The Stallion (1996) (10 page)

He didn’t because Betsy was waiting for him at the hotel.

Betsy had become a problem, for her family and for him. Set loose from Max van Ludwige, utterly contemptuous of her father, almost as contemptuous of her great-grandfather, she seemed to aspire to become one of the beautiful people. Besides some Hardeman money that had been willed to her by her grandmother Sally and the allowance paid to her monthly by Number One, she had a generous settlement from Max van Ludwige. She considered herself independent, and if she was careful about how much she spent, she could remain independent.

Truman Capote wrote of her—

Far more beautiful than Doris Duke ever dreamed of being, but less stylish and definitely less rich, apparently she seeks to make a place for herself by keeping company with people beneath her dignity—some of them beneath anyone’s dignity. She has been seen, for example, in the company of the Greaseball Junkie. (That’s Elvis Presley, if anyone didn’t know.) Better is what may have been a brief affair with William Holden. The lady drinks heavily, travels much, and is reputed to have the scruples of Lucretia Borgia. All of this makes her an exceptionally interesting twenty-four-year-old. If she will just stay out of the company of Budweiser drinkers, she may have a fascinating future in her future.

She maintained a home in London, where the five-year-old Loren van Ludwige saw her surprisingly often, considering the lifestyle Capote had described. Mommy traveled, true, but Mommy came home and stayed home for weeks at a time, during which time she was devoted to him. She rarely went out until after he was in bed, and during the day
she took him for long walks in the London parks and on cruises up and down the Thames. When she was invited aboard Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s yacht, moored in the Thames a little upstream from the Tower, she took him with her. She called him Loren Four and suggested to interviewers that he would succeed her father as chief executive officer of Bethlehem Motors.

She played blackjack in London clubs and annoyed the management by winning. She was hailed before a magistrate for driving under the influence and lost her driving license—after which she sold her car. The tabloids loved her. They loved her low-cut dresses, her high-cut skirts, her skimpy bikinis, and her willingness to pause for a moment and smile for the cameras.

Number One knew little of this, but what he did know infuriated him. Loren turned livid when stories came in from London.

Sometimes she disappeared. Right now she had managed that very feat, and neither the tabloids nor the Hardemans knew where she was. She was in Tokyo.

“Geishas haul your ashes?” she asked when he entered the suite. She sat on the couch in the living room, naked but for a pair of sheer white bikini panties studded with rhinestones.

“Doesn’t seem to be a part of the service,” he said.

“I’ve heard they insert razor blades in their cunts, so if a guy actually does get in—”

“Betsy!”

She shrugged. “Probably isn’t true.”

He poured himself a Scotch. Pulling off his tie and jacket, he sat down beside Betsy and began to fondle her breasts.

“Do you really do business over here?” she asked. “Or do you just come to have a good time and make occasions for us to be together?”

“I really do business here,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I need to know. I’m not going to be stupid about the business, the way my mother was, the way Anne is.”

“Well,” he said, “one of the first things we have to think about is converting Bethlehem Motors to metric. For a while I thought we could build the power trains to match bodies put together on English measurements. The complexities of that proved too much. Shizoka wouldn’t even think of converting to inches. There was no point raising the subject with them. So everything about the new car will be metric. Fortunately, we don’t have to retool the whole Detroit operation, because the engines and everything between engines and wheels will be built in Japan. But we do have to retool the equipment that makes chassis and bodies. The next question is, where do we get the money?”

“Where?” she asked.

“I put in some of my own. I took stock for it. Loren and Number One weren’t happy about that, but I wasn’t going to make a gift to the company. I talked a New York bank into putting up some more. The company is stretched thin. In terms of personal finances, you’d say the company is strapped.”

“What’s this car going to look like?” she asked.

“Like nothing ever built in Detroit before. Compact, but not compact like a Falcon or a Corvair. The longtime emphasis on curves is going to be replaced with emphasis on angles. The hood will slope down in front. The backs of the rear seats can be folded forward to make a trunk that runs all the way to the backs of the front seats. Oh, it’s going to be a different car.”

