shirt with pearl
bonons, a cowboy hat, and boots. For poor Liz it was a
white satin blouse with a fringed suede vest, a cowboy

�at, a pair of Guess jeans, and white lizard Mercedes
boots.
The rodeo was a lot more fun than I had expected. We
watched men ride bucking broncos, rope calves, and�

�bat was most interesting to me�ride bulls. Among the
�omen performers one of the most interesting was barrel

HAROLD ROBBINS

racing, which required proficiency and courage. The performers
were well known to the crowd, just as fans know
baseball and football players, and they were judged by
their skill and endurance.

Rodeo events were not for the faint of heart. Liz was
sickened when she saw one bull rider thrown and trampled,
suffering a broken arm before the rodeo clowns
could distract the bull. The stench of manure bothered her
sinuses. She confessed to me later that she found the
crowd more interesting than the performers.

When we returned to the Hyatt Regency, she and I sat
down for a final drink in the lobby bar.

"You deserve a bonus for tonight, Liz," I said to her.

"I can't remember ever being so goddamned humiliated,"
she said quietly.
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do," I said. "You'd
have got stares if you had done anything differently."

When we went upstairs, we hugged and kissed lightly
at her door. She smiled, opened with her key, and disappeared
inside.

The next morning we sat down with Tom Malloy in his
office. I opened the discussion by telling him what exactly
Gazelle, Inc. planned for Sphere.

"We've been assured by some very capable people that
microprocessors are going to become more and more important
and that there will be a growing market for them.
Sphere, Incorporated is very well situated to take advantage
of that opportunity. You have expertise and a name.
Sphere could become a major factor in microprocessing."

"We already make microprocessors," said Malloy.
"What do you think makes the Sphere computer work?"

"I understand. It's another reason why your company
is so well positioned to move in the areas my company
is interested in."

"Components from China," said Malloy. "Do you want
to name your Chinese partner?"


THE SECRET

"We have no partnership with anyone in China. If we
can move on this deal, our supplier will be Zhang Feng."
"I might have known," said Malloy. "Guangdong
Micro-Technology�GMT."

"What do you know of Zhang and his company?"

"He's a young man who's made himself very rich very
quickly, partly by theft, partly by guanxi."
"What's guanxi?" I asked.
"It's the grease that makes anything in China run well�

that is, anything that does run well. It means 'pull,' or
influence, often with bribery."

"I take it you don't much like him."

"He tried to sell us components. They didn't test well."

"I would expect you to test very thoroughly every single
item that comes from Zhang," I said. "We won't accept
and we won't pay for anything that doesn't pass."
"Am I expected to put GMT components in Sphere
Four?"

"We haven't committed to fund Sphere four."

"Well, do commit. If you don't, I'll leave the company
the minute you take over."

"We won't commit," I said, "until you come up with a
business plan. We'll want the design and all the specifications
for Sphere Four. We'll want a complete estimate
of what it will cost to develop and build it, based on two
assumptions: one, that you use GMT components, and
two, that you don't."

"How soon do you want this?"

"I have to fly out to Hong Kong for a week or two. I'd
like to see it when I come back. In the meantime, you can
work with Liz."

Malloy smiled. " 'Vice President, Technology Operations.'
She's the only computer scientist you have, isn't
she?"

"I have others on a consulting basis."

"Obviously it will do me no good to try to convince
you what an extraordinary machine Sphere Four will be.
Okay, then. I will try to convince Liz."


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Convince her in writing," I said. "Convince her with
documents I can show to others. And, incidentally...
while we're on the subject, let me see what your plans
are to prevent your laser printer from becoming obsolete.
Let me have cost figures on that."

"I see I'm going to have to deal with bean counters,"
he said grudgingly.

I nodded. "Three separate people who don't know each
other have described you to me as a genius but also as a
stubborn and unrealistic egomaniac. Gazelle is ready, just
about, to give you a major new infusion of capital. You
had better get used to the idea that you won't be able to
make major policy by the snap of your finger, just because
you think it's a good idea. My father ran Gazelle that way
when it was a small business. Even he can't do it that
way anymore."


I flew back to Hong Kong, this time alone. Vicky and the
kids stayed at home.

Vicky offered to send Maria with me, to take care of
things in the apartments, but I said no. Maria was more
important with the children. We had been assured that her
Chinese was not accented, and she spoke it to litde J. J.
and Catherine. It was Cantonese, not Mandarin, but we
were assured also that for the kids to learn a little Cantonese
would help them when they studied Mandarin in
earnest.

Anyway, we had contracted with a company to send
personnel into the apartments twice a week, to dust and
sake certain all was in order. When I knew I was going
em there, I called them, and they assigned a fulltime maid
for the duration of my stay. When I arrived, the refrigerator
and bar were stocked, the air conditioners were running,
and the South China Morning Post lay on my dining
life.

I had E-mail waiting: a message from Zhang Feng saytog
he would fly to Hong Kong at my convenience. I had

* fax from Charlie Han, saying Bai Fuyuan would come
�town from Shenzhen on whatever date we suggested.

HAROLD ROBBINS

I had dinner with Charlie my first night in town. We
ate in an excellent�and I mean excellent�Italian restaurant
called Tutta Luna, which served Italian cuisine that
would have met Vicky's approval. It was within walking
distance of the apartments.

"What do you think of the merchandise Bai Fuyuan
sent?" I asked Charlie.

"It's like a letter of recommendation, Len," he said. "If
it wasn't first-class stuff he wouldn't have sent it to us.
The question will be: Can he keep it up? Or will he? Does
he intend to?"

"So what deal does he want?"

"He wants to manufacture Cheeks merchandise in
China. He wants to sell much of it in China, but he wants
to export much of it to the States, where it will enter the
stock of Cheeks stores. He is willing to submit to our most
rigorous standards of quality control, to allow our inspectors
to look at every item individually."

"And of course he can manufacture cheap."

"Yes. Very cheap."

"And sell for�?"

"American prices. The profit will be immense."

"Are his Chinese customers going to be so stupid as to
believe they are buying something that was manufactured
outside China? That stretches credibility a little, doesn't
it?"

"There is a way of making them believe it," said Charlie.
"He sews the goods in Shenzhen, takes them to
Guangzhou by truck, and loads the crates on Chinese
ships. The crates bear stenciled signs saying the port of
origin is Hong Kong or maybe even New York. No one
cares about that. The shipping documents sealed to the
crates say the port of origin is Guangzhou. In the port of
Shanghai the crates are unloaded. The shipping documents,
now unsealed, say the crates were put aboard the
ship in Guangzhou. That makes the merchandise coastal
trade. Legally, it has never been out of China, so it is not
subject to tariffs. The inspectors tear off the documents,


THE SECRET 311

which are all they are interested in, and clear the crates
to leave the ship. The merchandise arrives in warehouses
here and there, in crates saying it came from Hong Kong
or the States, and the labels sewn in the garments say they
are Cheeks items, made in the U.S.A. or in Hong Kong."
"It's almost exactly what Zhang Feng wants to do," I
said.

Charlie smiled. "They may very well be partners."

"It's a little too transparent, it seems to me," I objected.

"Well, there's a certain amount of guanxi involved."

"Okay. What about the merchandise he wants to send
to the States?" I asked.

"The stuff comes from Shenzhen by truck. British inspectors
look at the merchandise�and will until the Handover,
after which the inspectors will be Hong Kong
Chinese, whom we may expect will be a little more lax.
It bears labels saying the articles were made in China and
identifying a maker. In warehouses here the labels are
changed to ones reading, like, 'Made in Hong Kong exclusively
for Cheeks.' Coming in, the merchandise is valued
as stuff manufactured in China, so it's quite cheap.
Going out, it is Hong Kong merchandise, already worth
three times as much. In the States you sell it for your
regular prices."

"Will he also want us to shill for him in China?" I
asked. "That's what Zhang wants."

"He will want you and your father to make one or two
well-publicized tours of China, appearing in stores and on
television, saying how happy you are that Cheeks merchandise
is now available in China."

"And our way will be smoothed by guanxi," I said
sarcastically.

"Well... you will be endorsing merchandise made
from Cheeks designs, to Cheeks standards, inspected by
Cheeks inspectors. So, what's the problem?"

"There's a problem," I said. "It's called Jerry Cooper."
"And you will make a lot of money," said Charlie Han.
For him that was the clinching argument.


312 HAROLD ROBBINS

* * *

Two days later Bai Fuyuan arrived from Shenzhen. He
took a suite in the Kimberly Hotel in Kowloon and asked
me and Charlie to have lunch with him and let him show
us some more merchandise.

Kowloon is not my favorite part of Hong Kong. It is
not, of course, on Hong Kong island but is across the
harbor on the mainland. American tourists obsessed with
the idea that Hong Kong is a shoppers' paradise go to
Kowloon to be ripped off on Nathan Road.

The hotel, even so, was first class. Bai had a spacious
suite�unfortunately overlooking, for the time being, an
enormous scaffolding made of bamboo, on which workmen
swarmed as they erected a twenty-story building. I
had observed this before: that the Chinese put up bamboo
scaffolding that looked flimsy but was, I was assured, as
strong as scaffolding made of steel.

Bai wore again a white double-breasted suit, as he had
the first time I met him. He welcomed us effusively and
gestured toward a long table where an elaborate buffet
luncheon had been spread for us. Three delicately beautiful
Chinese girls stood behind the table. They poured
and handed us flutes of champagne.

"The little girls speak very little or no English, I am
afraid," Bai said to us. "Just point at anything that pleases
you, and they will serve your plates."

The food was a curious mixture of Chinese and Western.
There was caviar and foie gras but also little cups of
shark's-fin soup and egg-white medallions flavored with
birds' nest and crabmeat. I recognized these dishes. Others
I did not.

We sat on two couches facing low tables, on which the
girls placed our loaded plates.

"Enjoy, enjoy," said Bai. "While we eat, the girls will
model some items for us."

He gestured, and two of the girls hurried away into a
bedroom, leaving one to continue serving us.


THE SECRET 313

After a moment one of the girls came out. She was
wearing crotchless panties�it was our bestselling example
of that item�and a bra with holes to show her little
brown nipples. She was not a professional model, but she
knew how to show off her body.

Bai spoke to her in Chinese, and she slipped out of the
bra and panties and handed them to me, leaving herself
standing quite naked.

"Can you see," Bai asked, "that these garments have
been sewn to the very same standard you habitually use?"

I examined the items perfunctorily, then handed them
to Charlie, who examined them critically. The girl stood
there patiently, showing not the least sign of discomfort.
Charlie handed the things back to her, and she walked to
the bedroom.

This was repeated maybe twenty times. A girl would
come out and model something, then she would take it
off and offer it to be inspected, while she stood naked.
We looked at panties, bras, nighties, teddies, G-strings.
The girls also demonstrated Bai's ability to make fetishist
items of leather and rubber. Looking at some of those
items being modeled, I was actually sorry that every item
was a knockoff on something offered in the Cheeks catalog.


"You see?" Bai said finally. "I am prepared to offer
exact replicas of the things you sell, made to your standards
of quality. But available for a fraction of what you
pay-

Cued, I suppose, one of the girls came from the bedmom
wearing an innovative design for a bra, consisting
only of satin bands that stretched tightly under the breasts
lo lift them and thrust them forward�plus a G-string with
a wide slit.

This girl's nipples had been pierced, and she wore little
platinum rings in them.
"This you sell for thirty dollars," said Bai. "I can de-
Sver you this item for four dollars."
Finally a model came from the bedroom wearing a gar



HAROLD ROBBINS

ment I had never seen before, something we didn't sell in
Cheeks shops. I don't know what to call it: a teddy, I
suppose. Anyway, it was fabricated of small aluminum
rings woven together after the fashion of medieval chain
mail. Obviously it covered nothing. I supposed, too, it had
to be quite uncomfortable; for example, the girl's butt
would be marked with little ring indentations if she sat
down. She, too, had pierced nipples, and platinum rings
set with green stones hung from them.

"I suggest you stock this item," said Bai. "I can offer
them to you for twelve dollars apiece."

"Very interesting," I said noncommittally.

Bai dismissed the model with a curt gesture. "So," he
said. "Do you think we can do business?"

"On the basis of the quality of your merchandise, I see
no reason why not," I said. "On the basis of your prices,
that looks doable, too. The only element of the thing that
troubles me is the . . . irregular ways we will have to operate
to disguise the origin of the goods. Also, I am not
sure I can persuade my father to visit China to promote
them."

"Let us, then, set to work to resolve these minor problems,"
said Bai.
And that was where we left it.

Zhang Feng liked to take people for boat rides. It was a
way to get his business associates isolated with him. This
time�it was on a Sunday�he took Charlie and me
aboard a chartered yacht much bigger than the one that
had taken us to Lamina Island. Our destination was Lantau
Island, an island larger than Hong Kong Island and
even more mountainous.

The trip out took about an hour, from Hong Kong Central
to Silver Mine Bay. The yacht was luxurious and carried
for the day a buffet lunch comparable to the one Bai
Fuyuan had spread for us in the Kimberley Hotel. Three


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girls in colorful microskirted, skintight dresses poured
champagne for us.

The trip across the water was pleasant. A bracing wind
blew, and the yacht plowed through three-foot seas. One
of the girls began to show Signs of motion sickness, and
I went to her and explained to her how to avoid it.

"Stand up. Don't sit. Now flex your knees a little, opposite
to the movement of the boat. When you're sitting,
your whole body moves with every motion of the boat.
When you stand and use your knees, you will move less
than half as much, if at all."

She tried it and found it relieved her queasiness. From
that moment she attached herself to me. Her name was
Chang Li, and she was a diminutive, perfectly formed
Chinese girl who spoke a bit of English. Her little dress
was silk, emerald green, and fit like her skin. It was obvious
she wore nothing under it. My eyes could trace the
dent of her navel and the cleft of her behind.

We docked at Silver Mine Bay and went ashore to find
a Mercedes limousine with driver waiting for us. Li sat
close beside me.

Zhang wanted us to see the Po Lin monastery, high on

* mountain on Lantau Island. It featured the world's largest
outdoor sitting statue of Buddha, cast in bronze and
one hundred ten feet tall. The statue was visible for miles.
We could have left the car and climbed the stairs to its
base, but we elected to view it from the limo.
We returned to the yacht, which eased out and began
a leisurely circuit of the island, in generally smooth wafers.
Hong Kong's immense new airport was under contraction
on the north side of Lantau Island.

We sat on couches in the aft cabin. Li sat close to me.

Zhang wanted to talk business.

"1 am confident," I told him, "that we are going to
acquire control of Sphere. We are going to have the prob


lem you anticipated."
"Malloy," said Zhang.
"He wants to continue to build the Sphere computer.


HAROLD ROBBINS

That is to say, he wants to resume building it: a new
version."
"That could be useful, if you are willing to invest the
money."

"How so?"

"It will be Sphere Corporation's signature product, its
facade, as we might say. If Sphere is once more known
as the maker of a superior computer, that should facilitate
sales of the Sphere microprocessors. And.. . the use of
GMT components will enable you to manufacture the new
computer at a price that will attract the market."

I smiled. "So we will need more GMT components. To
incorporate in the computers."

Zhang returned my smile and nodded.

"Quality is the key," I said.

He nodded again. "Quality is the key."

The crew of the yacht laid out a dinner on a big table
that was lifted from the floor in the main cabin. We sat
down to a meal of Chinese delicacies�Li beside me as
always.

"Would you like," Zhang asked, "to see Macau? It is
an hour or so from here. The activity there will just be
beginning. I can introduce you to the finest casinos."

"I love the casinos," said Charlie Han. This was something
I had observed in the Chinese. They loved to gamble�
from man jong, on which some of them risked huge
sums, to horse races, to cockroaches placed in a circle,
the bet being on which one would leave the circle first.

"We can sleep on the boat. And have breakfast. It has
accommodations."

I understood from that moment that "accommodations"
was going to include Li in my bed. I had cheated on Vicky
only once and very briefly, with Susan. But maybe this
small, affectionate Chinese girl... whom I'd never see
again.

I remember little about Macau. The casinos just didn't
appeal to me. And, in anticipation of what was going to


THE SECRET 317

happen, my attention was fixed on Li. I decided I wanted
her. I wanted her very much.

While the others were gambling, I quietly suggested to
Li that we return to the boat. We were holding hands, and
she squeezed my hand and nodded.

Our cabin was small but lavish. It had a bed and one
upholstered chair, a telephone, television, and its own
head, with shower. I suggested to Li that we shower together.
She undressed immediately, and I held her and felt
her smooth skin. She unzipped me and pulled out my
cock, then pushed down my pants. We couldn't undress
fast enough. My socks were still on my feet when I led
her into the shower.

Under the stream of hot water, I knelt and introduced
my tongue into her. It quickly found her tiny clit. She
gasped, and I felt it harden. She urged me to stand, and
when I did she seized my cock and pushed it into herself.

She was exquisite. I mean she was exquisite in her little
body as well as in her ardor. She made love with me as
though we were two kids just learning.

"Word in Chinese is dew," she said, "which means
fuck. We fuck good, Len. We fuck very good."
I had to realize she had fucked many times before. Innocent
as she looked and acted, she was a hooker.

I was glad, when I reflected on that. She was being
paid for what she was doing. I would give her some more
money. And we were establishing no relationship whatever.
I would remember her. Maybe she would remember
me for a while. For the money, I imagine, and for the fact
that I had not been abusive. I was racist enough to wonder
what Chinese men did to her.

When we left the boat, I hugged and kissed her. I hoped
I would never see her again, but I was not going to be
shat lucky.


54


JERRY

Our neighbors had been right in telling us that alligators
would climb the bank from the canal, nose up to our
fence, and then slip back down to the water. Our neighbors
to one side had no fence, and an occasional 'gator
would reach the street and even enter our driveway. I was
tempted to run one over with the car, but I was also told
that wildlife fanatics would demand my prosecution.

