“No details right now. I will say that it’s big, and it’s important, and it might be dangerous. It may save a beleaguered, poor nation. It will require a special kind of man. Tell you what. Have some references contact me. If those check out I’ll fill you in.” I said okay, he gave me contact info, I told him references would arrive forthwith, and that was that.
Then I wondered who. Todd Sonarr? No way. Can’t mention anyone in the CIA, or the Army either. Somebody from my Iran gig? Princess Ashraf? Razi Q’ereshi? Not likely. Evanston would be okay, but—my stepfather? That wouldn’t look good. My bodyguarding clients didn’t have the weight DeLorean would respect. That’s a problem with my line of work—no chain of command, no network. Sarge Wallace—him I could always count on, and Chet Alverson would vouch for me, but I could use one more. Maybe Ben Millstein?
I hadn’t seen Ben in a while, so I drove down to Ali bin Suleiman Palace of Fine Oriental Carpets in Beverly Hills. He was doing something at the rear of the store. He spotted me as I came down the aisle between stacks of Kashans, Shirazes and Tabrizes. “Hey, Jake,” he exclaimed. “Welcome, welcome! How you been?”
“Surviving over in Malibu, life goes on,” I said. We chatted about the carpet business for a while. I asked him about Rachel.
“Yeah, I heard from her. They have her working out of Tel Aviv now. She doesn’t get back here much lately. She wouldn’t tell me anything about Tehran, nor where she went after that. I was just relieved that she was still alive.”
“She had me worried too. Tough gal, Rachel. Ben, the reason I came down here, I need a reference, and I thought you might be able to help me out.”
“What, you’re buying carpets again? Sure, I’ll put in a word for you, but you got a job here any time you want one.”
“Not carpets. I’m not sure exactly what the guy has in mind.”
“What guy?”
“John DeLorean. Has a car factory in Northern Ireland. He wants somebody for some kind of special project.”
“DeLorean. Interesting. He’s a wild man, Jake, some say a crook. Left Detroit under a cloud. By him, a special project could be a lot of things. I’m just a carpet dealer. What kind of reference could I give?”
“Rachel said you were into some international stuff, so I thought…”
“International stuff? What did Rachel tell you?”
“About keeping track of things for the Mossad…”
“The Mossad. Hmm…what else?”
“She said you were a partisan during the War, ambushed SS patrols in Belarus, fought in the Irgun with Menachim Begin…”
“Okay, okay, I get it now,” said Ben. “You were hearing some bedtime stories I used to tell her when she was a little girl. Back in those days Jews didn’t need ogres and giants and dragons, we had plenty scary real life monsters to tell our kids stories about.”
“So you weren’t a partisan in Belarus?”
“Oh hell no. Do I look like somebody who ambushed SS patrols? I was just a jungend when the war broke out. Spent six years hiding out in a barn in Poland, in an area the Nazis didn’t much visit. Learned a lot about cows and pigs, I did. The part about Irgun and Begin is sort of true. When I got to Israel I did some raids with that bloodthirsty little bastard…not that he didn’t have reasons…but then I met Sarah, and then Rachel came along…”
“She isn’t adopted?”
“She told ya that, too? What an imagination. Tell you what, Jake. I heard a few things about what you did in Iran. Give me DeLorean’s contact numbers. I’ll put in some good words for you.”
Soh Soon tried to rip off my diamonds. Rachel told me a pack of lies. Barbra had it right: you can’t believe half the stuff people tell you in this town. The problem is, you don’t know which half. How much of what Ben was telling was the truth? Napoleon out of uniform didn’t look like somebody who’d conquer most of Europe, either.
Now that I think about it, there is something to be said for a California surf bunny unsullied by jungle warfare and covert black ops.
But Ben said he’d put in some good words for me. I had a feeling they’d be good enough.
Chet Alverson was good for a reference and said he’d get right on it. That left Sarge. He was now stationed at Fort Bragg. I’d filled him in when I got back from Iran but hadn’t talked to him lately. As always he was glad to hear from me. “Sure, sure, Jake,” he said. “Any time I can help you drum up a little business. Tell me more about it, give me an idea what to say.” I told him what I could.
