Yellow Dog Contract

by Thomas Ross

  She had no reaction. She said, “What should I think about him?”

  “Didn’t you know he was dead?”

  “How should I know he was dead?”

  “It was in the paper. On TV.”

  “Harvey.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t read a newspaper in two years. Not the front page anyhow. Sometimes I look at the Style section in the Post, but lately I haven’t even been doing that. I haven’t looked at a TV set in six months—unless you count Captain Kangaroo or whatever the hell it’s called that the kids sometimes look at.”

  “You didn’t know Max?”

  “No, I didn’t know Max, if that’s what you call him. I know that there was a Max Quane who called up here yesterday for you. He said it was important and he sounded kind of twitchy so I gave him Slick’s number. Did he reach you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what’s all this got to do with Mother’s silver?”

  I picked up the spoon and looked at it. It was as familiar as an old photograph. “I found this spoon in Max Quane’s apartment yesterday after I found him with his throat cut.”

  “Jesus!”

  “You didn’t know him?”

  “I already told you I didn’t know him.”

  “No,” I said. “You wouldn’t know Max. Not that way.”

  “You mean I wouldn’t be interested in playing house with him and even bringing along my own spoons.”

  “It’s not your style,” I said, rose, went over to the coffee pot, and poured myself another cup. “Where’s the sugar?”

  “In the sugar bowl.”

  I found it, put a spoonful in my coffee, stirred it, and said, “Sally still lives here, doesn’t she?”

  “Sally’s family,” my sister said. “She still has her own place on the third floor, the one we fixed up like a little apartment.”

  “But she’s not here today?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  My sister sighed. “Sally and Quane, huh?”

  I nodded. “It looks that way.”

  “She got a phone call about eight last night. It made her upset and she told me that she had to go out. I didn’t ask why.”

  “Are you and she still as close as ever?”

  Audrey nodded. “Maybe even more so. I think she saved my life after Jack died.” Jack Dunlap, Audrey’s late husband, had been one of those financial geniuses that Texas sometimes produces. By the time he was thirty he was already a millionaire. At thirty-five, which was when he had married Audrey, he was a millionaire many times over as well as part owner of a professional football team, a power in the Democratic party, a member of the boards of at least a dozen major corporations, and a nut about sports and hunting. In 1972 he had been hunting splittail grouse in North Dakota. He had climbed over a barbed-wire fence, his shotgun had gone off, and that had been the end of Jack Dunlap. I thought my nephew looked exactly like him. My niece was the image of her mother, which was just as well because Jack had been kind of ugly.

  “She’s been with you how long?” I said.

  “Six years, ever since Nelson was born. I hired her as a social secretary because Jack insisted that I needed one. When I asked him what a social secretary did, he said he didn’t know but he had read about them in books. So I hired Sally. She was just out of Smith where she’d gone on a full scholarship and graduated with top honors, which isn’t bad for a kid from this town who was born near Ninth and U.”

  “No,” I said, “not bad at all.”

  Audrey was silent for a moment, as though thinking. “Four weeks ago,” she said. “It must have started about four weeks ago.”

  “Sally and Quane?”

  Audrey nodded. “It was a couple of weeks after I’d broken up with Arch—or he had broken off with me, which is actually how it happened. I was pretty upset and Sally came to the rescue again. She urged me to talk about it. And I did.”

  “How’d you know about her and Quane?”

  “I didn’t know it was Quane, I just knew it was somebody. She’d leave at odd times. Matinees, I reckon. I asked her about it once or twice, but all she’d say was that he was white and married and that she knew she was a goddamned fool, but that she’d rather talk about my being a goddamned fool than about her being one. So we talked about Arch Mix and me.”

  I had been up since six and had eaten breakfast at six-thirty and I was hungry again. I got up and started opening cabinet doors. “Where’s the bread?” I said.

  “In the bread box,” Audrey said.

  I found it and dropped two slices into the toaster. “You want some toast?”

  “No.”

  I waited for the toast to pop up, found the butter and some strawberry jam in the refrigerator, put some on the toast, and sat back down at the table. “Did you and Arch ever talk about the union?” I said and took a bite of the toast.

  “Sure. We talked about everything. I told you that.”

  “Just before you split up, was there anything about the union that was bothering him? I mean anything out of the ordinary?”

  Audrey looked at me strangely. “He talked about you a lot. It wasn’t about you exactly, but it was about you and the union back in sixty-four.”

  “What did he say?”

  She shook her head. “I listened, Harvey, but I didn’t keep notes. Maybe I should have because recently Sally’s been getting me to talk about the same thing.”

  “How recently?” I said.

  She thought about it. “A month or so. Ever since Arch disappeared.”

  “What’d she get you to talk about?”

  “Well, I wanted to talk about what a rotten, no-good son of a bitch he is but Sally steered it around so that I found myself talking about what he’d told me. Sally’s no dummy and I thought she was trying to help me get him out of my system.” Audrey looked at me and smiled, but the smile was half sardonic, half rueful. “She was pumping me, wasn’t she, for this guy Quane?”

