The Stallion (1996) (48 page)

“I can’t imagine how I could possibly owe you anything,” said Loren.

“Well, you do. Number One had that videotape of you and Roberta, showing her blistering your bare ass with a belt.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Nothing was impossible for Number One when he made up his mind to do something. Every room in the house in Palm Beach was bugged, and he had hidden TV cameras in the guest bedrooms. He had tape of you and Roberta. He had one of me and Angelo.”

“You said you have them. Where? In London?” asked Loren urgently.

“I destroyed them,” she said.

“How did you get your hands on them?”

“I killed the old bastard,” said Betsy calmly. “He died of a heart attack, but it was while I was smothering him with a pillow, just after he showed me the tape of me and Angelo.”

“You say this in front of—”

“Angelo has known for a long time. He guessed it, but I told him.”

“If anyone ever asks me,” said Angelo, “I’ll deny I ever heard anything contrary to the coroner’s report on the death of Number One.”

“Why, Betsy?
Why did you…? Oh. I can guess. He was going to change his will!”

Betsy nodded. “Shutting me out. Shutting out my children.”

“And you committed …
murder
!” Loren screamed.

“Right,” she said insouciantly.

“To deprive me of my inheritance! He would have left it all to me!”

“Right.”

“And now you, the two of you, have robbed me of what 1 did inherit,” Loren complained bitterly.

“You’re still a very wealthy man,” said Angelo.

“You should be grateful we took control of XB away from you,” said Betsy. “You’re not very bright, Father. What is more, you can’t control your emotions. Sooner or later you would have destroyed the company, and your stock would have become worthless.”

“You think so, do you? At least I’m incapable of killing someone.”

“You were capable of having Angelo beaten half to death,” said Betsy coldly.

“Thereby winning his undying animosity, which has cursed me for twenty-two years.”

Angelo shook his head. “You’re wrong about that, Loren,” he said. “I thought you were a fool, but I didn’t hate you—until last year.”

“Last year?”

“Business is business, Loren, and it can sometimes get down and dirty. My grandfather was not just Number One’s bootlegger. You know that Joe Warren was your father’s lover and was blackmailing him. What you maybe don’t know is that when Number One decided to get rid of Joe Warren once and for all, he called on my grandfather, and my grandfather saw to it that Joe Warren was blown away. You do remember that he died in an explosion?”

“I … I don’t believe it,” said Loren.

“I do,” said Betsy. “That’s what your father was talking about that night at Alicia’s, isn’t it, Angelo?”

Angelo shrugged. “Suit yourself, Loren. Just business. Maybe even the beating you had done on me was just
business, too. But lately you got personal—very, very personal. That changed everything.”

“It changed things for me, too,” said Betsy. “I was half ready to attempt a reconciliation with you, but—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” snapped Loren.

“Rebecca Mugrage,” said Betsy. “You tried to ruin two young people’s lives by hiring a hooker to seduce my son. That’s
personal.
Damned personal.”

“Besides which,” said Angelo, “you hired a con man to worm his way into my wife’s affections and spy on me. That’s personal, too, Loren. It’s unpardonable.” Angelo looked over his seat back and grinned at Loren. “How are they supposed to say it at the CIA? We turned your spy. There never was a liquid battery. We used Carpenter to feed you disinformation.”

“I was trying to defend what was mine,” muttered Loren.

“You were playing out of your league,” said Betsy without taking her eyes from the road.

“I was trying to defend—”

“Fuck that,” said Betsy. “We’ve done you a big favor. We didn’t announce who was guilty of making the fake videotape. We kept you on the board of directors.”

“One vote out of nine,” muttered Loren.

“And lucky to have it,” she said.

Loren spoke to Angelo. “How long you figure the company’s yours?” he asked.

“Long enough,” he said. “Number One tried to hang in until he was a hundred. Not me. I’m going to step down when the time’s right.”

“When Loren Number Four is ready?”

“Probably not,” said Betsy. “Van is fascinated with law school. Anna wants nothing to do with XB Motors. It has bad associations for her. They may change their minds, but—”

“Then who?” Loren interrupted.

