by Thomas Ross
“And that was why the CIA wanted to make sure that Hundermark was re-elected,” Vullo said. “So that they could keep on using the PWI.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“They didn’t think that Mix would go along with it if he got elected and found out?”
“They were right, too. The second thing that Mix did when he won the presidency was to dissolve the PWI, or at least dissolve the union’s ties with it.”
“What was the first thing he did?”
“He fired me—except that I’d already quit. But Mix fired me anyway, at least in the newspapers. Then he fired Murfin and Quane.”
“Mix didn’t care for you, did he?”
“No.”
“Did you know him well?”
“Probably better than anybody, except possibly his wife. By that I mean that I had studied him—the way that you might study an insect or something that lives in a tidepool.”
“You didn’t like him?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t like him or dislike him. I studied him so that I’d be able to predict his moves and his reactions to whatever moves I made.”
“You make it sound like a chess game.”
“It wasn’t any game. It was more like a fight. Or a battle, I suppose.”
“And you ran Hundermark’s campaign?”
“With the help of Murfin and Quane. The rest of the staff were mostly hangers-on that Hundermark had accumulated over the years. They tended to panic.”
“But Murfin and Quane didn’t?”
“No. They’re not the type to panic.”
“Wasn’t Hundermark of any help?”
I started to tell him about Hundermark, but then I decided not to. Hundermark was dead and Vullo was paying me to tell him about Mix, not Hundermark. But it came back to me then, at least some of it, especially the night that I had gone up to Hundermark’s office to tell him there was a fifty-fifty chance that he was going to get dumped.
He had sat there at his desk, a portly, pleasant, soft-looking man with rimless glasses who had never been able to bring himself to be one of the boys. He was something of a joke at AFL-CIO headquarters. Meany had despised him and Reuther had pitied him and I hadn’t been sure which was worse.
“I just talked to Murfin and Quane,” I had said. “We haven’t quite got it. We’re about two or three votes short. Maybe even four.”
Hundermark had nodded thoughtfully and smiled gently. “Oh, I think we’ll be all right,” he had said. Then he had reached into his inside pocket and brought out a letter and unfolded it. He had read the letter silently, nodding to himself in a curiously comfortable, gentle sort of way.
“This letter,” he had said, “is from my practitioner.” Hundermark was a Christian Scientist.
“He assures me that the forces of good will overcome the forces of evil.”
“Well,” I’d said, “maybe you’d better see if those forces of good can scratch up another ten thousand dollars.”
Hundermark had smiled gently again. “Well, yes, I’m sure that they will be able to do that.”
The forces of good, although I didn’t know it, had been the CIA, of course, and it had promptly come up with the ten thousand, all cash, which I had spent as wisely and well as I knew how. But the forces of evil won by four votes anyway and Hundermark was out of a job and sometimes I wondered if later he had ever discussed the mystery of it all with his practitioner.
Vullo didn’t want to talk about Hundermark anymore. He wanted to talk about me. “What happened to you after you got fired?”
“I quit,” I said.
“I mean quit.”
“I came down with mononucleosis and got an offer to jump into a senatorial campaign to see whether I could turn it around in the last four weeks. Or maybe three. I did and the guy won and paid me a lot of money and I paid off most of my farm and went to England.”
“What did you do in England?”
“I lay down for a long time until the mono went away.”
“Then what?”
“I met my wife.”
“Is she English?”
“No.”
Vullo sat there as if he were waiting for me to tell him some more about Ruth, but when I didn’t he gave up and said, “You came back from England when?”
“Sixty-six.”
“And took on a couple of campaigns, I understand. One for the Senate and one for the House.”
“That’s right. Both sure losers.”
“But they didn’t lose.”
“No.”
“And you gained quite a reputation.”
It wasn’t a question so I didn’t say anything.
“Between 1966 and 1972 you took on thirteen Congressional and Senatorial campaigns and won twelve of them and each of them was what virtually everyone considered to be what you call a sure loser. I’m curious how you did it.”
“I knew where to look.”
“For what?”
“Dead bodies.”
“Time called you a political gunslinger.”
“Time still gets a little vivid.”
“And sometimes you hired Murfin and Quane.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you really think of those two?”
I thought about it. “I’d hire them again should the occasion arise, which it won’t.”
Vullo went back to work on his fingernails again. After a moment or two he stopped gnawing at them, looked up at me, and said, “I’ll make you a proposition.”
I nodded. There was no reason to say anything.
“Two weeks,” he said. “That’s all. I want you to spend two weeks on Arch Mix and then come up with a report on why you think he disappeared. Not why he disappeared, but why you think he did.” Vullo came down hard on the you. He was watching me carefully to see how I was taking it. I tried to have no expression at all.
“For your two weeks’ work,” he went on, “I’ll pay you—” He paused. I decided that he was something of an actor. “Ten thousand dollars.”
