Edsel

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Fired?” The political arena had trained him well. You had to have been watching him closely to spot the greenish cast behind his face, which remained immobile.

  “No one fires anyone these days, you know that. They accept their resignations with regret. I’ve saved you the trouble of typing one up. It’s there on the desk. All you have to do is sign it.”

  Zed went fishing. “If this is about the pushbutton transmission on the fifty-seven Dodge, that leak wasn’t in my department. You should be asking the boys in Design.”

  “Jack?”

  Bugas smiled shyly at the man opposite him. “How long did you think you could get away with it? Were you in politics so long you thought this institution would harbor a corrupt simply because he was good at his job?”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Shit.” Ford drained his glass, pushed off from the back of the chair, and trampled back to the bar for a refill. “I didn’t bounce that felon Bennett to put another one in his place. I’ve got better reasons than you or anyone else to hate Walter Reuther’s guts. That doesn’t mean I want to see them splattered all over the floor of the kitchen in his own house. His own house!” He bellowed the last three words. Bottles rang.

  The lull that followed was a vacuum. After two beats, certainly not as many as three, Zed turned his face on me. I knew at that moment that those same spies who had told him I had been to see Reuther had been keeping tabs on me ever since. He knew what I knew at the time I knew it. I wondered then, and I wonder now, why it should have come as so much of a surprise to have it flung in his face there on Olympus. Maybe Bugas was right; maybe the year’s delay between the time I had dumped all I had learned at Bugas’ feet and the time Ford kicked it back at Zed had confirmed his belief that the company would swallow any pill, no matter how large or bitter, rather than acknowledge the corruption in its bowels.

  I, in my turn, looked at John Bugas. Obviously he had told his friend and superior a highly simplified version of the story, editing out Frankie Orr in favor of Walter Reuther’s original suspicion, that someone high up in the Ford organization had authorized the attempts on his life and his brother’s in order to promote a union official whose interests coincided with Ford’s. And in that moment my general disapproval of J. Edgar Hoover lightened a shade. Small wonder that organized crime should have uncoiled its tentacles into every corner of American life, with the attention of the nation’s top cop distracted by reports filed by subordinates who chose not to take up the director’s time with details.

  In answer to my look, Bugas went on smiling his shy smile and looking harmless. It wasn’t a pose; or if it was, he had held it so long he was no longer aware of doing so.

  “This is absurd,” Zed broke in. “Who told you this? Minor? He’s been after my job from the beginning. This ridiculous story only proves the lengths he’ll go to in order to get it.”

  Ford, at the bar, raised his eyes in my direction from the stick he was swizzling. “What about it, Connie? Do you want Izzie’s job? It pays sixty thousand.”

  I hated him then almost as much as Zed. I had never at any time considered that the position would be offered me, so I had no answer ready. Ford, obviously thinking otherwise, had tossed it at me at that moment, confident I’d turn it down in the face of Zed’s accusation. And I knew then that attempted murder meant nothing twelve floors above Dearborn, beyond a bargaining chip. In a malicious flash I thought of accepting, just to see his expression change. But it was too late to start playing his game by his rules, and besides, I didn’t want the job. I wouldn’t have lasted a week in that tank of piranhas.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick with the ulcers I have.”

  Ford smiled at Zed, who stood.

  “I have a contract, Hank; and by God I’ll make you stick to it if it means five years in court.”

  “I don’t think so. I’d just have to state my reasons.”

  “A charge like that requires evidence.”

  “Well, if you force me to defend myself in court I’ll just have to come up with some. Meanwhile you’ll be branded a murderer in every paper and broadcast in town, and probably the country. Of course, you might have enough socked away not to have to worry about working ever again. That will leave you plenty of time to worry about the union hotheads who might not be as civilized as us when it comes to dealing with past mistakes. A lot of them are pretty Old Testament.”

  Without moving, Zed smoothed himself. Big and broad-shouldered in his tan double-breasted, he had looked for a moment as if he might take a swing at his tormentor. Now he seemed almost amused. “These aren’t the thirties, and you aren’t the man who built a company on a piece of machinery he put together in his backyard. Who are you to show me the door?”

  Ford drank, savoring the taste of the bourbon. He was one alcoholic who truly seemed to enjoy his vice. “When you’re outside the building, which you will be in five minutes under someone else’s power if not yours, you might take a look at the sign out front. That’s my name. Those four letters say I can do anything I want.”

  “It’s because I’m Jewish, isn’t it? You’re just as anti-Semitic as your grandfather.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m the opposite of my grandfather in everything that counts. I fought a war to end that shit you’re talking about. A lot of the guys I fought it with were Jews. Some of them weren’t very good Jews, as a rabbi might see it; they sneaked a ham sandwich now and then, and I doubt many of them had spent more than ten minutes with the Talmud since their bar mitzvahs. But they were better Jews than you, for all your tchotchkes and that black beanie. I know damn well they were better men. Don’t forget to sign that letter on your way out.”

  “What if I refuse?”

  “Then you won’t have to sue me to start the ball rolling.”

