The Stallion (1996) (21 page)

She was superb. Angelo had authorized the line, “It’s not a car for
me,
I suppose. I live in Europe, where the roads are narrower and there are no speed limits, and I drive a Lamborghini. But when I come home and rent a car, I hope it will be an XB Stallion. For the American way of driving, it has to be the best car you can find—safe, reliable, economical.”

Angelo’s secretary in his New York office knocked on his door and stepped in. “You’ve got an odd telephone call,” she said. “The man insists on talking to you and says you’ll want to talk to him for sure, but he won’t give his name.”

“I’ll fix his ass,” said Angelo as he grabbed the phone. “Hello!”

“We’ve met, Mr. Perino.”

“I wouldn’t know, since you haven’t identified yourself.”

“Who I am is immaterial. I have something you want. I can arrange to deliver it to you, in return for … a consideration.”

“Really? And what’s that?”

“It’s a videotape, Mr. Perino. It was shot in the Hardeman house in Palm Beach in 1974. You may remember my mother. She was Mr. Hardeman’s secretary.”

“Mrs. Craddock,” said Angelo.

“You remember. Well, I worked for Mr. Hardeman, too. You may recall I handled the guard dogs. Also, I kept the alarm system working. Anyway, Mr. Hardeman ordered me to install hidden cameras and microphones in the house and record certain events in certain rooms. Which I did.
This particular tape was one of his favorites. It stars you and Miss Elizabeth Hardeman. Do I need to describe it to you?”

For a moment Angelo wondered if the man had copied Number One’s tapes. But only for a moment. Number One had been too smart to let that happen. Anyway, why would this idiot have waited two years before attempting blackmail? No. Betsy had destroyed them, as she had said. The man on the other end of the line had seen them, though.

“What do you have in mind?” Angelo asked coldly.

“The years haven’t been kind to my mother and me since Mr. Hardeman died. He wasn’t at all generous to us in his will. I thought maybe a few thousand for people struggling to make a living—”

“Let me tell you something, Craddock. In the first place, there are no tapes. They were destroyed.”

“Do you think so? Do you know how easy it is to copy a tape, Mr. Perino?”

“Well, I know just two ways to deal with a blackmailer: one, you pay him, two, you kill him. Which way do you think I’m going to handle you?”

The XB Stallion did not take off like a rocket. As a Wall Street analyst reminded his readers, it came after all from a company that had almost failed in the past five years, that had clung too long to its outmoded Sundancer, and that might yet fail. Even so, the dealers sold out their minimum stocks of ten before Christmas and ordered a few more. By February they were selling an average of four Stallions a week, by March an average of six.

Word of mouth sold the Stallion. People who bought one liked it. In June 1981, XB Motors announced that it would not offer a 1982 model. The original Stallion needed no major modification, and people who bought one would still have the latest model, through 1982. Small changes had been made and would continue to be made. None would be merely cosmetic.

The car was solid, surefooted, comfortable, and economical to drive.

At the board meeting when Angelo recommended there be no 1982 model, he also recommended the Sundancer be discontinued. Loren joined him in the recommendation, and the venerable family car initiated by Number One died a quiet death. Dealers had stopped ordering it. They wanted their showroom space for Stallions.

In March 1981, Betsy gave birth to a baby girl she named Sally, for her grandmother. She was to be Sally Hardeman because she could not carry the name of her father, the psychiatrist.

Max von Ludwige had a pronounced sense of honor. He flew to London and broke the psychiatrist’s jaw. The psychiatrist told everyone he had fallen down a flight of stairs.

Loren van Ludwige left home that spring for St. George’s School. His father had arranged for his enrollment there and agreed to pay his tuition, though Betsy said she could afford to pay it herself. She agreed with Max that the boy should receive part of his education in a French secondary school, then take his university degree in the States. He was to be a cosmopolitan man.

In June Angelo flew to London to meet with British backers of the idea of importing the XB Stallion. They agreed that the car would be assembled in a plant in Manchester. The power trains would come directly from
Japan, and XB would export to Britain the right-hand-drive version of the bodies and chassis.

He stayed at Dukes Hotel and found in his room, after he’d checked in, a vase of flowers with a note from Betsy. Worse, he had a telephone message from Roberta, who was staying at the Hilton.

