“What’s this car going to look like?” she asked.

  “Like nothing ever built in Detroit before. Compact, but not compact like a Falcon or a Corvair. The longtime emphasis on curves is going to be replaced with emphasis on angles. The hood will slope down in front. The backs of the rear seats can be folded forward to make a trunk that runs all the way to the backs of the front seats. Oh, it’s going to be a different car.”

  “How are the old man and my father reacting?”

  “Number One keeps sending the drawings back. He uses a French curve on them and rounds off the angles.”

  “My father?”

  “Is keeping hands off, as he promised to do. And he’s seething, I have no doubt. I watch my back all the time.”

  “Don’t trust him, Angelo. Remember how he schemed before. Remember what he did to you. He hates you. I promise you he does. Also, he’s got that woman now. Roberta. She’s smarter than he ever dreamed of being. And tougher. She’s got him completely under her thumb.”

  He smiled. “I take it you don’t like her.”

  “There’s an inheritance at stake, Angelo. Anne’s, mine, and my son’s. My great-grandfather has talked about leaving all his remaining shares in Bethlehem Motors, plus everything else he owns, to a Hardeman family trust. My father would of course be a trustee, and he’d have enough stooges as additional trustees to assure him complete control, even if Anne and I were also trustees. I wouldn’t be surprised if Roberta were named a trustee.”

  “I’m only interested in building cars, not in Hardeman family problems,” said Angelo.

  “You won’t be building cars if my father gets complete control of the company,” argued Betsy.

  “He won’t let the company go under,” said Angelo. “And that’s what would happen if he backed out of the deal he has with me. The bank let the company have money only because I’m running the show.”

  “His capacity to be devious has been multiplied dangerously by his marriage to Roberta,” said Betsy. “I’m not sure he wouldn’t let the company go under if he could drag you down with it. He might look like a failure, but in his mind he wouldn’t be.”

  “I’ll keep what you say in mind,” said Angelo, dismissing the subject.

  “Now you’re going to make love to me,” she said.

  “Yes. I can’t resist you, Betsy. I want to, but I can’t.”

  “You know why?” she asked quietly.

  “Why?”

  “Because you know I love you. Sure, I’ve got a beautiful bod, but so do lots of other women you’ve had and will have. But I love you, you know I do, and you can’t push me away.”

  He sighed and nodded. “You’re right. I can’t. And I can’t leave my wife and children and—”

  “Let’s not get into all that again,” she said. “We don’t have enough time together to talk about all that. Let’s go take a shower together, ‘cause there’s something I want to do.”

  He stood and pulled her to her feet, then gathered her into his arms to kiss her. “What is it you want to do?” he whispered in her ear.

  She began to unbutton his shirt. “When you were a horny little teenager, did you ever hear of something called Around the World? I mean, did you ever fantasize having a girl lick every inch of you, front and rear, from your ears to your toes? That’s what I’m going to do for you. I’ve never tried it, and maybe my mouth will dry up before I’m finished, but I’m going to do it as long as I can. Also, remember where I put my tongue sometimes. I wonder how that would feel if I dipped my tongue in brandy first.”

  “I dipped my cock in brandy once. It burns.”

  “But up your ass it might just burn deliciously. Let’s find out.”

  He nodded. “Let’s find out.”

  4

  On the final full day of his trip to Japan, Angelo traveled with Keijo Shigeto on a fast train, in the comfort of a first class compartment, to Nagoya, which was miles from Tokyo. Keijo had offered to show him something he very much wanted to see.

  “We cannot use this in the car we are now building,” said Keijo, “but in a future model … I think you will be impressed.”

  The chauffeur who picked them up at the train station drove them out of the city and to the track where Shizoka tested its cars. It was, of course, a secluded place, surrounded by a tall, guarded fence, inside which grew thick, thorny hedges.

