Edsel

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Do you really think he arranged it?”

  He didn’t reply. I hoped it wasn’t what he thought, or the whole trip was a waste.

  “As I started to say, Reuther didn’t send me, but he’s the reason I’m here,” I said. “He’s got a hard-on to trace that shotgun blast to the man who ordered it.”

  “Asshole.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Reuther. He spouts all this pinko shit about the good of the many, but when it comes down to it, his own skin is all that counts. That’s getting to be ten years ago. What good’s it to the union if he finds out who ordered it? Comes to that, what good’s it to you?”

  “I can’t answer for him or the union. Only myself.”

  He took another swig, stood his bottle on the counter, and leaned back against it, folding his arms. He had thick forearms like Alley Oop; the tendons stood out under his jersey sleeves.

  I told him then, all of it except the part about Anthony Battle and Stuart Leadbeater. It told as well without that and I didn’t want to get off on a tangent. He was the first one I’d told. I wasn’t sure why I chose him. Maybe I’d gotten just too full of it to hold it any more and he was just handy. While I was talking a cobbled-up Model A with the hood removed to expose a lot of chromed engine chortled around the corner trailing Connie Francis out its windows. The boy and girl in the coupe were as unaware of the world I lived in as they were of life on Pluto. Their biggest problem was whether the change in the boy’s jeans would buy enough gas to get the girl home in time for curfew.

  Brock listened without expression or comment. When I finished he felt his bottle, found it too warm for his taste, and hooked another out of the refrigerator, raising his eyebrows at me in good-host fashion. I shook my head. It had begun to feel hollow from the amount I’d drunk already.

  “You’re in too deep to walk away.” He opened the bottle and thrust it out from his body when foam welled up and over the lip, letting it splatter to the floor. “You should’ve laughed in Reuther’s face when he threatened you. He isn’t going to pull a strike or a slowdown just to get your goat. Nobody’s that pig-headed.”

  “He gave me the impression he was. Anyway Pierpont nailed it down with those pictures of the car model.” I spoke slowly. My consonants were starting to slur.

  “Why come to me?”

  “You’re the court of last resort, the only man I know in Detroit who knows who’s wearing what this season, bulletproof vests or cement overcoats. People owe you favors. As I recall, one of the items the McClellan Committee wants to ask you about is a two-million-dollar loan you arranged for Frankie Orr from the Steelhauler’s strike fund.”

  His face darkened once again. “I’m telling them what I’m telling you. That was a business deal. His people put up two casinos in Las Vegas for collateral. They’re legitimate enterprises with a profit margin as big as Boulder Dam. Even if they defaulted on the loan, our interest in the casinos would more than double the investment. I’m only telling you that because you’ll be reading about it in a couple of days, after I testify. I don’t owe you an answer and I sure as hell don’t owe you any favors. The way out of here’s the same way you came in.”

  His words rang inside my empty skull, distorted by feedback. I’d never been much of a drinker, but a few sips of beer weren’t enough to make me drunk. I decided I needed air, and turned to go. That was a mistake. The room swung around and hit me in the back of the head. My field of vision collapsed, first from the sides, then from the top and bottom, just like a broken picture tube. My knees folded.

  26

  I NEVER LOST CONSCIOUSNESS.

  I was aware that I didn’t make it to the floor, that someone caught me from behind and half-dragged, half-carried me to a soft seat, but my brain was in a kind of brownout, capable of sensation but not thought. When the power came back on I was sitting on springs with my head tilted back, looking at an impressive display of cobwebs in a cross-hatching of rafters. I made a noise of some kind. Albert Brock’s face shimmered in from the edge of my vision. He still looked angry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you. What did you say?” He didn’t sound angry.

  “Something sweet.” My tongue grated against the inside of my mouth. “If you have candy or orange juice.” I was having trouble finishing sentences.

  “Grapefruit juice okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I got some in the house.”

