The Stallion (1996) (12 page)

“I see in the news that Mr. Hardeman has died: the
original
Mr. Hardeman.”

“Good riddance,” said Cindy.

“A massive coronary,” said Amanda. “I suppose at his age he was entitled.”

“He took his time about it.”

“I remember your saying one day he’d live till somebody shot him with a silver bullet.”

“His death gives us a much better chance of getting our new car on the road,” said Cindy. “He promised not to meddle, but that’s exactly what he was doing all the time. He wanted the new car to look like what
he
thought a car should be: like what he built thirty years ago. I think he’d have put fins on the rear fenders if he could have had his way.”

“As soon as the new car appears, I’ll buy one,” said Amanda innocently. “I—”

The doorbell rang, and she went to a button and pressed it to unlock the lobby door.

“That’ll be Greg.”

“We can’t talk about the Hardemans or the car or
anything in front of him,” said Cindy. “I’ll leave in just a few minutes. He won’t want to pose—”

“No problem. Greg’s a grown-up kid.”

She introduced him as Gregory Hammersmith. The young model shook Cindy’s hand and said he was glad to meet her. “Amanda told me she is a friend of yours. I’ve heard of Mr. Perino, though I never saw him drive, even on television.”

“Greg,” said Amanda, “do you mind posing with Mrs. Perino here?”

“That’s okay.” He spoke so insouciantly that for a moment Cindy wondered if his next words might be, “The more the merrier.” But without saying anything more, he began to undress. He kicked off his shoes, bent to take off his socks, pulled his sweatshirt over his head, and lowered his jeans. Without hesitation he pushed down and stepped out of his underpants. Naked, he stepped up onto the low model platform and assumed the pose that showed on the unfinished canvas. He was solemn but nonchalant

Cindy tried not to stare too intently, though it made really no difference since his pose required him to stand with his face turned away from her. He was an adolescent, his chest and shoulders still narrow, though hard muscles on his arms and legs suggested he was athletic. His skin was pale. He had no body hair whatsoever, except a little coarse, light brown hair in his crotch. She could not tell if his part was entirely flaccid or semierect. Notably long but boyishly thin, it hung in a shallow curve down over his scrotum.

“I like Amanda’s painting,” he said to Cindy without turning his head. “Knowing you’re posing for a really good and serious artist makes it easier to do this.”

“I know. I posed for her, too.”

“Like this?”

“Like that.”

The boy’s jock stirred a little, as if his mental image of her naked generated an incipient erection.

“Greg,” said Amanda, “you live in backcountry, don’t your’

“Well, there’s backcountry and there’s backcountry. We don’t live on one of the grand estates.”

“The Perinos are thinking of moving to Greenwich.”

“My uncle is a realtor,” he said.

“We’ll give her his name,” said Amanda.

“The schools are good here,” said Greg soberly.

Cindy went to the kitchen and refilled the coffee cups. As she looked through the kitchen door at the busy artist frowning over her canvas and the nonchalant teenager posing nude with his parents’ consent, she decided that if this scene in any way characterized the place, she wanted to move to Greenwich.

It wasn’t so easy, and within two weeks Cindy had decided she didn’t want to live there. By then Angelo had decided they, by God,
would
live there.

Greg’s uncle, the realtor David Schroeder, received the Perinos in his office and began to show them books of listings. Greenwich real estate was expensive, and they soon learned that they would have to spend a minimum of a quarter of a million dollars to buy a home that would suit them.

After they had looked through the realtor’s listing books he suggested he take them to see two or three houses. A tall, handsome man with thick white hair and a flushed face, he drove a silver gray Mercedes and was elaborately polite to Cindy as he held the back door open and offered her his hand to assist her in getting in.

He drove them to a part of town called Cos Cob, and after passing through several unattractive commercial streets, they entered a residential neighborhood. The houses he showed them were attractive enough, though anything but imposing. The neighborhood had well-tended green lawns and well-maintained houses, but Cindy noticed that many houses had as many as five cars in open garages, in the driveways, and parked at the curbs. Some of the vehicles looked old and were in bad shape. There were also pickup trucks in some of the driveways.

