Thunder City (23 page)

“I know nothing of the legalities,” confessed his mother. “I assume there is something I have to sign.”

O
N RARE OCCASIONS, WHEN HE
had been working particularly long hours at the plant, inspecting assemblies and examining bills of lading, Henry Ford rewarded himself with a meal out. When James Couzens found him in a booth in the Pontchartrain bar, the automobile manufacturer was peeling the shell away from the first of two hard-boiled eggs he had ordered with a tall glass of mineral water.

Couzens had risen from his well-paid but amorphous position as Alexander Malcolmson’s business advisor to become general manager of the Ford Motor Company. The shift had taken place at the expense of his relationship with the coal merchant, when Couzens joined Ford in opposition to the six-cylinder Model K. There was, however, little sign of self-exaltation in his strong-jowled face as he slid into the seat opposite. His collar was damp for the unseasonably cool late-spring day and his glasses were fogged. When his beer came he ignored it, distractedly mopping at his lenses with a white lawn handkerchief bearing his monogram.

“Well, good afternoon to you, too, Jim,” said his employer, dusting his egg lightly with salt. “You look worn out. Have you gone back shoveling coal for Malcolmson?” For reasons known only to himself, he seemed to take delight in the rift between the two.

“You know damn well where I’ve been. What makes you so happy?”

“I talked the Dodges into delivering their engines in crates built to my specifications. That means after they’re opened we can pull them apart and use the planks for floorboards without having to saw them. They won’t cost us a cent”

“Good. It’s good you’re saving money. You’ll need it to invest in another line of work.”

Ford munched on his egg. “Did you place those advertisements?”

“No. That’s what I came to talk to you about. Both the
Free Press
and the
Evening News
are refusing to carry them. They’re afraid of a lawsuit.”

“Bunk. Newspapers love lawsuits. The trust must have got to them.” He took a sip of water.

“You seem awfully calm about it.”

“We’ll just go national. Even the A.L.A.M. can’t silence them all.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. For a business that doesn’t make or sell anything they’re pulling in money hand over fist. Every day there’s a dozen new auto companies lining up waiting to give them the gelt.”

“They’re not alone. We should top three hundred thousand in sales next month. I hate to say it, but Malcolmson’s race idea has really been selling those more expensive models. So you see, we don’t need advertising.”

“You can’t go on winning races forever.”

“I don’t see why not, but we won’t need to do that either. Not when we come out with our cheap model.”

“How cheap?”

“I’m thinking seven hundred.”

“No one can make a car that cheap.”

“You can if you make ’em all the same, like pins. I’ve got an idea, a little thing I picked up in a meatpacking plant in Chicago. All the carcasses zip through on rollers; one man skins, the next quarters, the next slices up the smaller cuts, and the last wraps them up for shipping. The carcasses move, the workers stay put. Get it?”

“You want to run an automobile plant like a butcher shop?”

“Old bear, do you have any idea how much a good butcher pulls down on a normal day?”

Couzens, who at any given time was undecided whether Ford was a genius or as crazy as his nickname suggested, changed the subject. “I’m worried about this new A.L.A.M. move. Up until now the newspapers have been your biggest champion. Editors love rugged individualism.”

“Editors don’t run newspapers. Newspapers are run by their advertising staffs. If they’re turning down Ford ads it means they’re getting more from the Selden people.”

“We can’t afford to outbid them.”

“We won’t try.” Ford leaned forward. His tiny sharp eyes glittered and his long right index finger tapped the top of the table. “Newspapers are bunk. They’re in business to make money and nothing else. The news is just something they report so that their subscribers might stumble over an advertisement while they’re reading. Without news, they wouldn’t give them a second glance. Automobiles are news. All we have to do is keep making news and they’ll have to write about us.”

“Aren’t we in business to make money?”

“We’re in business to make money and use it, give employment, and send out the car where people can use it. And incidentally to make money.”

“Like the newspapers.”

“You’re not listening. If they could sell advertising without having to employ reporters and editors and typographers, they would. Turn it around. If you set out to employ a great army of men at high wages and reduce the selling price of your car so that a lot of people can afford it, if you give all that, the money will fall into your hands. You can’t get out of it.”