  Zed wrestled with it. Then he went over to the desk, read the letter of resignation, and snatched a silver-barreled pen from the set. “This is under duress.” He signed his name.

  “It always is, Izzie.”

  So far as I know, those were the last words that passed between them. Israel Zed left without another word. Three or four years later I heard he took a post as currency advisor to the military junta that deposed Juan Perón in Argentina, and died in a hotel fire in Buenos Aires. The North American obituaries were respectful.

  After the door closed, Ford winked at Bugas, who nodded back. “How are things in promotion, Connie?” the Chief asked then. “Need anything?”

  I hesitated. “No, sir.”

  “Good. Keep us posted on this horse opera thing, will you? I’m nuts about westerns since I was a kid.”

  It was a dismissal, and I took it out. From then until the day I left his employ he never referred to Zed or that meeting in my presence, and he was always politely interested in how I was getting on. Now as then my thoughts on Hank the Deuce are all mixed up with varying parts apprehension and admiration. I guess I’m not alone.

  32

  ON DECEMBER 27, 1957, ACTING ON a discovery by a shaken ice fisherman named Dierdorf from Highland Park, police in St. Clair Shores dragged a body out from under four inches of lake ice at the foot of Liberty Street. The corpse was so badly decomposed that no immediate identification could be made, even from fingerprints, after which the laborious process began of checking the teeth against the dental records of persons reported missing within the last six months. At the end of three weeks, the remains were identified positively as those of Jerome Winstead Pierpont, a licensed private investigator with an office in Detroit and an Inkster resident whose landlady had reported his disappearance in June. Despite a flurry of press speculation when it was revealed that at the time of his demise he had been investigating the 1948 shotgun assault on Walter Reuther, nothing on the body indicated foul play, and for lack of evidence to the contrary the cause of death was listed as accidental. Pierpont was known as a man of nebulous habits who kept no notes and took off on mysterious leads without telling
anyone where he was going or why. Neither his files nor his safe deposit box in the downtown office of the National Bank of Detroit contained anything vaguely sensational.

  It could have been an accident. He was an old man by just about anyone’s standard—the newspapers couldn’t agree whether he was born in 1894 or 1895—and he might have had a stroke or a heart attack while walking along one of the canals and fallen in, snagging in the weeds or under a dock until the currents tore him free. His wallet was never found, so it might have been a simple mugging. But for a long time I wondered what became of the photos and documents pertaining to the Edsel that he had dangled under my nose like a piece of meat on a stick. And that opened a string of possibilities from Reuther to Carlo Ballista to John Bugas that I didn’t care to contemplate.

  I couldn’t think of a good thing to say about the man, except perhaps that once he was paid to do something he never let go until either it was finished or he was. You know?

  On April Fool’s Day 1958 I was jamming the last of a dozen cartons into the Citation’s capacious trunk when a car pulled into the curb behind me. It was a loading zone belonging to the furniture store down the block from the house I had been renting for two years, so I assumed the driver was a customer and didn’t bother to look.

  “Taking it on the lam, eh, Minor?”

  The female voice was familiar. I turned. Janet Sherman was sitting behind the wheel of a five-year-old Nash sedan, the turtleback Ambassador, built like a tank with a chromed front like the baleen of a killer whale. There were piles of rusty snow on the sidewalk, but she had the window down on the driver’s side and her short arm resting on the ledge. Wearing a red cloth coat with black tabs on the lapels and with her black hair tied back, she made me think of a figure in a hunting print.

  “How do you like it?” She inclined her head toward the long hood. “It’s the first car I’ve actually owned. Paid cash for it.”

  “It needs its own area code. The least Ford could have done when they laid you off was let you use the company car for a while.”

  “I didn’t ask. Anyway, I wasn’t laid off. I quit. You can’t keep ’em down in the secretarial pool after they’ve seen the twelfth floor. I’m on my way back to Toledo. I’ve got an interview for a job next week. The pay’s no good, but it includes classes in engineering.”

  “Congratulations.” I meant it. Awkwardly: “I’m sorry about Zed.”

  She closed her eyes wistfully. Her cheeks reddened a little, but there was a stiff breeze. “He should’ve known better than to get so close to Jack Reith. You can’t make friends at that level.” That was the company line. She seemed to have decided to accept it. “What about you?”

  “I put away enough to keep me for a couple of years, provided I move out of this place and into an apartment. After that, I don’t know. An old friend of mine owns a gardening supply store in Troy. Maybe he can use a first-class salesman.”

  “I’m sorry, Connie.”

  I moved a shoulder. “The severance pay was good. The hard part will be living down the fact that I had the Edsel account. I don’t think it will go on my résumé.”

  “I’m sorry about that, too, but I meant Agnes. I heard she left.”

  I wondered from whom. It was a small town for its size. “She wanted someone who could give her signposts along the way. I can’t blame her for that.”

  While we were talking, a red Corsair driven by a man my age in a corduroy coat and a season-rushing cocoa straw hat with a yellow band boated around the corner and blasted its horns at sight of the Citation. He waved derisively. Someone had jammed a white plastic toilet seat onto the red car’s horse-collar grille.

