Thunder City

by Loren D. Estleman

  “He owns no stock?”

  “Just three percent. So you see, Mr. Borneo can say good-bye to his five thousand.”

  “Not if Ford succeeds.”

  “I thought we agreed that isn’t likely.”

  “The streetcar companies in Toledo and Monroe aren’t so sure. They’re dragging their feet on the interurban project until they see which way the wind blows. All these automobiles have got them wringing their hands like old maids. They’re afraid no one will ride the rails if he can make the same trip in a motorcar, and they’ll lose their investment. Meanwhile I’m sitting on thirteen hundred acres of farmland in Michigan and Ohio, and I’m no farmer. The property taxes are ruinous.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Those Kraut farmers drive a hard bargain. I had to liquefy every asset in order to close the deals with reasonable speed. At the time the streetcar companies were going full tilt with the interurban. If I didn’t act fast, they’d have negotiated with someone else for the right-of-way.”

  “So you borrowed against Democratic Party Funds.”

  Dolan’s smile put him in mind of an enormous leprechaun. “You’re a great man, Mr. Crownover. Great men aren’t hobbled by the laws of the land.”

  “We’re not talking about me.”

  “We are. You have as much interest as I have in seeing Ford’s latest attempt end in disaster. It would be a whiff of pepper in your son’s nose to bring him to his senses and back into the fold.”

  “Perhaps. I’m curious to find out how it would benefit you. According to your own figures, Ford’s failure would leave eighty-four automobile manufacturers still in business.”

  “Don’t ask me why—he’s stumbled twice before—but the man inspires confidence in unlikely places. Alexander Malcolmson’s sold on him, and Malcolmson’s anything but a fool. If Ford falls spectacularly enough this time, the aftershock will bring down most of his competitors. What’s left couldn’t frighten a kitten, much less those fellows at Detroit United Railways. He’s the solution to both our problems.”

  Abner swirled the liquid around in his glass. “What is your plan?”

  “It’s a bit complicated. If you’re free any day next week, I’ll introduce you to the one man who can bring it all about. Do you know the Detroit Shipbuilding Company on Orleans?”

  “I should think so. I went to school with the owner.”

  “It’s a small world. The manager is a friend. He’s offered me the use of his private office on the top floor for the meeting I have in mind. If you will name the day and the hour, I’ll make the arrangements with the others.”

  “What others?”

  Dolan flicked a column of ash to the floor, not without elegance. “You must allow an old politician some of his secrets. All will be revealed in the fullness of time.”

  “You’re ten years younger than I am,” Abner said. “One of the irritations of age is the number of pups who gather around me trying to convince me they belong to my generation, as if being old were some kind of exclusive club. It is not. It is a damn bore.”

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “Respect is not your stock-in-trade. I can spare one hour Thursday at noon.”

  He was about to return to the auditorium without awaiting a reply when the door to the ladies’ lounge opened and a striking woman glided their way on a sea of rustling taffeta. She was dressed entirely in black, with a gauzy shawl about her bare shoulders and a hat reminiscent of an old-time admiral’s fore-and-aft perched becomingly on a pile of glistening black hair. She coiled an arm inside one of Dolan’s and looked at Abner, lifting a pair of strong dark brows in expectation.

  “Abner Crownover,” the Irishman said, “may I present Countess Maribel Louisa diViareggio. The countess is visiting from her home in Tuscany. Maribel, Mr. Crownover is our most important citizen.”

  “Signor Crownover’s name is well known in my country. It was the fondest wish of my dear late husband to commission a coach from your great firm.” She laid a cool hand in Abner’s palm, extended automatically. The woman had the high cheekbones of a northern Italian and a smile Abner thought slightly mocking; but then he distrusted women who painted their faces, no matter how exotic their backgrounds. He withdrew his hand as soon as was decent.

  “Are you recently widowed?” he asked.