I had always wondered what my price was. Apparently it was ten thousand dollars for two weeks’ work because I said, “All right,” and then started planning how Ruth and I were going to spend quite a bit of money in Dubrovnik. I had heard that it’s really quite pleasant there in the fall.
CHAPTER FOUR
VULLO CALLED BOTH Murfin and Quane into his office, told them about the arrangement he had made with me, and instructed them to lend whatever assistance I might require. When Vullo mentioned the amount of money that I was to be paid for my fortnight’s effort, Murfin’s mouth abruptly went down at the corners in a look of frank appreciation. It sounded as if I’d pulled off something slippery and that made Murfin admire it.
I suggested rather politely, I thought, that Vullo call in a secretary and dictate a letter of understanding, which would, I pointed out, be mutually beneficial.
“He means he wants it in writing,” Quane said.
Vullo frowned, thought about it, chewed on a fingernail, and then rang for a secretary. When she came in he dictated the letter rapidly and didn’t object at all when I suggested a couple of phrases that I thought might be nice.
“You’ll want to wait for it, I suppose,” Vullo said.
I nodded and smiled. “Well, you know what the mails are.”
“Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting in Murfin’s office. He’ll give you a copy of our file on Mix.”
With that Vullo picked up some papers on his desk and lost himself in them. I was dismissed. I was not only dismissed, but I also seemed to have been forgotten.
Murfin grinned, shrugged, and jerked his head toward the door. I rose and followed him and Quane out and down the hall into Murfin’s office where he handed me a large manila envelope.
“That’s our stuff on Mix,” he said. “How’d you and Vullo get along?”
“Okay,” I said. “He seems a little remote. But he’s probably just shy.”
“He does
n’t believe in what he calls unnecessary social pleasantries,” Quane said. “He thinks they’re a waste of time. So he’s eliminated hello, good-bye, please, thank you and a lot of other stuff like that from his vocabulary. It must save him a couple of minutes a year. Maybe even more.”
Murfin grinned again. It was his nastiest one yet. “Who does he remind you of?”
I thought for a moment. “Mix,” I said finally. “In a curious kind of way he reminds me very much of Arch Mix.”
“Yeah,” Murfin said. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
The house was on one of the more fashionable stretches of N Street in Georgetown and I had to go around the block three times before I could find a place to park. It was a fairly narrow three-story house of old red brick. But the brick was just about all that was still old because the front door, the windows, and the wood trim were quite new, although they had been custom made so that they would look just as old as the brick. All that had cost a lot of money, but then the owner of the house had a lot of money.
I walked up the six metal steps to the door and rang the bell. After perhaps a minute or so the door opened slowly. The young woman who stood there was nude, or stark naked, if you prefer, and she said, “Well, Squire, come on in.”
I went in and said, “Put some clothes on.”
“The air conditioning’s on the blink.”
“Put some clothes on and sweat a little.”
“Jesus, you’re such a prude.”
She picked up an almost transparent green robe that had been flung over a chair and slipped into it. The robe helped some, but not much, because I could still see right through it. But it did nothing for me because the woman’s name was Audrey Dunlap, she was thirty-two, a widow, and also my sister, the millionaire dope fiend.
I tried heroin once when I was sixteen and I liked it very much. So much, in fact, that I never tried it again on the theory that anything that made you feel that good must be bad for you. I think I acquired that particular mind set from the German side of my family. Certainly not the French.
Over the years I had tried most of the other drugs out of mild curiosity and most of them only made me feel dopey. Pot does absolutely nothing for me except make me cough a lot and giggle a bit. I never tried LSD, primarily because of my schizoid tendencies which, I have been assured, are pronounced. For my nerves I sometimes take a little gin.
My sister, on the other hand, had never tried heroin because she said she was saving it. I never asked her for what because she might have come up with the answer. She made do, or did the last time I had talked to her, with a little coke and hash and Quaalude and pot, which were all rather fashionable that year and my sister, if nothing else, was fashionable.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose you want a drink.”
“You got anything to eat?”
“You know where it is.”
“Where’s Sally?” I said. Sally Raines was my sister’s black companion, confidante, social secretary, and connection.
“She took the kids over to the park.”
“How are they?”
“Six and five,” she said. “Do you remember when I was six?”
“Too well.”
“Well, they’re both just like me.”
“A pain in the ass.”
“Right.”
“Why don’t you all come out to the farm Saturday,” I said. “I fixed up a swing that goes out over the pond.”
“Like the one in Opelousas?”
I looked at her. She was smiling at me. “I didn’t think you remembered that,” I said.
“I remember everything,” she said. “It was the summer of forty-eight. You were fifteen and I was five and the swing went out over the river or the creek or lake or whatever it was and you held me and then we fell a mile into the water. That was a hell of a summer, wasn’t it?”
“It was fine,” I said. “So why don’t you bring the kids out Saturday?”
“Ruth wouldn’t mind?”
“You know Ruth.”
“Ruth’s all right,” she said. “The only thing wrong with Ruth is that she makes me feel as if I’ve got some part missing. By comparison, I mean. I like her. I like her a lot. Did I ever tell you that?”
