The Betsy (1971) (35 page)

Grandfather caught his breath and I saw his eyes go misty again. He nodded. “Before I go,” he managed to say.

About an hour later, we stood on the steps in front of the house and waved good-bye to my grandfather as the big Duesenberg started down the driveway. I saw him looking back at me through the rear window and I waved again to him. He raised his hand and then the car turned out of sight at the end of the driveway.

We stood there a moment, then I looked up at my parents. “Those men waiting for Grandpa were wearing guns under their coats,” I said. “I wonder if they know Grandpa doesn’t like guns.”

My mother and father stared at each other for a long moment, then my mother’s eyes filled with tears again. My father picked me up with one arm and put the other around her. We stood there silently like that on the steps in front of the house for a long time while my mother hid her face against my father’s chest. I looked at my father. There were unshed tears in his eyes too. I felt a strange lump come up in my throat. There were so many things I did not understand.

But in the time to come I would learn many of them. Like those two men that waited for Grandfather were federal agents who were to escort him to New York where he would board a ship for Italy.

Like Judge Weinstein, or Uncle Jake as I came to know him, wasn’t really a judge at all but an attorney in charge of all his business affairs.

For many years thereafter, almost until the time I left for college, Uncle Jake was a once-monthly visitor at our house for Sunday dinners.

Then shortly after I was twenty-one and I was down from MIT in January 1952, I found out how rich a man my grandfather had really been. By that time, my share of his estate had grown under Uncle Jake’s prudent management to more than twenty-five million dollars and my parents’ share was twice that.

I remember looking at my father and Uncle Jake in complete bewilderment. I knew we were well off. I didn’t know we were rich. “What do I do with all that money?” I asked.

“You’d better learn,” my father said seriously. “Because some day you’re going to have all of it.”

“I’d suggest you go to Harvard Business School when you graduate,” said Uncle Jake.

“But I’m not interested in business,” I said. “I’m interested in automobiles.”

“Automobiles are a business too,” Uncle Jake said.

“Not my kind,” I said. “All they do is cost money.”

“Well, at least you can afford that,” Uncle Jake smiled.

“I don’t need all that,” I said.

“Then I suggest you set up an investment trust at the bank and let them manage it,” Uncle Jake said.

I looked at him. “Why can’t you just keep on with it the way you have?” I asked. “I remember Grandfather said he gave you a lifetime contract. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

He glanced at my father. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning to me. “I can’t do it.”

“Why?”

He cleared his throat. “Because of certain other business activities of mine which the government says are allied with organized crime, I feel it’s wiser to cut you loose rather than chance the possibility of having you and your parents involved in something none of you have anything to do with.”

I knew what he was talking about. I read the newspapers too. His name had come up very often in connection with investigations into organized crime. “But can we still call on you if we ever have a problem?” I asked. “A real problem, I mean.”

He nodded. “Of course you can. After all, your grandfather did give me a lifetime contract.” He got to his feet. “Everything’s pretty much set up at the bank, John,” he said to my father. “Perhaps you and Angelo can come downtown tomorrow. We can have lunch, then go over to the bank, sign a few papers and make it official.”

We did that and when I went back to school I got a subscription to
The Wall Street Journal
and for a while religiously checked the market every day against the list of stocks and securities that the bank held for me. But then it got to be a bore and I stopped looking at it entirely, just depending on the bank’s quarterly statements to keep me up to date. And most of the time, they wound up in my drawer unopened. After all, how wrong could I go when I started with twenty-five million dollars in blue chips?

