Free We're All in This Together by Owen King Page A

back on his union representative, and
returned to work.

    From that point, the plot unraveled with the craven simplicity that was considered standard business practice among the upstanding
board members in New York and D.C., whose knowledge of the Amberson Ironworks extended only as far as the third column of
numbers on a monthly profit sheet.
    A cursory investigation revealed that a stranger, a gentleman from Boston who carried his cigarettes in an ivory case, had
in recent weeks spread around a great many free drinks in the local pubs. Among the stranger's drinking partners had been
several members of Local 219—including Tom Hellweg.
    Acting on this tip, Gerry called the Portland hotel where the stranger with the ivory cigarette case was said to be staying.
She spoke in a deep baritone, and started to badger the desk clerk before he could even say hello: "This is Mr. Fink, Chief
Officer of the East Coast Branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and I need to speak to my man immediately. I don't know
what name he's using, you can never be too careful when you're dealing with the sort of riffraff we deal with in this business,
but he's been charging the room to a company account, and I really must speak to him right away."
    The jolted desk clerk quickly rifled through his ledger. "Do you mean Edgar Hallsworthy in room sixteen? Oh, but wait a minute:
he's charging his room to an account belonging to St. Cloud Detective Agency—"
    "—That's right," Mr. Fink cut him off. "That's exactly right. He's from the St. Cloud arm of our operation. Now put me straight
through to Hallsworthy."
    A moment later, the clerk connected him to room sixteen, and a man with a Brahmin accent answered. Gerry asked if he had sent
down four shirts to the laundry. The cheerful Brahmin-voiced man said, "Wrong room, sweets. I don't go around trusting my
linen to just any old chink, you know." She apologized, and rung off.
    "So?" asked Henry.
    Gerry shook her head and went to refill the glasses, but the bottle was empty.
    Henry put his foremen on alert, and by the end of the week received another series of corroborating reports: all of their
shops were opened in the night, as well, tools and equipment disturbed.
    The president of Local 219 added the sum of all these figures, and concluded that the company was preparing for a strike by
buying off a skeleton crew of cross-trained workers who could keep the Ironworks going during a lockout.
    "We've got blacklegs, honey," said Gerry.
    "So we offered a quarter pension to the traitors who turned themselves in, and in exchange for another quarter pension, the
rats all ratted on each other. Every man except that son-of-a-bitch Tom Hellweg. They all fingered him, but he wouldn't admit
anything."
    Gil had piloted the Skylark all the way around the neighborhood again, back to the house with the whirligigs on the lawn.
It was almost noon. Papa's voice slipped to a monotone, and I sensed that he was reading the story from a set of long-prepared
notes. I risked a glance in the rearview mirror and saw that he now sat deep in the corner of the backseat, as if his narrow
body were slowly being sucked into the crevice of the cushions.
    "So, he got nothing, and that was that. But Tom wanted to rub our faces in it. He hung around, sent his children and his wife
out begging. The woman used to knock on our door almost every night and ask for another chance—and we gave her nothing. All
winter they stayed, until the kids, there was hardly anything left of them—you could look out the window and see the wind
push them up the street. And we gave them nothing. And when Tom himself finally came around, we gave him nothing. And he cried.
And that didn't matter, either, because when Tom Hellweg cried no one could even hear it. Because that could have been our
wives and our children. Because that was a goddamned fight.
    "And that's how it is now, that's my point, with these so-called Christians who are running our government.