“I don’t know too much about that John DeLorean, but we get briefed on Northern Ireland. They havin’ them Troubles. Been havin’ them Troubles for about 400 years and no end in sight. Irish against the English. Catholics against the Protestants. Lots of unemployed with time on their hands. It’s like the Crips against the Bloods, only with machine guns, RPGs and Semtex. Now you listen to me, Jake. Don’t be getting involved in any local stuff over there. I warned you about that when you went to work for that Shah, and you didn’t listen. I know you got through that okay, did a good job for the Shah, brought a passel of gold home. But you get caught up with any side over there in Northern Ireland, there’s no way for you to win, because nobody’s going to win. It’s full out civil war.” Good old Sarge, never at a loss for wisdom and sound advice that I only wish I could follow. He assured me that he’d call DeLorean the next day and left me with his usual parting warning: “Keep both eyes open, and one of ‘em on your backtrail.”
Sarge, Chet and Ben must have been on the job, because three days later DeLorean rang me up again. “Heard from your friends,” he said. “Let’s talk. Is this phone line secure?”
“I’ll give you the number of a pay phone I use for confidential calls. Got something to write with?” He took the number. “Call me there in 20 minutes,” I told him and hung up. When I had my phone checked three months previously it wasn’t tapped, but the public phone ploy impresses clients. Keep ‘em entertained, I say. So I drove down to a service station in town and parked the Vette by the phone booth. Presently the phone rang.
“Fonko here,” I said.
“Okay, this is John DeLorean. Your references checked out. You’re the man we need for the job. You interested?”
“I might be, if you’d tell me what kind of job it is.”
“Sure. I have a car factory in Belfast, as you probably know. What you may not know is that the company has been having difficulties. Labor problems, financial holdups, government red tape and harassment, threats from terrorists. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Everything’s going to be fine, we’re working it out right now, but we have to get over some rough spots. Once they’re behind us, we’re in the clear. Unlimited potential there, absolutely unlimited…“ He paused.
“Okay, companies have problems. What is it that you would be hiring me to do?”
“The thing is, Jake, if it’s all right to call you Jake…there are a lot of unknowns, and some of the people we have to deal with are, er, not your best people. And of course, Northern Ireland is one of the danger zones these days. You’ve heard of the Troubles there. They are very real, I can assure you. The IRA just about destroyed out factory last year. We’ve had more than 140 fire-bombings and too many sniper attacks to count. So I thought someone with your quals would be just the ticket.”
“I’ve been in some dangerous places, that’s true. But specifically what would I be doing?”
He paused again. “That I cannot tell you for certain, because the overall situation is still evolving and not all details are known yet. But when the situation gels, you’ll be the man to handle it.”
Is this guy for real? “I’ll tell you what, Mr. DeLorean (“Call me John,” he interjected), let me get back to you on this. Give me a phone number, and I’ll call you in…can you give me to the end of the week?”
“Okay, but no later than Friday.”
He gave me the number and
I wrote it down. “This is a New York City number,” I said. “You’re not in Belfast? You’ll be in New York through the rest of the week?”
“Sure. Call me as soon as you can.” And he hung up.
A strange job offer. For a top corporate executive, DeLorean sounded a little flakey. But I didn’t know that many Fortune 500 CEOs—maybe it wasn’t so unusual. DeLorean had been in the news a lot the past few years, looked like a movie star, married gorgeous women, lived a jet-setter’s life. He’d published a book—On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors—outspokenly critical of the Big Three car companies, all they did and all they stood for. It had gotten a lot of attention, applauded by The People Who Matter, and he’d started his own company turning out high quality sports cars. But I’d need to find more about the man before I could decide, and the best source I could tap was Dad. He hailed from Detroit, as did DeLorean, and though Dad had settled in southern California after World War Two, he always had a keen interest in the automotive industry, so he kept track of happenings in Detroit. He was a newspaperman, and the car business was one of his beats. I called him and arranged to see him the next day.
