Loren nodded. “He said he was frying eggs and grease splattered on the back of his hand.”

  Carpenter shook his head. “He told the Viscountess Neville, within the hearing of her nanny, that he was burned when a pellet of lithium caught fire. Lithium hydroxide is used to increase the capacity of dry batteries. The metal itself is corrosive and bursts into flame when exposed to air. It is a dangerous substance.”

  3

  Carpenter had been asleep for two hours when he was wakened by a knock on his motel-room door. He struggled out of bed, wrapped a towel around his waist, and stumbled to the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Hardeman. Open the door.”

  “I’m not dressed.”

  “I’m standing in a motel hallway. Open the goddamned door!”

  He pulled the chain out of its slot, turned the dead bolt, and opened the door. Roberta shoved past him into the room. She was wearing a wet raincoat over blue jeans.

  “I must’ve looked like a hooker out there,” she grunted. “You have any Scotch?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Always have Scotch,” she said. “When you’re working with us, always have Scotch.”

  It was apparent she had already had Scotch. She unbuttoned the raincoat and tossed it on the bed. She was wearing a Michigan University sweatshirt.

  “I’ll get dressed,” he said, moving toward the bathroom.

  “Don’t bother. I’m not going to be here very long,” she said. “Sit down.”

  He sat down.

  “You’ve got to change the way you’re handling this business,” said Roberta.

  “Oh?”

  “We don’t care who Perino sleeps with. Understand? Get off that kick. If you can get in his wife’s pants, fine. But that’s only so you can find out more about what he’s doing.”

  “I thought the fact that he was sleeping with—”

  “We already know,” she said. She pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and lit one.

  Carpenter lifted his chin. “Is it impossible I might find him with somebody you don’t know about? Is it possible I might see him with somebody you don’t want me to know about?”

  “You’re asking a question you shouldn’t ask,” she said coldly. “Also, let me warn you about something. A private dick who tailed Angelo Perino and the Viscountess Neville wound up with a skull fracture. His partner, a woman, got her nose and cheekbone broken. Get us information, not scandal.”

  Carpenter nodded thoughtfully. “Actually,” he said, “the only hard information I got came from establishing a relationship with Viscountess Neville’s nanny. If you’re telling me to stay away from his women, you destroy my effectiveness. I’m not an industrial spy. The art connection is what you hired me for.”

  “So you can get into the pants of Cindy Perino,” said Roberta. “That’s the whole idea. Information. She can tell you things we want to know. Besides, my husband wants to destroy Angelo Perino. When he finds out his loyal and dutiful wife, the mother of his children—”

  “He’ll kill me,” said Carpenter.

  “He might, if you’re not careful.”

  “She’s not an easy lay.”

  Roberta shook her head. “I don’t imagine she is. But can she resist a knowledgeable art collector with money to spend—who’s a handsome stud besides?”

  He grinned. “You flatter me.”

  “What the hell is this? You’ve got a hard-on!” She grabbed his towel and pulled it away. What she’d said was true; his oversized member stood rigid. “Jesus Christ! Have you got a hard-on for me?”

  “Mrs.—”

  “I haven’t got much time,” she said. “Do you want something or not?”

  “It’s a stupid dog that—”

  “—shits in his own bed. Don’t talk in clichés. Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well for Christ sake,” she said. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head. “How old are you, Bob?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “I’m fifty-nine. I’ve had it all. So has Cindy Perino. Let’s see if you’re good enough for her. C’mon. Climb into the saddle. We’ll start that way.”

  She stretched out on her back on the bed and spread her legs. He climbed on her and entered her immediately, without so much as a kiss before. He slammed his hips hard against hers and drove himself deep inside her.

  The rain had stopped, and the sky was gray with the coming dawn when she left the motel. Carpenter was exhausted, but Roberta was exhilarated.

