Wheels (24 page)

Chapter
eleven

On a dismal, grimy, wet November day, six weeks after the meeting with
Adam Trenton at the proving ground, Brett DeLosanto was in downtown
Detroit-in a gray, bleak mood which matched the weather.
His mood was uncharacteristic. Normally, whatever pressures, worries
and-more recently -doubts assailed the young car designer, he remained
cheerful and good-natured. But on a day like today, he thought, to a
native Californian like himself, Detroit in winter was just too much,
too awful.
He had reached his car, moments earlier, on a parking lot near Congress
and Shelby, having battled his way to it on foot, through wind and rain
and traffic, the last seeming to flow interminably the instant he sought
to cross any intersection, so that he was left standing impatiently on
curbs, already miserably sodden, and getting wetter still.
As for the inner city around him . . . ugh
!
Always dirty, preponderantly
ugly and depressing at any time, today's leaden skies and rain-as
Brett's imagination saw it-were like spreading soot on a charnel house.

Only one worse time of year existed: in March and April, when winter's
heavy snows, frozen and turned black, began to melt. Even then, he
supposed, there were people who became used to the city's hideousness
eventually. So far, he hadn't.
Inside his car, Brett started the motor and got the heater and
windshield wipers going. He was glad to be sheltered at last; outside,
the rain was still beating down heavily. The parking lot was crowded,
and he was boxed in, and would have to wait while two cars ahead of him
were moved
to let him out. But he had signaled an attendant as he came into the lot,
and could see the man now, several rows of cars away.
Waiting, Brett remembered it was on such a day as this that he had first
come to Detroit himself, to live and work.
The ranks of auto company designers were heavy with expatriate
Californians whose route to Detroit, like his own, had been through the
Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, which operated on a trimester
system. For those who graduated in winter and came to Detroit to work, the
shock of seeing the city at its seasonal worst was so depressing that a
few promptly returned West and sought some other design field as a
livelihood. But most, though jolted badly, stayed on as Brett had done,
and later the city revealed compensations. Detroit was an outstanding cultural center, notably in art, music, and drama, while beyond the city, the
State of Michigan was a superb sports-vacation arena, winter and summer,
boasting some of the lovelier unspoiled lakes and country in the world.
Where in hell, Brett wondered, was the parking-lot guy to move those other
cars?
It was this kind of frustration-nothing major-which had induced his
present bad temper.

He had had a luncheon date at the Pontchartrain Hotel
with a man named Hank Kreisel, an auto parts manufacturer and friend, and
Brett had driven to the hotel, only to find the parking garage full. As
a result he had to park blocks away, and got wet walking back. At the
Pontchartrain there had been a message from Kreisel, apologizing, but to
say he couldn't make it, so Brett lunched alone, having driven fifteen
miles to do so. He had several other errands downtown, and these occupied
the rest of the afternoon; but
in walking from one place to the next, a series of rude, born-happy
drivers refused to give him the slightest break on pedestrian crossings,
despite the heavy rain.
The near-savage drivers distressed him most. In no other city that he
knew-including New York, which was bad enough-were motorists as boorish,
inconsiderate, and unyielding as on Detroit streets and freeways.
Perhaps it was because the city lived by automobiles, whi
ch became sym
bols of power, but for whatever reason a Detroiter behind the wheel
seemed changed into a Frankenstein. Most newcomers, at first shaken by
the "no quarter asked or given" driving, soon learned to behave
similarly, in self-defense.

Brett never had. Used to inherent courtesy
in California, Detroit driving remained a nightmare to him, and a source
of anger.
The parking-lot attendant had obviously forgotten about moving the cars
ahead. Brett knew he would have to get out and locate the man, rain or
not. Seething, he did. When he saw the attendant, however, he made no
complaint. The man looked bedraggled, weary, and was soaked. Brett
tipped hint instead and pointed to the blocking cars.
At least, Brett thought, returning to his car, be had a warm and
comfortable apartment to go home to, which probably the attendant
hadn't. Brett's apartment was in Birmingham, a part of swanky Country
Club Manor, and he remembered that Barbara was coming in tonight to cook
dinner for the two of them. The style of Brett's living, plus an absence
of money worries which his fifty thousand dollars a year salary and
bonus made possible, were compensations which Detroit bad given him, and
he made no secret of enjoying them.
At last the cars obstructing him were being moved. As the one immediately
ahead swung clear, Brett eased his own car forward.
The exit from the parking lot was fifty yards ahead.

One other car was in
front, also on the way out. Brett DeLosanto accelerated slightly to close
the gap and reached for money to pay the exit cashier.
Suddenly, appearin
g as if from nowhere, a third car-a dark green sedan-shot
directly across the front of Brett'
s, swung sharply right and slam
med
into second place in the exit line. Brett trod on his brakes hard,
skidded, regained control, stopped
and swore. "You goddam maniac !
"
All the frustrations of the day, added to his fixation about Detroit
drivers, were synthesized in Brett's actions through the next five
seconds. He leaped from his car, stormed to the dark green sedan and
wrathfully wrenched open the driver's door.
-y
ou son-of-a It was as f ar as he got
before he stopped.
"Yes
.”

the other driver said. He was a tall, graying, well-dressed black
man in his fifties. "You were saying something
.”

