He saw that his judgment had been right. Perino was a man of abrupt movements. He ducked out of the car, grabbed his suitcase and raincoat, and strode toward the house: a bad target. But at the door—

  Suddenly that door flew open. Two little girls ran toward Perino. They threw their arms around him, jumping up and down, and pulled him toward the house. Then another one came out, this one a pretty teenage girl who grabbed Perino by the hand. He was surrounded by his children.

  “Jesus Christ…,” Len muttered.

  “You can’t,” Trish whispered shrilly.

  “No.”

  “There’ll be another time.”

  “There has to be another time. We’ve got a quarter of a million dollars of Hardeman’s money.”

  8

  “Let it go for now,” said Loren. “Things are developing. It may be to my advantage to keep him alive for a while. But don’t bank my money and forget about it. I’ll call on you again, sooner or later.”

  9

  Another opportunity would not come quickly. Angelo stayed home for a week, to be with the son he rarely saw and to spend time with the rest of the family. They went into New York City to see sights his Connecticut children had never seen: the Statue of Liberty, the view from the top of the Empire State Building, and Manhattan as viewed from a Circle Line cruise ship.

  Cindy gave Angelo and Betsy an opportunity to be alone. They did not take advantage of it.

  In bed the third night of Betsy’s visit to Greenwich, Angelo murmured to Cindy, “I don’t deserve a wife as perfect as you. To accept my son by Betsy—”

  “Angelo. I’m no saint either.”

  “I know. I guessed, anyway. Dietz? Marcus?”

  “Please. I haven’t asked you many questions.”

  “God … I’m not going to say I don’t care. But I love you more, not less.”

  Cindy reached for his jock, held it, and squeezed it gently. “I guess … probably every woman in the Hardeman family. Including Alicia. Christ! Mother and daughter. And … Oh, my God! Even Roberta, huh? Is that why she’s so helpful sometimes?”

  Angelo smiled and kissed her. “Business is business,” he said.

  “But you still love me more than all the rest of them put together, don’t you? I love you more than anyone else I’ve ever been with, put together.”

  “I love you more than all the other women in the world put together,” said Angelo.

  In this moment of mutual frankness, so beautifully free of recrimination, she was tempted to tell him about the abortion. She had told him about the ligation, saying she’d had it done because her doctor told her she could not take the pill anymore. But the abortion—no. She couldn’t tell him.

  10

  For Van, adjustment to American ways was fascinating, welcome—and difficult. He couldn’t believe he was supposed to call Mr. Perino and Mrs. Perino Angelo and Cindy. John and Anna Perino introduced him to young Americans. He was astonished to hear them say words like “cock” and “cunt” and, most unbelievable of all, “fuck.” They seemed to have no sense of propriety or modesty.

  When John took him to his parents’ bedroom and showed him the paintings of Mrs. Perino nude and of himself nude, Van blushed.

  As he said good-bye to his mother and his little half brother John Hardeman, who were returning to London, Van wondered if he were not being left in a barbaric land with a barbaric family.

  But there was one member of the Perino family whom he found truly congenial—fourteen-year-old Anna Perino. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Not only beautiful, she was gentle and tender; she seemed to understand his confusion and sympathized with him. He hadn’t known Anna a week before he decided he loved her. But he hadn’t the remotest notion what to do about it.

  Van was perplexed by the freedom Americans enjoyed. He and Charles had lived in terror that someone might find out what they were doing at night. He wasn’t sure Americans would care.

  John took him to parties where young Americans drank, took drugs, fondled one another, and exposed themselves to one another. God knew what else they did. Oh, it was the freedom he had always dreamed of—he and Charles, who would never know it because he would remain all his life in France. The difference between himself and Charles and his new American friends was that he and Charles had done what they did and were ashamed of it—but the Americans felt no shame. Like young animals, they followed their desires wherever they led them and seemed not to think twice about it.

