“Betsy, suppose you have a son?” Max said.
“Suppose I do?” she retorted.
“Don’t you see what that would mean to my family?” he asked. “I have three daughters and no son to carry on the name. My father would be in seventh heaven.”
“That’s a great reason,” Betsy said sarcastically. “And in case I have a girl or a miscarriage, I suppose I’ll get a second chance.”
“Betsy, you’re being foolish!” Max said.
“No, she’s not being foolish,” Bobbie said suddenly. They all looked at her in surprise. She ignored the men and addressed herself to Betsy. “You’re right, and ordinarily I would agree with you and even help you do what you want. But this time you’re not being fair.”
“I am being fair,” Betsy said heatedly. “To Max and Rita. To myself.”
“But not to your child,” Bobbie said. “I don’t have to tell you that Max is a fine man, you already know that. You owe it to your child to know his father. You also owe it to your child not to deny him his heritage.”
Betsy was silent. After a moment, she spoke. “At least you’re honest,” she said. “You put it exactly where it’s at, don’t you?”
“I try,” Bobbie said. “You made a mistake.”
Betsy suddenly understood that Bobbie had known all along why she had acted as she did. Angelo. To show him that she too could do as he did; she realized now she had been stupid.
“Don’t make another mistake,” Bobbie said quietly.
“Okay, I’ll go through with it,” Betsy said quickly. Then the tears came to her eyes.
Nothing ever worked out the way you wanted it.
Chapter Sixteen
“We’re in trouble,” Angelo said. “Big trouble.”
“So what else is new?” Rourke asked.
Duncan smiled grimly. “I’ve spent forty-five years of my life in this business and I’ve always been in trouble.”
“Not like this time,” Angelo said seriously. He got to his feet and paced the long length of the living room. He stopped and looked out the windows of the Pontchartrain. Across the street the marquee of Cobo Hall advertised the coming events. The next big attraction was a convention of brassiere manufacturers. He half smiled to himself at the ridiculousness of it. Those men had to have a ball. All they had to think about was tits.
He came back to them. “I wouldn’t have brought you both in from the Coast if I weren’t concerned.”
They nodded attentively without speaking.
“Last week Bancroft told me that we were losing dealers and that we stood a good chance of blowing the dealer network if we dropped the Sundancer.” They started to break in but he held up a restraining hand. “We checked it out. It’s our friend Simpson again and the IASO. There’s been a whole campaign mounted against us, and right now they are so far in front of us, there’s nothing we can do to catch up to them.”
“What’s that guy got against us?” Duncan asked “We’ve never done anything to him.”
“I don’t know,” Angelo said. “But I’m trying to find out. His money has to come from somewhere. He hasn’t the resources to pull off a thing as large as this on his own.”
He was silent as he walked to the bar and refilled his drink. He looked at them. They nodded and he made fresh drinks for them. He brought the drinks over and dropped into a chair opposite.
“What’s going to happen?” Tony asked.
“It’s anybody’s guess,” Angelo replied. “My own feeling is that the board will cut back the Betsy program at next Friday’s meeting and vote to keep the Sundancer.”
“But I’m committed to seventy million dollars worth of materials,” Rourke said.
“I know that.” Angelo looked at him. “But a lot of that would be absorbed if they continue with the Sundancer. That’s not the point, however. You have to measure the material loss against the loss of the entire company.”
“You sound as if we’re already dead,” the Scotsman said dourly.
“Not yet,” Angelo answered. “I have several ideas. But I don’t know how practical they are.”
“Try them on us,” Rourke said.
Angelo looked at him. “What are the chances of building the Big Betsy engine in our Coast plant instead of the Betsy Minis?”
“No chance,” Rourke said flatly. “It would take us another year to retool and even then we would only have the capacity for about fifty thousand units a year at the maximum.”
“How many Minis were you planning on?”
“A hundred thousand.”
Angelo thought carefully. The Betsy Mini was their answer to the sub-compacts. The Volks, Pinto, Vega, Gremlin. It was styled simply, much like the British minis, which were so successfully copied by the Japanese Honda, but it gave greater power and better performance and was priced competitively at $1,899.
“And how many Silver Sprites?”
“Seven to ten thousand,” Rourke answered.
