Arthur Hailey - Wheels

"Do me one favor," Smokey urged. "Gimme a minute to think. Then at least, let's talk."

Adam answered curtly, "All you'll be thinking of is a way to stop me, and it won't work. And we've done all the talking needed."

The dealer's voice rose. "How the hell you know what I'll be thinking?"

"All right, I don't know. But I know this - that you're a crook."

"That's a goddamn lie! I could take you to court for it."

"I'm perfectly willing," Adam said, "to repeat the statement in front of witnesses, and you can summon me into any court you want. But you won't."

"How a crook?" Smokey supposed he might as well find out what he could.

Adam dropped into a chair facing the desk and opened the black loose-leaf book.

"You want the whole list?"

"Damn right!"

"You cheat on warranty. You charge the manufacturer for work that isn't done. You replace parts that don't need replacing, then put the removed ones back in your own stock to use again."

Smokey insisted, "Give me one example."

Adam turned pages. "I've a lot more than one, but this is typical." An almost-new car had come into Stephensen Motors' service department, Adam recited, its carburetor needing minor adjustment. But instead of being adjusted, the carburetor was removed, a new one installed, the manufacturer billed for warranty. Afterward, the removed carburetor had been given the minor repair it needed to begin with, then was placed in the service department's stock from where it was later sold as a new unit.

Adam had dates, work order and invoice numbers, the carburetor identification.

Smokey flushed. "Who said you could go snooping around my service records?"

"You did."

There were procedures to prevent that kind of fraud, as Adam knew. All Big Three manufacturers had them. But the vastness of organization, as well as the volume of work going through a big service depot, made it possible for dealers like Smokey to foil the system regularly.

He protested, "I can't keep tab of everything goes on in Service."

"You're responsible. Besides, Vince Mixon runs that shop the way you tell him, the way he's running it today.

Incidentally, another thing he does is pad customers' bills for labor. You want examples?"

Smokey shook his head. He had never suspected this son-of-a-bitch would be as thorough, or would even see and understand as much as he had. But even while Smokey listened, he was thinking hard, thinking the way he used to in a close race when he needed to pass or outmaneuver someone ahead of him on the track.

"Talking of customers," Adam said, "your salesmen still quote finance interest rates at so much a hundred dollars, even though the Truth in Lending Act makes that illegal."

"People prefer it that way."

"You mean you prefer it. Especially when an interest rate you quote as 'nine percent per hundred' means a true interest rate of over sixteen percent per year."

Smokey persisted, "That ain't so bad."

"I'll concede that. So would other dealers who do the same thing. What they might not like, though, is the way you cheat regularly on dealer sales contests. You postdate sales orders, change dates on others . . ."

Audibly, Smokey groaned. He waved a hand, surrendering. "Leave it, leave it!

Adam stopped.

Smokey Stephensen knew: This guy Trenton had the goods. Smokey might slide sideways out of some, or even all, the other finagling, but not this. Periodically, auto manufacturers awarded dealer bonuses - usually fifty to a hundred dollars a car - for every new car sale during specified periods. Since thousands of dollars were involved, such contests were carefully policed, but there were ways around the policing and Smokey, at times, had used them all. It was the kind of duplicity which a manufacturer's marketing department, if they learned of it, seldom forgave.

Smokey wondered if Adam knew, too, about the demonstrator cars - last year's models - which the dealership had sold as new after switching odometers. He probably did.

How in hell could one guy find out so much in just that little time?

Adam could have explained. Explained that to a top-flight automotive product planner, such matters as investigative research, detailed follow through, analysis, the piecing together of fragmentary information, were all like breathing. Also, Adam was used to working fast.

Smokey had his eyes cast down on the desk in front of him; he appeared to be taking the time to think for which he had asked a few minutes ago. Now he lifted his head and inquired softly, "Whose side you on, anyway? Just whose interests you looking out for?"

Adam had anticipated the question. Last night and earlier today he had asked it of himself.

"I came here representing my sister, Teresa, and her forty-nine percent financial interest in this business, I still do. But that isn't to say I'll condone dishonesty, and neither would Teresa, or her husband, Clyde, if he were alive. It's why I'll go through with what I told you."

"About that. First thing you gonna do is call the bank. Right?"

"Right."

"Okay, Mr. Smart-ass-noble-high-'n-mighty, let me tell you what'll happen. The bank'll panic. Inspectors'll be around this afternoon, tomorrow they get a court order, padlock this place, seize the stock.

Okay, next you say you'll hand them notes over to your company sales guys. Know what they'll do."

"At a guess, I'd say take away your franchise."

"No guessin'. It'll happen."

The two men eyed each other. The dealer leaned forward across the desk.

"So where's that leave Teresa and them kids? How much you think forty-nine percent of a dead business'd be worth?"

"It wouldn't be a dead business," Adam said. "The company would put someone in temporarily until a new dealer could be named."

"A temporary guy! How well d'you think he'd run a business he doesn't know? Into bankruptcy maybe."

"Since you've brought up bankruptcy," Adam said, "that seems to be the way you're headed now."

Smokey slammed down a fist so hard and savagely that everything on his desk top shook. "There'll be no bankruptcy! Not if I play it my way.

Only if we do it yours."

"So you say."

"Never mind what I say! I'll get my bookkeeper here right now! I'll prove it!"

"I've already been over the books with Miss Potts."

"Then, goddamn, you'll go over them again with me!" Smokey was on his feet, raging, towering over Adam. The dealer's hands clenched and unclenched. His eyes were blazing.

Adam shrugged.

Smokey used an inside line to phone Lottie. When she promised to come at once, he slammed the phone down, breathing hard.

It took an hour.

An hour of argument, of assertions by Smokey Stephensen, of the dealer's penciled calculations with which the desk top was now strewn, of amplification of her bookkeeping by Lottie Potts, of examination of financial precedents reaching back to earlier years.

At the end Adam admitted to himself that it could be done. Smokey just might, just could, have the business back in shape financially a month from now, allowing for certain unorthodoxies and assuming a continuing upward trend in new car sales. The alternative was a temporary management which - as Smokey pointed out - might prove disastrous.

Yet to accomplish the survival of Stephensen Motors, Adam would be obliged to condone deception and defrauding of the bank's adjusters. He had the knowledge now; it was no longer a matter of guessing. During their rehash of the facts, Smokey admitted his out-of-trust position and his scheming to survive tomorrow's new car audit.

Adam wished he didn't know. He wished fervently that his sister, Teresa, had never involved him in this at all. And for the first time he understood the wisdom of his company's Conflict of Interest rules which forbade auto company employees to become involved - financially or otherwise - with auto dealerships.