On the other hand, Therese had cultivated the friendship
of two or three great white herons. She bought
chicken necks for them and tossed those out for the herons
to feed on. They made no mess. They found the chicken
necks on the grass by the pool and gulped them in one
swallow. They flew away, did their business somewhere
else, and returned�as if they knew better than to dirty
the lawns of their benefactors. On the other hand, when
they did not find their chicken necks when they thought
they should have them they would peck on our glass doors
and make a hell of a noise,

This is the kind of thing that held my attention in my
retirement in Florida. Do 1 have to say I was bored? Well,
I was, and no amount of fishing or bridge playing�which


THE SECRET

Therese had gotten me into with a few neighbors�made
me less bored.

Len came home from his latest trip to Hong Kong and
flew down to meet with me. We sat on the lanai and
watched Therese's herons�whom she had named Jake,
Pierre, and Lizzie, God knew why�while we talked.

"The problem is, as I see it," I told him, "we are venturing
into two situations where we don't know much and
where we can take one hell of a beating."

"In the one," he said, "we are expanding into a field,
technology, where we don't know much; and in the other
we are expanding in a field where we know everything,
but we will be doing it by joining a partner who wants to
lie, cheat, and steal."

"In an area of the world where we are even more ignorant
than we are in the area of technology," I said.
"We can repair our ignorance of technology," he said.
"And of China, too."

"This Liz you've hired and that professor who is consulting
can help us with that," I said. "Charlie Han knows
something of the ways of China. But does he know
enough?"

" 'In ways that are mean and tricks that are vain, the
heathen Chinee are peculiar,' " Len recited from Bret
Harte.

"Whatever that means," I said. I didn't know the quotation.
I never did get much education.

"The Chinese will play by their own rules, some of
which they will make up as they go along," said Len. "We
have to count on that, whether we're dealing with Zhang
or Bai."

Well..."

"On the other hand," he said, "we can import computer
chips with Chinese prices, inspect them thoroughly, test
them, and install them on Sphere microprocessor boards,
which Sphere can then sell at a price reflecting what we
faid for the chips. It makes us highly competitive."


HAROLD ROBBINS

"That's Zhang's point, isn't it? So, what about Malloy's
damned computer?"

"Zhang Feng thinks we should do it. Full of Chinese
components, it will sell at an attractive price. If it's as
good as he thinks Malloy is capable of making it, it will
be a good front for our microprocessor business."

I was dubious. "On this one, I'm going to say it depends
on how much money we have to put in it. You said
that Zhang once said he'd put up the majority of it. Then
he said twenty million�"

"Let's think of another point," said Len. "If we put up
a majority of the dollars, we control Sphere. If Zhang puts
up more than we do, he controls Sphere."

"Not necessarily," I said. "If Zhang puts up fifty million,
he lends it to us, and we buy the stock. A fiftymillion-
dollar loan is not going to buy him any position
in Gazelle."

Len smiled. "As Zhang always says, we can negotiate."


Len went to bed in the guest room, I sat alone on
the lanai, drinking a glass of red wine and pondering.

The night when Uncle Harry and Aunt Lila came to
my family's apartment to tell me my father and mother
had been killed, I was broke. That is, I would be shortly,
because Harry and my girlfriend, whom he later married,
would fuck me out of the few dollars I might have had
from my father's life insurance, and some proceeds from
his numbers running. I wasn't broke, but I was stupid and
soon was broke.

I went to work for a pittance and had nothing but a
pittance until things got worse�I was drafted. I might
have died in combat but for my perforated eardrum that
got me classified One-B: noncombatant. In the army I
used my skills as a hustler, so that when the war ended I
had a stash of money, a beautiful, loving girlfriend, and
prospects. I got the North American franchise for Plescassier
water, and Uncle Harry tried to fuck me out of


THE SECRET

that. With the help of guys like Frank Costello and Meyer
Lansky I fucked Harry royally, to the tune of two million
dollars.

The two million funded the Cheeks shops. From then
on I was in the ladies' undergarments business, as Buddy
scornfully put it sometimes; and by now I had so much
money I could afford to risk, say, fifty million dollars on
microprocessor chips. If I lost it all, it wouldn't break me,
or even come near it.

But it was a very strange turn of fate. From selling sexy
scanties I was going into a high-tech industry I knew nothing
about. If Giselle had been alive she would have reminded
me that when I went into lingerie I had known
nothing about that, either. Or about marketing, which had
proved to be the key. I'd had to learn.

Well.. . maybe I wasn't too old to learn something
about this new field. Low-tech to high-tech!

I should have been more comfortable with the Bai Fuyuan
proposition. There was nothing high-tech about that.

In the morning, Len and I talked about it.

"It troubles me," Len said, "that Bai Fuyuan and Zhang
Feng offered almost identical propositions on manufacturing
Cheeks goods in China and sneaking them out and
back in again as Hong Kong goods."

"I did what you suggested on the telephone," I told him.
"I had Middleton find out everything he could about Bai
and Zhang, focusing on the possibility that they are some
way associated. They could find no evidence of it�
though God knows the Chinese could find ways to conceal
that."

"I think there's another possibility," said Len.

"Which is?"

"That this way of doing business is so common that
many operators do it. They are offering the same kind of
deal because many rascals do it, and it is an accepted way
of working."


322 HAROLD ROBBINS

"So what happens to the round-eyes who gets caught?"
I asked.

"We'll have to shield ourselves."

"I suppose that can be worked out."

"Let's be clear about something more," Len said.
"You've been in business for a long time and were around
when things were done differently. Was it ever, in your
observation, a common practice for businessmen to offer
girls to sell their deals? I mean, offer girls' tails to soften
up the guy on the other side of negotiations?"

I shook my head. "I have known it to happen. I couldn't
say it was ever common." I frowned and tried to remember.
"Yes, I've known it to happen. If you think that's
because I'm so much older than you and was around when
things were different, forget it. If anything, it's more
likely today than it was in the 1950s."

"Well... Zhang Feng will set you up with a girl."

"You didn't... ?" I asked.

"No," Len said simply.

"I didn't think you were that dumb."

"The other real problem is," said Len, "are you willing
to go to China and shill for Bai's merchandise?"

I shrugged. "What the hell?"

We decided to go to Houston again. Therese had been
disappointed with it and was not interested in going this
time. Vicky felt she should not leave the kids with Maria
any more than was necessary and told Len go on without
her. Both women had met Liz McAllister by then and
were not concerned about their husbands traveling with
her without their wives.

This guy Tom Malloy was something else again. And
so was his wife, the one-time Oilers cheerleader. Hell, for
that matter so was Texas something else again, and so
was Houston, even if "there are no Texans in Houston."

The Malloys insisted we must be their guests in their
suburban home, and so we wound up in three separate


THE SECRET

guest bedrooms�Malloy having, not very subtly, determined
that neither Len nor I would want to share a bed
with Liz. ("I mean, fellas, she's one helluva woman, ain't
she? I got a sister about her size.")

Warned by Len, Liz and I brought along swimsuits and
the kind of clothes we would need if we were badgered
into going to a rodeo�everything but the hats, which we
were willing to let the Malloys provide.

Even if it was a business meeting, the Malloys wanted
to hold it around the pool, where we would sit sipping
bourbon poured over chipped ice.

Len had taken Liz to a Cheeks shop in Manhattan and
had her fitted into one of our international-orange swimsuits.
There was nothing that girl could have done to conceal
her bulk�and, dammit, I wouldn't have wanted her
to; she was handsome in her way and should not have
been made to feel she was flawed. The suit uncovered her
hips and butt and stretched tight over other parts and left
her looking... well, large, but with a grace in the way
she carried herself.

Malloy had by now offered a business plan for building
Sphere IV and bringing it to market. With American components
strictly, it could not be sold for less than $2,895,
bare. With GMT parts from China it could go on the market
at $1,695, bare. With more RAM, whatever the hell
that might be, and greater speed in its CPU, again whatever
the hell that might be, it could come up to $2,895,
but would then have what the computer community liked
to call "blinding speed."

Malloy talked to Liz about "modems" and about "monitors
" and about "CD ROM drives," which terms my son
seemed to understand. I became more painfully conscious
THAT a whole new world existed of which I was ignorant.

"Do you want to fly out to Hong Kong and go over to
Guangzhou and see how he manufactures chips?" Len

"Do you want to know what you're going to find?"
Malloy asked. "Tell 'em, Liz."


324 HAROLD ROBBINS

"Guangdong Micro-Technology will be an office," she
said. "Likely in an office that does a hundred other kinds
of business. The chips come in from twenty or more little
shops where people labor over designs to make the tiny
CPUs. Zhang Feng has them under contract. He supplies
a design from some genius designer who is paid little.
The shop does the work. I've never been to China, but I
understand this is how it works. It's a cottage industry, so
to speak."

"A cottage industry in so sophisticated.. . ?"
"Once a design is made, making the chip is a matter of
very tedious labor," she said.

"Americans," said Malloy, "automate the making of
chips. But automation costs money. When you have, as
they have in China, an endless supply of labor, you have
much less need to automate."

"Well," I said. 'Tell me the downside of this. If their
chips pass muster, why not use them?"

"Why not?" said Malloy. "The only thing that bothers
me is that we may become dependent on these Chinese
chips. What if Zhang Feng doubles his price a year from
now?"

"Easy enough, I think," said Len. "If Zhang doubles his
price, we buy from someone else. I'd bet Bai Fuyuan can
supply the same. If not he, someone else. Once we enter
the market, we'll get proposals from all sides."

"Quality, quality, quality, darling," said Liz. "Everything
must be tested, tested, tested. I'd raise our estimated
price on machines with Chinese components to include
the cost of quality control."

Len told me I was lucky the Malloys didn't insist on
dragging us off to a rodeo. Instead, as the sun set, guests
began to arrive, and we were to be subjected to a Texasstyle
pool party, with barbecue.

I'm going to say something first about the barbecue.
I'm not entirely sure how they did it. An immense piece


THE SECRET

325

of beef�a whole side�was put in a pit where wood
smoldered and generated heat. The meat cooked slowly
for a very long time; it was cooking all the time we sat
at the pool talking business, at least. It was ready when
we were ready, and I have never eaten anything better�
though it makes a Jewish boy from Brooklyn blush to
admit it. The Chinese should learn to do Texas barbecue.
And to make the sauce.

It was served on handsome plastic plates from Neiman
Marcus, with baked beans, corn on the cob, and all the
potato salad or coleslaw you could pile on. With frosted
schooners of ice-cold beer. It was lucky we were in swimsuits
and by the pool, because our monogrammed napkins
were sometimes defeated by our dribbling, and we could
best clean ourselves with a plunge in the pool.

The guests were Texans, even if there were supposed
to be none in Houston. It was amazing to see how many
men had found football cheerleaders for wives. Malloy
was not alone in that, though he was fortunate in having
found one with brains. They walked around in their
skimpy bikinis and open-toed-high-heeled shoes, cowgirl **
hats, and gaudy gold jewelry.

Well, not all. I didn't see a woman who would have
been taken for a matron back East. But some bikini-clad
women had about them a certain hard-bitten charisma,
suggesting that money didn't buy you out of every disappointment.


Texas is a hardscrabble place, and the bar girl who had
said there were no Texans in Houston had been wrong,
but had known what she was talking about.

A man with too much beer in him came on to Liz. I
watched him pat her on the fanny and talk quietly to her.
Unhappily, she was flattered by the attention and tolerated
him. Starved for attention, she let him fondle her. And
then .. . I don't know what he said, though it was easy to
guess; she stiffened and said something definite to him.
He slinked away.

I kept an eye on Liz after that. The big, gawky girl was


326 HAROLD ROBBINS

out of place and visibly uncomfortable. She wandered
around the pool, finding it difficult to join in conversations.


I took a little concern in the amount of beer Liz was
drinking. I tried to get Len's attention but couldn't without
being noticeable. Finally I went to her side.

"Liz, how ya doin'?"

" 'Kay, Jerry. Thanks for asking."

"Are you as bored as I am?" I asked her.

"Probably worse," she answered.

Gently, I took her beer mug from her hands and set it
aside on a table. She looked at me quizzically but said
nothing. I guided her away from the party crowd, to a
white-painted wrought-iron bench at the edge of the light
and beyond the reach of the talk. We sat down and were
silent for a few minutes, just watching the party, where
by now people had begun to push each other into the pool.

Liz began to glance at me�to glance, in fact, back and
forth between me and the party. And finally she broke our
silence.

"Jerry," she asked solemnly, "would you like a nice
blow job?"
I was stunned and for too long a moment was unable
to answer.
"I mean it," she said quietly. "I'd enjoy going down on
you. I really would enjoy it."
I drew a deep breath. "Is it a good idea, Liz?" was all
I could think of to say.
"It's a damned good idea. I do it very well, I've been
told."

"I'm surprised that you do it at all."

"Huh! If you're me and you don't want to be lonely,
you do it. The word got around at the university�
Michigan�that Liz McAllister would suck cocks. I had
dates after that. Of course, that's all they wanted." She
sighed, deeply, audibly. "I just didn't want to be lonely,"
she whispered tearfully.

"You want to come with me to my room?"


THE SECRET 327

"Yes ..."

"And sleep with me?"

"Yes."

"Okay. But you don't have to give me a blow job. You
aren't going to be alone tonight, but you don't have to do
.. . anything."

We went to my room and to my bed. There, slipped
under my door, I found a telegram. It was from Hugh
Scheck.

FORGIVE THE QUAINT METHOD OF COMMUNICATION.
HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO
REACH YOU BY PHONE OR FAX. I KNEW YOU
WOULD WANT TO KNOW ASAP THAT BUDDY
HAS BEEN SHOT. HE IS IN LINCOLN HOSPITAL
IN CRITICAL CONDITION AND IS ASKING
FOR YOU.

Hugh met me at LaGuardia, and by the time we reached
the hospital he had briefed me on what had happened.
Buddy was the victim of a drive-by shooting. The police
thought it was not a random shooting but was meant to
kill him specifically.

As we rode in a cab to the hospital, I suppose Hugh
found me oddly silent. I was thinking about Buddy, specifically
about the day I met him. I was working in Uncle
Harry's store, and Buddy wandered in as if by chance. He
made small talk, and quickly I realized that this streetsmart
guy was offering friendship. I couldn't imagine
why. Two guys couldn't have been more different. But at
that time in my life I was happy to have anyone offer
friendship.

We reached the hospital. The doctors just shook their
heads, but they let me in to see him.

I had to remember that Buddy was five to seven years
older than I was and so was in his late seventies. He lay
there attached to tubes and was a terrible reminder of how


328 HAROLD ROBBINS

the human body can be reduced from everything to nothing
in one cruel moment.

I spoke his name.

He opened his eyes and looked at me.

"I'm told it's gonna be okay," I lied.

"B'lieve that y'believe in the tooth fairy," he muttered.
He sighed. It was a rattle. "But I been layin' here, half
dreaming, and my mind goes back to Paris. Those were
good days, weren't they? Giselle .. . and Therese . .. and
Ulla. You fucked Giselle's little sister and wound up married
to her. Those were good days."

"Every day I ever spent with you was a good day,
Buddy," I whispered tearfully. "You saved my life, you
know. When Chieppa and Filly tried to kill me, I used
what you taught me: how to cut with a razor. How many
times did you make me practice that move?"

"You were a good kid, but you weren't smart. I tried
to make you smart."

"Why? Why did you want to do that for me, Buddy?"

"I gotta tell ya somethin'. I'm glad you got here in
time."

I sobbed. "Nobody ever had a better friend, Buddy ... "

"Not so good as you think. That's what I gotta tell ya."

"Buddy..."

"Your father and mother were killed on the Jersey
Pike," he whispered hoarsely. He shook his head faintly.
"No accident. They were forced off the road by a truck.
It was a hit."

"You mean they were murdered?" I asked, shocked.

"Yeah .. . They were murdered. By me. I was drivin'
the truck. I'd been paid good. I rammed that truck against
their back bumper and made your father drive faster. Then
I pulled out and nudged him off the road, through the
guardrail and into the water. I'd picked the spot."

"Buddy!"

"Then I heard about you and came to meet you, and
saw what I'd done. You were .. . so goddamned innocent.
And bein' fucked every which way. That's why I tried to


THE SECRET

be your friend�to save you from that son of a bitch!"
"You mean the man who hired you to kill my parents
was�"

"Right. He lied, he cheated, he stole. Hell, he even married
your girl, Kitty, after he knew she'd got her claws
on all your money."

"Uncle Harry?!"

Buddy nodded weakly. "Uncle Harry. .. . Well.. . A
long time later... Uncle Harry hated you and was still
plotting to have your ass. I fixed it so Harry wouldn't
have anybody's ass anymore. That move I made you
learn."

"Buddy! My God, Buddy!"

He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Jerry. About your father
and mother. I'm so goddamned sorry! I'm even sorry I
kept the secret all these years. I should have told you. The
secret has been a brick in my stomach for fifty years."

I sat with him until the end, thinking of all the days
and all the years. He said nothing more. In an hour he
was gone.


55


LEN

We acquired controlling interest in Sphere, Incorporated.
Zhang Feng put up $25 million in the form of a loan to
Gazelle, Incorporated. Gazelle bought up Sphere's debt
and took its hypothecated stock for a total of $75 million�
meaning of course, that we put in $50 million.
Though Gazelle owed Zhang $25 million, he acquired
none of the Sphere stock. Gazelle had total control of
Sphere.

Zhang asked for two seats on the board of directors, so
his representatives would be present at meetings and could
keep him fully informed. This presented no problem.
There were nine directors: Tom Malloy, Jerry Cooper,
Len Cooper, Vicky Cooper, Roger Middleton, Hugh
Scheck, and . . . My father surprised me. He suggested Liz
McAllister be elected to the board. I agreed, and she was
elected. Zhang's two directors were Vincent Lowe, a vice
president at Marine Midland Bank, and Professor Du Jin
of Columbia University.

My father was elected the chairman of the board. I was
elected the chief executive officer. Malloy was elected
president and chief operating officer.

All of this meant, of course, that Tom Malloy lost con



THE SECRET 331

trol of Sphere, absolutely. He would run it as we prescribed.