  While he was gone I got a hand under me and pulled my pelvis against the back of the seat. I felt as weak as an infant. I was in the rear seat of the Packard. He’d lowered the top for clearance. The interior of the car smelled of dust and dry wood. There was nothing left of the atmosphere that had greeted its first owner, that combination of hope and self-approbation that went hand in hand with the purchase of a new automobile. No amount of restoration could bring it back.

  Brock returned carrying a pitcher of pale yellow liquid and a small glass with orange flowers printed on it. He filled the glass and brought it toward my lips, but I intercepted his hand, taking it from him. I hated grapefruit juice. I drank it dry. The tart-sweet liquid stung the hinges of my jaws and slicked my throat like thin oil. I handed back the glass, waggling my palm at him when he started to refill it. He set it and the pitcher on the floor. The dizziness had begun to pass, and behind it the weakness. I thanked him.

  “I didn’t know you were diabetic.”

  “I didn’t expect it to come up. Sorry for the trouble. All I need is a few minutes’ rest and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “I got gout,” he said. “I can’t eat liver.”

  I managed to grin. “Do you like liver?”

  “Can’t stand it. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  He stooped to pick up the pitcher and glass and put them on the workbench. When he leaned back and crossed his arms his belly poked over his waistband. There was no suet in it, just gravity. A fist would have bounded off it as off a tire. “How much water you draw at Ford?”

  “Some.”

  “I know a little about the E-car. That kind of secret don’t keep.”

  I said nothing. I hadn’t referred to the Edsel even by its experimental designation.

  “When something big like a new division starts up,” he said, “the company-owned trucks aren’t enough to ship all the cars out to all the dealers. They got to farm it out.”

  “Usually.”

  “Ever hear of Musselman Trucking?”

  “Ann Arbor firm, right?” The name had appeared on a list that had crossed my desk only a few days before.

  “They run a fleet of car haulaways out of Ann Arbor and Jackson. They always get a bid in whenever there’s a push. I want them to get the E-car contract.”

  “Why?”

  “They didn’t throw in when we signed on with the nationals. They’re scab, but they’re too small to hurt. If they get the Ford contract and we shut ’em down, then they’ll hurt.”

  “Let me see if I understand you.” I put one foot on the Packard’s running board. “The Steelhaulers want to put the screws to a non-union shop and you’re asking Henry Ford to help.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt him. They bid low. They got no overhead. Not yet.”

  I hoped the acceleration in my heart rate had nothing to do with my blood sugar. “I’d sure like a peek at your hand.”

  “Tony Balls. Carlo’s brother. We used to be pretty tight back when the Steelhaulers did most of its negotiating with axe handles. Reuther was too good for all that. Getting his teeth kicked out was the way he did business. A note from me would get you in to see Tony.”

  “Fat lot of good that would do me. I’ve been bounced by one Ballista already.”

  “Tony couldn’t bounce a ping-pong ball. He’s in the oncology unit at St. John’s, dying of cancer. He’s got no reason to clam up or lie. Not any more.”

  “I heard that.” I put my other foot next to the first. “I could lie and say I ha
d something to do with the decision of which trucking company to use. You’d give me the password or whatever to talk to Tony and I could always claim Mr. Ford spiked Musselman at the last minute. I won’t do that in your car in your garage with your grapefruit juice in my system.”

  He took that in, nodded. Then he unfolded his arms and straightened. “Are you strong enough to walk?”

  I slid off the seat. The floor stayed put under my feet. “Thanks again, Mr. Brock. Sorry I interrupted your day off.” I walked.

  “Minor.”

  I was standing on the concrete pad where it had started. When I turned he was holding the socket wrench, slapping it softly against his other palm. I imagined he had manipulated an axe handle just that same way. “Any say on what time the cars are shipped?”

  “You mean a date?”

  “Did I say anything about dates? I mean day or night.”

  “Why?”

  “Old Man Musselman crowds the highway laws. That’s how he turns a profit. At six P.M. all the truck scales on all the interstates and U.S. highways shut down. That’s when his trucks roll. He routinely overloads by three or four tons.”

