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 confident 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?”