“Mahomet,” he said. “That boy draws excitement like a knuckle-bone draws flies.”
Through the opening the three watched Mahomet working his way through the brightly clad customers swaying on the linoleum and sitting on the sofa and chairs, pausing here and there to shake hands and flash his white grin, as brilliant as Sebastian Bright’s in the reflected light of his suit. He wore white all the time now, even when he wasn’t speaking; people who had never seen or listened to him recognized him on the street by his wardrobe and reputation. Behind him, dressed in dark suits and spread black collars like a rack of eight balls, trundled the exaggerated musculature of Mighty Joe Young, the two Bongo Brothers, and Anthony Battle, poor dead Congo’s friends from the World Wrestling Guild. As bodyguards they managed somehow to look even larger than they were without dwarfing the compact Mahomet. It was a group calculated to turn heads away from the scene of a multiple accident.
“Looks like somebody done left Pat Boone in the oven too long.” Lydell, who had developed a reluctant respect for Mahomet during the scuffle at 1300, still didn’t like him.
The newcomer stopped outside the open door to the utility room. Hanging back a pace, the quartet of wrestlers stuck out four feet on either side of him.
“Quincy. Krystal told me at the apartment you were here.” Mahomet seemed to be waiting for him to rise and approach.
Quincy, who unlike Lydell was more amused than irritated by his former inmate’s ascent from jailbird to rib-joint messiah, stayed seated. “You spellbinding tonight?”
“Not tonight. I came to find out if you heard about Gidgy.”
“Gidgy stays out of the news.”
“That’s changed. Cops hit the Morocco a little while ago. They arrested six for possession. One of them was the proprietor, the radio said. Isn’t that Gidgy?”
Lydell put out his cigarette in a puddle of melted ice on the table. “They wouldn’t take Gidgy. Gidgy’s got a connection.”
“I’m just telling what I heard.”
“Where’d they take him?” Quincy asked.
“Police headquarters.”
“Shiiit.” Lydell clamped a fresh Kent into the holder and lit up.
“Gidgy was getting us our guns,” Quincy told McCoy.
“Bail him.”
“That ain’t what I’m worried about.”
“Think the cops know?”
“We only know one man likes to hear himself talk,” Lydell said.
Mahomet said, “It wasn’t me.”
“Fucking white police state, that’s what we got here.” McCoy studied the crude upraised fist tattooed on his left bicep. “We ought to go out and take over some stores, bring the TV people down here and tell ’em what’s what.”
Lydell grinned, ghastly in his emaciation. “Shiiit. You been talking about going out and taking over stores ever since I know you. Why don’t you start one of your own?”
“They say who done the raid?” Mahomet shook his head. Quincy got up and peeled the back of his shirt away from his skin. “I don’t like Gidgy getting took down. Wasn’t no lieutenant from Vice called that.”
“Mayor wants to go to Washington,” Lydell said. “Elections fuck everything up.”
McCoy folded the diagram sheet lengthwise twice and stuck out the flat tube. “Want to scrub?”
“Just get your people and go over that floor plan.”
“It cost you. Where you going to get it now you’re out of bidness?”
“How much to start?” Quincy produced a roll of hundreds.
McCoy combed his beard with his fingers. “Thousand. No, fifteen hunnert. That splits better three ways.”
Quincy counted the bills onto the table. When McCoy reached for them, Quincy banged the heel of his hand down on top of the stack. “I hear them talking about this in the alley, I’m coming back.”
“You won’t hear.”
“Let’s split, Lydell.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Quit fucking around.”
Lydell’s hand was clenched on the knob of his stick. He was still grinning. “Nobody’s fucking nobody, bro. I can’t get up.”
F
OR TWO WEEKS AFTER
the parade, everyone at the Porter Group was kept busy.
Enid sorted the telephone messages, letters, and telegrams into her three
I
files: Important, Investigate, and Imbecile, and arranged for camera crews from Channels 2, 4, and 7 to be present when a smiling Wendell Porter handed a check to a nervous clerk in the City-County Building made out in the amount of his fine for conducting a public demonstration without a permit and creating a traffic hazard. Rick considered the second charge ironic.
