Wheels (8 page)

The handsome, gray stone staff building, which could have done duty as a
state capitol, was quiet in the early morning as Adam Trenton wheeled his
cream sport coupe down the ramp from outside. Adam made a fast "S" turn,
tires squealing, into his stall in the underground, executive parking
area, then eased his lanky figure out of the driver's seat, leaving the
keys inside. A rain shower last night had slightly spotted the car's
bright finish; routinely it would be washed today, topped off with gas,
and serviced if necessary.
A personal car of an executive's own choice, replaced every six months,
and each time with all the extras he wanted, plus fuel and constant
attention, was a fringe benefit which went with the auto industry's
higher posts. Depending on which company they worked for, most senior
people made their selections from the luxury ranges-Chrysler Imperials,
Lincol
ns, Cadillacs. A few, like Adam, preferred something lighter and
sportier, with a high performance engine.
Adam's footsteps echoed as he walked across the black, waxed garage
floor, gleaming and immaculate.
A spectator would have seen a gray-suited, lithe, athletic man, a year
or two past forty, tall, with broad shoulders and a squarish head thrust
forward, as if urging the rest of the body on. Nowadays, Adam Trenton
dressed more conservatively than he
used to, but still looked fash
ionable, with a touch of flashiness. His facial features were clean-cut
and alert, with intense blue eyes and a straight, firm mouth, the last
tempered by a hint of humor and a strong impression, over-all, of open
honesty. He backed up this impression, when he talked, with a blunt directness which sometimes
threw others off balance-a tactic he had learned to use deliberately.

His
manner of walking was confident, a no-nonsense stride suggesting a man who
knew where he was going.
Adam Trenton carried the auto executive's symbol of office-a filled
attach6 case. It contained papers he had taken home the night before and
had worked on, after dinner, until bedtime.
Among the few executive cars already parked, Adam noticed two limousines
in vice-presidents' row-a series of parking slots near an exclusive
elevator which rose nonstop to the fifteenth floor, preserve of the
company's senior officers. A parking spot closest to the elevator was
reserved for the chain-nan of the board, the next for the president;
after that came vice-presidents in descending order of seniority. Where
a man parked was a significant prestige factor in the auto industry.

The
higher his rank, the less distance he was expected to walk from his car
to his desk.
Of the two limousines already in, one belonged to Adam's own chief, the
Product Development vice-president. The other was the car of the
Vice-President Public Relations.
Adam bounded up a short flight of stairs, two at a time, entered a
doorway to the building's main lobbv, then continued briskly to a
regular staff elevator where he jabbed a button for the tenth floor.
Alone in the elevator, he waited impatiently while the
computer-controlled mechanism took its time about starting, then on the
way up experienced the eagerness he always felt to become immersed in
a new day's work. As always, through most of the past two years, the
Orion was at the forefront of his thoughts. Physically, Adam felt good.
Only a sense of tension troubled
him-a mental tautness he had be
come aware of lately, a nuisance, illogical, yet increasingly difficult
to shake off. He took a small
, green-and-black capsule from an inside
pocket, slipped it into his mouth and gulped it down.
From the elevator, along a silent, deserted corridor which would see
little activity for another hour, Adam strode to his own office suite-a
corner location, also a token of rank, rating only a little lower than
a vice-president's parking slot.
As he went in, he saw a pile of newly delivered mail on his secretary's
desk. There was a time, earlier in his career, when Adam would have
stopped to rifl
e through it, to see what was interesting and new, but
he had long since shed the habit, nowadays valuing his time too much for
that kind of indulgence. One of the duties of a top-notch secretary
was-as Adam once heard the company president declare-to "filter out the
crap" from the mountain of paper which came her boss's way. She should
be allowed to go through everything first, using her judgment about what
to refer elsewhere, so that an executive mind could concern itself with
policy and ideas, unencumbered by detail which others, in lowlier posts,
could be trusted to handle.
That was why few of the thousands of letters yearly which individual car
owners addressed to heads of auto companies ever reached the person whom
the sender named. All such letters were screened by secretaries, then
sent to special departments which dealt with them according to set
routines. Eventually the sum of all complaints and comments in a year
was tabulated and studied, but no senior executive could cope with them
individually and do his job as well. An occasional exception was where
a correspondent was shrewd enough to write to an executive's home
address-not hard to find, since most were listed in Who's Who, available
in public libraries.
Then an executive, or his wife, might well read the letter, become
interested in a particular case, and follow through personally.
The first thing Adam Trenton noticed in his office was a glowing orange
light on an intercom box behind his desk. It showed that the Product
Development vice-president had called, almost certainly this morning. Adam
touched a switch above the light and waited.
A voice, metallic through the intercom, demanded, "What's the excuse
today? Accident on the freeway, or did you oversleep
.”

Adam laughed, his eyes flicking to a wall clock which showed 7:23. He
depressed the key connecting him with the vice-president's office five
floors above. "You know my problem, Elroy. just can't seem to get out of
bed
.”

It was rarely that the head of Product Development beat Adam in; when he
did, he liked to make the most of it.
"Adam, how are you fixed for the next hour
.”

"I've a few things. Nothing I can't change around
.”

From the windows of his office, as they talked, Adam could see the early
morning freeway traffic. At this time the volume was moderately heavy,
though not so great as an hour ago when production workers were heading
in to factories to begin day shifts. But the traffic pattern would change
again soon as thousands of office employees, now breakfasting at home,
added their cars to the hurrying stream. The pressures and easings of
traffic density, like variations in the wind, always fascinated Adam-not
surprisingly, since automobiles, the traffic's chief constituent, were the
center
of his own existence. He had devised a. scale of his own-like the
Beaufort wind scale, ranging from one to ten degrees of volume-which he
applied to traffic as he viewed it. Right now, he decided, the flow was at Volume Five.
,, I'd like you up here for a while," Elroy Braithwaite, the
vice-president, said. "I guess you know our buddy, Emerson Vale, is off
in orbit again
.”