Pleading a heavy schedule of appointments, including dinner with his British associates, he put off Betsy the first night and met with Roberta.

“We have to think carefully about something,” he said, when they met in Harry’s Bar. “Loren’s daughter lives in London. I’m not exactly an anonymous character. If someone recognizes me, sees me with you, tells her, and … Well, you understand.”

“I’m
anonymous,” said Roberta. “Nobody knows me.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I don’t have to see you in public, lover. Only in private.”

“Okay. Not tomorrow night. I’m being taken to a show, then to dinner.”

“You can call on me at three A.M.”

“And do business the next day? Hey—”

“We need to talk and fuck, Angelo,” she said grimly. “Both.”

He nodded. “I’m looking forward to the one but am a little apprehensive about the other.”

“What do you want to bet nobody of Betsy’s acquaintance knows about our little Lebanese restaurant? I want some more lambs’ balls!”

They walked the short distance through narrow streets to the restaurant, and over the lambs’ testicles and gorgeous Middle Eastern olives and a Lebanese wine, Roberta talked about Loren.

“Hank Ford had to get rid of Lee Iacocca,” she said. “He
had
to. As he often reminds people, the name on the building is Ford. If he had to get work suited to his abilities, he’d be lucky to be a produce manager in a supermarket. Loren knows something like that about himself.”

“I don’t put him down quite that far,” said Angelo. “I think he could manage a Woolworth store.”

Roberta smiled bitterly. “Every big news story about the Stallion—in the
Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek,
Forbes, Business Week,
you name it—calls you the man who built the Stallion and saved the company. How could Loren not hate you?”

“It would never occur to him to be grateful, I imagine.”

“You’ve made a fool of him. Again. He’s the president of a company, and everybody calls it
your
company. I can emasculate him, but that’s in private. You do it to him publicly.”

Angelo shrugged. “So what am I supposed to do, lie down and play dead for the sake of Loren’s balls? To be frank with you, Roberta, I don’t give a damn about Loren’s balls. I tolerate him. And I’m gettting sick of tolerating him.”

“You don’t have to be so fuckin’ obvious about tolerating him.”

“I suppose he wants to get rid of me.”

She nodded. “Any goddamned way he has to.”

“I don’t know why I don’t take my father’s advice,” said Angelo. “He’s said to me a hundred times, ‘Quit bailing out the Hardemans. They’re not worth it. Do your own thing.’ Why don’t I?”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because my ‘thing’ is automobiles. It used to be driving them. Now, it’s building them. The Stallion is my automobile, and it’s only the first. I’ve put up with the Hardemans because they’ve got the only company I can take over and use to build cars.”

“You can
take over!”

“Haven’t I? Didn’t I once before?”

“Loren would rather see the company die than have it taken away from him.”

“I’m willing for him to play the Henry Ford role,” said Angelo. “We can put his name on the building. So long as I have a free hand to build cars. My peers, the people I respect and who respect me, will know who’s building the cars.”

Roberta stirred the food on her plate. “Ironic, isn’t it?” she murmured. “We’re talking about putting Loren’s balls on a plate in gravy, just like these.”

Angelo glanced around the restaurant. He could not rid himself of the thought that Betsy might walk in.

“Angelo—”

“If it comes down to it, Roberta, whose side are you on?”

She drew a breath and hesitated for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“Let’s hope you don’t have to decide.”

The lambs’ testicles were an appetizer, and she lifted the menu and began to study the entrees. “Lover,” she said, “what are you going to do for me when we get to the hotel?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to pepper my butt. I
want
you to, Angelo. I asked you before. I won’t be back in Detroit for another eight days. The welts will be gone by then.”

He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t go for that, Roberta.”

“When I
beg
you for it? ‘Cause that’s what I’m doing. I’ll tell you a secret. I do it to Loren. But I wouldn’t let him do it to me. That’s another big difference between you and Loren.”

Angelo shook his head again.

“You think I’m strange, don’t you? Well, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.”

“Degustibus non est disputandum”
said Angelo.

“Chacun a son gofit,”
said Roberta. “Hey, I’m the one who’ll be taking it. Anyway, think about what a confession I’m making to you, begging you to beat me. Angelo, I want you to.”

