Motown (9 page)

“Hi, I’m Pammie. Wendell’s the only one around here who wears a tie.”

The girl seated at the table sorting three-by-five cards into a recipe box fit his early expectations of Wendell’s Wonders. She wore a gray short-sleeved sweatshirt over white shorts that left her fat thighs exposed and she twinkled at him myopically over the tops of slanty glasses with a Band-Aid on the left bow. She had acne and her brown hair was gathered with a rubber band into a frayed stalk on top of her head like Alice the Goon’s.
VW,
Rick thought.

“Sorry.” He undid his collar button and loosened the tie. “I’m Rick.”

“I know. I heard. Welcome aboard. That telephone should be cooled down enough by now.”

Pammie was perhaps nineteen. As he took a seat and reached for the instrument, he hoped his bones didn’t creak too loudly.

He worked his way through the listings in order, taking notes on a legal pad Pammie slid his way and scratching out each number when someone answered. Letting a little Oklahoma creep into his voice, he identified himself as an independent surveyor employed by AAA.

Pammie giggled after he hung up the first time. “You’re good.”

“It’s the twang,” he said. “People think hicks are too stupid to be pulling anything.”

“What if a hick answers?”

“Then I talk like a Yankee.” He imitated JFK.

She giggled again. “Now you sound like Wendell.”

It was slow work. At the end of twenty minutes he’d made only three calls and filled a dozen pages with notes in his personal shorthand. It was surprising how many General Motors cars had had safety equipment problems. Pammie, reading and culling old cards from the file box and adding new ones, soon stopped listening. Rick was about to place another call when the telephone rang. Line 2 lit up. He heard Enid answering in the next room.

“Oh, hello, Wendell. How’s the weather?”

Rick glanced at Pammie, studying a card. He picked up the receiver and punched 2.

“… same as yours. I’m at Metro Airport. The meeting was canceled.”

Rick recognized the voice from television press conferences, the Harvard accent softly reminiscent of Kennedy’s.

“That’s the second time,” Enid said.

“I know. They’re ducking me. Can you meet me at American? We’ll have lunch at the Hilton.”

“Is that wise?” Her tone was barely above a whisper.

“I’m tired of being wise. It hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Are you free?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t tell the others I’m here yet. Nothing gets done when everyone’s depressed.”

Rick waited until they both hung up before he punched Line 1. He was busy dialing the next number when Enid leaned in through the door. “Pammie, can you watch the phone? I have to go out.”

“I thought you and Lee were going to lunch.”

“Damn.” She glanced at a tiny gold watch on her wrist. “Apologize, okay? Tell him I’ll explain later.” She clattered away without a glance at Rick. Thirty seconds later the Mercedes swept past the window, startling a bluejay off the feeder.

Rick broke the connection on a busy signal. That explained Miss Kohler. This was going to be easier than he thought.

“W
HEN YOU SAID
K
RESGE,
I was expecting a stool between Hardware and Lingerie,” Lee said.

Rick and the long-haired young man were sitting under the skylight in the Kresge Court Cafeteria, bathed in greenish light filtered through the orchids and ferns that grew in fuzzy profusion between the wrought iron tables. He had brought Lee there because the odds of running into any of his former police department colleagues in the lower court of the Detroit Institute of Arts were too small to measure. They finished their meals and listened to Frankie Avalon crooning over the speakers.

Rick said, “It’s good plain food but they make it look like an oil painting. You didn’t look the diner type.” Which was a lie; Lee Schenck looked as if he spent more time in diners than canned soup.

“It’s nice, but I could’ve caught a burger someplace. I’m not really into food anyway. Lunch is like an oasis, you know? In the working day.”

“Thanks for joining me,” Rick said. “I hate eating out by myself. People look at you.”

“I say let ’em look. Each to his own thing.”

Rick couldn’t tell if this guy was for real. He had the hair and the prole look, but looks were easy. He himself had ditched the jacket and tie back at the office. They had started to get in the way.

They split the check—Rick had learned early that picking it up only put others on their guard—and walked down Woodward, taking their time rounding the corner to where Rick had parked on John R. The late-June day was warming up for a two o’clock scorcher, but memories of the Michigan winter were still fresh and the sidewalks teemed with strollers drawing out their lunch breaks. A white Lincoln convertible with Oriental-looking headlights cruised past with its top down and Mitch Ryder screaming unintelligible lyrics from the radio. Lee jerked his long loose body with the beat.

