The Stallion (1996) (31 page)

“What if they come up with cash?” asked Angelo. “I mean, I suppose they have
some
financial clout. They’ve raided successfully before. Maybe they can raise enough cash.”

Bill Adams smiled. “I very much doubt they’ll be able to do that,” he said. “They’re not well thought of on the Street.”

Angelo relieved Keijo Shigeto of all responsibilities relating to the Stallion. Satisfied that his Japanese partner was an engineering genius, he wanted his undivided attention for a new project.

They sat in the Perino living room: Angelo and Cindy, Keijo and Toshiko. By now everyone had abandoned the pretense that Keijo was on loan to Angelo. The family had been in the States five years now, and none of them expressed any desire to return to Japan, except of course for filial visits.

Three aircraft companies were using their epoxy resin material for wings and fuselages, and their license had just been renewed by Shizoka. CINDY, Incorporated, was earning revenue and a profit. In fact, Tadashi Komatsu had acknowledged the value of manufacturing improvements made by CINDY, and the new license was more a partnership agreement than just a license. Shizoka remained committed to the idea that epoxy resin would be used in automobile bodies. Its success in the S Stallion was ample evidence of its practicality.

The four had been discussing this over martinis before dinner when Angelo grinned and said, “Of course, that’s not the big change that has to come. The real change is something far more fundamental.”

Keijo nodded. “The electric car,” he said.

“I’ve read two business-page stories in the last week saying it can’t be done—worse, that it can
never
be done,” said Angelo. “Well, by God, I’m convinced it
can.
More than that, it
has
to be done. We can’t go on burning fossil fuels. Even if we don’t run out of them, which we will sooner or later, they are expensive, inefficient, and polluting.”

“Did you see the cartoon?” Cindy asked. “I mean the one showing the car going along pulling a trailer with tons of batteries?”

“Chemical batteries,” said Angelo. “Lead cells, with acid. Chemical batteries are to the new technology as mechanical typewriters are to computer word processors.”

“Or worse,” said Keijo. “Like sailing ships to intercontinental jet aircraft.”

“Fuel cell,” said Toshiko with a bright smile.

“One possibility,” said Angelo.

“How are you going to fuel a car with hydrogen?” Cindy asked. “The stuff is dangerous. You could have an explosion like the one that destroyed the
Hindenburg.
Anyway, how would a filling station handle it?”

“The most successful experiment right now,” said Angelo, “cooks methanol, which breaks down into carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The hydrogen goes into the fuel cell. The CO
₂
is discharged into the air. A fuel cell small enough to fit under the hood of a conventional automobile can produce as much power as an eighty-horsepower engine. Of course, there are disadvantages—cost being one.”

“There are other approaches,” said Keijo. “The flywheel battery is one.”

“Do you really expect XB Motors to build an electric car?” asked Cindy. “Loren—”

“To hell with Loren,” said Angelo. “We’re going to build the car, with him or without him.”

“The difference in with him or without him,” said Cindy, “is that with him you have big manufacturing capacity and a chain of dealers, and without him you’ll have a little company building experimental cars in a garage.”

“Something like that is how Apple Computers and Microsoft got started,” said Keijo somberly, yet with a measured smile.

“He’s a handsome kid,” said Amanda quietly to Cindy, nodding toward John, who stood nude on her model platform.

“I don’t think he’s a virgin anymore,” said Cindy, equally quietly.

“At
fourteen?”

“If you two are going to stand over there talking about me, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this,” said John.

“Sorry, John,” said Cindy. She walked away from Amanda and her easel and sat down on the studio couch.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” Amanda asked. She was sketching with charcoal on a stretched canvas. “I don’t want a model who’s posing when he doesn’t really want to.”

“It’s a family tradition,” said John with a faint smile.

“We discussed it,” said Cindy. “I didn’t want him to think I was pressing him about it.”

“I’ll be the only guy in my class who was ever painted this way,” said John. “I wouldn’t even think of doing it if you weren’t a genuine and well-known artist. I like the paintings you did of my mother. I like my father’s portrait.”

