Norman came into the room.
"Nu?" he said. "You saw him?"
David nodded, reaching for a cigarette.
"I saw him."
He lit the cigarette. "He looks terrible. Rina's death must have hit him pretty hard."
The old man laughed.
"Sorry for him I can't feel," he said bitterly. "Not after what he's done to me." He took a cigar from his pocket and stuck it into his mouth unlit. "He offered you a job, no?"
David nodded.
"What job?"
"Executive vice-president."
His uncle raised his eyebrows.
"That so?" he asked interestedly. "Who's president?"
"Dan Pierce.
He's going to make the pictures. I'm to run everything else – administration, sales and theaters."
The cigar bobbed up and down excitedly in the old man's mouth. A broad smile came over his face. "My boy, I'm proud of you." He clapped his hand on David's shoulder. "I always said someday you'd amount to something."
David looked at his uncle in surprise.
This wasn't the reaction he had expected.
An accusation of betrayal would have been more like it.
"You are?"
"Of course I am," Bernie said enthusiastically. "What else did I expect of my own sister's son?"
David stared up at him. "I thought- "
"Thought?" the old man said, still smiling. "What difference does it make what you thought? Bygones is bygones.
Now we can really put our heads together.
I'll show you ways to make money you never dreamed about."
"Make money?"
"Sure," Bernie replied, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. "A goyishe kopf is always a goyishe kopf. With you in charge, who will know what's going on?
Tomorrow, I'll let all the suppliers know the old deal is still on.
Only now you get twenty-five per cent of the kickback."
"Twenty-five per cent?"
"What's the matter?" Bernie asked shrewdly. "Twenty-five per cent isn't enough for you?"
David didn't answer.
"So your Uncle Bernie ain't a chazer.
All right. Fifty, then."
David ground out his cigarette in the ash tray. He got to his feet and walked silently to the window. He looked down into the park across the street.
"What's the matter?" his uncle said behind him. "Fifty-fifty ain't fair?
You owe me something. If it wasn't for me, you'd never have got this job."
David felt his bitterness rise up into his throat.
He turned and looked at the old man.
"I owe you something?" he said angrily. "Something for all those years you kept me hustling my tail off for a lousy three fifty a week?
Every time I asked you for more money you cried about how much the company was losing. And all the time, you were siphoning off a million bucks a year into your own pocket."
"That was different," the old man said. "You don't understand."
David laughed.
"I understand all right, Uncle Bernie. What I understand is that you've got fifteen million dollars free and clear.
If you live to be a thousand, you couldn't spend all you've got. And still you want more." "So what's wrong with that?" Bernie demanded. "I worked for it. I'm entitled to it. You want I should let go everything just because some shlemiel screwed me out of my own business?"
"Yes."
"You take the side of that- that Nazi against your own flesh and blood?" the old man shrieked at him, his face flushing angrily.
David stared at the old man.
"I don't have to take sides, Uncle Bernie," he said quietly. "You yourself have admitted it's not your company any more."
"But you're running the company."
"That's right." David nodded. "I’m running the company. Not you."