Adam glanced sideways. He saw that Erica had put her head back and her eyes were closed. She looked young and vulnerable and weary. He answered, “Okay.”
She said, so softly that he had to strain to hear, “And thank you for coming. It’s true what I said—I wasn’t going to send for you, but I was glad when you were there.”
He reached out and let his hand cover hers.
“You said something”—Erica still spoke dreamily, as if from a distance—“about making a start. If only we could make a whole new start!”
“In what way?”
“In every way.” She sighed. “I know we can’t.”
On impulse, Adam said, “Perhaps we can.”
It was strange, he thought, that today of all days Perceval Stuyvesant should have suggested one.
Sir Perceval and Adam were breakfasting together at the Hilton Hotel downtown, where Perce was staying.
Adam had not talked with Erica since their return home last night. She had gone exhausted to bed, fallen asleep immediately and was still sleeping soundly when he left the house early to drive into the city. He had considered waking her, decided against it, then half way to the breakfast appointment wished he had. He would have gone back, except that Perce had a midmorning flight to New York—the reason they made the arrangement by telephone last night; also, suddenly, Perce’s proposition seemed more relevant and important than it had the day before.
One thing Adam had noticed last night was that while Erica went to sleep alone in the guest bedroom, as she had for the past month, she left the door open, and it was still open when he tiptoed in this morning.
He decided now: He would telephone home in another hour. Then, if Erica wanted to talk, he would rearrange his office schedule and go home for part of the morning.
Over their meal, Perce made no reference to the interruption in their talk the previous day; nor did Adam. Briefly Perce inquired about Adam’s sons, Greg and Kirk, then they talked about superconductors—the area in which the small scientific company, now offering its presidency to Adam, was hopeful of a breakthrough.
“One extraordinary thing about superconductors, old boy, is that the public and the press know so little of them.” Perce sipped his brew of mixed Ceylon and India teas which he carried with him in canisters and had prepared specially wherever he happened to be.
“As you probably know, Adam, a superconductor is a metal or wire which will carry a full load of electricity without any loss whatever.”
Adam nodded. Like any eighth-grade physics student, he was aware that all present wires and cables caused at least a fifteen percent loss of power, called resistance.
“So a working superconductor with nil resistance,” Perceval said, “would revolutionize the entire world’s electric power systems. Among other things it would eliminate complex, expensive transmission equipment and provide fantastic amounts of power at unbelievably low cost. What has held back development until now has been the fact that superconductors would only function at very low temperatures—about 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.”
Adam said, “That’s pretty darned cold.”
“Quite so. Which is why, in recent years, a scientific dream has been of a superconductor which will function at room temperature.”
“Is it likely to be more than a dream?”
Perce thought before answering. “We’ve known each other a good many years, old boy. Have you ever known me to exaggerate?”
“No,” Adam said. “Very much the reverse. You’ve always been conservative.”
“I still am.” Perce smiled and drank more tea, then went on. “Our group has not found a room temperature superconductor, but certain phenomena—the result of experiments we’ve made—have us excited. We wonder, some days, if we may not be very close.”
“And if you are?”
“If we are, if there is a breakthrough, there’s not an area of modern technology which won’t be affected and improved. Let me give you two examples.”
Adam listened with increasing fascination.
“I won’t go into all the magnetic field hypotheses, but there’s something called a superconducting ring. What it is is a wire which will store electric current in large amounts and hold it intact, and if we make the other breakthrough we’ll be on top of this one, too. It’ll make feasible the transfer of portable electric power in huge amounts, from place to place, by truck or boat or airplane. Think of its uses in the desert or the jungle—flown there in a package without a generator in sight, and more to follow when needed. And can you imagine another superconducting ring, this time in an electric operated car, making the battery as out of date as rushlight?”
“Since you ask,” Adam said, “I have trouble imagining some of that.”
Perce reminded him, “Not long ago people had trouble imagining atomic energy and space travel.”
True, Adam thought, then pointed out, “You said two examples.”
“Yes, I did. One of the interesting things about a superconductor is that it’s diamagnetic—that’s to say, when used in conjunction with more common magnets, immensely large repulsive forces can occur. Do you see the possibilities, old boy?—metals in any kind of machinery nestled close together yet never actually touching. Obviously we’d have frictionless bearings. And you could build a car without metal parts in contact with one another—hence, no wear. Those are just beginning possibilities. Others are endless.”
It was impossible not to share some of Perce’s conviction. From anyone else, Adam would have taken most of what was being described either as science fiction or a long-range possibility. But not from Perce Stuyvesant who had a record of good judgment and accomplishment in deeply scientific fields.
“Somewhat fortunately,” Perce said, “in the areas I’ve mentioned, and others, our group has been able to move along without attracting much attention. But there’ll be attention soon—lots of it. That’s another reason why we need you.”
Adam was thinking hard. Perce’s report and ideas excited him, though he wondered if the excitement would be as great or as sustained as he had experienced with cars—the Orion and Farstar, for example. Even now, the thought of not being a part of the auto industry was hard to accept. But there had been something in what Perce said yesterday about carving new pathways, breaking fresh ground.
