“And they haven’t?”
“Christ, no! We give a guy every possible break because we want the thing to work. Something else we do is give people who have trouble getting to work a cheap alarm clock; you’d be surprised how many have never owned one. The company let me buy a gross. In my office I’ve got alarm clocks the way other men have paper clips.”
Brett said, “I’ll be damned!” It seemed incongruous to think of a gargantuan auto company, with annual wage bills running into billions, worrying about a few sleepyhead employees waking up.
“The point I’m getting at,” Leonard Wingate said, “is that if a hard core worker doesn’t show up, either to finish a training course or at the plant, whoever’s in charge is supposed to notify one of my special people. Then, unless it’s a hopeless case, they follow through.”
“But that hasn’t been happening? It’s why you’re frustrated?”
“That’s part of it. There’s a whole lot more.” The Personnel man downed the last of his Scotch. “Those courses we have where the hard core people get oriented—they last eight weeks; there are maybe two hundred on a course.”
Brett motioned for a refill to their drinks. When the bartender had gone, he prompted, “Okay, so a course with two hundred people.”
“Right. An instructor and a woman secretary are in charge. Between them, those two keep all course records, including attendance. They pass out paychecks, which arrive weekly in a bunch from Headquarters Accounting. Naturally, the checks are made out on the basis of the course records.” Wingate said bitterly, “It’s the instructor and the secretary—one particular pair. They’re the ones.”
“The ones what?”
“Who’ve been lying, cheating, stealing from the people they’re employed to help.”
“I guess I can figure some of it,” Brett said. “But tell me, anyway.”
“Well, as the course goes along, there are dropouts—for the reasons I told you, and for others. It always happens; we expect it. As I said, if our department’s told, we try to persuade some of the people to come back. But what this instructor and secretary have been doing is not reporting the dropouts, and recording them present. So the checks for the dropouts have kept coming in, and then that precious pair has kept those checks themselves.”
“But the checks are made out by name. They can’t cash them.”
Wingate shook his head. “They can and they have. What happens is eventually this pair does report that certain people have stopped coming, so the company checks stop, too. Then the instructor goes around with the checks he’s saved and finds the people they’re made out to. It isn’t difficult; all addresses are on file. The instructor tells a cock-and-bull story about the company wanting the money back, and gets the checks endorsed. After that, he can cash them anywhere. I know it happens that way. I followed the instructor for an afternoon.”
“But how about later, when your employee relations people go visiting? You say they hear about the dropouts eventually. Don’t they find out about the checks?”
“Not necessarily. Remember, the people we’re dealing with aren’t communicative. They’re dropouts in more ways than one, usually, and never volunteer information. It’s hard enough getting answers to questions. Besides that, I happen to think there’ve been some bribes passed around. I can’t prove it, but there’s a certain smell.”
“The whole thing stinks.”
Brett thought: Compared with what Leonard Wingate had told him, his own irritations of today seemed minor. He asked, “Were you the one who uncovered all this?”
“Mostly, though one of my assistants got the idea first. He was suspicious of the course attendance figures; they looked too good. So the two of us started checking, comparing the new figures with our own previous ones, then we got comparable figures from other companies. They showed what was going on, all right. After that, it was a question of watching, catching the people. Well, we did.”
“So what happens now?”
Wingate shrugged, his figure hunched over the bar counter. “Security’s taken over; it’s out of my hands. This afternoon they brought the instructor and the secretary downtown—separately. I was there. The two of them broke down, admitted everything. The guy cried, if you’ll believe it.”
“I believe it,” Brett said. “I feel like crying in a different way. Will the company prosecute?”
“The guy and his girl friend think so, but I know they won’t.” The tall Negro straightened up; he was almost a head higher than Brett DeLosanto. He said mockingly, “Bad public relations, y’know. Wouldn’t want it in the papers, with our company’s name. Besides, the way my bosses see it, the main thing is to get the money back; seems there’s quite a few thousand.”
“What about the other people? The ones who dropped out, who might have come back, gone on working …”
“Oh come, my friend, you’re being ridiculously sentimental.”
Brett said sharply, “Knock it off! I didn’t steal the goddam checks.”
“No, you didn’t. Well, about those people, let me tell you. If I had a staff six times the size I have, and if we could go back through all the records and be sure which names to follow up on, and if we could locate them after all these weeks …”
The bartender appeared. Wingate’s glass was empty, but he shook his head. For Brett’s benefit he added, “We’ll do what we can. It may not be much.”
“I’m sorry,” Brett said. “Damn sorry.” He paused, then asked, “You married?”
“Yes, but not working at it.”
“Listen, my girl friend’s cooking dinner at my place. Why not join us?”
Wingate demurred politely. Brett insisted.
Five minutes later they left for Country Club Manor.
Barbara Zaleski had a key to Brett’s apartment and was there when they arrived, already busy in the kitchen. An aroma of roasting lamb was drifting out.
“Hey, scullion!” Brett called from the hallway. “Come, meet a guest.”
“If it’s another woman,” Barbara’s voice sailed back, “you can cook your own dinner. Oh, it isn’t. Hi!”
