Thunder City (27 page)

There were two more choruses along the same lines as the first. He read them all, finding himself humming as he did so; marches were contagious, particularly among new Americans, who lined Woodward twelve-deep on Independence Day, souvenir flags in hand, to see the parade. The primitive two-beat rhythm, the homely naiveté of the words, were visceral. He could imagine a drunk singing the song as he wobbled home.

No war had ever been won based upon the composition of a great master.

Sal Borneo folded the sheet three times lengthwise and slid it into his inside breast pocket.

Whatever the extent of the effect recent events had had upon his tightly controlled life, Big Jim Dolan remained secure in the knowledge that he loved his children. How else explain his willingness this Sunday afternoon following church and noon dinner to don his gabardine and boater and hike down to Fred Sanders’ ice cream shop and entrust the generous Dolan rear end to the inquisition of an infernal chair with twisted iron legs and a twisted iron back, merely to remind himself every time he took a spoonful of vanilla in caramel sauce that one of his gold fillings needed replacement? The light in the faces of Sean in his Sunday serge and cap with black patent-leather bill and Margaret in her white sailor suit was impossible to resist. And Charlotte was delighted to parade her new seersucker dress and picture hat for the first time. True, it did not hurt his reputation to be seen, a man in the bosom of his loving family, participating in a Detroit summertime tradition; but he had finished a particularly busy week of Rotary Club speeches, testimonial dinners, and one photographic pose at Bennett Field, showing Red Donahue how to line up one’s fingers with the stitching on a baseball for the throwing of a proper curve, and he complimented himself that the added exposure was hardly necessary. What he was doing today he was doing as James Aloysius Dolan, husband and father. Later he would reward himself with a beer and perhaps a game or two of billiards at the Shamrock Club.

“James, that funny little man is staring at me,” reported Charlotte over her strawberry sundae.

She had been brought up not to point, and so he was forced to follow her gaze across the room, which was jammed to the counter with chattering families on this first truly hot day of summer. The ice cream melting on his tongue turned to sawdust when he identified the slight Italian standing with his hat in his hands just inside the door.

At first he didn’t recognize him. His presence downtown was out of context, and he looked and stood far different when not in his customary surroundings; more like one of the supplicants who came to Dolan’s door asking for money or favors than the dark prince of his community. Here he was just Salvatore Bornea, immigrant, and the cut of his suit did not disguise the hunched shoulders and outward-turned elbows of a wop on Woodward. Dolan found strength in that, and transferred his napkin from his collar to the round iron table with a decisive snap. “It’s not you he’s staring at, dear,” he said. “I’ll go and have a talk with him.”

“Don’t these people know you’re not to be bothered on the Lord’s day?”

“I’ll remind him.” He rose, and made a business of tugging down the points of his vest, shooting his cuffs, and shifting his bamboo cane from his left hand to his right before starting toward Borneo. It would give the man time to absorb the knowledge that he was in Dolan’s park.

Borneo disarmed him somewhat by surrendering the point. “I am sorry, my friend, to interrupt your family excursion. Your houseboy told me I would find you here.”

“Noche should have known better.” He managed to make it sound more imperious than biting. The day belonged to God, after all.

“I managed to convince him my purpose is not frivolous. May I have five minutes with you?”

Dolan looked around. Three young ladies in smart hats and bustles were rising from a table ten feet away. He and Borneo reached it just ahead of two youths in linen suits and boaters carrying banana splits. One of them glared and opened his mouth, but his companion whispered something to him and the pair withdrew.

“Fame has its compensations,” remarked Borneo as they sat down.

“A wee bit off your run, isn’t it?”

“It is a beautiful day.”

Which was no explanation at all; but Dolan chose not to ask the question again a different way.

“Harlan Crownover paid me a visit Friday night.”

“Did you lend him more money?”

“No. In fact, he paid back what I’d lent him before. With interest.”

“He didn’t get it from his father. I hear the old boy’s in a bad way. Not long for this world.” This saddened him more than he let on. The Crownover plant, with its huge sign painted right on the brick tagged “A. Crownover, Prop.,” had been the first thing he saw when he came to Detroit, a knob-knuckled mick switchman full of beer and piss and not much savvy about the way the gears turned. Although they had spent their lives laboring in enemy camps, Abner Junior and Dolan were both self-made men in a country that hailed the phenomenon on paper while discouraging it in practice. From the beginning, Big Jim had fixed his eye on Abner’s example, the one sure landmark that would guide him out of the Yankee wilderness that had buried so many of his compatriots. A city in which an insignificant grease boy could climb hand over hand into the big office on the top floor could be made to deliver anything. He would sooner expect to see Ursa Major spill from the sky than Abner Crownover II on his deathbed.