“Almost bikini weather,” Rick said. “We’ll have to wangle lunch on Belle Isle then.”

“If I’m not overseas.”

He glanced at Lee. “Vietnam?”

“Peace Corps.”

“No kidding, how long you been?”

“I just got accepted last month. I’m waiting for my assignment.”

“What country you hoping for?”

“I studied Spanish six years. I’ll probably get Nairobi.” He laughed his short laugh.

“They say it looks good on the résumé.”

“I’m not doing it for me.”

Rick decided he was for real.

“So the Porter Group is just a temporary stop.”

“More than that,” Lee said. “It’s a chance to do something important while I’m waiting for the big one to come through. Safe cars are worth fighting for, right?”

“I guess.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re the next Hubert Humphrey. Pammie told me.”

“Pammie seems to be the office intercom system.”

“She’s a groovy kid. I like everyone at PG. They’re not into that middle-class
schtik.
It’s like I’m part of a big family.”

“You an orphan?”

“Let’s just say my folks and I have agreed to ignore each other. What about you, married?”

“I tried living with someone once. We kind of came to the same agreement.” Rick fished his keys out of his pocket. “Sorry you got stood up.”

“Yeah, well, Enid’s dedicated.”

“You two been going out long?”

“I wish. We just work together. Sometimes we graze at the same table. She says I’m a sweet boy.”

“Bitch.”

“Yeah. Nice wheels.” Lee got into the Camaro on the passenger’s side. “You ought to see the accident stats on GM’s sports models.”

“I got an earful of them this morning.” Rick slid under the wheel.

“I’m into bikes myself. I had a Harley until the bank took it away.”

“Now,
they’re
dangerous.”

“Yeah, but they’re supposed to be.”

Rick started the car. He thought he heard a lifter. He’d pop the hood later and take a look. “Enid’s a good-looking woman.” He checked the mirrors and pulled out behind a DSR bus.

Lee laughed. “Ursula Andress is a good-looking woman. Enid’s the best argument against anti-Semitism I know. You better forget her.”

Jewish. He’d been betting on something more exotic, like Egyptian. “She taken?”

“Married. To the Porter Group.”

“Got a thing for old Wendell, huh?”

“You guys in suits.” Lee shook his head. “It’s a new generation, man. Everybody isn’t just looking out for themselves any more.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard Peter, Paul and Mary.”

“Even if she
was
warm for Wendell’s form she wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s been with the Arctic Princess since before I was born. That’s Mrs. Porter. Caroline, the future first female justice of the Supreme Court.”

“Not popular, I guess.”

“She’s a lawyer, what’s else to say? Capitalist dinosaurs, that whole lot. But she keeps us out of jail. You new guys sure ask a lot of questions.”

Rick backed off. He was getting his range now.

They discovered they were both Tigers fans and discussed Al Kaline and whether Charlie Dressen would recover enough from his heart attack to resume his management duties before the end of the season. Lee thought Mickey Lolich should be traded before he cooled off. “Guy’s twenty-six,” he said. “Over the hill.”

Rick stopped at the light on Adams. A Negro built like Rosey Grier, wearing a dashiki and dark glasses and an enormous Afro, was seated Indian fashion at the base of the Edison fountain, plucking a sitar for a small audience. A Maxwell House can stood on the grass nearby with a sign taped to it reading REMEMBER BLOODY SUNDAY—GIVE TO THE NAACP. Rick thought, but couldn’t recall what Bloody Sunday was all about. He bet himself that Lee could. He’d have the date.

“I never realized so much of this work was done on the telephone.”

“We stuff envelopes too, a shitload of envelopes. What did you think, we go into plants dressed as the help with spy cameras in our shoes?”

“Something like that.”

“You bought the GM line. They’d like people to think we’re a bunch of crackpots who break into files and go through the garbage at the proving grounds. Wendell says consumer advocacy is in the same position unions were in thirty years ago. Pushing for seat belts makes us Communists or something.”

