Yellow Dog Contract (12 page)

“Arch Mix is dead, isn't he?”

I nodded.

“Any idea why or how?”

“No.”

“He was an interesting guy,” the Senator said. “He had a good mind, perhaps even a first-class one, although you can never really tell with guys who have jobs that require them to talk all the time.”

“It was a good mind,” I said.

“He had some interesting theories about civil service reform and the use of the strike by public employees as a collective-bargaining tool.”

“His garbage collectors' theory,” I said.

“His what?”

“When Mix got elected president of the Public Employees Union twelve years ago it actually wasn't much of a union. It was really more of a polite association, the kind that sponsors the annual city hall picnic. Strike was almost a nasty word. Well, if you're going to have a labor union, you can praise good-faith collective bargaining all you want, but your ultimate weapon is the strike. If the political types that you're bargaining with don't believe that you'll strike because there's a law against public employees striking, then you've lost all your muscle. It's like being in a poker game with no money to call a bluff. So Mix went south.”

“Why south?”

“It was a very calculated move. He needed to pull off a successful strike by public employees that would shake up and alter the membership's attitude toward strikes. And he also needed to convince the various mayors and city managers and governors and state legislatures around the country that the PEU was no longer going to be a mild-mannered company union that doted on sweetheart contracts.”

“I remember now,” Corsing said. “He picked Atlanta.”

“In the summer.”

“Yes.”

“He also picked out the workers who had the least to lose. He picked the garbage collectors.”

“What was it, four months?”

“Four months. He took them out in May and he kept them out until September and the union almost went broke. It was the hottest summer in fifty years in Atlanta and the garbage piled up until they swore they could smell it in Savannah.”

“They were black, weren't they?”

“The garbage men?” I said. “Ninety-eight percent of them. At the time I think they were making a buck and a quarter an hour and no overtime. Mix stayed with them all that summer. He slept in their houses, ate with them, and walked the picket line with them. He hated it because he always liked the best hotels and the best restaurants, and carrying a sign in a picket line when the temperature's a hundred and three degrees was his idea of no fun. But he made
Newsweek
and
Time
and the network newscasts were carrying him as though he were sponsored by Exxon.”

“And then they put him in the hospital.”

I shook my head. “It was only for three days. And the bandages on his head looked good on TV. If you use strikebreakers to bust a strike, you have to pay them something. The city had to pay the ones in Atlanta five bucks an hour which was two and a half bucks more an hour than the garbage men themselves were out on strike for. Well, all that came out after the goons killed four of the garbage men and put Mix in the hospital. By then the garbage was a serious health hazard and the rats had moved in and then they had those three cases of cholera and that did it. The city caved in to all of Mix's demands and this time he made the cover of
Time
and also
Meet the Press.
After that, he and the union were on their way. He took it from a membership of two hundred and fifty thousand to nearly eight hundred thousand and George Meany put him on the AFL-CIO executive council and they started inviting him to parties at the White House when they needed to show off an American labor statesman whose grammar wasn't too bad and who could handle the forks all right. And Mix loved it. Every goddamned minute of it.”

We were silent for a moment and then the Senator said, “I was back home last week.”

I nodded. Back home was St. Louis.

“The union's pretty strong there.”

“Yes,” I said. “Council Twenty-one, I think it is.”

“A guy came to see me. He used to be executive director of the Council.”

“Freddie Koontz?” I said.

“You know him?”

“I know Freddie. He was one of Mix's original backers. I didn't know he'd retired though. Hell, Freddie can't be more than fifty.”

“He didn't retire,” the Senator said. “He got bounced.”

“How'd that happen?”

“Before I tell you that, I'd better mention that the Council's contract with the city expires a couple of weeks from now on September first.”

“So?”

“So when Mix disappeared the Council was in the early stages of negotiating a new contract with the city. A week after Mix disappeared the International sent out about a half-dozen guys from its headquarters here in Washington to help with the negotiations.”

“That's not unusual,” I said. “Sometimes the International will send out a team that includes an economist, a lawyer, some resource people, and even some trained negotiators.”

“Freddie would know most of them, wouldn't he?”

“Sure.”

“He didn't know any of this bunch.”

“Who were they?” I said.

“Freddie still isn't sure. All he knows is that they were very smooth and they had plenty of money and they weren't afraid to use muscle.”

“So how'd it happen?”

“Freddie says that after they were there a week a special meeting of the Council's board of directors was called. This was right in the middle of negotiations with the city. Well, the first order of business was Freddie. A motion was made to fire him, it was seconded, there was no discussion, the vote was six to five, and Freddie was out of a job. After that they appointed a new executive director. He was a nobody, Freddie said, a rank and filer who knew as much about negotiating a contract as a hog does about a white shirt. I guess you remember how Freddie talks.”

“I remember,” I said. “Colorfully.”

“Well, the Council broke off negotiations, which Freddie said were going pretty well, and two days later they were back with an entirely new set of demands. Freddie says the new demands ask for everything but city hall.”

“And the six guys that the International sent out?”

“They're still there. They're calling all the plays now. If any opposition from the membership pops up, they buy it off. Two thousand, three thousand, even as high as five thousand. All cash, or so Freddie says. He also says that when they can't use cash to buy off opposition, they resort to muscle.”

“So what does it look like?”

The Senator took out his pipe, filled it, and lit it with a wooden match that he struck against the sole of his left shoe. “It looks like a strike,” he said after he puffed on his pipe for a few moments.

“The whole city?”

“Everything but the police and the firemen. The teachers will go out because the Public Employees have the school janitors. Or custodians, I think they're called now.”

“Well,” I said, “that's interesting.”

“It gets better.”

“How?”

