Yellow Dog Contract (15 page)

“So do I,” I said, “but being responsible to anyone other than myself and my family is one of the things I now avoid because I never much liked it anyhow.”

“You're very blunt.”

“I see no reason not to be.”

“No, I don't either,” Vullo said. “In fact, it's rather refreshing. However, we do have a problem that you may be able to help us with. I trust you won't mind giving us your thoughts?”

“Not at all.”

“We need to find a replacement for Quane,” he said. “I think you'll agree that he had certain singular qualities that will make replacing him rather difficult.”

If Roger Vullo wouldn't mourn for Max Quane, at least he would miss him—or his singular qualities, which consisted largely of a quick, cunning mind, a thoroughly manipulative personality, a streak of utter ruthlessness, and an unerring eye for other people's weaknesses. If he had really wanted to, Max Quane could probably have been a highly successful business executive, or if that were too tame, a Hollywood agent.

I thought about where Vullo might find himself another Max Quane and then I had an idea. But before I could tell him about it his secretary came in with the check. She handed it to Vullo who scrawled his name on it and then moved it across his huge desk to Murfin who signed with something of a flourish and handed it to me. I looked at it, saw that it was for five thousand dollars, and put it in my pocket.

Vullo dismissed his secretary with a curt nod and when she was gone I said, “I've heard about someone who might be able to help you find a replacement for Max. He's a headhunter.”

“What's that?” Vullo said, not at all ashamed of his ignorance.

“Someone who specializes in finding just the right person to fill hard-to-fill jobs. In fact, the one that I'm thinking of was the one who somehow located those two hundred guys that the union's hired. His name's Douglas Chanson although he calls himself Douglas Chanson Associates.”

Vullo gave his right thumbnail a nasty nip. “How very curious that you should mention Chanson,” he said.

“Why curious?”

“He's a friend of mine and when I was just starting the Foundation I went to him for advice and counsel. And it was he that recommended Murfin here.” Vullo looked at Murfin. “I never told you that, did I?”

“No,” Murfin said, “you never did.”

“Douglas suggested that I be discreet in my approach to you, so I was. You don't mind, do you?”

“No,” Murfin said, “I don't mind.”

“So perhaps Mr. Longmire has a good suggestion. I think I will get in touch with Douglas again. What do you think, Murfin?”

“Whatever's right,” Murfin said.

I could see that our meeting with Vullo was over, at least as far as he was concerned, so rather than risk one of his peremptory dismissals, I started to get up. I was almost halfway there when the phone rang. Vullo frowned, picked it up, said, “I see,” looked at me, and frowned again. “It's for you,” he said. “Would you mind taking it in Murfin's office?”

“Not at all,” I said and headed for the door with Murfin close behind me. When we reached his office I picked up the phone and said hello. It was my sister and she sounded frantic, or as near to frantic as Audrey would ever permit herself to be.

“All right, calm down,” I said. “What's the matter?”

“Sally called.”

“So?”

“She wants to come home.”

“Well, good.”

“She sounded awful.”

“What do you mean awful?”

“How the hell do I know what I mean by awful? She sounded scared and mixed up and desperate and, I don't know, panicky, I reckon. She wanted me to come get her.”

“Why doesn't she take a cab?”

“Goddamn it, Harvey, I told you she's scared out of her mind. She wants me to come get her, but I can't leave the kids and I don't want to take them over there so I told her I'd get you to go.”

“Where's over there?” I said.

“It's over on Twelfth Street Southeast.” She read the number to me. It wasn't much of a neighborhood. “I didn't want to take the kids over there.”

“No,” I said, “I don't think you should. When did she call?”

“About ten minutes ago. Maybe fifteen. I called Slick and he said you might still be at Vullo's.”

“Did Sally say anything else?”

“Like what, damn it?”

“I don't know. Anything?”

“She just said she wanted to come home,” Audrey said. “Isn't that enough?”

“Sure it is,” I said. “I'll go get her.”

“Right away?”

“Right away.”

I told my sister good-bye and hung up. I turned to Murfin. “You want to take a little ride?” I said.