  I nodded. “Don’t blame her too much. Max was awfully good at manipulating people. It was a specialty of his. One of several.”

  Audrey looked out the window to where her children were playing in the garden. They were playing tag although Nelson seemed to be bopping his sister a little harder than was really necessary. “I wonder if I told her what your friend Quane wanted to know?”

  “You probably told her exactly what he wanted to know.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Max called me yesterday. He was as you said, twitchy, which wasn’t at all like Max Quane. He said he had to see me. When I asked him why he said it was because he thought he knew what had happened to Arch Mix.”

  Audrey rose, went over to a cabinet, took down a cannister labeled “pepper,” took out a cigarette, and lit it. It wasn’t a real cigarette though; it was dope. She drew the smoke down into her lungs, held it, and then let it out slowly.

  “Shit,” she said. “Does that mean that what I told Sally got Quane killed?”

  “Quane got himself killed,” I said. “If he’d really figured out what happened to Mix, he must have tried to get cute with it. He got cute with the wrong people.”

  “I wonder what I told her?”

  “Was there any single thing that Sally kept coming back to, pressing you on?”

  Audrey took another drag on her marijuana, picked up the pepper cannister, and sat back down at the table. She offered me the cannister but I shook my head.

  “Sally’s too smooth for that,” Audrey said. “I mean she would never make it obvious.”

  “There must have been something,” I said.

  Audrey thought about it. “In bed,” she said.

  “She was interested in you and Mix in bed?”

  “Not really. But I once told her that after Arch and I had had a really good fuck he liked to just lie there and think out loud. I didn’t mind because I was feeling good and remembering how fine it had been. But it was then that he was relaxed and con
fident and felt that he could talk about whatever was on his mind.”

  “So what did he talk about?” I said.

  “That’s what Sally asked—and kept asking, although I didn’t notice it at the time.”

  “She must have been more specific than that.”

  “Uh-huh, she was, now that I think about it. She was especially interested in what Arch talked about just before we broke up. She kept coming back to that with the excuse that maybe there was something in what he’d said that would give me some clue about why it really happened. I mean our bust-up. So I told her what he’d said as best as I could remember.”

  “But then she would come back for something even more specific?” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s how I would have done it,” I said.

  “You are a shit.”

  “Come on, Audrey. What the hell did you tell her?”

  “She kept coming back to a couple of nights right toward the last when Arch was talking about you and the union. He wasn’t bad-mouthing you. It was just that he’d found out something that made him think of you and the union back in sixty-four.”

  “What?”

  “I told you I didn’t take notes. Anyway, I was half asleep.”

  “Just tell me what you told Sally.”

  “I told her that Arch had told me that they were going to try to use the union just the way they had used it back in 1964 but that he, by God, was going to put a quick stop to it. Or something like that.”

  I slumped back in my chair. “When did you tell her this?”

  “A few days ago. Maybe a week. It was all very casual. Just talk. Or at least that’s the way it seemed then. Does it mean anything?”

  “It sure as hell meant something to Max Quane.”

  “Does it mean anything to you?”

  I thought about Max lying on the cheap green rug with his throat cut. “I hope not,” I said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I USED THE PHONE in Audrey’s kitchen to make the calls. First I called Senator William Corsing’s office. The Senator was in a meeting but had left word that he would very much like to see me at ten o’clock, if that were convenient. If ten wouldn’t do, perhaps I could make it eleven.

  The young woman whom I talked to had a voice that sounded the way divinity fudge tastes and when I told her that I could make it at ten her grateful, slightly breathless reply made me feel that maybe with my help the republic could be saved after all.

  I called Ward Murfin next and when he came on he didn’t say hello, he said, “Max didn’t leave any insurance.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Murfin sighed. “Me and Marjorie were up with her most of the night. She kept saying she was gonna kill herself. You know how Dorothy is.”

  I indeed knew how Dorothy Quane was. Dorothy and I had once had a very brief, incredibly gloomy time twelve years before that in retrospect seemed like one long, wet, dismal Sunday afternoon. I had introduced her to Max Quane and he had won her away from me. I had been grateful to Max ever since. Max had never said whether he was grateful to me for introducing him to Dorothy and I had never asked.

  “Well,” I said, “what can I do?”

  “You can be a pallbearer,” Murfin said. “I can’t find any fuckin’ pallbearers. The guy’s thirty-seven years old and I can’t find six guys who’ll be his pallbearers.”

  “I don’t go to funerals,” I said.

  “You don’t go to funerals.” Murfin sounded as if I had told him that I didn’t go to bed nights, but hung from the rafters instead.

  “I don’t go to funerals, wakes, weddings, christenings, church bazaars, political rallies, or office Christmas parties. I’m sorry Max is dead because I liked him. I’ll even go by and see Dorothy this afternoon and ask if she and her kids would like to come out and stay at the farm for a while. But I won’t be a pallbearer.”

  “Last night,” Murfin said. “They had Max on the six o’clock news last night. Well, Marjorie and me get over there about six-thirty, maybe seven, and Dorothy’s already flipped. So hell, you know, we figure we’ll stay maybe a couple of hours or so, maybe even three or four, and then we figure the neighbors or somebody else’ll come by and take over. Nobody.”