  “My poor Guglielmo was taken by fever at Christmas. I come here to visit relatives, and to forget.” Her accent, like her level gaze, was somewhat masculine.

  Abner noted that Dolan had shifted some of his great belly into his chest since the woman had joined them. Clearly she was his mistress. He was furious to think the fat wardheeler would parade her before him in this way, as if he were expected to approve on behalf of the society of men.

  He kept his voice level. “I’m afraid you’re missing the play.”

  “It is no great sacrifice,” she said. “I did not like it when I saw it in London. Travel does not appear to have improved it.”

  Dolan said. “The countess knows a good deal about the theater. Her family has patronized the arts for centuries.”

  Abner said something about returning to his wife, declined his head in a cursory bow, and took his leave, setting his glass on the shelf of the concession window on the way to the door. He did not know if his departure was graceful and did not much care. He did know that the play taking place that evening in the Lyceum had been performed for the first time at the Lincoln Theater on Broadway in New York City in April 1901. It had never played London. The woman was an impostor.

  The Detroit Shipbuilding Company, with plants in Detroit and Wyandotte, was the city’s biggest employer behind Crownover Coaches and the Michigan Stove Company. Its base of operations, a great brick box of a building at the foot of Orleans Street overlooking the Detroit River, was less than ten years old but already deteriorating; the constant shuddering clang of steel beams and hammering of rivets had cracked most of the window panes on the first two floors and shaken mortar out of the spaces between the bricks into dirty white heaps at the base of the structure. Steam-operated cranes swung smokestacks and anchor winches over the heads of the workers in the shipyard, where the naked superstructures of vessels in various stages of construction resembled a fleet of Arks. In the blistering July heat, a haze of teak dust, steel and brass filings, and pulverized concrete hung over the river, a man-made fog. The fishy stench of the water, combined with rank sweat and lubricating grease, clawed at the protective lining of milk in Abner’s stomach as he entered the plant through a side door and boarded the freight elevator. The operator was a squat Indian in overalls, whose brick-colored features betrayed no recognition of Detroit’s wealthiest citizen; nevertheless he knew where his passenger was headed. The car started moving before Abner had time to ask for the top floor.

  Cork baffles must have been inserted in the crawlspace between the ceiling of the plant proper and the offices beneath the roof. As suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, the cacophony of construction ceased the moment he stepped off the elevator. He crossed a narrow hallway with a thick Brussels carpet and opened a door with a pebbled-glass window bearing the number 300 in black numerals flecked with gold.

  Beyond was an ordinary reception room, equipped with a female secretary in a starched blouse and pince-nez glasses behind a golden oak desk with a brass upright telephone on top. Five wooden file cabinets lined the wall to the left, opposite an upholstered bench upon which sat a small, balding man in an unpressed suit. The man looked up as Abner entered, but made no attempt at conversation. Abner in turn ignored him for the secretary, who left her black box of a Remington typewriter to knock at a door at the back and announce Mr. Crownover’s arrival to whoever opened it from the other side. Immediately the door was flung wide and Jim Dolan beckoned Abner to enter.

  Today the big man wore immaculate gray gabardine, with a platinum watch chain across his vast middle and an emerald stickpin in his tie. His left hand was wrapped around a thick glass with amber l
iquid in it. Abner, a rigid “sundowner” during his own drinking days, kept from scowling through an effort of will. The man seemed determined to underscore his Irishness.

  “It was good of you to make time for us.” Dolan stood aside.