Adam said, “If we do get down to this seriously, I’ll want to come to San Francisco and talk with the rest of your people.”
“We’d be more than delighted, old man, and I urge you to make it soon.” Perce spread his hands in a deprecating gesture. “Of course, not everything I’ve described may work out the way we hope, nor is a breakthrough ever a breakthrough until it’s happened. But there will be some important, exciting things; that much we know for sure and that I promise you. Remember that line?—‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood…’ and so on.”
“Yes,” Adam said, “I remember.”
He was wondering about timing, and a tide, for Erica and himself.
25
The initial involvement of Rollie Knight in organized plant crime had begun in February. It started the same week that he saw the foreman Frank Parkland—whom Rollie had come close to admiring—take a bribe, prompting Rollie’s later observation to May Lou, “There ain’t nuthun’ in this whole wide world but bullshit.”
At first, to Rollie, his participation seemed slight enough. He began by taking and recording numbers bets each day in the area of Assembly where he worked. The money and yellow betting slips were passed by Rollie to the stockroom delivery man, Daddy-o Lester, who got them farther along their route toward a betting house downtown. From overheard remarks Rollie guessed the delivery system tied in with truck deliveries in and out of the plant.
Frank Parkland, still Rollie’s foreman, gave him no trouble about occasional absences from his work station which the number running entailed. As long as the absences were brief and not too many, Parkland moved a relief man in withou
t comment; otherwise, he cautioned Rollie mildly. Obviously the foreman was continuing to be paid off.
That was in February. By May, Rollie was working for the loan sharks and check cashers—two illegal plant enterprises which interlocked.
A reason for the new activity was that he had borrowed money himself and was having difficulty paying off. Also, the money Rollie was earning from his job, which at first had seemed a fortune, suddenly was no longer enough to keep pace with his own and May Lou’s spending. So now Rollie persuaded others to accept loans and helped with their collection.
Such loans were made, and taken, casually—at extortionate rates of interest. A plant worker might borrow twenty dollars early in one week and owe twenty-five dollars by payday of the same week. Incredibly, the demand—including requests for far larger sums—was brisk.
On payday, the loan sharks—company employees like everyone else—would become in-plant unofficial check cashers, cashing the paychecks of all who wished, but seeking out those who owed them money.
A check casher’s fee was the odd cents on any check. If a check was made out for $100.99, the check casher took the 99¢, though his minimum fee was 25¢. Because of volume, and the fact that the check casher picked up his loans, plus interest, the operation involved big money and it was not unusual for a check casher-loan man to carry twenty thousand dollars in cash. When he did, he hired other workers as bodyguards.
Once a loan was made, it was wise for the borrower not to default. Anyone who did would find himself with a broken arm or leg, or worse—and would still owe the money, with more punishment to follow if it remained unpaid. A lucky few, like Rollie, were allowed to work off, in service, part of the interest owed. The principal sum—even for these—had to be repaid.
Thus, Rollie Knight, on all work days and especially paydays, became an intermediary for the flow of loan and check money back and forth. Despite this, he continued to be short of money himself.
In June, he began peddling drugs.
Rollie hadn’t wanted to. Increasingly, as he became involved with plant rackets, he had a sense of being sucked in against his will, incurring the danger of exposure, arrest and—a dread which haunted him—a return to prison with a long sentence. Others who had no criminal records, though their activities were illegal, ran a lesser risk than himself. If caught and charged, they would be treated as first offenders. Rollie wouldn’t.
It had been a growing anxiety on that score which made him morose and worried the night of the Auto City filming—also in June—in Rollie’s and May Lou’s apartment. Leonard Wingate, the company Personnel man, had sensed Rollie’s deep-seated worry, but they had not discussed it.
Rollie also discovered, around that time, that it was easier to begin involvement with the rackets than to opt out. Big Rufe made that plain when Rollie demurred after being told he would be a part of the chain which brought marijuana and LSD into plants and distributed the drugs.
Months earlier, when the two had been side by side at a plant urinal, it was Big Rufe who approached Rollie with a hint about recruitment into plant crime. And now that the hint had become fact, it was clear that Big Rufe had a part in most of the illegal action going on.
“Don’t cut no slice o’ that pie for me,” Rollie had insisted when the subject of drug traffic came up. “You get some other dude, hear?”
They were on work break, talking behind a row of storage bins near the assembly line, and shielded from the view of others. Big Rufe had scowled. “You stink scared.”
“Maybe.”
“Boss don’t like scared cats. Makes him nervous.”
Rollie knew better than to ask who the boss was. He was certain that one existed—probably somewhere outside the plant—just as it was obvious that an organization existed, Rollie having seen evidence of it not long before.
One night, after his shift ended, instead of leaving, he and a half dozen others had remained inside the plant gates. Ahead of time they had been warned to make their way singly and inconspicuously to the Scrap and Salvage area. When they arrived, a truck was waiting and the group loaded it with crates and cartons already stacked nearby. It was obvious to Rollie that what was being loaded was new, unused material, and not scrap at all. It included tires, radios, and air conditioners in cases, and some heavy crates—which required loading with a hoist—and marked as containing transmissions.
