We were silent for a moment and then the Senator said, “I was back home last week.”
I nodded. Back home was St. Louis.
“The union’s pretty strong there.”
“Yes,” I said. “Council Twenty-one, I think it is.”
“A guy came to see me. He used to be executive director of the Council.”
“Freddie Koontz?” I said.
“You know him?”
“I know Freddie. He was one of Mix’s original backers. I didn’t know he’d retired though. Hell, Freddie can’t be more than fifty.”
“He didn’t retire,” the Senator said. “He got bounced.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Before I tell you that, I’d better mention that the Council’s contract with the city expires a couple of weeks from now on September first.”
“So?”
“So when Mix disappeared the Council was in the early stages of negotiating a new contract with the city. A week after Mix disappeared the International sent out about a half-dozen guys from its headquarters here in Washington to help with the negotiations.”
“That’s not unusual,” I said. “Sometimes the International will send out a team that includes an economist, a lawyer, some resource people, and even some trained negotiators.”
“Freddie would know most of them, wouldn’t he?”
“Sure.”
“He didn’t know any of this bunch.”
“Who were they?” I said.
“Freddie still isn’t sure. All he knows is that they were very smooth and they had plenty of money and they weren’t afraid to use muscle.”
“So how’d it happen?”
“Freddie says that after they were there a week a special meeting of the Council’s board of directors was called. This was right in the middle of negotiations with the city. Well, the first order of business was Freddie. A motion was made to fire him, it was seconded, there was no discussion, the vote was six to five, and Freddie was out of a job. After that they appointed a new executive director. He was a nobody, Freddie said, a rank and filer who knew as much about negotiating a contract as a hog does about a white shirt. I guess you remember how Freddie talks.”
“I remember,” I said. “Colorfully.”
“Well, the Council broke off negotiations, which Freddie said were going pretty well, and two days later they were back with an entirely new set of demands. Freddie says the new demands ask for everything but city hall.”
“And the six guys that the International sent out?”
“They’re still there. They’re calling all the plays now. If any opposition from the membership pops up, they buy it off. Two thousand, three thousand, even as high as five thousand. All cash, or so Freddie says. He also says that when they can’t use cash to buy off opposition, they resort to muscle.”
“So what does it look like?”
The Senator took out his pipe, filled it, and lit it with a wooden match that he struck against the sole of his left shoe. “It looks like a strike,” he said after he puffed on his pipe for a few moments.
“The whole city?”
“Everything but the police and the firemen. The teachers will go out because the Public Employees have the school janitors. Or custodians, I think they’re called now.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s interesting.”
“It gets better.”
“How?”
“My colleague, the distinguished junior senator from Missouri, is scared shitless. If he doesn’t carry St. Louis he’s dead. Now suppose you were an average voter and a strike by the people whose wages are paid with your hard-earned tax money closed down your schools, interrupted your bus service, shut down your hospitals, eliminated your garbage collection, screwed up your traffic lights, ended your street cleaning, and fucked up all the records at city hall. Now suppose you were that voter and you usually voted the straight Democratic ticket, how would you vote come November the second?”
“By gum, I’d vote her straight Republican.”
“That’s what my distinguished colleague, the junior senator, is scared shitless about.”
“He’s not the only one who should be scared,” I said. “If the Democrats can’t carry St. Louis, they can lose the whole state. They can’t afford to lose any states.”
“No,” the Senator said, “they can’t.” He puffed on his pipe again. “It seems strange to me that a labor union, which in the past has so publicly aligned itself with the Democratic party, should call a strike that could well lose the party a U.S. Senator, not to mention a Congressman or two, and conceivably, even the presidential election. That seems strange to me. Passing strange.”
“So that’s why you asked me to come see you?”
“Yes.”
“Mix would never have done it like this, would he?”
“No,” the Senator said, “he wouldn’t.”
“But Arch Mix is no longer with us.”
“No.”
“It’s sort of a motive, isn’t it?”
“Barely.”
“You haven’t gone to anyone else with it, have you? Such as the FBI?”
Corsing looked up at the ceiling. “Let’s suppose the FBI went clumping around out in St. Louis and the union found out that they were there at the suggestion of Senator Corsing. Well, Senator Corsing is up for election in two years and Senator Corsing would very much like to get re-elected. If his theory is full of shit, Senator Corsing would much prefer that nobody found out that it was his theory — especially the splendid public servants of the great city of St. Louis and their sizeable bloc of votes.”
“So you thought I might do your poking around for you?”
“You, Harvey, are the logical choice. You knew Arch Mix. You are familiar with the union. In addition, you are intelligent, discreet, totally without ambition, and on somebody else’s payroll so you won’t cost me a dime. All in all, Harvey, I find you a remarkably felicitous choice.”
I rose. “You remember Max Quane, don’t you?”
The Senator nodded. “I’m sorry about Max. I heard about it this morning.”
“Max called me yesterday just before somebody cut his throat.”
“What’d he want?”
“About the same as you. He thought he might have a hunch about what really happened to Arch Mix.”
Chapter Ten
The public employees union headquarters was a five-year-old glass and steel cube on G Street between Eighteenth and Nineteenth. It was almost within hailing distance of the White House and only a short, pleasant stroll to the Sans Souci restaurant, which is where Arch Mix had liked to eat lunch, usually in the company of fellow deep thinkers from either the government or the news business or both.
The appointment that Slick had made for me with Warner B. Gallops was for eleven and I arrived five minutes early, but was kept waiting until eleven-twenty. The outer office that I got to wait in was a comfortable place with nicely upholstered furniture, although I thought that Gallops’s taste in secretaries was a bit odd.