  John Perino was intimate with a girl named Buffy. Their best friends were a couple named Jeff and Kara. Buffy was eighteen and would attend Wellesley in the fall. She was two years older than John, who would not graduate from high school for another year. Jeff and Kara were seventeen and also had to complete their senior years of high school.

  Kara’s father, who was a surgeon at Greenwich Hospital, owned a thirty-foot sports cruiser, which he berthed in Cos Cob Harbor. Jeff had demonstrated enough skill and responsibility with the boat that he allowed Jeff to take it out on weekday afternoons. On a Thursday afternoon in August, the three couples—John and Buffy, Jeff and Kara, Van and Anna—carried picnic baskets aboard and set out eastward on Long Island Sound, going nowhere in particular and planning to anchor in some cove where they would eat their lunch and maybe slip over the side to swim.

  The girls wore colorful bikinis. Kara in particular filled hers to overflowing. The boys wore White Stag Speedos, tight, showing proud bulges.

  The boat, named Finisterre, could be controlled from a flying bridge atop the main cabin or from a control center inside the cabin. As he eased the boat away from the dock and out into the harbor, Jeff worked from the flying bridge, where he had the best visibility. He used minimal engine power, causing no wake. Only when he was well beyond the harbor did he shove in the throttles and send the boat charging forward into a light swell.

  The other five sat in the cockpit, feeling in their feet the vibrations from the engines. John opened an ice chest and passed around bottles of beer.

  When they were two miles offshore and abreast of Shippan Point, in Stamford, Buffy pulled off her bikini top and cast it aside. Kara immediately followed suit. Anna was conspicuously reluctant to do the same but was also unwilling to be different. She took off her top, showing a fourteen-year-old girl’s small, pointed breasts.

  Kara climbed to the flying bridge, taking Jeff a beer.

  Van noted that no one seemed embarrassed. Apparently, his new friends were doing what they always did. He wondered if next the boys would pull off their Speedos and expose themselves naked. He wasn’t sure if he could do that.

  As they cruised east on the Sound, the sky behind them darkened, the wind freshened and turned cooler, and the water became choppy. Jeff switched on the radio on the bridge and listened to the Coast Guard frequency.

  “No problem,” he told the others. “A squall passing through. I’m going to run inside the islands just ahead and find a cove where we can anchor.”

  The three girls retreated into the cabin. The boys stayed on deck, and John and Van went out on the bow to be ready to drop the anchor when Jeff called for it. By the time they reached sheltered water in a cove, hissing rain had reduced visibility to almost nothing. When the boys came into the cabin, they were wet. Kara had taken towels from the locker, and the three boys rubbed themselves dry. Their Speedos were wet. Jeff and John pulled theirs off. Van hesitated but decided he would look silly to the others if he didn’t do the same. Jeff knelt at the rear of the cabin, opened a hatch in the bulkhead, and hung the trunks on hooks in the engine compartment, where the heat would dry them.

  The girls broke out their sandwiches and chips, and the boys opened more beer. The boat rocked on growing swells but was in no way threatened.

  “Cozy,” said Kara, snuggling against Jeff. He put his left arm around her and cupped her breast in his hand. “Mmm-hmm,” she murmured. “Very cozy.”

  John bent over and kissed each of Buffy’s nipples, leaving them glistening with the saliva from his tongue.

  Van looked at Anna and saw apprehension in her eyes. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she smiled shyly and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

  As they ate, the Greenwichers talked about their schools and the upcoming football season, and they laughed as they tried to explain to Van the fundamentals of American football.

  As soon as Jeff and Kara had finished eating their sandwiches and drinking their beer, they went down a short ladder and opened a door that admitted them to a narrow cabin.

  John and Buffy stretched out on the settee on the right side of the main cabin and began to kiss and fondle each other.

  Van kissed Anna. It was the first time he had kissed her on the mouth. He was thrilled. Her dark, solemn eyes fastened on his, and she lifted her soft, moist lips to invite him to kiss her again. He wanted to touch her small bare breasts.

