Wheels

"Now our score goes back to zero," the safety man said bitterly. He left the strong impression that this was what mattered most.

With the engine decker's firm statement, some of the tenseness had eased.

Someone asked, "What'll happen?"

"It's an accident, so no penalties," the union man said. He addressed Parkland and the safety man. "But there's an unsafe condition at this work station. It has to be corrected or we pull everybody out."

"Take it easy," Parkland cautioned. "Nobody's proved that yet."

"It's unsafe to get out of bed in the morning," the safety man protested. "If you do it with your eyes closed." He glowered again at the engine decker as, still deliberating, the trio moved away.

Soon after, those who had been questioned returned to work, the absent worker replaced by a new man who watched his hands nervously.

From then on, though nothing was ever said, Rollie Knight had no more trouble with his fellow workers. He knew why. Despite denials, those who had been close by were aware of what had happened, and now he had the reputation of being a man not to cross.

At first, when he had seen the smashed, bloody hand of his former tormentor, Rollie, too, was shocked and sickened. But as the stretcher moved away, so did the incident's immediacy, and since it was not in Rollie's nature to dwell on things, by the next working day - with a weekend in between - he had accepted what occurred as belonging in the past, and that was it. He did not fear reprisals. He sensed that, jungle law or not, a certain raw justice was on his side, and others knew it, including the engine decker who protected him.

The incident had other overtones.

In the way that information spreads about someone who has achieved attention, word of Rollie's prison record leaked. But rather than being an embarrassment, it made him, he discovered, something of a folk hero - at least to younger workers.

"Hear you done big time," a nineteen-year-old from the inner city told him. "Guess you give them whitey pigs a run before they gotcha, huh?"

Another youngster asked, "You carry a piece?"

Although Rollie knew that plenty of workers in the plant carried guns at all times - allegedly for protection against the frequent muggings which occurred in toilets or in parking lots. Rollie did not, being aware of the stiff sentence he would get if, with his record, a firearm were ever discovered on him. But he answered, noncommitally, "Quit buggin' me, kid," and soon another rumor was added to the rest: The little guy, Knight, was always armed. It was an additional cause for respect among the youthful militants.

One of them asked him, "Hey, you want a joint?"

He accepted. Soon, though not as frequently as some, Rollie was using marijuana on the assembly line, learning that it made a day go faster, the monotony more bearable. About the same time he began playing the numbers.

Later, when there was reason to think about it more, he realized that both drugs and numbers were his introduction to the complex, dangerous understratum of crime in the plant.

The numbers, to begin with, seemed innocent enough.

As Rollie knew, playing the numbers game - especially in auto plants - is, to Detroiters, as natural as breathing. Though the game is Mafia controlled, demonstrably crooked, and the odds against winning are a thousand to one, it attracts countless bettors daily who wager anything from a nickel to a hundred dollars, occasionally more. The most common daily stake in plants, and the amount which Rollie bet himself, is a dollar.

But whatever the stake, a bettor selects three figures - any three - in the hope they will be the winning combination for that day. In event of a win, the payoff is 500 to 1, except that some bettors gamble on individual digits instead of all three, for which the odds are lower.

What seems to bother no one who plays numbers in Detroit is that the winning number is selected by betting houses from those combinations which have least money wagered on them. Only in nearby Pontiac, where the winning number is geared to race results and published parimutuel payoffs, is the game - at least in this regard - honest.

Periodically, raids on the so-called "Detroit numbers ring" are made much of by the FBI, Detroit police, and others. RECORD NUMBERS RAID or BIGGEST RAID IN U.S. HISTORY are apt to be headlines in the Detroit News and Free Press, but next day, and without much searching, placing a numbers bet is as easy as ever.

As Rollie worked longer, the ways in which numbers operated in the plant became clearer: janitors were among the many taking bets; in their pails, under dry cloths, were the traditional yellow slips which numbers writers used, as well as cash collected. Both slips and cash were smuggled from the plant, to be downtown by a deadline - usually race track post time.