I haven’t said much about Dad—Mel Fonko—so far. It’s not that we were estranged or anything; we kept in touch, enjoyed each other’s company. He just hadn’t figured into the previous stories. He’d worked for the Los Angeles Mirror, a post-war tabloid started by the LA Times. Mom split when it dawned on her that a copy editor would never be able to support her in the way she wanted to become accustomed to, and Dad didn’t want to spin off into advertising or corporate work. When the Mirror folded he migrated south a few miles to Orange County for a job at the Register. He’d remarried, and his new family now included my half-brother, Phil, and my half-sister, Becky, much younger than me but good kids. The next afternoon, a Saturday, I wheeled my Vette—a car he approved of—down I-5 through the brown hills and suburban tracts to his home in Huntington Beach.
“DeLorean’s an interesting case,” Dad told me. “Supposedly a crack automotive engineer. He was the hottest thing in Detroit for a while, ran the Pontiac Division of GM, introduced some very successful lines there, the GTO for example, though that was somebody else’s concept originally. He was one of the worst administrators in the business, had a personality that turned everybody around him off, did a lot of personal business deals on GM time, and possibly with their money. But he always made his numbers—sales, that is—one way or another, so he went over to Chevy as general manager, seemed headed for the very top of the pile. Now, Chevy was the biggest automotive line in America, and with Dinah Shore and the “see the USA in your Chevrolet” ad blitz, that ad budget made you a show biz celebrity. DeLorean came out to California, took one look and went native. Bought into the lifestyle, dyed the grey out of his hair, had a face-lift. Divorced his wife, married Tom Harmon’s daughter, Kelly. It was the 70s, everybody was going a little crazy.
“Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at any Speed came out in 1965, singled out the Chevy Corvair as a corporate-sponsored death trap. The dirty secret about that crusade is that the VW Beetle—the go-to car for Nader’s fans—was far more dangerous to drive, but Nader wasn’t going there. He was after General Motors’ hide. DeLorean got caught up in the Ralph Nader thing, started denouncing GM and the rest of Detroit for their dangerous, gas-guzzling cars, for not listening to consumers, for hide-bound out of touch management. He leaked confidential GM internal documents to the press, gave rabble-rousing speeches, spun socially conscious dreams—”ethical cars,” for example. What the hell is an “ethical car”? Mostly, he provided the media with copy, which is what they crave more than anything. So he became a media phenom, even while GM was doing its utmost to get rid of him. He claims to be the one who slammed the door, but no one at GM was sorry to see him go.
“What you have to understand about the media, Jake, is that news guys are not necessarily the brightest lights on the tree. They write fast and well, but they weren’t trained to think or analyze. They crave stories to tell, and DeLorean supplied them plenty. They love underdogs and victims, and here was a guy who could have had it all laying into some of the most powerful corporations in America. Which also suited them, because they despise businessmen, except maverick businessmen, which DeLorean made a point of being.
“Consequently, he was a media natural. Photogenic, glib, dynamic, constantly spewing big plans, ideas and visions. Nobody in the national press checked him out closely, why sabotage their own invention? So a lot of things didn’t get reported. For example, his sports car company is in receivership right now. The cars they turned out were overpriced, unsellable crap, but you’ll have to look hard to find that in print. He did get a new assembly factory up and running in two years, an impressive feat, but at the cost of product quality. The word is, he never paid much attention to operations, left that to Colin Chapman at Lotus, whom he’d sub-contracted to do the development and factory set-up. Meanwhile DeLorean ran around dabbling in new businesses. He sold investors and dealers on pouring heaps of money into his sports car venture, then ran through the dough and left them screwed. The British government in Northern Ireland gave him huge start-up loans and grants, and then he kept coming back for more. Supposedly that factory was going to be the salvation of Northern Ireland’s economy, but now that dream’s doubtful as well.