Couzens smiled for the first time that day, however tentatively he felt it. “That’s good. It’s horseshit, but it’s good. But can you get a paper to print it?”

“They’ll have to. It’s what I intend to say in court.”

The smile fell off his face. “We’ve been served?”

“Not yet. They haven’t the guts so far. We’re going to have to force them to do it.”

“How?”

The Ford finger beat a tattoo on the table. “By making and selling more cars than anyone else in the business. By making and selling more of anything that’s ever been made and sold by anyone in any business. I’ve already made arrangements to lease a new plant on Piquette Avenue, twice as big as the Mack. We’re expanding.”

“With what?”

“With our profits so far. What have I just been telling you?”

“We don’t use all the space we have now. It’s more than adequate.”

“‘More than adequate’ is not this company’s motto. I’m introducing a new model, cheaper and more durable than anything we’ve produced. It may take a couple of years to stretch out the kinks, but by the time we’re through, you won’t be able to throw a shoe anywhere in this country without hitting one. In five years there will be a Ford in every garage in America. And we’re going to pay each and every employee five dollars a day to build it.”

“That’s crazy! Roosevelt isn’t paid that much.”

“Roosevelt couldn’t hang a door on the Model C.”

“If you start paying wages like that, you’re either the greatest man in history or the craziest. Every manufacturer in the country will be screaming for your hide.”

Ford sat back, smiling his tight smile. “Go and tell the newspapers not to write about that.”

“I can safely recommend the linguini, although I haven’t tried it,” Sal Borneo said. “The chef makes his own pasta. The strands are as fine as cornsilk. It is said to be the reason Caruso accepted his last booking in Detroit.”

Jim Dolan glowered at the stained menu and said nothing. The restaurant, with its murals of Roman ruins, Chianti bottles strung from the ceiling, and constant foreign jabber drifting over from the other tables, might have been in Palermo instead of ten minutes from Corktown by streetcar. He had wanted to hold this meeting in his own neighborhood, but had been unable to think of an excuse to give colleagues who saw him with the Sicilian. The bastard knew that, too, and had used his people’s own low social status to gain the upper hand in his home ballpark. What was that the wop was always saying? “Weakness is strength.”

“Big Jim?” Borneo’s tone was polite. The son of a bitch was nothing if not polite.

He looked up and became aware of the little old waiter standing by the table. “Can I get a plate of meatballs without the spaghetti?”

He noted that the waiter glanced at Borneo before answering. “Si, Signor. Wine?”

“Beer.”

The shriveled little man took his menu, paused to refill Borneo’s glass from the water pitcher on the table, and withdrew.

“You’re not eating?” Dolan asked.

The Sicilian shook his head, an almost infinitesimal movement. For one so thin he seemed to expend as little energy as possible. Dolan, who valued those who valued leisure, should have taken comfort from that. He didn’t. “I eat once a day, at breakfast.”

“Call yourself an Italian?”

“Rome was destroyed by its appetites. While others are spearing calimari, I’m thinking. You might try abstaining from liquor the next time you visit with your friends at the Shamrock. What you learn may surprise you.”

Dolan’s beer came, frothing over the schuper’s rounded lip. For answer he drank off half of it in one draft, thumped down the glass, and wiped his lip with a knuckle, glaring defiance.

Borneo’s shrug was hardly a movement at all, and his companion was left thinking that he had come off the worse in the discussion. In a mahogany-colored light, weight three-piece with a flaring white handkerchief and pale yellow necktie, Borneo looked like a civilized Indian in a medicine act. The moustache only accentuated the hawklike lines of his face.

“I heard from Maribel this week,” he said.

“You mean Thelma.” Dolan hadn’t seen her since they’d parted at the Shamrock Club.

“She prefers the name she used in Detroit. I think it suits her better. She writes a good letter, although her spelling is creative. She’s appearing with Bert Williams at the Gotham Theater in New York. A nonspeaking part, which is a mercy.”

“I didn’t know you were pen pals.”

