The Stallion (1996) (3 page)

This was his third face. He’d grown up with one, and it had been shattered and burned in the racetrack crash. He had never been satisfied with the second, which Dr. Hans had given him and thugs had broken up in a Detroit alley. That one had seemed false because it had been too youthful for a man his age. Now he had a third face, his second reconstructed one in a little more than three years.

Cindy insisted on being in the room when the bandages were removed, even though Dr. Hans and the sisters had warned her he would not look right at first. She gasped. “He looks like he’s been out in the sun too long!”

“Yes,” said the surgeon calmly. “It is red, as we told you it would be. In a week…”

In a week he was a third man. He did not have the same face he had had before the crash; reconstructing his original face remained an impossible feat for the plastic surgeon. But he did not have the sham young face he had worn for the past few years. His Roman nose had not been restored; it was straight, Teutonic: what Dr. Hans considered correct and handsome. His broken cheekbones had been restored, partly with bone taken from his pelvis. Another piece from his pelvis replaced a hunk of his chin that had been destroyed by the men who had worked him over. The best thing about his new face was that people would not turn and stare at him anymore.

“I like it,” said Cindy.

Which to Angelo was all that counted.

In London, in Amsterdam, and on the Riviera, Angelo and Cindy had accepted only one telephone call that was not from a member of their families—a call from President Nixon, congratulating them on their marriage and wishing them well at the Swiss hospital. He said a man like Angelo might want to consider a position in government and asked him to call when he was fully recovered.

During the weeks they spent at the hospital, Angelo and Cindy dealt with some of their correspondence and accepted a few telephone calls. He had a call from Lee Iacocca at Ford, who expressed sympathy about his beating, wished him a complete recovery, and suggested he phone him when he came home. Henry Ford the Second sent flowers to the hospital, with a note inviting Angelo to call when he came back to Detroit. The Ford flowers were delivered on the same day as a wire from Bunkie Knudsen warning him to keep his distance from Ford. Ed Cole at General Motors called to suggest they meet. To Angelo’s complete surprise, he received a wire also from Soichiro Honda.

The most interesting call was from Robert McNamara at the World Bank. He suggested that Angelo consider becoming a consultant in the field of automotive engineering and design. People on the Street, he said, constantly sought insight from people who could offer them sound information and advice about the state and the future of the industry and the corporations in it. He could become an industry analyst.

Since it was the kind of amorphous enterprise that appealed to both Angelo and Cindy, they determined to explore the idea.

Returning to the States, they went to Detroit and made their duty calls. The Perinos pronounced themselves happy with Angelo’s new face and forever grateful to Dr. Hans.
(“But may the good Lord forbid he should ever have to do it again,” Jenny prayed.) They had lunch with Lee Iacocca, dinner with Bunkie Knudsen, and cocktails with Ed Cole—all of whom applauded Angelo’s decision to become an industry analyst rather than join another company and try to build another new car.

“I understand you’ve got a great new car coming out,” Angelo said to Iacocca. “What are you going to call it? The Mustang?”

“You’ll make a fine analyst,” said Iacocca wryly. “You know what you’re not supposed to know.”

“But what will it do for you?” Angelo asked. “Will Hank Ford be grateful and give you academic tenure?”

Iacocca shrugged.

“You know better than that,” said Cindy. “If the car’s a success, he’ll convince himself it was
his
idea. If it’s not, it was
your
idea. By today, Loren Hardeman the First is sure he never wanted to build the Betsy. And Loren Three is absolutely certain Angelo shoved the idea down the company’s throat.”

“I’m not quite as cynical as you are, Cindy.”

She smiled at Iacocca and put her hand on his. “Lee, let’s come back here for lunch five years from now. You will no longer be with the Ford Motor Company.”

Lee Iacocca grinned. “And you, Mrs. Perino, will be the wife of the president of Bethlehem Motors.”

In New York, they moved temporarily into a suite in the Waldorf until the Manhattan apartment they had leased could be made ready.

