Edsel by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page A

Administration Building on Schaeffer Road. It was a horseshoe-shaped brick building, three stories high, built in swampland, and was regularly mistaken for the local high school by new deliverymen. The cubicle’s only solid wall was dominated by a huge portrait of the late Henry Imperitus, whose pinched Yankee features glared down at me from above his stiff collar as if contemplating the possible presence of a smoker or imbiber of alcohol in the Holy of Holies. Although I didn’t use tobacco and hadn’t drunk more than a jiggerful of bourbon in a beer garden on the way home from work since the Lindbergh kidnapping, I made it a point to keep a pint of Hiram’s and a carton of Chesterfields in my desk at all times. It’s the quiet revolutions that keep you sane.
    Beyond keeping track of Hank the Deuce’s wunderkind , now slated for production in fall 1957, there wasn’t much to do except revolt quietly. The first day I hung my framed copy of the last front page of the Detroit Banner on the partition opposite the desk, sharpened and separated my pencils according to color, used the telephone to bet the Indians against the Giants in the first game of the Series, and made a necklace out of paperclips. The second day I took down the newspaper in favor of a print my father had left me of George Washington crossing the Delaware, sharpened the pencils again and mixed up the colors, bet my bookie double or nothing on Cleveland in Game Two, and took the necklace apart. By the end of the week I had replaced Washington with poker-playing dogs, all my pencils were two and a half inches long, the paperclips were bent beyond use, and I was considering asking Israel Zed for an advance on my first two weeks’ salary to keep my kneecaps out of jeopardy when the telephone rang and it was Zed.
    “How are you settling in?” he asked.
    “So far it’s the best job I ever had. Getting paid for doing nothing has to be the universal dream.”
    “Didn’t you get the new sketches?”
    I said I had. They’d arrived at my apartment by special messenger over the weekend, in a briefcase chained to the wrist of a bodyguard type in a black wool suit with extra room tailored into it for the holster under his arm. The wheelbase had lengthened and interior studies included a front seat like a divan and a circle of buttons marked PRNDL in the center of the steering wheel, eliminating the need for a lever to change gears. The instrument-studded dash reminded me of an automat. “I’m still not used to that grille. Whose idea was it?”
    “We won’t discuss details over the telephone. Did you burn the sketches as instructed?”
    “Of course.” I made a note to do that as soon as I got home. I was pretty sure I’d tucked them under a stack of newspapers in the bathroom.
    “Good. I’m meeting Mr. Ford at Berman’s Chop House in twenty minutes. Care to come along? It’s high time you met the man you’re working for.”
    “I might be late. I’ll have to swing by my place and pick up a jacket and tie. They’re pretty strict.”
    “Don’t worry. You could show up naked and be seated at the best table if you’re with Hank. One thing. Don’t mention his grandfather in his presence. He hates the old boy for what he did to his father.”
    I thanked him for the advice. Hanging up, I tried once again to remember the name of the Ford who had come between the two Henrys and came up empty once again.

6
    B ERMAN’S CHOP HOUSE , LOCATED IN D ETROIT’S Times Square between Clifford and Grand River, was held over from an era when men snipped the ends off their cigars with silver clippers attached to platinum watch chains and women wore whalebone and kept their mouths shut; a patriarchic, oiled and pomaded barbershop of a time hewn of dark oak and polished brass, sunken with the Lusitania. The interior was a tall box that looked and smelled like a humidor, wood-paneled, leather-studded, and hung with red velvet. Most of the light in the room came