“I have to warn you,” said Amanda. “A boy who posed for me several years ago later said he regretted it. It embarrassed him with his classmates to have them see his picture in galleries.”

“I’m not bashful,” said John simply.

Cindy and Amanda exchanged amused glances. They were not sure why, but as he stood there holding his pose, his member was not flaccid but stood at a slight angle from his scrotum, in a nascent erection.

At fourteen he had the musculature and organ of a man. He was angular, no longer soft. His father was a hairy man, and apparently John was going to be too; already he had dark hair on his chest, not just in his armpits and crotch. His self-assurance was impressive.

Cindy was glad she had chosen to bring the family out from the city to Greenwich and enroll the children in private schools. John’s friends were intelligent, poised, and well mannered, just as he was. So were Anna’s friends. Her only concern was how soon they would be exposed to drugs and alcohol and how early they would become sexually active. Amanda would pay John well for modeling, and Cindy wondered what he intended to do with the money. It would be his own; he would not have to account to her or his father for it. She wondered if that—and not his admiration of Amanda’s artistic talent—were not his chief motive for agreeing to pose.

Anyway, the picture he was posing for now would be hers. She had already bought it. He would pose for five. The other four would go on sale at VKP Galleries.

John and Buffy went into New York on an afternoon train, on a frigid Saturday in February. He took her to VKP.

“
John!
Oh, my
God
!”

She had not seen the painting his mother had bought. It hung in the master bedroom, and he had not taken her there again.

A woman browsing in the gallery recognized John as the model for two of the paintings hanging there in the main room on the first floor and she smiled at him.

“How about you?” he asked Buffy. “Amanda pays a good fee.”

“My parents would go ballistic.”

He shrugged. “Well, my mother owns the gallery. I guess that makes a difference. I mean, our whole family is into art.”

“I wish I could get my parents to buy one of those,” said Buffy.

“Uh, I’d just as soon you didn’t,” said John.

At 10
A.M.
Loren Hardeman the Third rapped on the table with a ballpoint pen and called to order the 1988 meeting of the stockholders of XB Motors, Incorporated. Present were himself, Betsy, Roberta, Angelo, and James Randolph, director of the Hardeman Foundation.

“The chair takes note,” said Loren with a note of grim sarcasm in his voice, “that Elizabeth, Viscountess Neville, holds proxies for her mother, Alicia Hardeman, and her aunt, Anne, Princess Alekhine. This means that my daughter Betsy will be voting three hundred thousand shares.”

Betsy glowered at him. “Not exactly,” she said. “During his lifetime my great-grandfather made some small gifts of stock to six employees he considered loyal to him and deserving of his gratitude. Five of those six, or their heirs, have also given me their proxies. The heirs to the sixth will not be voting. In addition, Mr. Perino has given me his proxy. I will be voting three hundred and forty-six thousand, five hundred shares. I hand you those proxies.”

Loren turned to the corporate attorney, Ned Hogan, who sat uncomfortably behind him. “Can she come in here with additional proxies on the very day of the meeting?”

The lawyer nodded.

“Fine,” said Loren, dismissing Betsy with a contemptuous gesture. “So you’re going to vote three hundred thousand whatever. Why would the six employees or their heirs give
you
their proxies?”

Betsy smiled. “It could be because I asked them and you ignored them. It could be because they consider me a more worthy heir to Number One than you are.”

“Fine, fine. So you’re going to vote a little more than a third of the shares,” said Loren impatiently.

Betsy nodded and now grinned. “The chair has also taken note, I trust, of the written notice filed ten days ago.”

“It has been reviewed by counsel,” said Loren. “This … ‘notice of intention to vote cumulatively’ means, the lawyers advise me, that a stockholder voting thirty percent of the stock is entitled to elect a member of the board of directors.”

“Basic corporation law,” said Betsy. “Protection of the rights of minority stockholders. With more than thirty-four percent of the stock, nearly thirty-five percent, the minority is entitled to elect two of the five directors.”

