A President In Peril (A Snap Malek Mystery)

by Robert Goldsborough

  State Street subway train to the Grand Avenue station, just a short walk from Tribune Tower. Hazel had left for the day, but, sure enough, my fat bundle of clippings was in a manila envelope in the morgue with my name printed neatly on it. I had my assignment for the evening. "You mean we're not going to play Scrabble tonight?" Catherine asked in a disappointed tone when I arrived home and told her of my plans.

  "Aren't you satisfied at how soundly you beat me last evening, my true love? You must have at least tripled my score. What really knocked me out was when you came up with 'quartz.'"

  She gave me that special smile, the one that brings out her dimples. "That was nice, wasn't it? How often do you get to put both q and z in the same word? I though I might have to eat one or both of those letters until I drew that u from the pile."

  "Okay, there's no need to rub it in, lady. We'll go at it again tomorrow night. That's a promise."

  I spent the evening at the dining room table poring over all the clippings Hazel had so neatly assembled–almost 100 just from 1948 alone, many of them dealing with the company's financial and legal problems–to the point where I felt by bedtime I had become something of an expert on Preston Tucker, his revolutionary automobile, and his beleaguered company.

  The next morning in the office, I looked up the auto plant's phone number and put in a call. I soon found myself talking to a woman named Miss Henderson, who said she was Tucker's secretary. I identified myself, and asked for an interview with him.

  "I will have to speak to Mr. Tucker and get back to you," she said in a crisp but not unpleasant voice. "What kind of deadline do you have, Mr…?"

  "Malek, Steve Malek." I spelled it. "I'd like to sit down with Mr. Tucker as soon as possible, preferably in the next day or two," I told her. "I'm planning to write a long personality profile on him, to run in an upcoming Sunday Rotogravure section. You can verify my credentials by calling Mike Kennedy, the Tribune's Sunday Editor." I gave her Mike's office number in the Tower.

  "Oh, I'm sure that won't be necessary, Mr. Malek," she said, her crisp tone now slightly softened. "I will telephone you and let you know about Mr. Tucker's availability as soon as I find out."

  Less than an hour later, somewhat to my surprise, I got a call from Miss Henderson, telling me Tucker was available on any of the next three mornings. I told her tomorrow would be my choice, and we set the interview for ten o'clock in his office at the plant.

  I called the Tribune and told the night editor, Parvin, that I had come down with a cold and would not be at work tomorrow. Did I feel guilty about this little lie? Not even a little bit; I hadn't taken a sick day in more than five years and figured the paper could find a way to fill in for me at Headquarters for one day.

  The next morning, I fired up the old gray pre-war Ford Coupe and headed into the city at nine-thirty. Traffic was light on

  Roosevelt Road, which I took east as far as Cicero Avenue, then turned south. Cicero is one of Chicago's great north-south arteries, a gritty, twenty-five-mile, straight-as-a-nun's-ruler thoroughfare lined with small factories, used-car lots, corner taverns, six-flats, pawn shops, dry cleaners, currency exchanges, and railroad viaducts. I drove past the Municipal Airport and continued on down to

  74th Street, where the block-long Dodge Plant sprawled on my left behind a largely empty parking lot slightly smaller than Delaware. I called it the Dodge Plant because that's what it was known as during the war, when it was said to be the largest factory in the world under one roof. In those days it cranked out war materiel, specifically airplane engines by the thousands for the big B-29 bombers that battered a staggering Japan and its fleets and island strongholds in the Pacific. Dodge, which never made automobiles at the facility, had packed up after the surrender. The plant was now the home of the Tucker, as a sign above the main entrance proudly proclaimed in capital letters.

  I entered the building, and a uniformed guard directed me down a long hallway and up one flight of metal stairs to an unadorned brown door with 'Preston Tucker' painted on it in gold letters. I knocked, and a female voice said "Come in, please."

  The room I stepped into was windowless and spartan, with a well-worn carpet and a bank of three-drawer, gunmetal gray filing cabinets lining one wall. A metal desk in matching gunmetal gray was planted mid-room, and behind it was planted a pleasant-looking fortyish woman whom I assumed to be Miss Henderson. I was correct.

