The Stallion (1996) (8 page)

She smiled and shook her head. “I think we’d better do something for your frame of mind.” She stood and hiked the skirt of her negligee up around her hips. She sat down again and spread her legs wide. “C’mon,” she said. “And do it good, so Mama doesn’t have to put any new welts on your ass.”

Cindy had at first felt a little awkward about posing nude for Amanda. There was no way she could do it without being seen by the au pair. Also, of course, Angelo wandered in and out. The baby, John, saw her, of course, but was too young to see anything significant in his mother being the only naked person in the apartment.

She was posing when Angelo came in with the news that he’d had another call from Number One, who wanted him to come to Florida for a brief visit.

“Your master’s voice,” said Cindy. “Are you going?”

“I feel that I have to. It may well be that he wants to say good-bye. He’s ninety-seven, you know.”

They had become accustomed to discussing all but the most private matters in the presence of Amanda, and Cindy sneered and said, “He’ll live until somebody shoots him in the heart with a silver bullet.”

“He’s got a goal, he’s often told me, of living to be a hundred.”

“What if he offers you something?”

“Like what?”

“Control of the company.”

Angelo shook his head. “He won’t do that.”

“He’d better. The company is going under.”

Angelo glanced at Amanda. She seemed not to have heard anything, but obviously she had. Clearly, too, she knew what they were talking about.

“He can’t depend on Number Three,” Cindy continued. “That’s obvious. He’s calling you in to bail him out. And if you do, you’re a damned fool. He tried to kill you once. How the hell can you forget that?”

Angelo glanced at Amanda. “I’m going down there to see what he wants. I won’t make any commitment until you and I talk again.”

Sitting on the lanai, they faced a hissing rain that obscured the view even of the beach, much less of the sea. It was one of those tropical rains that sometimes fall in Florida: straight down out of a dark overcast sky, driven by no wind, and not intruding inside the screens. It was cold, though, and Number One sat wrapped in a knit shawl hung around his shoulders by his nurse.

“Which king was it?” he asked, “who was wrapped in blankets with virgins to give him heat in his old age?”

“David,” said Angelo. He smiled. “If you don’t require virgins, we might be able to find somebody.”

Number One managed a faint smile of his own. “When you reach that point in life,” he said, “when it would make no difference whether the girl wrapped up with you was a virgin or not, the time has come … Oh, hell. I swore I’d make a hundred, and I’m afraid I’m going to. Don’t make promises to yourself. You may have to keep them.”

Angelo had not come straight from the airport. Anticipating a confrontation, he had checked into a motel, affording himself a retreat if he needed one. He wore a madras jacket over a white polo shirt and a pair of Sandhurst-tan slacks.

Loren was there, so conspicuously filled with tension that
Angelo wondered if he hadn’t been taking something. No matter what he wore, Loren the Third was always tense and self-conscious, like a kid who had worn his Boy Scout uniform to school only to discover that Boy Scout Week was next week. The golfing clothes he was wearing now looked out of place in the presence of Number One.

The interesting one was Roberta. Angelo had heard of her but had never met her. Her string of names was Roberta Ford (not of
those
Fords, she was quick to tell you) Ross Hardeman, and she was a striking woman, no doubt of that, though he wished he could think of a better word for her. He had rarely seen a woman with as much brash self-assurance. Number One would not have allowed Loren’s other wives to sit in on what promised to be a confrontational business meeting, but he was allowing this woman to do it. She was not the kind of woman Angelo would have expected to see attached to Loren.

Apart from her unalloyed self-assurance, she was a physically imposing woman. He was interested in how she’d styled her hair: clipped bristly short to the tops of her ears, then feathered into longer hair above. She was not beautiful, but she did the best she could with what she had, and she was definitely attractive. She was wearing formfitting cream white pants stretched tight by stirrups and a raspberry polo shirt filled with a formidable bust.

“I suppose you still believe in that funny-car you want us to build,” said Number One.

Angelo lifted his chin a little. “There’d be a good name for it,” he said. “The F-Car.”

“Fucker,” muttered Number One. “You come here to make jokes or to talk about a car?”

