“We’ll let you know,” Murfin said.
“Well, I guess I better go find a seat.”
“Nice seeing you, Hazie,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said with a note of surprise, “it was sorta nice, wasn’t it?”
Freddie Koontz liked to make speeches, probably because he was very good at it. The one that he was making to the forty or forty-five members of the Public Employees Union was full of dire warnings about how an unjustified strike would affect their economic future. He made it sound grim.
“Lemme tell you something,” he said in his speech-making voice, which was a mild roar. “I’m not against us public employees striking. I’ve walked as many picket lines as any man or woman in this room. I’ve had my head split open by goon squads and I thought it was worth it because it helped build the union. But the strike they’re talking about now ain’t gonna build your union, it’s gonna bust it.”
“You tell ’em, Freddie!” It was a woman’s voice, slurred but loud, and I didn’t have to look to know that it belonged to Hazie Harrison. There’s usually at least one drunk at every union meeting, and this was no exception.
“The city’s in rotten shape,” Freddie Koontz went on, ignoring Hazie, “and it got that way because the politicians who run it are dumb managers. You know that and I know it and about the only people who don’t know how dumb these guys really are are the people who vote for them. Well, lemme tell you something, certain ones of these politicians ain’t so dumb that they won’t welcome a strike with open arms. You wanta know why? I’ll tell you why. Because then they’ll have themselves a whipping boy to blame all the city’s problems on, and that whipping boy is gonna be you, the members of Council Twenty-one of the Public Employees Union, AFL–CIO.”
That got a splatter of applause and another strident call from Hazie to, “Tell it like it is, Freddie!”
And Koontz did, or at least he told it as he thought it was. He warned that a strike would lead to a voter reaction at the polls which could set the union’s organizational efforts back thirty years. He spoke of increased workloads because of layoffs by attrition and by firings. He counseled the members that collective bargaining was their best bet, and if the bargaining process broke down, they should demand compulsory arbitration instead of a strike.
“Lemme tell you something about this here compulsory arbitration,” he said. “If we got a dispute with the city, well, the city’s gonna be just as scared of what might come out of compulsory arbitration as we are. Shit, they don’t know what kind of a deal might come out of it. Maybe they’d have to pay more than they would if they sat down with us and hammered out a contract. And that fear of the unknown is what we oughta count on. Because it’ll drive the city back to the bargaining table and make ’em work out a settlement that we can both live with.
“Now if that don’t happen and we go out on this strike that they’re talking about, well, a lot of you people right here in this room aren’t gonna have jobs to go back to when the strike’s over. And the ones who do have jobs to go back to might be given a little piece of paper to sign. And you wanta know what that little piece of paper is gonna be? Well, I’ll tell you. That little piece of paper is gonna be a yellow-dog contract and that’ll be the end of your union because the city’ll have you by the balls.”
Koontz was just going into his peroration when the six men came in. They looked cool and hard and confident. They were also young, mostly in their late twenties or early thirties, and they had a look-alike quality about them, probably because of the dark suits they wore.
They came in quietly and scattered themselves through the audience. Koontz went on with his speech until one of them called out, “Hey, Freddie, I think you’re full of shit.”
Koontz stopped his speech and stared at the man who sat in the third row. It wasn’t the first time Freddie Koontz had been heckled.
“Well, maybe you oughta know, pal, because you sound like you got a mouth full of it.”
“Hey, Freddie,” another one of them called out, “is it it true you and the mayor are still sleeping together?”
Freddie shifted his gaze to his new interrogator. “If I went in for boys, Rollo, I’d pick one with a real sweet little candy-ass like yours.”
“Why don’t you shut up and let Freddie talk?” This came from Hazie Harrison who was now on her feet, swaying a little, and glaring balefully at one of the hecklers who had taken a seat beside her. The heckler used his foot to turn over an empty chair. The chair fell in front of Hazie. She stumbled against it, lost her balance, and went down in a heap on the floor. It was a nasty fall and a murmur went through the crowd. One man said, “Why don’t you guys knock it off?” but he said it weakly.
The hecklers started tipping over the empty chairs then. Finally, one union member, a slim young black, rose and went up to the heckler who seemed to be the ringleader. The black said, “Look, all we’re trying to do is hold a nice, peaceful meeting. If you wanta stay, you gotta behave.”
The ringleader was about six feet tall with cold, wet blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair that was trying to curl itself into ringlets. He looked hard and well-muscled. He smiled once at the black and even from where I sat I could see that his teeth were white and shiny and even. The blond man said something to the black, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Whatever it was made the black swing at him, but the black’s blow didn’t connect because the blond man ducked it easily. The blond man then smiled again and hit the black hard in the stomach. He hit him twice. The black went whoosh and then sank to his knees as he doubled over and clutched his stomach.
The blond man looked around the room and said, “Folks, I think this meeting’s just about over, don’t you?”
Murfin turned to look at me. I saw the question in his eyes and I nodded. Murfin got up and moved over to the blond man with the cold blue eyes who now was nudging the bent-over black with his toe. Murfin’s right hand rested in his hip pocket.
“Excuse me, sir,” Murfin said, “but I think these folks would sorta like to go on with their meeting.”
“Who asked you?” the blond man said.
“Well, I guess what I’m saying is that I think you guys oughta leave.” Murfin smiled just a little as he said it. I stood up and started toward Murfin, an empty bottle of Falstaff in my right hand.
The blond man looked Murfin up and down carefully. The five other hecklers moved quickly across the room and formed a half circle behind the blond man. I glanced at Freddie Koontz who still stood behind the podium. Freddie gave me a small, almost imperceptible nod.
“You think we ought to leave, huh?” the blond man said to Murfin.
“Yes, sir, I think you should,” Murfin said and smiled his polite little smile again.
“Well, here’s what I think,” the blond man said and threw a hard left at Murfin’s throat. Murfin did a small, almost tiny dance step, ducked a little, and the left sailed past his right ear. The blond man just had time to look a bit puzzled before Murfin’s right hand came out of his hip pocket. In the hand was a woven leather blackjack. Murfin smashed the blackjack against the blond man’s upper left arm. The blond man howled and clutched the arm.
The five other hecklers started moving toward Murfin who stood, half crouched, waving the blackjack back and forth with his right hand, beckoning the hecklers on with his left. I cracked the bottle of Falstaff against the back of a folding metal chair. It shattered, leaving me with the top half of the bottle and some nicely jagged glass. A very wicked weapon. I moved up beside Murfin and let the hecklers look at the sharp, shiny edges of the jagged glass.