"Yes
.”

Adam had read the Free Press report of Vale's latest charges
before leaving the newspaper beside the bed where Erica was sleeping.
"Some of the press have asked for comments. This time Jake thinks we
should make a few
.”

Jake Earlham was the Vice-President Public Relations, whose car had also
been parked below as Adam came in.
"I agree with him," Adam said.
"Well, I seem to have been elected, but I'd like you in on the session.
It'll be informal. Somebody from AP, the Newsweek gal, The Wall Street
Journal, and Bob Irvin from the Detroit News. We're going to see them
all together
.”

"Any ground rules, briefing
.”

Usually, in advance of auto company press
conferences, elaborate preparations were made, with public relations
departments preparing lists of anticipated questions, which executives
then studied. Sometimes rehearsals were staged at which p.r. men played
reporters. A major press conference took weeks in planning, so that auto
company spokesmen were as well prepared as a U.S. President facing the
press, sometimes better.
"No briefing," Elroy Braithwaite said. "Jake and I have decided to hang
loose on this one. We'll call things the way we see them. That goes for
you too
.”

"Okay," Adam said. "Are you ready now
.”

"About ten minutes. I'll call you
.”

Waiting, Adam emptied his attacb6 case of last night's work, then used
a dictating machine to leave a series of instructions for his secretary,
Ursula Cox, who would deal with them with predictable efficiency when she
came in. Most of Adam's homework, as well as the instructions, concerned the
Orion. In his role as Advanced Vehicles Planning Manager he was deeply in
volved with the new, still-secret car, and today a critical series of tests
involving a noise-vibration problem with the Orion would be reviewed at the
company's proving ground thirty miles outside Detroit. Adam, who would have
to make a decision afterward, had agreed to drive to the test review with a
colleague from Design-Styling. Now, because of the press conference just
called, one of Ursula's instructions was to reschedule the proving ground
arrangements for later in the day.
He had better, Adam decided, reread the Emerson Vale news story before the
press session started. Along with the pile of mail outside were some
morning newspapers. He collected a Free Press and a New York Times, then
returned to his office and spread them out, this time memorizing, point
by point, what Vale had said in Washington the day before.
Adam had met Emerson Vale once when the auto critic was in Detroit to make
a speech. Like several others from the industry, Adam Trenton had attended
out of curiosity and, on being introduced to Vale ahead of the meeting,
was surprised to find him an engagingly pleasant young man, not in the
least the brash, abrasive figure Adam had expected. Later, when Vale faced
his audience from the platform, he was equally personable, speaking
fluently and easily while marshaling arguments with skill. The entire
presentation, Adam was forced to admit, was impressive and, from the
applause afterward, a large part of the audience-which had paid for
admission-felt the same way.
There was one shortcoming. To anyone with specialized knowledge, many of Emerson Vale's arguments were as porous as
a leaky boat.
While attacking a highly technical industry, Vale betrayed his own lack
of technical know-how and was frequently in error in describing mechanical functions. His engineering pronouncements were capable of several
interpretations; Vale gave one, which suited his own viewpoint. At other
moments he dealt in generalities. Even though trained in law, Emerson
Vale ignored elementary rules of evidence. He offered assertion,
hearsay, unsupported evidence as f act; occasionally the young auto
critic-it seemed to Adam-distorted f acts deliberately. He resurrected
the past, listing faults in cars which manufacturers had long since
admitted and rectified. He presented charges based on no more than his
own mail from disgruntled car users. While excoriating the auto industry
for bad design, poor workmanship, and lack of safety features, Vale
acknowledged none of the industry's problems nor recent genuine attempts
to improve its ways. He failed to see anything good in auto
manufacturers and their people, only indifference, neglect, and
villainy.
Emerson Vale had published a book, its title: The American Car: Unsure
in Any Need. The book was skillfully written, with the attention
commanding quality which the author himself possessed, and it proved a
bestseller which kept Vale in the spotlight of public attention for many
months.
But subsequently, because there seemed little more for him to say,
Emerson Vale began dropping out of sight. His name appeared in
newspapers less frequently, then, for a while, not at all. This lack of
attention goaded Vale to new activity. Craving publicity like a drug,
he seemed willing to make any statement on any subject, in return for
keeping his name before the public. Describing
himself as "a consumers' spokesman," he launched a fresh series of attacks
on the auto industry, alleging design defects in specific cars, which the
press reported, though some were later proved untrue. He coaxed a U.S.
senator into quoting pilfered information on auto company costs which soon
after was shown to be absurdly incomplete. The senator looked foolish. A
habit of Vale's was to telephone reporters on big city dailie
scollect, and
sometimes in the night-with suggestions for news stories which just
incidentally would include Emerson Vale's name, but which failed to stand up
when checked out. As a result, the press, which had relied on Vale for
colorful copy, became more wary and eventually some reporters ceased
trusting him at all.
Even when proved wrong, Emerson Valelike his predecessor in the auto
critic field, Ralph Nader-was never known to admit an error or to
apologize, as General Motors had once apologized to Nader after the
corporation's unwarranted intrusion into Nader's private life. Instead,
Vale persisted with accusations and charges against all automobile
manufacturers and, at times, could still draw nationwide attention, as he
had succeeded in doing yesterday in Washington. Adam folded the newspapers. A glance outside showed him that the freeway
traffic had increased to Volume Six.
A moment later the intercom buzzed. "The fourth estate just got here," the
Product Development vice-president said. '-fou want to make a fifth
.”