“Maybe Angelo’s son John,” said Betsy. “He’s interested. And maybe … just maybe, another John. He’s only eleven, so he’s got a lot of time to grow up and decide.”

“Your son? You mean the child the two of you had?”

“If he wants it,” said Betsy. “And maybe he won’t. Maybe
the two Johns: John Perino and then John Hardeman, in succession.”

“You’ve got it all worked out.”

“And you had better not try to interfere,” Betsy said, an unmistakable threat in her voice. “You’re outclassed and outgunned. Enjoy your retirement, Father dear. We’re going to make your stock worth a whole lot more money.”

“We’re going to the dinner in the Ren Center, and we’re going to act like we’re enjoying ourselves,” Roberta told Loren.

Angelo had reserved a private dining room, where the families would gather: Betsy, her husband and children, Angelo and Cindy with theirs, Alicia with Bill Adams, the Prince and Princess Alekhine, and Loren and Roberta.

“Do I have to let them gloat over me?” Loren asked.

“We’re going to act like civilized people. Besides, to stay away would be a hell of an admission.”

Loren stared into his Scotch and soda. “I suppose I have to get used to it,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “The game is over, Loren. We lost.”

Loren smiled. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless his fuckin’ car turns out to be a failure like the Super Stallion did. We can hope for that.”

For the dinner Cindy wore a beaded floral silk chiffon T-shirt dress in gold and green and shades of orange and red. It was a Karl Lagerfeld design and won sincere compliments even from Anne, Princess Alekhine. In the hotel room later she took it off. Without it, she was as spectacular as she had been all evening. Her sheer, dark, thigh-high stockings had bands of black lace around the top, concealing the bit of rubber that held them up without garters. Her black bra was underwired to thrust her up and out, and it was open tipped to bare her nipples. Her tiny
lace panties had no crotch, so her furrow and a narrow stripe of pubic hair were entirely uncovered.

When he took her in his arms, she whispered in his ear. “I can compete with any of them.”

Angelo nuzzled her throat. “You don’t have to,” he murmured.

The XB 000—officially the E Stallion, but almost always simply called the Stallion—was not prepossessing in its outward appearance: a small black sports coupe with something of the appearance of a Mazda MX-6. It was a solid little car, sitting confidently on a low chassis. In April it set out on a trip from Los Angeles to New York, as a test and a demonstration.

The news media became immediately enchanted with the team of handsome, engaging young people Angelo chose to drive it coast to coast. Loren van Ludwige—Van—was the principal driver, with John Perino to spell him. Sitting in the rear seat were Anna and Valerie Perino. Van was twenty-three years old, John was twenty-two, Anna was twenty, and Valerie was sixteen.

The route was Los Angeles to Flagstaff to Albuquerque to Amarillo to Oklahoma City to Tulsa to St. Louis to Indianapolis to Columbus to Akron and finally across Interstate 80, over the George Washington Bridge and into New York, where the car would be put on display at the Exhibition and Convention Center. The idea was for the four young people
to drive like a family of tourists, stopping for lunches, staying overnight in motels. They were to keep the car running at the speed limit or a little above. They were to run the air conditioner when they needed it. They were to play tapes and disks and listen to the radio news. The idea was for them to drive the E Stallion exactly as they would drive a gasoline-powered car.

But, of course, their drive across country could not be exactly that kind of trip. They were followed by a truck carrying the generator they needed to recharge their batteries. Only in Oklahoma City, St. Louis, and Columbus could they recharge in service stations. As the constant flow of news releases from XB pointed out, though, recharging equipment could be added to service stations as readily as diesel fuel once had been—more readily, since there would be a greater market.

The big point was that the E Stallion could be recharged while the drivers and passengers ate lunch, or during their first half hour at a motel. It did not require an overnight charge. In St. Louis, where XB had arranged for recharging equipment to be installed at a McDonald’s, Van smiled at television cameras as he plugged the Stallion into the recharger that looked very much like a gasoline pump, and the car was recharged in twenty minutes while the crew ate Big Macs and fries and drank Cokes. Van paid $16 for that charge.

They spent Monday night in a motel outside Akron. The next day they would drive across Pennsylvania to Stroudsburg, where they would spend their last night on the road and be ready to make a triumphal entry into New York by noon on Wednesday.

