The Stallion (1996) (17 page)

She sat down. For a long moment Loren sat silent, as if stricken. Then he smiled and said, “You see why I married her. Well, one of the reasons.” He turned to Angelo. “I
want
to go to Japan with you. I want to see this car and drive it, as you suggest.” He turned and spoke to Beacon. “Work on that quality control, Pete. Angelo is right when he says we can’t have doors falling off. Or windshields leaking.”

Loren expanded to his role as arbiter executive. “I’m sorry to have had to call you here today, but you can all see we face problems that won’t wait.”

Roberta managed to find a moment to speak with Angelo alone. “Find something he can change on the car,” she said urgently. “Feed it to me, and I’ll feed it to him. He’s got to think he’s making a contribution.”

Angelo nodded.

“Where you staying tonight?” she asked.

“North Street, Greenwich, Connecticut,” he said. “My kids were asleep when I left, but they won’t be when daddy gets back. Besides, my parents are there.”

“How you going to get back so fast?”

Angelo grinned. “I cut costs. I chartered a bizjet and a limo.”

She laughed. “You son of a bitch! Make time for
us
sometime, lover. Make time for
us.”

If there was a group called accepted Greenwich society, Alicia Grinwold Hardeman was a member. Her home on Round Hill Road was a white clapboard house built in the 1870s and had once been the manor house overlooking hundreds of acres of farmland. The house’s original owner, a man named Mead, had made his fortune in shipping. His portrait still hung over the mantel, and the town swarmed with his descendants.

Alicia, Loren Hardeman the Third’s first wife and the mother of his only child, Betsy, lent a dignity to the house it probably had never known before. At forty-seven she was taller than most women, thinner, and confidently in control of a life that resulted from her marriage into the Hardeman family and then a comfortable settlement from her exhusband. She owned 5 percent of what was now called XB Motors, Incorporated; but if the company went under, her trust fund, which had been established when Number One and Number Three were more secure than Number Three and XB were now, would continue her lifestyle as long as she lived. In fact, shrewd investments had improved her financial security and her lifestyle. She was a woman with nothing to worry about—in terms of money.

For her New Year’s party, she wore a formfitting brocade dress, gold and green and red over beige. She smoked unfiltered Camels and drank straight gin with only a cube or so of ice.

“Angelo! And you must be Cindy! I’m glad you could come. And this must be Dr. and Mrs. Perino. Welcome! Please—My daughter, Betsy. Hardeman … van Ludwige, whatever you want to call her.”

“Thank you, Mother,” said Betsy. “How nice of you to set me off so well. I’ve met Angelo and Cindy. Dr. and Mrs. Perino,
it’s nice to meet you. Whatever you’ve heard about me, it is probably true.”

“We have heard nothing but complimentary things about you,” said Dr. Perino.

Betsy was wearing a red-orange knit dress, with narrow green-and-dark-blue stripes. It was short, and it clung to her. “I’d offer you a drink, Cindy,” she said, “and will if you’re not swearing off until—”

“Until April,” said Cindy.

“Congratulations,” said Betsy, both to her and to Angelo. “We take great pride in our grandchildren,” said Jenny Perino.

“I take great pride in my son,” said Betsy. She glanced at Alicia and Angelo. “I count on my mother and Angelo to be sure he inherits what he is entitled to.”

“I’m not sure I have any influence over that,” said Angelo.

“Yes, you do,” said Betsy. The expression in her eyes turned hard. “I count on you to see to it that my father dies soon.”

“Betsy has always been a difficult child,” Alicia said with cold, condescending fury.

Betsy retreated. “Uh, figuratively speaking, of course.”

Dr. Perino smiled. “We understand that everyone is speaking figuratively and in riddles. But why? I was able to go to medical school because during Prohibition the first Mr. Hardeman was one of those who bought their liquor from my father. Who broke the law more, the seller or the buyer? We don’t talk about these old things anymore. We don’t talk about who blew up Joe Warren, do we? Joe Warren was Bethlehem Motors’ Harry Bennett, but he suddenly died very conveniently. Henry Ford the Second had big trouble getting rid of his grandfather’s thug. For Number One it was easier. Joe Warren was killed in an explosion that was never explained. There is a long alliance between the Hardeman and Perino families. I don’t think my son needs to defer to any Hardeman. Without the Perinos, there would be no Hardemans.”

