He waved his cigarette at me by way of greeting and then said to Ginger, “Would you get us some coffee, honey?” Ginger said, “Of course,” and gave him a concerned, tender look which made me decide that Murfin was probably sleeping with her. I would have been more surprised if he hadn’t been because Murfin always slept with his secretaries. Or at least tried to. He felt that it was an automatic fringe benefit that went with the job along with two-hour lunches, a pension plan, four-week vacations, a company car, and hospital insurance.
Murfin stretched, yawned, lowered his feet to the floor, and sat up. He held his cigarette between his lips while he rubbed his eyes. When he was done they were more bleary than ever.
“You know what time we got home this morning?” he said.
“What time?”
“Four-thirty. That’s after me and Marjorie finally got Dorothy to bed. She was almost out on her feet by then, but she was still talking about killing herself. Jesus, I think she gets her kicks out of talking about it.”
“For some people the thought of suicide is a comfort,” I said. “It gets them through their tough spots. The thought of it comforts them because it offers an ultimate solution to all their problems.”
Murfin looked at me with disbelief. “Where’d you come up with a horseshit theory like that?”
“From Dorothy,” I said. “We used to talk about suicide sometimes. Usually on Sunday afternoon. Usually it was raining. It cheered her up. Talking about it, I mean.”
“Shit, I never thought about killing myself,” Murfin said and I believed him. He doubtless lumped suicide with devil worship, witchcraft, animal sodomy, group therapy and other wicked pursuits that he felt to be crimes against both man and nature.
Ginger came in with the coffee, served us, and left. Murfin took a noisy sip of his and said, “Well, anyway we get home at four-thirty, but do I get to go to sleep? Hell, no. Marjorie’s gotta sit up until six o’clock analyzing it. She isn’t interested in why Max went and got himself killed. Oh, no. What she’s interested in is analyzing what she keeps calling Max’s manipulative relationship with Dorothy which is what she claims is the real reason that Dorothy wants to kill herself. Well, poor old Max is lying down there dead with his throat cut and I can’t find anybody to be his pallbearers, but Marjorie’s gotta sit up until six o’clock in the fuckin’ morning blaming Max for Dorothy’s saying she wants to kill herself, which now you tell me is what makes Dorothy feel better. Jesus.”
“I’ll go see her this afternoon,” I said. “After I go see the police and tell them how I found Max.”
“You found him?” Murfin said as something seemed to wipe the tiredness from his eyes.
“I think I’d better tell you about it,” I said. “In fact, I think I’d better tell you about everything.”
So I told him and when I was through he wanted more details, so I fed them to him until he was almost sated, except that my mother’s silver spoon seemed to fascinate him. I had to explain several times how I could tell that it was one of her spoons. He finally accepted my explanation with the comment that, “Well, hell, maybe you could, I don’t know. We never had no silver spoons in my house when I was a kid anyway.”
“I could tell it was her spoon,” I said. “Believe me.”
“Yeah, okay, you could tell. So what do you think?”
“I think I want to be paid one half in advance. Five thousand dollars.”
“What the hell for?”
“Because, like Max, I don’t have any insurance and if I keep on poking around and, like Max, come up with a hot idea about what really happened to Arch Mix, then somebody might decide to cut my throat, which would leave my wife a very poor widow.”
“Aw, shit, Harvey.”
“I’m serious,” I said.
“Okay, we’ll check it with Vullo.”
“Good.”
Murfin took another loud sip of his coffee, put the cup down, lit another cigarette, stretched, leaned back on the couch, and looked up at the ceiling. “You say Gallops put two hundred guys on the payroll,” he said. “How do you figure that?”
“I figure,” I said, “that you and I had better take a run out to St. Louis.”
Murfin stopped looking at the ceiling and instead looked at me. He nodded happily, gave me one of his more knavish smiles, and said, “Yeah, that’s just what I was figuring.”
Roger Vullo listened with rapt attention as I gave him the same report that I had given Murfin. I knew Vullo’s attention was rapt because he forgot to bite his fingernails. However, when I was through, or thought I was through, he wanted even more details than Murfin had demanded although Vullo didn’t seem to find it at all strange that I could recognize one of my mother’s old silver spoons. But then Roger Vullo had had silver spoons in his house when he was a kid.
One of the details that Vullo was especially interested in was how Max Quane had looked as he had crawled from the bathroom into the living room to die on the cheap green rug.
“He didn’t say anything before he died?” Vullo asked.
“No. He was pretty far gone.”
“Not a word?”
“No.”
“Poor Quane,” Vullo said and I think that was the only expression of sympathy or regret that I ever heard him make about Max Quane.
It was Murfin who broached the subject of paying me half of my ten-thousand-dollar fee in advance. Vullo listened quietly to my reasoning although he started nibbling at his fingernails again. The little finger on his left hand seemed to be giving him particular trouble. When I was through with my pitch, he picked up his phone, spoke quietly into it, and then looked at me after he hung it up. “The check will be in shortly, Mr. Longmire.”
“Thank you.”
“You really do feel that you might be in some danger?”
“I hope not, but there may be the possibility.”
“How does it make you feel?” he said. I thought it was a strange question, but when I looked at him carefully I could detect only real interest, although it may have contained a trace of prurience.
“Nervous,” I said. “Watchful. Apprehensive. Perhaps even a little frightened.”
“Paranoiac?”
“Maybe, a little, but I don’t really think so.”
Vullo nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I’ve never been in any real danger that I can think of. It must be interesting.”
“Yes,” I said. “Extremely.”
“Now, then,” he said, all brisk business again, “this trip to St. Louis. When do you think you might go?”
I looked at Murfin. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, tomorrow. They aren’t going to bury old Max until day after tomorrow. We ought to be back in time.” He looked at Vullo and then asked in the tone of a man who has just been struck by an absolutely brilliant idea. “How’d you like to be a pallbearer at Max’s funeral?”
The idea caused Vullo to make a savage attack on his right thumbnail with his teeth. When he had won he looked up at Murfin and said without a trace of regret, “I’m extremely sorry, but I really don’t think that my relationship with Quane was quite that personal.”
“That’s the trouble,” Murfin said with a sigh. “I can’t find anybody who thinks they and Max had anything personal going.”
“Surely Mr. Longmire knew Quane quite well.”
“Harvey?” Murfin said. “Harvey don’t go to funerals.”
That was a new fact and new facts always interested Vullo. He looked at me and said, “Why not?”
“I no longer do things that I don’t like to do, if I can avoid doing them. I can avoid going to funerals. So I don’t.”
Vullo thought that over and to help his thoughts along he bit the nail on his right index finger. “I think I find that a rather irresponsible attitude,” he said finally.