  "Mr. Malek?" she said in a cordial tone, smiling and running a palm self-consciously over brown hair that was pulled back into a bun. "Mr. Tucker is expecting you. Please let me inform him that you have arrived."

  She pushed a button on her black telephone as she picked up the receiver. "Mr. Tucker, Mr. Malek of the Tribune is here. Yes sir, yes, I will."

  She smiled again and gestured me toward another plain door. Everything here whispered plain.

  The room I entered did little to dispel that impression, except it had an interior window looking down onto the plant floor. At the window stood a tall dark-haired man in a well-tailored suit. He turned toward me with an engaging smile.

  "Mr. Malek, so nice to see you," the automaker said as if he meant it, shaking hands with a firm grip. "Even though your paper has been pretty rough on me over these last months, I will be glad to talk to you. After all, what have I got to lose? Please sit down."

  Preston Thomas Tucker, age forty-five, was the sort of person who would quickly command notice in a crowd. He had center-parted hair and a long, strong face with an open, engaging expression hinting that a smile was about to break out.

  "I understand that you've come to do a profile on me for that paper of yours. Or is it really a profile on my automobile?"

  "A little of both," I told him with a nod and a grin, pulling out my reporter's notebook and a pencil. "Hard to separate the two, isn't it? I also know we, and other newspapers, have had some tough articles, but then, you've had some tough times. I want you to know I come with no preconceptions or biases."

  He laughed, a warm, spontaneous laugh. "Fair enough, Mr. Malek, fair enough. Whatever you may have heard, this automobile is my life–after my wonderful family, that is. Come on over here to the window and let me show it to you."

  I wasn't prepared for what I saw down on the floor. My image of an auto plant had been formed from movie theater newsreels and newspaper photos of throbbing assembly lines like Ford's giant River Rouge plant in Michigan, where workers by the dozens all up and down the line scrambled like ants, performing their specific duties with machine-like precision. This was…well…disappointing, to say the very least.

  The floor was lit from above only in the area beneath our window, with the vast remainder of the concrete-floored building stretching away into an empty, endless darkness. Within the halo of light below us were four of the distinctive, slope-backed Tucker automobiles, two of them red, one green, one blue, spaced about ten feet apart in a row. It would be stretching a point, however, to term this arrangement an 'assembly line'.

  A handful of men in white coveralls labored over each of the streamlined sedans. A door was being attached to one car, a windshield fitted to another, and an engine being eased into place in the back of a third–where one usually finds a trunk. Now I knew why the parking lot in front of the plant was so empty.

  "Beautiful, aren't they?" Tucker asked as he gazed down on the scene.

  I nodded. "Like no automobile I've ever seen."

  "Come and sit down, Mr. Malek," he said, indicating a grouping of chairs and lamp tables in one corner of the office that looked like they had come from a Salvation Army resale shop.

  When we got settled, he asked: "I assume that as a good reporter, you've been doing your research about us–newspaper clippings and such?"

  "Yes, I have," I said, pencil poised over my open notebook. "I've reviewed everything the Tribune has written over the last year or so."

  He pursed his lips as if choosing words. "Then you know at least something of our troubles in trying to get raw materials fo
r our cars, steel in particular. Mr. Malek, we are being blocked at every turn by the other automobile companies and their, shall we say, friends in the government.

  "There are strong forces that want us to fail," he went on, clenching a fist and looking at it as if it belonged to someone else. "But I am determined to push on in my fight to get Tuckers into the hands of our dealers and, ultimately, the American buying public."

  He paused for breath. It was clear he was just getting warmed up.

  "Mr. Malek, what you should be seeing down there on that factory floor is an assembly line of Ford or Chevrolet or Buick proportions teeming with activity, a finished car rolling off every few minutes. And you will, by God, one day you will."

  As I took notes, Tucker told me of his plans to thwart his enemies through the courts. He then began extolling the features of his cars and–only after my prompting–talked about his early years as a car-crazed kid in Michigan, followed by a stint with a local police force and a job as a successful car salesman in Tennessee. It was easy to see how he would have been a terrific salesman.