She appeared with a tiny apron over the smart, knit suit she had arrived in, having come directly from the OJL agency’s Detroit office. The suit, Brett thought appreciatively, did justice to Barbara’s figure; he sensed Leonard Wingate observing the same thing. As usual, Barbara had dark glasses pushed up into her thick, chestnut-brown hair, which she had undoubtedly forgotten. Brett reached out, removed the glasses and kissed her lightly.
He introduced them, informing Wingate, “This is my mistress.”
“He’d like me to be,” Barbara said, “but I’m not. Telling people I am is his way of getting even.”
As Brett had expected, Barbara and Leonard Wingate achieved a rapport quickly. While they talked, Brett opened a bottle of Dom Perignon which the three of them shared. Occasionally Barbara excused herself to check on progress in the kitchen.
During one of her absences, Wingate looked around the spacious apartment living room. “Pretty nice pad.”
“Thanks.” When Brett leased the apartment a year and a half ago he had been his own interior decorator, and the furnishings reflected his personal taste for modern design and flamboyant coloring. Bright yellows, mauves, vermilions, cobalt greens predominated, yet were used imaginatively, so that they merged as an attractive whole. Lighting complemented the colors, highlighting some areas, diminishing others. The effect was to create—ingeniously—a series of moods within a single room.
At one end of the living room was an open door to another room.
Wingate asked, “Do you do much of your work here?”
“Some.” Brett nodded toward the open door. “There’s my Thinkolarium. For when I need to get creative and be uninterrupted away from that wired-for-sound Taj Mahal we work in.” He motioned vaguely in the direction of the company’s Design-Styling Center.
“He does other things there, too,” Barbara said. She had returned as
Brett spoke. “Come in, Leonard. I’ll show you.” Wingate followed her, Brett trailing.
The other room, while colorful and pleasant also, was equipped as a studio, with the paraphernalia of an artist-designer. A pile of tissue flimsies on the floor beside a drafting table showed where Brett had raced through a series of sketches, tearing off each flimsy, using a new one from the pad beneath as the design took shape. The last sketch in the series—a rear fender style—was pinned to a cork board.
Wingate pointed to it. “Will that one be for real?”
Brett shook his head. “You play with ideas, get them out of your system, like belching. Sometimes, that way, you get a notion which will lead to something permanent in the end. This isn’t one.” He pulled the flimsy down and crumpled it. “If you took all the sketches which precede any new car, you could fill Cobo Hall with paper.”
Barbara switched on a light. It was in a corner of the room where an easel stood, covered by a cloth. She removed the cloth carefully.
“And then there’s this,” Barbara said. “This isn’t for discarding.”
Beneath the cloth was a painting in oils, almost—but not quite finished.
“Don’t count on it,” Brett said. He added, “Barbara’s very loyal. At times it warps her judgment.”
The tall, gray-haired Negro shook his head. “Not this time, it hasn’t.” He studied the painting with admiration.
It was of a collection of automotive discards, heaped together. Brett had assembled the materials for his model—laid out on a board ahead of the easel, and lighted by a spotlight—from an auto wrecker’s junk pile. There were several burned-brown spark plugs, a broken camshaft, a discarded oil can, the entrails of a carburetor, a battered headlight, a moldy twelve-volt battery, a window handle, a section of radiator, a broken wrench, some assorted rusty nuts and washers. A steering wheel, its horn ring missing, hung lopsidedly above.
No collection could have been more ordinary, less likely to inspire great art. Yet, remarkably, Brett had made the junk assortment come alive, had conveyed to his canvas both rugged beauty and a mood of sadness and nostalgia. These were broken relics, the painting seemed to say: burned-out, unwanted, all usefulness departed; nothing was ahead save total disintegration. Yet once, however briefly, they had had a life, had functioned, representing dreams, ambitions, achievements of mankind. One knew that all other achievements—past, present, future, no matter how acclaimed—were doomed to end similarly, would write their epilogues in garbage dumps. Yet was not the dream, the brief achievement—of itself—enough?
Leonard Wingate had remained, unmoving, before the canvas. He said slowly, “I know a little about art. You’re good. You could be great.”
“That’s what I tell him.” After a moment, Barbara replaced the cloth on the easel and turned out the light. They went back into the living room.
“What Barbara means,” Brett said, pouring more Dom Perignon, “is that I’ve sold my soul for a mess of pottage.” He glanced around the apartment. “Or maybe a pot of messuage.”
“Brett might have managed to do designing and fine art,” Barbara told Wingate, “if he hadn’t been so darned successful at designing. Now, all he has time to do where painting’s concerned is to dabble occasionally. With his talent, it’s a tragedy.”
Brett grinned. “Barbara has never seen the high beam—that designing a car is every bit as creative as painting. Or that cars are my thing.” He remembered what he had told the two students only a few weeks ago: You breathe, eat, sleep cars … wake up in the night, it’s cars you think about … like a religion. Well, he still felt that way himself, didn’t he? Maybe not with the same intensity as when he first came to Detroit. But did anyone really keep that up? There were days when he looked at others working with him, wondering. Also, if he were honest, there were other reasons why cars should stay his “thing.” Like what you could do with fifty thousand dollars a year, to say nothing of the fact that he was only twenty-six and much bigger loot would come in a few years more. He asked Barbara lightly, “Would you still breeze in to cook dinner if I lived in a garret and smelled of turpentine?”
