Yellow Dog Contract (24 page)

If I had to go down to an office every morning, which is a recurring bad dream that I have about two or three times a month, I suppose I would prefer it to be like the one that Douglas Chanson had on Jefferson Place, a one-block street that runs between Eighteenth and Nineteenth just north of M Street.

It's a quiet block consisting mostly of narrow, brightly painted, three-story townhouses with a number of trees and lots of small, highly polished brass plates that discreetly announce the names of those who do business there. There were quite a few lawyers on the block, but some of the brass plates simply gave a name with no indication of the profession that went with it, and I liked to think that these unnamed professions were mysterious and perhaps even a bit nefarious.

Douglas Chanson Associates had such a brass plate above the doorbell of a three-story townhouse that was painted a rich cream color with black trim. I tried the door, but it was locked, so I rang the bell. There was an answering buzz and I went in and found myself in what probably used to be the foyer but was now a reception area presided over by a young, slim brown-haired woman with green eyes.

She looked at me and then at her watch. “You'd be Mr. Longmire.”

“That's right.”

“You're early.”

“To be early is to be on time,” I said, a little sententiously.

“To be early means you'll have to wait a few minutes,” she said. “Here. Fill this out.” She moved a small form across her desk. I picked it up and read it. The form wanted my name, my spouse's name, my occupation, my business address, my home address, my business and home phones, and my Social Security number.

I put it back down on the desk. “The name is Harvey Longmire,” I said. “And I'm not looking for a job.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “Mr. Chanson still likes the information for his records.”

“My address is a post office box, my phone is unlisted, I don't remember my Social Security number, and this week my occupation is beekeeper.”

She grinned at me. It was a saucy kind of grin. “We don't get much call for beekeepers. What do you really do?”

“For the record?”

“Just curiosity.”

“As little as possible.”

“Does it pay anything?”

“Not much.”

“Enough to buy me a drink at the Embers at say, five-thirty?”

“Why don't we make it at my place at six. You'll like my wife. Her name's Hecuba.”

She grinned again. “Well, I tried.” She picked up the phone and punched a button. “Mr. Longmire, the beekeeper, is here.” She listened and then she said. “He says he's a beekeeper. I don't.” There was another pause and then she said, “All right,” and hung up the phone. “Right through there,” she said, indicating a pair of sliding double doors.

I started for them and she said, “Her name's not really Hecuba, is it?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “She was named after her Uncle Priam's first wife.”

She was writing it all down on the form as I slid back the sliding doors and went in. What I entered wasn't an office or even a study. Rather, it was somebody's impression of what the number two reception room of a turn-of-the-century London club must have been like. There was a fireplace with a fire that crackled in August and for a moment I wondered why I wanted to go over and warm my hands in front of it until I realized that the temperature in the room had been brought down to about sixty or sixty-five degrees by air conditioning.

There was no desk in the room, just an oak library table against one dark-paneled wall. The drapes were of plum velvet and the carpet was a deep mauve color. In front of the street windows were a couple of comfortable-looking wing-backed leather chairs with a small table in between them. The chairs would be nice to sit in after a good lunch and watch it rain on the pedestrians. There was also a couch or two in the room, one of which looked like it would be just right for an afternoon nap. Flanking the fireplace was a cane-backed settee and a deep leather armchair that a man was sitting in, an open grey file on his lap. He looked up at me, put the file down on a table that held a 1908-type telephone, and got up. He didn't offer to shake hands; instead he nodded at me, and gestured that I should sit on the settee.

He was about forty-five or fifty, I decided, although it was hard to tell because of the brown beard that was formed by a moustache that ran back down his cheeks to join his long sideburns, leaving his chin bare. I couldn't remember what that particular style of beard was called, but I remembered from old photographs that it had been popular during the latter part of Victoria's reign.

“Do sit down, Mr. Longmire,” he said. His accent wasn't British, but it was still nicely clipped.

I sat down on the settee and looked at Douglas Chanson. He wore a dark, almost black suit with a dove-grey vest and a plain, wide, deep-purple tie. His glistening white shirt and collar looked stiff and starched. Above the stiff collar was an equally stiff face that didn't look as if it laughed much. The bare chin that poked out from the beard was bony and narrow and above it was a small pursed mouth. Above the mouth was a thin nose and a pair of shiny brown eyes and in between the eyes were the lines of what seemed to be a perpetual vertical frown that creased the center of his pale forehead. He combed his brown and grey hair carefully down over his forehead to make it look as though it wasn't as thin as it was. Douglas Chanson, I decided, had a generous amount of vanity.

He stared at me carefully for several moments and then said, “I don't usually do this and I wouldn't have in this instance unless you'd said that you were associated with Roger Vullo.”

“You checked, I take it.”

“Naturally.”

“I'd like to ask some questions about one of your clients.”

“I'm not at all sure that I'll answer them. I think you should understand that from the outset.”

“I'd like to ask them anyway.”

“All right.”

“The client is the Public Employees Union.”

“Yes.”

“You recently recruited two hundred new employees for them, right?”

“Two hundred and three, actually.”

“I'm curious about what qualifications they had to have. I recently ran into six of them out in St. Louis.”

“St. Louis? Let's see, that would be Russ Mary and his team, I believe. Yes, Mary.”

“A rather tall blond guy with cute little waves in his hair?”

“Mr. Mary is rather tall and blond but I don't find his hair cute.”

“What's his background?”

“That's one of the questions that I choose not to answer.”

“Let me put it another way,” I said.

“If you wish.”

“Mary doesn't have a labor organization background, does he? What I mean is, has he ever worked for another union other than the PEU?”

“No.”