“I came here to pay you a social call,” said Angelo. “I didn’t come to talk business.”

“Loren,” said Number One. “See to it that Angelo gets a check for twenty-five thousand dollars within the week. A consulting fee. So we can talk business.”

“I didn’t offer to talk business, not for any price,” said Angelo.

“Don’t be stubborn,” said Number One. He turned to Roberta and said, “You see what we have to contend with
whenever he’s around? Let’s not play games, Angelo. We want your input.”

“What’s this? You want my input? When did this come about?”

Number One turned and stared at the pouring rain for half a minute, while the others wondered if he had lost track of the conversation. “Do you remember the time I asked you to be my legs?” he asked Angelo.

“Then fired me when I did the job too well.”

The old man’s hand fluttered impatiently. “Never mind that. Talk to us about how to build this car.”

“Time has passed,” said Angelo, “since I told you what you had to do to save Bethlehem Motors. GM has been working on a fuel-efficient car with a transverse engine. So has Chrysler. You’re late at the starting gate, Mr. Hardeman.”

“Yes, yes. I read your Wall Street reports. I know what you think. The question is, what do we
do?”

Angelo glanced at Roberta, who he guessed was listening to him with a more open mind than Number One or Number Three. “It’s very simple,” he said. “You can’t build the car now. By the time you design the car, engineer it, and tool up the plant to make what it needs, your competition will have taken the market away from you. But there’s a way you can do it.”

“Tell us,” said Loren, unable to subdue the scorn in his voice.

“The engine and drive train you need is being manufactured by Shizoka. It’s a beautiful unit, manufactured to the highest quality standards. They don’t sell many cars in the States because … well … the Chiisai is too small or, depending on how you look at it, too large. The American market right now is for two kinds of cars. They want family cars—the idea still being that you should be able to cram six people into an automobile for a Sunday-afternoon drive—or ‘pony’ cars, ones that leave rubber on the road. With relatively little work, the Chiisai can be reengineered to carry a body into which five, and maybe even six, American-size people can be squeezed. If that body is cleverly designed, it will look good—that is, racy, romantic.”

“I know the Chiisai,” Loren said impatiently. “What has it got to do with Bethlehem Motors?”

“You form a partnership with Shizoka,” said Angelo. “Maybe even merge the two companies, though I don’t think that will be necessary. Jointly, you design, manufacture, and sell one car. In Japan it’s whatever Shizoka wants to call it. In America it’s whatever
you
want to call it. In Europe maybe it’s called something else. But it’s always the same car: medium size, peppy but not overpowered, solid, manufactured to high standards of quality control—”

“Partnership!”
Number One yelled.
“Merger!
With the fuckin’ Japs? I’d rather the company went under.”

Loren smiled tolerantly. “C’mon, Angelo. For a twenty-five-thousand-dollar consulting fee, surely you can come up with something better than this.”

“Stick your money up your butts, Hardemans,” said Angelo. “I don’t need it, and I don’t need you.”

“You were never as smart as you thought you were,” grumbled Number One.

Angelo shook his head tolerantly at the old man. “My dear friend,” he said. “In nineteen thirty-nine, when you rebuilt my kiddie car, you were alive to ideas and possibilities, in spite of the fact you were already in a wheelchair. Your trouble is—and I can’t blame you; you’ve lived too long too painfully—that you’ve been dead to anything since … well, since nineteen thirty-nine. Your company won’t survive you, because all the juice has gone out of you. And you never passed any along to your son and grandson.”

Number One stared at Angelo for a moment. His face was bland, showing absolutely no emotion or thought. Finally he nodded. “Good-bye, Angelo,” he said softly.

Angelo checked the airline schedules. He could have flown back to New York that night, but it would have involved a rush to the airport, a change of planes at Atlanta. No, he decided to enjoy a restful evening after a good dinner.

He called Cindy and told her she’d be glad to hear he’d had no offer from the Hardemans. He’d said good-bye to
Number One, and he guessed he would never see the man again.

