Amanda stood with her arms around Cindy’s hips, nuzzling her belly. “I’ll help you, hon. I’ve had two abortions. There’s a clinic in New Haven. My doctor is a woman. She’ll take good care of you. I’ll drive you there and back.”

  The following week, in a clinic in New Haven, the fetus was removed. The doctor advised Cindy not to take the pill anymore. She suggested a tubal ligation. The following week, when Angelo was in Detroit and on his way to Japan, Cindy returned to New Haven and had the operation.

  She had not told Marcus. He visited a surgeon in an office on Park Avenue South and submitted to a vasectomy. He told her about the vasectomy before she could tell him about the ligation. She decided not to tell him what he had done had not been necessary—not for them, anyway.

  2

  Trish Warner did not check into a hotel or motel in Greenwich. She had rented a car at LaGuardia and driven to Stouffer’s Inn on the Cross-Westchester Expressway. She and Len had agreed that it would be better for her to explore Greenwich alone. She could change her appearance to some extent. He could not.

  She had run a shaver over her head, reducing her hair to about a quarter of an inch. That way, her handsome, expensive dark brown wig fit her perfectly and was much less likely to be observed as a hairpiece. Perino had of course never seen what his thug’s blackjack had done to her face, so her disguise was probably perfect.

  Her rental car was an inconspicuous Ford. She carried with her a Nikon camera with a compact mirror telephoto lens. She mailed her film cartridges to Len in Detroit, from a post office in Rye, New York.

  In the course of four days she had photographed the Perino house from several angles and had good shots of people going in and out. She had identified the wife. And the children. She had an excellent idea of the lay of the land.

  The job could be done with a rifle. Whenever Hardeman said go.

  1989

  3

  Herbert Froelich was sixty-seven years old. His hair was white, as was his bushy mustache. The flesh of his face sagged and was furrowed with deep wrinkles. He wore little round horn-rimmed glasses and carried himself with the air of a man who was right and honest but had to guard at all times against slanders and attacks.

  “I have often dealt,” he said in sober, pontifical tones, “with the heirs of men who built empires. Their work was so challenging, so sustaining, so satisfying that they wanted nothing more in their lives. But for their heirs … well, the task of maintaining what their ancestors built is not so challenging, is not something they are willing to dedicate their lives to at the cost of all else. They are entitled to some security and comfort.”

  Loren, Roberta, and Froelich sat over dinner at the Hardeman home in Detroit. Loren had revisited the bar and poured from the Scotch bottle after Roberta had ceased to pour for him, and he was a little fuzzy.

  “My husband inherited control of a company that was in deep trouble,” said Roberta. “The Sundancer was losing market share. The first Mr. Hardeman had lost touch with reality in his later years.”

  Froelich nodded and lifted a glass of wine in salute to Loren. “And Mr. Hardeman had the perspicacity to employ Angelo Perino as his automotive engineer and form a partnership with Shizoka to build the XB Stallion, thus snatching the company back from the brink.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Loren mumbled.

  Froelich nodded and lifted his glass higher. He wore a gray three-piece suit marred by a pack of Marlboros conspicuously bulging his vest pocket. “My associates and I have meticulously analyzed your company,” he said. “Since the stock is only privately traded, it is difficult to fix a value. At one time we were prepared to offer eight hundred and fifty dollars a share for it. We contacted you about that. I need hardly tell you, though, that the market collapse of nineteen eighty-seven radically altered all stock values. At this time I am thinking more in terms of six hundred dollars a share. I might be able to convince my associates to offer six hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “That’s quite a comedown, Mr. Froelich,” said Roberta gravely.

  Froelich nodded. “Money is tight, Mrs. Hardeman,” he said. “I doubt you could find another buyer who would pay more than five hundred and fifty dollars. Although the company is paying it off, it is heavily laden with debt.”

  “What that damned Perino had us borrow to build the fancy new plant,” grumbled Loren.

  “Which is today your best asset,” said Froelich.

