Onyx (33 page)

Justin reddened. “Haven't we given this enough time, sir?”

“Colonel Marshall's come up against this sort of thing before. He'll know how to handle it.”

“About an hour ago he telephoned to say he'd been hasty about sacking me. I can do something called a tour of punishment—they do it at West Point. It's only marching.”

“And that's your problem? You can't decide if you can take going back?”

“I told him I'd be there tomorrow morning,” Justin said and whistled. The dogs bounded to him, planting muddy forepaws on his blazer while he rubbed their silky red muzzles.

Tom's gaze remained on the boy, then he gave his short laugh. “Dressing up like soldiers, pretending Detroit is West Point, kindergartners saluting old farts—what idiocy! You're right, let's forget it.” He opened the car door. “Hop in.”

The dogs scrabbled over one another to get into the backseat. Justin started around, but Tom handed him the ignition keys. “Here,” he said. And when Justin was in the driver's seat, he pointed. “There's the spark.”

Justin retarded it.

“In a Fiver you have to push her clear up. That's better. Now. There's the gas—the petrol.”

Justin pushed down on the gas lever, switching to battery. The coil box began to buzz. He jumped out, stooping to use his full force to spin the crank, pulling the choke wire carefully so as not to flood the engine. He gave the crank another spin. The engine caught. He ran to get back in, advancing the spark, retarding the gas, switching to magneto.

The engine putt-popped triumphantly.

The Fiver bounced slowly along the drive, picking up speed as Justin gained confidence.

“Hear that?” Tom asked.

“What?”

“
That
. She's missing. Take her round back.”

The Fiver circled the house, coming to a shuddering, dust-clouded halt on the gravel outside the big garage. The doors were open, and the new Packard Twin Six was gone. Tom pulled off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves.

“Lend me a hand, will you,” he said, opening up the hood.

Together they checked the carburetor, the commutator, and the spark plugs. The problem lay in the commutator. Tom replaced the rotor spring. They went into the garage to wash up.

“Mr. Bridger.” Justin dug his three middle fingers into the gritty mechanic's soap. “People think they're wonderful geniuses if they can repair a motorcar, and you built one before there were any to copy. You invented everything. And you're helping the British war effort.…” His freckles stood out. “But—”

“You
do
like things square, don't you?” Tom was grinning. “Yesterday I was a horse's ass, Justin, but that doesn't mean it's a permanent condition. I realize you don't exactly love me.”

Justin concentrated on using the nail brush.

Hugh, topcoat slung over his shoulders, stepped inside the garage. “Nothing like a little honest labor,” he said. “Justin, it's lunchtime.”

“Already?” Justin smiled. Retrieving his blazer, he ran into the brilliant sunlight, swerving, kicking at gravel as though steering a rugby ball, an excess of animal energy.

They watched until the servants' door slammed behind the boy. Hugh said, “This is the first time I've seen him happy since he got here.”

“Mind if he keeps this?”

“The Fiver?”

“Yes. Your chauffeur can give me a lift over to the Hamtramck. I'll pick up another this afternoon.”

Hugh rubbed his thumb against his coat, a thoughtful gesture. Last night the brothers had sat in the big living room, Hugh denigrating himself for believing the worst of his ward. A couple of brandies made him yet more ashamed of himself, and more admiring of Justin's honorable behavior. His self-chastisement was sincere. “Tom, I was up all night. I can't think of a way to apologize without making it worse.”

“He prefers it forgotten,” Tom said.

Hugh nodded: “Yes.”

“So you don't think he'll take the car?”

“He'll realize you're paying him off,” Hugh said. “He's going back to school tomorrow.”

“It's going to be rough on him,” Tom said.

“What a mess.”

“Maybe Caryll could invite him on a tour of the Hamtramck.”

“He's very intelligent about machinery.” Hugh's voice held a trace of smugness.

“Don't get any ideas,” Tom said quietly.

“Whose suggestion was it?”

“I swore to her he'd never find out.”

A swift darted into the garage. The brothers ignored the frantic rustling of wings in gasoline-odored gloom. This was Tom's first confession of paternity.