  4

  Angelo sat on a rose-colored plush couch in Alexandria McCullough’s apartment in Houston. He had taken off his jacket, shirt, and tie and sat in his T-shirt and pants, a martini on the table before him. Alex was in the kitchen, visible beyond a counter, chopping vegetables for a salad. She had taken off most of her clothes, too, and worked in a white bra and white bikini panties. Also dressed only in bra and panties, her friend Lucy sat opposite Angelo, smoking a joint as she lazily stared at and appraised Angelo Perino.

  “I hope you don’t take offense,” she said to him. “I just can’t bring myself to say okay. If Alex wants to give herself to a man, I can’t stop her; but I’m not going to issue her a license.”

  He glanced at Alex. “If I wanted to make a point of the matter, I think she might come to bed with me, if only as an experiment,” he said so quietly that Alex may or may not have heard. “But it would threaten a beautiful friendship. Why should I do that?”

  Lucy was thirty-eight years old, a little younger than Alex. Though she had a generous mop of dark brown curly hair, her face might have been called mannish: square, with a strong jaw. Her figure was anything but mannish. She was an aerobics instructor at a local health club and a lifeguard at its swimming pool. If any woman he had ever seen had a perfect, sleek body, Lucy did.

  The two women had as complete a friendship as any married couple had. This was not Alex’s apartment but their apartment. It seemed to Angelo that Alex played the female role in the relationship and Lucy the male; but that was a simplistic description of their relationship. It was more accurate to say they were an affectionate—no, a passionate—couple, genuinely in love with each other.

  “We’ve both experimented,” said Lucy. “There’s nothing you could do for either of us that we can’t do for ourselves.”

  “Except get you pregnant,” said Angelo dryly.

  “There are plenty of people taking care of that function,” said Lucy. “Culturally, we live in an era when it is not necessary for everyone to procreate. The primitive Israelites had to. The early Christians had to. In order to survive. Today, there’s not a race or a nation left in the world who can’t spare some people from that burden.”

  Angelo smiled. “You think of yourselves as an elite, spared the labor of—”

  “Precisely,” said Lucy.

  Alex came in from the kitchen. She carried two martinis, a fresh one for Angelo and one for herself; but she picked up Lucy’s roach and drew deeply on it before she sipped from her glass.

  She and Angelo had just finished two days of going over in close detail the design of the electric car. The onboard computer would switch on the windshield wipers when they were needed, measure the rainfall hitting the car, and adjust wiper speed accordingly. It would switch on the lights when they were needed. It would recognize six separate voice-prints and unlock the doors when told to. But all these things were gimmicks compared to the basic function the computer would perform: the exquisitely efficient use of the car’s power.

  Alex had said the car could utilize 90 percent of its power. It would do better than that.

  The major problem remaining was the power source. Angelo’s designers were experimenting with several ideas. None had yet been adopted.

  Alex sat beside Lucy. Reaching behind her, Lucy unhooked her friend’s bra and began to lick her nipples.

  “Do we embarrass you, Angelo?” asked Alex.

  “There’s nothing left in this world that can embarrass me,” he said.

  “Well,” said Lucy. “I wouldn’t have that cock of yours stuck in me for all the world. But we might do something else for it. Both of us, at the same time. What do you say, Alex?”

  “I think all three of us would enjoy that,” Alex purred.

  They didn’t want him in their bedroom, so he lay on his back on the floor. While Alex licked his penis, Lucy sucked on his scrotum. Then Lucy drew him into her mouth, and Alex licked all around. Finally both of them worked on his shaft together. Lucy sucked in and swallowed his ejaculate, and Alex used her tongue and lips to clean him up.

  He sat on the couch and watched them lick each other. It was plain they were having multiple orgasms, while he’d had only one. They knew that and laughed about it—and then set to work on giving him another one.