Anna also shared in the driving. When they stopped in the service area just west of DuBois, she moved into the driver’s seat. They waited a few minutes for their service truck to catch up, and Van talked for a minute or two with the crew. The rule was for the truck to stay two or three miles behind them, so it would not be conspicuous or appear in the pictures that were taken of them everywhere. Van climbed into the passenger seat, and Anna pulled onto the highway. She would drive the next hundred miles or so.

Without realizing it, she had chosen one of the most
mountainous hundred-mile stretches of their whole coast-to-coast trip. But she was a skilled driver, and this was an interstate highway. What was more, the Stallion had long since demonstrated its power and reliability on long uphill stretches that often caused internal-combustion engines to overheat. In fact, twice they passed cars with geysers of water and steam shooting from their radiators. They laughed when they noticed that one of them was an old Sundancer.

They crossed a high ridge, and the highway began a descent down the eastern slope of the Appalachians.

Eighteen-wheelers ran fast on long downhill runs, clocking seventy miles an hour or more. Signs urged them to downshift, but few of them did. Their drivers were impatient to regain some of the time they had lost laboring uphill. Truck traffic was heavy, too, as 1-80 was a major transportation route.

An immense yellow rig loomed behind the Stallion, its engine roaring. The driver began to blink his lights.

“What the hell does he want me to do, get off the road?” Anna asked.

“Seems to be what he has in mind,” said Van.

A red eighteen-wheeler filled the lane ahead of them, this one showing brake lights, slowing down. Anna caught up with it and had to use her brakes to stay a safe distance behind it.

“You’re gonna have to pass him. That son of a bitch back of us is too close,” John said from the backseat.

Anna turned on her left-turn signal and began to ease out into the left lane to pass, but the yellow eighteen-wheeler jerked abruptly into the left lane and came up beside the Stallion.

“Hey!” yelled Van. “Look at that bastard ahead of us. Look! He’s got no license plates!”

Not only that. The identification numbers painted on the trailer had been covered with paper and masking tape.

Anna gripped the wheel grimly with both hands. She glanced to the right. Only a guardrail separated the highway from a long, steep plunge into woodland.

“They’re trying to force us into the guardrail,” Van muttered.

“Like hell,” Anna grunted.

The huge front wheel of the yellow eighteen-wheeler rolled just to the left of the front of the Stallion. Anna eased closer to it, then abruptly rammed the big tire with her front bumper. A puff of smoke issued from the tire, and shreds of rubber flew, hitting the Stallion’s hood and windshield. The tire’s cords were exposed. She hit it again. The tire exploded.

Anna swerved to the right and applied her brakes. Suddenly the Stallion was behind the eighteen-wheelers, and the one with the shredded tire began to fishtail. Out of control, it rammed into the trailer of the red eighteen-wheeler and drove it against the guardrail. The weight of the rig ripped away a piece of the guardrail. The driver braked and was hit again, this time from squarely behind, by the yellow rig. Finally, the yellow eighteen-wheeler veered wildly to the right, tore away more guardrail, and plunged down the steep wooded slope. It turned over and rolled.

Anna swerved into the left lane and accelerated. She glanced at Van, and her eyes filled with tears. “I think I just killed a man,” she said.

“Somebody just tried to kill
us,”
said Van. “I wouldn’t want to be that person when your father figures it out.”

That night in the parking lot of a motel just outside Stroudsburg, the crew of the service truck replaced the front bumper of the Stallion, which was the only damaged part of the car.

News accounts of the collision between the two eighteen-wheelers—and the death of the driver of the yellow one—noted that a small black passenger car had somehow miraculously escaped the trap the two out-of-control rigs had created; but all witnesses had been at least several hundred yards away, and no one had any idea what kind of car it was or where it went.

When the four young people checked out of their Stroudsburg motel, Angelo did not know what had happened to them. He had come to Betsy’s suite in the Waldorf—for breakfast, she had said.

She lay beside him gleaming with sweat, some of his own mixed with hers. He inhaled the unique, unmistakable odor that human bodies exude while in the throes of rapture.