Wheels (35 page)

"It's an accident, so no penalties," the union man said. He addressed
Parkland and the safety man. "But there's an unsafe condition at this
work station. It has to be corrected or we pull everybody out
.”

"Take it easy," Parkland cautioned. "Nobody's proved that yet
.”

"It's unsafe to get out of bed in the morning," the safety man
protested. "If you do it with your eyes closed
.”

He glowered again at
the engine decker as, still deliberating, the trio moved away.
Soon af ter, those who had been questioned returned to work, the absent
worker replaced by a new man who watched his hands nervously.
From then on, though nothing was ever said, Rollie Knight had no more
trouble with his fellow workers. He knew why. Despite denials, those who
had been close by were aware of what had happened, and now he had the
reputation of being a man not to cross.
At first, when he had seen the smashed, bloody hand of his former
tormentor, Rollie, too, was shocked and sickened. But as the stretcher
moved away, so did the incident's immediacy, and since it was not in
Rollie's nature to dwell on things, by the next working day-with a weekend
in between-he had accepted what occurred as belonging in the past, and
that was it. He did not fear reprisals. He sensed that, jungle law or not,
a certain raw justice was on his side, and others knew it, including the
engine decker who protected him.
The incident had other overtones.
In the way that information spreads about someone who has achieved
attention, word of Rollie's prison record leaked. But rather than being
an embarrassment, it made him, he discovered, something of a folk hero-at
least to younger workers.
"Hear you done big time," a nineteen-year-old from the inner city told
him. "Guess you give them whitey pigs a run bef ore they gotcha, huh
.”

Another youngster asked,'-y
ou carry a piece
.”

Although Rollie knew that plenty of workers in the plant carried guns at
all times
allegedly for protection against the frequent muggings which
occurred in toilets or in parking lots
Rollie did not, being aware of the
stiff sentence he would get if, with his record, a firearm were ever
discovered on him. But he answered, non
-
committally, "Quit buggin' me, kid," and soon another rumor was added to the
rest: The little guy, Knight, was always armed. It was an additional cause
for respect among the youthful militants.
One of them asked him, "Hey, you want a joint
.”

He accepted. Soon, though not as frequently as some, Rollie was using
marijuana on the assembly line, learning that it made a day go faster,
the monotony more bearable. About the same time he began playing the
numbers.
Later, when there was reason to think about it more, he realized that
both drugs and numbers were his introduction to the complex, dangerous
understratum of crime in the plant.
The numbers, to begin with, seemed innocent enough.
As Rollie knew, playing the numbers game
especially in auto plants-is,
to Detroiters, as natural as breathing. Though the game is Mafia
controlled, demonstrably crooked, and the odds against winning are a
thousand to one, it attracts countless bettors daily who wager anything
from a nickel to a hundred dollars, occasionally more. The most common
daily stake in plants, and the amount which Rollie bet himself, is a
dollar.
But whatever the stake, a bettor selects three figures-any three-in the
hope they will be the winning combination for that day. In event of a
win, the payoff is 500 to 1, except that some bettors gamble on
individual digits instead of all three, for which the odds are lower.
What seems to bother no one who plays numbers in Detroit is that the
winning number is selected by betting houses from those combinations
which have least money wagered on them. Only in nea
r
by Pontiac, where
the winning number is gea
r
ed to race results and published pari
-
mutuel payoffs, is the game-at least in this regard -honest.
Periodically, raids on the so-called "Detroit numbers ring" are made much
of by the FBI, Detroit police, and others. RECORD NUMBERS RAID or BIGGEST
RAID IN U.S. HISTORY are apt to be headlines in the Detroit News and Free
Press, but next day, and without much searching, placing a numbers bet is
as easy as ever.
As Rollie worked longer, the ways in which numbers operated in the plant
became clearer. janitors were among the many taking bets; in their pails,
under dry cloths, were the traditional yellow slips which numbers writers
used, as well as cash collected. Both slips and cash were smuggled from
the plant, to be downtown by a deadline-usually race track post time.
A union steward, Rollie learned, was the numbers supervisor for Assembly;
his regular duties made it possible for him to move anywhere in the plant
without attracting attention. Equally obvious was that betting was a daily
addiction which a majority of workers shared, including supervisors,
office personnel, and-so an informant assured Rollie-some of the senior
managers. Because of the immunity with which the numbers game flourished,
the last seemed likely.
A couple of times after the crushed fingers incident, Rollie received
oblique suggestions that he himself might participate actively in running
numbers, or perhaps one of the other rackets in the plant. The latter, he
knew, included loan sharking, drug pushing, and illegal check cashing;
also, overlapping the milder activities, were organized theft rings, as
well as frequent robberies and assaults.
Rollie's criminal record, by now common knowledge, had clearly given him
ex-officio standing among the underworld element directly involved with crime in the
plant, as well as those who flirted with it in addition to their jobs.
Once, standing beside Rollie at a urinal, a burly, normally taciturn
worker known as Big Rufe, announced softly, "Guys say you dig okay, I
should tell you there's ways a smart dude can do better 'n the stinkin'
sucker money they pay square Joes here
.”

