Bantam Books by Arthur Hailey 12 страница

Erica thought of names she had learned since coming to Detroit:

Riccardos, Gerstenbergs, Knudsens, lacoccas, Roches, Brambletts, others.

There had been outstanding second marriages,

138-wheels

too: the Henry Fords, Ed Coles, Roy Chapins, Bill Mitchells, Pete and

Connie Estes, the John DeLoreans. As always, it depended on the indi-

viduals.

Erica walked for half an hour. On her way back, a soft rain began to

fall. She held her face toward the rain until it was wet and streaming,

yet somehow comforting.

She went in without disturbing Adam who was still in the living room,

immersed in papers. Upstairs, Erica dried her f ace, combed out her

hair, then undressed and put on the nightgown she had bought earlier

today. Surveying herself critically, she was aware that the sheer beige

nylon did even more for her than she had expected in the store. She

used the orange lipstick, then applied Norell generously.

From the living-room doorway she asked Adam, "Will you be long?"

He glanced up, then down again at a bluebound folder in his hand.

"Maybe half an hour."

Adam had not appeared to notice the seethrough nightgown which could

not compete, apparently, with the folder, lettered, Statistical

Projection of Automobile and Truck Registration by States. Hoping that

the perfume might prove more effective, Erica came behind his chair as

she had earlier, but all that happened was a perfunctory kiss with a

muttered, "Good night; don't wait for me." She might as well, she

thought, have been drenched in camphorated oil.

She went to bed, and lay with top sheet and blanket turned back, her

sexual desire growing as she waited. If she closed her eyes, she could

imagine Adam poised above her...

Erica opened her eyes. A bedside clock showed that not half an hour,

but almost two hours, had passed. It was I A.M.

Soon after, she heard Adam climb the stairs.

wheels-1 39

He came in, yawning, with a, "God, I'm tired," then undressed sleepily,

climbed into bed, and was almost instantly asleep.

Erica lay silently beside him, sleep for herself far away. After a while

she imagined that she was once more walking, out of doors, the softness

of the rain upon her face.

chapter nine

The day after Adam and Erica Trenton failed to bridge the growing gap

between them, after Brett 'DeLosanto renewed his faith in the Orion yet

pondered his artistic destiny, after Barbara Zaleski viewed frustrations

through the benthos of martinis, and after Matt Zaleski, her plant-boss

father, survived another pressure-cooker work day, a minor event occurred in

the inner city of Detroit, unconnected with any of those five, yet whose

effect, over months ahead, would involve and motivate them all.

Time: 8:30 P.m. Place: Downtown, Third Avenue near Brainard. An empty

police cruiser parked beside the curb.

"Get your black ass against the wall," the white cop commanded. Holding

a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other, he ran the flashlight's beam

down and up Rollie Knight, who blinked as the light reached his eyes and

stayed there.

"Now turn around. Hands above your head. Move!-you goddam jailbird."

As Rollie Knight turned, the white cop told his Negro partner, "Frisk the

bastard."

The young, shabbily dressed black man whom the policeman had stopped, had

been ambling aimlessly on Third when the cruiser pulled alongside and its

occupants jumped out, guns drawn. Now he protested, "Wadd' I do?", then

giggled as the second policeman's hands moved up his legs, then around his

body. "Hey man, oh man, that tickles I"

"Shaddupl" the white cop said. He was an old-timer on the force, with hard

eyes and a big beRy, the last from years of riding in patrol cars.

wheels-141

He had survived this beat a long time and never relaxed while on it.

The black policeman, who was several years younger and newer, dropped

his hands. "He's okay." Moving back, he inquired softly, "What

difference does the color of his ass make?"

The white cop looked startled. In their baste since moving from the

cruiser he bad forgotten that tonight his usual partner, also white, was

off sick, with a black officer substituting.

"HeIll" he said hastily. "Don't get ideas. Even if you are his color,

you don't rate down with that crumb."

The black cop said drily, "Thanks." He considered saying more, but

didn't. Instead, he told the man against the wall, "You can put your

hands down. Turn around."

As the instruction was obeyed, the white cop rasped, "Where you been the

last half hour, Knight?" He knew Rollie Knight by name, not only from

seeing him around here frequently, but from a police record which

included two jail convictions, for one of which the officer had made the

arrest himself.

"Where I bin?" The young black man had recovered from his initial shock.

Though his cheeks were hollowed, and he appeared underfed and frail,

there was nothing weak about his eyes, which mirrored hatred. "I bin

layin' a white piece o' ass. Doan know her name, except she says her old

man's a fat white pig who can't get it up. Comes here when she needs it

from a man."