Uncle Jake didn’t entirely lose his fight with the government, but the following year he gave up his practice and moved to Las Vegas where he had interests in several hotels. We exchanged Christmas cards and once in a while when he came East my parents would see him, but I was always somewhere else. Then just a few years ago I read in the papers that he had sold his interests in Las Vegas and had moved near Phoenix, Arizona, where he embarked on a large program of land development tied to a sport and spa hotel and country club complex called Paradise Springs. I remembered receiving an invitation from him to attend the grand opening of the resort, but that was about the time I had begun working for Number One and I couldn’t attend. Mother and Father, however, did go and carried with them my explanation and regrets and good wishes. Mother loved it, and my parents had returned there several times a year since. Father told me that Uncle Jake looked relaxed and content for the first time since he had known him and had gone brown-as-berry native, even to the extent of wearing a white ten-gallon Stetson out on the links for his morning round of golf.

In the time that passed I had learned many things, but of all of them perhaps the greatest regret was that I never got to see my grandfather again. It took him almost two years to get me the Bugatti that he had promised, but it finally came. And a year later so did the war in Europe and he wrote my parents not to come to visit as he did not want them to take any chances with me. Then we were in the war and for almost two years we heard nothing until the American troops landed in Italy.

But then, it was too late. My grandfather had died of cancer the year before.

 Chapter Nine

I opened my eyes to the sunlight streaming into a room filled with flowers. I moved my head slightly. No pain. I grew bold. It hurt like hell. “Damn!” I said.

The nurse who had been sitting in the corner of the room got to her feet. Her uniform rustled as she came to the bed and looked down at me. “You’re awake,” she said.

I already knew that. “What day is this?”

“Thursday.”

“What happened to Wednesday?” I asked.

“You slept,” she answered, reaching for the telephone. She dialed a number. I heard the faint crackle of an answering voice. “Will you please page Dr. Perino and tell him that 503 is awake. Thank you.

“Your father is on his rounds but he wanted to be notified the moment you awoke,” she explained.

“What time is it?”

“Ten o’clock,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “And I’m afraid to find out.”

The door opened and my father came into the room. No Anglo-Saxon bullshit with us, we were Italian. Doctor he might be but he was my father first. We kissed on the lips. “Mother and Cindy are on the way up from the coffee shop,” he said.

“Before they get here, how bad is it?”

“You’ve had worse,” he said. “A couple of broken ribs, numerous and heavy body bruises and contusions, but no internal injuries as far as we can determine, mild concussion, you’ll have headaches for a while.” He paused. “They did make a mess of your face though. Undid all the work you had done in Switzerland. Broken nose in two places, there’s a slight crack in your jawbone, not too serious—it will heal practically by itself. I figure you lost about five teeth, mostly caps, and it looks like they shifted your right cheekbone a little, but we can’t tell until the swelling goes down. Cuts over the eyes and around the mouth. All in all, not too bad.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said. I reached for his hand and kissed it. Like I said, we were Italian. When I looked up at him there were tears in his eyes.

Then the door opened and Mother and Cindy came in and my father had his hands full for the next ten minutes trying to keep Mother from crying all over me.

Cindy stood there at the foot of the bed, almost shyly watching us. I think it was the first time she had ever seen an Italian family in action. It really was something to see.

Finally, when Mother had kissed practically every part of me, including my feet, she straightened up. “Cindy, come here,” she said. “Angelo wants to thank you.”

My mother turned back to me. “She’s a good girl, your friend. She saved your life and brought you home to us. I thanked her a thousand times. Now, you thank her.”

Cindy leaned over me and kissed my cheek chastely. I returned her kiss, equally chaste on her cheek. “Thank you,” I said gravely.

“You’re very welcome,” she said formally.

“Now, that’s a good boy, Angelo,” my mother said proudly.

Cindy and I had all we could do to keep from breaking up. We didn’t dare look at each other.

“Who sent all the flowers?” I asked.

“The story about your mugging was in all the papers,” Cindy said. “They started arriving yesterday. Number One, Duncan, Rourke, Bancroft. Even Number Three and Weyman sent flowers.”

“Angelo has good friends,” my mother said proudly.

“Yeah,” I said dryly, looking at Cindy.

“Number One called you from Palm Beach,” Cindy said. “He said not to worry. He would see you on Monday when he came up here.”