  5

  “At least he didn’t buy any art,” said Roberta. She sat at Loren’s desk in the XB administration building. Loren, whose face was flushed with anger, had handed her a letter to read. It was from Robert Carpenter and it read—

  On the evening of July 8, Loren van Ludwige flew to London, accompanied by a young woman—in fact a sixteen-year-old named Anna Perino, the daughter of Angelo and Cindy Perino. They arrived on the morning of July 9 and were brought immediately to the residence of the Viscount and Viscountess Neville. That same day Max van Ludwige arrived from Amsterdam. The conversation in the house during their visit, according to my informant, whose identity you know, does not just suggest but clearly indicates that the young man intends to marry the young woman. They did not share a bedroom during their stay.

  “My grandson and the daughter of that wop!” Loren snarled.

  “We suspected,” said Roberta.

  “The eldest son of my only child! Going to marry the great-granddaughter of the mafioso bootlegger who sold my grandfather booze during Prohibition! The goddamned family’s still connected. I don’t see how Betsy can—”

  “You’ve made a point over the years I’ve known you of treating Betsy like shit,” said Roberta.

  “She’s treated me like shit. She—she even had a bastard by the wop! She sued me! She—”

  “She’s your daughter, and you had better make peace with her.”

  XXXIII

  1991

  1

  The six months the directors had given Angelo to solve his remaining design problems and make his final recommendations expired in midsummer.

  All the directors—Angelo himself, Loren and Roberta, Betsy, and Tom Mason—were in Detroit for the crucial meeting.

  “We have a car,” said Angelo. “The only question is whether Tom thinks he can sell it.”

  “What’s it gonna look like, Angelo?” Tom asked.

  Angelo stood and uncovered a drawing on an easel. The car looked modern but was no radical departure from cars on the road. It was small and sleek, yet not a sports car.

  “Next year’s car,” said Tom. “The ninety-threes will all look something like that.”

  “Designed in Italy?” asked Loren.

  Angelo nodded. “In Turin, by Marco Varallo.”

  “He’s batting five hundred,” said Loren dryly. “His Stallion body was a success. The S Stallion—”

  Betsy interrupted. “The S Stallion did not fail because of its body design.”

  “Well, you couldn’t see out of the damned thing,” said Loren.

  “A moot point,” said Roberta. “Looking at this car … obviously it’s no family sedan.”

  “The family sedan is dead,” Angelo stated. “Look at the cars on the streets. The vast majority of them are carrying one person. Others are carrying two. It’s rare to see three or four people in a car. The van is today’s family vehicle. And incidentally, I propose we build an electric van as well as an electric car.”

  “You’ve solved all the engineering problems?” Loren asked.

  “All but one. The batteries. And—”

  “Well, hell! If you haven’t got the batteries, you haven’t got anything.”

  “It’s a matter of choosing,” said Angelo. “I’ve found alternative ways of powering the car. We just haven’t made up our minds which battery system will work best.”

  “You’re sticking the company’s neck out a long way, aren’t you?” Roberta asked. “Everything I read says it’s impossible to get acceptable performance and range from batteries.”

  “Alexandria McCullough has designed an onboard computer system that will maximize the utilization of our battery power. That’s the key. The car will use all its battery-supplied energy. Internal-combustion cars waste up to eighty percent of the energy from their fossil fuels. Heat alone dissipates—”

  “Can you sell it, Tom?” Roberta interrupted.

  “Eventually,” said Tom. “Eventually we’ll have to, because sooner or later this old world is going to run out of fossil fuels—liquid ones, anyway. My problem is, how long will it take before people realize this is the car they’re going to be driving, whether they like it or not? The DeSoto Airflow was the car of the future, but it was designed almost twenty years before the public began to buy cars like that. The Cord was a great car. So was the Tucker. But—” He shook his head.

  “If we don’t build this car, XB Motors is dead,” said Angelo flatly.