On the other hand, it meant Sphere's entire debt was
retired, and it was in a position to borrow again to finance
the new things it was going to do. Texas banks were
happy to lend money to the newly and surprisingly solvent
Sphere, Incorporated, and we let the Texas banks do the
financing. Except that one significant loan came from the
Bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Professor William Cable became a permanent consultant
to Sphere. With Liz McAllister, he examined every
element of the designs Malloy came up with.

I found myself affected by Tom Malloy's enthusiasm
about Sphere IV. We would earn more revenue from our
microprocessors, at least initially, but Sphere IV might in
time become another Cheeks. If for no other reason, it
would be a handsome stylishly ultra-sleek computer, not
a beige box.

1 was thirty-six years old. My father was seventy-four.
Vicky was fifty-four. We had a seven-year-old daughter,
Catherine, and a five-year-old son, J. J. Anthony Lucchese
was twenty-six, had his MBA, and was installed as heir
apparent at Interboro Fruit.

Anthony was an intelligent businessman and began to
suggest to Vicky that Interboro should begin to diversify.
Diversification was a buzz word in business now. He wondered
if Interboro should not buy into Sphere. Vicky said
no, for the moment anyway.

My children were a joy. With Maria's assistance and
Vicky's encouragement, both of them could say simple
things in Chinese. That made it easier for us to contemplate
returning to Hong Kong. On the other hand, it was
difficult to contemplate a peripatetic life, living in New
York eight months of the year and Hong Kong four. Catherine
had to go to school.

Our options were limited. I would go out to Hong Kong


HAROLD ROBBINS

and stay as long as I needed to, leaving my family behind,
or we would all go to Hong Kong and would have to stay
there long enough for Catherine to complete a school year.

The Handover had occurred by now. Charlie Han and
others assured me that life in Hong Kong was little
changed, that the Beijing government had not imposed
tyranny and showed no sign of intending to.

The decision was business-driven. We needed someone
on the ground in the Far East if we were to do there the
things to which we were committed and which we
planned.

So we decided. We would move into our apartments in
Hong Kong and stay there nine or ten months.

Charlie was right. The place had not changed much. The
principal change I noted at first was that the new airport
was open and was as efficient as any airport in the world.
Downtown, we noted chiefly the absence of the Union
Jack. The flags of China and Hong Kong flew. The police
were the same men and women who had been police before.
The difference was that they no longer wore crowns
for insignia but badges of red, with stars.

Hong Kong remained one of the best-run cities in the
world, with quiet, expeditious subways, fast-running traffic,
a telephone system par excellence, modern new buildings
dominating everything, air-conditioning overcoming
the subtropical heat... I had come to like the place, in
spite of the fact that I could speak only a few words of
Chinese.

We enrolled Catherine in a school in Kowloon that was
run by Jesuits. They quiedy accepted the fact that she was
of Jewish heritage and said they would not try to influence
her to become Christian. At her age she could not travel
on the subway alone, so I leased a Toyota and hired a
driver.

So .. . the first problem was to deal with Bai Fuyuan.


THE SECRET 333

* * *

He asked me to come to Shenzhen this time. I went, with
Charlie Han. The train trip from Kowloon Station was
easier this time�easier in that we made a much quicker
exit from Shenzhen Station. I had to wonder if the Chinese
government had not made the passport ordeal at
Shenzhen more difficult when Hong Kong was a British
colony than it was now that Hong Kong was a province
of China.

We met Bai Fuyuan in an exclusive club. Once again
he was wearing a white suit, as he had the first time I met
him. We were served champagne and slices of fruit by
stark-naked little girls. I began to suspect that he had been
in touch with Zhang Feng and knew that I had succumbed
to the charms of Chang Li.

But now he wanted to talk business. We moved slowly
toward an agreement. I wanted to start with the merchandise
that would go to America.

"I must ask you, Mr. Bai, hasn't the new relationship
between China and Hong Kong made our arrangements
more difficult?"

'To the contrary, Mr. Cooper. And, incidentally, there
is no longer any reason to speak about differences between
Hong Kong and China. It is all China now. The
Brits could be stiff-necked. We Chinese know how to do
business."

"Guanxi," I suggested.

"Guanxi," he agreed with a modest smile. "In the
States there used to be a clich�, I believe. 'One hand
washes the other.' So .. . the whole point is, how can we
make a mutually satisfactory profit?"

"You spoke once of selling us microchips," I said.

Bai turned down the corners of his mouth and shrugged.
"I can do better business selling you sewn merchandise.
I know that business better, as do you."

I wondered if this didn't mean he knew Zhang Feng
iad gotten the microchip contracts. I wondered if the two


334 HAROLD ROBBINS

of them did not work together. I also had to wonder if we
were in the grip of two Chinese bandits.
"Have you considered the suit made with the aluminum
links?" he asked.

He pointed a finger, said something in Chinese, and one
of the girls trotted off toward another room. I knew she
would return momentarily wearing the teddy made of aluminum
chain mail.

"I think it would have a limited market, owing to the
fact that it has to be uncomfortable to wear."

"But, Mr. Cooper. Is it not uncomfortable to wear the
handcuffs, leg irons, and other restraint articles that you
sell?"

"You have a point," I admitted.
When the girl returned she was wearing the aluminumring
teddy. I had to admit it was erotic.

"I gave you a price of twelve dollars," said Bai. "On
reflection, I think I would have to ask fourteen. I believe
you can sell it for thirty or forty dollars, maybe more.
You might invest in, say, a hundred dozen. I wager you
will sell them in four months."

"Sell me a hundred dozen at your original price of
twelve dollars, and if I sell them in four months or so and
re-order, I will take them at fourteen."

Bai smiled broadly. "You might be .. . Chinese," he
said. "You might be . .. Chinese."

"That raises another point," I said. "If I am going to do
business in China, I must learn something of the language.
Shall I learn Cantonese or Mandarin? My children are
learning Mandarin."

"Let me urge you to learn Cantonese," he said. "It is
not the language of government. It is much the language
of business. Then .. . in time you can learn Putonghua as
well."

Putonghua was the official name of Mandarin Chinese,
the official language of China.

He smiled again. "Do you like our little Xin there? I
can offer her to you as an instructor in Cantonese. She


THE SECRET 335

can instruct in the Glorious Positions as well."

"My wife, who is with me in Hong Kong now and will
be in Hong Kong as long as I will, might object to little
Xin."

He nodded. "Then, sir, can we talk about your father
and you appearing in China to endorse our merchandise?"

lh e first show for the endorsement of merchandise was
held in Guangzhou, in what was called the Friendship
Store.

My father did not come out to the Far East for that
show. I went, accompanied by Vicky.

Vicky and I were treated as royalty. We were delivered
to the store in a Mercedes limousine and escorted immediately
to a lounge, where we were treated to champagne
and caviar.

We went with a high degree of skepticism. Although I
had seen Guangzhou and stayed there in a luxury hotel, I
could not imagine the opulence of the Friendship Store.
Though a great many of its customers were obviously
foreign, the great majority were Chinese. To all appearances,
anyone could enter and shop there.

Floors that were not marble were parquet. People
moved up and down on quiet, slow-moving escalators.
The lighting was subdued and colored to display merchandise
at its best advantage. The merchandise was
mostly western�Gucci, Bruno Magli, Hermes, Versace,
Rolex. . . . Girls in blue blazers and gray skirts hovered
over customers and offered service. Each girl spoke perfect
English, more often American-accented than British
English. Others�sometimes the same ones�spoke Japanese.
The only suggestion that this was China was in the
photo identification badges they all wore.

Bai, obviously, was proud of the Friendship Store. He
was like a child with a good report card.

"This kind of merchandising is growing in China," he
said. "We have stores like this in Beijing, Shanghai, Shen



HAROLD ROBBINS

zhen, Chongquing, and many other cities. The young people
shop here. They have money to spend and are good
customers."

He took us to a large room furnished chiefly with
couches and low tables. A cast-bronze sign by the door
said:

CHEEKS

Intimate apparel

It said the same in Chinese characters, also.

On the side of the room opposite the door stood a platform
some two feet above the floor, carpeted and brilliantly
lighted by spots in a track overhead. It was the
stage for the models.

Two television cameras in the far corners of the room
were ready to tape the show.

Men and women sat on the couches, sipped champagne
or tea, and nibbled on slices of fruit. Most of them were
Chinese, though a few looked Japanese, and there were
half a dozen westerners in the room, one or two of them
American.

Bai escorted Vicky and me and Charlie Han to a
couch near the stage. He handed Vicky and me two sets
of small earphones, which were attached to boxes small
enough for me to stick mine in my outside jacket
pocket. We would hear a translation of what would be
said in Chinese, Bai explained. He pointed to what he
called a projector high above the stage and explained
that it would transmit sound to our receiver boxes by
means of infrared light. He told me to take the box out
of my pocket and let it lie on my lap, where its sensor
would receive the signal.

Bai Fuyuan opened the style show. He introduced the
deputy governor of Guangdong province, then the mayor
of Guangzhou, then Vicky, then Charlie Han, and finally
me.


THE SECRET 337

The lights in the room dimmed to brownish-yellow,
leaving only the stage brightly lighted.

The first model to appear wore one of our internationalorange
swimsuits: a Cheeks signature item. Bai so described
it. He said it was seen on beaches and at pools
everywhere in America and Europe.

The next model showed a sheer black catsuit stitched
with floral lace. After that came a teddy of similar material,
to which garters were attached to hold up the model's
dark stockings. Then a series of bra-and-panty sets.

I was curious to know how far Bai would go. During
an initial show at home we did not show everything we
sold.

Bai Fuyuan did. He showed bras with holes to display
the nipples. He showed panties with slit crotches. Two of
his models were shaved and showed their inner parts
when they modeled slit panties.

Then he had his models show items we never showed
but only sold in private rooms in our shops�fetishist
items: handcuffs, leg irons, leather collars fastened with
padlocks, rubber-ball gags . . .

The people on the couches nodded solemnly, whispered
comments to each other, and tittered.

Bai's commentary came through my headphones in
English, loud and clear. I heard him say, "Before we
show you our final item, I want to introduce an honored
guest to say a few words. We are able to sell Cheeks
merchandise in China by the courtesy of the officers and
fcectors of Gazelle, Incorporated, which owns the
Cheeks line. May I present Mr. Len Cooper, the president
of Gazelle."

Bai had earlier presented me a text and suggested I use

k. I didn't. I simply acknowledged the presence of the
two dignitaries, thanked the audience for coming, and said
bow very glad we were to be able to offer our merchandise
to Chinese customers. I said I hoped they would always
be pleased with anything they bought from us and

338 HAROLD ROBBINS

invited them to return anything they found defective, for
a full refund.
Bai winced at that last. He had anticipated no such
thing.

And now the finale of his style show. "You all remember
pretty little Ling," he said. "She modeled several items
for you. As did Lufeng. They will now demonstrate the
value of one more item we will make available."

Ling, a tiny Chinese girl who could not have been
older than seventeen, stark naked, blindfolded and
gagged, was led to the stage by Lufeng, herself naked
but for a tiny white G-string and a white nippleless bra.
She carried a cat-o'-nine-tails. A heavy black leather
collar was padlocked around Ling's neck. A strap from
that collar ran down her back to leather cuffs that were
locked around her wrists, pinning her hands together
and behind her. Her nipples were pinched by clamps,
with a chain running between them. Lufeng wore the
nipple clamps, too.

Lufeng gave Ling a firm slap on the rear, and the little
girl bent forward. Lufeng swung the cat. It swished audibly
through the air and smacked Ling's hinder cheeks
with a sickening jolt. The little girl grunted through the
rubber ball of her gag.

Lufeng swung again. Ling moaned.

"It is sufficient," said Bai. "You see the point. Some
love to receive the blows. Ling does, believe it or not.
Some would rather give them. Lufeng would. This kind
of merchandise will be available to our more adventurous
customers."

The six models all came out then and showed themselves
to the assembly, all of them absolutely naked. Little
Ling received a round of applause.

Vicky allowed herself to be escorted through a round of
dinners and cocktail parties and a second show, this one
in Shenzhen. She smiled on cue, said nothing, and ac



THE SECRET 339

cepted gifts that included earrings of the finest dark green
jade. She accepted and wore a cheongsam: an exquisite
dress made of emerald-green silk embroidered with gold
and silver thread. It fit like water poured over her body.
Its collar reached her ears. The skirt reached below her
knees, but it was slit almost to her hip. She was spectacular
in it.

After one of these events, when we had been home ten
minutes, Vicky spoke.

"I haven't said a fuckin' word. Every word we spoke
in those hotel rooms was recorded. But I don't think
they've got this place bugged, so I can tell you what I
think."

"What do you think, honey?" I asked.

"I think you can't do business with those people. I think
sooner or later the shit's gonna hit the fan."
"Like ... ? Meaning... ?"
"You ever bang one of those models?" she asked.
I shook my head emphatically.
"I can live with that. I'm your wife, I'm the mother of

your kids, and so long as you don't get it in your head to
leave home for some Chinese whore I can understand
your fucking one now and then. But I'll bet you something.
If you ever did, you're on videotape. Those guys
are not stupid. Nothing happens without a purpose. 'Let's
go to the videotape!' "

"Maybe I'm naive," I conceded.

"I doubt that," said Vicky grimly. "But they don't supply
you with whores for nothing. These Chinese bastards
don't do anything for nothing. But they've got a big surprise
coming when they show a tape like that to me."

"Vicky�"

She kissed me. "When they do, I'm gonna say, 'Too
fuckin' bad. Don't show me this shit. I don't care.' "
I shook my head. "They wouldn't."
"Hey, Len. You think you know everything? Okay.

Maybe you oughta be wiser. I'm gonna tell you something
you don't know. Your father made his bones some years


HAROLD ROBBINS

back. Not too long ago, either�maybe ten years ago. Before
you and I met. A guy and a gal tried to kill him.
They sleep with the fishes. That's a silly cliche nobody
really uses. But that pair do. They tried to kill your dad,
and they got eaten by sharks. Or. . . apparently they did.
They disappeared in Florida and were never seen or heard
from again."

I can't say how shocked I was. I knew Vicky wouldn't
lie about such a thing. I also knew she had sources of
information.

"I've just proved something to you, my darling," she
said. "You can't rely on promises."

"From whatever source," I said bitterly.

"Okay. The world is the world, Len. What I'm telling
you right now is that you can't rely on those Chinese
operators. Cover your ass, Len. Cover your ass, because
they're gonna cover theirs, for damned sure, and they'll
take the first opportunity to steal you blind."

"You telling me to back out?"
"No, I'm not telling you to back out. I'm telling you
not to trust them."
"You're telling me not to trust anybody, not even you.
Isn't that what you're telling me?
"Trust me? Well.. . I've told you. I've trusted you. I
do trust you, lover."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I promised your father I would never tell what I've
just told you." She shrugged. "I lied to him. I didn't know
I was lying to him when I said that, but.. . Don't tell your
father what I said to you about Florida. Okay? Don't ever
mention that to him."

"All right," I said.

I suppose I was as depressed that night as I have ever
been�ever, anyway, since I was given the news of the
death of my mother. When we were in bed, Vicky did
that thing for me that she alone could do; she sucked my
entire scrotum and testicles into her mouth and held them
there, licking and warming them, until I could think of


THE SECRET

nothing else but what she was doing. She was eighteen
years older than I was, and I suppose Chang Li was eighteen
years younger, but Vicky was the artist Li would
never be.


56


Tom Malloy and Liz McAllister pronounced themselves
satisfied with the chips coming to us from China. Guangdong
Micro-Technology, GMT, proved capable of producing
chips that consistently met every test. The tests
were beyond my comprehension but not beyond my understanding
that they worked, which was what counted,
so far as I was concerned.

Malloy designed the Sphere IV and put it out for beta
testing. He took it to national trade shows and let the
computer types play with it. It got good notices in the
trade journals. There was a half-breathless anticipation for
it, something like what there had been for Windows 95
before it shipped.

All I knew was, it was a handsome machine. And, more
important, it ran Windows, not just a Malloy proprietary
operating system. That would make all the difference.

The merchandise from Bai Fuyuan was generally good.
Charlie Han inspected it in Hong Kong before it was
shipped to the States. He rejected an occasional batch of
items, but on the whole the lingerie was put together well
from high-quality fabrics. Charlie Han knew fabrics, and
he knew stitching. We were lucky to have him.


THE SECRET 343

The only real problem we had was with colors. For
some odd reason, Bai's people could not exactly match
our colors. That is, he could not match the colors used by
our Hong Kong makers.

Okay . ..

We were doing business as we had planned. The legalities
of some parts of it were mysterious, but we relied
on Hong Kong solicitors to steer us. The merchandise was
made in China and shipped to Guangzhou or Hong Kong
without labels. In those two cities labels were sewn in saying
the merchandise was made in Hong Kong, some
of it in the United States. Shipments to the States�
merchandise with Hong Kong labels�went out as air
cargo. When it arrived in the States, import tariffs were
paid. Shipments from Guangzhou went up the coast and
were delivered at various Chinese ports, chiefly Shanghai.
The labels on the merchandise said it had been made in
Hong Kong. The shipping documents said it had been
made in China and was being shipped only in coastal
trade.

I asked my father to come out to Hong Kong. I wanted
him to see the Friendship Store in Guangzhou, and Bai
wanted him to be present for the opening of our two shops
in Beijing. He insisted that an appearance by Jerry Cooper
was important.

One reason why he did not want to come was that Therese
did not want to. She had settled into a comfortable
life in Florida, fishing, playing bridge, and feeding her
herons; and it was true that the flight out and back was
an ordeal, even for younger people, even if they did travel
in the first-class section.

Reluctantly, my father agreed to make the trip alone. He
sounded weary on the telephone, and I was tempted to tell
him to forget it, that he was entitled to his relaxation.

Imagine my surprise when I met him at the new airport
and found him not alone. Liz was with him.
"She wants to see how Zhang makes chips," he explained.
"So, it occurred to me that she could come with


344 HAROLD ROBBINS

me and ease some of the burden of travel."