“It was in the way of a thank-you note. I paid her fare east, with a bonus for her work here. Apparently I exceeded the Broadway scale.”

“On her feet or on her back?”

“Your anger is misdirected. In any case the regard with which you’re held in this community is more assured than ever. The November elections proved that. You have made all the right choices.”

“I can’t see it that way as long as I’m paying property taxes in Ohio with nothing to show for them. You told me Ford would be out of business by now. The streetcar companies are still dragging their feet on the interurban.”

“I did not say that. Ford is a gamester. Give him a penny and he will play it up into thousands. You can take away the thousands, but there is always someone who is willing to give him another penny. In such cases it becomes necessary to destroy the man.”

“I’ll not do murder.”

“I am not suggesting that. You can kill a man and still fail to destroy him. Where there is no apparent weakness you must look to his strengths. What in your opinion is Ford’s greatest asset?”

“He’s mule-headed. This is his third run at the same business.”

“Perhaps. He is also popular. Reporters love him because there is no predicting what bold thing he will say or do next. Their editors like him because he sells newspapers. The public adores him because he came up from nothing and is a good family man besides. America is a moral nation. That’s its great strength as well as its most appalling weakness. It disillusions easily.”

Dolan’s meatballs arrived, a heaping bowl slathered with thick red sauce, with a garlic loaf on the side. They fell silent while the waiter laid out the items from the tray. When the waiter left, Dolan remained motionless, watching Borneo. “Whatever you’re chewing, spit it out.”

“With your help, we’ve succeeded in pressuring the local newspaper advertising staffs not to accept Ford advertisements,” Borneo said. “The editors and reporters aren’t influenced so easily. They can be bribed, but they are not honorable about such arrangements. They have been known to take the money and print what they want regardless. Doing business with them is unstable.”

“I’m sure you have methods to deal with those who won’t come through in such matters.”

“Of course. But they are worthless if the lesson they teach will not be learned. Journalists are lower organisms who cannot be made to understand fear. Their instincts are bestially simple: anything for the sake of a story. Run over a dog, and if he survives he will chase your wagon again the next time you pass, if it means dragging his crippled legs behind him. Killing him will not prevent other dogs from doing the same thing. It is most frustrating to an intelligent man.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Eliminate the wagon.”

Dolan shook his head like an old bull. “You said killing was out.”

“It was. It is. Dead men have a disconcerting habit of rising again as symbols, and there is no fighting a symbol. Killing Henry Ford would only cloak the automobile business in a heroic mantle. Truly destroying a man involves hollowing him out and leaving him standing, an empty wreck not even worth pitying.”

“I’m beginning to get you.” The Irishman’s face felt hot.

“I was certain you would. You’re a higher animal, able to learn from the past. George.”

He spoke the name without raising his voice above the level of the conversation they’d been having, which was not engineered to carry to the other tables. Nevertheless, a man rose from his seat in a corner booth near the swinging door to the kitchen and offered a hand to someone who had been seated opposite him. The man was the shockingly ugly creature whom Dolan had first seen in Borneo’s office above the butcher shop away back in January. George Zelos, the name was. A Greek, but decidedly not the kind of which statues were made. The woman he helped to her feet could not have helped but appear beautiful by comparison, although indeed she was not. She had a long, homely face, and her drab brown hair was skinned back into a tight bun behind her head under a cheap hat. She wore a dress that upon a more handsome woman might have appeared endearingly simple. On her it was a nondescript print in a shade of gray unbecoming to her indoor pallor. Her downcast gaze and hesitant step as Zelos escorted her to his master’s table convinced Dolan that she belonged to the serving class.

“James Aloysius Dolan, this is Agnes. She has asked that her surname not be used.” Borneo kept his seat.

Dolan, not wishing to draw any more attention to himself than he already had, chose to remain seated also. Ordinarily he made it a point to greet every woman he met as if she were a lady. They did not vote, but many of them influenced their men, and in any case even a drunken bricklayer who beat his wife and abused his children preferred to support politicians who kept the proprieties. He nodded to the woman, who stood staring at the floor and twisting her hands in front of her.