“Not the Democrats,” I said.
“Not fuckin’ likely. If they don’t carry the big cities, then they don’t carry the big states, and if they don’t carry New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, and at least a couple of others, they’re fuckin’ dead come November second, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Murfin wagged his head from side to side in sheer admiration. “It’s sure a sweetheart, isn’t it?” Suddenly something seemed to bother him because his mouth went down at the corners and he wrinkled his forehead. “What I can’t figure out is who the hell’s steering it? It’s not Gallops all by himself. He couldn’t put something like this together. Not Warner B-for-Baxter Gallops.”
“No,” I said, “he probably couldn’t.”
“And it sure as shit couldn’t be the fuckin’ CIA again.”
I shook my head. “No, it’d be a little rich even for them, especially just now.”
“And the Republicans wouldn’t wanta take a chance on something like this, not with Watergate still hanging over them.”
“I don’t think they’d do it even if they knew how, although if it works, they’re going to be the principal beneficiaries.”
“You got any ideas?” Murfin said.
“I don’t, but I think I know somebody who might.”
“Who?”
“My Uncle Slick.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“I’m not sure that he has anything to do with it, but he might have some interesting notions. Especially since dumping Chaddi Jugo was all his idea to begin with.”
Chapter Eighteen
The international order of Oddfellows Hall was about six blocks from The Feathered Nest bar and grill in a not particularly fashionable section of downtown St. Louis.
It was a two-story brick building with a flat front. Downstairs was the bar and card-gaming area and upstairs was the main hall, which was large enough to seat probably 500 persons if all the chairs were up, which they weren’t. Only fifty or sixty folding chairs had been set up in five or six rows in front of the speaker’s podium. The podium rested on a long table.
By the time Murfin and I arrived and took seats in the rear there were twenty or twenty-five union members in the room, about three quarters of them men. Freddie Koontz, still in his grey leisure suit, was behind the podium in earnest conversation with a small band of members. There was much vigorous headshaking and nodding and when he wanted to make a point, Freddie Koontz liked to use two fingers to drive it home into his listener’s chest.
Most of the members had stopped in at the bar downstairs and bought bottles of beer which they sipped from as they sat waiting for the meeting to begin. When Murfin saw the beer he asked me if I wanted one. I told him yes and he went downstairs and returned with a couple of bottles of Falstaff.
We were drinking the beer and watching the members dribble into the meeting when the woman came through the door. Murfin dug me in the ribs with his elbow. “Remember her?” he said.
“Jesus,” I said. “She’s changed.”
“She’s just older.”
“She sure as hell is.”
The woman must have been forty-six and looked it, but when I had first met her, a dozen years before, she had been thirty-four and looked twenty-five. Or maybe twenty-eight. Her name was Hazie Harrison and in 1964 her vote at the forthcoming convention was considered to be worth a special trip to St. Louis. I had been the one who got to make the trip.
She had been blond then and she was blond now, but that was almost all that had stayed the same. In 1964 she had been slender and willowy, but now she was chubby, if not fat, and her once pretty face sagged at the jowls and wrinkled around her eyes.
She stood in the doorway to the hall and the drink she held in her hand was almost dark enough to be ice tea, although I was pretty sure that it wasn’t tea, but nearly straight bourbon instead. I remembered that she had liked bourbon. She stood there in the doorway and looked about the room as if seeking someone to sit next to. Her gaze ran by Murfin and me, stopped, and backed up. She dug a pair of glasses out of her purse, put them on, and looked at us again. She smiled, put the glasses back in her purse, and started toward us.
“She saw you,” Murfin said out of the corner of his mouth.
“It’s you that she has the real memories of,” I said.
When she reached us she said, “Well, well, well, well, and well. If it’s not Harvey Longmire and Wardie Murfin.”
Murfin and I were up by then and I said, “How are you, Hazie?” Murfin lied and said, “You’re looking great.”
“I look like shit,” she said. “I thought you guys were dead, but apparently you aren’t, although with Ward here it’d be sort of hard to tell on account of he wasn’t too much of a fuck as I remember, at least not like you, Harvey.”
“You haven’t changed, have you, Hazie,” I said.
“Why should I?”
“No reason.”
She cocked her head to one side and ran an appraising eye over me. “You look a little older, Harvey, but that’s about all except for that moustache. I think it’s kinda cute.”
“Thanks.”
“Does it tickle down you know where?”
“My wife says it doesn’t.”
“You’re married, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“You know how many times I been married now?”
“At last count it was two.”
“It’s five now and I might make it six. I got this old guy lined up who thinks I give terrific head.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said.
She giggled. “You oughta know.” She looked at Murfin. “You, too, baby.”
“Best in St. Louis,” Murfin said.
She nodded gravely and I could see that she was more than just a little drunk. “That’s what I was, wasn’t I? The best fuck in St. Louis. Guys used to come from all over — from Chicago, Denver, Omaha, all over — just to find out if it was true and every man jack of ’em told me it was.” She looked at me and smiled and I saw that there was a lot more gold in her smile than there had been.
“You remember that time you flew all the way out from D.C. to romance me into splitting off from Freddie and Arch Mix and going with Hundermark at the convention?”
“I remember,” I said.
“It was 1964, right?”
“Right.”
“We stayed up all night, didn’t we?”
“All night.”
“Then the next morning we called Murfin here and got him up out of bed in Washington.”
“My wife liked that,” Murfin said. “She liked it a lot.”
“Then at the convention,” she said to Murfin, “you took over to make sure that I stayed in line.”
“It was pure pleasure,” Murfin said.
“And I did, too, didn’t I,” she said. “I told you I’d go with Hundermark and I did because I always do what I say I’m gonna do. I never go back on my word. Never.”
“You’re tops, Hazie,” Murfin said.
“You guys back with the union?” she said and swayed a little.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“They’re talking about a strike. I don’t want no fuckin’ strike. Strikes are dumb.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Murfin said.
“I been with the tax assessor’s office twenty-three years and we haven’t had any fuckin’ strike yet. But all you hear about now is strike.”
“Maybe they won’t have one,” I said, just to be saying something.
“Well, I sure don’t want one. All I wanta do is have a little fun.” She winked at me and then at Murfin. “How about later, after the meeting, you guys gonna be busy?”
“We’ve got to catch a plane, Hazie,” I said.
“That’s too bad. But if you change your plans, lemme know. I got a girl friend who’s real neat.”