“No, I gather it came from his first-quarter profits providing bodies for Ford,” Borneo said. “People appear to want to buy Ford’s machines despite the threats from the A.L.A.M. Or perhaps because of them. When judging Americans you must never overlook the fact that they are the grandchildren of rebels.”

“Horseshit.”

“Soon to be an antiquated phrase.”

“So you made some money on the deal, and now you’re a believer. When can we expect to see you operating your own horseless carriage?”

“Not soon, I fear. All that cranking.” He wasn’t smiling. “The time has come, my friend, to admit we made a bad investment and cut our losses.”

“Just because you lost your hold on young Crownover is no reason for me to jump the fence. You came out ahead. You’re forgetting all that Ohio farmland I’m stuck with.”

“Oh, that. Ford’s case comes up in September. It’s a New York court. When the ruling goes against him all the streetcar companies will be screaming for that property. You’ll make more off it in a month than all the farmers who have worked it combined.”

Dolan squinted, trying to see the Italian in an objective light. “If that’s the case, why am I paying a Pinkerton detective to prune Ford’s hedges?”

“He’ll appeal the ruling, of course. He’ll take it all the way to Washington if he’s forced to. By that time it won’t matter whether he wins or loses. He’ll go on doing what he has since the start. He’ll pay the fines out of petty cash just like Standard Oil. He’s a hero to the people, like Thomas Paine or Patrick Henry. At this point a dirty little scandal might take some of the shine off his monument, but I doubt it will help. We started too late and moved too slow. We didn’t know we were trying to smash quicksilver with an iron hammer.”

“So you’re out.”

“I am out. I came here to tell you and spare you the trouble of coming to see me. I know Little Italy is not your favorite place.”

“You came here to make sure we still have an arrangement.”

“Grapellini really is the finest butcher in Detroit,” Borneo said. “Sometimes the man who knows all the right people also knows his work.”

There was a long silence, which Dolan came to conclude was wasted. The Sicilian would not be made anxious. “I see no reason to make any changes at this time,” he said.

Their business was finished, but Borneo made no move to rise. Dolan could feel his wife’s eyes on the back of his neck. The children would have emptied their dishes by now and would be growing restless. “Well?”

Borneo looked apologetic. “I feel that I have cost you time and money. I have a proposition.”

“The last time I accepted one of your propositions I wound up in bed with a nigger.”

“This would be an equal arrangement.” Borneo reached inside his coat and laid a rectangular fold of paper on the table between them. Dolan picked it up and unfolded it. It was a song sheet.

He slid his glance over it, then tossed it back. “I’ve seen these before. Dried-up old prunes hire church halls to sing this horseshit. Are you temperance?”

“I enjoy a glass of Chianti on rare occasions. In any case I consider it poor policy to impress one’s habits upon others. The woman who was handing these out in Little Italy Friday night was no prune. Neither were the women who took them. And every woman who passed her took one.”

“What’s the point? Women can’t vote.”

“We’ve spoken of this before. Married men who vote have to live with their wives.”

“No man would ever vote to close saloons.”

“I can refute that, but it’s not the point I wish to make. I spent yesterday researching out-of-town newspapers in the library. Did you know ten counties in Michigan are expected to vote themselves dry next year? The Anti-Saloon League predicts that number will quadruple itself by 1910.”

“They were probably drunk when they counted.”

“I still have not made my point. You know our system, Big Jim. In your heart of hearts, do you believe it is impossible to obtain an alcoholic beverage in ten Michigan counties?”

“Certainly not. Outlaw a bad habit and all you’ll make is more outlaws.”

Borneo sat back, smiling behind his moustache.

Dolan began to see then. That, he decided, was what he hated about the little dago; he made him feel like a potato-headed Irishman. “You invested in Harlan Crownover hoping he would fail. You’re telling me you’re investing in the prohibition movement for the same reason.”

“Not at all. I have every hope it will succeed.”