From past visits to Palm Beach, Angelo knew you could eat much better off the premises of Casa Hardeman than you could seated across that grim dining table from that ever-grimmer old man. He sat at a table overlooking a crashing surf lighted by powerful floodlights and drank piña coladas, then ordered a big lobster with a bottle of white wine. His waitress said she’d seen him drive at Daytona. She said she had a Pontiac Firebird in the parking lot and would love to be a passenger with him driving. He thanked her and said he’d be glad to take her up on that sometime when he hadn’t been drinking.

He had a bottle of Scotch in his room but had had enough to drink. He took off his clothes and stretched out on the bed. A pro football game was on television, and he punched up the pillows and began to watch.

He’d watched less than a quarter when he heard a knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Roberta Hardeman.”

Angelo was taken aback, but he called, “Hold it a minute. I’ve got to get dressed.”

She was dressed as she had been on the lanai: in the stretch pants and full shirt. “Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”

Angelo nodded and stepped aside from the door. “Where’s Loren?”

“Sleeping the sleep of the innocent,” she said. “Or to put it another way, he’s sleeping one off. He never knows what he misses.”

Angelo nodded toward the couch, but sat down in the chair. “What do we have to talk about, Mrs. Hardeman?”

“The first thing is that I’m Roberta, not Mrs. Hardeman. Can you offer me a drink? Or should we go to the bar?”

“I’ve got Scotch. No ice.”

“It’s a cardinal sin to put ice in Scotch,” she said.

“Water?” he asked.

“A teaspoonful.”

“Admire my crystal ware,” he said as he handed her a
drink in a plastic glass. He had poured himself one, too. “Cheers. Now, what can we talk about?”

“Can you believe that I love Loren Hardeman?”

“No.”

“Okay, I know why you would think so. I know what he did to you. Even having heard the story from his point of view, I think it was a despicable thing to do. But … I didn’t marry him for his money. I have money of my own.”

“Good for you. You may need it,” said Angelo coldly, taking a sip of Scotch.

Roberta stared into her glass for a moment, then drank. “Whatever you think of him—and are entitled to think of him—you don’t want to kill him. Am I right?”

Angelo shrugged. “Don’t worry. If I ever had any thought of calling my friends of the Honored Society to get rid of him, that was a long time ago. I healed. I have a new life.”

She smiled and nodded. “So does he.”

Angelo looked her up and down, unsubtle in what he was doing: making a crass and intimate appraisal. “I bet he does,” he said.

“You appreciate,” she said quietly.

“Sure.”

“Another subject, for a little later,” she said. “Right now, what I want to talk to you about is Loren. I know what he did to you: that he had you beaten up, hurt, scarred. That’s the price
you
paid for Number One’s unconscionable manipulations. The old man used you. You know he did. He used Loren, too. Do you have any idea what price
Loren
paid?”

“Tell me.”

“He was emasculated. The old man left him in charge of the company, but first he cut off one of his balls. That’s what he did to Number Two—only both balls, as you well know. The old man is
evil,
Angelo.”

Angelo shook his head. “Old, frustrated, unhappy … yes. Evil? I don’t think so.”

“You really care about him, don’t you?”

“I admire him,” said Angelo. “He outsmarted me. I have to have some respect for a man who can do that. That’s why I have no respect for your husband. He could never outsmart
me. He might try to have me killed, but he could never outsmart me.”

“Your modesty is overwhelming,” she said, tossing back her Scotch. “Can I have some more of this?”

He got up and took their glasses to the bathroom, where the bottle waited.

“Angelo,” she said while he was still in the bathroom. “Loren is going to be castrated again. Do you understand?”

“I can’t say that I do. Or that I care.”

“The old man gave him control of Bethlehem Motors—”

“Family,” said Angelo as he returned with their new drinks. “However deficient he was, Loren was a Hardeman.”

“But he wasn’t Number One. Nobody is ever going to be Number One. The old man won’t let that happen.
You’re as
good a man as he is, and he knows it. That’s why he fired you. Loren is a safe bet. He’ll never be a big enough man to put the founder’s name in shadow. So—”

“So?”

“So he gave Loren control of a failing company. Number One built Bethlehem Motors! Number Two wasn’t man enough to run it. Number Three—Loren—is going to preside over the collapse, which cuts off his remaining testicle.”