My father was full of surprises for me always. He
sually announced that Liz would not be going to a hotel,
but would share his room in the second apartment.

She had brought with her a Sphere IV. She hooked it up
in my apartment office and shortly had it doing impressive
things. I'd learned a lot about computers before leading
our company into making the commitment it had made,
but Liz was a computer guru and could make the machine
do things I didn't know any machine could do.

"Look, honey," she said to me, leaning over me and
brushing me with her oversized breasts. "This one is set
up with both Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect."

I knew that was important. Loyalists for both programs
wanted to see documents formatted for their choice between
these major word processors. To do that, the Sphere
had to have a lot of RAM: a lot of memory, plus a capacious
hard drive. What was more, this computer ran at
six hundred megahertz, which was about as fast as any
desktop could then run�what the advertising copywriters
liked to call "blinding speed." Of course, I knew that today's
blinding speed would be a crawl tomorrow.

My father watched quizzically, without total interest, as
Liz demonstrated the Sphere and then turned it over to
me. He didn't pretend to know what we were talking
about. He had pronounced himself too far along in life to
learn a whole new science.

He was no innocent, though. At the end of his second
day in Hong Kong he took me aside in my apartment
office and asked me a pointed question.

"How much are we paying Charlie Han?"

"A hundred twenty thousand," I said. "Plus perks."

"Do his perks include that Mercedes? That's one hell
of a luxury car."


THE SECRET


"No. We've known all along that he was doing some
business on the side."

"All I want to know is, is he competing with us? Or
worse, is he cheating on us? You know, he could be putting
his imprimatur on merchandise that does not in fact
meet standards."

I nodded. "Are we getting complaints? Are the customers
back home ... ?"

"No. Well.. . it would take time. But no. We've had
no complaints about the merchandise. But I can walk into
a store and tell immediately what was made in Hong Kong
and what in China. It's good stuff. It's correctly sewn.
But the colors are all a little off."

"I've noticed that," I said.

"I wonder," said my father, "if Bai Fuyuan doesn't have
some reason for that. I mean, he can walk into any store,
anywhere, and know what part of the stock came from
him."

"I tend to trust Charlie Han," I said.
"I've got good reason to trust him," said my father. "He
committed perjury for me, one time."
"But it's a slippery business. I lose sleep over it."

went over to Guangzhou to meet Zhang Feng and see
his shops. Charlie sent along a young Chinese woman to
be Liz's interpreter.

Bai Fuyuan wanted us to be in Beijing for the opening
of the first Cheeks shop there. Liz very much wanted to
see Beijing and said she would pay her own expenses to
go there. So it was arranged mat she would fly from
Guangzhou to Beijing and meet us there. I knew, of
course, that my father would take care of her expenses.

She already had her visa for visiting China. We had to
obtain ours and so had to go to the Chinese travel agency,
be photographed, and fill out our applications. Two days
later we retained to pick up our passports with the visas
stamped inside.


HAROLD ROBBINS

Before we left for Beijing, Zhang Feng appeared in
Hong Kong and offered us a boat ride. We agreed to go.
The boat would circle Hong Kong Island and stop for a
fish dinner on Lamma Island. We would have a good time,
he promised.

Zhang was conspicuously taken aback when he discovered
that my wife was with me. He had brought along
three little girls. He had planned that we should have a
good time.

At least he had the sensitivity not to bring Chang Li.

Or maybe she was not available.

"I had supposed," I said to Zhang, "you would stay in
Guangzhou and escort Liz McAllister to your shops."
'This I did for two days," he said. "Your young woman
asks many questions."

"Good," I said. "That's her job."

"She is a very intelligent young woman."

He did not offer a run to Macau or an overnight stay
on the boat. We were at home before midnight.
I wish, though, that I had known who owned the boat
we were on that evening.

w e flew from Hong Kong to Beijing�my father, Vicky,
and I, with Charlie Han�and landed on an airport that
did little credit to the People's Republic. We were treated
courteously and efficiently and moved to our waiting limousine
with no trouble, but the airport terminal was
shabby. Someone told me later that they are building a
new one. I hope so.

The drive to our hotel was uninteresting, on an expressway
that might have been seen in Los Angeles except the
Chinese characters on the signs�which were also in English.


Our hotel was the Sheraton Great Wall. It was even
more opulent than the hotels in Shenzhen and Guangdong.

Even so, it told me something about China: There was
a serious unemployment problem there. The hotel was


THE SECRET 347

overstaffed. We would observe that one little girl did
nothing all day but run a dry mop over the marble floors
of the lobby. Twenty minutes after she had mopped a
given area, she would be back to do it again. You could
not press an up or down button to call an elevator. A
young man in blue blazer would do that for you. You
could not press the button for your floor. He would step
in and do that for you. On your floor you could not take
an ice bucket to the ice machine. You hardly got out your
door before someone in blue blazer would appear to take
it for you.

Liz was there, luxuriating. She moved into my father's
room, rather than him moving into hers. The hotel staff
noticed. When they returned to their room at night, two
servings of hot water and two sets of tea bags would be
waiting.

Liz introduced my father to ginseng tea. He acquired
the taste, as I had.

The first Beijing store would be in the Sheraton Great
Wall hotel, in a mall just off the lobby. It was far more
open than any Cheeks store in the States. People strolling
along the marble-floored corridor would have a full view
of the merchandise, the clerks, and the customers. In fact,
there was no door, no windows; the store was open to the
mall, and it would be open twenty-four hours a day.

The store was already open and doing business, even
though we were there for its official opening.

I suppose I have to admit that we remained coy about
our inventory. We still kept what we thought of as bolder
items�especially fetishist things�halfway concealed.
The Chinese were realistic. If a pair of panties was attractive
and might sell, they displayed it, no matter that it �
had no crotch at all. Mannequins stood about in leather
handcuffs and leg restraints, some of them clothed in fetishist
rubber and vinyl. Westerners gawked. The Chinese
were interested or not interested and regarded our merchandise
as they would any other.

The first night in Beijing Bai Fuyuan took us to dinner


HAROLD ROBBINS

in a club that featured Chinese opera. The performance
on the stage was highly stylized�I thought stiff. The performers
wore makeup so heavy that you could not tell
when one came on stage if it was an actor you had seen
before or a different one. They sang, much of it falsetto.
They gesticulated wildly. The dancing was athletic, involving
leaps. For us it was all but impossible to follow
the story lines, even though the programs summarized
them in English.

It was a memorable experience. I wouldn't want to see
much more of it, but I was glad I had seen this much.

My father was bored.

Over dinner he presented Liz a gift. When she opened
the box and found a black sheer-and-satin teddy, she
blushed deeply. It had been custom made to fit her, in
Hong Kong, on the order of Charlie Han. I tried, but I
frankly could not imagine how she would look wearing
it.

The next day we attended the formal opening of the
shop, which was held not in the shop but in a meeting
room in the hotel. It was much like the show I had attended
in Guangzhou. My father spoke briefly and said
the same sort of thing I had said in Guangzhou. That night
he saw himself on Beijing television, speaking Chinese.

The next day we set out in limousines to drive north
of Beijing to the Great Wall of China, stopping along the
way for a visit to the famous Ming tombs.

"There's something funny going on here," my father
said as we rolled out of Beijing.

He and I, Vicky and Liz, sat in the backseat of the car.
In front was a chauffeur and an interpreter. A glass separated
the front and back seats. I was not sure the interpreter
and chauffeur could not hear. I gestured that that
might be the case, and my father nodded.

He went on. "The stuff Bai sends to the States is a
shade off our colors. What he's selling in Beijing is an
exact match of the original color. What's he got in mind?"

I suggested an answer. "He could prove that what we're


THE SECRET 349

selling in the States, labeled 'Made in Hong Kong,' was
in fact made in China, since the color is wrong."

"Which gets him what?" my father asked.

"It's not all odd colors," Vicky said. "I noticed a few
items in the shop that are exact duplicates of our items."
"I'd like to know why that is," my father said.
"Well, let me ask Liz a question," I said. "What about

Zhang Feng's chips? Do they follow Malloy's designs
absolutely? Or are there little differences?"

"There are little differences," she said. "Nonperformance
differences. Zhang's chips do precisely what Tom
designed them to do, without question. But there are small
differences in layout. An expert can tell how Zhang's
chips differ. To be perfectly frank with you, some of
Zhang's differences improve performance�which he
would use to explain if you asked him why he deviated
from the Malloy design."

"He would say he improved on it," my father commented.


She nodded. "He would say he improved on it."

"Okay," I said. "Bai Fuyuang could say his all-butunperceptible
deviations from our color standards improve
our merchandise, make it more attractive."

"Then," asked my father, "why is some of the merchandise
in his Beijing store dyed to our exact specifications?"


"Easy," said Vicky. "He's selling some merchandise
fce's not manufacturing in China."

"Meaning ... ?"

"Meaning he's ripping us off somewhere, some way."

We had to pause to think about that. The implications

were too complex to be considered in a minute's thought.

What can I say about the Great Wall of China? What can
I say that hasn't been said? Just this�that you don't climb
the Great Wall; you climb on it. There are places where
it has been restored to make climbing possible for the


HAROLD ROBBINS

average man or woman. Where we went, you were lifted
to the Wall on a modern cable car. From the station at
the top you could climb and walk a half mile or so in
either direction. I'm glad I did it. I am not glad my father
tried. He was too old for it, and even with help he could
not do it.

That experience made me more aware than I had been
before of my father's age. I knew he was beyond the age
when he could do anything and everything, but seeing him
struggle, flushed in the face, on those irregular stone steps
made me acutely aware of his vulnerability.

And, I suppose, of my own.


57


JERRY

I did not tell Therese that I fooled around with Liz. I am
not sure she would have found that particularly distressing.
What counted for Therese was that we had a pleasant
home in a pleasant place where she could indulge in her
pleasant activities and never be challenged. What is more,
she had an identity. Maybe for the first time in five decades
she was not the girl who had been stripped, had her
head shaved, and had been marched naked through the
streets of Lyon. She was Mrs. Jerry Cooper, a gentle, intelligent,
amusing Frenchwoman, married to an odd
American who sold scanties. To our neighbors in Fort
Lauderdale we were a little eccentric and the more interesting
for it.

Did I love Therese? Absolutely. She was a comfort and
a companion, and I knew I was lucky to have her.

Liz had nothing to do with that, and Liz understood.
Big and gawky though Liz might be, she was smart as
hell. She needed respect and got it, but she needed affection
also, and men could take advantage of her. I determined
I wouldn't. So it wouldn't be that way, I made sure
we understood each other, from the beginning. I would
enjoy her. I hoped she would enjoy me. But she was never


HAROLD ROBBINS

to imagine I was in love with her, and she was not to
allow herself to fall in love with me. That was how it had
to be.

Liz was one hundred percent at liberty to involve herself
with another man, anytime. I had one reservation,
which I did not mention to her. She was not to give herself
to my son, Len. And I think she had thought about it.

Her reaction to being given a sheer black teddy, sized
for her big body, was endearing. She wore it that night in
our hotel room in Beijing and every night after that until
I gave her other things. Back in Hong Kong I asked Charhe
Han to have panties�including crotchless ones�and
bras made up for her. It amused Charlie, I am sure, to
have a strip panel made up for Liz.

What in the world would she do with it? Charlie must
have smiled and wondered.

Len described Liz with the word Rubenesque. I didn't
know what that meant. I even had to ask him how to spell
it. He showed me some pictures in an art book, to illustrate.
So okay, she was Rubenesque, but I would rather
have had her than some stringbean model�or, for that
matter, any little Chinese girl I saw. Liz McAllister was
a woman, all woman, every pound of her.

Len used another word. He said her hooters were enormous.
I guess they were. I liked her big, shiny-pink nipples.
She had an ample tummy with a deep, dark navel,
a fleshy butt, and chubby arms and legs. She had a forest
of pubic hair. It took some convincing to get her to show
all these things. But when she did, and when I praised
them, it made her ingenuously happy.

It was easy to make Liz happy.

She gave sloppy head, bobbing up and down energetically,
with enthusiasm, and slavering, and watching her
do it was almost as good as feeling it.

And she could talk about anything. She had the education
I had never had myself but had seen to it that Len
had. If Len had told her she was Rubenesque, she would
have known exactiy what he meant.


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Hell. Liz was a fun girl. I was going to be in Hong
Kong another ten days after we returned from Beijing.
She was supposed to go back to Houston. I decided to
keep her with me. Apart from everything else, she would
be company on that long, long flight.

Len pressed Charlie Han on the question of why Bai Fuyuan
could not match our colors precisely, and also on
the question of why some of the merchandise in the Beijing
store did match.

"I've been worrying about that," Charlie said.

We were at dinner at Mozart Stub'n, the Viennese restaurant
I looked on as a refuge from Chinese cuisine.
Vicky and Liz were with us. The place was within walking
distance from our apartment building, and we had become
known there.

"If he can make some items with exactly matching colors,
why can't he make others?" I asked.

"It's not a matter of some items and other items," said
Vicky. "It was different examples of the same items. I
looked very closely. The same panty or teddy was piled
up with those slightly nonmatching colors."

"Which means .. . ?" I asked.

"Which means," she said, "that not all his merchandise
comes from his establishments in China. He's somehow
getting his hands on some of our merchandise."

"I think he's not matching the colors because he doesn't
want to match them," said Len. "He's got some reason
for wanting to be able to distinguish what he makes for
the Cheeks label from what is made here and elsewhere."

"I wish we could prove that," I said.
"Why bother?" Charlie asked. "The line is making a
nice profit, so ... "
"I'm going to talk with Henry Wu," said Len. "I want
to know if the dyes he uses for us are unique."
"I wouldn't want Bai to think he can pull a fast one on


HAROLD ROBBINS

us," I said. "He had better understand who he is dealing
with."

The next day we received an invitation to dinner from a
man I had never met and Len had never met. His name
was Yasheng Lin, and he was identified to us by Charlie
Han as a Hong Kong billionaire.

I should have done more homework on Hong Kong
billionaires. I had supposed that the world's real money
men lived in the States chiefly, with a few in the U.K.
maybe some in Germany, and a few in France�with, I
should add, some in Japan.

I'd had no idea who lived on the Peak.

A Mercedes limousine picked us up at our apartments
and set off on a climbing route that would take us to the
highest elevations of Hong Kong.

We arrived at a compound. Like everyone else, I suppose,
I had seen the Godfather movies and carried in my
mind an image of the Coreleone compound. The Yasheng
compound was the same, for real.

A wall surrounded it. We entered through a gate ostensibly
guarded by a turbaned Sikh but in fact guarded by
ominous little Gurkhas hovering in the shadows.

Inside the compound we faced an Edwardian mansion.
But the compound also contained at least half a dozen
homes on a private street inside the walls. Just inside the
gate was a garage that housed three Rolls cars and three
more Mercedes. To its left was a broad swimming pool
faced by cabanas.

"I wanted you to see," Charlie Han said before we left
the car, "how Hong Kong billionaires live." Then he
added ominously, "The Honorable Yasheng Lin could buy
Gazelle, Incorporated out of pocket change."

I glanced at Len. He stared at me. What had led Charlie
Han to make that statement?

As we entered the mansion, the word taipan came to
mind. This, surely, had been the home of some rich and


THE SECRET

powerful British trader. I wondered how long it had been
owned by a Chinese.

Inside the ponderous iron-bound oak front door we
waited in a cavernous foyer. Lighted glass showcases covered
all the stone walls, displaying a varied collection of
things someone thought worth collecting and displaying.
Some of the items were Western in origin, and others were
Chinese.

Charlie pointed out a set of cups. "Wine cups," he said.
"Solid gold." He explained why each cup had in the center
a stem capped with a gold ball. "The ball would hit your
nose if you tried to tip the cup all the way back and drink
all the wine at once. You would have to sip the wine. It
was a way of keeping people from getting drunk."

Another case displayed a set of trophies won in yacht
races. This confirmed my suspicion that the house had
been British.

Still another case contained antique knives and pistols,
also an apparently genuine steel chastity belt.

Most fascinating was an enameled crown, turquoisecolored,
set with precious and semiprecious jewels,
topped with a gold fringe of dragons. Ropes of pearls
hung from the heads of the outermost dragons and would
have fallen over the wearer's shoulders.

"Yasheng Lin," Charlie said under his breath as a door
opened and a small Chinese gentleman came toward us.

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, Mr. Cooper Senior,
and Miss McAllister. Welcome. It is good to see you
again, Charlie. Come with me."

Yasheng Lin was, I suppose, sixty to sixty-five years
old. His face was what I would call Oriental, with slanting
dark eyes and a shiny, faintly yellow complexion. He
wore a dark blue double-breasted suit and a white silk
shirt.

By gesture he directed us to an adjoining room where
we found a bar and a buffet of hors d'oeuvres.
When I was in Paris, Giselle had taken me out to see
the Palace of Versailles. This room was like the rooms in


HAROLD ROBBINS

that palace: gleaming parquet floors, walls covered in pale
yellow silk, graceful antique French furniture .. .

Two little Chinese girls served us. They might have
been twins. Each wore a form-fitting knee-length cheongsam
with skirts slit to their hips, showing and then concealing
their sleek legs as they walked. These were made
of silk, one green and one red, and they were embroidered
with gold and silver thread. One girl brought us little
plates and offered hors d'oeuvres from a tray. The other
took our orders for drinks. I asked for a Scotch and soda.

"Well... Misters Cooper. You have learned to like
Hong Kong, have you not?"

"I have," I said. "Very much. I'm impressed just now
with the dresses your young women are wearing. I was
thinking that maybe we should sell dresses like those in
our shops in the States."

"Cheongsams," said Yasheng. "Yes. I have visited your
shops. You could perhaps have them made up in sheer
fabrics."

"I think they would sell made just as they are. They are
very attractive."
"Well... perhaps they would be a�how shall I say?�
a little pricey for the retail trade."

