The Betsy (1971)
| The Betsy (1971) | |
| Robbins, Harold | |
| (2011) | |
| Tags: | Thriller Thrillerttt |
The Betsy
explores the shocking world of the automobile industry—of savage ambition, searing passion, and breathtaking fortunes won or lost in a desperate struggle for power.
HAROLD
ROBBINS
“To date, this incredible man,
who became a star author with
Never Love a Stranger,
has sold a staggering 685
million
books. Every single day at least
40,000 human beings buy
one of his novels.”
--Liz Smith,
New York Newsday
THE BETSY
THE MOST THRILLING, MOST SHOCKING NOVEL
FROM AMERICA’S MASTER STORYTELLER …
HAROLD ROBBINS
“HAROLD ROBBINS IS A MASTER!”
--Playboy
“ROBBINS’ BOOKS ARE PACKED
WITH ACTION, SUSTAINED BY A STRONG
NARRATIVE DRIVE AND ARE
GIVEN VITALITY BY HIS
OWN COLORFUL LIFE.”
--The Wall Street Journal
HAROLD ROBBINS
IS ONE OF THE
“WORLD’S FIVE BESTSELLING AUTHORS . . .
EACH WEEK, AN ESTIMATED
280,000 PEOPLE . . . PURCHASE A
HAROLD ROBBINS BOOK.”
--Saturday Review
“ROBBINS GRABS THE READER
AND DOESN’T LET GO . . .”
--Publishers Weekly
The Betsy
by
Harold
Robbins
AuthorHouse, Inc.
Books by Harold Robbins
The Adventurers
The Betsy
Descent from Xanadu
The Dream Merchants
Dreams Die First
Goodbye, Janette
The Inheritors
The Lonely Lady
Memories of Another Day
Never Love a Stranger
The Pirate
79 Park Avenue
Spellbinder
Where Love Has Gone
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
Phone: 1-800-839-8640
© Copyright 2011 Jann Robbins.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.
Photography and Direction by Arthur Coleman
http://www.arthurcoleman.com/
First published by AuthorHouse 6/13/2011
isbn: 978-1-4634-1376-7 (sc)
isbn: 978-1-4634-1375-0 (e)
Printed in the United States of America.
Bloomington, Indiana
Contents
Book One
1969
Chapter One
I was sitting up in bed, sipping hot coffee, when the nurse came into the room. The English girl with the big tits. She got busy right away with the drapes at the window, pulling them back so that more daylight spilled into the room.
“Good morning, Mr. Perino,” she said.
“Good morning, Sister,” I answered.
“Today is the big day, isn’t it?” She smiled.
“Yeah.”
“Dr. Hans will be here any minute,” she said.
Suddenly I had to pee. I swung my feet off the bed. She took the coffee cup from my hand. I went into the john. I didn’t bother closing the door. After one month here nothing was private any more.
The water burst from me with a reassuring force. When I finished I turned to the sink to wash my hands. The white bandages covering my face stared back at me from the mirror. I wondered what I looked like beneath them. I would find out soon enough. Then a funny thought crossed my mind:
If my ass itched would I scratch my face?
She had a hypo waiting when I came back into the room. I stopped. “What’s that for?”
“Dr. Hans ordered it. A mild tranquilizer. He likes his patients relaxed when the bandages come off.”
“I’m calm.”
“I know,” she said. “But let’s do it anyway. It will make him feel better. Give me your arm.”
She was very good. There was only the faintest ping when she hit me. She led me to the chair near the window. “Now, sit down and let me make you nice and comfy.”
I sat and she wrapped the light blanket around my legs and fluffed a pillow behind my head. “Now, rest a bit,” she said, going to the door, “and we’ll be back in a little while.”
I nodded and she went out. I turned to the window. The sun poured down on the summer snow topping the Alps. A man walked by, dressed in Tyrolean shorts. A crazy thought jumped through my head.
“Do you yodel, Angelo?”
“Of course I yodel, Angelo,” I answered myself. “Don’t all Italians yodel?”
I dozed.
I was eight years old when I first met him. It was 1939 in a little park where my nurse often took me to play. I was pedaling the miniature racing car my grandfather had given me for my birthday. He had it especially made in Italy for me. With the leather straps over the hood, electric headlamps that worked, it was an exact replica of the Type 59 Bugatti that set the record at Brooklands in 1936, even down to the oval Bugatti insignia on the radiator.
