Wheels (25 page)

"You'd better help me," Brett said. "I have trouble getting up
.”

His companion smiled. "If we did try to help, I'd send someone from
employee relations staff to see you. If you'd dropped out, quit coming
to work, he'd ask you why. There's another thing: some of these new
people will miss one day, or even be an hour or two late, then simply
give up. Maybe they didn't intend to miss; it just happened. But
they have the notion we're so inflexible, it means automatically they've
lost their jobs
.”

"And they haven't
.”

"Christ, not We give a guy every possible break because we want the
thing to work. Something else we do is give people who have trouble
getting to work a cheap alarm clock; you'd be surprised how many have
never owned one. The company let me buy a gross. In my office I've got
alarm clocks the way other men have paper clips
.”

Brett said, "I'll be damned
.”

It seemed incongruous to think of a
gargantuan auto company, with annual wage bills running into billions,
worrying about a few sleepyhead employees waking up.
"The point I'm getting at," Leonard Wingate said, "is that if a hard
core worker doesn't show up, either to finish a training course or at
the plant, whoever's in charge is supposed to notify one of my special
people. Then, unless it's a hopeless case, they follow through
.”

"But that hasn't been happening? It's why you're frustrated
.”

"That's part of it. There's a whole lot more
.”

The Personnel man downed
the last of his Scotch. "Those courses we have where the hard core
people get oriented-they last eight weeks; there are maybe two hundred
on a course
.”

Brett motioned for a refill to their drinks. When the bartender had
gone, he prompted, "Okay, so a course with two hundred people
.”

"Right. An instructor and a woman secretary are in charge. Between them,
those two keep all course records, including attendance. They pass out
paychecks, which arrive weekly in a bunch from Headquarters Accounting.
Naturally, the checks are made out on the basis of the course records
.”

Wingate said bitterly, "It's the instructor
69 and the secretary-one particular pair. They're the ones
.”

"The ones what
.”

-Who've been lying, cheating, stealing from the people they're employed
to help
.”

"I guess I can figure some of it," Brett said. "But tell me, anyway
.”

"Well, as the course goes along, there are dropouts-for the reasons I
told you, and for others. It always happens; we expect it. As I said,
if our department's told, we try to persuade some of the people to come
back. But what this instructor and secretary have been doing is not
reporting the dropouts, and recording them present. So that checks for
the dropouts have kept coming in, and then that precious pair has kept
those checks themselves
.”

"But the checks are made out by name. They can't cash them
.”

Wingate shook his head. "They can and they have. What happens is
eventually this pair does report that certain people have stopped
coming, so the company checks stop, too. Then the instructor goes around
with the checks he's saved and finds the people they're made out to. It
isn't difficult; all addresses are on file. The instructor tells a
cock-and-bull story about the company wanting the money back, and gets
the checks endorsed. After that, he can cash them anywhere. I know it
happens that way. I followed the instructor for an afternoon
.”

"But how about later, when your employee relations people go visiting?
You say they hear about the dropouts eventually. Don't they find out
about the checks
.”

"Not necessarily. Remember, the people we're dealing with aren't
communicative. They're dropouts in more ways than one, usually, and
never
volunteer information. It's hard enough getting answers to questions.
Besides that, I happen to think there've been some bribes passed around.
I can't prove it, but there's a certain smell
.”

"The whole thing stinks
.”

Brett thought: Compared with what Leonard Wingate had told him, his own
irritations of today seemed minor. He asked, 'Were you the one who
uncovered all this
.”

"Mostly, though one of my assistants got the idea first. He was
suspicious of the course attendance figures; they looked too good. So
the two of us started checking, comparing the new figures with our own
previous ones, then we got comparable figures from other companies. They
showed what was going on, all right. After that, it was a question of
watching, catching the people. Well, we did
.”

"So what happens now
.”

Wingate shrugged, his figure hunched over the bar counter. "Security's
taken over; it's out of my hands. This afternoon they brought the
instructor and the secretary downtown-separately. I was there. The two
of them broke down, admitted everything. The guy cried, if you'll believe it
.”

"I believe it," Brett said. "I feel like crying in a different way. Will
the company prosecute
.”

"The guy and his girl friend think so, but I know they won't
.”

The tall
Negro straightened up; he was almost a head higher than Brett DeLosanto.
He said mockingly, "Bad public relations, y'know. Wouldn't want it in
the papers, with our company's name. Besides, the way my bosses see it,
the main thing is to get the money back; seems there's quite a few
thousand
.”

'What about the other people? The ones who dropped out, who might have
come back, gone on working . .
.”

"Oh come, my friend, you're being ridiculously sentimental
.”

Brett said sharply, "Knock it off I I didn't steal the goddam checks
.”

"No, you didn't. Well, about those people, let me tell you. If I had a
staff six times the size I have, and if we could go back through all the
records and be sure which names to follow up on, and if we could locate
them after all these weeks . .
.”