  A car that looked like an ordinary Chiisai was speeding around the track. It looked like an ordinary Chiisai. Angelo had seen hundreds of Chiisais, but this one was equipped with sensors that were feeding information to recording instruments in the garage. He could not identify all the Japanese gauges, but he could read enough to see that the Chiisai was moving on the straightaways at something over 200 kilometers per hour, a little more than 120 miles an hour. It seemed to be entering the curves too fast, and Angelo wondered what the test driver had in mind.

  Keijo called the car in. The driver got out and took the occasion to go to the bathroom.

  “You see? It has not an alarming appearance,” said Keijo.

  Angelo walked up to the car and put his hand on it. Then he rapped it with his knuckles. He could tell from the feel and sound that the body was not made of steel but of epoxy resin. Each component of the body of the car had been built by stretching a fabric over a frame, then applying several coats of epoxy resin. When the part was finished it was removed from the frame, which could be used to make another, identical part.

  Keijo stepped up to the car and struck a door panel with a large ball-peen hammer. The panel yielded under the blow, then immediately recovered.

  “The main body is made of the same material,” said Keijo, “but it is reinforced with a steel frame. The material can be drilled and parts can be fastened together with rivets or bolts, but most parts are attached to one another by epoxy cement.”

  “Which test are you running now?” Angelo asked.

  “I think you know,” said Keijo with a broad smile.

  “Stress,” said Angelo. “Running into curves too fast and stressing the frame and body.”

  Keijo nodded, the movement originating at his waist and looking more like a short bow. “I show you one we test-crashed,” he said.

  In a corner of the garage was a car that had been run into a wall. It was as nearly intact as any car could be after that kind of impact.

  Keijo took a screwdriver and gouged out a scratch on the rear fender. The scratch was all but invisible; the material was the same color all the way through. He picked up a loose front fender and handed it to Angelo. The material was light.

  “Too costly now,” said Keijo. “But the technology can be developed to make it far less costly. We hope our American partner will join us in that investment.”

  Angelo didn’t tell him that Bethlehem Motors wouldn’t be able to invest in anything unless the car they were now building captured a respectable market share and earned a handsome profit.

  IX

  1978

  1

  It was difficult for the Hardeman family to decide whether to mark the one-hundredth birthday of Loren Hardeman the First, Number One, with any kind of celebration. He was weak and obviously sinking slowly into his long sleep. On the other hand, he was still capable of anger and might direct it at anyone he could identify as insufficiently deferential to him and insufficiently interested in his centenary.

  Roberta made the decision. They would celebrate with a family dinner, to which only the immediate family would be invited—Loren and herself, Princess Anne Alekhine, Betsy, and her son, Loren van Ludwige. Princess Anne did not so much as respond to the invitation. Betsy flew in from London. She could not bring little Loren because he had contracted measles. The family group that assembled around a table in the late afternoon consisted of Number One, Number Three, Roberta, and Betsy.

  The old man sat at the table in a stiff gray suit, white shirt, red-and-blue striped tie, with his panama hat on his head. Betsy had played tennis a little earlier and had not changed out of her tennis whites. Roberta wore her favored stretch stirrup pants, this pair cream white, and a long-sleeved silver lamé top. Loren looked uncomfortable in a blue blazer and white duck pants.

  Bethlehem Motors had circulated a news release, reminding the world that Loren Hardeman the First, the founder of the company, would be one hundred years old on Tuesday. Two bushel baskets filled with congratulatory wires and letters sat on a side table. Number One shrugged at them and declined to read any of them.

  Loren read one to him. It was from the White House, from Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Number One listened, his head bobbing, and when Loren handed him the engraved and embossed card, he waved it aside and said, “Peanuts.”

  He wouldn’t let Loren read the wires from executives of the automobile industry. “Boring bullshit,” he muttered. “Pro forma. I’ve outlived their grandfathers.”

  He drank Canadian whisky, as he’d done in the old days. “What’s the difference now?” he asked.

