Thunder City

by Loren D. Estleman

  “That’s exactly how I know he’s the man to back.” His son remained calm, and was more than a little surprised to observe he was the calmer of the two. Always before his father had won his point when Harlan lost his temper and any chance of making a reasonable argument. “He doesn’t give up. The fact that he’s lost everything twice and is willing to risk losing it all over again is the best point in his favor. That’s how I know your A.L.A.M. will fail. You can defeat Ford, even kill him, but you can’t destroy him.”

  The silence that followed jangled like a brass bell. Muscles worked in Abner’s face; Harlan knew his father’s stomach had tied itself into burning knots. He did not speak until the spasm had subsided. “Is that what you came here to tell me?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “In that case you will do me the good service to leave.” He opened the ledger once again and bent his head to the columns.

  Abner III was standing in the hallway when Harlan left the office. He shook his head in answer to the question on his brother’s handsome face. “Tell Mother I’m sorry I couldn’t see her. I have an appointment downtown.” He didn’t bother to make the lie convincing, a mistake. Ab had troubles, but he wasn’t stupid.

  Ab touched Harlan’s arm. “She’s in the morning room. She told me not to let you leave before she spoke to you.”

  “The morning room?” Although he knew it was past dark, Harlan glanced involuntarily toward me face of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall. Ab’s agitated expression confirmed the message. A change in anyone’s routine was enough to upset him.

  Harlan climbed the stairs to the east room, tapped on a panel, and was invited inside. He had never been in the room in the evening—as far as he knew his mother had not either—and found it far less vapidly cheerful by the electric light of a small chandelier and tulip-shaped lamp on the spinet desk. The corn-fed mothers and their naked babies seemed to stare at him from the Cassatt prints on the walls with a speculative air, as if undecided whether this newcomer was welcome in their family circle. Edith Hampton Crownover was seated at the desk in a mauve dressing gown and matching suede slippers with her hair in a long braid over her left shoulder, the way she wore it to bed. Her son had not seen her thus since he had moved out, and felt a sharp pang of nostalgia at the sight. Her inkwell was capped and there was no stationery on the blotter. She appeared to have been doing nothing but sitting and waiting for her visitor, without so much as an open book for company. In that light, her son noticed for the first time the signs of age in her face. Shadows pooled in hollows beneath her eyes, and sharp lines bracketed her mouth nearly to the corners of her nostrils. He felt a cold flash of mortality then, as if the downstroke of a dark wing had inserted itself between him and the warmth of the sun.

  “Your father spent a good deal of time debating the merits of steam heat with the contractor when he built this house,” she said in lieu of greeting. “In the end he decided in favor of ductwork, and there have been no secrets under this roof since that day.” She inclined her head toward the scrolled bars of the heating vent in the baseboard opposite the desk.

  Responding to her unspoken instruction, Harlan bent and thumbed up the lever that closed the louvers behind the bars. “I’m sorry you had to be upset,” he said.

  “People have tried not to upset me my entire life. You will never know how upsetting that is. I need to ask you something. Will you promise to answer without worrying about whether it will distress me?”

  “I’ve never lied to you.”

  “Of course you have. We raised you to be a gentleman. Will you promise?”

  He nodded. He felt more intimidated in her presence than he had in his father’s. The novelty of the sensation was intriguing.

  “Is your interest in Henry Ford’s automobile company genuine? By that I mean to say, have you involved yourself in that industry because you believe in it, or merely because you know it will anger your father? I know a little something about rebellion, you see. I’m just enough of a coward to understand its attraction.”

  “Actually, it’s a little of both.” His response surprised him. Even as he gave it he realized he was speaking the truth.

  “But not equal parts.”

  After a long moment he said, “No.”

  Her eyes searched his. Then she nodded, just as if he had told her in which direction the balance tipped. “I’ve heard a bit about Mr. Ford. He is no gentleman.”

  “No, ma’am, he isn’t.”

  “Good.” She appeared to think about her answer, then nodded again and slid a hand inside the pocket of her dressing gown. From it she drew a slim skeleton key attached to a ring with a tiny gold rose for a fob and inserted the key in the bottom drawer of the desk to the right of the kneehole. The drawer contained a large photograph album bound in black cloth with leather corners, and Harlan thought at first that this was the object of her search. But she transferred it from the drawer to the top of the desk without a second glance and took out from beneath it a sheaf of paper bound with a tasseled cord, which she lifted into her lap. The sheet on top, wider than it was long, with an ornate border and skirled lettering printed in green ink, was instantly familiar to Harlan. He kept a stack of his own in a safety deposit box at the Detroit Savings Bank, although his was much smaller. It was a stock certificate belonging to Crownover Coaches.

  “I know nothing of the legalities,” confessed his mother. “I assume there is something I have to sign.”

  chapter thirteen

  Battle Lines

  ON RARE OCCASIONS, WHEN HE had been working particularly long hours at the plant, inspecting assemblies and examining bills of lading, Henry Ford rewarded himself with a meal out. When James Couzens found him in a booth in the Pontchartrain bar, the automobile manufacturer was peeling the shell away from the first of two hard-boiled eggs he had ordered with a tall glass of mineral water.