The white cop took a step forward, the blood vessels in his face

swelling red. His intention was to smash the muzzle of his gun across

the contemptuous, taunting face. Afterward, he could claim that Knight

struck him first and his own action was in self-defense. His partner

would back up the story, in the same way that they always

142-wheels

corroborated each other, except-he remembered abruptly- tonight his partner

was one of them who might just be ornery enough to make trouble later. So

the policeman checked himself, knowing there would be another time and

place, as this smart-aleck nigger would find out.

The black cop growled at Rollie Knight, "Don't push your luck. Tell us

where you were..

The young Negro spat on the sidewalk. A cop was an enemy, whatever his

color, and a black one was worse because he was a lackey of the Man. But

lie answered, "In there," motioning to a basement bar across the street.

"How long?"

"An hour. Maybe two. Maybe three." Rollie Knight shrugged. "Who keeps

score?"

The black cop asked his partner, "Should I check it out?"

"No, be a wasta time. They'd say he'd been there. They're all damn liars."

The black officer pointed out, "To get here in this time from West Grand

and Second he'd have needed wings, anyway."

The call had come in minutes earlier on the prowl car radio. An armed

robbery near the Fisher Building, eighteen blocks away. It had just hap-

pened. Two suspects had fled in a late model sedan.

Seconds later, the patrolling duo had seen Rollie Knight walking alone on

Third Avenue. Though the likelihood of a single pedestrian, here, being

involved with the uptown robbery was remote, when the white cop had

recognized Knight, he shouted to halt the car, then jumped out, leaving

his partner no choice but to follow. The black officer knew why they had

acted. The robbery call provided an excuse to "stop and frisk," and the

other officer enjoyed stopping people and bullying them when he knew he

could get away

wheels-143

with it, tbough it was coincidental, of course, that those he picked on

were invariably black.

There was a relationship, the black officer believed, between his

companion's viciousness and brutality-which were well-known around the

force-and fear, which rode him while on duty in the ghetto. Fear had its

own stink, and the black policeman had smelled it strongly from the

white officer beside him the moment the robbery call came in, and when

they had jumped from the car, and even now, Fear could, and did, make

a mean man meaner still. When he possessed authority as well, he could

become a savage.

Not that fear was out of place in these surroundings. In fact, for a

Detroit policeman not to know fear would betray a lack of knowledge, an

absence of imagination. In the inner city, with a crime rate probably

the nation's highest, police were targets-always of hate, often of

bricks and knives and bullets. Where survival depended on alertness, a

degree of fear was rational; so were suspicion, caution, swiftness when

danger showed, or seemed to. It was like being in a war where police

were on the firing line. And as in any war, the niceties of human

behavior-politeness, psychology, tolerance, kindness-got brushed aside

as nonessential, so that the war intensified while antagonisms-often

with cause on both sides-perpetuated themselves and multiplied.

Yet a few policemen, as the black cop knew, learned to live with fear

while remaining decent human beings, too. These were ones who understood

the nature of the times, the mood of black people, their frustrations,

the long history of injustice behind them. This kind of policemanwhether

white or black-helped relieve the war a little, though it was hard to

know how much because they were not in a majority.

To make moderates a majority, and to raise

144-wheels

standards of the Detroit force generally, were declared aims of a recently

appointed police chief. But between the chief and his objectives was the

physical presence of a contingent of officers, numerically strong, who

through fear or rooted prejudice were frankly racist like the white cop here

and now.

'Where you working, crumb?" he demanded of Rollie Knight.

"I'm like you. I ain't workin', just passin' time."

The policeman's f ace bulged again with anger. If he had not been there,

the black cop knew, his partner would have smashed his fist into the frail

young black face leering at him.

The black cop told Rollie Knight, "Beat itl You flap your mouth too much."

Back in the prowl car the other policeman fumed, "So help me, I'll nail

that bastard."

The black officer thought: And so you will, probably tomorrow or the next

day when you've got your regular sidekick back, and he'll look the other

way if there's a beating or an arrest on some trumped-up charge. There had

been plenty of other vendettas of the same kind.

On impulse, the black cop, who was behind the wheel, said, "Hold it I I'll

be back."

As he got out of the car, Rollie Knight was fifty yards away.

"Hey, youl" When the young black man turned, the officer beckoned, then

walked to meet him.

The black cop leaned toward Rollie Knight, his stance threatening. But he

said quietly, "My partner's out to get you, and he will. You're a stupid

jerk for letting your mouth run off, and I don't owe you favors. All the

same, I'm warning you: Stay out of sight, or better-get out of town 'til

the man cools."

wheels-145

"A Judas nigger copt Why'd I take the word from you?"