Porter met for an hour in his office with Senator Philip Hart, agreed to see him next month in Washington to discuss an appearance before a special Senate subcommittee on automobile safety, and took Hugh Downs of the
Today
show on a tour of the Farm.
Lee Schenck filled one file with articles about Porter clipped from automotive journals published since the parade and started another. He had been working on the first file for more than a year.
In Grosse Pointe, Caroline Porter negotiated a thirteen-week contract with Kaiser Broadcasting in Southfield for a weekly ten-minute consumer advocacy program to be hosted by Porter on Channel 50.
Pammie ran errands.
Rick performed a telephone survey in the greater metropolitan area to find out how many people were aware of the Porter Group’s efforts and whether they supported or opposed them. So far it was running forty percent favorable, with thirty percent—auto workers, mostly—against and another thirty percent declining to comment or professing ignorance of Wendell Porter’s existence. Enid said, “If you asked half of them who’s President, they’d answer Eisenhower.”
On Saturday, July 23, when Channel 4’s three-minute biography of Wendell Porter was shown to the Lions Club just before Porter spoke, the assembled members laughed loudly when Fred Donner was quoted as asking, “Who is Wendell Porter?”
Enid ordered five thousand bumper stickers with the question emblazoned in red capitals inside quotation marks, to be given out wherever Porter appeared.
Wednesday afternoon, Rick took a break from the telephone and wandered out into the entry way, where Enid sat at her desk slitting envelopes with a copper letter-opener with a handle shaped like a Corvette; a souvenir of the 1965 Detroit Auto Show. She snapped open a letter typed on heavy bond, read it swiftly, and handed it to Rick without comment. It was from a writer named Baedecker, requesting permission to interview Porter for a proposed biography.
“I’ve seen that name.” Rick placed the letter on the desk.
“He wrote the authorized biography of Albert Brock. Fawning tripe. But maybe it’s time someone fawned over Wendell.”
“I’m glad it’s working out. I like Wendell.”
“Everyone does,” she said. “Well, forty percent of everyone. A month ago they’d never heard of him.”
He watched her open another envelope. “We haven’t had a chance to talk in a couple of weeks.”
“Talking isn’t doing.” She made a face at the letter, opened her deep drawer, and stuck it in the crackpot file.
“Doing is what I want to talk about,” he said. “Specifically, what you and I did two weeks ago. Are you free for dinner?”
She resumed slitting. “Tonight I’m attending a meeting of the Detroit chapter of the D.A.R.”
“I didn’t know you were a member.”
“My mother was. Last time I hit them up for a donation they were polite. They sent me an application to join. This time they called me. I figure they’re good for a couple of thousand. More, if they’re courting me to get Wendell to speak at their next convention.”
“Can we go out for a cup of coffee this afternoon?”
She glanced at her watch. “I’m due at Porter Associates in half an hour. Caroline thinks General Motors is going to drop their suit and she wants me there when their attorneys call.” She looked at him the same way she had looked at the watch. “Let’s go up to Wendell’s office.” She put down the letter opener.
The room upstairs had been tidied since his last visit, the furniture dusted and the books returned to their places on the shelves. It was as if Porter in his new fame had decided he no longer had to pose as a man who didn’t want celebrity; or maybe it was Enid making subtle changes in his image. Rick’s small exposure to the eminent had caused him to wonder how much of what he admired or hated about certain public men had been manufactured by their women.
Enid assumed her favorite pose, leaning back against the desk with her ankles crossed. She had on a pale pink jersey top with a red pleated skirt and penny loafers, an outfit that made her look very young. She lacked only cotton socks and a plastic hairband to be taken for a cheerleader. “Wendell likes you,” she said. “Not just because of the parade idea. He likes to work with people who aren’t afraid to argue with him. He says that’s what keeps a zealot from becoming a fanatic.”
“I like him too. I said that.”
“I love him.”
He made himself comfortable on the Victorian couch. He hoped it made him look less like an interrogator.
“Not in that way,” she said. “Oh, maybe once. Definitely once. I love him because he’s a decent man, no kind of movie hero, who believes in what he’s doing without setting himself up as the Way and the Light. Do you know how rare that is?”
“I’m more interested in hearing about the once.”