The bartender appeared. Wingate's glass was empty, but he shook his head.
For Brett's benefit he added, 'We'll do what we can. It may not be much
.”

"I'm sorry," Brett said. "Damn sorry
.”

He paused, then asked, "You
married
.”

"Yes, but not working at it
.”

"Listen, my girl friend's cooking dinner at my place. Why not join us
.”

Wingate demurred politely. Brett insisted.
Five minutes later they left for Country Club Manor. Barbara Zaleski had a key to Brett's apartment and was there when they
arrived, already busy in the kitchen. An aroma of roasting lamb was
drifting out.
"Hey, scullion
!
" Brett called from the hallway. "Come, meet a guest
.”

"If it's another woman," Barbara's voice sailed back, "you can cook your
own dinner. Oh, it isn't. Hi I"
She appeared with a tiny apron over the smart, knit suit she had arrived
in, having come directly from the OJL agency's Detroit office. The suit,
Brett thought appreciatively, did justice to Barbara's figure; he sensed
Leonard Wingate observing the same thing. As usual, Barbara had dark
glasses pushed up into her thick, chestnut
brown hair, which she had undoubtedly forgotten. Brett reached out, removed
the glasses and kissed her lightly.
He introdu
ced them, informing Wingate, "Th
is is my mistress
.”

"He'd like me to be," Barbara said, "but I'm not. Telling people I am is
his way of getting even
.”

As Brett had expected, Barbara and Leonard Wingate achieved a rapport
quickly. While they talked, Brett opened a bottle of Dom Perignon which
the three of them shared. Occasionally Barbara excused herself to check
on progress in the kitchen.
During one of her absences, Wingate looked around the spacious apartment
living room. "Pretty nice pad
.”

"Thanks
.”

When Brett leased the apartment a year and a half ago he had
been his own interior decorator, and the furnishings reflected his personal taste for modern design and flamboyant coloring. Bright yellows,
mauves, vermilions, cobalt greens predominated, yet were used imaginatively, so that they merged as an attractive whole. Lighting
complemented the colors, highlighting some areas, diminishing others. The
effect was to create-ingeniously-a series of moods within a single room.
At one end of the living room was an open door to another room.
Wingate asked, "Do you do much of your work here
.”

"Some
.”

Brett nodded toward the open door. "There's my Thinkolarium. For
when I need to get creative and be uninterrupted away from that
wired-for-sound Taj Mahal we work in
.”

He motioned vaguely in the
direction of the company's Design-Styling Center.
"He does other things there, too," Barbara
said. She had returned as Brett spoke. "Come in, Leonard. I'll show you
.”

Wingate followed her, Brett trailing.
The other room, while colorful and pleasant also, was equipped as a
studio, with the paraphernalia of an artist-designer. A pile of tissue
flimsies on the floor beside a drafting table showed where Brett had raced
through a series of sketches, tearing off each flimsy, using a new one
from the pad beneath as the design took shape. The last sketch in the
series-a rear fender style-was pinned to a cork board.
Wingate pointed to it. "Will that one be for real
.”

Brett shook his head. "You play with ideas, get them out of your system,
like belching. Sometimes, that way, you get a notion which will lead to
something permanent in the end. This isn't one
.”

He pulled the flimsy down
and crumpled it. "If you took all the sketches which precede any new car,
you could fill Cobo Hall with paper
.”

Barbara switched on a light. It was in a corner of the room where an easel
stood, covered by a cloth. She removed the cloth carefully.
"And then there's this," Barbara said. "This isn't for discarding
.”

Beneath the cloth was a painting in oils, almost-but not quite-finished.
"Don't count on it," Brett said. He added, "Barbara's very loyal. At times
it warps her judgment
.”

The tall, gray-haired Negro shook his head. "Not this time, it hasn't
.”

He studied the painting with admiration.
It was of a collection of automotive discards, heaped together. Brett had
assembled the materials for his model-laid out on a board ahead of the
easel, and lighted by a spotlight-from an auto wrecker's junk pile. There
were several burned
brown spark plugs, a broken camshaft, a discarded oil can, the entrails of
a carburetor, a battered headlight, a moldy twelve-volt battery, a window
handle, a section of radiator, a broken wrench, some assorted rusty nuts and
washers. A steering wheel, its horn ring missing, hung lopsidedly above.
No collection could have been more ordinary, less likely to inspire great
art. Yet, remarkably, Brett had made the junk assortment come alive, had
conveyed to his canvas both rugged beauty and a mood of sadness and
nostalgia. These were broken relics, the painting seemed to say: burned
out, unwanted, all usefulness departed; nothing was ahead save total
disintegration. Yet once, however briefly, they had had a life, had functioned, representing dreams, ambitions, achievements of mankind. One knew
that all other achievements-past, present, future, no matter how
acclaimed-were doomed to end similarly, would write their epilogues in
garbage dumps. Yet was not the dream, the brief achievement-of itself
-enough?
Leonard Wingate had remained, unmoving, before the canvas. He said slowly,
"I know a little about art. You're good. You could be great
.”