“You didn’t have to.”
“But then you and I don’t ever talk about anything, do we?”
“Who does?”
“Do you and Ruth?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about?”
“Everything,” I said. “Anything. Nothing.”
“It must be fun.”
“It’s different.”
We were still in the living room, which was furnished in my sister’s eclectic but impeccable taste. It was a blend of antique and contemporary furniture although blend makes it sound far too tame. Everything contrasted dramatically without jarring and the living room and the entire house, for that matter, had appeared in the Sunday supplements of half a dozen or so newspapers. Often Audrey, and maybe the kids, too, would be seen in the pictures, all dressed up, and even if you knew her very well and looked very closely, you couldn’t tell that the beautiful young matron was half spaced out.
I followed her back into the kitchen. “You want something to eat?” I said as I opened the refrigerator, which was large enough to have done for a small hotel.
“I just got up,” she said. “I think I’ll have some tea.”
I turned, put the kettle on, and went back to the refrigerator. There was a lot to choose from—cold roast beef, ham, fried chicken, several kinds of wurst, and maybe nine kinds of cheese. I decided on a chicken leg and roast beef sandwich. My sister watched as I made it.
“Guess who called the other day?” she said.
“Who?”
“Slick.”
The kettle started to whistle so I put a tea bag in a cup, poured the water in, and placed the saucer on top of the cup on the unproved theory that it would make it steep better. Then I went back to the refrigerator and took out a can of beer. It was Coors beer. It would be.
“Well,” I said. “How’s Slick?”
“Chipper,” she said. “Jaunty. Maybe even ebullient.”
“And as full of shit as ever.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I only talked to him over the phone. He asked about you.”
“What’d he ask?” I said, moving my sandwich and beer over to the kitchen table, which provided a view of the garden, fountain and all. The garden also had been featured in the Sunday supplements. My sister sat down opposite me with her tea.
“He wanted to know if you were still in hiding.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That as far as I knew you still were.”
I shook my head. “I’m not in hiding. We’ve got a phone in and everything now. You’ve got the number. So does Slick.”
“Does it ever ring?”
“Last week,” I said. “It rang last week.”
“Did you answer it?”
“I was outside and by the time I got there they’d hung up.”
“Have you got a cigarette?” she said.
“I’ll roll you one.”
“God, you’re quaint.” She rose, found a carton in a cabinet, tore open a pack, and lit the long, brown cigarette with a paper match. She blew some smoke out and said, “That suit. Are you supposed to be dressed up or something?”
I looked down at my suit. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s ten years old. At least ten.”
“Eleven.”
“What’s the occasion?” she said. “The last time you dropped by you were wearing your Big Mack overalls and your shitkicker high-tops.”
“Somebody wants to pay me a whole bunch of money for two weeks’ work. I thought I should look neat and earnest.”
“I liked the overalls better. Who’s paying you the bunch of money?”
“Roger Vullo.”
Audrey made a face indicating that she didn’t think mu
ch of Roger Vullo.
“You know him?” I said.
“We’ve met. He’s weird. What’re you supposed to do for him?”
“Give him my opinion about what happened to Arch Mix.”
She took it well enough. There was a slight tremor in her left hand as she raised the cigarette to her lips, but I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been looking for it.
“You’re a real son of a bitch, aren’t you?” she said.
“Probably.”
She got up and went over to the sink and ran the burning end of her cigarette under the tap and dropped it down the disposal. She switched on the disposal and let it run for a while, for much longer than was really needed. Then she turned back.
“It’s funny,” she said.
“What?”
“How much alike you and Slick are.”
“Sure.”
“When Slick called last week he wanted to know all about the kids and me. He must have talked for fifteen minutes about that. I thought he’d never shut up. He even offered to take the kids to the zoo. I told him they hated the zoo. Well, he dropped the kids and switched to me. How was I feeling? Was there anything he could do for me? Maybe we could go to dinner soon. And then—ever so casually, he even lapsed into French—he said, by the way, he was just wondering whether I had any idea of what might have happened to Arch Mix. And that was going to be your next question, too, wasn’t it, Harvey?”
“Sure,” I said again.
“Well, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Slick before I hung up on him. I don’t know what happened to Arch. We broke up six weeks ago. He vanished or disappeared or dropped out of sight four weeks ago. He’s dead by now, I guess. He must be dead.”
“It lasted quite a while, didn’t it?”
Audrey turned and started opening and closing cabinets. She finally found what she was looking for, a bottle of Scotch. She poured some into a glass, drank it down, and made a face. She seldom drank. She poured more Scotch into the glass, added water this time, and sat back down at the kitchen table across from me.
“You know how long it lasted,” she said. “A year. Then when he broke it off I came running to my big brother for what—solace? Comfort? A pat on the head? Well, I suppose I got as much from you as you’ve got to give. But Ruth made it worth the trip. She let me talk.”