"You can't buy those in stores," said Charlie. "Mr.
Yasheng has them made. If I had one made up like that�
that quality silk, that embroidery�I'd have to charge you
.. . say, two thousand dollars for it. I mean American dollars."


"You saw the one given to me in Shenzhen," said
Vicky. "How much is it worth?"
Charlie Han turned down the corners of his mouth.
"More than that," he said quiedy.
Vicky frowned. "I suppose it's rude of me to ask the
price of a gift," she said.
"Anyway, they are pretty, are they not?" Yasheng
asked.
"Beautiful," said Vicky.


THE SECRET

A servant�another little girl in a cheongsam�came
into the room and spoke to Yasheng.

He rose. "A friend of ours has come. I will welcome
him." He went out to the foyer and in a moment returned
with a smiling and bowing Bai Fuyuan.

I began to wonder if this evening was not for some
purpose other than to show us how a Hong Kong billionaire
lived.

Bai greeted us all with great�I thought exaggerated�
cordiality. He accepted champagne and sat down. He was
wearing the white suit that seemed to be his trademark.

The conversation quickly turned to business. "You understand,
I believe," said Bai Fuyuan, "that the honorable
Mr. Yasheng is an investor in our enterprise."

"We didn't know that," Len told him curtly.

"Yes. To manufacture such a variety of goods in such
quantities and to open the kind of stores you have seen
requires a substantial injection of capital. Mr. Yasheng has
provided."

"That would not be a loan, I imagine," my son said.
"Mr. Yasheng owns your company."
"Quite so," said Yasheng. "I should say, however that
the relationship is more subtle than that."
"Then we are dealing with you, sir," I said to Yasheng.
"And not with Mr. Bai."
"No. You continue to deal with him. He will represent
me in everything."
"I suppose the merchandise goes to Shanghai in your
ships," said Len.

"And sometimes is flown to the States in my airplanes,"
said Yasheng. "Yasheng companies have invested in
many enterprises."

So. The man was a taipan. I tried to remember what I
had read about them. They exercised enormous economic
power. With complete autonomy. This one might be one
of the few left. Powerful though they were, there was little
room in the world for their kind anymore.

"Then in a sense, at least," said Len, "we are partners."


HAROLD ROBBINS

He was speaking to Yasheng. "Do you know the meaning
of the term 'ripped off,' Mr. Yasheng?"

"I do indeed."

"In some sense we are being ripped off, probably in a
minor way. Mr. Bai manufactures Cheeks merchandise to
Cheeks specifications. He does it very well. It would be
difficult to distinguish a garment made in China from one
made in Hong Kong or in the States. Except for one thing.
The colors don't exactly match. Now�"

"This is true?" Yasheng asked Bai.

"It is true. The differences are subtle, but we have had
difficulty matching the dyes. Black is black, of course,
but�"

"The dyes are standard," Len interrupted. "The colors
vary, not by chance, but for some reason. We are not
complaining about that, not yet anyway, but there is something
else."

"And what is that, Mr. Cooper?" Yasheng asked
grimly.

"When we went to the store in Beijing we noticed that
some of the merchandise in the showcases was Mr. Bai's
colors and some was ours. In other words, not everything
being sold in Beijing originated in China. Some of it came
from somewhere else�Hong Kong, I imagine. Someone
is selling�"

"Stolen goods," Yasheng interjected ominously.

"That thought had occurred to us," said Len, though it
had occurred to him alone, not to me.
"Why do the colors vary?" Yasheng asked Bai.
Bai hesitated for a moment, then said, "So the inspec


tors can see that what we are selling in China is in fact
made in China. That makes a great difference�"

"In the payoffs," said Yasheng.

Bai nodded.

I was surprised that they did not lapse into Chinese and
leave us out of the conversation. Charlie glanced back and
forth between Yasheng and Bai, looking apprehensive�
in fact, miserable.


THE SECRET 359

"Very well," said Yasheng. "Then what is the origin of
the merchandise not made in China?"

"I don't know," said Bai. "The merchandise is examined
well before it reaches the stores. The inspectors are
satisfied, adjustments are made, and we stock the stores."

"Somebody is paying for the non-Chinese merchandise,"
said Yasheng. "Who is buying it?"
"I will make it my business to find out," said Bai. "I
have no doubt I can do so."

"Do that."

We went in to dinner shortly. I cannot tell you what I
ate. I didn't know. I didn't want to know. I have been
told that birds'-nest soup has nothing to do with twigs and
straw but comes from birds' saliva. I don't know. I don't
want to know. Nothing we were fed was nauseating. The
flavors were subtle. Bai and Charlie oohed and aahed over
some of the dishes and pronounced them exquisite. I ate
whatever it was that was exquisite. I complimented Yasheng
and said the meal was wonderful.

No one said anything in the car as we descended from
the Peak to Arbuthnot Street. We sat down in the living
room of the first apartment�Len and I, Vicky and Liz.
From the windows we could see the lighted tower of the
Bank of China Building, lights that were so bright through
our windows that we needed not switch on night lights to
go to the bathrooms. We poured nightcaps and sat sipping
them. We turned on the TV and without sound glanced
from time to time at the Chinese television programs coming
in from Guangzhou. Oddly, perhaps, the new government
had not squelched the broadcasting from the BCC
or CNN, but we did not want to watch or hear the news
just then.

"I have an odd feeling," said Len. He was leaning
back so far on his sofa that his head touched the wall.
"Tonight Tonight the shit hit the fan."

I nodded. "There's been something wrong all the time."


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Someplace in all this there's larceny," Len said.
"There has to be."

"We knew that and risked it," I said.

"I'm not sure we're the victims," Len said.

"We weren't invited up to the Peak just to see how a
Hong Kong billionaire lives," I said. "Charlie was told to
deliver us up there. And Christ, Jesus, when Meyer Lansky
said his crowd was bigger than United States Steel,
he couldn't have imagined�Yasheng has got to be enormously
wealthy."

"I was appraising," said Liz. "I don't know the value
of things, much, but I'll tell you, the wealth up there is

tremendous."

"Be a hell of a town to do business in," said Vicky.

"Under the Brits," Len said, "the maximum income-tax
rate was sixteen percent. And it's not in Beijing's interest
to raise it."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"Sleep on it," said Liz.

So we did. Only I didn't sleep much.

That night Liz did not wear her teddy but stripped to
the crotchless panties, nipple-baring bra, black garter belt,
and dark stockings she had been wearing all evening. She
knew that was more erotic than nudity. If she had been a
smaller, more handsome girl, she could have been a showgirl.
She had the instincts for it.

She also knew I was distressed and knew how to relieve.


Afterward we felt a want for one final brandy, and she
put on a robe and went to get the bottle and snifters.
Returning, she threw aside the robe and poured small
drinks. We fluffed up the pillows and sat with our backs
to the head of the bed, sipping placidly. I fondled her
gently, and she fondled me.

"Forgive me," she said, "if I venture to meddle in something
that's really none of my business; but I can't help
but believe I know who's ripping off whom."

"Your opinion will be as good as mine," I said.


THE SECRET

"Okay. It's Charlie Han."
"Charlie has been a damned good friend of mine since
.. . well, since before you were born, Liz."

"I'm sorry, Jerry. But think about it. He rips off some
of the merchandise he's having made for you here. Instead
of sending it to the States, he sends it to China. He sells
it there, probably for not much after he makes what were
this evening called 'adjustments,' and pockets a profit.
He's a hustler. I think I know the type."

"So am I. I ought to know the type."

"So you think he's not?"

"No, he is. You're right. But it's really hard for me to
believe that Charlie Han is stealing from me."
"He's your agent. He counts the merchandise."
"Liz, really .. . don't ask me to believe this. Or.. .
don't ask me to believe it until I see the proof."

"Well. Okay, I've said too much already."

She reached behind her back and unhooked the bra and
then the garter belt. She was going to sleep nude. We
always did.

As she slipped her stockings down, she whispered to
me. "I can't tell you how grateful I am that you've
brought me out here. It's the experience of a lifetime."

"I need hardly say that the pleasure has been mine."

"I dread going home. I won't see you anymore."

"We'll arrange it so we see each other," I told her.
"We'll arrange it."


58


LEN

We breakfasted together the next morning. It was a Sunday,
so Catherine did not have to be driven to school, and
Maria had the day off, as all Filipino maids did that one
day of each week. We decided that this would be a good
day to take Catherine and J. J. for a drive to the south
side of the island, where we would see Repulse Bay and
have lunch in a restaurant in Stanley. Because the Toyota
could not carry all of us, someone had to do something
different. Liz volunteered for that. She said she wanted to
see the famous shopping street Nathan Road in Kowloon.
My father said he would go with Liz.

That is how we spent Sunday. Our driver suggested
after lunch that we might like to see something of the
New Territories. He drove us through a tunnel to Kowloon
and from there out into the country. We went, in fact,
within a mile of the border. We were close enough to the
border to see the towers of Shenzhen. Though Hong Kong
was now part of China, the border remained heavily
guarded to prevent unwanted immigration. At one point
we encountered a roadblock, and a Chinese soldier courteously
but firmly ordered a U-turn.

When we got home Catherine wanted to know where


THE SECRET 363

Grandpa was. We told her he was taking a nap. Where
was Miss McAllister? She was taking a nap, too.

On Monday morning Vicky went with the driver to take
Catherine to school. Maria took J. J. for a walk and Chinese
lesson. As they walked, she would point out things and call
them by their Chinese names. My father, and Liz, and I remained
in the apartment. We had some E-mail and three
faxes to scan and answer.

About 9:30 a call came up from the reception desk. An
Inspector Kung Yuk-kam of the Hong Kong Police
wanted to see us. I met him as he stepped off the elevator.
My father was just behind me. Knowing that a police
inspector had come to see us, he was as anxious as I was
to know why.

"You are, I imagine, Mr. Leonard Cooper," he said politely.
"And this gentleman would be Mr. Jerry Cooper."

"Yes. What can we do for you, Inspector?"

"I'm afraid I have some distressing news for you, Mr.
Cooper."

I was gripped with cold alarm and nearly fell to the
floor. I supposed the news was about Vicky and Catherine,
probably about an accident with the car.

"You had in your employ, I believe, a man named Han
Wong, more often called Charlie Han."
I stared blankly, not yet comprehending that he had said
we'd had in our employ a man named Charlie Han.

"Am I wrong?"

"Uh .. . no. Charlie Han works for our company."

Inspector Kung nodded. "The distressing news is that
Han Wong is dead. Worse than that, he was murdered."

"Murdered .. . ?" I said blandly. I had not yet recovered
from the shock of believing, if only for a moment, that
something terrible had happened to Vicky and Catherine.

"Yes. May I come in?" he asked, pointing to the open
door of the apartment where I was keeping an office.


HAROLD ROBBINS

"Certainly," I said. I began to assemble my wits again.
"Yes. Do come in."

Now it was my father who was numb and speechless.

I gestured toward the couch, and Inspector Kung sat
down. He was a man in his fifties, as I judged. He was
bald, though his hair on the sides of his head was thick
and black and his eyebrows were heavy. He had a faintly
daunting mien, I thought, with piercing black eyes that
stared at the whole world accusingly.

"How was he killed?" my father muttered.
"With a knife. His body was found floating in the harbor
this morning, just off Wan Chai."
Liz winced and covered her mouth with her hand, as if
she were going to vomit.

"Have you any idea who did it or why?" I asked.

I asked, though I had a pretty good idea who killed
Charlie Han. You don't steal from a man like the billionaire
who had entertained us for dinner Saturday night. I
remembered how Charlie had been absolutely trembling
when we left the mansion. I was sorry now that I had
raised the subject of somebody ripping somebody off. It
had been Charlie, and he had been killed for it.

In another sense it would have been difficult to feel
sorry for Charlie Han. He had assumed we were too stupid
to see what he was doing.

Inspector Kung began to explain why he had as yet no
idea who had killed Charlie or why. "He was engaged in
many things. Gambling, smuggling, prostitution...
maybe narcotics. Any one of his businesses could have
brought him ill fortune."

"Charlie was an operator," my father said sorrowfully.

"If you knew, or suspected, he was engaged in all these
things, why didn't you deport him?" I asked. "I thought
Hong Kong is intolerant of petty criminals."

"Deport him? He was a citizen of Hong Kong. He was
born here. He carried a Hong Kong passport. He lived in
the States for many years, with what I believe you call a
green card, but he was a citizen here."


THE SECRET 365

"He spoke the language," my father said.

"Exactly what was your business relationship with
him?" the inspector asked.

My father looked at me and nodded.

"Do you know what business we are in?" I asked.

"I do."

"Ten or more years ago we began to import a large part
of our merchandise from Saipan, Hong Kong, Singapore,
and so on. Seven or eight years ago my father and I visited
Saipan and found our goods were being manufactured by
slave labor. We took all our business away from there,
and most of it was transferred to Hong Kong. We felt we
needed an agent here, someone who knew our line of
merchandise very well and spoke Cantonese fluently. My
father had known Charlie Han for many years, and he
seemed the perfect man. We hired him and sent him to
Hong Kong. He was to contract with sewing shops, to
provide and explain our specifications, and to inspect what
they made to be certain it met our standards. He has been
doing that... until now."

"What did you know of his other enterprises?"

"Only that he had some other enterprises. He lived too
well for what we paid him."

"When and where did you see him last?"

"Saturday night, at the home of Yasheng Lin on the
Peak. We had dinner there."
"Yasheng Lin invited Han Wong to dinner in his mansion?"
the inspector asked incredulously.
"Yes. Also present was Mr. Bai Fuyuan, from Shenzhen."


"You have entered into an arrangement to allow Bai -
Fuyuan to manufacture goods for you. This begins to
make sense. You understand, I suppose, that Bai Fuyuan
is the Shenzhen agent for Yasheng. And�unless I am
seriously mistaken�there are certain arrangements for
goods manufactured in Guangdong Province to be exported
to the United States as goods from Hong Kong."

"Got us," my father muttered.


366 HAROLD ROBBINS

Inspector Fung laughed. "Don't worry about that, Mr.
Cooper. My concern is homicide. Even if I were worried
about misrepresenting the origin of exported merchandise,
I wouldn't touch this one. Yasheng Lin is a multibillionaire."


I grinned. "And the People's Republic .. . ?"

"Is very happy to have him invest in Chinese industries."
"His guanxi is ... ?"
"Limitless."
"Then," said my father glumly, "we probably never will

find out who killed Charlie."

"I am assuming it is the result of some other of his
enterprises," said Inspector Fung. "A man like Yasheng
Lin is rarely so crude. Oh, never that crude. Come, think
of it. A dark, foggy night on the waterfront. A knife. A
body falling from the quay into the water of Victoria
Harbor. It is a dramatic scene from Clavell, is it not? The
killer might be Three-Fingers Somebody."

"Well, it happened," my father said.

Liz stood and sighed. "Would you like a cup of tea,
Inspector?" she asked.
"That is very kind of you, Miss McAllister."
She went into the adjoining kitchen to make the tea

herself, instead of calling on Maria to do it. She poured
water from a two-liter green bottle into the teapot. I guess
I haven't mentioned that in Hong Kong you don't drink
the tap water. You don't even brush your teeth with it. In
one of the world's most civilized cities, everyone but the
bag ladies drinks bottled water.

"May I ask why you came to see us this morning?" I
asked the detective.
"Routine," he said. "You are the dead man's employer."
"I understand he left a wife and children," said my father.
"Not really," said Inspector Kung. "He had a string of


THE SECRET

girls, and sometimes he took his own pleasure with them.
I don't believe there were any children."

"Which explains why we never saw any," I said.

The inspector glanced at Liz in the kitchen, as if he
were about to say something too indelicate for a woman
to hear. "He worked a string of the most attractive young
women you could imagine," he said.

"Why didn't you stop him?" my father asked.

Inspector Kung smiled. 'To stop prostitution in Hong
Kong would require an army. Wouldn't it in New York?
We discourage open displays of it, but�well... Han
Wong did most of his business aboard his boats, which
carried his girls beyond our waters."

"Boats?" I asked.

"He did not deal in street hookers. His girls were delightfully
beautiful and were offered only to high-paying
clients�typically to businessmen wanting to impress and
influence other businessmen. He owned three yachts�
party boats. He chartered them for very high prices, often
for runs to Macau, where his clients gambled before returning
to the boat and the delights of the girls."

Yes. I knew what he meant.

"You have never used his services of that nature?" the
inspector asked.
"No," I said. "I am not sure we could afford it."
The detective sat and sipped the tea Liz brought him,

as did the rest of us. It was an awkward time.

"May I respectfully suggest to you," said Inspector
Kung, "that you have become involved in a rather complex
business, with ramifications you do not understand.
Han Wong was not a faithful agent for you. But you can
employ honest agents in this city. May I suggest you retain
a solicitor? Let him help you. You can navigate these
waters. To great profit. But you must avoid the shoals."

After Inspector Kung left I spoke earnestly to my father.
"I think we are in waters that are far too deep for us. I


HAROLD ROBBINS

think we should pull out of Hong Kong and go home. I
don't want to live here. I want to give up this apartment
and go back to Greenwich."

My father stood, stared for a minute at Liz, and began
to pace the floor.
"The hell with that," he said. "The goddamned Chinks
are not going to run me out of town. No, sir."
'Which of us will wind up floating in the harbor?" I
asked.

"Yasheng Lin. He's the goddamned key. I wouldn't be
surprised if he also owns Zhang Feng. Multibillionaire!
He's got tentacles everywhere."

"He can buy and sell us out of pocket change," I said.

"No, he can't. Us, yes. Sure. But we represent something
he hasn't got. Just like Malloy. We know what the
fuck we 're doing. So does Malloy. So does Zhang Feng,
maybe. If Yasheng destroys us, he destroys the business,
because he can't run it without us. I've spent too many
goddamned years in this business not to have learned
something. We meet our competitors. We know our business.
Could a bunch of Chink amateurs do it? Let 'em try
it. Money ain't everything."

Then I got a phone call I had never thought I'd get.