  Roberta shook her head. “The new figure is a disappointment,” she said.

  “Look at it from my point of view,” said Froelich. “In a situation where money is difficult to come by. If I offer six hundred and fifty dollars a share, I have to offer it to all the shareholders. If all of them accept, I have to raise six hundred and fifty million dollars. And then look at it from your point of view. At six hundred and fifty dollars a share you will be worth a hundred and sixty-two million, five hundred thousand dollars. Granted that at eight hundred and fifty dollars a share you would have been worth fifty million dollars more, you will still be very wealthy people. And freed of the cares of managing the corporation.”

  Loren nodded. “I guess after all the taxes I’ll still be able to buy a first class place in Paris and keep a yacht at St. Tropez.”

  “Are you going to give us a written offer?” asked Roberta.

  “Exactly,” said Froelich. “I have to impose some terms. I have to buy control—which means I must have the Hardeman Foundation stock as well as your own. Then, of course, you can’t expect me to come up with six hundred and fifty million dollars in cash—a hundred and sixty-two million, five hundred thousand dollars to you. My associates and I will offer a deal, paying part cash, part notes, and part warrants in our own corporate stock. The latter will be priced so as to afford you a substantial profit when you sell the warrants or exercise them. As I said, you can’t help but come out of the deal as exceptionally wealthy people. The Paris flat and the St. Tropez yacht will come out of small change for you.”

  Loren smiled lazily. “I have to see the documents and let my lawyers and accountants review them,” he said. “But I think you’ve got a deal.”

  4

  “I think you don’t have any deal at all,” said Roberta when Froelich had left the house.

  She sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Loren, stark naked, rinsed dishes and loaded the dishwasher. Lately, he begged her not to beat him, saying he couldn’t take the pain anymore. Sometimes, even so, she flicked him with the whip. It lay on the table now, and twice since he had begun clearing the table and loading the dishwasher, she had snapped him on his buns and made him jump and shriek.

  “Come here.” He approached her and knelt before her. “First it was eight hundred and fifty dollars a share,” she said. “Now it’s six hundred and fifty dollars—and not in cash, in funny money. It’ll go lower.”

  “I’m going to be sixty years old this year,” he said. “If all we get is twenty million, we can retire and live—It doesn’t have to be in Paris.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I want to have some kind of life, Roberta. I want to go where I don’t ever again have to hear the name Angelo Perino. He’ll take the ultimate screwing on this deal. Number One didn’t screw him any better.”

  “It’s your decision,” she said.

  He lifted his face and looked into her eyes. He nodded. “I’m cashing out,” he said.

  5

  Roberta sat on the couch in Angelo’s suite in the Hyatt Regency in Houston. The hour was 10 A.M. She had spotted him in the lobby bar when she checked in last night. He had been with a woman, and she had not called his room until she could feel confident that the woman, whoever she was, was gone. She mentioned her, and Angelo had laughed and told her the redhead was a computer guru who might be able to contribute something to the design of the electric car. Then they had begun to talk about the car and the company.

  “Why kid around?” she asked. “I don’t know where my loyalties ought to lie. I’m past that. I can’t figure it out.”

  “Where does Loren think you are?”

  “He thinks I’m right here. He thinks I’m down here exploring Houston as a possible place to retire.”

  “What happened to Paris?”

  “They speak French in Paris. I suspect he thinks he’ll never learn it.”

  “He’ll never learn to speak Texas either,” said Angelo.

  She shook her head. “He’s not as bad a guy as you think.” She sipped from the cup of coffee Angelo had poured for her from the pot on his room-service breakfast tray. “In some ways he’s even worse,” she added.

  “In some ways, I’m more nearly the heir of Number One than he is,” said Angelo. “I won’t let him destroy the company.”

  “Can you stop him, really?” she asked.

  “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. Since you don’t know where your loyalties should be, it’s better not to talk about it.”