  He said he began to hit his stride as a designer during World War II, when he developed gun turrets used for PT boats, naval landing craft, and, coincidentally, the very B-29 bombers whose engines had been produced in this plant a few years earlier.

  I found it difficult to get Tucker to talk about himself for any length of time, however. His mind was focused on one thing and one thing only: the car. At his urging, we went down onto the production floor, where he greeted each of the mechanics and other workers, calling them all by name.

  "Look at this, Mr. Malek," he said enthusiastically, stroking a fender, and opening the passenger-side front door of a gleaming blue sedan. "More interior space than any auto being made. And low-slung, just sixty inches high. This baby has a 128-inch wheel base and is 219 inches long. That's a lotta car, sir. A lotta car."

  I nodded as though I understood what he was talking about and scribbled the statistics in my notebook.

  "Not only a comfortable car, it's also a safe car," he continued, smacking a fist into his open palm. "The safest car on the American road, no contest. See how the dashboard is padded as protection in case of a collision?" he said, slapping a palm against it. "And if there is a collision, the windshield will pop out rather than shatter.

  "Now here's something else: See all this extra space under the dash? We call that foot-well the 'safety chamber,' which a front-seat passenger can dive into if a crash is coming. These are things you aren't going to see on any of the cars coming out of Detroit." He pronounced Detroit as if it were a swear word, which to him it probably was.

  "Say, I've got a thought," he said, grinning and putting a hand on my shoulder. "How about taking a spin? You can see how one of my babies handles."

  "Well, I'm really not much of a motorist," I said in an uncertain tone.

  "You drove here, didn't you?" he snapped.

  "Yes, but–"

  "Then you can drive a Tucker, by God." He turned to one of the men in coveralls, a squat, dark-haired fellow with a moustache and a patch over one eye. "Eddie, where's the one that guy from Pennsylvania is supposed to pick up tomorrow?"

  "Over near Dock 7, Mr. Tucker," Eddie answered. "Keys are in it."

  "And it's all ready for him?"

  "Yes sir," Eddie answered with a sort of salute. "I really think it's the best one we've made yet, sir. We only had it outside the building once, but it handles like a dream."

  "That's what I like to hear. Okay, Mr. Malek, let's take us a ride," the automaker boomed, grabbing my arm and practically pulling me along.

  We strode through shadowy, empty acres toward the back of the building, or at least this section of the building, our footfalls echoing on the hard surface. Parked near a closed overhead door was a single vehicle, a pristine green Tucker.

  "There she is," my host proclaimed like a proud parent, thrusting one arm out, palm up, in a theatrical gesture. "You are about to become one of the first couple of dozen people to drive a Tucker 48. That's its official name, although the press and lots of folks have taken to calling it the Torpedo, which is fine by me." He punched a button on the wall and the big door rolled upward, letting the sunshine in.

  "Climb in, Mr. Malek, and I'll ride shotgun," Preston Tucker said, folding himself into the front passenger seat.

  "I have to warn you that the only car I've ever driven is a creaky and somewhat rusted old '39 Ford," I told him as I slid in under the wheel.

  "A '39 Ford, eh? Well, that's quite a model…" he said, not completing the sentence.

  As I got settled, I realized I was probably a foot closer to the road than in my Ford. In the center of the steering wheel, the oversized circular horn cover was embellished with a splashy red-and-silver coat-of-arms and the word TUCKER beneath it.

  "Okay, start 'er up," Preston Tucker said. I turned the key and the engine sprang to life. "Out the door and take a right," he directed, "and we'll head north up

  Cicero Avenue." The big car jerked slightly as I put in into gear. "That's okay, don't worry," my passenger assured me, "takes a few minutes to get used to the feel. You're driving a lot of power, a lot more than in that '39 Ford coupe."

  My palms were sweating on the wheel as I drove along the side of the big building and out toward

  Cicero Avenue. I turned right into the busy street, moving slowly and hugging the lane closest to the curb. "Come on, Mr. Malek, this machine is dying to go faster," Tucker urged. "Give her some gas now, she's a caged animal. Turn her loose."

