I looked at him. “If it is, the whole world is crazy. And so is our business. A better car has to be everybody’s dream.”
“Last night I thought a great deal about what you said. It won’t be easy.”
I didn’t answer. Just drank more of my coffee.
“It will take a lot of money. GM will have at least three hundred million dollars in their new sub-compact; Ford will be a lot less because they’re just redesigning their British car for the American market and will import the engines from Britain and Germany. And still it should cost them close to two hundred million.” He looked at me. “I figure that’s the least we would need.”
“Has Bethlehem got that kind of money?” I asked.
“Even if they had,” he answered, “I’d never be able to get my grandson to go along with me. And he has the board of directors in his pocket.”
We were silent for a long time. I poured myself more coffee.
He sighed heavily. “Maybe we better just forget about it. Maybe it is just the dream of a crazy old man.”
He seemed to be shrinking into himself before my eyes. I think it wasn’t until that moment that I realized how committed I really had been.
“There is a way,” I said.
He looked at me.
“It won’t be pleasant and they’ll fight you every step of the way.”
“I’ve done that all my life,” he said.
“It will mean getting out of Detroit.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Spin-off. Sell the appliance company. You said it nets forty million a year. You could get at least ten times earnings for that. Four hundred million. With your eighty percent of the stock alone, that’s three hundred and twenty million.”
“I vote eighty percent,” he said. “But I own only forty-one percent, thirty-nine percent belongs to the Hardeman Foundation.”
“Forty-one percent is a hundred and sixty-four million. It shouldn’t be that hard to get the rest of it. Then you move the automobile division.”
“Where?”
“California. Washington State. They’re loaded with big aerospace assembly facilities that are going to turn to instant shit with the cutbacks that are coming in the next few years. It won’t take much to make them into automobile assembly lines. They have the space and the trained labor pool right there.”
He looked at me. “It might work.”
“I know damn well it will,” I said confidently.
“Who would buy the appliance company?”
“I know a lot of companies that would grab at it, but you’d wind up with very little money and a lot of paper,” I said. “There’s only one way to do it. Sell it to the public. And, maybe, at the same time, sell a little bit of the car company and get the rest of the money we need.”
“That means going to Wall Street,” he said.
I nodded.
“I never trusted them,” he said suspiciously. “They want too much say in what you do.”
“That’s where the money is,” I said.
“I don’t know how to deal with them,” he said. “We don’t speak the same language.”
“That’s what you got me for. I’ll translate for you.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, he began to smile. “I don’t know what I’m so worried about,” he said. “I started out poor. And no matter how it comes out, I had to be poor a lot longer at the beginning than I will be at the end.” He turned his chair and rolled it toward the door. I got out of bed and opened it for him.
He looked up at me. “I wonder how my grandson knew you were here.”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “You have a large staff.”
“That girl you went out with last night. Where did she come from?”
“Hertz-Rent-a-Girl.”
“You’re crazier than I am,” he said, and rolled his chair out into the hall.
Chapter Six
The plane put me down in Detroit at six o’clock in the evening and I was home by seven o’clock. Gianno opened the door and, in a moment, enfolded me in a bear hug.
“Signora! Signora!” he shouted, forgetting his English. “Dottore! Angelo is here!”
My mother came flying down the stairs. She was crying before she reached the halfway landing. I ran up the steps to her and put my arms around her. “Mamma.”
“Angelo, Angelo! Are you all right?” Her voice was anxious.
“I’m fine, Mamma. Absolutely fine.”
“I saw the smoke coming from your car,” she said.
“It was nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Sure.” I kissed her. “You’re as beautiful as ever.”
“Angelo, you say such silly things. How can a woman of sixty be beautiful?” She was beginning to smile.
I laughed. “Sixty-one. And still beautiful. After all, I should know. A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
“Stop teasing, Angelo,” she said. “Someday you will find a girl who is really beautiful.”
“Never. They don’t make girls like you no more.”
“Angelo.” My father’s voice came from the doorway to the study off the foyer.
I turned to look at him. The gray hair over his slim patrician face was the only thing that had changed about him since I was a boy. I ran down the steps.
He stood there very quietly, his hand outstretched. I pushed it aside and hugged him. “Papa!”
He hugged me back and we kissed. There were tears in his eyes, too. “How have you been, Angelo?”
“Fine, Papa, just fine.” I looked into his eyes. He seemed tired. “You’ve been working too hard.”
“Not really,” he said. “I’ve been cutting down since my attack.”
“You should,” I said. “Whoever heard of a Grosse Pointe doctor going out all hours of the night?”
“I don’t do that any more. I have a young assistant who makes my night calls.”
We were silent for a moment. I knew what he was thinking.
I should have been that assistant. It had always been his dream that I would follow in his footsteps and come into his practice. But that was not the way it was. My head was someplace else. He never mentioned his disappointment, but I knew it was there.
“You should have let us know you were coming, Angelo,” my mother said reproachfully. “We would have had a special dinner.”