  The birthday dinner was catered. So many foods were off-limits to Number One that he had not employed a cook for years and just ate the bland meals his nurse set before him. Tonight, however, he was treated to a hearts of palm salad and pompano, with a chilled Rhine wine.

  When they had finished and the dishes were cleared away, brandy was served, and only then did Number One wave the bottle away.

  “I have something I want to say,” he said. He pushed his wheelchair back and glanced around the table, letting his eyes settle for a moment on each member of his family. “I guess it was Maurice Chevalier who said the only thing worse than living to a ripe old age is the alternative. If you have ambitions to live to my age, curb them. It’s not worth it.

  “Loren, that car Perino is developing is a piece of shit. It’s gonna look like a fuckin’ strawberry box. It’s gonna look like a Model A. Maybe it’ll run okay; I keep reading about how good the Jap engines are. But it won’t sell because it won’t have a modern look. Remember this—you can’t buy a Studebaker or a Packard or a Hudson anymore, but you can buy a Sundancer. That’s because I’ve always kept some of the smart young boys in line. I was building cars before Periao’s father was born.

  “Roberta, you make sure Loren keeps his backbone stiff. I know you keep his other bone stiff, but I’m talking about his backbone.

  “Betsy, I have something to say to you, but I want to say it in private. You give the nurse fifteen minutes to get me into bed, then come up. I want to talk to you.”

  Loren watched the nurse wheel Number One out of the room, then turned and spoke to Betsy. “He’s gonna give you shit.”

  Betsy reached for the brandy. “Maybe not.

  2

  Number One sat propped up against four big pillows. He wore blue-and-white striped flannel pajamas. Betsy could see now why he wore the panama hat. Only a sparse fringe of white hair circled his liver-spotted pate, which made him look older and frailer even than his hundred years.

  Her short white tennis skirt and her tennis shoes were entirely out of place in what was conspicuously the old man’s deathbed room. But she squared her shoulders and drew a deep breath and planted her hands on her hips.

  Number One pointed at a machine that sat on a table beside his television set. “You think you can make that thing run?” he asked.

  Betsy looked at the machine. She had seen two or three of them before. It was a machine that could tape television shows and play them back. She studied the controls for a moment, then said she thought she could run it.

  “Good. Pull that big dictionary out of the shelf over there.”

  She did. Behind the dictionary was a tape cartridge.

  “Play it,” he said.

  She mounted the cartridge on the spindles on top of the big, heavy machine and shoved forward the switch marked PLAY.

  A picture appeared on the television screen. It was of an empty bed. Voices began to sound—

  “Goddamnit, you shouldn’t have come here! You know you shouldn’t have come here.” Angelo’s voice.

  “Why not? The old fart’s asleep. My father is sleeping one off. So’s Roberta. Anyway, I want you. You can’t believe how much I want you.” Her own voice.

  They came into the view of the camera, she busily pulling off her clothes. The light was dim, and the focus was not precise, but no one could have doubted who they were and what they were doing. She threw herself on the bed and spread her legs. Angelo pulled down his slingshot underpants but did not take off his white T-shirt and he mounted her.

  “Four years ago, that was. I’ve watched the tape a good many times,” muttered Number One. “You are a true slut, Betsy! I wish I’d known you fifty years ago.”

  “Was Sally any better?” she asked.

  “Sally—your grandmother—was a lady.”

  “And you were a gentleman…”

  The old man shook his head and grimaced. “Angelo Perino,” he grumbled.

  “You and I are perfect together,” whispered Betsy’s image on the screen—whispered hoarsely enough for a hidden microphone to capture. She drank brandy and handed the snifter to Angelo. “There’s got to be more to it than this—more, I mean, than sneaking a night in this house. Oh, God! Leave her, Angelo! Give her a nice settlement and come to me.”

  “The best is yet to come,” Number One interjected.