Big Jim Dolan felt the first chuckling tremors of what promised to be his first full-fledged belly laugh in many months. He shoved himself to his feet to keep the melted ice cream in his stomach from backing up on him. He was laughing out loud now, infectiously drawing grins and sympathetic laughter from the other tables. Very soon everyone was laughing, with the exceptions of his wife and children and Borneo, and only one of them knew why. He slid his chair under the table, hooked his cane over his wrist, and leaned down so the Sicilian could hear him through the mirth. He hissed the words between his teeth.

“The day the citizens of this country vote to outlaw liquor is the day the mayor of Detroit rides up Woodward Avenue in an automobile.” He returned to his family.

W
HEN
H
ARLAN
C
ROWNOVER HEARD
that the judge in New York had ruled that no gasoline car could be sold without infringing on George Selden’s patent, he called Ford’s home and was told by a maid that her mistress was resting after the long train ride and that her master was at work. There a man whose voice he didn’t recognize—Ford was always hiring and firing, taking on a man for a certain job and then transferring him to an entirely different position according to his aptitude or Crazy Henry’s own whim—informed him that he had been in, but had left after fifteen minutes without leaving word as to where he could be reached. That suggested the Pontchartrain bar, and as the operator reported that line busy Harlan decided to go down there.

He found the place nearly full, mostly with strangers, although from the snatches of conversation he heard as he cruised through looking for Ford he gathered that they were mostly auto men. Every day, it seemed, more were entering the business; Harlan, who had once known everyone in the local field at least well enough to say hello to, had wondered briefly upon entering if in his preoccupation he had come to the wrong bar. At length he spotted a pair of familiar faces in a booth near the back and went that way.

John and Horace Dodge weren’t hard to notice. Outfitted in identical navy blazers and yachting caps, they resembled a pair of fat babies dressed up for a studio portrait. Always husky, they were now both absolutely corpulent; two massive lumps of pink protoplasm sharing the same side of the booth as if they were joined at the hip. The table bristled with empty beer mugs and shot glasses.

“If it ain’t the Coach Prince,” Horace greeted.

John said, “We’re taking the new scow out for a shakedown this afternoon. You want to come along as ballast?”

Harlan took their cue and responded politely. Although the brothers still owned a percentage in the company, they had ceased to supply engines for Ford cars, which were now manufactured almost entirely on the premises. Rumor said the Dodges were considering starting up their own automobile company. “This would be the
Hornet
?” Harlan asked.

“The
Hornet II
,” corrected John. “This one’s a hundred feet long, twin engines. Horace built ’em both with his own two hands.”

His brother wrapped one around his current beer mug and finished it off. “Thousand horsepower, four cylinders, ten-inch stroke. Forty-one miles per hour. Fastest boat in the world.” He belched.

“Runner-up’s a torpedo boat” John grinned.

“I’ll have to take you up on the offer another time. Have you seen Ford?”

The grin became a scowl. “He dropped by a half hour or so back, didn’t even sit down. Son-of-a-bitch New York judge ought to be cornholed with a piston rod.”

“Crankshaft,” suggested Horace. They touched shot glasses and tossed down the contents in one synchronized jerk.

“Did he say where he was headed?”

The Dodges spoke in unison. “River Rouge.”

Harlan blinked. Obviously John and Horace were drunk; but when they were generally yet always managed to make sense. “Whatever for?”

“Maybe he wants to drown himself.” John turned his head and bellowed to the bartender for a refill.

The River Rouge was one of a disputed number of shallow streams that drained the flat, unfarmable plain southeast of the city into the Detroit River. French explorers had named it for the cherry trees that were in full fruit when they paddled their canoes upstream to trade with the Iroquois and Hurons. But the area had grown too marshy to sustain them after settlers had cleared the land to plow and build, altering the runoff patterns of centuries, and the last of the trees had vanished long ago. Now it was a great squishy wasteland, a breeding ground for mosquitoes and the odd massasauga rattlesnake. Harlan, who had chosen the tall, boxy Model T town car for his personal transportation, drove up and down East Jefferson several times before he spied the familiar angular figure standing all alone five hundred feet from the Rouge’s southwestern bank, a startling incongruity in the same snug black suit and white collar he’d been photographed in on his way to court. The civilized gray homburg he affected in public completed the cartoon image. Harlan drew the brake, got out, and started that way on foot, choosing each step carefully. Within a few yards his feet were soaked.