The first truck left, a second came, and for three hours altogether the loading went on, openly, and although it was after dark and this portion of the plant saw little nighttime traffic, lights were blazing. Only toward the end did Big Rufe, who had appeared and disappeared several times, look around him nervously and urge everyone to hurry. They had, and eventually the second truck had gone too, and everyone went home.
Rollie had been paid two hundred dollars for the three hours he had helped load what was clearly a big haul of stolen goods. Equally evident was that the behind-scenes organization was efficient and large-scale, and there must have been payoffs to get the trucks safely in and out of the plant. Later, Rollie learned that the transmissions and other items could be bought cheaply at some of the many hot-rod shops around Detroit and Cleveland; also that the outflow through the Scrap and Salvage yard had been one of many.
“Guess you bought yourself a pack o’ trouble by knowin’ too much,” Big Rufe had said when he and Rollie had their talk behind the storagebins. “That’d make the big boss nervous too, so if he figured you wasn’t with us no more, he’d likely arrange a little party on the parking lot.”
Rollie understood the message. So many beatings and muggings had occurred recently on the huge employee parking lots that even security patrols went around in pairs. Just the day before, a young black worker had been beaten and robbed—the beating so savage that he was hovering, in hospital, between life and death.
Rollie shuddered.
Big Rufe grunted and spat on the floor. “Yeah, man, I’d sure think about that if I was you.”
In the end, Rollie went along with the drug peddling, partly because of Big Rufe’s threat, but also because he desperately needed money. The second garnishee of his wages in June had been followed by Leonard Wingate’s financial austerity program, which left barely enough each week for Rollie and May Lou to live on, and nothing over to pay back loans.
Actually, the drug arrangement worked out easily, making him wonder if perhaps he had worried too much after all. He was glad that just marijuana and LSD were involved, and not heroin which was a riskier traffic. There was horse moving through the plant, and he knew workers who had habits. But a heroin addict was unreliable and likely to get caught, then under interrogation name his supplier.
Marijuana, on the other hand, was a pushover. The FBI and local police had told auto company managements confidentially that they would not investigate marijuana activity where less than one pound of the drug was involved. The reason was simple—a shortage of investigating officers. This information leaked, so that Rollie and others were careful to bring small amounts into the plant each time.
The extent of marijuana use amazed even Rollie. He discovered that more than half of the people working around him smoked two to three joints a day and many admitted it was the drug which kept them going. “For Cri-sakes,” a regular purchaser from Rollie asserted, “if a guy wasn’t spaced out, how else could he stand this rat run?” Just a half joint, he said, gave him a lift which lasted several hours.
Rollie heard another worker tell a foreman who had cautioned him for being obvious about marijuana use, “If you fired everybody smoking pot, you wouldn’t build any cars around here.”
Another effect of Rollie’s drug peddling was that he was able to get squared away with the loan sharks, leaving some spare money which he used to indulge in pot himself. It was true, he found, that a day on the assembly line could be endured more easily if you were spaced, and you could get the work done too.
Rollie did manage to work to the continuing satisfaction of Frank Parkla
nd, despite his extra activities which, in fact, took little time.
Because of his lack of seniority, he was laid off during two of the four weeks when the plant shut down for changeover to Orion production, then resumed work when the first Orions began to come down the line.
He took a keen interest in the Orion, describing it to May Lou when he returned from his first day of working on it, as “Hot pants wheels!” It even seemed to affect Rollie sexually because he added, “We gonna lay a lotta pipe tonight,” at which May Lou giggled, and later they did, Rollie thinking about wheels most of the time and the chances of getting an Orion himself.
All was going well, it seemed, and for a while Rollie Knight almost forgot his own credo: Nuthun’ lasts.
Until the last week of August, when he had cause to remember.
The message from Big Rufe came to Rollie’s work station via the stock man, Daddy-o Lester. The next night there would be some action. At the end of Rollie’s shift tomorrow he was to stay in the plant. Between now and then he would be given more instructions.
Rollie yawned in Daddy-o’s face. “I’ll check my engagement book, man.”
“You so smart,” Daddy-o threw back, “but you don’t hipe me. You’ll be there.”
Rollie knew he would be, too, and since the last after-shift episode at the Scrap and Salvage area produced an easy two hundred dollars, he assumed tomorrow’s would be the same. Next day, however, the instructions he received half an hour before his work day ended were not what he expected. Rollie—so Daddy-o informed him—was to take his time about leaving the assembly line, hang around until the night shift began work, then go to the locker and washup area where others would meet him, including Daddy-o and Big Rufe.
Thus, when the quitting whistle shrilled, instead of joining the normal frenzied scramble for exits to the parking lots and bus stations, Rollie ambled away, stopping at a vending machine area to buy a Coke. This took longer than usual because the machines were temporarily out of use and being emptied of cash by two collectors from the vending company. Rollie watched while a stream of silver coins cascaded into canvas sacks. When a machine was available he bought his drink, waited a few minutes more, then took it to the employees’ lockerwashup room.
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