Loren glared at the attorney, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. He leaned forward and spoke in Loren’s ear. “Maybe not with thirty percent even,” he said. “But with almost thirty-five—”

Loren turned and faced Betsy, his face flushed with anger. “Well, just which of our directors do you propose to discard? And who do you propose to replace them?”

“Dump your deadwood,” she said, chuckling. “I’ll leave it to you to decide who
they
are. My nominees are myself and Angelo Perino.”

Roberta spoke. “I move,” she said, “that the stockholders meeting be adjourned for one hour.”

After lunch the newly elected directors gathered around the same table. They were Loren, Roberta, James Randolph, Betsy, and Angelo. Missing were Professor Mueller and Congressman Briley.

“Isn’t this cozy?” said Loren.

Roberta touched his hand under the table. After the conclusion of the stockholders meeting and during the lunch break, she had worked to calm him in his office. She had given him sex rather than take it from him, and when that had not calmed him she had poured him a heavy drink of Scotch.

“I move,” said Betsy brusquely, “that Mr. Loren Hardeman the Third be reelected chairman of the board of directors and president of XB Motors, Incorporated.”

“I second the motion,” said Angelo.

“Those in favor?” Loren asked weakly.

All raised their hands.

“I move,” said Betsy, “that Mr. Angelo Perino be elected vice chairman of the board of directors and executive vice president of the corporation.”

Loren’s face reddened more darkly, but Roberta spoke up quickly and said, “I second the motion.”

Loren sighed and said, “Those in favor?” When his wife’s hand went up, he raised his own.

Seeing that, Randolph raised his.

Betsy grinned at Angelo over the dinner table in the hotel in the Renaissance Center. “It only takes one vote,” she said. “Frankly, I was surprised at Roberta. I never imagined she’d do it. So my father’s unquestioned control is broken.”

Angelo shook his head. “Don’t count on it. Roberta’s no dummy, and she doesn’t surrender. I figure she decided this was not the ground on which to fight. Also, I figure she wants to give us a chance to shoot ourselves in the foot. It was too easy. The real battle is not going to be that easy.”

“When are you going to present the idea of the electric car?”

“Not yet. That’s when the fight comes.”

“Maybe sooner than that, when he tries to sell his stock to Froelich.”

Angelo shook his head. “Froelich won’t buy it unless he
can buy the foundation stock also and take control. And to do that, he’s going to have to come up with cash.”

Betsy grinned. “I hope you don’t ever outsmart yourself,” she said.

She reached for his hand, but Angelo pulled it back. “Betsy, aren’t you aware that we’re being followed and watched?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t look now at the man and woman about two thirds of the way around the fountain. The big guy with the bullet head. The frowsy blond.”

“Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “I’m going to find out.”

“Jesus, that’s
creepy!”

“I’m going out to make a phone call. Don’t look at them. Just glance around casually and pretend you don’t notice them. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

An hour and a half later Angelo and Betsy left their table. Instead of going up to their rooms, they walked out into the parking lot behind the hotel. They walked through several rows of parked cars before they returned to the hotel.

The man who was following them took a blackjack shot to the back of the head, slumped quietly against a Volvo, and dropped to his knees, then to his face, on the pavement. The woman took the second shot, squarely across her face, smashing her nose and breaking a cheekbone. She fell.

Ten minutes later Angelo heard a discreet knock on his door on the eighteenth floor. He did not go immediately to the door. He knew enough to wait a minute. Then he went over and picked up a card he spotted lying on the floor, halfway under the door. One corner was brown with drying blood.

DIXON & BRAGG

Investigators

All Work Strictly Confidential

Leonard Bragg       (333) 867-0500

He went to the telephone and called Betsy’s room. “The coast is clear,” he said. “My place or yours?”

Cindy lay beside Marcus in Amanda’s bedroom. Amanda had gone out, and her answering machine was taking her calls. The machine was in the bedroom, and they could hear her messages.

One was from Dietz, who said he’d be coming in on the 4:07 train from Grand Central, which would arrive at 4:45. He suggested she make a dinner reservation.