The Betsy Silver Sprite was the sports car of the line, much the same as the Corvette was to the Chevrolet. It was the only car of the line in which all the performance wraps were off. Everything about it was high performance. Axle, heavy-duty suspension, steering, reinforced chassis. The speedometer stopped at 220 miles per hour but in straightaway tests they had the car up to 270.
Angelo reached for a cigarette. “How soon can you get into production?”
Rourke and Duncan looked at each other. Duncan supplied the answer. “If we get the okay now, we could have cars coming off the line in November.”
Angelo looked at him. This was the beginning of July. November was five months away. “No sooner?”
Duncan shook his head. “That’s pushing it, laddie. We’ll be lucky to make it.”
Angelo was silent. That left the Betsy JetStar, the mainstay of the entire line. There were two basic models, the smaller of which corresponded to the Nova and Maverick, the other, slightly larger than the Chevelle and Torino, yet priced within the same range. It was for this car the Sundancer factory was needed. It was the only plant with the capability of turning out two hundred thousand units per year or better.
He put down his drink. “That leaves us with only one choice. To go abroad to build our engines.”
“Number One isn’t going to like it,” Duncan said. “He wanted this to be an all-American car.”
“He won’t have any choice if he wants to get the car on the market,” Angelo said. “Even he has to realize you can’t market a volume car if your dealer network falls apart.”
“It’s late in the game to set up a plant somewhere else that would have the capacity we need,” Rourke said.
“We have two shots,” said Angelo. “Matsuoka in Japan and Waggoner Fabrik in West Germany. Both of them have the industrial capacity and both have expressed interest in licensing the engine from us for their own use.”
“If we give them a license,” Duncan said, “we’re only building our own competition.”
“If we’re successful we won’t be able to hold it back,” Angelo said. “Look at what happened with the Wankel. GM here has the rights to it and Toyo Kogyo already has its version on the market.” He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray and lit another. “It might even work out to our advantage. If they’re eager enough we can set up joint venture companies with them.”
Rourke nodded. “That could mean a lot of money for us.”
“Forget the money part of it,” Angelo said. “The important part of the deal is that they must guarantee to deliver a minimum of at least one hundred and fifty thousand engines to us in the next year.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Rourke said. “Those babies are sharp traders. They’ll smell we’re in trouble.”
“It’s up to you to convince them that we’re not,” Angelo said. He got to his feet. “Tony, you take Japan, Duncan, you have the Germans.”
“Okay,” Rourke said. “When do we leave?”
“Right now,” Angelo answered.
Duncan got to his feet. “I’m getting too old to be running around like that,” he grumbled.
Angelo grinned at him. “You know you love it. All those big blond frauleins.”
“Laddie, at my age all I can do is look,” the Scotsman said. “And if I haven’t my glasses on, even that doesn’t help much.”
Angelo laughed. “You’ll make out all right.”
Duncan looked at him. “What about the Mini and the Silver Sprite? Do you want us to put them in the works?”
“Not yet,” Angelo said. “That will have to hold until after the board meeting on Friday. The decision has to come from them.”
The board room was filled with smoke and tension. John Bancroft had made his report simply and without dramatics. But the eventual result was clear to all of them. Without the full dealer network, the Betsy didn’t stand a chance.
Angelo cut into the welter of futile conversation. “We’ll deal with the problem of Simpson at a later date. That’s not the issue before us at the moment. Our problem is how do we do both, get the Betsy on the market, and, at the same time, deliver the Sundancer to the dealers so that we keep them satisfied?”
Silence fell around the table as they turned to look at him. He continued. “We all recognize that if we do not have the Sundancer plant available to us, there’s no way we can produce the Betsy JetStar in enough quantities to make the entire venture profitable as well as practical. However there are certain solutions available to us. They are being explored at this very moment.
“Tony Rourke is in Japan talking to the Matsuoka Hevay Industries and John Duncan is in West Germany speaking to Waggoner Fabrik about manufacturing JetStar engines for us. If a satisfactory agreement can be reached with them, it will be possible to produce the JetStar on the third and fourth assembly lines of the Sundancer plant. It would mean an additional investment to get these lines in operative condition again because they have not been in use for many years, but I think the investment will be reasonable in view of our over-all program.”