He emptied his bladder with a
grunt of satisfaction. "Times, we need hep guys who know the score, don't
scare easy
.”

Big Rufe stopped, zipping his fly as someone else came to
stand beside them, then turned away, nodding, the nod conveying that
sometime soon the two of them would talk again.
But they hadn't because Rollie contrived to avoid another meeting, and
did the same thing after a second approach by another source. His
reasons were mixed. The possibility of a return to prison with a long
sentence still haunted him; also he had a feeling that his life, the way
it was now, was as good or better than it had been before, ever. A big
thing was the bread. Square Joe sucker money or not, it sure corralled
more than Rollie had known in a long time, including booze, food, some
grass when he felt like it, and little sexpot May Lou, whom he might
tire of sometime, but hadn't yet. She was no grand door prize, no beauty
queen, and he knew she had knocked around plenty with other guys who had
been there ahead of him. But she could turn Rollie on. It made him horny
just to look at her, and be laid pipe, sometimes three times a night,
especially when May Lou really went to work, taking his breath away with
tricks she knew, which Rollie had heard of but had never had done to him
before.
It was the reason, really, he had let May Lou find the two rooms they
shared, and hadn't pro
tested when she furnished them. She had done the furnishing without much
money, asking Rollie only to sign papers which she brought. He did so
indifferently, without reading, and later the furniture appeared,
including a color TV as good as any in a bar.
In another way, though, the price of it all came high-long, wearying
work days at the assembly plant, nominally five days a week, though
sometimes four, and one week only three. Rollie, like others, absented
himself on Monday, if hung over af ter a weekend, or on Friday, if
wanting to start one early; but even when that happened, the money next
payday was enough to swing with,
As well as the hardness of the work, its monotony persisted, reminding
him of advice he had been given early by a fellow worker: "When you come
here, leave your brains at home
.”

And yet . . . there was another side.
Despite himself, despite ingrained thought patterns which cautioned
against being suckered and becoming a honky lackey, Rollie Knight began
taking interest, developing a conscientiousness about the work that he
was doing. A basic reason was his quick intelligence plus an instinct
for learning, neither of which had had an opportunity to function
before, as they were doing now. Another reason-which Rollie would have
denied if accused of it-was a rapport, based on developing mutual
respect, with the foreman, Frank Parkland.
At first, af er the two incidents which brought Rollie Knight to his
attention, Parkland had been hostile. But as a result of keeping close
tab on Rollie, the hostility disappeared, approval replacing it. As
Parkland expressed it to Matt Zaleski during one of the assistant plant
manager's periodic
tours of the assembly line, "See that little guy? His first week here I
figured him for a troublemaker. Now he's as good as anybody I got
.”

Zaleski had grunted, barely listening. Recently, at plant management
level, several new fronts of troubles had erupted, including a
requirement to increase production yet hold down plant costs and somehow
raise quality standards. Though the three objectives were basically in
compatible, top management was insisting on them, an insistence not
helping Matt's duodenal ulcer, an old enemy within. The ulcer, quiescent
for a while, now pained him constantly. Thus, Matt Zaleski could not
find time for interest in individuals-only in statistics which regiments
of individuals, like unconsidered Army privates, added up to.
This-though Zaleski had neither the philosophy to see it, nor power to
change the system if he had-was a reason why North American automobiles
were generally of poorer quality than those from Germany, where less
rigid factory systems gave workers a sense of individuality and craf
t
smen's pride.
As it was, Frank Parkland did the best he could.
It was Parkland who ended Rollie's status as a relief man and assigned
him to a regular line station. Afterward, Parkland moved Rollie around
to other jobs on the assembly line, but at least without the bewildering
hour-by-hour changes he endured before. Also, a reason for the moves was
that Rollie, increasingly, could handle the more difficult, tricky
assignments, and Parkland told him so.
A f act of life which Rollie discovered at this stage was that while
most assembly line jobs were hard and demanding, a few were soft
touches. Installing windshields was one of the
soft ones. Workers doing this, however, were cagey when being watched, and
indulged in extra, unneeded motions to make their task look tougher. Rollie
worked on windshields, but only for a few days because Parkland moved him
back down the line to one of the difficult jobs-scrabbling and twisting
around inside car bodies to insert complicated wiring harnesses. Later
still, Rollie handled a "blind operatio
n
'-the toughest kind of all, where
bolts had to be inserted out of sight, then tightened, also by feel alone.
That was the day Parkland confided to him, "It isn't a fair system. Guys
who work best, who a foreman can rely on, get the stinkingest jobs and a
lousy deal. The trouble is, I need somebody on those bolts who I know for
sure'll fix 'ern and not goof off
.”