Wheels
Page 82First, feelers were put out for information. When none resulted, a reward was quietly offered: a thousand dollars.
For that much, in the inner city, a man might sell his mother.
Rollie Knight heard of the Mafia involvement and reward one week and two days after the debacle at the plant. It was at night and he was in a dingy Third Avenue bar, drinking beer. The beer, and the fact that whatever official investigation was going on had not, come close to him so far, had relaxed a little of the terror he had lived with for the past nine days.
But the news, conveyed by his companion at the bar - a downtown numbers runner known simply as Mule - increased Rollie's terror tenfold and turned the beer he had drunk into bile, so that he was hard pressed not to vomit there and then. He managed not to.
"Hey!" Mule said, after he conveyed the news of the Mafia-proffered reward. "Ain't you in that plant, man?"
With an effort, Rollie nodded.
Mule urged, "You find out who them guys was, I pass the word, we split the dough, okay?"
"I'll listen around," Rollie promised.
Soon after, he left the bar, his latest beer untouched.
Rollie knew where to find Big Rufe. Entering the rooms where the big man lived, he found himself looking into the muzzle of a gun - the same one, presumably, used nine days before. When he saw who it was, Big Rufe lowered the gun and thrust it in his trousers waistband.
He told Rollie, "Them crummy wops come, they ain't gonna find no pushover."
Beyond his readiness, Big Rufe seemed strangely indifferent - probably, Rollie realized later, because he had known of the Mafia danger in the first place, and accepted it.
There was nothing to be gained by staying, or discussion. Rollie left.
From that moment, Rollie's days and nights were filled with a new, more omnipresent dread. He knew that nothing he could do would counter it; he could only wait. For the time being he continued working, since regular work - too late, it seemed - had become a habit.
Though Rollie never knew the details, it was Big Rufe who betrayed them all.
He foolishly paid several small gambling debts entirely with silver coins. The fact was noticed, and later reported to a Mafia underling who passed the information on. Other pieces of intelligence, already known about Big Rufe, were found to fit a pattern.
He was seized at night, taken by surprise while sleeping, and given no chance to use his gun. His captors brought him, bound and gagged, to a house in Highland Park where, before being put to death, he was tortured and he talked.
Next morning Big Rufe's body was found on a Hamtramck roadway, a road much traveled at night by heavy trucks. It appeared to have been run over several times, and the death was listed as a traffic casualty.
Leroy Colfax went into hiding, protected by politically militant friends. He remained hidden for almost two weeks, at the end of which time it was demonstrated that a militant, like many another politician, has his price. One of Colfax's trusted companions, whom each addressed as brother, quietly sold him out.
Leroy Colfax, too, was seized, then driven to a lonely suburb and shot.
When his body was found, an autopsy disclosed six bullets but no other clues. No arrest was ever made.
Daddy-o ran. He bought a bus ticket to New York and tried to lose himself in Harlem. For a while he succeeded, but several months later was tracked down and, soon after, killed by knifing.
Long before that - on hearing of Leroy Colfax's slaying - Rollie Knight began his own time of waiting, and meanwhile went to pieces.
***
Leonard Wingate had trouble identifying the thin female voice on the telephone. He was also irritated at being called in the evening, at home.
"May Lou who?"
"Rollie's woman. Rollie Knight."
Knight. Wingate remembered now, then asked, "How did you get my phone number? It isn't listed."
"You wrote it on a card, mister. Said if we was in trouble, to call."
He supposed he had - probably the night of the filming in that inner city apartment house.
"Well, what is it?" Wingate had been about to leave for a Bloomfield Hills dinner party. Now he wished he had gone before the phone rang, or hadn't answered.
May Lou's voice said, "I guess you know Rollie ain't been workin'."
"Now, how in the world would I know that?"
She said uncertainly, "If he don't show up . . ."
"Ten thousand people work in that plant. As a Personnel executive I'm responsible for most of them, but I don't get reports about individuals
Leonard Wingate caught sight of himself in a wall mirror and stopped.