  My heart rate went up a notch. “So if I say night…”

  “No snake alive can crawl under a Musselman bid on a shipment after dark.”

  “I’m not saying I can swing it,” I said. “But if I can, and you shut down our carrier, I’m up shit creek.”

  “Musselman’s bonded. He’s pledged to ship or pay to ship it with another firm. Nobody loses. Except Musselman.” He shifted the wrench to his left hand and held out his right.

  I didn’t take it. “I might not be this honest if I didn’t feel responsible for that newspaper piece. I’ve already persuaded Israel Zed to ship the cars at night. The press is better.”

  He moved a shoulder. “It wouldn’t be the first time I got the short end of a bargain.” He didn’t withdraw the hand.

  I took it. His grip was brutal. A generation had passed since he’d last slapped around a heavy vehicle without benefit of power steering, but when after days of haggling a handshake is the only contract you have until the papers are drawn up, you learn to make it last.

  “One more thing,” he said, hanging on. The nailheads glittered. “For the rest of your life, you and I never had this talk.”

  I agreed. He let go then. The ends of my fingers had just begun to tingle when I curled them around the wheel of the Mercury.

  It was Saturday and no office. St. John’s Hospital would be admitting visitors, but the way I felt just then I couldn’t be certain they’d let me out when I was through visiting, so I went home to stretch out. At twilight I woke up feeling better than I had in days. I showered and shaved, just as if it were morning, put on clean clothes, and went downstairs to see about supper.

  I had surrendered another yard of ground to the march of time and laid in a stock of frozen TV dinners, which had fused together in the freezing compartment as solidly as a course of bricks. While rummaging through the silverware drawer for the ice pick I hoped I hadn’t thrown out with the Blue Network radio directory and my old spats, I came across the scrap of butcher wrap on which I’d written the license plate numbers Anthony Battle had given me. They belonged to the automobiles whose owners had gone to and from Carlo Ballista’s office behind the Highwaymen’s Rest without stopping to play the slots or take in the floor show. I’d had some recollection of looking for the list a while back, not remembering where I’d put it, and giving up the search as unimportant. I suppose it was only in consideration of the time I’d wasted that day that I didn’t throw it away without looking at it first.

  I noticed nothing familiar right off about the second number from the top. The only reason my eyes rested on it at all had to do with its symmetry, three letters followed by three numerical digits. Michigan plates ran two letters and four digits. I thought at first it must have belonged to an Ohio plate, not unusual with the border only thirty minutes south of the Detroit city line. Then I looked at the letters, and thereupon spread a decent layer of sod over the coffin containing what remained of my reportorial instinct.

  FMC.

  Ford Motor Company.

  Company cars driven by the senior staff all displayed the prefix on their plates, with the numbers that followed ascending in reverse ratio to the order of importance of the executives whose automobiles bore them. Henry Ford II’s, of course, was FMC-001; company chief Robert McNamara’s was 002; Jack Bugas’, 003; and so on. Mine was 009, after which the conceit was abandoned to the rabble that gathered around the water cooler to discuss the president’s health.

  The number on the list was FMC-004.

  Just to be sure I dialed a number out of the State Government section of the telephone book.

  “Michigan Secretary of State’s office. Can I help you?” She sounded sincere, a break.

  “I hope so,” I said. “I was coming out of the downtown Hudson’s this afternoon and happened to see a well-dressed lady put her handbag on top of her car to get out a dollar to give the valet who drove it up. Then she got in and drove away, only she forgot to take her purse off the roof.”

  “Gracious.”

  “That’s exactly what I said. Anyway I ran after her and picked it up when it fell, but she didn’t see me waving. I’d like to return it to her, except there wasn’t any identification in the purse. All I have is her license number.” I read it off.

  “Yes, sir. You can turn the purse over to the police. She’ll probably go to them anyway when she misses it.”

  I made an embarrassed little cough. “Uh, I thought of that, but there’s quite a large sum of money in the purse. If I return it in person there might be a reward.”

  “I see.” The voice chilled a degree.

