Bonner was silent for a moment. "What would be the point? I never even met the man.
If he wasn't polite enough to look me up just once in the three years I've been working for him, I see no reason to start running after him now.
Besides, my contract is up next month and nobody has come around to talk about renewing it.
I didn't even hear from McAllister." He began scratching again.
David lit a cigarette. "Why didn't you come to me?" he asked softly. "I brought you over here."
Bonner didn't meet his gaze.
"Sure, David, I should have.
But everybody knows you can't do anything without Cord's O.K.
By the time you could have got to him, my contract would have run out. I'd have looked like a damn fool to the whole industry."
David dragged the smoke deep into his lungs.
They were all alike – so shrewd, so ruthless, so capable in many ways, and still, so like children with all their foolish pride.
Bonner took his silence as resignation.
"Sheffield told me he'd take care of us," he said quickly.
"He wants us both, David. You know that.
He said he'll set up a new deal the minute he takes over. He'll finance the pictures, give us a new profit-sharing plan and some real stock options."
"Do you have that in writing?"
Bonner shook his head.
"Of course not," he said.
"He can't sign me to a contract before he's taken over.
But his word is good. He's a big man. He's not a goof ball like Cord who runs hot and cold."
"Did Cord ever break his word to you?"
Bonner shook his head. "No. He never had a chance to.
I had a contract. And now that it's almost over, I'm not going to give him a chance."
"You're like my uncle." David sighed. "He listened to men like Sheffield and ended up in stocks and bonds instead of pictures.
So he lost his company.
Now you're doing the same thing.
He can't give you a contract because he doesn't control the company, yet you give him a signed agreement making it possible for him to take over." David got to his feet, his voice angry. "Well, what are you going to do, you damn fool, when he tells you, after he's got control, that he can't keep his promise?"
"But he needs us to run the business.
Who's going to make the pictures for him if I don't?"
"That's what my Uncle Bernie thought, too," David said sarcastically. "But the business ran without him. And it will run without us.
Sheffield can always get someone to run the studio for him.
Schary at MGM is waiting for a job like this to open up. Matty Fox at Universal would take to it like a duck takes to water.
It wouldn't be half as tough for him here as it is over there." David sat down abruptly. "Do you still think he can't run the company without us?"
Bonner stared at him, his face white.
"But what can I do, David?
I signed the agreement.
Sheffield can sue the ass off me if I renege."
David put out his cigarette slowly.
"If I remember your agreement," he said, "you agreed to sell him all the stock you owned on December fifteenth?"
"That's right."
"What if you only happened to own one share of stock on that day?"
David asked softly. "If you sell him that one share, you've kept your word."
"But that's next week.
Who could you get to buy the stock before then?"
"Jonas Cord."
"But what if you can't reach him in time?
Then I’m out four million dollars.
If I sell that stock on the open market, it'll knock the price way down."
"I’ll see to it you get your money." David leaned across his desk. "And, Maurice," he added softly. "You can start writing your own contract, right now."
"Four million bucks!" Irving screamed. "Where the hell do you think I can lay my hands on that kind of money?"