  Couzens had risen from his well-paid but amorphous position as Alexander Malcolmson’s business advisor to become general manager of the Ford Motor Company. The shift had taken place at the expense of his relationship with the coal merchant, when Couzens joined Ford in opposition to the six-cylinder Model K. There was, however, little sign of self-exaltation in his strong-jowled face as he slid into the seat opposite. His collar was damp for the unseasonably cool late-spring day and his glasses were fogged. When his beer came he ignored it, distractedly mopping at his lenses with a white lawn handkerchief bearing his monogram.

  “Well, good afternoon to you, too, Jim,” said his employer, dusting his egg lightly with salt. “You look worn out. Have you gone back shoveling coal for Malcolmson?” For reasons known only to himself, he seemed to take delight in the rift between the two.

  “You know damn well where I’ve been. What makes you so happy?”

  “I talked the Dodges into delivering their engines in crates built to my specifications. That means after they’re opened we can pull them apart and use the planks for floorboards without having to saw them. They won’t cost us a cent”

  “Good. It’s good you’re saving money. You’ll need it to invest in another line of work.”

  Ford munched on his egg. “Did you place those advertisements?”

  “No. That’s what I came to talk to you about. Both the Free Press and the Evening News are refusing to carry them. They’re afraid of a lawsuit.”

  “Bunk. Newspapers love lawsuits. The trust must have got to them.” He took a sip of water.

  “You seem awfully calm about it.”

  “We’ll just go national. Even the A.L.A.M. can’t silence them all.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. For a business that doesn’t make or sell anything they’re pulling in money hand over fist. Every day there’s a dozen new auto companies lining up waiting to give them the gelt.”

  “They’re not alone. We should top three hundred thousand in sales next month. I hate to say it, but Malcolmson’s race idea has really been selling those more expensive model
s. So you see, we don’t need advertising.”

  “You can’t go on winning races forever.”

  “I don’t see why not, but we won’t need to do that either. Not when we come out with our cheap model.”

  “How cheap?”

  “I’m thinking seven hundred.”

  “No one can make a car that cheap.”

  “You can if you make ’em all the same, like pins. I’ve got an idea, a little thing I picked up in a meatpacking plant in Chicago. All the carcasses zip through on rollers; one man skins, the next quarters, the next slices up the smaller cuts, and the last wraps them up for shipping. The carcasses move, the workers stay put. Get it?”

  “You want to run an automobile plant like a butcher shop?”

  “Old bear, do you have any idea how much a good butcher pulls down on a normal day?”

  Couzens, who at any given time was undecided whether Ford was a genius or as crazy as his nickname suggested, changed the subject. “I’m worried about this new A.L.A.M. move. Up until now the newspapers have been your biggest champion. Editors love rugged individualism.”

  “Editors don’t run newspapers. Newspapers are run by their advertising staffs. If they’re turning down Ford ads it means they’re getting more from the Selden people.”

  “We can’t afford to outbid them.”

  “We won’t try.” Ford leaned forward. His tiny sharp eyes glittered and his long right index finger tapped the top of the table. “Newspapers are bunk. They’re in business to make money and nothing else. The news is just something they report so that their subscribers might stumble over an advertisement while they’re reading. Without news, they wouldn’t give them a second glance. Automobiles are news. All we have to do is keep making news and they’ll have to write about us.”

  “Aren’t we in business to make money?”

  “We’re in business to make money and use it, give employment, and send out the car where people can use it. And incidentally to make money.”

  “Like the newspapers.”

  “You’re not listening. If they could sell advertising without having to employ reporters and editors and typographers, they would. Turn it around. If you set out to employ a great army of men at high wages and reduce the selling price of your car so that a lot of people can afford it, if you give all that, the money will fall into your hands. You can’t get out of it.”

  Couzens smiled for the first time that day, however tentatively he felt it. “That’s good. It’s horseshit, but it’s good. But can you get a paper to print it?”

  “They’ll have to. It’s what I intend to say in court.”

  The smile fell off his face. “We’ve been served?”

  “Not yet. They haven’t the guts so far. We’re going to have to force them to do it.”

  “How?”

  The Ford finger beat a tattoo on the table. “By making and selling more cars than anyone else in the business. By making and selling more of anything that’s ever been made and sold by anyone in any business. I’ve already made arrangements to lease a new plant on Piquette Avenue, twice as big as the Mack. We’re expanding.”

  “With what?”

  “With our profits so far. What have I just been telling you?”

  “We don’t use all the space we have now. It’s more than adequate.”

  “‘More than adequate’ is not this company’s motto. I’m introducing a new model, cheaper and more durable than anything we’ve produced. It may take a couple of years to stretch out the kinks, but by the time we’re through, you won’t be able to throw a shoe anywhere in this country without hitting one. In five years there will be a Ford in every garage in America. And we’re going to pay each and every employee five dollars a day to build it.”

  “That’s crazy! Roosevelt isn’t paid that much.”

  “Roosevelt couldn’t hang a door on the Model C.”