Wendell says. Leary says. Tommy and Dick say. Che said. Talk about buying someone’s line. The whole fucking generation was a Chatty Cathy doll filled with other people’s words. Rick felt as if he’d aged forty years since morning.

“It’d throw a lot of people out of work for a long time,” he said. “All those new safety features.”

“Not so long, just during retooling. How much work you think gets done by people killed or crippled in accidents?”

“Did Wendell say that too?”

Lee lifted his chin. “He’s a great man. You’ll see when you meet him.”

Did it again.

The light changed. They crossed the intersection. The man with the sitar was playing for himself now; his listeners had drifted off.

“Don’t go stiff on me, Lee. I’m on your side.”

The young man exhaled and ran his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. These rednecks who put their goddamn jobs ahead of people’s lives get me uptight. Sometimes I think I might as well be talking to my folks.”

“Thanks for the indoctrination. I’m just the new kid in town.”

“You ain’t heard nothing till you talk to Wendell. When he gets back, ask him to show you his slides. Better yet, get him to take you to the Farm.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s up in Macomb County. I can’t describe it. You’ll have to see it for yourself.”

They swung left on Jefferson. The sun had turned the surface of the river into a sheet of white metal. The Windsor skyline was fuzzy in the glare. “Is Enid uptight?” Rick asked.

“Most women with her bucks, when they get involved in a cause they just throw money at it. The Porter Group’s into her for ten thousand and she still spends sixty hours a week at the office. Practically runs the place.”

“Ten thousand?”

“What I heard.”

“Who’s she related to, Horace Dodge?”

“All I know is she inherited more than I’ll ever see. Hey, the game’s started.” Lee turned on the radio and found WJR. McLain was starting against Baltimore. The rest of the way back to the office their conversation centered on the game. Afterward Rick couldn’t remember who was ahead.

P
ATSY
O
RR WAS UNCOMFORTABLE,
and only part of it involved having to support himself on one of his aluminum canes in a hot public booth while he waited for the clumsy Puerto Rican exchange to complete a simple connection.

“Pasquale, you there?”

“Yes, Dad.” All his muscles tensed, including the atrophied ones in his stricken legs. When he’d first learned that his contact with Frankie Orr would be reduced to conversations on the telephone, he’d hoped he would be less intimidated, but it was as if the old man could compress all the awesome qualities of his blade-straight, burnished old age into his gliding whisper of a voice. Despite its lack of timbre it had a virility at sixty-four that Patsy, who had been mortified once to hear his own thin tones played back in open court from a tape recording made from a wiretap, could never hope to acquire. He pictured himself in thirty years with a querulous cackle.

“There’s a boatload of transistor radios sitting on a dock in Mexico waiting for a deposit,” Frankie said, “What about it?”

“I sent you a check yesterday.”

“Me? Jesus Christ, you were supposed to send it direct to General Díaz in Caracas. You know what happens to radios when they sit around in that climate? I’ve got people in Miami who aren’t interested in buying hot paperweights.”

“You didn’t tell me to send it there.”

“Have I got to tell you to go to the toilet? You’re a
capo,
Pasquale, not some
insensato
street soldier needs a map to find his dick.”

Patsy reflected that his father had picked up a lot of the
linguaggio
during his sojourn in Sicily.

“Well, let’s just hope one of these spick assholes doesn’t cop the check and buy himself a fiesta.” Ice cubes collided on Frankie’s end. Before deportation, his American doctors had warned him against drinking, but it wouldn’t be ginger ale in the glass. “Account’s getting low, by the way. I need another eighty grand.”

“It’ll take me a week or so to shake that much loose.”

The drinking sounds were amplified by the receiver. “What are you selling there, subscriptions to
Grit?”

“I got a lot of capital tied up in this policy move. DiJesus and his outfit don’t work cheap.”

“I don’t like the way that out-of-town ape operates. You can’t just run around killing niggers these days like there’s a bounty on them. What about Gallante?”

“He starts today. Hammer and anvil, Dad, just like you taught me. Gallante’s the anvil.”

“Keep me up on it. And tell DiJesus not to go so hard on the coloreds. We get Cronkite down here. I know what’s going on in Alabama and Mississippi. Heat like that is bad for business.”