He addressed himself silently: Okay, you pompous, successful, important bastard with an unlisted phone, so you've let her know what a wheel you are, that she's not to assume you've anything in common just because you happen to be the same color. Now what?
In his own defense, he thought: It didn't happen often, and he had caught it now; but it showed how an attitude could grow, just as he had heard black people in authority treat other black people like dirt beneath their feet.
"May Lou," Leonard Wingate said, "you caught me in a bad moment and I'm sorry. Do you mind if we start again?"
The trouble, she told him, was with Rollie. "He ain't eatin', sleepin', don't do nuthun'. He won't go out, just sits and waits."
"Waits for what?"
"He won't tell me, won't even talk. He looks awful, mister. It's like" May Lou stopped, groping for words, then said, "Like he's waitin' to die."
"How long since he went to work?"
"Two weeks."
"Did he ask you to call me?"
"He don't ask nuthun'. But he needs help bad. I know he does."
Wingate hesitated. It really wasn't his concern. It was true he had taken a close interest in hard core hiring, and still did; had involved himself, too, in a handful of individual cases. Knight's was one. But there was just so much help that people could be given, and Knight had quit working - voluntarily it seemed - two weeks ago. Yet Leonard Wingate still felt self-critical about his attitude of a few minutes earlier.
"All right," he said, "I'm not sure I can do anything, but I'll try to drop by in the next few days."
Her voice said pleadingly, "Could you, tonight?"
"I'm afraid that's impossible. I've a dinner engagement which I'm late for already."
He sensed hesitation, then she asked, "Mister, you remember me?"
"I already said I do."
"No, you haven't." He had the feeling May Lou had never asked much of anyone, or of life, nor received much either.
"I'm asking now. Please! Tonight. For my Rollie."
Conflicting motivations pulled him: ties to the past, his ancestry; the present, what he had become and might be still. Ancestry won. Leonard Wingate thought ruefully: It was a good dinner party he would miss. He suspected that his hostess liked to demonstrate her liberalitas by having a black face or two at table, but she served good food and wine, and flirted pleasantly.
"All right," he said into the telephone, "I'll come, and I think I remember where it is, but you'd better give me the address."
***
If May Lou had not warned him beforehand, Leonard Wingate thought, he would scarcely have recognized Rollie Knight, who was emaciated, his eyes sunken in a haggard face. Rollie had been sitting at a wooden table facing the outer door and started nervously as Wingate came in, then subsided.
The company Personnel man had had the forethought to bring a bottle of Scotch. Without asking, he went to the closet - Eke kitchen, found glasses and carried them back. May Lou had slipped out as he arrived, glancing at him gratefully and whispering, "I'll just be outside."
Wingate poured two stiff, neat Scotches and pushed one in front of Rollie. "You'll drink this," he said, "and you can take your time about it. But after that, you'll talk."
Rollie's hand went out to take the drink. He did not look up.
Wingate took a swallow of his own Scotch and felt the liquor burn, then warm him. He put the glass down. "We might save time if I tell you I know exactly what you think of me. Also, I know all the words, most of them stupid - white nigger, Uncle Tom - as well as you. But whether you like or hate me, my guess is, I'm the only friend you'll see tonight." Wingate finished his drink, poured another and pushed the bottle toward Rollie.
"So start talking before I finish this, or I'll figure I'm wasting time and go."
Rollie looked up. "You act pretty mad. When I ain't said a word."
"Try some words then. Let's see how it goes." Wingate leaned forward. "To start: Why'd you quit work?"
Draining the first Scotch poured for him, Rollie replenished his glass, then began talking and went on. It was as if, through some combination of Leonard Wingate's timing, acts, and speech, a sluice gate had been opened, so that words tumbled out, channeled by questions which Wingate interposed, until the whole story was laid bare. It began with Rollie's first hiring by the company a year ago, continued through his experiences at the plant, involvement with crime - small at first, then larger - to the robbery-murder and its aftermath, then the knowledge of the Mafia and word of his ordained execution which, with fear and resignation, Rollie now awaited.