"Is Chang Li. You remember me, Len?" She was the
girl on the boat to Macau.
"Of course I remember you."
"Would like to speak with you. No ominous. No mean
to blackmail you. Nothing like that. Would like to speak."

"Where and when?" I asked curtly.

"I live now in Miramar Hotel, Kowloon. Could you
come? I do you no harm."
Late in the afternoon I knocked on her door.
My God! That beautiful little girl was as bald as a cue

ball! Her head was shaved.

"This," she said immediately, touching her naked scalp.

'This Charlie. When he make a girl his girl, he do this.


THE SECRET

It supposed to make a girl wrong for any other man. He
not want his girl to see other man."

She led me into her modest suite. She had a small parlor,
a bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and of course a bathroom.
"Charlie, he do," she said, meaning that Charlie had
provided the suite.

She poured us two drinks of good Scotch without asking
if I wanted one.
"When you and I..." I said.
"Not then. When Charlie see I please you, then he de


cide I please him."

"You would please any man, Li," I said simply. "I can't
imagine a man you would not please. If I were not married�"


"I live here. You visit me as you wish."

"No. It can't be. My wife is the mother of my children,
and she is very smart."
"Ah. You lucky man."
I sipped the Scotch she had poured for me. "Why did
you want to see me?" I asked.

"Charlie dead. You know why, maybe you can help
me, small way."
"Why is he dead, Li?"
"Charlie stealing from you. Didn't you know?"
"We trusted him,"
At last the solemn little girl smiled. "He make whore
of me. Didn't you know?"

"No."

"Yes. Charlie make whore. He buy me from my family
and make me whore." She nodded. "It is done in China,
in Hong Kong. I lucky maybe. He didn't sell me in marriage."


"Marriage?"

"I am from Quinghai Province. Girls sold there. I put
on display, wearing sign that says my price. Auction. All
kind man bid. Man work for Charlie hear I speak English.
He bid me. Sneak me into Hong Kong. No buy me Char



HAROLD ROBBINS

lie, I maybe marry to factory worker in Beijing, Shanghai,

by now have babies, many."

"So you felt some loyalty to Charlie."

"Yes. Much better be whore for Charlie than�But they
kill him, yes?"

"Who killed him?"

"He steal from you. Not much. Just a little, the same
he steal from everyone he in business with. He steal a
little and send into China to be sell in your shops."

"Who bought what he sold?"

"Bai Fuyuan. He dead too, you know."

"I didn't know."

"Yes. Why kill Charlie and not Bai? No percentage in
that."

"What do you want me to do for you?" I asked.

'Tell Yasheng Lin I am good girl, no help Charlie steal.
Tell Yasheng Lin I like be his girl."

"You mean ... ?"

"Be whore for Yasheng Lin. Was good whore for Charlie.
You know. Be good whore for Yasheng Lin."

"Do you need money?" I asked. "I mean, right now."

"Charlie leave me good," she said. "I live in hotel. I
can live till hair grow out." The little girl ran her hand
over her naked scalp. "Is much embarrass, yes?" she asked
quietly.


59


Bai Fuyuan was dead. I do not conceal the fact that I was
scared. Scared? Hell, I was terrified.

Given my choice, I would have done exactly what I'd
said to my father I would do: abandon the apartments in
Hong Kong, pull out of the Far East, and go home. We
were deep in things we didn't know how to handle. I was
a stranger, and afraid in a world I never made.

Not the old man. So far as he was concerned the world
anywhere was not much different from what he'd learned
on the mean streets, where you fought dirty, took your
lumps, and gave lumps in return. He had made his bones,
Vicky had told me. If I had heard that from anyone but
Vicky I wouldn't have believed it.

My father was not about to be run out of Hong Kong.
The first thing he did was to call and ask Hugh Scheck
to identify a solicitor to represent us. Hugh E-mailed back
in a few hours with the name of Sir Arthur Xu. I telephoned
to make an appointment with him, and the next
day we sat in his office.

Sir Arthur was not intimidated by the name Yasheng
Lin. What was more, he was not in the least surprised by
the brutal murder of Charlie Han.


372 HAROLD ROBBINS

The solicitor was a lifelong resident of Hong Kong, a
graduate of a Jesuit school in Kowloon and of Columbia
University, and received his law training at Gray's Inn,
London. His office was much like the one occupied by
Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution. He
dressed like Laughton in that film�in somber black with
a heavy gold watch chain drooped across his waistcoat.
He was, nevertheless, absolutely Chinese, with straight
black hair showing a touch of gray only above his ears,

- slanted eyes, and a dusty-gold complexion.
"Yasheng Lin will not hurt you," he said. "If he meant
to do that, he would have done it by now. What good
would it do him, anyway? I can't imagine you were surprised
to learn that Charlie Han was stealing from you."
"What about Bai Fuyuan?" my father asked. "Why in
the world was he killed?"
"Yasheng had a clever thing going. He leased the space
and bought the appointments for the Cheeks shops in
China. He bought the merchandise�allowing Bai a percentage.
Bai was his . .. traveling salesman, as you might
say. But Bai and Han were greedy men. Han stole merchandise
from you. It cost him nothing, except maybe
some small bribes to men on the loading platforms. Bai
bought it from him for a small amount�small, but profitable
for Han because he'd paid nothing for it. Then Bai
put it in the shops and charged Yasheng the same price
as he got for other merchandise. Bai was making more
than Han."

"How can you know so much about this?" I asked.
Sir Arthur shrugged. "You called me yesterday, did you


not? I made a few inquiries."

I had noticed this about the Hong Kong Chinese. When
in New York you asked for legal advice, asked for a bid,
asked for information, you could expect, perhaps, to receive
a response in ten days or two weeks. In Hong Kong
you expected it before the end of the day, and usually got
it.

"How did Bai Fuyuan die?" my father asked.


THE SECRET 373

"When he learned of the death of Han, he took poison.
Unnecessarily, I think."
"What should we do about this business?" I asked.
"Frankly, I am thinking of pulling out."
"I suppose you could do that," said Sir Arthur. "Are
you making any money?"

"Yes."

"And you have a good deal invested in a presence in
Hong Kong. Two expensive apartments . .. You have
made a commitment to doing business in this part of the
world. You know the potential here. You know the future
lies here."

"I guess we're not accustomed to the idea that our business
associates will be stabbed and dumped in the harbor,"
I said.

Sir Arthur smiled tolerantly. "Hong Kong has a population
approaching .. . oh, six and a half million people.
How many people are murdered in New York per million,
per year? Or in Boston or Philadelphia? Or Washington?
This sort of thing is rare. But Charlie Han took unusual
risks."

"In falsely labeling goods?" I asked.

"No. That is common. In stealing from Yasheng."

"It is common ... " my father repeated.

"You should have secured the services of a Hong Kong
solicitor from the outset. There are ways to shield yourself
from the consequences of such misdemeanors. Actually,
Han had you reasonably well protected. It was he who
was violating the law. Of course, he was your employee
..."

"Let me change the subject," I said. "You seem to know
a great deal about us. What do you know about our business
relationship with Zhang Feng?"

"I know who Zhang Feng is. More than that�your relationship,
I know nothing."

"Can we trust him?"

"So far as you can trust any man. Zhang is one of the
new breed of Chinese capitalists made possible by Deng


HAROLD ROBBINS

Xiaoping. It is my impression that Zhang would not go
so far as to mislabel goods. On the other hand, he is sharp.
If you have a contract with him, I would be sure it is
nailed down at all four corners."

I left my chair and went to stare down at the street
Hong Kong was a strange mixture of great high-rise office
buildings and old stone buildings from the colonial days.
Sir Arthur kept his office in one of the old buildings, not
far from the law courts.

"To what extent can we trust Yasheng Lin?" I asked.

"To the same extent you can trust Bill Gates," said Sir
Arthur. "He will not lie, cheat, or steal. On the other hand,
he will take whatever advantage there is to be taken. He
is voracious. He is the fourth generation of his family to
own and build businesses in Hong Kong. He is an empire
builder."

"He has an empire," I said.

Sir Arthur smiled. "Are you a student of history, Mr.
Cooper? Can you name me an empire builder who was
ever satisfied with his empire and did not want a bigger
one? Napoleon? Rockefeller?"

"Well, then .. . did he have Charlie Han murdered?"
my father asked.

"Directly .. . no. He simply put out the word that Charlie
Han was no longer under his protection. That is all it
would have needed. Han was hated by many."

"And in twenty-four hours .. . ?"

Sir Arthur nodded.

"It's too damn melodramatic," my father said. "A dark
and foggy night on the Hong Kong waterfront�"

"They don't kill with guns here," said the solicitor.
"Guns are not allowed here, so they kill with knives,
sometimes with machetes. It can be brutal, but it doesn't
happen nearly as commonly as murder happens in some
American cities."

"As I told you on the telephone," I said, "we will probablv
need to employ a new agent. Have you anyone to
suggest?"


THE SECRET

375

'Tentatively, yes, I do," said Sir Arthur. "You need
someone familiar with the sewing trades, someone who
can inspect merchandise for quality. I have in mind a
young woman. Her name is Xiang Yi, often called Lily
Xiang."

e met Lily Xiang in the dingy office of a small sewing
company on Yee Woo Street in Wan Chai, not far from
the waterfront and not far from where Charlie Han was
killed. She was manager of the company and knew fabrics
and the cutting and sewing trades very well. She had been
with the company four years and was reasonably well �~
content with her job, but she would be receptive to an
offer of a better job.

She was a plump woman with coarse black hair unstylishly
bobbed just below her ears, round, dark-rimmed
eyeglasses, and a cigarette constantly in a corner of her
mouth. She wore a pair of gray sweat pants and a white
T-shirt.

Sir Arthur had arranged the meeting, so Lily knew why
we were there.

"I know the Cheeks line," she said brusquely, almost
immediately, having taken no time for amenities. "Maybe
you don't know this, but we make certain items for you."

She picked up a pair of sheer white panties decorated
with glistening rhinestones and showed them to us. They
sold well in the States. The next item she showed us�a
black lace bra with generous cutouts to show the nipples�
did not sell nearly as well, but we had no complaint about
how it was made.

"We do items made with sheer fabrics," she said. "Pan-"
ties, nightgowns, teddies, negligees, and so on. We don't
do things that require elastic fabrics or vinyl. I like to
think we make feminine things. You know: loose and soft
and provocative. The kind of stuff that flatters a woman,
for herself and for her man."

"Which doesn't describe our whole line," I said.


376 HAROLD ROBBINS

"No," she said without hesitation. "It doesn't. I wear
Cheeks things myself, but you show a good many items
I wouldn't want to put on."

"What will you wear if you come to work for us?" my
father asked bluntly.

"Well... not what you see me in here," she replied.
She slapped at her pants. "Work clothes. What do you
want me to wear?"

"I want you to represent our company," my father said.

"Understood."

"We will ask you to confine your smoking to private
times and places," I said.
"Can do."
"How much are you being paid here?" I asked.
"A hundred eighty thousand," she said.
I looked at my father. "She means Hong Kong dollars,"

I told him. "Meaning, she is being paid .. . a little more
than twenty-three thousand U.S."

"We'll double it," my father said blandly. "I want you
to start tomorrow. Your first job is to locate an office.
Bring the lease to us. Find an office big enough for you
and a secretary. Like you, the office will represent our
company."

We were not as careless as this might sound. Sir Arthur
Xu had briefed us thoroughly on Lily Xiang.

When we returned to the apartments on Arbuthnot Street,
we found we had a visitor. Zhang Feng had come to Hong
Kong. When we arrived he was sitting at the Sphere IV.

He was a little nervous, since Vicky had told him emphatically
that he could not smoke in our apartments. In
fact, as Vicky had told me, he had stepped outside on our
balcony to smoke, but being twenty-three floors above the
street with only a waist-high barrier between him and a
plunge, he had given up his smoke and retreated indoors.

I had wondered if he were associated with Bai Fuyuan.
Apparently he was not. He said he didn't know Bai was


THE SECRET

dead. But he knew Charlie Han was dead and how he got
that way, and he was troubled.

He tried to speak to me apart from the others. My father
and Vicky decided there was some reason for that, and
invited Liz to go across to the other apartment while
Zhang and I talked in the office.

"Chang Li called me," Zhang said.

"I saw her," I told him. "Charlie shaved her head."

"She wants help," he said.

"That shouldn't be too difficult to arrange," I said. "Between
us we should be able to come up with something."
"Such as?"
"The night we went to Macau, that was Charlie's boat,

wasn't it? And Chang Li was working for Charlie."
"That was Charlie's business, partly: to provide entertainment.
That girl is one of the finest he ever had."

"So he married her, as we might put it," I said. "He
shaved her head so she wouldn't be attractive to other
men."

"Charlie Han was a fool," said Zhang. "It only makes
her more attractive. A prominent actress here in Hong
Kong shaved her head... and got better roles than she'd
ever had before. There is something intriguing about�"

"She wants to work for Yasheng Lin," I said.
"Every girl wants to work for Yasheng Lin. But he is
not in the business of hiring girls like her."
"You are, apparently," I said. "You hired her with
Charlie's boat, to entertain me."

"We have done good business together, haven't we?"
he asked. "Mr. Malloy's Sphere Four is impressive. I understand
it is doing well in the States."

"It has just been introduced. So far it is doing all right."

Zhang walked to the window and stared toward the
Bank of China Building. A tropical rain had begun to fall.
In fact, a typhoon was in the forecast.

"You wonder if I am owned by Yasheng Lin," he said.

"The question has occurred to us."

"I am not. He doesn't own everything. He owned Char



HAROLD ROBBINS

lie Han and Bai Fuyuan. If he chose to raid you, he could
probably own you�your Far Eastern operations, in any
case. He controls more assets than many nations do."
Zhang shrugged. "On the other hand, it is more difficult
for him to exert his influence inside China."

"He is not the only Hong Kong billionaire," I suggested.


"He is not even the largest."

"So..."

"Anyway. My reason for coming to see you," said
Zhang. "Mr. Malloy has contacted a Taiwanese supplier
and is talking to him about buying certain electronic components
from him. It must not happen. This could destroy
our relationship. My government will tolerate a great deal,
but not that. You must choose between a relationship with
China and one with Taiwan."

"That choice has already been made," I said.

"Then rein in Malloy, please."

We did. I discussed it with my father after Zhang left,
then called Tom Malloy in Houston and gave him the only
direct order he had so far received from us.

"Okay. You're the boss, pardner," Malloy said. "But
there is a problem."

"Which is?"

"We got a congressman here in Texas that's got a
strong opinion about doing business with China. He figures
we oughta do business with the non-Communist Chinese."


"You tell the congressman that I guarantee him one
hundred thousand dollars support for his next campaign�
provided he shuts his mouth on this deal."

"You're talking his language, pardner."

"Liz will be with you in a few days. Is there anything
you want to tell me that she's going to report?"

"I figger everything's going damn well. Sphere Four is
pickin' up steam."


THE SECRET 379

"Would it if we didn't have chips at Zhang Feng's
prices?"

"You make your point very persuasively."

"And our microprocessors?"

"Sometime next year two percent of all the cars sold in
America will have engines controlled by our microprocessors."


"Kee-rist!" I said to my father after I hung up the telephone.
"In five years we may be a high-technology company!"


By now the rain was pouring hard. We could barely
see the bright lights on the Bank of China Building. He
stood at the window and watched. I could guess what he
was thinking: It was all so alien, all so much beyond his
experience.

"Don't be too confident," he said. "We're also getting
to be a company completely dependent on Hong Kong
and China. That's chancy, Len. That's damn chancy."

lh e storm kept us in the apartments, where we didn't
have much in the way of fancy dinner. We ate frozen
things that night: pizzas and lasagna.

The kids were a bit afraid. Catherine looked out at the
wind-driven rain and wondered. "Could it get so bad it
could break through our windows?"

"Sissy! Sissy!" mocked J. J, though his own eyes were
wide and wondering as he heard the wind whip rain
against the glass sliders of the living room.

It was not Greenwich, Connecticut, for damn sure�
though I had been there when a hurricane glanced off the
town.

After the kids were long asleep and Vicky and I were
in bed, aware that the worst of the monsoon had passed
and that it was moderating, she talked about what my
father had said.

"This place isn't us, Len," she said. "It can never be
us. I have to wonder, the way your father does, if we


HAROLD ROBBINS

aren't getting too dependent on it. I mean, what the hell
are we doing? Catherine is learning two dialects of Chinese!"


"You want her to learn Spanish?" I asked.

"I want her to be an American."

"I'd much rather," I said, "she would be a Chinesespeaking
American than a Spanish-speaking American."
That was all I had to say.
That night Vicky did her special thing for me. I felt her

warm lips slowly sucking my entire scrotum into her
mouth. We lay together that way for some time, she using
her tongue to massage me gently, until I thought I might
explode. Abruptly she moved to the tip of my cock and
used her tongue on that, more vigorously. Finally she
slipped down until she had the whole thing in her mouth
and sucked hard on it. I did explode!


JERRY

I called Therese. I can remember when placing a call from
one side of Paris to another was dicey, when calling Los
Angeles from New York was a matter of calling an operator,
giving her the number, and answering a ring half
an hour later when she'd gotten the call through. They
called that "long distance." By the mid-nineties, calling
Fort Lauderdale from Hong Kong was a matter of punching
in the numbers. Within five seconds the phone rang.
Therese answered, and I told her I would be home in a
few days.

She told me someone had run over the alligator on the
street. It had risked crossing one too many times, and a
driver who didn't give a damn had run over it and killed
it. I can't pretend that I cared, though I had come to think
of the creature as something of a neighborhood pet and
realized I would miss it, sort of. I had never imagined it
would bite me, and since I didn't have a dog or cat.. .

"Honey babe, I miss you," I said. "I wish you were out
here, in Hong Kong."

That was a lie. Liz was with me.

"I not want to travel so far much, anymore," Therese
said. "Hong Kong long way."


HAROLD ROBBINS

She told me about a bridge game she had played, then
about the herons and their chicken necks. Friends had invited
her to go on their boat for a cruise to Miami.

