“Sometimes, Harvey,” he said, “you do have perfectly splendid ideas. I don’t really believe that I’ve been on a picnic in years.”
“Would you like some of my cheese?”
He looked at it suspiciously. “Is that some of your goat cheese?”
“It’s kind of a Brie.”
“Kind of?”
“Yes.”
“Well, dear boy, I really do think I shall pass.”
My lunch consisted of the cheese, two hard-boiled eggs, a tomato, and some cold biscuits left over from dinner the night before. Slick’s was somewhat more grand. There was the chicken breast; a portion of paté that he said he had made himself and insisted that I try; a small salad; half a loaf of French bread; some assorted olives, and a Thermos full of a chilled, light Moselle that he said was a particularly good buy that year. We didn’t drink the wine out of any tacky paper cups, however. We drank it the way it should be drunk, out of two long-stemmed wine glasses that Slick had packed in the wicker basket.
While we ate I told him about how I’d found Max Quane with his throat cut and why I hadn’t waited around for the police, none of which seemed to disturb Slick’s appetite in the least.
“And it was really one of Nicole’s old spoons?” Nicole had been my mother’s name.
“Yes.”
“And the girl... uh... Sally. I do have a problem with that young woman’s name.”
“Sally Raines.”
“Yes. Raines. She hasn’t returned to Audrey’s since receiving that phone call yesterday?”
“No.”
“So it would seem that the late Mr. Quane purposely wooed Miss Raines so that he could use her to pry information about Arch Mix out of Audrey. Pillow-talk information, I suppose one should call it. The fellow must have been something of a cad.”
“Max was something like that,” I said, wondering when I had last heard somebody called a cad.
“I wonder what Mr. Quane found out that would necessitate someone cutting his throat?”
“I don’t know. But those two guys who were watching Audrey’s house yesterday must have been watching it for Sally, not Audrey.”
“Yes. So it would seem.”
“And now you know why I decided that I’d better see a lawyer,” I said.
Slick sipped his wine and thought about it. “Yes,” he said. “I really do think you should. Of course, I can drop a word here and there that might make things a bit easier for you when you describe your rather aberrant behavior to the police.”
“I’d be grateful,” I said.
“They won’t welcome you with loving arms, you understand.”
“No.”
“On the other hand, they probably won’t clap you in jail, either.”
“That’s nice. Ruth will appreciate that. So will the goats.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, I saw your client today.”
“And how was Mr. Gallops?”
“He’s taken over, hasn’t he?”
“Oh, quite. I don’t think he hesitated more than a day or two after Mix disappeared before he assumed full direction of the union’s affairs. But then, someone had to.”
“What kind of board of directors did Mix have?”
“A tame one, so I understand,” Slick said. “Very carefully assembled over the years.”
“So Gallops needn’t worry about them?”
“No, but why should he?”
“He’s spending a lot of money.”
“Really?”
I told Slick about the 200 full-time representatives that Gallops had put on the union’s payroll, and why, and his reaction was similar to mine. “However, Harvey,” he said, “I think that your estimate of the total cost is a bit low. It would be closer to four million a year than three million.”
“A lot of money.”
“A great deal,” he said. “I wonder just how one would go about finding two hundred such people? I mean, they would have to have some experience with or at least some affinity for a labor union, wouldn’t they?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “From what I’ve heard so far all they’d really have to be good at is convincing a limited group of people to do what they want them to do. And labor union members are no different from anyone else. You can get them to do what you’d like them to do by the skilled use of persuasion and sweet reason. But if that fails, you can always fall back on coercion, bribery, and maybe just muscle, which seems to be what some of Gallops’s new guys are using.”
“I see. Did Gallops say where he’d found them?”
“He said an outfit called Douglas Chanson Associates found them for him. Ever hear of it?”
“The headhunter,” Slick said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, he started about ten years ago, I believe, and has done remarkably well ever since.”
“You know him?”
“We’ve met on several occasions.”
“Slick?”
“Yes, dear boy?”
“He didn’t used to be with the agency, did he?”
“Chanson? Certainly not. He got his start, as I said, about ten years ago in what was then a rather ripe field. His specialty was supplying certain government agencies and private industry with competent, middle-management executives. As I said, Chanson is a head-hunter. However, he specialized in supplying his clients with black middle-management executives. He did extremely well, or so I understand. Later, when the women’s movement — uh — burgeoned, shall we say, he supplied his ever-expanding list of clients with female middle-management executives and, recently, or so the rumors have it, he’s been doing rather nicely by coming up with executives who are both black and female.”
“But that’s not all he does?”
“Oh, certainly not. He also helps solve those little problems that are always popping up in both government and industry. Labor relations, I understand, just happen to be one of his many specialties.”
“And you’re sure he didn’t used to be with the agency?”
“I’m quite sure. For fifteen years Douglas Chanson was a top special agent with the FBI.”
Slick took the last sip of the wine, collected our glasses, and tucked them back into the wicker basket. He then shook the crumbs from the red and white checked cloth, folded it carefully, and laid it on top of the glasses. As always, he was very neat.
“So,” I said, “what else have you got for me?”
“Well, dear boy, right now I am involved in one particular aspect of this affair, but unfortunately I can’t give you any details because, well, because it just might jeopardize everything.”
“What’s everything?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“We’re supposed to have a trade-off, Slick. But so far it’s been mostly a one-way deal. I give and you take.”
“Well, I can give you just one tiny hint,” he said, “but only if you swear to keep it absolutely confidential. Agreed?”
“All right,” I said.
“And I positively will not tell you any more than I’m going to tell you so there’s no use in your asking. Understood?”
“Sure.”
He looked up at the hot August sky as if trying to decide how best to phrase his tiny hint. Then he said, “Well, there seems to be a slight possibility that Arch Mix isn’t dead after all.”
Ward Murfin looked as if he hadn’t had much sleep. When his secretary, Ginger, showed me into his office at the Vullo Foundation, Murfin was stretched out on the couch. He wasn’t asleep though. He was smoking a cigarette and staring up at the ceiling. His eyes were red and swollen and for a moment I wondered whether he had been crying until I thought about it and decided that Murfin probably hadn’t cried about anything since he was five years old. Maybe four.