"No reason." The policeman shrugged. "So let what's coming come. No skin

off me."

"How'd I leave? Where'd I get wheels, the bread?" Though spoken with a

sneer, the query was a shade less hostile.

"Then don't leave. Keep out of sight, the way I said."

"Ain't easy here, man."

No, it was not easy, as the black cop knew. Not easy to remain unnoticed

through each long day and night when someone wanted you and others knew

where you were. Information came cheap if you knew the pipelines of the

inner city; all it took was the price of a fix, the promise of a favor,

even the right kind of threat. Loyalty was not a plant which flourished

here. But being somewhere else, absence for part of the time, at least,

would help. The policeman asked, "Why aren't you working?"

Rollie Knight grinned. "You hear me tell your pig friend..."

"Save the smart talk. You want work?"

"Maybe." But behind the admission was the knowledge that few jobs were

open to those with criminal records like Rollie Knight's.

"The car plants axe hiring," the black cop said.

.That's honky land."

"Plenty of the blood work there."

Rollie Knight said grudgingly, "I tried one time. Some whitey fink said

no."

"Try again. Here." From a tunic pocket the black cop pulled a card. It

bad been given him, the day before, by a company employment office man

he knew. It had the address of a hiring hall, a name, some hours of

opening.

Rollie Knight crumpled the card and thrust it

146-wheels

in a pocket. 'Vhen I feel like it, baby, I'll piss on it."

"Suit yourself," the black cop said. He walked back to the car.

His white partner looked at him suspiciously. "What was all that?"

He answered shortly, "I cooled him down," but did not elaborate.

The black policeman had no intention of being bullied, but neither did

he want an argument-at least, not now. Though Detroit's population was

forty percent black, only in most recent years had its police force

ceased to be nearly a hundred percent white, and within the police de-

partment old influences still predominated. Since the 1967 Detroit

riots, under public pressure the number of black policemen had

increased, but blacks were not yet strong enough in numbers, rank, or

influence to offset the powerful, whiteoriented Detroit Police Officers

Association, or even to be sure of a fair deal, departmentally, in any

black-wbite confrontation.

Thus, the patrol continued in an atmosphere of hostile uncertainty, a

mood reflecting the racial tensions of Detroit itself.

Bravado in individuals, black or white, is often only skin shallow, and

Rollie Knight, inside his soul, was frightened.

He was frightened of the white cop whom he had unwisely baited, and he

realized now that his reckless, burning hatred had briefly got the

better of ordinary caution. Even more, he feared a return to prison

where one more conviction was likely to send him up for a long time.

Rollie had three convictions behind him, and two prison terms; whatever

happened now, all hope of leniency was gone.

Only a black man in America knows the true

wheels-147

depths of animal despair and degradation to which the prison system can

reduce a human being. It is true that white prisoners are often treated

badly, and suffer also, but never as consistently or universally as black.

It is also true that some prisons are better or worse than others, but

this is like saying that certain parts of hell are ten degrees hotter or

cooler than others. The black man, whichever prison he is in, knows that

humiliation and abuse are standard, and that physical brutality- sometimes

involving major injury-is as normal as defecating. And when the prisoner

is frail-as Rollie Knight was frail, partly from a poor physique which he

was born with, and partly from accumulated malnutrition over years-the

penalties and anguish can be greater still.

Coupled, at this moment, with these fears was the young Negro's

knowledge that a police search of his room would reveal a small supply

of marijuana. He smoked a little grass himself, but peddled most, and

while rewards were slight, at least it was a means to eat because, since

coming out of prison several months ago, he had found no other way. But

the marijuana was all the police would need for a conviction, with jail

to follow.

For this reason, later the same night while nervously wondering if he

was already watched, Rollie Knight dumped the marijuana in a vacant lot.

Now, instead of a tenuous hold on the means to live from day to day, he

was aware that he had none.

It was this awareness which, next day, caused him to uncrumple the card

which the black cop had given him and go to the auto company hiring

center in the inner city. He went without hope because... (and this

is the great, invisible gap which separates the "have-nots-and-never-

hads" of this world, like Rollie Knight, from the "haves," including

some who try to understand

148-wheels

their less-blessed brothers yet, oh so sadly, fail)... he had lived so

long without any reason to believe in anything, that hope itself was beyond

his mental grasp.

He also went because he had nothing else to do.