“You mean you have nothing to eat in the house?” I laughed.
“There’s always something,” she said.
At the dinner table I told them the news. Gianno had just put down the coffee. Espresso. Hot, thick, and heavy. I put two spoons of sugar into it and sipped. I looked at them.
“I’m giving up driving,” I said.
There was complete silence for a moment, then my mother began to cry.
“What are you crying about?” I asked. “I thought you’d be happy about it. You always wanted me to give it up.”
“That’s why I’m crying.”
My father was more practical. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to work for Bethlehem Motors. Number One wants me to be vice-president in charge of special projects.”
“What does that mean?” my mother asked.
“You know,” I said. “Handle problems. Things like that.”
“Does that mean you’ll stay here in Detroit?” she asked.
“Some of the time,” I answered. “My job will keep me on the move.”
“I’ll have your room redecorated,” she said.
“Not so fast, Mamma,” my father cut in. “Maybe Angelo wants a place of his own. He’s not a boy any more.”
“Do you, Angelo?” my mother asked.
I couldn’t stand the look in her eyes. “What do I need my own place for, when my home is here?”
“I’ll get in touch with the painter tomorrow,” she said. “You tell me what colors you like, Angelo.”
“You pick the colors, Mamma.” I turned to
my father. “I want to get my face fixed. I’ll be meeting a lot of people and I don’t want to have to worry about it. I remember once you told me about a doctor who was the best in the world at it.”
My father nodded. “Ernest Hans. He’s in Switzerland.”
“That’s the one. Do you think he can do anything?”
My father looked at me. “It will not be easy. But if anyone can do it, he can.”
I knew what he meant. It wasn’t only the nose, which had been broken a few times, or even the left cheekbone, which had been flattened and crushed. It was the white patch of burn scars on my cheek and forehead. “Can you make the arrangements for me?”
“When do you want to go?” he asked.
“As soon as he will take me.”
Two days later I was on the plane to Geneva.
Dr. Hans lifted the last gauze pack from my cheek and placed it on the tray. He leaned forward and peered closely at my face. “Turn your head from one side to the other.”
I did as I was told. First to the right. Then left.
“Smile,” he said.
I smiled. My face felt tight.
He nodded. “Not bad. We weren’t too bad after all.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” he said quite seriously. He rose from the chair opposite me in which he had been sitting. “You’ll have to remain here about another week until the redness disappears. It’s nothing to be disturbed about. Quite normal. I had to plane the old skin remaining on your face so that it would come in new with the grafted skin.”
I nodded. After four operations in ten weeks another week more or less didn’t matter.
He started to leave and then turned back. “By the way,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “you can look at yourself in the mirror if you want to.”
“I will,” I said. “Thank you.” But I didn’t make a move to get out of my chair. Oddly enough, I wasn’t in a hurry to look at myself.
He stood there for a moment and then, when he saw I was not getting out of the chair, he nodded and left the room followed by his six flunkies.
I sat there watching the English nurse cleaning the surgical tray and placing the bandages into a waste container. She didn’t make a big thing out of looking at me, but I did notice that she kept glancing at me out of the corners of her eyes.
I caught her hand the next time she walked in front of me and turned her toward me. “What do you think, Sister?” I asked. “Is it that bad?”
“Not at all, Mr. Perino,” she said quickly. “It’s just that I never saw you before your accidents. I did see you when you came in. The transformation is quite remarkable. You have an interesting face, almost handsome I would say.”
I laughed. “I was never handsome.”
“See for yourself,” she said.
I got out of the chair and went into the bathroom. There was a mirror over the sink. I looked into it.
In a moment I knew how it felt to be Dorian Gray and never grow old. It was almost the same face that I had at twenty-five. Almost. But there were subtle differences.
The nose was thinner, more aquiline. The doctor had taken the original Italian out of it. The cheekbones were slightly higher, making my face thinner and longer, my jaw more square. The ridges of proud flesh that had puffed up under my eyebrows after they had been split were gone, as were the white burn scars, and my skin was all pink and new and shining like a baby’s. Only the eyes seemed wrong in that face.
They were old eyes. They were thirty-eight-year-old eyes. They hadn’t changed. They hadn’t been made younger to match the rest of the face. They still held the pain and the glare of the sun and the lights of a thousand different roadways.
In the mirror I could see the nurse standing in the doorway behind me. I turned toward her and held out my hand. “Sister.”
She came toward me quickly. There was concern in her voice. “Are you all right, Mr. Perino?”
“Would you be kind enough to kiss me?”
She looked into my eyes for a moment, then nodded. She came toward me and, taking my face in her hands, turned it down to her. She kissed me.
First, on the forehead, then on each cheekbone, then on each cheek, and finally, on the mouth. I felt the kindness and gentleness flowing from her. I lifted my face from her.
There were tears standing in the corners of her eyes and her lips were trembling. “Did I make it better, Mr. Perino?” she asked gently.
