Arthur Hailey - Wheels

"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?"

"Yes, but not working at it."

"Listen, my girlfriend's cooking dinner at my place. Why not join us?"

Wingate demurred politely. Brett insisted.

Five minutes later they left for Country Club Manor.

Barbara Zaleski had a key to Brett's apartment and was there when they arrived, already busy in the kitchen. An aroma of roasting lamb was drifting out.

"Hey, scullion!" Brett called from the hallway. "Come, meet a guest."

"If it's another woman," Barbara's voice sailed back, "you can cook your own dinner. Oh, it isn't. Hi!"

She appeared with a tiny apron over the smart, knit suit she had arrived in, having come directly from the OJL agency's Detroit office. The suit, Brett thought appreciatively, did justice to Barbara's figure; he sensed Leonard Wingate observing the same thing. As usual, Barbara had dark glasses pushed up into her thick, chestnut-brown hair, which she had undoubtedly forgotten. Brett reached out, removed the glasses and kissed her lightly.

He introduced them, informing Wingate, "This is my mistress."

"He'd like me to be," Barbara said, "but I'm not. Telling people I am is his way of getting even."

As Brett had expected, Barbara and Leonard Wingate achieved a rapport quickly. While they talked, Brett opened a bottle of Dom Perignon which the three of them shared. Occasionally Barbara excused herself to check on progress in the kitchen.

During one of her absences, Wingate looked around the spacious apartment living room. "Pretty nice pad."

"Thanks." When Brett leased the apartment a year and a half ago he had been his own interior decorator, and the furnishings reflected his personal taste for modern design and flamboyant coloring. Bright yellows, mauves, vermilions, cobalt greens predominated, yet were used imaginatively, so that they merged as an attractive whole. Lighting complemented the colors, highlighting some areas, diminishing others. The effect was to create - ingeniously - a series of moods within a single room.

At one end of the living room was an open door to another room.

Wingate asked, "Do you do much of your work here?"

"Some." Brett nodded toward the open door. "There's my Thinkolarium. For when I need to get creative and be uninterrupted away from that wired-for-sound Taj Mahal we work in." He motioned vaguely in the direction of the company's Design-Styling Center.

"He does other things there, too," Barbara said. She had returned as Brett spoke. "Come in, Leonard. I'll show you."

Wingate followed her, Brett trailing.

The other room, while colorful and pleasant also, was equipped as a studio, with the paraphernalia of an artist-designer. A pile of tissue flimsies on the floor beside a drafting table showed where Brett had raced through a series of sketches, tearing off each flimsy, using a new one from the pad beneath as the design took shape. The last sketch in the series - a rear fender style - was pinned to a cork board.

Wingate pointed to it. "Will that one be for real?"

Brett shook his head. "You play with ideas, get them out of your system, like belching. Sometimes, that way, you get a notion which will lead to something permanent in the end. This isn't one." He pulled the flimsy down and crumpled it. "If you took all the sketches which precede any new car, you could fill Cobo Hall with paper."

Barbara switched on a light. It was in a corner of the room where an easel stood, covered by a cloth. She removed the cloth carefully.

"And then there's this," Barbara said. "This isn't for discarding."

Beneath the cloth was a painting in oils, almost - but not quite - finished.

"Don't count on it," Brett said. He added, "Barbara's very loyal. At times it warps her judgment."

The tall, gray-haired Negro shook his head. "Not this time, it hasn't."

He studied the painting with admiration.

It was of a collection of automotive discards, heaped together. Brett had assembled the materials for his model - laid out on a board ahead of the easel, and lighted by a spotlight - from an auto wrecker's junk pile. There were several burned-brown spark plugs, a broken camshaft, a discarded oil can, the entrails of a carburetor, a battered headlight, a moldy twelve-volt battery, a window handle, a section of radiator, a broken wrench, some assorted rusty nuts and washers. A steering wheel, its horn ring missing, hung lopsidedly above.

No collection could have been more ordinary, less likely to inspire great art. Yet, remarkably, Brett had made the junk assortment come alive, had conveyed to his canvas both rugged beauty and a mood of sadness and nostalgia. These were broken relics, the painting seemed to say: burned-out, unwanted, all usefulness departed; nothing was ahead save total disintegration. Yet once, however briefly, they had had a life, had functioned, representing dreams, ambitions, achievements of mankind. One knew that all other achievements - past, present, future, no matter how acclaimed - were doomed to end similarly, would write their epilogues in garbage dumps. Yet was not the dream, the brief achievement - of itself - enough?

Leonard Wingate had remained, unmoving, before the canvas. He said slowly,