Thunder City (4 page)

Goaded into defending himself, Edward abandoned his show of discretion. “During that hour he was seen going into Jim Dolan’s house.”

“By whom?”

“I can’t reveal the source.”

“I see. I hope you are paying the security men you assign to follow your brothers around out of your salary. They are employed to protect the plant.”

“If Harlan is cooking something up with the Irish Pope, the entire company is in jeopardy.”

“Dolan is a politico. I pay this company’s taxes and be damned with him.”

“The Democratic Party lends money to those who serve its interests. Dolan controls the party. I think Harlan went to his house to borrow money to invest in his damn go-devils.”

“Surely he’s outgrown that whim.”

Edward spread his soft meaty hands. “Why else would he meet with Diamond Jim?”

“I made it clear how I felt about automobiles when he approached me with the idea of joining hands with that man Ford. The machines are too expensive and complicated ever to catch on with the general public. Rich men grow bored with their kickshaws. They move on to other things.”

“Logic is wasted on Harlan. He’s weak in the head.”

The telephone jangled.

“I’ll have a talk with him.” Abner unpegged the listening cup. When Edward remained seated, he placed his hand over the mouthpiece. “Cincinnati.”

“Ah.” His son shoved himself to his feet and trundled out.

Abner hung up on his branch manager’s obsequious farewell, donned his trilby and light topcoat, and told Winthrop he would return in thirty minutes. He rode the caged elevator to the ground floor. Hector, the operator, had been a cabinetmaker in the firm’s employ until his right hand was mangled by a drill press. That was the hand, clothed in a mitten, with which he operated the lever. The work was less demanding than his old job, and so his salary had been cut from five dollars per week to three. He was a dark-skinned Greek with pewter-colored hair who in nine years had not exchanged more than a greeting with his employer.

The clangor of coach making was a shock to Abner’s system after the quilted silence of the office, but he welcomed it, along with the smells of turpentine and sawn wood and fresh lacquer, the scorched-metal stench from the boilers that powered the steam machinery, the clatter of tools dropped to the broad oaken planks of the floor. The sight of coaches, buggies, depot hacks, and carriages in various stages of construction, seen through a golden haze of sawdust, never failed to carry him back to his youth. His rheumatic hands felt the metal bail of the heavy grease bucket cutting into the folds of the fingers, he tasted his own sweat trickling into his mouth from his streaming forehead, heard the wheelwrights cursing him when he was slow to slather the hubs with handfuls of the thick viscous brown stuff in the bucket. He knew every bevel and join in every vehicle that rolled out of every plant in the Crownover empire; at one time or another he had planed and fitted them all. None of his competitors had managed to improve upon the suspension system he had patented. To achieve parity they were forced to pay him for its use in their own product. If he never made another vehicle, his invention would continue to pay him millions.

He paused to watch a young carpenter tapping a peg into place where a side panel met the back of a Victoria coach. The young man’s shoulders tensed, aware that he was being scrutinized by the owner of the company. After the first tentative raps, Abner begged the fellow’s pardon, relieved him of his mallet and, gripping it near the end of the handle, drove the peg home with one sharp blow.

“Leverage.” He handed back the mallet. “I dined with a university professor who told me he spent an entire semester teaching the principle to an auditorium full of student engineers. I learned it from an illiterate Negro my first day on the job.”

“Thank you, sir.” The carpenter fumbled in his wooden toolbox for another peg.

Abner went out through the great open bay doors to the loading dock, a platform erected three feet above the ground so that material and equipment could be transferred smoothly from the boxes of delivery wagons into the building. The concept was another of his own improvements, borrowed from a flour mill he had seen on a visit to a Michigan farming village; although he did not get the credit for it that he received from his suspension, he calculated that the addition saved the firm two hours each day, enough time to complete the chassis of an extra coach or carriage. That meant two more per week, and eight more at the end of each month. Genius, he was fond of repeating, is the art of making things simple.