  The room was reminiscent of the library in a gentlemen’s club. The desk, where presumably the plant manager conducted business, was mounted on massive cherry-wood legs carved into the likenesses of seated lions, tucked away in a corner darkened by wooden slats covering the window. Leather-bound books with titles stamped in gold on their spines gleamed on walnut shelves built into the walls. A good painting of Walkin-the-Water, the first steamboat to navigate the Upper Great Lakes in 1818, leaned out in a giltwood frame from the wall above a fireplace with a gray marble surround and a bearskin on the hearth, its fur singed in several places by wandering sparks from the grate. Morsels of white ash clung to the scorched iron, undoubtedly cold since March. A small library table supported not books but a set of four cut-crystal decanters in a portable lock rack, labeled Scotch, Gin, Bourbon, and Rye. Another decanter of polished glass with a long narrow neck and a flat base as big around as a dinner plate contained a molasses-colored liquid, as black a port as Abner had ever seen. There were in addition a tray of sparkling glasses, a leather pipe humidor, a deep carved-ash box with its lid propped open to reveal cigars stacked inside, and a brass lighter of a type popular with executives too old to have served in the war with Spain, fashioned from a machine-gun cartridge case recovered from the fighting in Cuba. The room was, even to Abner’s mind, suffocatingly masculine; he thought that if a woman were to enter it unannounced, it would crack apart with a loud report, like a warm glass pitcher into which ice water was poured suddenly. He might as well have been in a barbershop or a Turkish bath.

  They were not alone. In a studded leather wing chair in the corner opposite the desk, smoking a cigar, sat a beautiful man with thick snowy hair brushed back from his temples and healthy widow’s peak and a vandyke beard trimmed to a perfect point. His skin was pink and unwrinkled, his eyes clear gray, and he wore a black morning coat, striped trousers without the suspicious crease that marked a garment as ready-to-wear, and gray kid spats on black patent leathers polished to a mirror gloss. The coat was buttoned to his neck, allowing only a glimpse of white collar and burgundy satin tie to show at his throat, which had begun to sag slightly, the only flaw in his finish. Abner, who took no small care with his own appearance, felt positively slovenly against such meticulous attention to detail. It had been thirty years since anyone had managed to intimidate him; he found the sensation intriguing.

  “William C. Whitney, Abner Crownover,” Dolan said. “Commodore Whitney was secretary of the navy under President Cleveland.”

  Whitney deposited his cigar in a crystal ashtray balanced upon the arm of his chair and rose, exhibiting none of the effort associated with age, to grasp Abner’s hand. The old man’s grip was dry and no firmer than it had to be. Abner, who could not recall the last time he had been presented to someone else rather than the other way around (Yes, he could; it was when he met President McKinley), approved. The custom of the new century seemed to be the importance of crushing another man’s metacarpi in establishing one’s station; by this reasoning, circus strong man Sandor the Magnificent occupied a position higher than Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  “Pierpont Morgan and I were discussing recently the relative merits of our nation’s largest cities,” announced Whitney, without preamble. “We agreed that Detroit boasted two strings to its bow: the birthplace of the Pullman car and the headquarters of Crownover Coaches.”

  Abner smiled, genuinely pleased by a statement which coming from anyone else he would have dismissed as empty flattery. “Not Michigan Stove?”

  “Our wives might have insisted upon including it. It’s quite possible there’s one in my kitchen. Never having visited the room, I couldn’t say.”

  “You’re not a drinking man, I think,” Dolan said. “I can send Aurora out for whatever you’d like.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “Then I won’t beat around the bush. I asked Commodore Whitney here because he’s organizing a group in which you and I should have more than passing interest.”

  “I’m not a political man,” Abner said.

  “It’s not a political group. I keep forgetting the name.” Dolan turned to Whitney, who had reseated himself and reclaimed his cigar from the ashtray.

  “We’re calling it the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers.”

  Abner said, “Now I know I’m not interested.”

  Dolan said, “The A.L.A.M. has no intention of producing an automobile. It exists mainly to prevent them from being produced, or at the very least to collect tribute from those who attempt it.”

  “Specifically, it’s been formed to exercise one man’s exclusive right to manufacture automobiles.” Whitney blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. “It may interest you to know, Mr. Crownover, that the internal combustion engine as a practical factor in transportation is not in public domain. It has been patented.”

  “By whom?”

  Dolan, who was standing by the door to the reception room, opened it and leaned out. “We’re ready now, Aurora.”