One evening Cindy came into the bathroom and found Angelo, who had just taken a shower, standing naked at the mirror, staring at his face. “Do you know what happens to men who stand too long in front of their mirrors and study their faces?” she asked. “Staring at your face distracts you from what’s
really
important.” She reached around him and grasped his penis in both her hands.

“Well…,” he said. “That part’s not very useful in business.”

“It’s useful in fucking,” she said. “What’s more, it’s passed the test.”

“What?”

“The doctor says—I’m pregnant as hell.”

“Cindy!”

“Well, don’t play like you’re
surprised.
What’d you think would happen when I stopped taking the pill and we went on doing it?”

Angelo turned around and drew her into his arms—cautiously, as a husband just learning of his wife’s “delicate condition” always does.

She embraced him tighter. “Hey! I won’t break.
It
won’t break. When the time comes to back away, I’ll let you know. Right now, I want it!”

Angelo grinned. “Like you always do.”

Loren Hardeman Number Three knew he was a lucky man. He’d fallen into shit and come out smelling like a rose. In more ways than one.

He was in control of the company. His grandfather, Number One, had gone back to Palm Beach; and though he was still the persistent meddler he had always been, he left the day-to-day management of the company to his grandson and the other officers and directors. He insisted that the company continue to manufacture automobiles, so they continued the venerable Sundancer. But one day … well, there would come a day.

He was free of Angelo Perino. Perino didn’t even come to Detroit much anymore. He was out; but more than that, Number One had told him not to interfere in the affairs of the company. Unfortunately, you couldn’t altogether ignore a man who owned two hundred thousand shares, but Perino was smart enough not to buck the old man.

Number One was smart and tough. Always had been. He’d
used
Perino and made that Italian son of a bitch like it. He’d made Perino understand that blood was thicker than water; so even when he, Loren, had fucked up, he was still
family and counted for more with his grandfather than a rank outsider could ever hope to count.

But none of this was the chief reason why Loren thought he was a lucky man—that was business. He was lucky at home, which was more important.

Alicia, his first wife, Betsy’s mother, didn’t bug him anymore. She lived in Connecticut and apparently was content with golf and sailing—and probably a boyfriend. She owned 5 percent of Bethlehem Motors and had written him a harsh letter complaining about the lowered dividend and the declining value of the stock, but with 5 percent there was nothing much she could do about it.

Bobbie, Lady Ayres, his second wife, had her divorce, and she hadn’t cost him much. During a furiously angry exchange between them one night, she had confessed she’d fucked with Perino. (“That lying wop son of a bitch swore to me he never fucked my wife!” Bobbie had laughed. “He never did. He fucked your girlfriend, before we were married.”) She didn’t hate him. She scorned him, which was worse. Anyway, he was well rid of her.

That marriage had ended at the most opportune time. Within a month after he met Roberta, he was free to marry her. And she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Anyway, good times had returned. Though he was a little wacky in some respects, Nixon made a fine president who stood foursquare for the values that made this country great. Loren had taken to wearing the American-flag lapel button, as Nixon did; and he was glad, too, that Nixon had repopularized the vested suit. Loren liked vests because he thought they disguised his paunch. Also, it was acceptable to wear a hat again, and because his hair was thinning, Loren was glad to cover his head. He was a thickset man, not as big as Number One had been, but bigger than his father. With a little more exercise and a little less drinking he could be a handsome man, he judged. He’d rather be a contented one.

He sat in the rear seat of a Sundancer, being driven home by a chauffeur. His bodyguard sat beside the chauffeur. Ever since he had arranged the beating of Angelo Perino, he’d
had to keep a bodyguard employed. Sooner or later that wop son of a bitch would look for his revenge, if not personally then through one of the hoodlums that adhered to the Perino family. His mistake had been in not ordering Perino beaten to death. If any other occasion arose, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Perino was dangerous.

Roberta would not have let him make that mistake.