“John Z. DeLorean—a good automotive engineer, a lousy executive, a shameless self-promoter and media whore, and quite possibly an out-and-out criminal. Forgive me for going on and on, Jake, but I do hate phonies. Did he say what he wanted to hire you for?”
“No, and that’s what concerns me.”
“His main problem right now is finding investment money to revive the company. I can’t imagine him sending you out fundraising. Does he need a bodyguard?”
“Didn’t sound like it.”
“There’s no history of violence in his past…he’s had his share of shady deals, plenty of lawsuits, but nothing felonious as far as I know. Did he say what the job would pay?”
“That hasn’t come up yet.”
“Don’t go cheap, and get it in advance, is my advice,” Dad concluded.
“Mel, are you going to invite him to stay for dinner?” came a call from the kitchen. It was Judy, Dad’s wife.
“Will do, hon,” he called back. To me: “Got any plans for the rest of the day, Jake? We see little enough of you these days. Love to catch up on things with you. I’ll bet you have stories to tell.”
“On one condition. Do you have any Dos Equis in the fridge?”
He did. Deal.
Though of course I’d have gladly stayed even if he didn’t.
Dad mentioned that DeLorean had a history of lawsuits, so I arranged to drop by the house in Pacific Palisades for a chat with Evanston, my heavyweight lawyer stepfather. I figured he’d know something of DeLorean’s legal history, and he didn’t disappoint. “John DeLorean built quite a reputation around southern California, and not a good one. He’s undoubtedly a crook, the only unknowns being how big a one and in what ways. One year he diverted the money Chevrolet budgeted for the Soap Box Derby sponsorship to pay for some overblown TV productions of his. He’s been involved in numerous lawsuits, mostly people trying to recover funds or property from him. He made an agreement to market some patented automotive devices, essentially stole the devices, stiffed the patent owner out of $70 million in royalties, then ground him into the dirt with litigation. Arranged a deal to help a Pontiac dealer in Kansas weather a rough spot, instead stripped the dealership of cash and assets and left it a smoldering hulk. Got into some land dealings in Idaho and defrauded, allegedly, I’ll say because the matter is still in court, a rancher there, raped the deal for cash, then ruined the rancher, no matter how the matter comes out, and it won’t be settled for a long time. DeLorean is a master of destructive litigation. He has a goon on the payroll, Roy Nesseth, former car dealer, which in California forms the lowest circle
of scum. Nesseth has a knack for sweet-talking people into deals, then intimidating them not to go to court when they go sour. And you’re thinking of going to work for this guy?”
“I could use the work, and I’m not going to be putting any money of my own at risk. Just hired help.”
“You’ve dealt with worse than John DeLorean—certainly the Khmer Rouge and the Ayatollah have him beat—but just be very, very careful. Have cab fare in your pocket and know where the exit doors are at all times.”
An old joke has the eyeglass salesman breaking in the new hire. “When they ask how much the glasses will cost, you tell ‘em it’s $100, and if they don’t flinch, say ‘for the frames…The lenses are $100,’ and if they still don’t flinch, say ‘each.’ I banged my rate off the time estimate, bumped it up a little, factored in the risks and the stories I’d heard, and figured $30,000 for a couple months of work would be sufficient, considering the doubts I had about getting into this. I sat down behind my desk, pad, pencils and calculator in front of me, and dialed the number he gave me.
He picked up on the second ring. “DeLorean,” he barked.
“This is Jake Fonko, Mr. DeLorean,” I said.
“Who? Jake, you say? Jake who?”
“Jake Fonko. You called me about a special assignment.”
“Oh yeah. I remember. You aboard?”
“Just a couple questions. About how long do you think the job will take?”
“A month or two, tops.”
“And when do you want me to start?”
“Right away. There’ll be some briefing and orientation. The job may involve some traveling too.”
“Do you want to talk about my fee?”
“Sure. What’s your price?”
I told him it would be all expenses and $10,000…(he didn’t make a noise)…for a retainer. With another $10.000 on arrival (still quiet)…and another $10,000 on completion of the job.
“That’s fine,” he said. “When can you leave?”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 47