“Where to?” he said.

“Over on Twelfth Street Southeast. Max's girl friend is there. She wants to go home to my sister's except that she's too scared to take a cab.”

Murfin looked at me. “The spade fox,” he said thoughtfully.

“That's right.”

“Think maybe she can tell us something about Max?”

“We can ask,” I said.

“Yeah, we can, can't we,” he said. “Okay, let's go.” He started toward the door, then stopped, and turned back to me. “You know something?”

“What?”

“When we get back from our little run out to St. Louis, maybe you and me had better check out this Douglas Chanson Associates guy. What do you think?”

“I think you're right,” I said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

W
E TOOK MUBFIN
'
S
car, the big brown 450 SEL Mercedes that he drove carelessly, almost recklessly, the way a lot of people drive leased cars, secure in the knowledge that somebody else will have to pay for the skinned paint or the nicked bumper.

“You wanta know something?” Murfin said.

“What?”

“I like this car better'n any car I ever had except one. You wanta know what that one was?”

“A 1957 Cadillac convertible that you had when you were nineteen,” I said. “It was yellow.”

“I already told you about it?” He sounded disappointed.

“You already told me.”

He told me again anyway.

When Murfin was graduated from high school in 1956 he hadn't gone on to college because there hadn't been any money to send him and because he really hadn't wanted to go anyway. Instead he had gone to work for something called the Acme Novelty Company in Pittsburgh. The Acme Novelty Company supplied Pittsburgh with most of its pinball machines, which were legal, and with all of its slot machines, which weren't.

The principal owner of the Acme Novelty Company was one Francesco Salleo, quite often referred to in the Pittsburgh papers as Filthy Frankie, who was alleged to have certain important connections Back East (New York) and Out West (Las Vegas). Filthy Frankie was quick to recognize Murfin's genuine mechanical ability, as well as his flair for sound business practices. As a result Murfin quickly went up the promotional ladder at the Acme Novelty Company and soon was in charge of the placement and servicing of all slot machines in Pittsburgh's numerous fraternal halls, country clubs, veteran's posts, after-hours joints, and whorehouses.

As a reward for his diligence, ability, and unswerving loyalty to the firm, Filthy Frankie rewarded Murfin, by then nineteen, with a salary of $500 a week, not an insignificant sum to a nineteen-year-old back in 1957 or, for that matter, today.

It was with his newly gained prosperity that Murfin purchased the 1957 yellow Cadillac convertible, a car remembered, if not cherished, for its enormous tail fins. In it he went courting Miss Marjorie Bzowski, eighteen, daughter of Big Mike Bzowski, business agent for Local 12 of the United Steelworkers of America (AFL-CIO).

Filthy Frankie was to have been best man at the marriage of Murfin and Miss Bzowski and doubtless would have been had he not been found floating in the Monongahela River on the wedding day, the back of his head blown off by a shotgun blast.

Frankie's connections Back East (New York) started feuding over the spoils with his connections Out West (Las Vegas) and the feud developed into a minor war that left dead bodies about. Murfin, forced to take sides in the war, unfortunately chose the wrong side. As a result he was hailed before a grand jury, but with the aid of an expensive lawyer he managed to escape being indicted. However, it cost him his job, his savings, and his treasured 1957 yellow Cadillac convertible.

Burdened, or perhaps blessed, with a young wife who was expecting their first child Murfin took the only job he could get. It was obtained for him in a Pittsburgh steel mill by his father-in-law. It was a job that required Murfin to rise early, work hard, get his hands dirty, and he loathed it. He soon saw that union officials had to work nowhere nearly as hard as did the rank and file members and within a year he was secretary-treasurer of his local union.

Soon after that he went on the steelworkers' payroll as a full-time organizer. He was an excellent organizer and in 1960 when he was twenty-two he switched to the Public Employees Union. By the time he was twenty-six he was the PEU's Director of Organization.

“You know,” he said as we drove east on Pennsylvania Avenue, “that was the best goddam job I ever had in my life, that time when I was with Frankie.”