She looked at him directly. “You know I would.”
While they talked of other things, Brett decided: He would finish the canvas, which he hadn’t touched in weeks. The reason he had stayed away from it was simple. Once he started painting, it absorbed him totally and there was just so much total absorption which any life could stand.
Over dinner, which tasted as good as it had smelled, Brett steered the conversation to what Leonard Wingate had told him in the bar downtown. Barbara, after hearing of the cheating and victimization of hard core workers, was shocked and even angrier than Brett.
She asked the question which Brett DeLosanto hadn’t. “What color are they—the instructor and the secretary who took the checks?”
Wingate raised his eyebrows. “Does it make a difference?”
“Listen,” Brett said. “You know damn well it does.”
Wingate answered tersely, “They’re white. What else?”
“They could have been black.” It was Barbara, thoughtfully.
“Yes, but the odds are against it.” Wingate hesitated. “Look, I’m a guest here …”
Brett waved a hand. “Forget it!”
There was a silence between them, then the gray-haired Negro said, “I like to make certain things clear, even among friends. So don’t let this uniform fool you: the Oxxford suit, a college diploma, the job I have. Oh, sure, I’m the real front office nigger, the one they point to when they say: You see, a black man can go high. Well, it’s true for me, because I was one of the few with a daddy who could pay for a real education, which is the only way a black man climbs. So I’ve climbed, and maybe I’ll make it to the top and be a company director yet. I’m still young enough, and I’ll admit I’d like it; so would the company. I know one thing. If there’s a choice between me and a white man, and providing I can cut the mustard, I’ll get the job. That’s the way the dice are rolling, baby; they’re weighted my way because the p.r. department and some others would just love to shout: Look at us! We’ve got a board room black!”
Leonard Wingate sipped his coffee, which Barbara had served.
“Well, as I said, don’t let the façade fool you. I’m still a member of my race.” Abruptly he put the cup down. Across the dining table his eyes glared at Brett and Barbara. “When something happens like it did today, I don’t just get angry. I burn and loathe and hate—everything that’s white.”
The glare faded. Wingate raised his coffee cup again, though his hand was shaking.
After a moment he said, “James Baldwin wrote this: ‘Negroes in this country are treated as none of you would dream of treating a dog or a cat.’ And it’s true—in Detroit, just as other places. And for all that’s happened in the past few years, nothing’s really changed in most white people’s attitudes, below the surface. Even the little that’s being done to ease white consciences—like hard core hiring, which that white pair tried to screw, and did—is only surface scratching. Schools, housing, medicine, hospitals, are so bad here it’s unbelievable—unless you’re black; then you believe it because you know, the hard way. But one day, if the auto industry intends to survive in this town—because the auto industry is Detroit—it will have to come to grips with improving the black life of the community, because no one else is going to do it, or has the resources or the brains to.” He added, “Just the same, I don’t believe they will.”
“Then there’s nothing,” Barbara said. “Nothing to hope for.” There was emotion in her voice.
“No harm in hoping,” Leonard Wingate answered. He added mockingly, “Hope don’t cost none. But no good fooling yourself either.”
Barbara said slowly, “Thank you for being honest, for telling it like it is. Not everyone does that, as I’ve reason to know.”
“Tell him,” Brett urged.”
“Tell him about your new assignment.”
“I’ve been given a job to do,” Barbara told Wingate. “By the advertising agency I work for, acting for the company. It’s to make a film. An honest film about Detroit—the inner city.”
She was aware of the other’s instant interest.
“I first heard about it,” Barbara explained, “six weeks ago.”
She described her briefing in New York by Keith Yates-Brown.
It had been the day after the abortive “rustle pile” session at which the OJL agency’s initial ideas for Orion advertising had been routinely presented and, just as routinely, brushed aside.
As the creative director, Teddy Osch, predicted during their martini-weighted luncheon, Keith Yates-Brown, the account supervisor, had sent for Barbara next day.
In his handsome office on the agency’s top floor, Yates-Brown had seemed morose in contrast with his genial, showman’s manner of the day before. He looked grayer and older, too, and several times in the later stages of their conversation turned toward his office window, looking across the Manhattan skyline toward Long Island Sound, as if a portion of his mind was far away. Perhaps, Barbara thought, the strain of permanent affability with clients required a surly counterbalance now and then.
There had certainly been nothing friendly about Yates-Brown’s opening remark after they exchanged “good mornings.”
“You were snooty with the client yesterday,” he told Barbara. “I didn’t like it, and you should know better.”
She said nothing. She supposed Yates-Brown was referring to her pointed questioning of the company advertising manager: Was there nothing you liked? Absolutely nothing at all? Well, she still believed it justified and wasn’t going to grovel now. But neither would she antagonize Yates-Brown needlessly until she heard about her new assignment.
“One of the early things you’re supposed to learn here,” the account supervisor persisted, “is to show restraint sometimes, and swallow hard.”
Wheels Page 16
