Wheels (44 page)

Wingate smiled dourly. "I don't think I have
the guts; besides, I'm disqualified. I've a good job, money in the bank.
As soon as anyone has those, they want to protect them, not blow it all
up. But I'll tell you this: I know what makes people of my race
revolutionaries
.”

He touched a bulge in the jacket of his suit. It was a collection of
papers May Lou had given him before he left. They were invoices, time
payment contracts, demands from finance companies. Out of curiosity,
Wingate had gone over them briefly
in his car, and what he had seen amazed and angered him.
He repeated to the other three the substance of his talk with Rollie and
May Lou, omitting figures, which were private, but apart from that the
others knew the story anyway, and he was aware they cared.
He said, "You saw the furniture they had in that room
.”

The others nodded. Barbara said, "It wasn't good, but . .
.”

"Be honest," Wingate told her. "You know as well as I do, it was a bunch
of shoddy junk
.”

Brett protested, "So what I If they can't afford much . .
.”

"But you'd never know they couldn't, not from the price they paid
.”

Once
more, Wingate touched the papers in his pocket. "I just saw the invoice,
and I'd say the invoice price is at least six times what the furniture was
worth. For what they paid, or rather signed a finance contract fo
r
, those
two could have had quality stuff from a reputable outfit like J. L.
Hudson's or Sears
.”

Barbara asked, "Then why didn't they
.”

Leonard Wingate put both hands on the table, leaning forward, "Because,
my dear innocent, well-to-do friends, they didn't know any better. Because
nobody ever taught them how to shop around or buy carefully. Because there
isn't much point learning any of that if you've never had any real money.
Because they went to a white-run store in a black neighborhood, which
cheated them-but good!
Because there are plenty of those stores, not just
in Detroit, but other places too. I know. We've seen other people travel
this route
.”

There was silence at the table. Their drinks had come, and Wingate sipped
a neat Scotch on the rocks. After a moment he went on, "There's
also a little matter of the finance charges on the furniture and some
other things they bought. I did some figuring. It looks to me as if the
interest rate was between nineteen and twenty percent
.”

Wes Gropetti whistled softly.
Barbara queried, "When your Personnel man talks to the creditors, the
way you said he would, can he (to anything to get the furniture bill or
finance charges lowered
.”

"The finance charges, maybe
.”

Leonard Wingate nodded. "I'll probably
work on that myself. When we call a finance outfit and use our company's
name, they're apt to listen and be reasonable, They know there are ways
a big auto manufacturer can put the squeeze on, if we take a mind to.
But as to furniture . .
.”

He shook his head. "Not a chance. Those
crooks'd laugh. They sell their stuff for as much as they can get, then
turn their paper over to a finance company at a discount. It's little
guys like Knight-who can't afford it-who pay the difference
.”

Barbara asked, "Will he keep his job? Rollie, I mean
.”

"Providing nothing else happens," Wingate said, "I think I can promise
that
.”

Wes Gropetti urged, "For Christ sake, that's enough talk I Let's eat I"
Brett DeLosanto, who had been unusually quiet through most of the
evening, remained so during the meal which followed. What Brett had seen
tonight-the conditions under which Rollie Knight and May Lou lived;
their cramped, mean room in the run-down, garbage-reeking apartment
house; countless other buildings in the area, either the same or worse;
the general malaise and poverty of the major portion of the inner city
had affected him deeply. He had been in the inner city before, and
through its streets, but never with
the same insight or sense of poignancy he had known within the past few
hours.
He had asked Barbara to let him watch tonight's filming, partly from
curiosity and partly because she had become so absorbed with the
project that he had seen little of her lately. What he had not expected
was to be drawn in, mentally, as much as he had.
Not that he had been unaware of ghetto problems of Detroit. When he
observed the desperate grimness of housing, he knew better than to ask:
Why don't people move somewhere else? Brett already knew that
economically and socially, people here-specifically, black people-were
trapped. High as living costs were in the inner city, in suburbs they
were higher still, even if the suburbs would let blacks move there-and
some wouldn't, still practicing discrimination in a thousand subtle and
not-so-subtle ways. Dearborn, for example, in which Ford Motor Company
had its headquarters, at last count didn't have a single black
resident, due to hostility of white, middleclass families who supported
wily maneuverings by its solidly established mayor.
Brett knew, too, that efforts to aid the inner city had been made by
the well-meaning New Detroit Committee-more recently, New Detroit
Inc.-established after the area's 1967 riots. Funds had been raised,
some housing started. But as a committee member put it: "We're long on
proclamations, short on bricks
.”

Another had recalled the dying words of Cecil Rhodes: "So little
done-so much to do
.”