“Has he ever worked for the federal government?”

“I'd have to say yes to that, but with certain qualifications which I'm afraid I can't mention. Do you smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Perhaps you'd like one of my cigarettes.” He picked up a small, highly polished wooden box that may have been made out of rosewood, opened it, and offered it to me. It contained long brown cigarettes. I took one. So did Chanson. He produced a gold lighter from a vest pocket and leaned forward to light my cigarette. Then he lit his own and leaned back in his chair, drew some smoke down into his lungs, and exhaled it. I took a puff of my own. It wasn't bad.

“I have them made for me in New York,” he said. “They contain no artificial preservatives. No saltpeter and what have you. I seem to like things that haven't been tampered with.”

“I roll my own,” I said.

“Do you really. That's interesting.” He said it as if it really were.

I took another drag on my cigarette and said, “Having met Mary and his five helpers, I was wondering if the other hundred and ninety-seven persons that you recruited for the union were similar.”

“In what way?”

“Mary struck me as a rather take-charge type of guy. Competent. Aggressive even.”

“You mean tough as a boot.”

“Yes,” I said, “maybe I do mean that.”

“The team leaders that I chose are quite similar to Mr. Mary. The helpers as you call them are—how should I put it—competent, let's say, but in need of firm direction.”

“It must have been quite an assignment. Finding two hundred competent people to do anything can't be an easy task.”

Chanson nodded judiciously. “But not as difficult as one might think providing you have the resources and enough lead time.”

“You didn't have very much, did you? Lead time, I mean.”

“Actually, we had quite a bit although it may not sound like much to you.”

“How much?”

“Nearly a week.”

“That's all?”

“Sometimes we're only given a day or two.”

“Who approached you?”

“From the union?”

“Yes.”

“That's another question I choose to skirt, Mr. Longmire. I can only say that the initial approach was made by a confidential emissary from the union. Let me explain my secretiveness so you won't think that I'm being overly arcane and mysterious. You see, in my business we often have corporate, organizational, and even governmental clients who decide to make sweeping changes from top to bottom. Replacing these personnel quickly is a difficult and sometimes delicate matter. My task, in exchange for what I like to think of as a fair retainer, is to recruit in absolute secrecy qualified personnel who can immediately step into the positions left vacant by these often abrupt changes in top-, middle-, and even lower-level management. Therefore, I wasn't at all surprised by the confidential nature of the union's approach. As I think I said, it happens quite frequently in my business.”

“These people you recruited, were they for permanent or temporary jobs?”

Chanson thought about it for a moment. “I see no reason why I can't tell you that. They were all temporary jobs to last no more than six months.”

“And when were you approached by the union?”

“A little over a month ago.”

“How about being a little more specific?”

“In what way?”

“Was it after or before Arch Mix disappeared?”

“After.”

“How long after?”

“As I recall it was two days after he disappeared. Possibly three, but no more than that.”

“Did you connect the two?”

“The two what?”

“Mix's disappearance and the union's sudden demand for your services.”

Chanson stared at me for several moments. “What I thought, Mr. Longmire, must, I'm afraid, remain confidential. However, I think it only fair to tell you that whatever my thoughts were, the FBI and the D.C. police were made aware of them the same day.” He looked at his watch, a big, fat gold one that he kept in his vest pocket on a heavy chain. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but I have another appointment.”

“Just one more question,” I said.

“Yes?”

“How did you turn up Ward Murfin for Roger Vullo?”

He picked up the grey file that he had placed on the table and leafed through it. When he found what he seemed to be searching for he looked back up at me.

“Murfin is an interesting type. I keep extensive files on such types because they are the kind of people who often are quite suddenly needed by the kind of clients that I sometimes serve. In fact, I think you'd be surprised at the files that I do keep. For instance, this one here.” He tapped the folder on his lap. “It says in here that you really do keep bees, don't you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

R
OGER VULLO
'
S OFFICE
was only a short, hot walk from Jefferson Place, but I didn't notice the heat because I was too engrossed in putting the finishing touches on my theory about what had happened to Arch Mix and why. It was a sound theory, buttressed by solid facts with only a touch of wild surmise. I intended to lay it on Roger Vullo personally, collect the other half of my ten-thousand-dollar fee, and stop by a travel agent on my way home to make reservations for Dubrovnik. Two seconds after I entered Vullo's office I knew that I wouldn't be making the reservations just yet.

Vullo was savaging his right thumbnail as I walked in. He looked up and said, “You're late.” Before he went back to his nail he used the hand he was working on to gesture at the two other men in his office. “I think you know everybody,” he said.

I thought so, too. One of the men was Warner B. Gallops. The other was my Uncle Slick.

Gallops grunted at me and Slick said, “I've been trying to get in touch with you, dear boy.”

“I know,” I said and sat down in a chair.

“There've been some extremely interesting new developments,” Slick said. He reached over to Roger Vullo's desk and handed me the morning edition of the
Washington Post.
I looked at it, but saw nothing that was relevant.

“What page?” I said.

“The front page,” Slick said. He nodded at Vullo and said, “I think you should play it for him first.”

“Yes, it would probably save time,” Vullo said. There was a small cassette tape recorder on Vullo's desk. He punched a button.

The tape whirred for a few moments and then a voice came on. The voice said, “This is Arch Mix.”

There was a silence on the tape for a second or two that was interrupted only by a slight crackling sound as if some paper were being unfolded.

The voice that was Arch Mix's went on: “To prove that this recording was made today I'm going to read you the top three headlines from this morning's edition of the
Post.
”

I looked at the
Post
as the taped voice read the headlines. There was another pause, another crackle of paper, and then Mix's voice continued.