He was silent for a moment, then while a murmur of approval rose around the table, he spoke again. “Of course, you realize, gentlemen, we have no choice, I think, but to delay and reevaluate the Betsy project.”
“No, goddamn it!” Number One’s fist slammed into the table. “I won’t have any part of it! The Betsy is an American car and it will be built right here. All of it. I don’t intend to go crawling to goddamn foreigners to help us do what we taught them!”
In contrast with Number One’s vehemence, Loren III’s voice was calm, almost cool. “You’re being most unreasonable, Grandfather. I think Angelo has stated our position very clearly and fairly. We have no choice but to follow that path.”
“No fucking foreigners will have anything to do with this car as long as I’m alive!” Number One snapped. “It’s my company and my money and I will say what’s going to be done with it!”
Loren stared at his grandfather steadily. “You can’t do that any more,” he said quietly, almost patiently. “The time when a company could be run at the whim of one man who could dictate its life-or-death policy is over. Men like you, Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler belong to another time. You cannot make decisions based solely on your own equity and selfish vanity. There are thirty thousand employees of this company, many of whom have devoted their lives to it, and you have no right to play Russian roulette with their welfare and their future. They have earned as much right to this company as you have and deserve to get every consideration that you expect. We have no choice but to continue with the Sundancer.”
“Goddamn it! No!” Number One roared. He held his arms out in front of him. Quickly he undid the buttons of his jacket sleeves, revealing the shirt cuffs beneath. With a pull, he tore the cuff links from them and held them out toward them in his hand. They were gold and shining in his palm.
“Look at these cuff links!” he ordered in an angry voice. “They are models of the first Sundancer I ever built. That was fifty years ago. You talk of living in the past when all you want to do is cling to it!”
He snapped his arm violently, throwing the cuffs links away from him. The heavy links crashed into the casement windows. The fragile glass gave way with a tinkling sound and the cuff links disappeared outside.
He turned back to the silent room. His voice was calm and quiet now. “The Sundancer is dead, gentlemen. This meeting is over.”
Silently they filed from the room until only Angelo, Loren III and Number One were left. After a moment, Loren III got to his feet.
He looked down at Number One. “You know I don’t intend to let you get away with this. You can ride roughshod over all the others, but not me. I’m going to fight you on this with everything I have in me.”
Number One smiled. “You do just that,” he said in an almost pleasant voice. “But don’t come cryin’ to me when you get the shit kicked out of you.”
“I don’t intend to lose,” Loren III said. Now he sounded exactly like his grandfather. “Someone has to care about the responsibilities this company has assumed toward its employees over the years. And there’s one thing you seem to forget.”
Number One didn’t speak.
“Under the law, minority stockholders have some privileges. My sister and I own twenty percent of this company. And Anne has given me her proxy. Neither of us intends to allow you to destroy this company.”
“And I own eighty percent,” Number One said.
“No,” Loren answered calmly. “You vote eighty percent. You own only forty-one percent. There’s a big difference.” He turned and walked from the room.
Number One watched the door close behind his grandson, then turned to Angelo. “The kid’s developing some gumption,” he said almost respectfully.
Angelo studied him silently for a moment before he spoke. “He’s not entirely wrong. You’re going into an S-curve at three hundred miles an hour.”
Number One stared at him. “Who the hell’s side are you on anyway?”
Angelo didn’t answer. The telephone on the table in front of him began to ring. He picked it up.
“I have a call for you from the Bahamas, Mr. Perino,” the operator said.
He was puzzled. “Who’s calling me?”
There was a click on the line, a moment’s silence, then the operator came back on. “Miss Elizabeth Hardeman.”
He shot a look at Number One. “Put her on,” he told the operator.
“Angelo?” Betsy’s voice came on the line.
“Yes.” There was a faint hum in the wires like the sound of the surf breaking behind her.
“Angelo.” Her voice was strained and tense as if she had been crying. “This is the last time I’m going to ask you. Will you marry me?”
He tried to make a joke of it. “When?”
“No funnies, Angelo,” she said sharply. “I mean it. Right now. Right this minute. This is the last time.”
He still tried to keep it light. “I told you, Miss Elizabeth. I’m not the marrying kind.”
Abruptly the telephone went dead in his hand. Slowly he put it down. She sounded wild, almost as if she were stoned out of her mind. He looked across the table at Number One.