He smiled and shrugged. “Well, Daddy always said, ‘Please the ladies if you can.’”

Betsy’s splendid flat on Chester Terrace overlooked Regent’s Park. Angelo hoped it was a neighborhood into which Roberta would have no occasion to venture. He could hope also that Betsy would accept dinner in a neighborhood restaurant and would not want to go—God forbid—to Mayfair, where the Hilton was located.

Fortunately, she wanted to introduce him to a tiny Czech restaurant just off Marylebone Road. She was known there, and they were given a table beside a streetside window, where they could see the people walking past.

Betsy was exquisitely beautiful, as always. Tonight she wore a simple Grecian dress: white, trimmed with gold,
with a knee-length skirt but spectacular decolletage. At twenty-eight, she was still young, still fresh. Her adventures had not spoiled her. Angelo knew he shouldn’t see her, shouldn’t be intimate with her; but he couldn’t resist her. Besides, he rationalized, if he tried to break away from her completely, she might very well tell all

“So what’s the story of the psychiatrist?” he asked her.

“He seduced me,” she said with such innocence that he might almost have believed her. “Max is an old-fashioned man. He came over from Amsterdam and beat up on him.”

“So I heard.”

“Do you know Roberta’s in London?” Betsy asked.

“I know.”

“I’m having lunch with her tomorrow. She’s coming by to see little Sally, and then we’re going somewhere—somewhere elegant and expensive. It’s on her.”

“How do you like her?” he asked.

Betsy paused for a moment, then said, “I’m going to tell you something about her and my father. I suppose you ought to know. My grandfather, the one they called Number Two, was sexually dysfunctional. You know all about that. Well, so’s my father, in his own way.”

“You mean he’s gay?”

Betsy sneered. “We should be so lucky. No, he’s a masochist. She’s a sadist. She beats him.”

For an instant Angelo felt a stab of apprehension. What did Betsy know? He calmed himself and asked, “How do you know? What makes you think so?”

Betsy stared at Angelo through narrowed eyes. She opened her mouth and ran her tongue across her upper teeth. “Number One told me. Not long before he died.”

“How would
he
know?”

“Angelo, he knew too fuckin’
much.
I told you about the videotape he had of us. Well, he had one of my father and Roberta, too. He didn’t show it to me, but he told me about it. That was one of the tapes I burned on the beach the night he died.”

Angelo put his hand on hers. “We carry a hell of a lot of heavy baggage, don’t we, Betsy?”

“Anytime I think of those tapes I feel uneasy,” she said. “Number One didn’t make those tapes himself. Someone
else did it for him. I wonder why the person who did it has never come forward and tried to blackmail any of us. Three years—”

Angelo decided to say nothing about the call from Craddock. He’d heard nothing more from the man. “He couldn’t. When he went to look for the tapes, he couldn’t find them. He didn’t dare ask about them.”

“But he
knowsl
God, what he knows!”

“And doesn’t dare mention. Our word against his. If there had been others, or any other evidence, we’d have heard about it by now. Number One had servants. He pretended to trust them, but he didn’t. So far as he was concerned, they were always servants.”

“And you were always an employee,” said Betsy.

“Well, I was never a Hardeman.”

“Neither am I. Am I, Angelo?”

“Miss Elizabeth, you may be the most Hardeman of them all.”

“Shit, Angelo!”

“You’re the only true heir Number One left. You’ve got his guts and his smarts.”

“And he hated me.”

“Of course he would.”

“He was an evil man,” said Betsy. “Ruthless. Sadistic. Have I got that in me, too, Angelo?”

“That remains to be seen,” he said smoothly. But he knew the answer was yes; she did have those traits, too. She was the true heir and would be a far more formidable foe than her father. “You haven’t shown the dark side of the Hardemans yet,” Angelo lied.

They were sharing a bottle of dark red Hungarian wine with an appetizer of tiny pastries stuffed with meat and mysterious spices. Betsy lifted the bottle and refilled their glasses. As she leaned across the table to pour into his glass, she showed him her breasts in the deep V of her dress. Tomorrow she was meeting with Roberta. That would be a real confrontation, Angelo thought. Loren was insignificant compared to either one of them.