The cluster of people—Angelo, Cindy, Betsy, Alicia, and Jenny Perino—gaped.

Dr. Perino went on. “Loren the Third had my son beaten, nearly killed. I could have had Loren killed within twenty-four hours. And it would not have been a pretty death, either. But problems are not solved that way. My son could have demanded that kind of revenge, and it would have been done. He didn’t demand it. My son is a worthy man.”

Angelo spoke. “My father speaks a bit simplistically. We are going to build the new car and make it a success—whether anyone named Hardeman likes it or not.”

“Your father said some very interesting things,” said Betsy to Angelo a little later, when they were apart and looking at Alicia’s elaborate buffet spread out over the dining table and three side tables in the candlelit dining room. “He doesn’t pull his punches, does he?”

“Neither did your father’s thugs,” said Angelo. “And while we’re on the subject, you were pretty blunt.”

“I meant I want him destroyed, not killed.”

“At least we know what our goals are. Don’t forget that mine is to build a car.”

“You’re like Number One in that respect, aren’t you? Is the XB Stallion something you want to devote the rest of your life to?”

“The Stallion is only the beginning,” he said. “I’ve got other plans. Once the Stallion is a success and reestablishes the company as a player in the automotive industry, we’ll go on from there.”

“Angelo…” She smiled at him playfully. “Are you going to build the Betsy for me? At last.”

He grinned. “Why not? When our family car is a success, we’ll build a sporty car.”

“I’ll take that as a promise,” she said. She glanced into the living room. “There’s someone you ought to meet. My mother’s boyfriend. C’mon.”

The man she led him toward was what every backcountry Greenwicher aspired to be: cleft-chin handsome, conspicuously at ease, physically fit, wearing a double-breasted blue blazer with a blue-and-white striped shirt and a rep tie, gray flannel slacks, Gucci loafers.

“Let me fill you in a bit,” said Betsy. “I heard what you said about firing all the MBAs, especially the Harvard ones. The man you are about to meet is a Harvard MBA. He’s an investment banker. He was a Marine captain in Vietnam. Tennis player. He owns a beautiful sailboat. He’s five years younger than my mother. She must give him a hell of a fuck. His name is William Adams.”

Betsy introduced Angelo to Adams, who invited him to call him Bill even before they finished their handshake.

“I’ve been interested in your automotive analyses,” he said to Angelo. “To tell the truth, I was sorry you went back with the corporation. I was beginning to rely on your reports.”

“When a man has it in his blood to build automobiles, it’s difficult to stay away from it,” said Angelo.

“I’d like to talk with you about that sometime,” said Adams. “There’s a takeover artist in New Jersey named Froelich who might try to buy XB.”

“It’s family owned. That might be a little difficult.”

“Difficult but not impossible. But’s let not talk about it now. I met your charming wife a few minutes ago and suggested that after she has her baby you might like to come out on the Sound with Alicia and me. We love to sail. Do you sail?”

“Afraid not.”

“You used to do something else that fascinates me. You raced cars. I was in Europe in nineteen sixty-four and saw you drive in the Targa Florio. I’m sorry I can’t remember what car you were driving.”

“That was a Porsche 904,” said Angelo.

“Well, driving and sailing are two very different sports. I don’t race. Not anymore. Alicia has become a very competent first mate. She handles a boat very well. I imagine you and Cindy will be first-rate sailors, too.”

“I’ll be happy to try.”

“Cindy says she’s due in April. By July or August she should be game for sailing. Let’s hope we see each other before that, though.”

“Yes, let’s do,” said Angelo.

This was the first time anyone in backcountry Greenwich had made an offer of a friendship to him.

Roberta sat comfortably in an overstuffed chair in her living room. It was a windy winter evening and she was wearing a quilted green robe and smoking a Chesterfield. Loren entered the room. He was naked, and he carried Scotch and soda and a bucket of ice on a tray. He mixed her a drink.

“You took your damned good time about it,” she said.

“I had to open a new bottle,” he said humbly.

“Then start moving and get the goddamned hors d’oeuvres,” she said.

He hurried back to the kitchen and quickly returned with a tray of small open-face sandwiches that had been prepared by the maid earlier that day. He knelt by the coffee table and began to lift sandwiches onto a plate, using a silver spatula. Gray Poupon mustard and mayonnaise filled two tiny glass bowls. Using small knives, he spread mustard on two sandwiches, mayonnaise on two others.