  I pushed down on the accelerator, watching the needle move to twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five miles per hour.

  "Faster than that!"

  "I'm not sure what the speed limit is along here," I complained.

  "Aw, don't give it a thought; the police are used to us testing our product."

  Hands squeezing the wheel, I worked the speed up to forty-five, vaguely aware of the stares of pedestrians looking at a vehicle the likes of which many of them had never seen. The car handled beautifully and I actually began to enjoy the ride.

  As we approached the Municipal Airport, I saw the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror. "Damn! It's the cops," I snarled.

  Tucker laughed. "Don't worry, Mr. Malek. As I said before, the police along this stretch are used to us. I'll take care of it."

  I pulled over and the squad car stopped behind us. "Ah, but it's yet another one of these Tuckers speeding," the stocky and ruddy uniformed cop said with a touch of Irish brogue as he came to the drivers' side window.

  "It's not his fault," Tucker told the uniform. "I encouraged him. We're testing one that's just come off the line."

  "Well, if it isn't Mr. Tucker himself," the cop said, crouching and looking in. "How many times do we have to warn you about this?" he said with a half-grin.

  "I promise, solemnly promise, that it won't happen again, Sergeant Mullaney," Tucker said, unleashing a grin of his own.

  The stocky member of Chicago's Finest threw up his hands. "All right, off with the both of you now. And remember, you're in a thirty-five mile per hour zone."

  "I gather this happens often," I said to Tucker as we eased away from the curb.

  He chuckled. "Yes. I wish we had a test track, but we have to make do."

  "Sounds like next time you're really going to get a ticket."

  "Nah. That fellow Mullaney who just pulled us over, that's about the third or fourth time he's stopped me. Twice I've been behind the wheel, the other times I was the passenger. He and the other cops along here pull us over because they have to. But the truth is, if we are successful, this plant will be wonderful for the area, with a lot of new jobs. When Dodge pulled out after the war, thousands got laid off."

  As we drove back to the plant, I felt relief I wouldn't have to explain to Fergus Fahey how I happened to get a speeding ticket while driving the newest automobile on the American road.

  "This car's being picked up tomorrow," Tucker said as I e
ased it back though the big door and into the plant. "Fellow buying it is a railroad executive from Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Railroad bigwig. He's coming in on the train and will drive it back east. He'll get a lot of stares on the long road home. Wonderful advertising for us. As you know, our slogan is 'You've just been passed by a Tucker.'"

  "Well, thanks for the drive. And the excitement," I said as we headed back up to his office. "Tell me what you think your chances are of going into mass production on your vehicle."

  "As I told you earlier, Mr. Malek, there are strong forces that want us to fail. You've read the stories–some of them in your own paper," he said with just a touch of bitterness. "All I can say is I will do everything in my power to see this car succeed. America needs it. And I firmly believe America wants it. It is the future of our industry."

  "I wish you luck, sir," I told him, meaning it. The guy's enthusiasm impressed me. "But before I let you get on with your work, I do have a question regarding my article."

  "Shoot," Tucker said, grinning. "You can ask all the questions you want."

  Now came the reason for my visit to this monstrous but shadowy and virtually deserted factory building. "I would very much like to talk to someone who owns a Tucker, to find out what he thinks about the car and what makes it different, special to him. I would be especially interested in someone from the Chicago area, if that's possible."

  "Of course! I should have thought of it myself," he said, clapping his hands once. "There is a man right here in the city who bought one of the first few cars. Fine fellow, he is. Name's Warren Jones. I'm sure he would be glad to talk to you."

  "Any idea what this Warren Jones fellow does for a living?" I asked in what I hoped was a casual tone.

  Tucker scratched his forehead in thought. "I believe that he runs a printing company a few miles from here, a big one. Yes, that's it, I recall it now. When he was here at the plant–right here in this office–buying his car–it was Number 11, by the way–he mentioned his printing business. It's somewhere up on the North Side, if I remember right."