I was pedaling madly down the path when I saw them in front of me. The tall nurse pushing the man in the wheelchair. I slowed down and honked my horn.
The nurse looked back over her shoulder and moved her chair slightly toward the right side of the path.
I swung left and began to pass her, but by then there was a slight incline and, pedal as hard as I could, all I could manage was to keep even with them.
The man in the wheelchair spoke first. “That’s quite a machine you got there, son.”
I looked over at him, still pedaling as hard as I could. I was told not to talk to strangers, but this one looked all right. “It’s not a machine,” I said. “It’s a Bugatti.”
“I can see that,” the man said.
“The fastest car on the road,” I said.
“No pickup,” he said.
I was still pedaling with all my might but now I was beginning to run out of breath. “We’re on a hill.”
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “They’re all right on the flat but give them a little hill and they have nothing in reserve.”
I didn’t answer. I had to save all my breath to keep pedaling.
“There’s a bench just ahead of us,” he said. “Pull off the road and let’s have a look at your machine. Maybe there’s something we can do about it.”
I was only too glad to do what he told me. I was out of breath. I managed to pull up to the bench before him. The nurse turned the wheelchair alongside. I started to get out.
Gianno, who always came with us when the nurse and I went to the park, came running up. “You okay, Angelo?”
I nodded.
Gianno looked at the man in the wheelchair. They didn’t speak but something seemed to pass between them and Gianno smiled. “Sure,” he said.
The man leaned over the side of the wheelchair and looked into the car. He reached down and lifted the seat, exposing the gear and chain.
“Do you want to look under the hood?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said, letting the seat drop back into place.
“Are you a mechanic?” I asked.
There was a startled expression on his face when he looked at me. It was gone swiftly. “I guess you can call me that,” he said. “Anyway that’s what I used to be.”
“Can you do something about it?” I asked.
“I think so.” He looked up at his nurse. “Could I have my notebook, Miss Hamilton?”
Silently she gave him a plain, hard-covered notebook much like the kind I carried to school. He took a pen from his pocket, and, looking down at the Bugatti, began to sketch swiftly.
I walked around the chair and looked at the pad. It looked like a strange combination of wheels and chains and lines. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Variable gears.” He saw the blank expression on my face. “It doesn’t matter,” he added. “It will work, you’ll see.”
He finished the drawing and gave the book back to his nurse. “What’s your name?”
“Angelo.”
“Well, Angelo, if you’ll meet me here about this time the day after tomorrow, I’ll have a surprise for you.”
I looked over at Gianno. He nodded silently. “I can do that, sir,” I said.
“Fine.” He turned to his nurse. “Home now, Miss Hamilton. We have work to do.”
I was early. But so was he. He smiled when he saw me. “Good morning, Angelo.”
“Good morning, sir,” I said. “Good morning, Miss Hamilton.”
She sniffed. “Good morning.” I had the feeling she didn’t like me.
I turned back to him. “You said you would have a surprise for me?”
“Patience, young man. It’s coming.”
I followed his gaze. Two men dressed in white coveralls were carrying a large wooden crate up the path, followed by another man carrying a tool box.
“Over here,” my friend in the wheelchair called. They put the crate down in front of him. “Everything ready?” he asked the man with the tool box.
“As you ordered, sir,” the man replied. “I just took the liberty of allowing ten-millimeter leeway on the axle placement in case we had to make adjustments.”
My friend laughed. “Still don’t trust my eye, do you, Duncan?”
“No point taking chances, Mr. Hardeman,” Duncan replied. “Now where is the car we’re to work on?”
“Right here,” I said, pushing it out in front of them.
Duncan looked down at it. “A fine lookin’ automobile.”
“It’s a Bugatti,” I said. “My grandfather had it made specially for me in Italy.”
“Eyetalians do fine coachwork,” Duncan said. “But they know nothing about engineering.” He turned to the other two men. “Okay, boys, go to work.”
For the first time I saw the lettering on the back of their coveralls.
BETHLEHEM MOTORS
. They worked swiftly with practiced efficiency. Two bolts unfastened the sides and top of the crate from the bottom which then became a workbench as they placed my car on top of it.
The two mechanics got busy. I looked down at the ground where the opened crate revealed a rectangular steel frame filled with gears, chains, and wheels. “What’s that?” I asked.
