The assistant plant manager nodded; he had no wish to rob the union man of kudos, and if Illas wanted to make a small skirmish sound like the Battle of the Overpass, Zaleski would not object. But he told Newkirk sharply, "You can take the grin off. There's nothing funny." He queried Illas, "You told him it'll be even less funny if it happens again?"
"He told me what he was supposed to," Newkirk said. "It won't happen no more, not if there ain't no cause."
"You're pretty cocky," Zaleski said. "Considering you've just been fired and unfired."
"Not cocky, mister, angry!" The black man made a gesture which included Illas. "That's a thing you people, all of you, won't ever understand."
Zaleski snapped, "I can get pretty damned angry about brawls upsetting this plant."
"Not deep soul angry. Not so it burns, a rage."
"Don't push me. I might show you otherwise."
The other shook his head. For one so huge, his voice and movements were surprisingly gentle; only his eyes burned - an intense gray-green. "Man, you ain't black, you don't know what it means; not rage, not anger. It's a million goddamn pins bein' stuck in from time you was born, then one day some white motha' calls a man 'boy,' an' it's a million 'n one too many."
"Now then," the union man said, "we settled all that. We don't have to get into it again."
Newkirk dismissed him. "You hush up!" His eyes remained fixed, challengingly, on the assistant plant manager.
Not for the first time, Matt Zaleski wondered: Had the whole free-wheeling world gone crazy? To people like Newkirk and millions of others, including Zaleski's own daughter, Barbara, it seemed a basic credo that everything which used to matter - authority, order, respect, moral decency - no longer counted in any recognizable way. Insolence was a norm - the kind Newkirk used with his voice and now his eyes. The familiar phrases were a part of it: Newkirk's rage and deep soul angry were interchangeable, it seemed, with a hundred others like generation gap, strung out, hanging loose, taking your own trip, turned on, most of which Matt Zaleski didn't comprehend and - the more he heard them - didn't want to. The changes which, nowadays, he could neither keep pace with nor truly understand, left him subdued and wearied.
In a strange way, at this moment, he found himself equating the big black man, Newkirk, with Barbara who was pretty, twenty-nine, college educated, and white. If Barbara Zaleski were here now, automatically, predictably, she would see things Newkirk's way, and not her father's.
Christ! - he wished he were half as sure of things himself.
Tiredly, though it was still early morning, and not at all convinced that he had handled this situation the way he should, Matt Zaleski told Newkirk brusquely, "Get back to your job."
When Newkirk had gone, Illas said, "There'll be no walkout. Word's going around."
"Am I supposed to say thanks?" Zaleski asked sourly. "For not being raped?"
The union man shrugged and moved away.
The mist-green sedan which Zaleski had been curious about had moved still further forward on the line. Walking quickly, the assistant plant manager caught up with it.
He checked the papers, including a scheduling order and specifications, in a cardboard folder hanging over the front grille. As he had half-expected, as well as being a "special" - a car which received more careful attention than routine - it was also a "foreman's friend."
A "foreman's friend" was a very special car. It was also illegal in any plant and, in this case, involved more than a hundred dollars' worth of dishonesty. Matt Zaleski, who had a knack of storing away tidbits of information and later piecing them together, had more than a shrewd idea who was involved with the mist-green sedan, and why.
The car was for a company public relations man. Its official specifications were Spartan and included few, if any, extras, yet the sedan was (as auto men expressed it) "loaded up" with special items.
Even without a close inspection, Matt Zaleski could see a de-luxe steering wheel, extra-ply whitewall tires, styled steel wheels and tinted glass, none of which were in the specifications he was holding. It looked, too, as if the car had received a double paint job, which helped durability. It was this last item which had caught Zaleski's eye earlier.
The almost-certain explanation matched several facts which the assistant plant manager already knew. Two weeks earlier the daughter of a senior foreman in the plant had been married. As a favor, the public relations man, whose car this was, had arranged publicity, getting wedding pictures featured prominently in Detroit and suburban papers. The bride's father was delighted. There had been a good deal of talk about it around the plant.
The rest was easy to guess.
The PR-man could readily find out in advance which day his car was scheduled for production. He would then have telephoned his foreman friend, who had clearly arranged special attention for the mist-green sedan all the way through assembly.
Matt Zaleski knew what he ought to do. He ought to check out his suspicions by sending for the foreman concerned, and afterward make a written report to the plant manager, McKernon, who would have no choice except to act on it. After that there would be seventeen kinds of bell let loose, extending - because of the PR-man's involvement - all the way up to staff headquarters.
Matt Zaleski also knew he wasn't going to.
There were problems enough already. The Parkland-Newkirk-Illas embroilment had been one; and predictably, by now, back in the glass-paneled office were others requiring decisions, in addition to those already on his desk this morning. These, he reminded himself, he still hadn't looked at.
On his car radio, driving to work an hour or so ago from Royal Oak, he had heard Emerson Vale, the auto critic whom Zaleski thought of as an idiot, firing buckshot at the industry again. Matt Zaleski had wished then, as now, that he could install Vale on a production hot seat for a few days and let the son-of-a-bitch find out what it really took, in terms of effort, grief, compromise, and human exhaustion to get cars built at all.
Matt Zaleski walked away from the mist-green sedan. In running a plant, you had to learn that there were moments when some things had to be ignored, and this was one.
But at least today was Wednesday.
Chapter 3
At 7:30 A.M., while tens of thousands in greater Detroit had been up for hours and were already working, others - either through choice or the nature of their work - were still abed.
One who remained there by choice was Erica Trenton.
In a wide, French Provincial bed, between satin sheets which were smooth against the firm surface of her young body, she was awake, but drifting back to sleep, and had no intention of getting up for at least two hours more.
Drowsily, only half-conscious of her own thoughts, she dreamed of a man
. . . no particular man, simply a vague figure . . . arousing her sensually, thrusting her deeply-again! again! . . . as her own husband had not, for at least three weeks and probably a month.
While she drifted, as on a gently flooding tide between wakefulness and a return to sleep, Erica mused that she had not always been a late riser. In the Bahamas, where she was born, and lived until her marriage to Adam five years ago, she had often risen before dawn and helped launch a dinghy from the beach, afterward running the outboard while her father trolled and the sun rose. Her father enjoyed fresh fish at breakfast and, in her later years at home, it was Erica who cooked it when they returned.
During her initiation to marriage, in Detroit, she had followed the same pattern, rising early with Adam and preparing breakfast which they ate together - he zestfully, and loudly appreciative of Erica's natural talent for cooking which she used with imagination, even for simplest meals.