  But—her brother was just across the cabin!

  John had pushed Buffy’s bikini bottom down. He kneaded her taut little rear.

  Van put his right hand gently on Anna’s left breast. She gasped but did not move away from him or try to move his hand away. She only stared into his eyes with increasing solemnity. He kissed her again. They relaxed, settled back on the settee, and continued kissing.

  The rain slackened, and visibility around the boat improved. Van and Anna could see the islands around them and the mainland shore. Other boats were at anchor not far from them, and Van wondered if people on those boats were doing what they were doing on this one.

  The door opened. Jeff and Kara came up the ladder, grinning.

  “Next!”

  John and Buffy descended into the front cabin. Jeff and Kara sat down and opened two more beers. Van and Anna said they wouldn’t have any more for now.

  Jeff grinned impishly and said, “They don’t circumcise everybody in Europe, do they?”

  “No. Only if parents specifically ask for it to be done.”

  “You have to in this country. It’s the law.”

  “No it isn’t,” said Kara.

  “I always heard it was,” said Jeff.

  “Well, my father’s a doctor. He ought to know.”

  “Come to think of it, not all the guys at school are. Anyway … they didn’t do it to you, huh, Van?”

  “No,” said Van very quietly. The other three were all staring at his penis, and he knew he was blushing. This was really too much, but he had no escape from it. “In Amsterdam, where I was born, it is regarded as a religious rite only.”

  “Did you go out for any sports in your schools?”

  “‘Go out’?”

  “Did you play any sports?”

  “Oh, yes. Rugby especially.”

  “That’s a rough game, isn’t it?”

  “It can be very rough. Have you ever heard the joke about it? They say rugby is a game for hoodlums, played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen, played by hoodlums. And ice hockey is a game for hoodlums, played by hoodlums.”

  The others laughed. Van was glad they had turned their attention away from his crotch.

  Jeff resumed his explanation of American football.

  John and Buffy came up. John nodded at Van.

  “Uh, well, perhaps…,” Van murmured.

  “Don’t be bashful,” said John. “Anna’s not.”

  One small brass lamp on the bulkhead lighted the cabin. It was tiny and warm and cozy. It was equipped with two narrow bunks, with hardly enough room to stand between them. Van and Anna lay down facing each other. He was embarrassed to find his fully engorged organ pressing between her legs. She showed no sign of dismay but only looked at him with those appealing dark eyes of hers and offered her mouth to be kissed.

  He kissed her warmly, more warmly than passionately. “Anna,” he whispered to her, “we will not take off the rest of your swimsuit.”

  “No,” she said. “We mustn’t.”

  “You can touch me, though, if you want to.”

  She closed her hand around his shaft and instinctively knew what to do. Only a minute passed before he ejaculated into her hand and onto her legs.

  “Anna,” he said. “I want you to understand that I love you. I will see no other girls until we are old enough to marry.”

  XXVIII

  1989

  1

  Alicia invited the Perino family to Thanksgiving dinner. Her grandson Van Ludwige had come down from Harvard and was staying with her. Everyone gathered in her living room around a crackling fire in the formal marble-bordered fireplace. They nibbled hors d’oeuvres and sipped drinks.

  Bill Adams and Angelo stood apart from the group for a few minutes of private talk.

  Froelich & Green had at last made their offer. It was $625 per share, on the condition that F & G acquire a minimum of 51 percent of the stock in XB Motors. The price would be paid $150 per share in cash, $400 per share in warrants for stock in Froelich & Green, $75 per share in notes.

  “I was beginning to wonder if they hadn’t backed off,” said Angelo, sipping from a martini.

  “They had a difficult time raising the money,” said Bill. “I put the word around, which didn’t help them.”

  “But they raised it,” said Angelo.