Therese would be all right. I would, in fact, see her
soon. The truth was, we would fuck: we seventy-someyears-
old citizens. We would do it, and we would like it
Once. Then again sometime. Not too often. Not nearly as
often as I would have liked.

Okay. Liz was a sloppy cocksucker. She left me wet
with her spit as she ran to the bathroom to rinse out her
mouth.

But, God, I would have missed her if I hadn't had her!
I had become too much involved with her.
Watching her run to the bathroom, fat butt bouncing,
was a special small pleasure.
I could keep her. Sure. Yes, I could. But for how long?
I had to think about that.

Then there was Len. The boy was�Christ! I should have
been proud of him. And I was.

But there was something. He wasn't what I was. He
wasn't what Buddy was. And maybe he was right, too.
He wasn't reckless. He planned carefully and was not
reckless.

Had I been, though? I guess not.

But I wasn't about to be run out of Hong Kong. By
God, I wasn't going to be! Son of a bitch, I wasn't going
to be!

Any more than I'd been run out of Philadelphia.

This girl we'd hired. Lily. She was damned smart. I
couldn't believe what she told us one day within a week
after we hired her:

"We're missing something," she said. "There's a marketing
ploy that's not in use. I don't know how you can
use it, but I want you two gentlemen to be aware of it.
Maybe you can find a way to sell merchandise with it."

At this point it was no more sweat pants and T-shirts.


THE SECRET

No more cigarettes dangling out of her mouth. She was
wearing a dark blue miniskirted cheongsam. We sat over
lunch in Luk Yu Tea Shop, the famous dim sum restaurant.
As she wielded chopsticks with confidence and pretended
not to notice that Len and I wielded ours more
awkwardly, she talked business.

"I don't know how you advertise this," she said, "but
do you have any idea why many girls wear crotchless
panties under tight jeans? Hey! Crotchless panties under
tight jeans!"

We shook our heads.

"Tight jeans," she said. "Bare pussies. Can you guys,
being men, imagine how that feels? Rough, tight denim
rubbing your private parts, every step you take. Hey! Girls
comer

"Why not no panties at all?" Len asked.

"Rear-end hygiene, Lennie. C'mon!"

I understood what she meant. So did Len. But she had
asked the right question. How did we advertise it? I
couldn't think of a way, and I doubted Len could, either.

By that day Lily had visited all of our suppliers and
was satisfied that no one was ripping us off more than
was conscionable. She had rejected one small batch of
merchandise. Charlie, she said, had been letting some stuff
through that was not up to standards�not much, just a
little, presumably in return for a percentage.

"He couldn't help himself," she said. "I know the type.
He considered that day lost when he didn't manage to
cheat somebody. He must have been an endearing man,"
she added slyly.

Len took me to Kowloon Tong that evening, leaving behind
a suspicious Vicky and Liz. We sat down in a courtyard
open to the sky, where we had what the Kowloon
proprietors imagined was a French-style dinner�snails,
borscht, sole, and wine�in the company of a shyly beautiful
little Chinese girl.


384 HAROLD ROBBINS

Len introduced her as Li, Mrs. Charlie Han. She was
delicately lovely, with appealing almond eyes. But she
had a dramatic characteristic, too. She had only a spare
bristle of hair on her recently shaved head. I was supposed
to imagine that I had been brought here to meet Charlie's
widow, but I was not fool enough to buy that. It was
obvious to me that Len had had her. It would have been
obvious to Vicky, too, and I resolved that the two should
never meet.

Well, what was I supposed to expect? I mean, Vicky
was as fine a woman as any man was ever married to,
but�Okay. So long as this did not get out of hand. Which
obviously it had if he thought it necessary to introduce
her to me.

"I want to do something for Li," he said solemnly. "I
want you to do something for her. She was sold to Charlie.
She'd been put on an open-air market and sold!"

"I can imagine."

"No, you can't. No. It's not so simple. Charlie supported
her. He left her some money. But she needs a new
connection. I am hoping we can provide something."

"What do you do, Li?" I asked her.

"I am whore," the httle girl said with calming simplicity,
obviously not in the slightest embarrassed.

I glanced at Len. "I am not sure we can hire any girls
for that," I said.

"She wants to work for Yasheng Lin," my son said to
me. "I doubt we have enough clout with him to arrange
that. I am wondering if Lily could use her as a model."

"With no hair?" I asked.

"It grow out!" the little girl protested.

"It might make her the most famous model in Hong
Kong," said Len. "She could travel for us. We could show
her in China and even in the States."

I was emphatic. "And you keep hands off. She's not to
be your plaything, my son."

"I'll keep hands off. You have my word."


THE SECRET 385

"Li," I said to her, "how would you like to be a model

and not a whore?"

"No whore?" she whispered.

Len answered her. "You do whore, we won't want you
anymore. You wear the clothes we make, show them to
people. And you will have to keep your head shaved."
She put her fingers to her head. "Embarrass this," she
said quietly. "Many embarrass ... "

"But it may make you famous and rich," I said.

Well... getting ahead of things, it did.

I' d had a lot of experience in my life. Experience taught
me that the best way to confront a problem was to confront
it. So I called Sir Arthur Xu and asked him if the
best way to deal with Yasheng Lin was not to meet with
Yasheng Lin and openly negotiate.

"Yasheng Lin," he answered, "likes straightforward
dealing. Yes. Straightforward dealing."

So we went a second time to the imposing compound
of the Hong Kong billionaire: Len, Vicky, Liz, and I, with
Sir Arthur Xu and Lily Xiang.

We gathered on a stone terrace outside the mansion
where we had a view of Hong Kong, the harbor, and
Kowloon. We sat on white-painted cast-iron furniture.
Torches provided the light. A fountain splashed. Girls in
chenogsams served hors d'oeuvres and drinks.

Vicky wore the cheongsam given her by Bai Fuyuan.
It was, I thought, a gesture of defiance. Lily's dark blue
brocaded cheongsam was not a gesture, and she was not
uncomfortable about the slit in her skirt that sometimes
exposed her leg all the way to her hip. She was a Chinese
woman, comfortable in Chinese wear. Liz wore a white
lace minidress that did not flatter her.

Yasheng Lin greeted us as a gracious host. He was
dressed as before in a double-breasted suit, this one black,
a white silk shirt, and a regimental necktie.


386 HAROLD ROBBINS

I meant to avoid the topic of the death of Charlie Han,
but he raised it immediately.
"I hear that your Hong Kong agent has been killed,"
he said. "Unfortunate."

He said it as if it were a matter of no consequence that
he had heard about as a piece of business news, as if he
had read a brief account of it in a newspaper.

"We have been very fortunate," I said, "in that we have
been able to employ Miss Lily Xiang as our new agent."

"Yes. I know Xiang Yi by reputation. She is an excellent
choice." He nodded at Lily. "My congratulations. I
am confident that you will serve the Coopers well."

"I mean to," she said evenly.
We talked about the typhoon, then, and the recovery of
the Asian economies.

After a while I turned to business. "You know, Mr.
Yasheng, our company has committed itself pretty fully
to doing business in China and Asia. Companies in this
area have become the major suppliers for important elements
of our businesses. I am not ready to say we are
dependent on Southeast Asia, but we are deeply involved
in it. Which I like, frankly. Also, I like the way you do
business in this part of the world."

"Except the fact that Han Wong was stealing from
you," said Yasheng with a faint smile.

"And from you, too, sir, if you don't mind my mentioning
it," said Len.

Yasheng nodded. His smile widened. "I wonder if
Charlie didn't learn that way of doing business in the
States."

I don't know what Len meant to say, but I spoke before
he could. "I suppose that's possible," I said. "Charlie Han
lived in the States for many years."

"Bai Fuyuan was stealing, too," said Yasheng.

"Our other chief associate in this area is Zhang Feng,
of Guangzhou. What can you tell us about him, if anything?
Would you suspect he is stealing?"

"Zhang Feng is one of a new breed of billionaires made


THE SECRET 387

possible by the policies of the late Deng Xiaoping. If he
is delivering goods to specification at acceptable prices,
what do you care if he has small deals going on the side?
Han Wong was crudely stealing from your shipments.
That is another matter entirely."

"And in so doing was also stealing from you," I said.

Yasheng closed his eyes and nodded again.

Sir Arthur Xu's face was rigid. He was not accustomed
to doing business this way. Straightforward, he had said.
This was more than straightforward. I had in effect suggested
that Yasheng Lin bore some responsibility for the
death of Charlie Han.

But it didn't appear to bother Yasheng.

I went on. "Mr. Yasheng, you are one of the wealthiest
men in Hong Kong, perhaps one of the wealthiest men in
the world."

Yasheng shook his head, simulating modesty.

"I has occurred to me," I said, "that you might want to
acquire my businesses. You seem to acquire most of the
businesses you�"

This was too much for Sir Arthur. "Oh, no," he interjected.
"Mr. Yasheng is involved in real estate, chiefly,
and�"

"And shipping," Yasheng interrupted. "Involving my
group of companies in merchandising, as Bai Fuyuan recommended,
was something of a departure for us. It did
seem like a good investment. And I think it will be."

"Let us work together to see that it will be," I suggested.


"Nothing would please me more."

"I have no doubt, Mr. Yasheng, that you are a shrewd
and careful investor. I'd like to offer some ideas as to
why it would not be a good idea for you to acquire my
company."

Yasheng raised a peremptory finger and ordered my
drink refreshed. A girl rushed to my side with a new
Scotch and soda. Others of the little girls hurried to the
rest of the guests.


HAROLD ROBBINS

"In the first place," I said, "our stock is closely held,
and we have no great outstanding debt. We are not interested
in selling."

Yasheng nodded.

"Even so, a man with your resources could probably
find a way to drive us out of business."
"If I wanted to. But why would I want to do that?"
"Which is my point entirely," I said. "I am sure you

have much valuable knowledge and expertise in many
subjects, but I also doubt you have much in the fields of
ladies' intimate wear or the technology of computer
chips."

Again, Yasheng nodded and did not speak.

I went on. "You just said that you thought selling
Cheeks goods in China would be a good investment for
you. You had a knowledgeable man working for you: Bai
Fuyuan. Unfortunately, Charlie Han was stealing from us,
and Bai knew it and was helping him. What is more, their
defalcations were increasing and would have increased
still more."

"That is true," said Yasheng Lin.

"I have a suggestion. I suggest we work in partnership,
directly, and not through a man like Bai. We need to be
represented by an honest manager. I suggest Lily Xiang.
The work she will be doing for Gazelle in Hong Kong
will not require her services full-time, any more than they
required Charlie's. I suggest we make her our joint representative,
with power to hire the help she will need."

"That is an interesting proposition, which I will take
into consideration," said Yasheng.

I sipped my Scotch and waited to see if Yasheng
wanted to say anything more. Then I went on: "Also, in
our subsidiary Sphere Corporation we have acquired expertise
in advanced technology. I acknowledge that I
know next to nothing about it. In the beginning I knew
nothing about the manufacture and sale of intimate underwear.
In almost forty years I have learned a great deal
about it. Learning a new line of business takes time, Mr.


THE SECRET 389

Yasheng. If you are interested in advanced technology,
I'd like to suggest we consider a relationship between
your companies and mine in that field also."

"That, too, we can discuss," he said.


LEN

We returned to the apartments on Arbuthnot Road and
shortly went to bed. Around two in the morning we were
awakened by Liz's hysterical shrieks. An emergency
squad hurried my father to Matilda Hospital, a private
hospital on the Peak, and perhaps the finest in Hong Kong.
The doctors there decided he had suffered a stroke.

Therese arrived in two days. She moved into his room
in the apartments. Liz had moved to the Kimberley Hotel
in Kowloon, from where she departed in a few days for
New York.

Five weeks later a chartered jet carried my father to
Miami International Airport. He was able to travel by limousine
to Fort Lauderdale.

That was the end of my father so far as the business is
concerned. I call him every few days to report to him the
developments in our businesses, but he is less and less
interested. He is partially paralyzed and does not travel.
He will never return to Hong Kong. He spends his time
fishing, studying the alligators in the canal, and watching
the birds come to eat Therese's chicken necks. He spotted
a manatee in the canal, which was for him a big enough
event to require a call to Hong Kong.


THE SECRET

And he writes. He spends hours every day writing his
chapters of these memoirs. His memory is perfect.

We did enter into a form of partnership with Yasheng
Lin. It is a complex deal, put together by Sir Arthur Xu,
Hugh Scheck, and a firm of San Francisco lawyers specializing
in business arrangements in Southeast Asian
countries.

It is working smoothly. Our businesses are expanding.
The name Yasheng gives us entry into places where we
would not otherwise find a ready welcome.

Tom Malloy was right about the Sphere IV. It is steadily
growing in market share. It goes against the conventional
wisdom in the computer world, which is obsessed
with miniaturization. Millions of people still want to work
at what some computer gurus scornfully call desktops.

My personal attention is focused chiefly on the expansion
of Cheeks into Asia. Bai Fuyuan was right when he
said the Chinese would buy many millions of our items.
We had expanded about as far as we could in the States.
The Europeans have not been terribly receptive to what
we sell. But we have a burgeoning market in China and
Japan, plus a prosperous market in Malaysia, Thailand,
Burma, and Singapore.

Lily Xiang has proved a fortunate choice for us. She
supervises our Hong Kong manufacturing operations and
manages our expansion into China. We have a different
manager for Japan, and others, locals, in the other countries.


Vicky and I, with our children, spend eight or nine
months of the year in Hong Kong. The kids are being
educated there, and we can't run them back and forth
between Hong Kong schools and Connecticut schools, so
we make Arbuthnot Road our home most of the time. Of
course, I have to make frequent trips to New York.

Sir Arthur arranged for us to have permanent-resident
status in Hong Kong, a necessity. We carry United States


392 HAROLD ROBBINS

passports but can live full-time in Hong Kong.

Poor Liz saw my father for the last time when she visited
him at Matilda Hospital. She lives in Houston now.
My father can't go there, and she can't go to Fort Lauderdale.
She has thrown herself into her work, but I also
understand she has taken to drinking a bit more and has
developed something of a reputation for being indiscriminate
about men. I see her whenever I go to Houston,
which is not often. She offered herself to me. I turned her
down as gently as I could.

Little Chang Lin has, of course, become an internationally
famous model. She worked for us for a while, and
then was picked up by a New York modeling agency. She
models for us occasionally but much more often for designers.
She has kept her head shaved, and sometimes she
sticks flower decals on her head to give the appearance
that she has had her scalp tattooed.

She is very grateful to me. And she is a problem. I
can't resist her, and Vicky has found out about her. I have
been with her only three times since the night we went to
Macau�once in Hong Kong, twice in New York. Vicky
is resentful, but she has not made a horrible fuss about it.
She would if she thought Li threatened our marriage, I
am sure. But Li absolutely does not. She is an appealing
novelty, and Vicky thinks of her that way.

Finally, what goes around comes around. One October
morning shortly after Vicky left to deliver the kids to
school, an outing that always took an hour and a half, the
telephone rang, and I had a call from the reception office
on the ground floor.

"A Mrs. Sue Ellen Cooper is here to see you, Sir."

I told him to send her up, and shortly there arrived at
my door my ex-wife, whom I had not seen in ten years.

"You haven't changed, Len," she said as she stepped
into my office, took my hand, and offered her cheek for
a kiss.

"You haven't either," I said.

She hadn't, either. She was still defined by her over



THE SECRET

sized boobs; almost forty years old, she was still taut of
figure and was still the somewhat vacuous blond I had
married.

She was direct. "I've come to ask you a favor," she
said immediately.

I pointed to the couch and asked, "Which is?"

"I came out here looking for a job. My father sent me.
The only really unusual qualification I have is that I am
still fluent in Chinese. My father has given me references
to two American companies with offices in Beijing, but I
decided to come here first. I spent some time in Beijing,
you know, and found it a pretty depressing place."

"You speak Mandarin," I said.

"So I've been forcefully reminded since I arrived in
Hong Kong. Coming here, I tried to tell the cab driver
where I wanted to go, in Chinese. I wound up having to
tell him in English."

"You can learn Cantonese," I said.

She sighed loudly. "Could you give me a drink, Len?
I'm in deep shit. I'm living at home with my parents, who
despise me. I can't do anything right. I can't get or keep
a job. I'm too good for the jobs and I can get and not
good enough for the ones I want."

I stepped into the kitchen and poured her a Scotch.
"What's with Mollie?" I asked.

"I haven't seen her in five years."

"I don't know what you'd do in Hong Kong," I told
her. "It's not an easy place to get a job. Besides, you'd
have to get a work permit, and they restrict those to people
who have skills not readily available here."

She swallowed her Scotch and used the back of her left
hand to wipe tears from her eyes. "I was hoping you could
help me," she whispered. "I understand you're running an
expanding business from Hong Kong."

The last thing I wanted was to have Sue Ellen in Hong
Kong. I shook my head. "You see all the office I have
here. We have another one downtown, but there are only


HAROLD ROBBINS

three people working there. We have branch offices and
stores on the Mainland�"

"Lenny ... " she wept. To my amazement she dropped
on her knees in front of me and yanked up her polo shirt,
exposing her breasts. "Isn't this how a woman is supposed
to beg?" she whispered hoarsely. "On her knees, with
bared breasts?" I stared at her. She wasn't wearing rings
in her nipples. In fact, I couldn't see the holes. Apparently
she had stopped wearing rings, and the holes had closed.
"Help me, Lenny! I'm begging you."

"Mollie taught you to give a first-class blow job," I said
coldly. I am an evil man. I confess.
Sue Ellen's eyes widened. "Sure. Sure, Lenny. Why
not?"

She did it, just as Mollie had taught her, just as she had
done for me a hundred times. And when she was finished,
she wiped her mouth and said, "Anytime you want it. And
I'll be invisible. Your wife won't know I'm in Hong
Kong."

"No, because you won't be. I'm going to send you to
a woman called Lily Xiang. She does our hiring for the
Mainland. If we have a job for you, that's where it will
be."