Suddenly it all came back to me. Monday was only five days away. I had lost one precious day of time sleeping. I looked up at my father. “How long do I stay in here?”

“I figure over the weekend,” he answered. “If everything checks out all right we could let you go Monday or Tuesday.”

“If I left the hospital for one day and then came back, would I do any damage?”

My father studied me. “Is it that important?”

“Yes. This was no mugging and you know it. Nobody took my watch or wallet.”

He also knew a professional beating when he saw one. You didn’t practice in Detroit hospitals for over forty years without learning about that. He was silent.

“There’s something I must do,” I said. “It’s the only chance I have to keep them from taking the company away from Number One.”

A strange expression came to my father’s face. “You mean old Mr. Hardeman?”

I nodded.

He thought for a moment. “You’ll come back within one day?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be in agony every minute,” he said.

“Give me pills.”

“All right.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll give you one day. I have your word. You’ll be back.”

“No!” Mother cried. “You mustn’t let him! He’ll hurt himself!” She started for me, crying. “My baby!”

My father held out his arm to stop her. “Jenny!” he said sternly.

Mother looked at him in surprise. It was a tone that I doubt she had ever heard from him.

“Leave man’s work to men!” Father said.

Sicilian women know where it’s at. “Yes, John,” my mother said meekly. She looked at me but spoke to him. “He’ll be careful?”

“He’ll be careful,” my father said.

I woke up the next time in the cabin of the big, chartered DC-9. The stewardess was looking at me, Gianno standing next to her.

“We’ll be landing in Phoenix in fifteen minutes, Mr. Perino,” she said.

“Raise me up,” I told Gianno.

He bent down beside the stretcher bed and turned the crank, raising the back of the bed until I was in a half-reclining position. “That okay, Angelo?”

“Fine,” I said. The afternoon sun was brighter at thirty thousand feet here than it was in Detroit. The seat belt sign went on with a pinging sound.

Gianno bent over me to tighten the straps. That done he checked the floor locks on the bed. Satisfied, he returned to his seat and fastened his belt. The stewardess went forward to the pilot’s cabin.

I leaned back with a good feeling. Father really had it all arranged. It had begun that morning when I asked Cindy to check the flights to Phoenix while I put in a call to Uncle Jake.

“Forget it,” Father said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

“But I have to get to Phoenix today.”

“You will. You just rest. I’ll call Jake and get you to Phoenix today.”

“But how are you going to do it?”

“Stop worrying,” he smiled. “It’s time you learned there are some advantages to being rich.”

After he had gone, Cindy came over to the bed. She stood next to Mother who was seated in a chair watching my every motion with an eagle eye. “I think I’ll go back to the hotel and get some sleep,” she said. “I’m beat.”

“I don’t want you to go back to the hotel. They know you were with me and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing will happen to me,” she said.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Cindy can stay at our house,” Mother said quickly. “She can have the guest room she had last night.”

I looked at Cindy. She nodded. “I don’t want anyone to know where you are,” I said.

“Okay,” she answered. “I’ll tell Duncan to keep it quiet.”

“No, you’ll tell him nothing. You won’t even call him or anybody else for that matter. I don’t trust any of the telephones in the plant.”

“But I promised to let him know how you are,” she said.

“The hospital will give him the information. You just keep out of sight until I give you the word.”

“She’ll do what you say, Angelo,” Mother said. “Won’t you, Cindy?”

“Yes,” Cindy answered.

“See?” Mother said triumphantly. “I told you she was a good girl. Now don’t worry about her. I’ll take care of her every minute. Nobody will know where she is.”

I could see the beginning of a smile come to Cindy’s lips. But it wasn’t a funny ha-ha smile. It was the kind of smile you have when you find a friend.

I nodded my head. “Thank you, Mamma.”

My father came back into the room. “Well, it’s all arranged,” he said, obviously pleased with himself. “I spoke to Jake and he’ll meet you in his office at five o’clock.”