  “Because you have already committed the company to it,” Loren said angrily. “Resources that could have been spent in developing a new model of the Stallion have been spent—”

  “The Stallion has gone as far as it can go,” said Angelo. “It’s very close to being a perfect design, for what it is. All we could do now is hang a little chrome on it, reshape the headlights, give it a new instrument panel, and proclaim it a new car. But it wouldn’t be a new car. It would be the same old thing, cosmetically redesigned. That’s what each new model of every car in the world is, and the public knows it.”

  “The Big Three don’t seem to be driven to a radical departure,” said Loren.

  “They can survive for a while longer without facing the future,” said Angelo. “We can’t. And by the way, before the end of the century it will be the Big Four.”

  “I doubt it,” said Loren. He snapped a yellow pencil in two. “Six months ago the board of directors gave you time to develop a proposal. In that six months you’ve moved forward as if you had authority to develop the new car, virtually scrapping the Stallion in the process. We didn’t authorize you to commit us. You did anyway.”

  “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady,” said Angelo. “Nor success in a cutthroat business.”

  “I believe Angelo has foreclosed our options,” Betsy observed grimly.

  “Tom,” said Roberta, “you are the swing vote on the board. You were elected to be just that. Can we sell the car?”

  “Looks to me like we damned well have to,” he replied. “It’s gonna be all we have to sell. So … I have a lot of confidence in Angelo. I don’t know anybody in the industry who understands design and engineering more thoroughly than he does—and when he doesn’t know he hires experts who have the knowledge. Can we sell this kind of car? That’s what he doesn’t know. And frankly, I don’t know either. But I do know one thing, which is that we’ve got to offer something better than the Stallion in the next few years. We kept the Sundancer alive too long, and we can’t afford to do the same with the Stallion. We’ve got to bet on this car.” He paused and looked hard at Angelo. “And on the man who bet the company on it.”

  “What are you going to call it?” Betsy asked Angelo.

  “Zero-Zero-Zero,” said Angelo. “Because it will have no piston displacement.”

  2

  Betsy went to Angelo’s Detroit apartment that night. It had become pointless for them to try to conceal their relationship.

  She took off most of her clothes. She didn’t even have to suggest they make love. She knew they would. She walked around the apartment in a pair of black bikini panties, a black bra, a black garter belt holding up dark stockings, and black shoes. From long experience with Angelo Perino, she knew he found that a provocative outfit.

  He mixed martinis. “Do I detect that you are beginning to have doubts?” he asked.

  “It occurs to me that we’re gambling everything we have.”

  “Number One did. More than once,”

  “I wouldn’t want to become dependent on my husband,” she said.

  Angelo grinned as he handed her a drink. “Is that the worst thing you can think of?” he asked.

  “My father still wants your ass. He was furious when you fired the corporate accountants. I was surprised he didn’t raise that issue at the meeting.”

  “This company has needed reputable, independent auditors for a long time. I may as well tell you; the state of Michigan is going to require an independent audit of the Hardeman Foundation.”

  “What does Michigan want?”

  “The Hardeman Foundation is supposed to be an independent entity,” said Angelo. “But it never has been. Number One set it up that way. That’s how your father managed to use it against him in nineteen seventy-two. Number One had given a large block of stock to the foundation—and took the tax break on that charitable gift—but still voted the stock as if it were his, using puppet trustees.”

  “My father uses the foundation the same way,” said Betsy.

  Angelo nodded. “To control the corporation. He went along with making me president. He went along with electing Tom Mason a director. But he can get rid of me as president and Tom as a director anytime he wants to.”

  “That is, at the next stockholders meeting,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “He won’t do it, Angelo. By that time XB Motors will be so heavily into the Zero-Zero-Zero project that it would bankrupt the company to try to back out. And XB can’t build the car without you.”

  “I’d like to believe so,” said Angelo. “But no one is indispensable. I’ve got some bright young people working on the Triple Zero. If the Lear should crash and kill me, they could go on.”

  “Except that they couldn’t fight off the opposition.”