  “If you start paying wages like that, you’re either the greatest man in history or the craziest. Every manufacturer in the country will be screaming for your hide.”

  Ford sat back, smiling his tight smile. “Go and tell the newspapers not to write about that.”

  “I can safely recommend the linguini, although I haven’t tried it,” Sal Borneo said. “The chef makes his own pasta. The strands are as fine as cornsilk. It is said to be the reason Caruso accepted his last booking in Detroit.”

  Jim Dolan glowered at the stained menu and said nothing. The restaurant, with its murals of Roman ruins, Chianti bottles strung from the ceiling, and constant foreign jabber drifting over from the other tables, might have been in Palermo instead of ten minutes from Corktown by streetcar. He had wanted to hold this meeting in his own neighborhood, but had been unable to think of an excuse to give colleagues who saw him with the Sicilian. The bastard knew that, too, and had used his people’s own low social status to gain the upper hand in his home ballpark. What was that the wop was always saying? “Weakness is strength.”

  “Big Jim?” Borneo’s tone was polite. The son of a bitch was nothing if not polite.

  He looked up and became aware of the little old waiter standing by the table. “Can I get a plate of meatballs without the spaghetti?”

  He noted that the waiter glanced at Borneo before answering. “Si, Signor. Wine?”

  “Beer.”

  The shriveled little man took his menu, paused to refill Borneo’s glass from the water pitcher on the table, and withdrew.

  “You’re not eating?” Dolan asked.

  The Sicilian shook his head, an almost infinitesimal movement. For one so thin he seemed to expend as little energy as possible. Dolan, who valued those who valued leisure, should have taken comfort from that. He didn’t. “I eat once a day, at breakfast.”

  “Call yourself an Italian?”

  “Rome was destroyed by its appetites. While others are spearing calimari, I’m thinking. You might try abstaining from liquor the next time you visit with your friends at the Shamrock. What you learn may surprise you.”

  Dolan’s beer came, frothing over the schuper’s rounded lip. For answer he drank off half of it in one draft, thumped down the glass, and wiped his lip with a knuckle, glaring defiance.

  Borneo’s shrug was hardly a movement at all, and his companion was left thinking that he had come off the worse in the discussion. In a mahogany-colored light, weight three-piece with a flaring white handkerchief and pale yellow necktie, Borneo looked like a civilized Indian in a medicine act. The moustache only accentuated the hawklike lines of his face.

  “I heard from Maribel this week,” he said.

  “You mean Thelma.” Dolan hadn’t seen her since they’d parted at the Shamrock Club.

  “She prefers the name she used in Detroit. I think it suits her better. She writes a good letter, although her spelling is creative. She’s appearing with Bert Williams at the Gotham Theater in New York. A nonspeaking part, which is a mercy.”

  “I didn’t know you were pen pals.”

  “It was in the way of a thank-you note. I paid her fare east, with a bonus for her work here. Apparently I exceeded the Broadway scale.”

  “On her feet or on her back?”

  “Your anger is misdirected. In any case the regard with which you’re held in this community is more assured than ever. The November elections proved that. You have made all the right choices.”

  “I can’t see it that way as long as I’m paying property taxes in Ohio with nothing to show for them. You told me Ford would be out of business by now. The streetcar companies are still dragging their feet on the interurban.”

  “I did not say that. Ford is a gamester. Give him a penny and he will play it up into thousands. You can take away the thousands, but there is always someone who is willing to give him another penny. In such cases it becomes necessary to destroy the man.”

  “I’ll not do murder.”

  “I am not suggesting that. You can kill a man and still fail to destroy him. Where there is no apparent weakness yo
u must look to his strengths. What in your opinion is Ford’s greatest asset?”

  “He’s mule-headed. This is his third run at the same business.”

  “Perhaps. He is also popular. Reporters love him because there is no predicting what bold thing he will say or do next. Their editors like him because he sells newspapers. The public adores him because he came up from nothing and is a good family man besides. America is a moral nation. That’s its great strength as well as its most appalling weakness. It disillusions easily.”

  Dolan’s meatballs arrived, a heaping bowl slathered with thick red sauce, with a garlic loaf on the side. They fell silent while the waiter laid out the items from the tray. When the waiter left, Dolan remained motionless, watching Borneo. “Whatever you’re chewing, spit it out.”

  “With your help, we’ve succeeded in pressuring the local newspaper advertising staffs not to accept Ford advertisements,” Borneo said. “The editors and reporters aren’t influenced so easily. They can be bribed, but they are not honorable about such arrangements. They have been known to take the money and print what they want regardless. Doing business with them is unstable.”

  “I’m sure you have methods to deal with those who won’t come through in such matters.”

  “Of course. But they are worthless if the lesson they teach will not be learned. Journalists are lower organisms who cannot be made to understand fear. Their instincts are bestially simple: anything for the sake of a story. Run over a dog, and if he survives he will chase your wagon again the next time you pass, if it means dragging his crippled legs behind him. Killing him will not prevent other dogs from doing the same thing. It is most frustrating to an intelligent man.”