  Roberta shook her head. “I saved one company, and who gives a shit? My first husband died and—”

  “People do give a shit,” Angelo interrupted. “There are families in Detroit who’ve worked for Bethlehem Motors, now XB Motors, for more than fifty years. There are people who’ve been driving Sundancers and now Stallions for as many years—and wouldn’t have any other kind of car.”

  Roberta reached for his hand. “We gonna fuck?” she asked.

  He smiled wryly. “You do know where your loyalties lie.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Angelo,” she said quietly. She bent over and kissed him on the neck just below the ear. “Betsy and I share a tragedy. She couldn’t marry you, and neither could I.”

  “I didn’t know you’d thought about it.”

  “I haven’t thought about it. Not really. And my tragedy, really, is not that I couldn’t marry you but that I couldn’t marry a man like you. I’ve dominated two husbands. I had to. If I hadn’t—”

  “Don’t tell me too much,” Angelo interrupted.

  She put the coffee cup aside. “What’d I’d really like is a Scotch,” she said. “That says something about me, doesn’t it? A Scotch before noon.”

  “How ‘bout a martini? Ice cold. A clean taste that doesn’t linger. I’ll join you in one.”

  She nodded, and he went to the little bar. “Shall I undress?” she asked.

  “We can’t fuck if you don’t.”

  “What I plan to do first, lover, we can do without taking off a stitch. Bring it here. Let’s see what it feels like when a woman has ice-cold martini on her lips.”

  6

  The Viscountess Neville had ways of getting what she wanted. She wanted her first child, Loren van Ludwige—by now universally known as Van—to be educated at Harvard. He was admitted, to begin in the fall of 1989.

  She called Cindy and asked for a favor. Could Van come to the States in June and live with the Perinos until he moved to Cambridge? He had never been in the States, and it was important for him to acclimate himself before he settled into a dormitory in Harvard Yard.

  Cindy made a suggestion. Betsy should bring Van to the States, not send him, and she should bring John, who could meet his half brothers and sisters.

  So it was arranged. They would arrive on June 3: Betsy with her two sons, Van, seventeen, and John, six. Three guests would overflow the house, so Betsy and John would stay with Alicia. Only Van would move into the Perino house, where he would live all summer and, it was hoped, be at least halfway Americanized before he went to Cambridge.

  7

  Len Bragg wore his best suit, dark blue with a pinstripe. He wore a white shirt with button-down collar and a dark blue tie with tiny white dots. It was a warm spring evening, and he did not need a topcoat or raincoat. Trish wore a burgundy linen suit.

  She would drive. She knew the area. Besides, he was a little nervous and did not want to risk making a driving mistake that might attract the attention of the police.

  They were sharing a room in a Courtyard Inn in Westchester County: Mr. and Mrs. David Englehardt of Boston. Paying with cash would make a desk clerk remember him, so Len had applied for and received a Visa card in the name Englehardt. He would use it only this once and would pay it off and never use it again. Trish had rented a Chevrolet with the credit card of their agency in Detroit. But that was at LaGuardia, where thousands of cars were rented every day.

  Len had bought the rifle in Indiana a year ago. For cash. It was a bolt-action Remington, mounted with a fine telescopic sight. He could drop his man from a hundred yards away. He wouldn’t have to come closer. What was more, he could get two or three shots into him within ten or twelve seconds. Once the man fell, he would be an easier target than he’d been when he was standing and probably moving. From a hundred yards away. It would not be necessary to approach closer.

  Trish had surveyed the land well. In this part of Greenwich, Connecticut, people tended to build stone walls in front of their houses. That meant that Perino’s neighbors were unlikely to spot this car pulled over to the edge of the road.

  The way they were going to handle the job was simple. From the parking lot at Westchester Airport they would be able to identify the XB corporate jet as it landed. It had the logo on the tail. They would watch for Perino to come out of the general-aviation building—the facility for nonairline flights—and go to his car. Shooting him was an alternative Trish had suggested they consider. But there would be too many people around. And police, as they discovered when they parked. No, the better way was to shoot him when he got out of the car at home.