She turned up a palm. “It’s not exactly unheard of for a man and woman who spend a lot of time together in a common cause to fall in love. Especially when one of them is trapped in a cold marriage, not that he ever complained; it’s been profitable for both of them and they went into it with their eyes wide open. But it’s never enough.
“What happened ended months ago,” she went on. “We agreed to end it because of what was at stake if the press found out about it. Thank God we were discreet. I didn’t even know Caroline suspected until that little cat fight we had in her office. Was that when you caught on, Sergeant?”
He had started to form a response when he realized what she’d called him.
“If we’re bestowing rank now, I think Lee should be sergeant,” he said carefully. “He’s got seniority.”
“Sergeant Amery, wasn’t that your title when you were with the Detroit Police Department?” She placed her hands behind her on the edge of the desk, her knuckles clenched. “You must have been a good cop. I didn’t suspect anything until you made that age slip, and even then it didn’t bother me until after we—until later. That’s when I started working on Pammie. It didn’t take long to find out she told you about that letter.”
He hadn’t budged from the couch. “How’d you find out I was a cop?”
“I had you investigated. It was easy. You should have used a phony name, but I suppose that leaves you open to more slips. Once the detective found out you’d quit your last job and moved to a better apartment I knew you’d found a job that pays more. There’s only one other kind of work you’re qualified for, and half the personnel in security at GM are former police officers. Would you care to save PG the expense of further investigation and admit you’re a corporate spy?”
“I prefer ‘undercover,’” he said.
“I’m sure you do, you son of a bitch.”
He got off the couch. “It’s just a job, but I guess I can’t make you understand that. I was at low ebb when it came along and Wendell Porter didn’t mean any more to me than King Farouk.”
“I’d be interested in reading the job description. I’m surprised they’re not lined up all the way down Grand Boulevard hoping for openings.”
“What happened at your place wasn’t planned. The dinner was, but that wasn’t. And it had nothing to do with getting my hands on the letter.”
“I got as much out of it as you did. I’m not a heroine in a Faith Baldwin novel, I don’t give a damn about my virtue. But when you screw Wendell you’re screwing a million people you don’t even know and never will, because that’s how many people will die this year because the cars they’re riding in are rolling death traps.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about that. I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since Wendell ran into those sandbags at the Farm. I didn’t come up with that parade idea just to get in solid with him.”
“Bullshit.”
“Why lie now?”
“It’s what they pay you to do,” she said. “But it backfired, mister. People are listening to what Wendell has to say, and they know it’s more important than who’s saying it and what he does when he isn’t out testing cars or scratching for attention.”
“If that’s true, you’ve got nothing to lose.”
“You’re right.” She produced a ring of keys from the pocket of her skirt, went behind the old desk, and inserted one in the top drawer. She rummaged a moment, then withdrew a packet of envelopes tied with a piece of cord and held it out across the desk. “Take them.”
“What are they?”
But he knew what they were. He recognized Porter’s scrawl on the top envelope and the address.
“Eight letters. I got them all in the space of twelve days; I don’t know where he found the time. There’s enough here to nail us both in divorce court, if Caroline wanted a divorce. I doubt she will now that the Porter Group is picking up speed. I gave them back to Wendell when we broke it off. I watched him put them in this drawer and lock it. He should’ve burned them, but I knew he wouldn’t. Go ahead, take them. Publish them. This is nineteen sixty-six. Everybody’s into fucking.”
“Why are you giving them to me?”
“To prove to you and General Motors and this whole goddamn one-wheel town that auto safety is coming and nobody can stop it. Not with nine-and-a-half-inch drums and certainly not with a bunch of starry-eyed scribbles. Wendell Porter’s just a man, he can be destroyed. But you can’t stop this thing that’s started.”
“This is what you had in mind when you invited me up here, isn’t it? You didn’t just decide to do it.”
“I’m sorry I can’t give you dinner too,” she said.
He took them.
Something went out of her eyes then, like a light going out in a window just as he was coming up the walk. He had a sudden wild urge to return the letters. But he knew even if he did the light wouldn’t come back on.
In the parking lot he sat for a full minute before starting the Camaro. The packet of letters rested on the passenger’s seat. Finally he turned over the engine and pulled out.