Wheels

Now, in early evening, it was beginning to fill, the level of business and voices rising simultaneously.

"A whole lot riding on that Orion baby," Wingate said.

"Damn right."

"Especially jobs for my people."

"Your people?"

"Hourly paid ones, black and white. The way the Orion goes, so a lot of families in this city'll go: the hours they work, what their take-home is - and that means the way they live, eat, whether they can meet mortgage payments, have new clothes, a vacation, what happens to their kids."

Brett mused. "You never think of that when you're sketching a new car or throwing clay to shape a fender."

"Don't see how you could. None of us ever knows the half of what goes on with other people; all kinds of walls get built between us - brick, the other kind. Even when you do get through a wall once in a while, and find out what's behind it, then maybe try to help somebody, you find you haven't helped because of other stinking, rotten, conniving parasites ..."

Leonard Wingate clenched his fist and hammered it twice, silently but intensely, on the bar counter. He looked sideways at Brett, then grinned crookedly. "Sorry!"

"Here comes your other drink, friend. I think you need it." The designer sipped his own before asking, "Does this have something to do with those lousy aerobatics in the parking lot?"

Wingate nodded. "I'm sorry about that, too. I was blowing steam." He smiled, this time less tensely. "Now, I guess, I've let the rest of it out."

"Steam is only a white cloud," Brett said. "Is the source of it classified?"

"Not really. You've heard of hard core hiring?"

"I've heard. I don't know all the details." But he did know that Barbara Zaleski had become interested in the subject lately because of a new project she had been assigned by the OJL advertising agency.

The gray-haired Personnel man summarized the hard core hiring program: its objective in regard to the inner city and former unemployables; the Big Three hiring halls downtown; how, in relation to individuals, the program sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.

"It's been worth doing, though, despite some disappointments. Our retention rate - that is, people who've held on to jobs we've given them - has been better than fifty percent, which is more than we expected.

The unions have cooperated; news media give publicity which helps; there's been other aid in other ways. That's why it hurts to get knifed in the back by your own people, in your own company."

Brett asked, "Who knifed you? How?"

"Let me go back a bit." Wingate put the tip of a long, lean finger in his drink and stirred the ice. "A lot of people we've hired under the program have never in their lives before, kept regular hours. Mostly they've had no reason to. Working regularly, the way most of us do, breeds habits: like getting up in the morning, being on time to catch a bus, becoming used to working five days of the week. But if you've never done any of that, if you don't have the habits, it's like learning another language; what's more, it takes time. You could call it changing attitudes, or changing gears. Well, we've learned a lot about all that since we started hard core hiring. We also learned that some people - not all, but somewho don't acquire those habits on their own, can get them if they're given help."

"You'd better help me," Brett said. "I have trouble getting up."

His companion smiled. "If we did try to help, I'd send someone from employee relations staff to see you. If you'd dropped out, quit coming to work, he'd ask you why. There's another thing: some of these new people will miss one day, or even be an hour or two late, then simply give up. Maybe they didn't intend to miss; it just happened. But they have the notion we're so inflexible, it means automatically they've lost their jobs."

"And they haven't?"

"Christ, not! We give a guy every possible break because we want the thing to work. Something else we do is give people who have trouble getting to work a cheap alarm clock; you'd be surprised how many have never owned one. The company let me buy a gross. In my office I've got alarm clocks the way other men have paper clips."

Brett said, "I'll be damned!" It seemed incongruous to think of a gargantuan auto company, with annual wage bills running into billions, worrying about a few sleepyhead employees waking up.

"The point I'm getting at," Leonard Wingate said, "is that if a hard core worker doesn't show up, either to finish a training course or at the plant, whoever's in charge is supposed to notify one of my special people. Then, unless it's a hopeless case, they follow through."

"But that hasn't been happening? It's why you're frustrated?"

"That's part of it. There's a whole lot more." The Personnel man downed the last of his Scotch. "Those courses we have where the hard core people get oriented - they last eight weeks; there are maybe two hundred on a course."

Brett motioned for a refill to their drinks. When the bartender had gone, he prompted, "Okay, so a course with two hundred people."

"Right. An instructor and a woman secretary are in charge. Between them, those two keep all course records, including attendance. They pass out paychecks, which arrive weekly in a bunch from Headquarters Accounting.

Naturally, the checks are made out on the basis of the course records."

Wingate said bitterly, "It's the instructor and the secretary - one particular pair. They're the ones."

"The ones what?"

"Who've been lying, cheating, stealing from the people they're employed to help."

"I guess I can figure some of it," Brett said. "But tell me, anyway."

"Well, as the course goes along, there are dropouts - for the reasons I told you, and for others. It always happens, we expect it. As I said, if our department's told, we try to persuade some of the people to come back. But what this instructor and secretary have been doing is not reporting the dropouts, and recording them present. So that checks for the dropouts have kept coming in, and then that precious pair has kept those checks themselves."

"But the checks are made out by name. They can't cash them."

Wingate shook his head. "They can and they have. What happens is eventually this pair does report that certain people have stopped coming, so the company checks stop, too. Then the instructor goes around with the checks he's saved and finds the people they're made out to. It isn't difficult; all addresses are on file. The instructor tells a cock-and-bull story about the company wanting the money back, and gets the checks endorsed. After that, he can cash them anywhere. I know it happens that way. I followed the instructor for an afternoon."

"But how about later, when your employee relations people go visiting?

You say they hear about the dropouts eventually. Don't they find out about the checks?"

"Not necessarily. Remember, the people we're dealing with aren't communicative. They're dropouts in more ways than one, usually, and never volunteer information. It's hard enough getting answers to questions.

Besides that, I happen to think there've been some bribes passed around.

I can't prove it, but there's a certain smell."

"The whole thing stinks."

Brett thought: Compared with what Leonard Wingate had told him, his own irritations of today seemed minor. He asked, "Were you the one who uncovered all this?"

"Mostly, though one of my assistants got the idea first. He was suspicious of the course attendance figures; they looked too good. So the two of us started checking, comparing the new figures with our own previous ones, then we got comparable figures from other companies. They showed what was going on, all right. After that, it was a question of watching, catching the people. Well, we did."

"So what happens now?"

Wingate shrugged, his figure hunched over the bar counter. "Security's taken over; it's out of my hands. This afternoon they brought the instructor and the secretary downtown - separately. I was there. The two of them broke down, admitted everything. The guy cried, if you'll believe it."

"I believe it," Brett said. "I feel like crying in a different way. Will the company prosecute?"

"The guy and his girlfriend think so, but I know they won't." The tall Negro straightened up; he was almost a head higher than Brett DeLosanto.

He said mockingly, "Bad public relations, y'know. Wouldn't want it in the papers, with our company's name. Besides, the way my bosses see it, the main thing is to get the money back; seems there's quite a few thousand."

"What about the other people? The ones who dropped out, who might have come back, gone on working . . ."

"Oh come, my friend, you're being ridiculously sentimental."

Brett said sharply, "Knock it off! I didn't steal the goddamn checks."

"No, you didn't. Well, about those people, let me tell you. If I had a staff six times the size I have, and if we could go back through all the records and be sure which names to follow up on, and if we could locate them after all these weeks . . ."

The bartender appeared. Wingate's glass was empty, but he shook his head.

For Brett's benefit he added, "We'll do what we can. It may not be much."

"I'm sorry," Brett said. "Damn sorry." He paused, then asked, "You married?"