  Trish had observed that Cindy Perino parked her Porsche inside the garage. The Perino daughter drove a Stallion, which was usually in there, too. Perino parked his own Stallion on the driveway.

  All Trish had to do was get ahead of Perino on the road—which she could do by leaving the airport parking lot before he did—and stay far enough ahead of him that he didn’t catch up and pass. She didn’t want to reach the road in front of the house too soon, either. If they sat on the edge of the road more than two or three minutes, they might attract attention. What was more, Greenwich was a town with a heavy police presence. They patrolled the roads constantly.

  This was Thursday evening. If Perino followed his usual schedule, he would arrive at Westchester just about sunset. If he didn’t, they would have to watch for him again tomorrow night. He was at home most weekends.

  Luck wasn’t with them. The XB jet did not land. They waited until ten o’clock.

  Len and Trish were not lovers. Placed in the same room, in the same king-size bed, they gratified each other, without much thought or enthusiasm. Any partner would have suited either of them as well.

  In the morning they returned to Westchester Airport to see if the jet had come in during the night and was sitting on the ramp. It had not.

  They did not drive past the house during the day on Friday. The road on which the Perino house sat was a residential street, and a strange car with New York plates might be noticed if it drove by too often.

  They sat in their motel room, nervously watching television. Every five minutes Len went to the window to look out at the car—obsessed with the idea that someone might somehow discover the rifle hidden in the trunk. They ate nervously, too, and drank very little.

  At six they went back to the airport.

  As the light faded, it was more and more difficult to identify the landing bizjets. But then it came: the XB corporate Lear. It was easy enough to identify, by the prominent logo on the fin—

  Shortly Perino came out of the general-aviation building. They recognized him—they had watched him for hours that night in the Renaissance Center. He was a bigger man than they had remembered. Knowing his age, which was almost sixty, they had visualized him as smaller. He carried a small suitcase and had a raincoat folded over his arm.

  Trish started the rented Chevy, drove to the gate and paid for her parking, then drove up the road toward Greenwich. They were well ahead of Perino, but they could be certain he was back there, no more than two or three minutes behind.

  Neither of them spoke a word. In the course of their careers as private investigators, both of them had done despicable things. They had committed burglaries. They had committed assaults. They had tapped telephones illegally. Either one of them could have been in prison. Trish had, in fact, spent thirty days in jail for criminal trespass. But neither of them had ever killed anyone. They had never even contemplated such a thing.

  But this … They hated Perino. He’d had them slugged. Trish carried on her face the marks left by the heavy blow of a blackjack. She remembered the terror and the pain. Besides, Hardeman was paying them half a million dollars for this hit. They had half of it in hand already. They had laughed over what was so far their worst problem: what to do with money they obviously could not report on their income tax returns.

  They had planned their hit carefully, almost lightheartedly. Now, suddenly, the enormity of it was bearing down on them. They were going to kill a man They were silent and thoughtful.

  They reached the street. Trish pulled the car over at the spot she had identified weeks ago as the best place. She turned out the lights.

  Len reached to the floor of the backseat and lifted the rifle. It was rolled in a blanket, and he unrolled it. The Remington was a hunting rifle, and the clip was loaded with long, slender cartridges. The bullets had flat tips, so they would expand as they tore through flesh, giving a deer a fatal wound. They would do the same to a man. Len had fired at trees and had marveled at the damage the slugs did, even to wood.

  He rolled down the window. He worked the bolt to bring up a cartridge from the clip to the chamber. For the moment he set the safety.

  Perino passed them and turned into his driveway.

  Len flipped off the safety and put his eye to the telescopic sight. Perino would be getting out of the car under the glare of bright lights mounted on the overhang of the garage roof. That was one place where he could be shot: right there in front of the garage as he got out of the car. The other place was on his doorstep, when he stood with his back to the road and put his key in the lock. The latter would be the better chance, when he was standing still; and that was where Len had decided he would make the shot.