A union steward, Rollie learned, was the numbers supervisor for Assembly; his regular duties made it possible for him to move anywhere in the plant without attracting attention. Equally obvious was that betting was a daily addiction which a majority of workers shared, including supervisors, office personnel, and - so an informant assured Rollie - some of the senior managers. Because of the immunity with which the numbers game flourished, the last seemed likely.

A couple of times after the crushed fingers incident, Rollie received oblique suggestions that he himself might participate actively in running numbers, or perhaps one of the other rackets in the plant. The latter, he knew, included loan sharking, drug pushing, and illegal check cashing; also, overlapping the milder activities, were organized theft rings, as well as frequent robberies and assaults.

Rollie's criminal record, by now common knowledge, had clearly given him ex-officio standing among the underworld element directly involved with crime in the plant, as well as those who flirted with it in addition to their jobs.

Once, standing beside Rollie at a urinal, a burly, normally taciturn worker known as Big Rufe, announced softly, "Guys say you dig okay, I should tell you there's ways a smart dude can do better 'n the stinkin' sucker money they pay square Joes here." He emptied his bladder with a grunt of satisfaction. "Times, we need help guys who know the score, don't scare easy." Big Rufe stopped, zipping his fly as someone else came to stand beside them, then turned away, nodding, the nod conveying that sometime soon the two of them would talk again.

But they hadn't because Rollie contrived to avoid another meeting, and did the same thing after a second approach by another source. His reasons were mixed. The possibility of a return to prison with a long sentence still haunted him; also he had a feeling that his life, the way it was now, was as good or better than it had been before, ever. A big thing was the bread. Square Joe sucker money or not, it sure corralled more than Rollie had known in a long time, including booze, food, some grass when he felt like it, and little sexpot May Lou, whom he might tire of sometime, but hadn't yet. She was no grand door prize, no beauty queen, and he knew she had knocked around plenty with other guys who had been there ahead of him. But she could turn Rollie on. It made him horny just to look at her, and be laid pipe, sometimes three times a night, especially when May Lou really went to work, taking his breath away with tricks she knew, which Rollie had heard of but had never had done to him before.

It was the reason, really, he had let May Lou find the two rooms they shared, and hadn't protested when she furnished them. She had done the furnishing without much money, asking Rollie only to sign papers which she brought. He did so indifferently, without reading, and later the furniture appeared, including a color TV as good as any in a bar.

In another way, though, the price of it all came high-long, wearying work days at the assembly plant, nominally five days a week, though sometimes four, and one week only three. Rollie, like others, absented himself on Monday, if hung over after a weekend, or on Friday, if wanting to start one early; but even when that happened, the money next payday was enough to swing with.

As well as the hardness of the work, its monotony persisted, reminding him of advice he had been given early by a fellow worker: "When you come here, leave your brains at home."

And yet . . . there was another side.

Despite himself, despite ingrained thought patterns which cautioned against being suckered and becoming a honky lackey, Rollie Knight began taking interest, developing a conscientiousness about the work that he was doing. A basic reason was his quick intelligence plus an instinct for learning, neither of which had had an opportunity to function before, as they were doing now. Another reason - which Rollie would have denied if accused of it - was a rapport, based on developing mutual respect, with the foreman, Frank Parkland.

At first, after the two incidents which brought Rollie Knight to his attention, Parkland had been hostile. But as a result of keeping close tab on Rollie, the hostility disappeared, approval replacing it. As Parkland expressed it to Matt Zaleski during one of the assistant plant manager's periodic tours of the assembly line, "See that little guy? His first week here I figured him for a troublemaker. Now he's as good as anybody I got."

Zaleski had grunted, barely listening. Recently, at plant management level, several new fronts of troubles had erupted, including a requirement to increase production yet hold down plant costs and somehow raise quality standards. Though the three objectives were basically in-compatible, top management was insisting on them, an insistence not helping Matt's duodenal ulcer, an old enemy within. The ulcer, quiescent for a while, now pained him constantly. Thus, Matt Zaleski could not find time for interest in individuals - only in statistics which regiments of individuals, like unconsidered Army privates, added up to.