Both comments had been from individuals, impatient with the smallness
of accomplishment by groups-groups which included the city, state, and
federal governments. T
h
ough the 1967 riots were now years away, nothing
beyond sporadic
tinkering had been done to remedy conditions which were the riots' cause.
Brett wondered: If so many, collectively, had failed, what could one
person, an individual, hope to do?
Then he remembered: Someone had once asked that about Ralph Nader.
Brett sensed Barbara's eyes upon him and turned toward her. She smiled,
but made no comment on his quietness; each knew the other well enough
by now not to need explanations of moods, or reasons for them. Barbara
looked her best tonight, Brett thought. During the discussion earlier
her face had been animated, reflecting interest, intelligence, warmth.
No other girl of Brett's acquaintance rated quite as high with him,
which was why he went on seeing her, despite her continued, obstinate
refusal to join him in bed.
Brett knew that Barbara had gained a lot of satisfaction from her
involvement with the film, and working with Wes Gropetti.
Now Gropetti pushed back his plate, dabbing a napkin around his mouth
and beard. The little film director, still wearing his black beret, had
been eating Beef Stroganoff with noodles, washed down generously with
Chianti. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.
'Wes," Brett said, "do you ever want to get involved-really
involved-with subjects you do films about
.”

The director looked surprised. "You mean do crusading crap? Chivvy
people up
.”

-Yes,-
Brett acknowledged, "that's the kind of crap I mean
.”

"A pox on that
!
Sure, I get interested; I have to be. But. after that
I take pictures, kiddo. That's all
.”

Gropetti rubbed his beard, removing
a fragment of noodle which the napkin had missed. He added, "A buttercup
scene or a sewer-once I know it’
s there, all I want axe the right lens,
camera angle, lighting, s
ound synch. Nuts to involvement!
Involvement's
a full-time job
.”

Brett nodded. He said thoughtfully, "That's what I think, too
.”

In his car, driving Barbara home, Brett said, "It's going well, isn't
it? The film
.”

"So well!
" She was near the middle of the front seat, curled close
beside him. If he moved his face sideways he could touch her hair, as
he had already, several times.
"I'm glad for you. You know that
.”

"Yes," she said. "I know
.”

"I wouldn't want any woman I lived with not to do something special,
something exclusively her own
.”

. If I ever live with you, I'll remember that
.”

It was the first time either of them had mentioned the possibility of
living together since the night they had talked about it several months
ago.
"Have you thought anymore
.”

"I've thought," she said. "That's all
.”

Brett waited while he threaded traffic at the Jefferson entrance to the
Chrysler Freeway, then asked, "Want to talk about it
.”

She shook her head negatively.
"How much longer will the film. take
.”

"Probably another month
.”

"You'll be busy
.”

"I expect so. Why
.”

"I'm taking a trip," Brett said. "To California
.”

But when she pressed him, he declined to tell her why.

Chapter
nineteen

The long, black limousine slowed, swung left, then glided smoothly, between
weathered stone pillars, into the paved, winding driveway of Hank Kreisel's
Grosse Pointe home.
Kreisel's uniformed chauffeur was at the wheel. Behind him, in the plush
interior, were Kreisel and his guests, Erica and Adam Trenton. The car's
interior contained-among other things -a bar, from which the parts
manufacturer had served drinks as they drove.
It was late evening in the last week of July.
They had already dined-at the Detroit Athletic Club downtown. The Trentons
had met Kreisel there, and a fourth at dinner had been a gorgeous girl,
with flashing eyes and a French accent, whom Kreisel introduced merely as
Zo
e
. He added that she was in charge of his recently opened export liaison
office.
Zo
e
, who proved an engaging companion, excused herself after dinner and
left. Then, at Hank Kreisel's suggestion, Adam and Erica accompanied him
home, leaving their own car downtown.
This evening's arrangements had been an outcropping of Adam's weekend at
Hank Kreisel's lakeside cottage. Following the cottage affair, the parts
manufacturer telephoned Adam, as arranged, and they set a date. Inclusion
of Erica in the invitation made Adam nervous at first, and he hoped
Kreisel would make no references to the cottage weekend in detail, or
Rowena in particular. Adam still remembered Rowena vividly, but she was
in the past, and prudence and common sense dictated she remain there. He
need not have worried. Hank Kreisel was discreet; they talked of
other things-next season's prospects for the Detroit Lions, a recent
scanda
l in city government, and later the Orion, some of whose parts
Kreisel's company was now manufacturing in enormous quantities. After a
while Adam relaxed, though he still wondered what, precisely, Hank Kreisel
wanted of him.
That Kreisel wanted something he was sure, because Brett DeLosanto had
told him so. Brett and Barbara had been invited tonight but couldn't
make it-Barbara was busy at her job; Brett, who was leaving soon for the
West Coast, had commitments to finish first. But Brett confided
yesterday, "Hank told me what he's going to ask, and I hope you can do
something because there's a lot more to it than just us
.”