  It was. After another minute or so of urgent, whispered conversation, Angelo rose on his hands and knees and presented his backside. Betsy buried her face in it and—though the camera had seen only the back of her head—it was obvious enough that her tongue was as deep in his anus as she could push it. Their grunts were further evidence of what she was doing.

  “you can turn it off. That was the most interesting part. I do wish I’d known a woman of your ilk even forty years ago. No woman ever did that for me.”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “Would you like to see your father with Roberta?” asked Number One. “Would you like to see her tan his backside with his belt? She puts welts on his ass. Would you like to hear him tell her how great it is and beg for more? Surely you don’t believe, child, that I would allow people to plot and scheme and fuck and lick ass in my house and not make a record of it? Is that like me? How do you think I managed to live a hundred fuckin’ years and fuck every son of a bitch that—”

  “I was going to call you an evil old man,” said Betsy. “You were evil before you became an old man. When did you become evil, Great-grandfather? Was it when you fucked my grandfather’s wife and fathered Anne? Or earlier?”

  Number One smiled and shook his head. “I’ve fathered a brood, haven’t I? My son was a fairy and killed himself. My grandson … well, there’s hope for him. At least he’s devious and has the capacity to hate.”

  “Why did you show me this?” she asked, nodding toward the tape machine.

  “It will be handy as evidence against you if you try to break the new will my lawyers are drafting—which I’ll sign before the week is over. You’ve been calling your son Number Four. Dream on, you little slut. Your son will never so much as share in the control of Bethlehem Motors. I’m leaving everything I own to a trust. You and Anne will be trustees, but you’ll be outvoted by Loren and my other trustees.”

  “You’ll have to fight Roberta.”

  “I’ve made a deal with Roberta. I’ve already put a big chunk of cash in trust for her, and I’m getting rid of her. She manipulates Loren like a puppet master, and she’s gonna tell him he needs an heir and she can’t give him one. As soon as she can find the right girl for the purpose, she will divorce Loren, let him marry the girl, get her pregnant, and produce the real Number Four, who will be a Hardeman. When that happens, the trust pays out the money to Roberta.”

  “Have it all figured out, don’t you, you old piece of shit?”

  Number One grinned. “I take note that you begged Angelo four years ago to leave his wife and come to you. Since then he’s fathered two more children by her.”

  “Got it all figured out…”

  “I think so. The lawyers will be here with the new documents before the week is over.”

  “You overlooked something, Great-grandfather,” said Betsy.

  “Did I? What?”

  “Me,” she said.

  She jerked one of the pillows from under his head and jammed it down on his face. He struggled, but he was a weak hundred-year-old man, and she was twenty-six and strong enough to have played three sets of tennis that afternoon without getting winded.

  Something good happened—good for her. She felt him stiffen and guessed he was having a coronary. Maybe he wouldn’t die of the pillow denying him breath. Maybe … She held the pillow in place, just the same, for five minutes. When she removed it, he was turning blue, and his eyes were staring lifelessly at the ceiling. To be certain he was gone, she sat beside him for another ten minutes, holding the pillow gently over his face so as not to bruise him.

  3

  She removed the tape cartridge from the VCR and wiped her fingerprints from the control switches.

  He had not made this tape himself. Someone in the house, or someone elsewhere, had done it for him. It would not do for investigators to find missing only the tape showing her with Angelo. She began to move books. Sure enough, she found half a dozen more tape cartridges. She would have liked to see if one really showed Roberta beating her father’s naked ass, but she could not stay here and play tapes, and she could not risk keeping them.

  She stepped onto the balcony outside Number One’s bedroom. The house was silent and mostly dark. She stood for a while, watching to see if anyone was outside. Detecting no one, she tossed all the tapes onto the lawn.

  Outside, a few minutes later, she gathered them up. She walked to the edge of the beach. Then, inspired, she took off her tennis dress and panties and walked onto the sand stark naked, clutching the tape cartridges. If anyone saw her and wondered why she was moving so furtively, the explanation would be that she had decided to take a walk, nude, on the beach.