“You're lucky you didn't get killed,” I said.

“I don't know,” he said, “if Frankie could've stayed alive, there's no telling where I might be today.”

“Vice lord of Pittsburgh, huh?”

He looked at me. “What's wrong with that?”

“Not a thing,” I said.

When we got to Twelfth and Pennsylvania Avenue we turned right, drove a block, and started looking for a place to park. The house number that Audrey had given me was in the middle of a block that so far had resisted the renaissance of Capitol Hill which seemed bent on turning the area into another Georgetown. The renaissance meant, in effect, that a house that a speculator bought for $15,000 in 1970 would, with a little renovation, command an $80,000 price today.

The block that we parked in was a sullen stretch of row houses, most of them three stories tall and most of them in evident need of paint. It was largely an all-black block lined with aging cars. Some of the cars had no wheels and some of them had no doors and nearly all of them that had no wheels or doors had no glass. Some kids played in and near several of the cars but they didn't play very hard. At three o'clock on an August afternoon in Washington it was too hot to play hard.

When we got out of the Mercedes Murfin made sure that all of the doors were locked. He loosened his tie and I wondered whether he had picked it out that morning while he was still asleep. It was a big, wide fat orange and green tie that screamed and fought for attention with a French blue shirt, a reddish plaid jacket, and lilac windowpane slacks. I also wondered if Murfin were colorblind. It was something that I had often wondered.

The house that we were looking for was in a little better condition than most of its neighbors. It was three stories tall with an English basement and somebody had bothered to give it a coat of fresh white paint and put new screens on all the windows. The house also boasted a covered porch with a wooden railing. A man in an undershirt sat on the porch in a tilted-back kitchen chair, his feet up on the railing, a can of beer in his hand. He was a black man of about sixty with close-cropped white frizzy hair. He sat underneath a dime-store sign that advertised rooms for rent.

Murfin and I headed for the cement walk that split the narrow, shallow front yard in half and led to the house. The yard had a few patches of brown grass that seemed to have given up and died in the August heat. The rest of the yard was hard-packed brown dirt in which nothing could grow. For decoration there were a few empty bottles that nobody had bothered to collect yet.

We heard the scream when we were about twenty feet from the walk that led to the house. The man on the porch heard it, too, because the front legs of his tilted-back chair came down on the porch floor with a hard crack. He turned his head as if he could look into his house and see who was screaming.

The screen door flew open and she burst out of the house, all pale brown and dark red from the blood that ran from her nose and mouth down her chin to her throat and her breasts. She raced down the steps of the porch to the sidewalk and paused. She looked down at herself and touched the blood that had reached her bare breasts. She stared at the blood for a moment and then almost absently wiped it on the side of her leg. The leg was bare, too, as was the rest of her. Sally Raines was naked.

I yelled, “Sally!” and she looked my way, but I don't think she really saw me. Her eyes jumped from me back to the house. She threw her head back and screamed again. It was a long scream that rang of terror and panic and near hysteria.

In the middle of her scream the door opened and the two men with the guns came out. They wore ski masks. One mask was blue and the other was red and I remember thinking that ski masks in August must be hot and sweaty.

The man with the red mask waved his gun almost idly at the white-haired black man who still clutched his can of beer. The black man shrank back, pressing himself against the wall.

The man in the blue mask moved quickly and smoothly down the three porch steps. He went into a crouch and used both hands to aim his pistol. It was a revolver with what looked like a six-inch barrel. He aimed it at Sally Raines.

She stopped screaming and started to run. She ran down the sidewalk. I snatched up an empty pint bottle that had once contained Old Overholt, a pretty good rye. I threw it sidearmed and I threw it hard. The bottle glittered, spinning in the August sun as it flew at the man in the blue ski mask who was aiming his pistol at Sally Raines. It hit him high on the left arm. A lucky throw. It didn't make him drop his pistol. It just made him look at me. He changed his stance with a jump and came down in a crouch again, his pistol aimed at my head or my heart. It was hard to tell. I didn't move.