  There wasn’t much more to say. Janet and I wished each other good luck, promised to write while the post office was still forwarding our mail, and she put the big car in gear and swung into the street and away on a cushion of bubbling exhaust. Of course I never heard from her again.

  There isn’t much more to say here, either, except it was a tragedy what happened to the Edsel. Sales picked up briskly in October 1957, then began to lose steam just when everyone thought the car was in the clear. In December Henry Ford II came on closed-circuit television to pep-talk wavering dealers. Shortly thereafter, Ford began jettisoning personnel to lighten the burden, changed advertising agencies, and replaced the entire division promotional staff. My successor was a business-school graduate exactly half my age who had worked on the “Be Happy, Go Lucky” cigarette campaign. Ford shook my hand warmly and told me to go on driving the Citation until I found a replacement. “We can use the advertising.”

  The top-of-the-line Citation and the second-from-the-bottom Pacer disappeared with the 1959 model year. The grille was made less noticeable and a number of mechanical improvements were engineered to satisfy Consumer Reports, who sniffed at all the gadgetry and complained about the steering and suspension. But by July 1, 1959, only 84,000 units had been sold, a significant number of which were raffled off at church bazaars and school carnivals, causing people to ask of new Edsel owners: “Where did you win yours?” The joke went into the bin with all the rest, including variations on the comment that the car looked like an Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon.

  But it might have survived the jokes; and in fact the 1960 Edsel Ranger, minus the hilarious grille and unpopular pushbutton gearshift and with a more manageable wheelbase, won the admiration of most critics, for both its performance and its realistic price. But by then Ford was just selling out its inventory. The Edsel died, aged twenty-six months.

  The fifties died about the same time. Dwight D. Eisenhower was on his way out, having lost his characteristic mongoloid grin and most of his sense of humor in a blow-up with Nikita Khrushchev that promised to prolong the Cold War another generation at least. The Democratic Party, dormant for eight years, was talking of running the bootlegger Joe Kennedy’s son for President, the United Nations was pressing Washington for a show of solidarity in Indochina, preferably with men and material, and Vice-President Nixon was preening himself for a run at the Oval Office. Batista was out in Cuba, Fidel Castro was in. On a more local level, the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, had turned up sufficient heat under the American Steelhaulers Union to bring national president Albert Brock to the serious attention of the Justice Department. Chief counsel to the committee was a young Washington attorney named Robert Kennedy, another son of the bootlegger. Assisting him in Detroit was Stuart Leadbeater, in private practice after having resigned from the city attorney’s office to run unsuccessfully for county prosecutor, and reborn as a Democrat. Both men would continue to be festering thorns in Brock’s side throughout the rest of his tenure. It seemed I could bring that man nothing but grief, even when I wasn’t trying to help him.

  The new era was already assuming a shape completely foreign to the ten years that preceded it. What the next generation would think about those years would be based entirely upon the evidence of warped gray Kinescopes, overripe theatrical epics, a stack of 45-rpm records, and a handful of books. But the whole added up to so much more than just the sum of its parts. It was braggadocio and hope, fear and comfort, bad taste and good intentions, innocence and cynicism—Little Richard and Eleanor Roosevelt, tucked as securely as a lace valentine between the glossy four-color pages of a magazine. It was the most important time of our century.

  On Labor Day 1959 I was standing in a crowd gathered in Grand Circus Park when Walter Reuther swept through behind a flying wedge of bodyguards on his way to the podium. He had on a light topcoat against the gray mist and a black felt hat with the brim pulled low on his forehead. Our eyes met when he came past, but only for an instant, and there was no recognition on his side. As I’d predicted he had continued to put on weight, and there was more of the bulldog in his heavy-jowled face than the terrier who had nipped at the heels of Big Auto until it was forced to acknowledge him, first with fists, then with contracts. I have n
o memory of what he talked about that day. I was distracted by the realization that there are men who can in a moment subvert your life to their own agenda, and in the next forget you ever existed. To this day, whenever I hear a news report of a hit and run, I picture Walter Reuther at the wheel.

  The Ford Motor Company lost three hundred fifty million dollars on the Edsel. Its stock fell twenty dollars per share from an all-time high recorded during the first years of Henry II’s leadership. Why the venture toppled depended on where you were standing when it began to teeter. Some said it was a bad car, but they were only repeating the opinions of others who never drove one or even sat in one. The recession, our first since the uncertain days immediately following the end of the Second World War, is an easy target; or if your preference runs to the obvious you can blame the strange grille. Most likely it was the human factor that brought it down, the petulant backbiting at the senior executive level that inspired company president Robert McNamara, six days before the Edsel was unveiled, to confide to a companion: “I’ve got plans for phasing it out.”

  What difference does it make why? It was a good car, and they killed it. They being us. But like the Oscar Wilde hero, when we plunged the dagger through the physical embodiment of our collective soul, we pierced our own collective heart as well. The first failure is always entertaining. After that they become commonplace, even expected. Success becomes the diversion.

  And so the whole damn dizzy decade was an Edsel.

  A Biography of Loren D. Estleman

  Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.

  Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once The Oklahoma Punk was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.