He really did have it arranged. A private ambulance took me from the hospital to the airport where it rolled right onto the field up to the chartered jet. Gianno rode with me and in the plane made sure that the stretcher bed was securely locked into place. Five minutes after we were airborne, he came over to me, a hypo in his hand.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sleep shot,” he said. “The
Dottore
wants you to rest until you get to Phoenix.”

“I’ll rest,” I said.

“The
Dottore
said if you give me trouble I turn the plane back to Detroit.”

“Okay,” I said wearily. “Hit me.”

Father taught him well. I think I was asleep before he got the needle out of my ass.

There was an ambulance waiting on the tarmac when the big plane rolled to a stop. Thirty-five minutes later we pulled into Paradise Springs. I had to say one thing for it. It was a hell of a way to beat the traffic problem.

We were directed to the private entrance to Uncle Jake’s office. It was through a screened-in garden facing the golf course.

Uncle Jake was behind his desk in the large, wood-paneled room. Logs crackled in the fireplace, fighting a losing battle against the air-conditioning.

Uncle Jake saw me looking at it, as Gianno cranked up the bed. He got out of his chair and walked toward me, his snow-white Stetson startling against the dark wood walls. “This air-conditioning is so goddamn efficient in here that sometimes I find myself freezing,” he said. “And I’m still enough of an Easterner to like a log fire at which to warm my hands.”

I smiled at him. “Hello, Uncle Jake.” I held out my hand.

He took it. His grip was as strong and friendly as it had always been. “Hello, Angelo.” He turned to Gianno. “Good to see you again, Gianno.”

Gianno bowed. “Good to see you,
Eccellenza.”
He moved to the door and left the office.

Uncle Jake turned back to me when the door had closed. He pulled a chair from in front of the desk and sat down, looking at me. “Do you always travel like this?” he smiled.

“No,” I laughed. “Only when I’m too tired to get out of bed.”

“Your father told me you really caught it,” he said, still smiling. “You should have learned to duck.”

“I did,” I said. “Right into a kick in the teeth.”

The smile left his face. The drooping, heavy lids over his large eyes, the large, curved, Roman nose almost reaching the center of his upper lip above his wide, thin-lipped mouth and pointed, dimpled chin, all combined to give him the dangerous, hooded look of a hunting falcon. “Who did it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, deliberately pausing for a moment. “But I can guess.”

“Tell me.”

I went through the whole story from the beginning. From the very first call I got from Number One almost three years ago. I left nothing out, business or personal, because that’s the way I knew he would want it and that’s the way it had to be. An hour and a half later I came to the end of my story with the conversation I had with my father that morning.

He was a good listener, interrupting me only a few times to clarify a hazy point. Now he got to his feet and stretched. He was in fantastic shape for a man in his late sixties; physically he looked more like a man in his fifties, and not late fifties at that. “I could use a drink,” he said.

“So could I.”

“What will be your pleasure?”

“Canadian on the rocks.”

He laughed. “Your father said you would ask for that, but all I’m allowed to give you is two ounces of cognac neat.”

“Father knows best.”

There was a bar hidden in the wall which came out at the touch of a button. He poured cognac into two snifters and gave me one.

“Cheers,” I said. The cognac burned its way down my throat. I coughed and winced as the pain ran through my side.

“You’re supposed to sip it, not gulp it,” he said. He sipped his drink. After a moment he looked down at me. “Okay, now that I’ve heard your story, exactly what do you want from me?”

“Help,” I said simply.

“In what way?”

“There are two things I want you to do. If you can. One is to find out where Simpson got the money to push his campaign against us. If he got it legitimately, good and well, I’ll forget about it. But if it came in any way from someone in our company, I want to know it.

“Two, I want that suicide note that Loren Three has in his home safe.”

“What good do you expect that to do you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just have a hunch it may be the key to all of this if I can get it out into the open.”

“You’re not asking for very much, are you?” Without waiting for me to reply, “A little bit of detective work and a little bit of safecracking, that’s all.”