When Sue Ellen had left, I called Lily and explained
who was coming to see her. I told her she didn't have to
hire Sue Ellen, that it was up to her. Of course I knew
she would. I didn't have to tell her that I wanted my exwife
out of Hong Kong and as far away as possible.

Tianjin, once called Tientsin, is a river port not far from
Beijing. It is a city of more than six million people, the
third-largest city in China, and we had two Cheeks stores
there. It is the site of a university, has museums and art
galleries, and Lily thought Sue Ellen would be happy
there. She appointed her her own deputy, so to speak, and
assigned her the duty of making frequent trips to Beijing
to look in on our three stores there. Also, she was to visit
container ships as they arrived from Hong Kong carrying


THE SECRET

our goods. It was a responsible job, and Lily proposed we
pay well.
So .. . I am an evil man, but I did something good for
Sue Ellen, too.
I am not ashamed of myself.


The world's best-selling novelist returns
with a high stakes game of moral ambiguity,
love, betrayal, and dangerous consequences in


NEVER
ENOUGH



SATURDAY EVENING,

APRIL 20, 1974

Four of them were together that Saturday evening: Dave
Shea, Cole Jennings, Bill Morris, and Tony DeFelice. It
was a warm spring evening, and teenagers from Wyckoff,
New Jersey were doing what teenagers everywhere in
America were doing: hanging out.

They and their peers groused constantly about what
teenagers always grouse about: that there is "nothing to
do." They had hung out on the streets of Wyckoff and
Ridgefield, sometimes sitting on the fenders of other people's
cars. They were conscious�sometimes resentfully
conscious, usually just amused�that they were not welcome
on the streets of the several small towns they frequented.
Teenagers generally were not. They were not
thought of as menacing, only annoying and nuisances.

Apart from sitting on cars, apart from sometimes obstructing
sidewalks, they were often boisterous and loud,
capering around, slapping at each other, shooting punches
that were not meant to land. The police often ordered
them to move on. Only rarely was any action taken
against them, and that usually was just notifying their parents.


With an exception�


When they were tanked up with beer, they could make
themselves a real problem. Occasionally, only occasionally,
one or more of them was arrested and held until his
parents could come and take him home.

These four�Shea, Jennings, Morris, and DeFelice�
had minor reputations as more than common exuberant
troublemakers.

�Dave Shea was a handsome young man, tall and
muscular, a football player. He was charismatic. Every
girl's dream was to date Dave Shea. He was his school's
quarterback two years, during which years his team lost
only one game. In his senior year the team went undefeated.
Besides that, he was an outstanding scholar. He
was inducted into National Honor Society in his junior
year. His special subjects were mathematics, chemistry,
and physics. As of April he had accepted a football scholarship
at Rutgers University. Without the scholarship he
would have been unable to go to college. But he had the
scholarship, and his future seemed assured.

He had, though, a dark side. It wasn't the beer. The
unhappy fact was that Dave would cheat. He did it on the
football field, where he had an exceptional talent for
knowing when officials weren't looking and then clipping,
and for face-mask violations, even for punching an opposing
player on the nose. In close contact with a defensive
lineman, he might growl "Nigger!" and precipitate a
furious assault that got a star defense man ejected from
the game, while Dave stood gaping and shaking his head
and ostensibly wondering what had caused the foul. In the
chemistry lab he knew what results were expected from a
problem in qualitative analysis and pretended to have
achieved that result, when he really hadn't. He was in fact
a good player and a good student, but he had his little
tricks to make himself look even better.

"You're good enough, Shea." In the manner of
teenagers, they called each other by their last names.
"Why...?"

"Look, Jennings. Your family will send you to college,


NEVER ENOUGH

no matter what. You're smart, too, but you don't need
a scholarship. I do. I have to be, by god, good enough
to ..."

"Gotcha. But you are good enough!"

"Yeah? Well, don't begrudge me a little insurance on
it. The son of a wholesale grocery salesman who drives
around the country begging for little orders . . . Hey! Like
Willy Loman. Like in Death of a Salesman. They add up
their nickels every month, hopin' there's enough to make
the payment on the car. I don't want to live like that,
Jennings!"

He didn't want to live without sex either. Hung like a
horse, he first shoved his big penis into a girl when he
was thirteen years old.

She was seventeen.
"Jesus Christ! The guys said you're .. . Hey, I can't
take all that, Shea."
"Bet ya can. Why would I have it if a girl can't take
it?"
"Well... Hey! God almighty! Hey! I wouldn't have
believe it!"
Eventually, Amy, who also declared she couldn't possibly,
but did. And complained it hurt.

You gotta be a football hero to get along with the beautiful
girls. Okay, he was a football hero. It was no disadvantage
to be known for being a stud.

�Cole Jennings played basketball and was good at it.
He was tall, six-feet-six, and had an indefinable agility on
the polished floor that brought him recognition as a valuable
player. His blond hair fell over his forehead as he
dribbled toward the basket, dodging this way and that,
avoiding the players trying to guard him, until at the last
moment he passed the ball to a teammate close to the goal
and charged in to take the rebound if the shot missed. He
made most of his points by capturing rebounds and jamming
the ball through the basket.

He, too, was an excellent student. One of them, Dave
or Cole, would be valedictorian of their high school class.


HAROLD ROBBINS

As Dave had suggested, Cole did not need a scholarship,
athletic or academic, to go to college. His father was
senior partner in a major realty firm. His family could and
would pay his tuition at any school he wanted to attend.

From the time he was old enough to drive, Cole had
his own car. That night he was driving his graduation
present, already given him though graduation was six
weeks away. It was a black Pontiac TransAm. That his
parents had given such a car to an eighteen-year-old boy
spoke something about their indulgence and their judgment.


Cole was a responsible young man, and though he
could burn rubber he didn't. He was in fact sober and
thoughtful, compared to Dave.

Dave was immensely jealous of Cole's sporty new car.
He never even got to drive his father's old Chevy. That
car was too important to making a living for his father to
allow his son to drive it.

�Bill Morris played both football and basketball,
though he was not the star that Dave and Cole were. He
spent most of his time on the bench. Even so, he "went
out" for sports and was considered a jock. All of these
four were. He was not the scholar his two friends were,
either; and his parents had been squirreling away money
for years, in anticipation of his college tuition. Bill would
not win a scholarship.

He was a solid young man, not heavy enough for football
and not tall enough for basketball. On the basketball
floor he wore plastic-rimmed eyeglasses held in place by
a rubber strap behind his head. On the football field he
wore no glasses and relied on a slightly blurry vision of
the developing play. Since he was a guard and all but
invariably was blocked after he did or did not block his
man, it made little difference. He was dark-haired, and
oddly was already showing, on his forehead, the initial
evidence of baldness.

�Of the four, many would have called Tony DeFelice
the most interesting. They were all jocks, but Tony was


NEVER ENOUGH 403

a jock in a very different sense. He was a Golden Gloves
boxer.

He was a welterweight, knife-thin, with muscles as hard
as the steel of a knife. Many were afraid of him, but he
had been trained to restrain himself and never use his
boxing skills outside the ring. His ambition was to turn
professional.

He was an extremely intense young man, with hard
eyes. People who knew him well were aware that he had
a ready sense of humor and found amusement in all man- ~~
ner of things and people.

His family owned a score of packer trucks and collected
trash and garbage over a wide area of Bergen County.
They were said to be "connected." It was not true. They
were a family of shrewd, hard-working Italian immigrants,
who had hauled first in a single mule-drawn wagon and
had gradually worked their way up to the considerable
business they now owned.

On this April night it was the same old thing: nothing to
do. The four boys had bought six-packs of beer and drunk
twenty bottles among them. The remaining four bottles
were on the floor of the backseat of Cole's car. A little
after ten Cole drove into the parking lot of Pizza Palace
on the edge of Wyckoff.

The Palace might more realistically have been called
the shack. It had only four small tables. Customers were
expected to take delivery of their pizzas, ordered earlier,
and drive them home. The boys ordered two pizzas and
returned to the car to wait the twenty minutes until their
pizzas would be ready. They opened their last four bottles
of beer and talked about whether or not they should drive
off during the twenty minutes and buy another six-pack
or two.

They had sat there, drinking their last beers and talking
aimlessly when Jim Amos came alongside the car.

"Well, if it ain't Slaw," he said in a beer-slurred voice.


HAROLD ROBBINS

Slaw was a nickname sometimes fastened on Cole. He
didn't like it, but he didn't make an issue of it.

Amos was twenty-four years old and had served four
years in the United States Navy. He was known in the
town and area as a drunk and a bully. He would walk up
to a smaller and younger boy on the street and ask him
what was the finest service in the United States armed
forces. The boy might not know that Amos had been in
the navy and might say United States Marines or something
else. If he didn't say navy, Amos might deck him.

Or he might say, "You're wrong, and I'll let you buy
me a few drinks to make up for it."

In any case, Jim Amos was a swaggering bully. He'd
been beaten up two or three times, for having taken a
swing at the wrong young man; but that had not discouraged
him, and he remained a blustering punk.

Tonight he was feeling aggressive.
"Slaw and his Three Musketeers. Nice car," he said as
he hopped up on the fender and sat.

Dave came out of the passenger side, fast, and rushed
around the car. "Get your ass down from there, Amos,"
he yelled.

"Y' gonna make me?"

"I'm gonna make you."

Cole was out of the car now, followed by Bill and Tony
from the backseat.
"Oh. All four of you. Fine. Suits me. Who's first?"
Dave grabbed Amos by the legs and threw him off the

fender, onto the gravel of the parking lot. Amos was
drunk, but he was quick and strong. He scrambled up and
charged Dave, throwing a shoulder against his chest and
knocking him back against the car, where he was vulnerable
to the punch to the chin that Amos threw.

Amos set himself to throw more punches to Dave's face
and down one of his opponents. But Cole grabbed him
from behind and wrestled him away. He punched him
hard on the kidneys.

Amos broke out of Cole's grip, turned, and punched


NEVER ENOUGH

him in the stomach. Cole doubled over and vomited beer.

Bill stunned Amos with a hard punch to the ear.

Dave was furiously angry. As Amos momentarily disoriented,
Dave shot a hard fist against his nose, which
collapsed in a spray of blood. Amos shook his head and
moaned. His knees began to buckle. He was finished.

But Dave's anger was not assuaged. He stepped up to
the staggering Amos and put every ounce of his weight
and strength into a crushing blow to Amos's jaw. Amos
dropped backward to the gravel. His head hit with a sickening
crunch.

The police arrived a moment later. One of the officers
knelt beside Amos and examined him.
"This man is dead."

The families gathered at the Bergen County Jail.

The Sheas were frightened. Dave's mother was weeping,
and his father's hps trembled. "That poor boy! That
poor boy!" Mrs. Shea kept murmuring through her tears.
She meant Jim Amos.

The Jennings family was grimly composed. Stuart Jennings
was prepared to confront trouble and had summoned
his lawyer.

The Morrises seemed not to comprehend what was going
on. Their faces were blank, as though they were in
shock, which in fact they were.

Anthony DeFelice glowered. He was not connected, but
sometimes it was shrewd to allow some people to imagine
he was.

Witnesses from Pizza Palace assembled to give statements.
None of the witnesses was quite sure what had
happened, except that all agreed Tony DeFelice had not
hit Amos.

From that point, all was confusion.
"Those three mere, they all hit him. I seen 'em," an old
man with a three-day stubble of white whiskers declared.
"It was self-defense," Dave asserted angrily.


406 HAROLD ROBBINS

"Three of you? Self-defense against one feller ?"
A fat girl spoke. "Jim Amos was a drunken bully. He
was always starting fights."

"We know that," said the chief of police. He was a
muscular, middle-aged man in a suntan uniform. "On the
other hand .. . Well�"

"He's dead," said the old man. "An' three of 'em were
beaten' up on 'im."
"Which one of you swung the punch that broke his
neck?" asked the chief of police.

"Uh .. . Just a moment," said a white-haired man with
a flushed face. "I'm going to advise these boys not to
answer that question. Or any others, until they've had a
chance to consult with counsel."

The white-haired man was Lloyd Paul Strecker. He was
attorney for the Jenningses and had arrived at the police
station before they did. He had a formidable reputation in
Bergen County, not just for being a tough lawyer but for
his political connections.

An assistant district attorney arrived. Her name was
Lela Goldish, and she was about thirty years old, an attractive
young woman, though with broad hips and a priminent
butt. She was also hyper, moved in jerks and spoke
in clipped sentences.

"What've we got here?" she asked.

The chief of police gave her a brief statement.

"Manslaughter," she said. "Maybe involuntary manslaughter.
Sure as hell not murder."

"Okay," said Strecker. "I think these boys should be
given a chance to confer among themselves. They are all
involved. They should sing from the same sheet."

No one disagreed. Dave, Cole, Bill, and Tony went into
a little conference room to talk.

Dave put his elbows on the table and his face in his
hands. "Well..." he said. "It's the end for me. Manslaughter
charge. There goes my scholarship. There goes
my friggin' life. If I don't go to the slammer, anyway
Rutgers won't want me. It's the end!" He sobbed.


NEVER ENOUGH

"You didn't have to hit him that last time," said Cole.
"We had him. He was finished."

"I was .. . mad," Dave sobbed. "The son of a bitch ..."

"We're the witnesses," said Tony calmly. "Whatever
we say happened, happened. Self-defense."
"They won't buy that," Dave muttered. "Four of us .. . "
"Only the guy that shot the last punch," said Bill Morris.
"He was out. The guy that�"

"Yeah, sure," said Dave. "/ killed him."

"Jesus, man," said Cole. "I guess it's gonna go tough
for you. I don't think you'll get a big sentence, but�"
"But goombye scholarship, goombye chances, goombye
future," Dave sobbed. "I'll wind up like my old man."

"We oughta talk to the lawyer," said Tony.

They asked Strecker to come in.

"Here's where it stands," he told them immediately.
"We can make it voluntary manslaughter. The man who
threw the last punch can plead guilty to that. He'll get
probation."

"But he'll have a felony record," said Dave despondently.


"Well... Actually, that can be expunged from the records
in a few years. It won't prevent a man from getting
into law school, for example�because the record won't
exist."

"But right now�" Dave muttered disconsolately.

"For a while it will be an impediment," said Strecker.

"An impediment that�"

"Can ruin his whole life," said Cole sadly.

"I see where this is going," said the lawyer. "I'm going
to leave you boys to talk together."

With the lawyer out of the room, the four boys sat silent
for a full minute. Then�

"I'm the one with the most to lose," said Dave. "You
guys are going to college because your families can pay
for it. Mine can't. My scholarship is the only way I'm
going to get a college education. The only goddam way."


HAROLD ROBBINS

"What you're saying," said Tony, "is that one of us
should confess he shot the last punch."
Dave closed his eyes and nodded. "I'm the only one
whose life is on the line."

"I'll go this far," said Tony coldly. "If one of these
guys wants to take it, I won't screw it up. I won't tell the
truth."

Dave looked at Cole. "You've got the least to lose.
You're going to whatever university you choose, because
your family will pay for it. You've got a first-class lawyer.
Your family and your lawyer have got political connections.
You can come out of this smelling like roses. / come
out smelling like shit."

Cole drew a deep breath. "Except for you, Tony, we
all hit him. All of us. Dave couldn't have�Well, he
couldn't have if Bill and I hadn't done what we did. I
mean, I figure we share the responsibility. And�Dave's
right. He's got the most to lose. I've got the least." He
stood and opened the door. "Mr. Strecker�

The lawyer listened gravely to what Cole told him. He
shook his head. "Alright. I don't buy it, but if that's what
you want to do. I know what you have in mind."

he newspapers were angry�

TEENS BEAT NAVY VET TO DEATH!

Rampaging Wyckoff teenagers, drunk on beer,
beat a navy veteran to death in the parking lot of
Pizza Palace Saturday night.

What began as a Saturday-night rumble, arising
from the fact that the veteran sat on the fender of a car
belonging to Cole Jennings, 18, resulted, after a savage
beating, in the death of James Amos, 24, a veteran
of four years service in the United States Navy.

Cole Jennings has entered a guilty plea to involuntary
manslaughter. His companions, David Shea,


NEVER ENOUGH

William Morris, and Anthony DeFelice, have not
been charged.

James Amos, Senior, father of the slain young
man, says that his son had an exemplary record in
the Navy and had never been in any kind of trouble
at home.

"Half the town believes that," said Bill Morris.
"And the other half knows what a prick Amos was,"
said Dave.

"Anyway... it's all settled," said Cole. "Three years
probation, after which the record will be erased. I'm accepted
at Princeton. And�" He turned to Dave. "Your
scholarship is intact, and you'll be going to Rutgers. All's
well that ends well, huh?"

Dave nodded. "All's well that ends well."



De: Bons Amigos lançamentos 

O Grupo Bons Amigos e o Grupo Só Livros com Sinopses têm o prazer de lançar hoje mais uma obra digital  no formato  pdf,mobi, epub e txt  para atender aos deficientes visuais

The Secret - Harold Robbins. 

Livro  doado por Adeilton e digitalizado por Fernando Santos

Sinopse:

Este livro vamos deixar você ler  e fazer a sinopse para nós .

Lançamento    Só Livros com sinopses e Grupo Bons Amigos: 1 )https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/solivroscomsinopses   Grupo Bons Amigos grupo parceiro 2)https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/bons_amigos   Blog: http://grupobonsamigos.blogspot.com/   Esta revista representa uma contribuição do grupo Bons Amigos e Só livros com sinopses  para aqueles que necessitam de obras digitais como é o caso dos deficientes visuais  e como forma de acesso e divulgação para todos.  É vedado o uso deste arquivo para auferir direta ou indiretamente benefícios financeiros.   Lembre-se de valorizar e reconhecer o trabalho do autor adquirindo suas obras.

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Abraços fraternos!

 

Bezerra

Blog de livros

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Blog de vídeos

https://bezerravideoseaudios.blogspot.com/

 

Meu canal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8S_fz0WyUk

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