“How are the old man and my father reacting?”

“Number One keeps sending the drawings back. He uses a French curve on them and rounds off the angles.”

“My father?”

“Is keeping hands off, as he promised to do. And he’s seething, I have no doubt. I watch my back all the time.”

“Don’t trust him, Angelo. Remember how he schemed before. Remember what he did to you. He hates you. I promise you he does. Also, he’s got that woman now. Roberta. She’s smarter than he ever dreamed of being. And tougher. She’s got him completely under her thumb.”

He smiled. “I take it you don’t like her.”

“There’s an inheritance at stake, Angelo. Anne’s, mine, and my son’s. My great-grandfather has talked about leaving
all his remaining shares in Bethlehem Motors, plus everything else he owns, to a Hardeman family trust. My father would of course be a trustee, and he’d have enough stooges as additional trustees to assure him complete control, even if Anne and I were also trustees. I wouldn’t be surprised if Roberta were named a trustee.”

“I’m only interested in building cars, not in Hardeman family problems,” said Angelo.

“You won’t be building cars if my father gets complete control of the company,” argued Betsy.

“He won’t let the company go under,” said Angelo. “And that’s what would happen if he backed out of the deal he has with me. The bank let the company have money only because
I’m
running the show.”

“His capacity to be devious has been multiplied dangerously by his marriage to Roberta,” said Betsy. “I’m not sure he wouldn’t let the company go under if he could drag you down with it. He might look like a failure, but in
his
mind he wouldn’t be.”

“I’ll keep what you say in mind,” said Angelo, dismissing the subject.

“Now you’re going to make love to me,” she said.

“Yes. I can’t resist you, Betsy. I want to, but I can’t.”

“You know why?” she asked quietly.

“Why?”

“Because you know I love you. Sure, I’ve got a beautiful bod, but so do lots of other women you’ve had and will have. But I love you, you know I do, and you can’t push me away.”

He sighed and nodded. “You’re right. I can’t. And I can’t leave my wife and children and—”

“Let’s not get into all that again,” she said. “We don’t have enough time together to talk about all that. Let’s go take a shower together, ‘cause there’s something I want to do.”

He stood and pulled her to her feet, then gathered her into his arms to kiss her. “What is it you want to do?” he whispered in her ear.

She began to unbutton his shirt. “When you were a horny little teenager, did you ever hear of something called Around the World? I mean, did you ever fantasize having a
girl lick every inch of you, front and rear, from your ears to your toes? That’s what I’m going to do for you. I’ve never tried it, and maybe my mouth will dry up before I’m finished, but I’m going to do it as long as I can. Also, remember where I put my tongue sometimes. I wonder how that would feel if I dipped my tongue in brandy first.”

“I dipped my cock in brandy once. It burns.”

“But up your ass it might just burn deliciously. Let’s find out.”

He nodded. “Let’s find out.”

On the final full day of his trip to Japan, Angelo traveled with Keijo Shigeto on a fast train, in the comfort of a first class compartment, to Nagoya, which was miles from Tokyo. Keijo had offered to show him something he very much wanted to see.

“We cannot use this in the car we are now building,” said Keijo, “but in a future model … I think you will be impressed.”

The chauffeur who picked them up at the train station drove them out of the city and to the track where Shizoka tested its cars. It was, of course, a secluded place, surrounded by a tall, guarded fence, inside which grew thick, thorny hedges.

A car that looked like an ordinary Chiisai was speeding around the track. It looked like an ordinary Chiisai. Angelo had seen hundreds of Chiisais, but this one was equipped with sensors that were feeding information to recording instruments in the garage. He could not identify all the Japanese gauges, but he could read enough to see that the Chiisai was moving on the straightaways at something over 200 kilometers per hour, a little more than 120 miles an hour. It seemed to be entering the curves too fast, and Angelo wondered what the test driver had in mind.

Keijo called the car in. The driver got out and took the occasion to go to the bathroom.

