Arthur Hailey - Wheels

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.

This - though Zaleski had neither the philosophy to see it, nor power to change the system if he had - was a reason why North American automobiles were generally of poorer quality than those from Germany, where less rigid factory systems gave workers a sense of individuality and craftsmen's pride.

As it was, Frank Parkland did the best he could.

It was Parkland who ended Rollie's status as a relief man and assigned him to a regular line station. Afterward, Parkland moved Rollie around to other jobs on the assembly line, but at least without the bewildering hour-by-hour changes he endured before. Also, a reason for the moves was that Rollie, increasingly, could handle the more difficult, tricky assignments, and Parkland told him so.