"Never mind," Brett growled. He moved to close the door.
"Please wait I I do mind I I may even complain to the Human Rights
Commission. I shall tell them: A young white man opened my car door with
every intention of punching me in the nose. When he discovered I was of
a different race, he stopped. That's discrimination, you know. The human
rights people won't like it
.”

It sure would be a new angle
.”

Brett laughed. "Would you prefer me to
finish
.”

"I suppose, if you must," the graying Negro said. "But I'd much rather buy
you a drink, then I can apologize for cutting in front like that, and
explain it was a foolish, irrational impulse at the end of a frustrating
day
.”

"You had one of those days, too
.”

"Obviously we both did
.”

Brett nodded. "Okay, I'll take the drink
.”

"Shall we say Jim's Garage, right now? It's three blocks from here and
the doorman will park your car, By the way, my name is Leonard Wingate
.”

The green sedan led the way.
The first thing they discovered, after ordering Scotches on the rocks,
was that they worked for the same company. Leonard Wingate was an
executive in Personnel and, Brett gathered from their conversation,
about two rungs down from vice-president level. Later, he would learn
that his drinking companion was the highest-ranking Negro in the
company.
"I've heard your
name," Wingate told Brett. "Y
ou've been
Michelangelo-ing the Orion, haven't you
.”

"Well, we hope it turns out that way. Have you seen the prototype
.”

The other shook his head.
"I could arrange it, if you'd like to
.”

"I would like. Another drink
.”

"My turn
.”

Brett beckoned a bartender.
The bar of Jim's Garage, colorfully festooned with historic artifacts
of the auto industry, was currently an "in" place in downtown Detroit.
Now, in early evening, it was beginning to fill, the level of business
and voices rising simultaneously.
"A whole lot riding on that Orion baby," Wingate said.
"Damn right
.”

"Especially jobs for my people
.”

"Your people
.”

"Hourly paid ones, black and white. The way the Orion goes, so a lot of
f
amilies in this city'll
go: the hours they work, what their take-home is -and that means the way
they live, eat, whether they can meet mortgage payments, have new clothes,
a vacation, what happens to their kids
.”

Brett mused. "You never think of that when you're sketching a new car or
throwing clay to shape a fender
.”

"Don't see how you could. None of us ever knows the half of what goes on
with other people; all kinds of walls get built between us-brick, the
other kind. Even when you do get through a wall once in a while, and find
out what's behind it, then maybe try to help somebody, you find you
haven't helped because of other stinking, rotten, conniving parasites .
.
.”

Leonard Wingate clenched his fist and hammered it twice, silently but
intensely, on the bar counter. He looked sideways at Brett, then grinned
crookedly. "Sorry!
"
"Here comes your other drink, friend. I think you need it
.”

The designer
sipped his own before asking, "Does this have something to do with those
lousy aerobatics in the parking lot
.”

Wingate nodded. "I'm sorry about that, too. I was blowing steam
.”

He
smiled, this time less tensely. "Now, I guess, I've let the rest of it
out
.”

"Steam is only a white cloud," Brett said. "Is the source of it
classified
.”

"Not really. You've heard of hard core hiring
.”

. I've heard. I don't know all the details
.”

But he did know that Barbara
Zaleski had become interested in the subject lately because of a new
project she had been assigned by the OJL advertising agency.
The gray-haired Personnel man summarized the hard core hiring program: its
objective in regard to the inner city and former unemployables; the Big
Three hiring halls downtown; how,
67 in relation to individuals, the program sometimes worked and sometimes
didn't.
"It's been worth doing, though, despite some disappointments. Our
retention rate-that is, people who've held on to jobs we've given
them-has been better than fifty percent, which is more than we expected.
The unions have cooperated; news media give publicity which helps;
there's been other aid in other ways. Thafs why it hurts to get knifed
in the back by your own people, in your own company
.”

Brett asked,"Who knifed you? How
.”

"Let me go back a bit
.”

Wingate put the tip of a long, lean finger in
his drink and stirred the ice. "A lot of people we've hired under the
program have never in their lives before, kept regular hours. Mostl~
they've had no reason to. Working regularly, the way most of us do,
breeds habits: like getting up in the morning, being on time to catch
a bus, becoming used to working five days of the week. But if you've
never done any of that, if you don't have the habits, it's like learning
another language; what's more, it takes time. You could call it changing
attitudes, or changing gears. Well, we've learned a lot about all that
since we started hard core hiring, We also learned that some people-not
all, but some
who don't acquire those habits on their own, can get them
if they're given help
.”