“Yes, Sister,” I said. “Thank you.”
She really did make it better.
Chapter Seven
“It will be expensive,” Loren Hardeman III said heavily.
I sat across the desk and looked at him. He was two years older than I, but he seemed much older. Maybe it was the office.
It was old-fashioned in heavy dark wood paneling, the chairs and couches were in black leather, the racing and automobile prints on the wall were ancient and faded. But it was The Office. It had been his grandfather’s, then his father’s, and now it was his. It was the office of the man who ran Bethlehem Motors.
He had the look of a man who was running toward weight but was fighting it. He had the ponderousness of a young man on whose shoulders responsibility had climbed at a very early age. Neither his eyes nor his smile had any real fun in them. Maybe he never had a chance.
He had been twenty-one, elected executive vice-president of Bethlehem Motors the year he had married the right girl, Alicia Grinwold, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Randall Grinwold of Grosse Pointe, Southampton, and Palm Beach. Mr. Grinwold was then vice-president of the procurement division of General Motors.
Everything followed in order. Alicia was delivered of their daughter; Number Two died; he was elected president in his father’s place; Bethlehem Motors was awarded the largest parts contract ever given by GM to a competitive contractor; and he celebrated his twenty-third birthday.
That was seventeen years ago and the Detroit papers were proud of their third generation. Many articles were written about their two bright young men, Henry Ford II and Loren Hardeman III. They had come forth like knights in their shining automobile chromed steel to do battle for their four-wheeled liege.
“Very expensive,” Loren added into the heavy silence of the office.
I didn’t answer. I took a cigarette and lit it. The smoke curled upward in the still air.
He pressed a switch on his desk intercom. “Ask Bancroft and Weyman to come down if they’re free,” he said.
He wasn’t about to make it easy for me. John Bancroft wouldn’t be any problem. He was Sales and my plan could do him nothing but good. But Dan Weyman was another matter. He was Finances and anything that might cost money was anathema to him. It didn’t matter whether there was any value in it or not. He would only part with the money under duress.
They came into the office and went through the usual good-to-see-you-again bullshit. Then they arranged themselves on chairs and looked expectantly at their master.
Loren didn’t waste words. “Grandfather wants to put us into racing. He’s suggested that Angelo spearhead the project.”
They waited for a reading. Loren didn’t disappoint them.
“I don’t know whether the time for that hasn’t really passed. With safety and ecology becoming an increasing pressure factor, I think the emphasis on power will diminish. And then there’s the cost factor. It’s way up there now. Ford has already announced their pullout. Chevy cut back. Dodge is still in but only until their contracted commitments are used up. I thought I’d get you fellows down and skull it around.”
Bancroft was the first to speak. His booming salesman’s voice echoed in the room. “Can’t see where it would hurt. We could use some excitement. The dealers are all bitching that we haven’t any glamour.” His voice suddenly faded as he realized that he might be on the wrong track.
Dan Weyman took it up smoothly. “There are two sides to the problem. No doubt about it that a good effort on the raceway could help us. But we ha
ve to weigh its cost against its benefits.” He looked at me. “What do you estimate?”
“The least we should field is three cars,” I said. “Formula Three. We couldn’t make it in One or Two. We haven’t a standard car that could meet the competition, so we would have to go to prototype. I figure with personnel and design and engineering, about a hundred thousand a car. That would be for the first three, after that they would cost progressively less.”
Weyman nodded. “Right now we’re selling a little over two hundred thousand cars annually and we’re losing about a hundred and forty dollars per unit. You would be adding about a dollar and a half per unit to that loss.” He looked at Bancroft. “That means you would have to sell at least thirty thousand more cars just to keep the unit loss at present levels. Do you think you could do it?”
Bancroft was so hungry for the sales you could almost feel him taste it. “I think we have a chance.” Then he added the qualifying Detroit constant, “Providing the economy doesn’t go to hell.”
I looked at Weyman. “How many units do you have to sell to break even?”
“Three hundred thousand,” he said quickly. “That’s a fifty percent increase over our present rate. Once past that, we break into the profit column.”
“That should be easy,” I said, slipping him the needle. “Volkswagen sells more than that.”
“Volks doesn’t field a full line,” he said. “We have to cover the whole American market to meet the competition.”
I didn’t answer. We all knew that was a crock of shit. The only reason for a full line was to protect their own parts division.
Loren had been silent while we were talking. Now he spoke. From his tone I knew his mind had been made up. “I think we’ll take a shot at it. I have a lot of respect for my grandfather. Besides it won’t make a big difference whether we lose a dollar more per unit or not at this stage of the game. And, who knows, with Ford and GM out of it, we might even pick up a few trophies.”
He got to his feet. “Dan, you take care of the details. Get Angelo set up in an office and see to it that he gets whatever assistance he needs.” He looked at me. “Angelo, you report to Dan on costs, and to me on everything else.”
The Betsy (1971) Page 4