“A new chassis,” my friend replied. “It was much simpler to build the whole thing in the shop with everything in it than to pull yours apart.”
I didn’t speak. By that time the two men had lifted the body of my car from its chassis and were going to work on the wheels. A few minutes later they had the new chassis on the crate and were mounting my wheels to it, and in less than ten minutes they had the body of the Bugatti mounted on the new chassis. They stepped back.
Mr. Duncan walked over to it and looked inside. He fiddled around a bit, pushing first one thing, then another. After a moment he stepped back. “Seems okay to me, sir,” he said.
My friend grinned. “Did you need the ten millimeters?”
“No, sir,” Duncan said. He nodded to the two men.
They lifted the car to the ground. I looked at it, then at my friend.
“Go ahead, Angelo, get in.”
I climbed into the car as he wheeled his chair alongside me. “There are several new things I want to show you before you drive off,” he said. “See that gear lever coming up near your right hand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put your hand on it.” I did as I was told. “It moves forward and back and when it’s in the center it can move sideways and then forward again. Try it.”
I moved it forward and back, then to the center and sideways forward. I looked up at the wheelchair. Something of what he had done suddenly began to make sense to me.
He picked it up from my eyes. “Do you know what that’s for, Angelo?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “High, low and reverse.”
“Good boy. Now there’s one other thing I did. I put coaster brakes on your rear wheels. You slow down or stop merely by reversing the push on the pedals, just like you do on a bicycle. Understand?”
I nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Try it out. But be careful. It’s going to be a lot faster than it was before.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Cautiously I went down the hill, getting the feel of it and trying the brakes. Each time I came off the brakes it went a little faster, then I would hit the brakes again and slow down. At the bottom of the hill I turned around on the path by reversing, then going forward. I came up the hill almost as easily as going down. I stopped in front of them. “It’s great!”
I got out of the car and walked up to my friend. “Thank you very much.” I held out my hand.
He took it and we shook. “You’re very welcome, Angelo.” He smiled. “Just you be careful. You have a very fast car there.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m going to be a race-car driver when I grow up.”
The men had been busy putting all the old bits and pieces into the crate. They started down the path and Mr. Duncan came over to us.
He held a sheet of paper toward my friend. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’ll need your signature on this.”
My friend took it. “What is it?”
“A new system L.H. Two put in. It’s a work order. He also wanted me to ask ye what department to charge it to.”
My friend grinned almost like I would. “Experimental car.”
Duncan laughed. “Yes, sir.”
My friend signed the paper and Duncan turned away. I called him back. “Thank you, Mr. Duncan.”
He looked down at me dourly. “Ye’re welcome, lad. But don’t ye forget, ye might be drivin’ a Bugatti but ye’re powered by Bethlehem Motors, thanks to Mr. Hardeman there.”
“I won’t forget,” I said. I watched him hurry down the path toward the other men, then turned back to my friend. “Mr. Hardeman, is that your name?”
He nodded.
“You’re very nice,” I said.
“Some people don’t think so.”
“I wouldn’t pay any attention to them,” I said. “Lots of people feel that way about my grandfather, but he’s nice and I like him.”
He was silent.
His nurse’s voice came from behind me. “It’s time for us to be going, Mr. Hardeman.”
“In a moment, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “How old are you, Angelo?”
“Eight.”
“I have a grandson just two years older than you. He’s ten.”
“Maybe I can play with him sometime. I would let him drive my car.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Hardeman. “He’s away at school.”
I heard the nurse’s voice again. “It’s getting late, Mr. Hardeman.”
He made a face.
“Nurses are always like that, Mr. Hardeman,” I said. “Mine is always after me for one thing or another.”
“I guess so.”
“They tell me I won’t have a nurse next year when I grow up. Why do you have one?”
“I can’t walk,” he said. “I need someone to help me get around.”
“Did you have an accident?”
He shook his head. “I was sick.”
“When will you be better?”
“I’ll never walk again,” he said.
I was silent for a moment. “How do you know? My daddy says that miracles happen every day. And my daddy should know. He’s a doctor.” I had an idea. “Maybe he could come and see you. He’s a very good doctor.”
“I’m sure he is, Angelo,” Mr. Hardeman said gently. “But I’ve had enough of doctors for a while.” He gestured to the nurse. “Besides, I’m leaving for Florida on the weekend and I won’t be back for a long time.” He held out his hand. “Good-bye, Angelo.”