“I'd never suggest a word—it would hurt him too much. He's made an idol of Claude Hutchinson. A crazy idol. All I meant is that you're on the right track. He'll need
something
to help him through this.”

Tom held his arms under the faucet, rinsing off the soap. “I'll give him a Saturday job.”

“Good,” Hugh said softly.

“Listen to me, Hugh. I'm not sure why you brought those two over here, but whatever you have in mind for Antonia's boy, forget it.” A regretful sigh mitigated the decisiveness in Tom's voice.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Hugh, this is me, Tom. No games, hear. I'm not about to draw him into my life. For one thing it's not fair to Maud. She's gone through a lot, and I'm not putting her through any more.”

“Justin's a person too. The most honorable, decent person I've ever met.”

“
I'm
proud of him.”

“Then you wouldn't say it's asking too much for you to be a little generous to him? It's a difficult period of adjustment for him, and after all he's your own—”

“Hugh,” Tom said, a low, flat warning that pierced the shadows.

Hugh glanced at the emptiness beyond the sunbright doors. “Nobody heard,” he said.

“You're a dead man if you ever say it.” Tom did not raise his voice, so it was inexplicable how the low, normal timbre managed to ring with ominous threat.

Hugh backed toward the Fiver truck that his gardeners used.

Tom dried his hands on the grubby towel. After a minute he said, “She asked only that one thing of me in all the years. It meant everything to her.”

“Stop worrying, Tom.”

“If I go around playing fond benefactor, people might guess.
Justin
might guess.”

“I can't see why. You're very generous to the Sinclair boys, and they're nephews. Justin is my ward.”

“Hugh, no wheedling, no maneuvering.”

“There'll be no leaks from me,” Hugh said. He watched his brother fasten his cufflinks. “Come on. Let's have lunch.”

“Nope.”

“But I had them set a third place.”

“No lunches.”

“An appointment?”

“Justin's here.”

“You worked on the car with him. What difference will one meal together make?”

“Hugh, get it through your head that I'm afraid. What if some extra note of affection slips out?” He sighed deeply. “The only way this'll work is to keep it strictly automobiles between us.”

“If that's how you feel.”

“No personal involvements.”

While Tom started the Fiver, Hugh watched him with that peculiarly satisfied expression usually described in terms of cats and canaries. Tom was indebted to Justin, was proud of him, admired him, was giving him a Saturday job at the Hamtramck, and if that wasn't personal involvement, it was one sweet beginning.

BOOK THREE

Woodland

Woodland was unique in size and function. Here, by the Detroit River, on a tract more than two miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, Thomas Bridger's vision had conceived one enormous machine to mass-produce automobiles.

The History of the United States
by Edwardes and Whitney

CHAPTER 16

“A hamburger sandwich?” Justin asked.

“Ground beef on a bun. It's one of our favorite American del-icacies,” retorted Elisse Kaplan, the cutting edge of her sarcasm not blunted by the remarkable charm of her smile.

“I know. I'm American,” Justin said. He had sworn to uphold the United States government and its laws nine years ago, on April 6, 1917, the day that the country had entered the war, the day he had enlisted over Hugh's protests and his own most profound beliefs. “I doubt if you can get one here.”

She glanced around Verona's, an eloquent shrug of her pretty shoulders dismissing the velvety lights, the darting, solicitous waiters, the tables with stiff, floor-length damask encircled by well-dressed, middle-aged diners—and him as well, Justin decided, for the unconscionable stuffiness of patronizing what was considered the top restaurant in Los Angeles.

He barely knew Elisse Kaplan.