“I can’t believe that all of Greenwich is like this,” Cindy said. “I’ve heard of backcountry. I’ve heard of Riverside. Let’s see houses in those neighborhoods.”

David Schroeder pulled the Mercedes to the curb and
stopped the engine. He turned so he could talk to Angelo in the front seat and Cindy in the rear.

“We could encounter a little problem, Mr. and Mrs. Perino. I have to be perfectly frank with you.”

“What’s the problem?” Angelo demanded.

Schroeder drew a deep breath. “It’s embarrassing to talk about, and I wish I didn’t have to say this, but there’s a determined effort in Greenwich—not uniformly successful—to keep people of Mediterranean descent in the Cos Cob area.”

“Meaning Italians,” said Angelo darkly.

Schroeder nodded. “Also Spanish people, even French. I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t create this idea, and I don’t support it; but I’m stuck with it.”

“Meaning what?” asked Angelo.

“The first problem,” said Schroeder, “would be in finding an owner who would sell to you. The second would be that the board of realtors would ostracize me if I arranged to sell you a house outside of Cos Cob. In any event, the banks would find some fault in your loan application, for sure.”

Angelo turned to Cindy and smiled. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Frankly, Mr. Schroeder, until now I didn’t really give a damn if we lived in this town or not. But, by God, we’re
going
to. Wanna bet on it?”

Cindy’s elder brother, Henry Morris, was the president of Morris Mining. After their marriage ceremony and before they’d left for Europe, Angelo and Cindy had visited him and his wife at their home in Pittsburgh. Since then they had seen him and his wife half a dozen times. The Morrises sent generous gifts to the Perino children on their birthdays and thoughtful gifts to the whole family at Christmas.

Henry had a lively wit. “I admire your new face,” he’d once said to Angelo. “I do hope, though, it is the final version.”

Henry had inherited his place in life, but he had done so far more gracefully than Loren Hardeman the Third. He held a degree from the Colorado School of Mines and had
served as a lieutenant, United States Marines, in Vietnam. He had deplored but had not resented Cindy’s fling as a racetrack groupie. He was thirty-nine years old, so his little sister was married to a man nine years his senior. Angelo was sure that Henry would have preferred a different brother-in-law than himself, but he seemed to have accepted him and come to respect him.

Henry Morris was about the same height and weight as Angelo. In fact, the two men resembled each other. He was a little more formal than Angelo, invariably wearing a suit except for when he was on the golf course. He still smoked an occasional cigarette, having cut down from two packs a day to half a pack or less. He drank wine and beer, no hard booze. Angelo found him a little too serious, but if that was the only fault he could find in a brother-in-law, he thought himself lucky.

Over dinner in their New York apartment, Angelo let Cindy tell her brother about their Greenwich experience.

“It is a tragedy,” Henry commented, “that there are still people who think like that. If you are determined to live there, there are federal laws about housing discrimination. A suit in federal court—”

“My idea is to tackle it more directly,” said Angelo. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve done some research. Morris Mining does all its banking with Consolidated Pennsylvania Bank. Consolidated holds thirteen million dollars in notes from Byram Digital Equipment, Incorporated, which is slow in paying. The CEO of Byram is one Roger Murdoch, who happens to be the chairman of the Greenwich Republican Party, the president of the Greenwich Historical Society, last year’s chairman of the Greenwich United Way campaign, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, a word in the ear of the bank’s chairman, resulting in a word in the ear of Byram Digital, might produce an anxious call from Murdoch to the president of the board of realtors. You follow? I’ll take them into federal court, sure as hell, but I prefer faster methods.”

Henry Morris smiled. “I wouldn’t like to find myself opposing you, Angelo. I can do more. The president of the board of realtors will also get a call from Governor Ella Grasso.”

Angelo lifted his glass. “If the Morrises and the Perinos can’t break a small-town board of realtors, what good are we? Particularly when our cause is just.”

“Mille grazie,
Signor DiCostanzo,” said Angelo.
“Questo è per Lei.”
He handed the old man across the table a small case. When the old man opened it, he found a gold wristwatch inside.