  A moment later, the man whom Abner had seen waiting outside walked in. He was taller than he appeared when seated, but that fact did not add to his stature. If anything, he appeared to be cowering inside himself. He had restless eyes and a habit of moving his head jerkily to take in the room and its occupants, like a particularly nervous bird. When he was introduced, his handshake confirmed Abner’s impression of the man’s relative unimportance in the world scheme. It was self-consciously firm, as if he practiced gripping one hand with the other in private when he should have been concentrating upon something more significant.

  “William Whitney, Abner Crownover, George Selden,” Dolan said. “Mr. Selden designed an automobile in 1895, and had the foresight to apply for a patent. Washington granted it. He is the only man in the United States who possesses the right to manufacture and sell automobiles. It is his intention, with our help, to prevent anyone who does not belong to the A.L.A.M. from doing so. That includes Henry Ford.”

  part three

  The Blight

  chapter ten

  Fire and Ice

  IN THE STICKY JULY HEAT a haze of sawdust and iron shavings hung motionless inside the Mack Avenue plant. It stirred to admit James Couzens, then closed in behind him like shifting sand. Harlan thought the congested bulldog face a portrait of a man about to be stricken. Couzens swept past him without looking in his direction and handed Ford a copy of the Detroit Evening News, folded to a full-page advertisement in the first section:

  NOTICE

  To Manufacturers, Dealers, Importers, Agents, and Users of Gasoline Automobiles

  No other manufacturers or importers are authorized to make or sell automobiles, and any person making, selling, or using such machines made or sold by any unlicensed manufacturers or importers will be liable for prosecution for infringement.

  Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers

  7 East Forty-second Street, New York

  Ford’s deep-set eyes raced over the legend. He alone of the small knot of company executives present had kept on his suitcoat and his necktie drawn to his collar. He alone was dry of perspiration. He returned the newspaper without comment.

  “Well?” Couzens’ face remained red.

  “Well, what?”

  “What are you planning to do about this? Can these cranks really sue our customers?”

  “Anyone can sue anyone. That’s how the courts work.”

  “Can they win?”

  “That depends on the judge and jury.”

  “Well, what in thunder is the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers? I can’t find them listed in any directory.”

  “That’s because the directories were printed before it existed.”

  “You seem to kno
w something about it.”

  “The automobile business is small. Not much goes on that I don’t know about. A man named Selden designed an automobile in ninety-five. He didn’t build it, but he did the next best thing. He took out a patent. The A.L.A.M. controls him and his patent. It intends to put out of business every manufacturer who doesn’t belong.”

  Harlan spoke up. “Are you planning to join?”

  Ford shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s a mule-headed son of a bitch, that’s why.” Couzens accordioned the newspaper between his short thick paws.

  “I am a mule-headed S.O.B.,” Ford agreed. “But that’s not why.”

  “Well, then, suppose you tell us.”

  A joyless smile tugged out the corners of the motorman’s thin mouth. “Because I tried, when I first heard about it. They won’t have me.”

  Two days after the advertisement appeared, another ran in its place:

  NOTICE

  To Dealers, Importers, Agents, and Users of our Gasoline Automobiles

  We will protect you against any prosecution for alleged infringement of patents.

  We are pioneers of the Gasoline Automobile. Our Mr. Ford also built the famous “999” Automobile which was driven by Barney Oldfield in New York this year, a mile in 55 4/5 seconds, on a circular track, which is the world record.

  Mr. Ford driving his own machine beat Mr. Winton at Grosse Pointe track in 1901. We have always been winners.

  Playing Couzens’ part now, carrying the newspaper containing the advertisement rolled up in one fist, Harlan had sought out Ford in his booth at the Pontchartrain bar, where the automobile man was drinking a glass of mineral water opposite John and Horace Dodge. The redheaded brothers were drinking gin.

  Harlan slid in beside Ford. “Do we have the resources to indemnify all our agents and customers?”