“My colleague, the distinguished junior senator from Missouri, is scared shitless. If he doesn't carry St. Louis he's dead. Now suppose you were an average voter and a strike by the people whose wages are paid with your hard-earned tax money closed down your schools, interrupted your bus service, shut down your hospitals, eliminated your garbage collection, screwed up your traffic lights, ended your street cleaning, and fucked up all the records at city hall. Now suppose you were that voter and you usually voted the straight Democratic ticket, how would you vote come November the second?”

“By gum, I'd vote her straight Republican.”

“That's what my distinguished colleague, the junior senator, is scared shitless about.”

“He's not the only one who should be scared,” I said. “If the Democrats can't carry St. Louis, they can lose the whole state. They can't afford to lose any states.”

“No,” the Senator said, “they can't.” He puffed on his pipe again. “It seems strange to me that a labor union, which in the past has so publicly aligned itself with the Democratic party, should call a strike that could well lose the party a U.S. Senator, not to mention a Congressman or two, and conceivably, even the presidential election. That seems strange to me. Passing strange.”

“So that's why you asked me to come see you?”

“Yes.”

“Mix would never have done it like this, would he?”

“No,” the Senator said, “he wouldn't.”

“But Arch Mix is no longer with us.”

“No.”

“It's sort of a motive, isn't it?”

“Barely.”

“You haven't gone to anyone else with it, have you? Such as the FBI?”

Corsing looked up at the ceiling. “Let's suppose the FBI went clumping around out in St. Louis and the union found out that they were there at the suggestion of Senator Corsing. Well, Senator Corsing is up for election in two years and Senator Corsing would very much like to get re-elected. If his theory is full of shit, Senator Corsing would much prefer that nobody found out that it was his theory—especially the splendid public servants of the great city of St. Louis and their sizeable bloc of votes.”

“So you thought I might do your poking around for you?”

“You, Harvey, are the logical choice. You knew Arch Mix. You are familiar with the union. In addition, you are intelligent, discreet, totally without ambition, and on somebody else's payroll so you won't cost me a dime. All in all, Harvey, I find you a remarkably felicitous choice.”

I rose. “You remember Max Quane, don't you?”

The Senator nodded. “I'm sorry about Max. I heard about it this morning.”

“Max called me yesterday just before somebody cut his throat.”

“What'd he want?”

“About the same as you. He thought he might have a hunch about what really happened to Arch Mix.”

CHAPTER TEN

T
HE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES UNION
headquarters was a five-year-old glass and steel cube on G Street between Eighteenth and Nineteenth. It was almost within hailing distance of the White House and only a short, pleasant stroll to the Sans Souci restaurant, which is where Arch Mix had liked to eat lunch, usually in the company of fellow deep thinkers from either the government or the news business or both.

The appointment that Slick had made for me with Warner B. Gallops was for eleven and I arrived five minutes early, but was kept waiting until eleven-twenty. The outer office that I got to wait in was a comfortable place with nicely upholstered furniture, although I thought that Gallops's taste in secretaries was a bit odd.

The secretary was about thirty and he sat behind a desk with nothing on it other than a console telephone and a pad and pencil. Every so often the phone would hum softly, he would pick it up, listen, say “yes” or “no,” make a note on his pad, and hang up. It looked like a very soft job for someone who was at least six foot two and weighed about 175 pounds, all of it apparently big bone and hard muscle.

When he wasn't saying yes and no into the phone he sat quietly at his desk with the patient look of a man who has learned how to wait. Once in a while he would flick a glance at me although I don't think I really interested him that much. My one attempt at idle conversation had failed utterly. I had said, “Been with the union long?” He had said, “No, not long,” and then he had gone back to waiting for the phone to ring so that he could pick it up and say yes or no.

I took out my tin box, rolled a cigarette, lit it, and thought about Warner Baxter Gallops. I had first met him in the Birmingham bus station in 1964. He and Ward Murfin and I had met there for lunch because back in '64, despite what the Supreme Court said, there still weren't too many public places in Birmingham where two whites and a black could eat without somebody kicking up a fuss. And Murfin and I weren't in Birmingham to desegregate lunch counters. We were there to pick up eight votes.

Warner B. Gallops was not much more than twenty-four then, which would make him thirty-six now. He was a tall, very black, almost shy young man who spoke slowly and carefully as if he weren't too sure of his grammar and was worried about making mistakes. The only one that I ever heard him make was his inevitable use of mens for men, but I had seen no point in correcting him, not if I wanted those eight votes that he had in his hip pocket.

He and Murfin and I had moved down the cafeteria line in the bus station. Gallops had gone first. I remembered looking down the line toward the cashier. She was a white, middle-aged woman with a cheater's eyes and a bitter mouth. Her gaze was fixed on Gallops and the only expression in her eyes was hate, the hot kind that supposedly sears souls.

Without taking her eyes off Gallops, she started ringing our lunches up on the cash register. She didn't look once at our trays to see what we had bought. Nor did she once look at the cash register keys. She just banged away at them, her mouth working a little, as she tried to kill Gallops with her eyes.

When he and Murfin were past her she turned her death gaze on me. By then the hate was hot enough to fry brains. I said, “Nice day.” She ripped off the cash register tape and thrust it at me. The total cost of three pretty awful buck-fifty lunches in the Birmingham bus station came to $32.41, a net sum that I doubt that I'll ever forget.

There were two things I could do. I could set up a howl or I could pay. But I wasn't in Birmingham to set up a howl. I was there to pick up eight votes. So I paid, silent and perhaps shame-faced, and when I did she grinned spitefully, the way some people do when they've taken money away from a coward, and said, “Maybe that'll teach you to take blue-gummed niggers to lunch.”