They had met once before, in London this past June. She was the cousin of his old school friend, Rosburg, visiting from California. Justin had been passing through on his way to inspect the French Onyx plant in Asnières, and for maybe fifteen minutes he and Elisse had sat on the Rosburgs' lounge window seat, afternoon sun shining gold on her curly brown bob as she alternately irritated and entranced him. Breezy, witty, assured girls, the dishes like Elisse, always threw Justin off-balance. He was disbelieving when Zoe informed him that in Detroit he had a reputation as a ladies' man, for though he escorted debutantes and postdebutantes to the usual parties, he had embarked on only two truncated affairs, both with married women: during the course of these entanglements his affection and even his physical gratification had eroded like sand at the necessary undertow of adulterous sneakiness—he had never outgrown that boyhood rectitude. Arriving in Los Angeles on Onyx business, he had immediately looked up Elisse in the telephone book (her father was a musician, he recalled, and his name was Harris Kaplan: in point of fact he had total recall of their brief conversation), inviting her out to dinner. She had hesitated, a long silence on the line that had wrenched him surprisingly, before saying she would meet him at Columbia Pictures' studio on Gower Street in Hollywood.

She was now staring quizzically across the shaded table lamp.

“If a hamburger sandwich is what you want, we're in the wrong place,” he said.

“You've caught on.”

The word
bitch
clearly in his mind, he rose to pull out her chair. The gray-haired captain swooped around tables. “Is anything the matter, sir?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Justin said, tucking a bill into the waiting palm. “We changed our plans, that's all.” He hurried after Elisse, whose white pleats swirled around her good legs.

It was dark outside. September's heat was being vanquished by an advance of fog that held the marshy, saline odors of the sea.

“Now what?” He looked down at her, jolted again by the realization of how small and delicately built she was: Elisse Kaplan's personality reverberated far beyond her physical dimensions. “I'm afraid I don't know Los Angeles. Where shall we go?”

“Philippe's,” she retorted, unhesitant.

“Will you be able to get your hamburger sandwich?”

She rolled her wrist in an expansive gesture. “A wide cuisine there.”

“What about a table?”

“Any difficulty,” she said, “and you can slip a tip.”

“Elisse, I have the impression I'm being punished.”

“It's more a case of being fired on before you have a chance to shoot.”

“Shoot?”

“Make a pass,” she explained.

“You have a pretty low opinion of my character.”

“Character, too? Isn't it enough to be impeccably tall, dark, handsome, and brilliant?”

He groaned. “So
that's
it.”

She was opening her purse to take out a rolled
Time
, the most recent edition with an ink-sketched Fiver—the twenty millionth—on the cover. Holding the magazine up to the streetlight, she riffled pages.

“‘Though the undisputed heir to Onyx's throne is Caryll Bridger, only child of Thomas K. Bridger,'” she read, “‘Detroiters are watching the meteoric rise of twenty-seven-year-old—'”

“I'm twenty-six,” Justin interjected. “So much for accurate reporting.”

She continued, “‘—London born, tall, dark, handsome, and brilliant Justin Hutchinson who, after the War, spent two years training under Lord (then Sir) Edge at British Onyx. He has worked in managerial positions throughout Europe. Thomas K. Bridger's long-standing policy is to avoid executive titles; however, since Hutchinson's return to Detroit in 1923, his sphere of influence, especially at Woodland, the world's largest industrial complex, has grown steadily, and he belongs to the charmed inner circle of executives. A rumor persists among acute observers in the automotive industry that he is being groomed as second in command for the day that Caryll Bridger takes over.' Hey, fortune's tot, aren't you?”

“The article never mentions that Hugh Bridger—”

“Mmm, let me see.… Here it is. “The automotive tycoon's shadowy, invalid brother is reputed to be a major force in company decisions.'”

“They really have us down pat, don't they? Hugh was my guardian.”

“Well, well, a relative, too.”

“Not in any way,” Justin said, exasperated. They had reached the Fiver, and he opened the door for her, hoping a change of venue would change the conversation. She did not get in. “Hugh was my parents' friend, that's all. But he's been a Rock of Gibraltar. Kind, generous. When Mother died during the War, he brought us over, me and Zoe, my sister.”

“Is advancing a ward also called nepotism?”

“I'm not being advanced. I'm not being groomed.”

“Just sitting around being one of the charmed knights of the Onyx round table?” She was referring to the paragraph about the big round table in the executive dining room.