It was a warm day for early spring and he could smell the sun reflecting off the surface of the river. The brick factory buildings of Windsor carved square chunks out of the sky on the opposing bank. A native Detroiter, he felt pride at the thought that a worker on the Canadian side might even now be gazing across the water at the mighty height of the ten-story Hammond Building and, nearby, the fourteen floors of the Majestic. Businesses like Crownover Coaches and the Michigan Stove Company made such things possible. He was a major investor in the stove manufacturer, whose president had entered into an exclusive contract with Crownover to provide the wagons that delivered the heavy cast-iron conveniences to stores and private customers who ordered them direct from the factory. He had only to turn his head a few degrees to see that factory and its great display piece, the Biggest Stove in the World, standing in front of it. The construction, as big as a house, had been moved there from the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, where in demonstration of the greatness of the project the wooden replica had sheltered an entire family on salary to the stove maker.

There were those who told Abner he should erect a monstrous coach for the same purpose. He demurred, explaining that Crownover had not gotten where it was by imitating the actions of others. In private he considered the big stove a vulgar blot on the Detroit skyline. He had the self-made man’s horror of public exhibitions of gaucherie. For this reason he had filled his closet with suits made to his order by the Prince of Wales’s tailor during his visits to London and had hired, in strict secrecy, a valet formerly employed in the Benjamin Harrison White House to teach him which fork to use and where to place his napkin during a formal dinner. He was aware that some of his earthier competitors muttered among themselves that Abner Crownover took too seriously the honorary title of Coach King, but he wasn’t troubled by it. He had had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, and he could not think of another thirty-third-degree Freemason who could claim that.

As it happened, the episode of the Church of Rome had threatened to expel him from the Detroit order. From this controversy he also remained aloof, trusting that the High Priest would not forget who provided the funds that forestalled an investigation by the membership into cost overruns incurred in the construction of the Masonic Temple. He did not forget, and in time the muttering ceased. The example of his father had taught Abner II that honorable causes and charitable deeds were best embraced when they bore favorably upon one’s livelihood. He had joined the Freemasons because many of the men with whom he did business were members. He had met with the Pope because most of the politicians who voted for and against taxes on private enterprises and established commercial zoning ordinances were Irish and Catholic. (He had spent the time with His Holiness attempting to interest him in a new papal vehicle.) In 1896 he had publicly contributed to the presidential war chest of William Jennings Bryan because Detroit was a Democratic enclave, while quietly pledging three times the amount to the McKinley campaign, Republicans having demonstrated support for American business. After the assassination and Roosevelt’s rise, Abner had sent the new chief executive a beautiful silver-chased Winchester rifle with a carved stock, custom-made at the factory in New Haven. He had no fear that the Rough Rider’s vow to smash the eastern trusts would include Crownover, but at a modest seven hundred dollars the gift seemed a sound security investment.

Harlan was busy supervising the unloading of packing cases from the back of a dray. The stenciling on the cases identified them as the erstwhile property of a plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, that made brass coach lamps. The lamps, which arrived packed in straw, were made from copper mined in the Upper Peninsula; an arrangement resulting in a triangulated course across two Great Lakes and eight hundred unnecessary miles, but one that had to be made in order to obtain the cooperation of a Pennsylvania senator in a matter involving a federal harbor tax. The senator’s jurisdiction acquired a new industry, and Crownover gained an exemption. As a bonus, Abner had realized a profit when he sold the equipment from his own lantern plant to the Pennsylvania firm, which was owned by the senator’s brother-in-law. So far the new century was starting out where the old one had left off.