  “It’s not what you think,” I hurried on. “At least, I hope not. I’ve been out of work for six weeks, and I can’t collect unemployment because my last job was part-time. If I miss another payment on my car the bank will take it. You know the chances of landing a job in Detroit without your own transportation. Frankly, I was tempted to just keep the money, but that wouldn’t be honest.”

  “Yes, sir.” There had been a thaw. “It’s against policy, but I’ll put a trace on the number. It will take a little while, so if you’ll tell me where you can be reached?”

  I gave her my name and number. She didn’t know me from Garry Moore, but then her parents might have used my last column to line her cradle.

  While I was waiting I heated up an order of Morton’s salmon croquettes with rice and peas and ate them on a folding tray in front of Highway Patrol and John Cameron Swayze. The telephone rang in the middle of a story about Grace Kelly’s wedding. I got up and turned off the sound.

  “The license plate belongs to a green 1956 Lincoln Continental registered to the Ford Motor Company,” reported the woman in the Secretary of State’s office.

  “Do you have a principal driver?”

  “Yes. You may want a pencil. This one needs spelling.”

  I didn’t bother to get one. I saw the name practically every day.

  27

  EVENING VISITING HOURS AT a hospital are the worst. The quiet is preternatural, pointed up by the occasional squeak of rubber gurney wheels on buffed linoleum and the dry slither of a paperback book page being turned over by the nurse at the desk. Without the ungodly racket of the daytime bustle there is nothing to distract the visitor from the smell of carbolic or the sight of restless figures stirring under green sponge-rubber blankets in the half-lit rooms with their doors standing open. I wondered why the architects bothered with doors at ail.

  The nurse in charge of Oncology, thirty and plump, with powdered cheeks and the red lacquered lips of a geisha, informed me politely that Mr. Ballista was in Intensive Care and that only members of his immediate family were allowed to see him. When I mentioned that Mr. Brock had suggested an exception might be made in my case, she didn’t blink but gave me directions to ICU. On the way I passed a metal plaqu
e listing the names of the hospital’s founding board of directors. Albert Brock’s was fourth from the top.

  Nobody accosted me as I pushed through the swinging doors into Intensive Care. The carbolic odor was strongest here, covering the stench of human corruption, and the suck and wheeze of life-support paraphernalia created the impression that the room itself was breathing. There was, in fact, an organic quality about the whole place, from the carefully maintained temperature approximating human body heat to the click-bleep-click pulse of the electronic monitors. I felt as if I had entered a living artery.

  Screens hung with gauze separated the beds. I asked a young resident or something in a white coat and sneakers with pimples on his neck for the whereabouts of Anthony Ballista. He finished reading the page on the clipboard he was holding, looked up at the ceiling as if committing something to memory, and hooked a hulking blonde nurse on her way past carrying a tray heaped with bloodstained cotton. “Ballista?”

  “Second from the end.” She passed on.

  The resident or whatever had an afterthought. “Are you a relative?”

  I said, “I’m his Uncle Guido.”

  It satisfied him as much as it had to. Nurses run hospitals. Doctors come and go like disposable gloves.

  Tony Balls lay cranked into a semi-sitting position, entirely devoid of movement. The tubes running from his wrists to the IV bottle strapped to the stand next to the bed, and from his nose and penis to the draining apparatus underneath, might have been thick cobwebs. Picturing him as the identical twin of his hyperkinetic brother was like trying to match a stripped hulk rusting in the weeds of a neglected field to a well-preserved antique speeding down the highway. The naked polished-ivory scalp that was their most prominent feature had in Tony’s case puckered and gone yellow and resembled nothing so much as a squash forgotten on the vine. The meaty lips had thinned and withdrawn to his gums, exposing teeth that seemed to have outgrown his mouth. Only the vulpine eyes the brothers shared had remained; bright, swollen, and yellow—those, and the uptilted nostrils, now dehydrated by the drain tube, cavities in a dry gourd. His one visible arm was just veneered bone. The thick calcium of an old break, improperly set, stood out on the wrist like a shackle.