They were sitting in a small diner in the Cos Cob section of Greenwich. Their entire conversation was conducted in Italian.

Signor DiCostanzo smiled but pushed the watch back across the table. “You do not need to do this,” he said. “You are a man of honor, doing honorable work.”

Angelo shoved the case back toward the old man. “It is my honor to recognize your inestimable contribution,” said Angelo.

“Our people can live anywhere in town now,” said Signor DiCostanzo. He chuckled. “The board of realtors put their cocks on the anvil, and we slammed the hammer down.” He lifted a glass of wine. “We accepted your suggestion.”

Angelo nodded and drank. “I figured it out. The Wasps take the trains to New York every day. The wops stay home and run the town. When you had the building permit denied for the—”

“The
fourth
application for a building permit,” said DiCostanzo. “The rules are so complex and detailed that
nobody
can file an application that
must
be granted.” He laughed. “We can leave them buried in their own trash, too. We haul every ton of it.”

“Signor,” said Angelo. “I am buying a home on North Street. My wife and I will be honored if you and your family—and such friends as you wish—will be our guests at a very early date.”

The old man smiled. “Well, Angelo, you may want to think about that.”

“My grandfather was a bootlegger, Signor. He sold liquor to the first Loren Hardeman. Now I am a vice president of Bethlehem Motors, and the grandson of his bootlegger
dominates Number One’s company. As soon as we are in the house, we will have a great party! I value friendship, Signor DiCostanzo. I do not turn my back on my friends after I have enjoyed the benefits of their friendship. Do you?”

As Cindy had noticed before, Greg did not cover himself during his breaks. Usually he walked around the easel to see what Amanda had been doing. He accepted a glass of Coke from Cindy, as he had done before.

She was struck by the realization that she was far more unsettled by looking at a naked sixteen-year-old boy than he was by being looked at by a thirty-year-old woman. A couple of days ago she had been painfully embarrassed when it had become obvious that he had noticed her staring at his crotch. He hadn’t seemed to care, but he’d acknowledged what he’d seen by smiling faintly.

“Cindy,” he said now—she had encouraged him to use her first name—“I’d like to know what you did to my uncle. Whatever it was, I like it.”

“We didn’t do anything to him,” she said. “We did something to some people who were doing things to him.”

“He says Greenwich will never be the same.”

“Let us fervently hope so,” said Amanda.

Greg left at five o’clock.

“I’ve got to quit looking at your teenage model,” said Cindy. “It’s getting to me.”

“He gets to me,” said Amanda simply.

“Jesus, hon…”

“Let’s quit playing around,” said Amanda.

When the downstairs doorbell rang a little after six, Cindy fled into the bathroom to dress and repair her makeup before the elevator arrived, bringing Angelo.

Angelo accepted a brandy and studied the painting on the easel. “Interesting…,” he said.

“I think I’ll buy it,” said Cindy.

A week before Christmas, Angelo went to London to meet with a group of British bankers and automobile dealers who were interested in possibly selling Bethlehem Motors’ new car through a chain of English and Scottish franchises. The meetings were protracted but progress was made toward an agreement.

“Tell us something,” one of them said over a luncheon at the Café Royale. “What will the name of the new car be? Please tell us it won’t be Sundancer.”

“It won’t be Sundancer. That I promise you.”

“What, then?”

“We have a group working on it,” said Angelo.

Yes, they had a group working on it. Loren liked to work through committees. He acknowledged that he knew little about automotive engineering, but he fancied that he knew a great deal about marketing, and he had appointed a committee to come up with a name for the new car—
assuming
the new car would in fact be built, a matter that had not yet been settled.

The call was Loren’s. With Number One gone, he controlled
the company. Angelo had heard talk that the old man had changed his will to disinherit Betsy and her son, Loren, and to settle control firmly in Loren the Third’s hands; but the will that came to probate contained nothing surprising. Betsy inherited. Princess Anne Alekhine inherited. Control rested, even so, in Loren, who would vote his own stock, and in the Hardeman Foundation, which would vote its stock. A majority of the trustees of the foundation would vote with Loren.