The building near 12th Street, like a majority of others in the inner

city's grim "black bottom," was decrepit and unkempt, with shattered win-

dows, of which only a few had been boarded over for inside protection from

the weather. Until recently the building had been disused and was dis-

integrating rapidly. Even now, despite patching and rough painting, its

decay continued, and those who went to work there daily sometimes wondered

if the walls would be standing when they lef t at night.

But the ancient building, and two others like it, had an urgent function.

It was an outpost for the auto companies' "hard core" hiring programs.

So-called hard core hiring had begun after the Detroit riots and was an

attempt to provide work for an indigent nucleus of inner city people

-mostly black-who, tragically and callously, had for years been abandoned

as unemployable. The lead was taken by the auto companies. Others

followed. Naturally, the auto companies claimed altruism as their motive

and, from the moment the hiring programs started, public relations staffs

proclaimed their employers' public spirit. More cynical observers claimed

that the auto world was running scared, fearing the effect of a perma-

nently strife-ridden community on their businesses. Others predicted that

when smoke from the riot-torn, burning city touched the General Motors

Building in '67 (as it did), and flames came close, some form of public

service was assured. The prediction came true, except that Ford moved

first.

wheels-149

But whatever the motivations, three things generally were agreed: the

hard core hiring program was good. It ought to have happened twenty

years before it did. Without the '67 riots, it might never have happened

at all.

On the whole, allowing for errors and defeats, the program worked. Auto

companies lowered their hiring standards, letting former deadbeats in.

Predictably, some fell by the way, but a surprising number proved that

all a deadbeat needed was a chance. By the time Rollie Knight arrived,

much had been learned by employers and employed.

He sat in a waiting room with about forty others, men and women, ranged

on rows of chairs. The chairs, like the applicants for jobs, were of

assorted shapes and sizes, except that the applicants had a uniformity:

all were black. There was little conversation. For Rollie Knight the

waiting took an hour. During part of it he dozed off, a habit he had

acquired and which helped him, normally, to get through empty days.

When, eventually, he was ushered into an interview cubicle-one of a half

dozen lining the waiting area-he was still sleepy and yawned at the

interviewer, facing him across a desk.

The interviewer, a middle-aged, chubby black man, wearing hom-rimmed

glasses, a sports jacket and dark shirt, but no tie, said amiably, "Gets

tiring waiting. My daddy used to say, 'A man grows wearier sitting on

his backside than chopping wood.' He had me chop a lot of wood that

way."

Rollie Knight looked at the other's hands. -Yoii ain't chopped much

lately."

"Well, now," the interviewer said, "you're right. And we've established

something else: You're a man who looks at things and thinks. But

150-wheels

are you interested in chopping wood, or doing work that's just as hard?"

"I dunno." Rollie was wondering why he had come here at all. Soon they

would get to his prison record, and that would be the end of it.

"But you're here because you want a job?" The interviewer glanced at a

yellow card which a secretary outside had filled in. "That's correct,

isn't it, Mr. Knight?"

Rollie nodded. The "Mr." surprised him. He could not remember when he

had last been addressed tb at way.

"Let's begin by finding out about you." The interviewer drew a printed

pad toward him. Part of the new hiring technique was that applicants no

longer had to complete a pre-employment questionnaire themselves. In the

past, many who could barely read or write were turned away because of

inability to do what modern society thought of as a standard function:

fill in a form.

They went quickly through the basic questions.

Name: Knight, Rolland Joseph Louis. Age: 29. Address: he gave it, not

mentioning that the mean, walk-up room belonged to someone else who had

let him share it for a day or two, and that the address might not be

good next week if the occupant decided to kick Rollie out. But then a

large part of his life had alternated between that kind of

accommodation, or a flophouse, or the streets when he had nowhere else.

Parents: He recited the names. The surnames differed since his parents

had not married or ever lived together. The interviewer made no comment;

it was normal enough. Nor did Rollie add: He knew his father because his

mother had told him who he was, and Rollie had a vague impression of a

meeting once: a burly man, heavy-jowled

wheels-151

and scowling, with a facial scar, who had been neither friendly nor

interested in his son. Years ago, Rollie had heard his father was in jail

as a lifer. Whether he was still there, or dead, he had no idea. As for

his mother, with whom he lived, more or less, until he left home for the

streets at age ftfteen, he believed she was now in Cleveland or Chicago.

He had not seen or heard from her for several years.

Schooling: Until grade eight. He had had a quick, bright mind at school,

and still had when something new came up, but realized how much a black

man needed to learn if he was to beat the stinking honky system, and now

he never would.

Previous employment: He strained to remember names and places. There had

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04