“You see? It has not an alarming appearance,” said Keijo.

Angelo walked up to the car and put his hand on it. Then he rapped it with his knuckles. He could tell from the feel
and sound that the body was not made of steel but of epoxy resin. Each component of the body of the car had been built by stretching a fabric over a frame, then applying several coats of epoxy resin. When the part was finished it was removed from the frame, which could be used to make another, identical part.

Keijo stepped up to the car and struck a door panel with a large ball-peen hammer. The panel yielded under the blow, then immediately recovered.

“The main body is made of the same material,” said Keijo, “but it is reinforced with a steel frame. The material can be drilled and parts can be fastened together with rivets or bolts, but most parts are attached to one another by epoxy cement.”

“Which test are you running now?” Angelo asked.

“I think you know,” said Keijo with a broad smile.

“Stress,” said Angelo. “Running into curves too fast and stressing the frame and body.”

Keijo nodded, the movement originating at his waist and looking more like a short bow. “I show you one we test-crashed,” he said.

In a corner of the garage was a car that had been run into a wall. It was as nearly intact as any car could be after that kind of impact.

Keijo took a screwdriver and gouged out a scratch on the rear fender. The scratch was all but invisible; the material was the same color all the way through. He picked up a loose front fender and handed it to Angelo. The material was light.

“Too costly now,” said Keijo. “But the technology can be developed to make it far less costly. We hope our American partner will join us in that investment.”

Angelo didn’t tell him that Bethlehem Motors wouldn’t be able to invest in anything unless the car they were now building captured a respectable market share and earned a handsome profit.

It was difficult for the Hardeman family to decide whether to mark the one-hundredth birthday of Loren Hardeman the First, Number One, with any kind of celebration. He was weak and obviously sinking slowly into his long sleep. On the other hand, he was still capable of anger and might direct it at anyone he could identify as insufficiently deferential to him and insufficiently interested in his centenary.

Roberta made the decision. They would celebrate with a family dinner, to which only the immediate family would be invited—Loren and herself, Princess Anne Alekhine, Betsy, and her son, Loren van Ludwige. Princess Anne did not so much as respond to the invitation. Betsy flew in from London. She could not bring little Loren because he had contracted measles. The family group that assembled around a table in the late afternoon consisted of Number One, Number Three, Roberta, and Betsy.

The old man sat at the table in a stiff gray suit, white shirt, red-and-blue striped tie, with his panama hat on his head. Betsy had played tennis a little earlier and had not changed out of her tennis whites. Roberta wore her favored stretch stirrup pants, this pair cream white, and a long-sleeved
silver lamé top. Loren looked uncomfortable in a blue blazer and white duck pants.

Bethlehem Motors had circulated a news release, reminding the world that Loren Hardeman the First, the founder of the company, would be one hundred years old on Tuesday. Two bushel baskets filled with congratulatory wires and letters sat on a side table. Number One shrugged at them and declined to read any of them.

Loren read one to him. It was from the White House, from Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Number One listened, his head bobbing, and when Loren handed him the engraved and embossed card, he waved it aside and said, “Peanuts.”

He wouldn’t let Loren read the wires from executives of the automobile industry. “Boring bullshit,” he muttered. “Pro forma. I’ve outlived their grandfathers.”

He drank Canadian whisky, as he’d done in the old days. “What’s the difference now?” he asked.

The birthday dinner was catered. So many foods were off-limits to Number One that he had not employed a cook for years and just ate the bland meals his nurse set before him. Tonight, however, he was treated to a hearts of palm salad and pompano, with a chilled Rhine wine.

When they had finished and the dishes were cleared away, brandy was served, and only then did Number One wave the bottle away.

“I have something I want to say,” he said. He pushed his wheelchair back and glanced around the table, letting his eyes settle for a moment on each member of his family. “I guess it was Maurice Chevalier who said the only thing worse than living to a ripe old age is the alternative. If you have ambitions to live to my age, curb them. It’s not worth it.