His satisfaction at this reminder of an old windfall was marred by his son’s appearance. Harlan insisted on dressing as the men beneath him dressed, in dungarees worn soft and corduroy shirts with the ribs rubbed shiny where his elbows brushed his sides. It was clear that he helped with the physical labor. Like most men who had worked their way up from the ground, Abner made it a point of honor to spare his sons similar indignity; not because he wished them less hardship, but because the sight of young Crownovers heaving and sweating along with the men in their employ would please his enemies. He regretted deeply that he could not trust his second-born to make even a show of competence at a desk, as Abner III had managed to do once he’d been removed from the directorship of the Detroit operation. The duties of a glorified file clerk had suited his eldest son as the pressures of decision making had not. Young Harlan’s silences during family discussions had convinced his father that the boy was incapable of understanding simple business. The fact that he was his mother’s favorite confirmed his weakness. Edith was the kind of woman who rescued fallen birds and selected the runt of the litter, attempting to foil the Darwinian principles that Abner had applied to business, with brilliant success. If she liked a person, a creature, or a thing, it followed that the object of her affection was damaged in some fundamental way. He treated his wife at all times with cordial reverence and held her in contempt.

As always, he made a mental note to upbraid Harlan for his misplaced democracy when they were alone, and busied himself inspecting boards from a stack of lumber laid at the edge of the dock. They were mahogany, shipped at great expense from Central America and reserved exclusively for use in custom vehicles. Company policy was to protect the wood with a tarpaulin at all times when it was outside and to move it inside as quickly as possible. He had slid a fourth board out from under the cover and was sighting down its length as if it were a billiard cue when his son approached him, mopping his hands with a stained rag.

“This is a surprise, Father. You never come down to the dock.”

“Obviously a mistake. These boards are warped.”

“The entire shipment is defective. It’s been left out in the weather. They’re dumping it on us.”

“Have you made arrangements to return it?”

“I’d planned to talk with Edward about it this afternoon.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Return it.”

“If we return it, it will be two months before it’s replaced, if Nicaragua agrees to replace it. We’ve had trouble with them before. They’ll insist upon inspecting it before authorizing a second shipment. If we simply put in another order, we’ll have it in four weeks.”

“And eat the cost of Nicaragua’s incompetence?”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been dissatisfied with that firm. We’ll of course place our order with a competitor. Meanwhile we can make up part of the cost by selling this shipment to Wilson.”

“Who the devil is Wilson?”

“C. R. Wilson Body Company,” said Harlan, using a tone in which he might have said “King Edward of
En
g
land.”

“They make bodies for Olds, the automobile manufacturer. I know Fred Fisher there. Automobile customers are less picky about such details. What they can’t use in the bodies they can burn for charcoal.”

“Meanwhile we’re still operating at a loss.”

“We’ll make up for it by remaining liquid. We paid for the mahogany in advance. A refund would take as long as replacement, by which time it may be worth less than what we get from Wilson now. The economy is on the upswing. Prices are rising.”

“Where did you read that, in the Hearst press?” Withstanding a lecture in economics from his backward son soured Abner’s stomach. Of late he had been forced to give up coffee in favor of warm milk.

“Hearst is saying the opposite, actually. He’s running again.”

Abner dropped the board he’d been inspecting on top of the stack. The sharp clank turned heads among the workers unloading the brass lamps. He kept his voice level. “Crownover isn’t in business to help your friends in the automobile world. Return the shipment.”

The expression on Harlan’s round face was unreadable. His father thought it blank. “They won’t go away because you ignore them,” Harlan said.

“Is that the reason you went to see Jim Dolan behind my back?”

“It wasn’t behind your back.” The young man didn’t seem surprised that he knew of the visit.

“You took time off from your work here to go see him.”

“It was personal time.”

“Someone had to do your work while you were gone. Someone had to do
his
work, and so on. It left us a man short.”

“The company was still solvent when I returned. Meanwhile seventy-five minutes were deducted from my card.”

“Then you admit you went to Dolan for money after I refused you?”

“I went to see him. I have nothing to admit.”

“He’s a politician!”

“Some men are. You needn’t make the word sound like an oath.”

Pain began to gnaw at Abner’s stomach. It never did when he spoke to Edward. Abner III was always too busy considering what to order for lunch to unsettle his father’s digestion. He adjusted his tack. “And did your populist friend oblige you with a loan?”