Roberta crushed her cigarette in an ashtray. Without rising from his knees, Loren seized the ashtray and dumped the butt and ashes into a silent butler. He wiped out the ashtray with a Kleenex and tossed the Kleenex into the fireplace.

Roberta smoked, but she did not like the stench of dead butts near her food.

“Serve the cucumbers and carrot sticks,” she said.

He lifted those with little silver tongs and added them to her plate.

“Now listen carefully,” she said, “and Mama will tell you what we’re going to do when we get to Japan.”

As she spoke, he bent down and licked her feet.

“Chances are, Angelo and the Japanese have put together a pretty good car,” she said. “But not a perfect car. So, we’re going to find fault with it, you and I. It can’t be anything that requires a big retooling. But we’ll find some-thing. We’ll find something that he and the Shizoka people have to change. It’ll be a good idea for Shizoka to see how you can order Angelo to change things. You got it, Daddy?”

Loren sighed. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to recognize anything that needs to be changed. I wish we could take Beacon along.”

“And have the Japs think Beacon, instead of you, gives orders? Don’t worry about it. We’ll find something. On the flight you can read those two books I gave you. I’ve read them. There are ideas in them. You were a very effective CEO on December twenty-seventh. You’ll be that again.”

Loren rose, but only to his knees.

“Take some food,” she said. “Fix yourself a drink.”

He took sandwiches and vegetables on his plate. He poured himself a stout drink. “I’m glad you’re going with me,” he said.

“Be a
man,
lover.”

Loren looked up and smiled. “You think I’m not being one right now? Well … there are ways and ways of being a man. When I’ve got my face in your crotch, I’m being a man. And—”

“Be a man about Angelo Perino,” she said sternly. “Which doesn’t mean—”

“Let him have his Stallion. Maybe it will save the company. But I’m going to have that wop’s ass. You watch me, Roberta. It’s not going to be pretty for Mr. Angelo
Perino. I’m going to have his car, then his ass. You watch.”

Loren and Roberta planned to fly to Japan on Tuesday, January 22. Angelo was going over a week earlier, on January 15. Four times during the week before his flight Angelo had to take telephone calls from Roberta. During her call on Thursday, January 10, she told him for the first time that she was going, too. She insisted she had to see him before the trip, for business reasons as well as personal reasons.

“We haven’t got things set up,” she said, and he heard a note of urgency, even of panic, in her voice.

“Okay, I’ll fly to Tokyo from Detroit, on Northwest Orient, if I can arrange it. I’ll spend Tuesday night in, say, Ann Arbor and fly over on Wednesday. That puts me in Tokyo a day late, but I guess Keijo and I are close enough friends now that he won’t take offense.”

Tuesday he flew to Detroit, rented a Ford at Metro Airport, drove out to Ann Arbor, and checked into a Holiday Inn. He had a couple of drinks and a club sandwich in the restaurant and was lying on his bed reading when Roberta arrived at about two o’clock.

She slipped out of her coat, sat down on the couch facing his bed, and tugged off her knee-high boots. Her midcalflength skirt was of gray wool, and her bulky sweater was cream white.

Angelo poured them two Scotches.

“Business first,” she said. “You haven’t told me what fault Loren will find in the Stallion.”

“I’m going over a week early to install them,” he said. “It’s a silly goddamned charade, Roberta. I’m going along with it, but—”

“What would you do if he sold his stock in XB? And if the Hardeman Foundation did?”

“Who’d buy it?”

“There’s a corporate raider in New Jersey who’s talked twice to Loren.”

“Number One would kill him!”

“Number One is dead. Think of it from Loren’s point of view. The company is a lot of goddamned trouble. It dominates his life. It always has. And you are a source of repeated humiliations. So he sells his stock. With ten or twelve million dollars in the bank, he moves away from Detroit and takes up residence in, say, Paris.”

“Would you go with him, Roberta?”

She hesitated. “I haven’t decided. He won’t go if I won’t. But listen. He’s going to be fifty-one years old shortly. He’s been defeated too many times. So he gets a big charge of cash. I’ve got resources. So we move to Paris and forget all about Detroit and automobiles.”