  “Some very sharp guys are working with them,” said Bill. “They’ve got the hundred and fifty million dollars they’d need if all the XB stockholders accepted their offer. They can secure the notes. They’ve sold enough junk bonds to cover those. It’s the warrants that are doubtful. They value their stock at four hundred and fifty dollars and offer warrants for it at four hundred dollars. But the warrants may turn out to be worthless.”

  “If their stock isn’t worth four hundred dollars a share.”

  “Precisely.”

  Angelo shook his head. “I don’t understand how these guys can raise money. Hell, Boesky’s in jail. Milken is going there. The world has to be full of suckers.”

  “Including one named Loren Hardeman the Third,” said Bill Adams.

  2

  Neither Van nor Anna could conceal what their eyes told anyone acute enough to see. The way she looked at him and the way he hovered over her attentively and lovingly was only a little short of conspicuous.

  “What’s going on between those two?” Angelo asked Cindy when they were alone in their bedroom.

  “They’re in love.”

  “Christ! She’s fourteen!”

  “He promised her he will not date any other woman and will wait for her until she’s old enough to marry him,” said Cindy. “She gave him the same promise.”

  “Gimme a break? Don’t tell me they—”

  “No. She swears not, and I believe her. She said they had chances last summer and agreed not to. I wish I could say the same for John and Buffy. He doesn’t confide in me, but I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “I did it when I was sixteen,” said Angelo.

  “Well, you never asked me for my intimate autobiography, but I lost my virginity—lost it? Not the way to say it. I gave it away gladly when I was fourteen.”

  Cindy stood before a long mirror, critically examining the red marks around her waist that had been left by the panty hose she had worn all afternoon and evening. Those things would take hours to disappear. Garter belts didn’t leave marks like that. She resolved to quit wearing panty hose. She avoided bras as much as she could, too, and when she did wear one, it was sheer and flimsy and not too tight so that it wouldn’t mark her.

  “Maybe we’re lucky in a way,” she said. “Our kids seem to be monogamous. In the age of AIDS, you have to think about that.”

  “They don’t do drugs, either—do they?”

  “Anna has beer now and then. She told me. I imagine John goes further. But I’ve seen no problem.”

  Angelo lay on the bed, waiting for Cindy. He shook his head. “I’ve done a lot of things,” he said, “but I’ve never had a snort of coke. Did a little grass one time, but that’s all.”

  “So did I,” said Cindy. “Back when I was hanging around the tracks, I used to share roaches. You could hardly live and not do it. But I’ve never tried anything harder.”

  “You know something? We’re a couple of old farts. In a couple of years I’m going to be sixty years old!”

  Cindy looked at him and grinned. He lay on his back, and his cock, standing just behind his balls, looked vaguely like the stake behind the last two arches on a croquet court. “You’re still young and handsome, my husband,” she said. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Let Amanda paint you. I’ll put John somewhere else and put you beside me.”

  Angelo ran his hands down his face. “If I can find time,” he said with a mock groan.

  1990

  3

  “Thirty-seven fuckin’ million!” Roberta yelled. “What the hell became of two hundred and twelve million?

  “We’ve been through it,” Loren protested impatiently. “Nineteen million more from the notes. That makes fifty-six. And the Froelich & Green stock is worth four hundred and twenty-five dollars a share. When I exercise my warrants, I’ll get a hundred and six million more.”

  “You believe that, you believe in the tooth fairy,” she snorted.

  “If all I get out of it is the thirty-seven, that’ll come without capital gains tax, and I’ll wind up a wealthy man who can retire in comfort with a wife he loves, someplace where we can look at the ocean.”

  “Ocean, my achin’ ass! What ocean? We were gonna live in Paris!?

  Roberta was drunk. He had found her drunk when he came home. For some odd reason she was dressed in a pair of blue jeans—something she almost never wore—and a plain white bra. She was not just drunk; she was slobbering drunk. He himself had overdone the Scotch on the way home, but she was out of control, weepy and profane and unsteady on her feet.