  “Nobody at all?”

  “Just the cops. Nobody came. Nobody even called except some reporters. That’s kinda hard to believe, isn’t it?

  “Kind of,” I said. “Max knew a lot of people.”

  “You know something?” Murfin said, “I don’t think Max had any friends except me. And maybe you, although I’m not too sure about you since you don’t wanta be a pallbearer.”

  I told him again that I’d stop by and see Dorothy that afternoon. Then I asked, “What did Vullo say?”

  “Well, he seemed to think that Max went and got himself killed on purpose, you know what I mean? He said he was sorry and all that, but he kinda hurried over it. What he was really interested in was how we were gonna replace Max. I told him I’d work on it and then he wanted to know if I’d heard from you on account of maybe you’d have some ideas.”

  “I don’t have any,” I said.

  “You tell him that,” Murfin said. “He wants to see you today.”

  “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “What time?”

  “Two-thirty?”

  I thought about it. “I’ll come by at two and maybe you and I can figure out what to do about Dorothy.”

  “Maybe we can figure out how you’re gonna tell her who Max was shacked up with.”

  “Who?”

  “A real good-looking black fox, according to the cops.”

  “Did they tell Dorothy that?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The cops know who she is?”

  “She rented the pad under the name of Mary Johnson, but the cops don’t figure that’s her real name. Paid a hundred and thirty-five dollars for the place, utilities included.” Murfin, as always, had savored the details.

  “What do the cops figure?”

  “They figure that she had a boyfriend or maybe even a husband who found out about her and Max and snuffed him out with a knife. Cut his throat. Did you know that’s how it happened?”

  “Jesus,” I said, not exactly lying.

  “I had to go down and identify him last night on account of Dorothy by then was threatening to kill herself for the thirteenth or fourteenth time. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “Max didn’t look too bad,” Murfin said. “Not for a guy who’d had his throat cut.”

  I told Murfin I’d see him at two o’clock and then I called my Uncle Slick and invited him to lunch. But when I told him where and when I wanted to eat he said, “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s family business now, Slick,” I said, “and I don’t want to talk about it all jammed up against somebody else.”

  “Well, at least we could have some wine,” he said.

  I said, “I’ll leave that up to you,” and hung up.

  After that I called a lawyer. It was about time. His name was Earl Inch, I had known him for years, and he was very expensive because he was very good. I had decided that I needed a very good lawyer. When I told him I was in trouble he said, “Good,” and we set up an appointment for three-thirty that afternoon. It seemed to be turning into a very long day.

  Audrey swung around to face me after I hung up the phone and said, “How much trouble are you in?”

  “Just enough so that I need a lawyer. And Slick. He can drop a word here and there that probably won’t do any harm.”

  “You need any money?”

  “No, but thanks for asking.”

  “Sally,” she said. “You’re going to have to tell the police about Sally, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will she be in trouble?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “I wish she’d come home.”

  “Maybe she will when she gets over t
he shock.”

  “Harvey.”

  “What?”

  “If I can do anything, well—you know.”

  “There’s one thing you can do,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Come out to the farm Saturday.”

  Senator William Corsing’s office was in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, which used to be called the New Senate Office Building even though after a while it wasn’t very new anymore.

  The Senator’s outer offices suffered from what all Congressional offices suffer from, a lack of space. The staff members were crowded up against each other, fighting for lebensraum against files, stacks of documents, boxes of envelopes and stationery, and what seemed to be a monumental pile of old copies of the Congressional Record.

  But the staff seemed cheerful, busy, and confident that they were doing important work. Perhaps they were. I had to wait only a few minutes before I was shown into the Senator’s office by the young woman with the divinity-fudge voice. I think I must have expected something blond and flighty, but she was a tall, slim, cool-looking brunette about thirty, with smart, even wise brown eyes and a wry smile that let you know that she knew how her voice sounded, but there was nothing she could do about it and, what the hell, sometimes it was useful.

  If his staff was cramped for space, the Senator wasn’t. He had a large, sunny corner office furnished by the government with leather chairs and a nice big desk. On the walls were photographs of him in the company of people he was proud to know. Most of them were rich and famous and powerful. The others looked as though they were determined to get that way.

  There were also some nice photographs of the Ozarks, a shoe factory, the Mississippi River, some farm scenes, and one of Saarinen’s 630-foot-high stainless-steel catenary gateway arch which a lot of people in St. Louis still think looks like a plug for McDonald’s hamburgers. In addition to the photographs there was a large oil portrait of the Senator in a grave pose that made him look concerned and statesmanlike.

  When I first met William Corsing he had been the thirty-year-old boy mayor of St. Louis. That was in 1966. He had very badly wanted to be the boy senator from Missouri, but nobody gave him much of a chance, in fact, almost none at all, and that’s why I had been called in. After a rather bitter campaign, nasty even for Missouri politics, he had squeaked in by less than 126 votes after a statewide recount. In 1972 he had run against the Nixon tide and won by fifty thousand votes. He was now forty-two, still young for the Senate, but nobody called him the boy anything anymore.