The most unfortunate aspect of being president of Bethlehem Motors was that he had to ride around in a goddamned Sundancer. He’d thought about introducing a luxury line, the company’s Cadillac or Lincoln, maybe called the Loren; but he knew Number One would come down hard on that idea. Anyway, the dealers would never take it. They were having a hard enough time selling Sundancers.

This Sundancer, his personal automobile, was the only one of its kind the company had ever built. Everything about it had been modified to conceal a luxury car in a Sundancer body. The Sundancer engine had been removed and a powerful, high-compression Mercury engine installed in its place. A four-speed Hurst transmission—called a shifter—made best use of the new engine power. To carry the extra weight and withstand the strains of the new acceleration, the chassis had been reinforced and the suspension system entirely replaced. Loren drove it occasionally himself, and he enjoyed surprising the drivers of Mustangs and Chargers when his Sundancer burned rubber.

Mostly he let the chauffeur drive. The interior of the car was what he enjoyed most. No vinyl showed anywhere. All of it had been replaced with leather and polished walnut. Instead of the Sundancer’s array of rectangular gauges and too-late lights, this car’s instrument panel included a full array of real engine gauges. The rear seat was in effect two comfortable leather chairs, separated by a bar.

The car had cost Bethlehem Motors $550,000. Number One had never seen it and never would. The $550,000 had been hidden in various accounts: R & D, advertising, machine replacement, and so on.

Just now he had opened the bar and poured himself a Scotch. A small refrigerator had proved really impracticable, so he had settled for a little ice chest. One of the
chauffeur’s duties was to see that the chest was always full of ice—also to be sure the correct brands of Scotch, gin, and brandy were always in the bar in good supply.

He was being driven home—to Roberta’s home, actually, since he had moved in with her almost three months ago. They had agreed not to marry until they were more sure of each other, but they had been sure enough to decide to live together, and they told each other they would either marry or separate before the end of the year.

Her name was Roberta Ford (not of
that
Ford family) Ross. Harold Ross, her husband, had died two years ago. He had been an architect and builder and had accumulated a handsome fortune before his death. He had left Roberta well off. He
should
have left her well off. Without her, he would not have been the success he was.

Roberta held a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard—one of the first women MBAs. Her specialty was marketing, and she had gone into real estate. Before she married Ross at age thirty-one, she had been for five successive years a member of the Wayne County Realtors Million Dollar Club, meaning she had sold more than $1 million worth of property in each of those years. She had earned more than $75,000 a year in four of those five years. When she accepted Ross’s proposal of marriage, she put aside a plan she had been working on to establish her own brokerage.

Within a year after marrying Ross she discovered that Kirk, one of his partners in Duval, Kirk & Ross, was embezzling heavily from the firm. Duval and Ross were willing to forgive and forget. Roberta was not. She took the case to the district attorney. The embezzler spent three years in the penitentiary, and Roberta insisted on the lawsuit that recovered forty cents on every dollar he had stolen.

After that she assumed management of the firm. Duval and Ross did the design work and the building, and Roberta ran the business. Duval gratefully retired at sixty-five. Roberta incorporated the firm and gave stock options to young architects to recruit them. Ross & Associates, Incorporated, became one of the biggest architectural firms in the Midwest.

Then Ross died.

Roberta offered her stock—and full control of the business—to the young architects. She offered a purchase plan under which they would buy the stock by handing her a percentage of the firm’s gross revenues. She insisted that the firm be audited by Touche, Ross, and she paid occasional visits to the offices to examine the accounts. Her income from the business exceeded half a million dollars a year.

She was a formidable woman, in every sense.

She was as tall as Loren, actually half an inch or so taller. If not for the work of her hairdresser, she would have been a dishwater blond. She did not want to be that, yet she did not want her hair stripped. She insisted on, and got, a golden color with a wholly natural look. At a time when piled-up hair was in style, she had hers cut short: clipped on the sides shorter than most men wore theirs, then abundant but not piled up on top. Her eyes were vivid blue. Her nose was too big to be thought ideal, but she had never considered letting a surgeon scrape cartilage out of it. Her mouth was narrow, her lips thin.