“That’s a safe prediction,” Corsing said.
“Okay,” the Candidate said, “who’s back of it?”
“That’s simple,” I said. “Find out what happened to Arch Mix and you’ll probably find who’s back of it.”
“The FBI isn’t having much luck, is it?”
“Not much,” I said. “None, in fact.”
“You going to eat your french fries?” the Candidate said.
“No.”
“Good.” He reached over and took three or four and crammed them into his mouth. “Gallops must know,” he said.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “He may be just a tool.”
“The unwitting kind?”
“Who knows? Maybe somebody’s paying him a little money. Or maybe he’s just ambitious. Try this one on. Suppose Gallops came to you about September first and said, ‘There won’t be any strike if you put it in writing that you’ll make me Secretary of Labor.’”
The Candidate didn’t reject the idea out of hand. He thought about it first as he reached for the rest of my french fries. “I’ll deny it if it ever gets out of this room, but if that were to be the price, I might agree to pay it.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think somebody’s steering Gallops.”
“Them?” he asked.
“No,” Corsing said. “They wouldn’t do it. They’re too busy trying to make everyone forget Watergate.”
“If I didn’t know better,” the Candidate said, “I’d say that some of those nuts out at the CIA are up to their old tricks.”
“How about the Mafia or whatever they’re calling it nowadays?” I said.
The Candidate thought about it. “What’s their angle?”
“Extortion,” I said. “The cities will leave them alone to operate wide open in exchange for no strikes.”
“Any proof?”
“None.”
He shook his head. “Put it down to paranoia, if you want to, but I think the stakes are higher than that. I think they’re playing for the presidency.”
“Have you got any idea of who they might be?” I said.
He shook his head again. “None. Do you?”
“It’s somebody with a lot of money,” I said, “although they might not know how it’s being spent. In fact, they might not want to know.”
“That’s cryptic,” he said.
“It was meant to be.”
“You’ve got an idea?”
“Possibly,” I said, “but that’s all it is.”
“But there’s a chance?”
“I’m not sure it’s even that.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“No.”
“Harvey?”
“Yes?”
“If whatever you’re up to somehow prevents these strikes, I’ll be grateful.”
“I should hope so,” I said.
“How’d you like to be White House press secretary?”
“Not very much,” I said. “Not any at all, in fact.”
Chapter Twenty
After I dropped Senator Corsing off at his office I found a pay phone and called Slick. Once again I got his answering service who informed me that he now was expected to return around four. I looked at my watch and saw that it was one-forty. I thought a moment, then picked up the phone book and looked up a number. The number that I looked up belonged to Douglas Chanson, the headhunter. With much reluctance, he agreed to give me ten minutes at two o’clock.
If I had to go down to an office every morning, which is a recurring bad dream that I have about two or three times a month, I suppose I would prefer it to be like the one that Douglas Chanson had on Jefferson Place, a one-block street that runs between Eighteenth and Nineteenth just north of M Street.
It’s a quiet block consisting mostly of narrow, brightly painted, three-story townhouses with a number of trees and lots of small, highly polished brass plates that discreetly announce the names of those who do business there. There were quite a few lawyers on the block, but some of the brass plates simply gave a name with no indication of the profession that went with it, and I liked to think that these unnamed professions were mysterious and perhaps even a bit nefarious.
Douglas Chanson Associates had such a brass plate above the doorbell of a three-story townhouse that was painted a rich cream color with black trim. I tried the door, but it was locked, so I rang the bell. There was an answering buzz and I went in and found myself in what probably used to be the foyer but was now a reception area presided over by a young, slim brown-haired woman with green eyes.
She looked at me and then at her watch. “You’d be Mr. Longmire.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re early.”
“To be early is to be on time,” I said, a little sententiously.
“To be early means you’ll have to wait a few minutes,” she said. “Here. Fill this out.” She moved a small form across her desk. I picked it up and read it. The form wanted my name, my spouse’s name, my occupation, my business address, my home address, my business and home phones, and my Social Security number.
I put it back down on the desk. “The name is Harvey Longmire,” I said. “And I’m not looking for a job.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Mr. Chanson still likes the information for his records.”
“My address is a post office box, my phone is unlisted, I don’t remember my Social Security number, and this week my occupation is beekeeper.”
She grinned at me. It was a saucy kind of grin. “We don’t get much call for beekeepers. What do you really do?”
“For the record?”
“Just curiosity.”
“As little as possible.”
“Does it pay anything?”
“Not much.”
“Enough to buy me a drink at the Embers at say, five-thirty?”
“Why don’t we make it at my place at six. You’ll like my wife. Her name’s Hecuba.”
She grinned again. “Well, I tried.” She picked up the phone and punched a button. “Mr. Longmire, the beekeeper, is here.” She listened and then she said. “He says he’s a beekeeper. I don’t.” There was another pause and then she said, “All right,” and hung up the phone. “Right through there,” she said, indicating a pair of sliding double doors.
I started for them and she said, “Her name’s not really Hecuba, is it?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “She was named after her Uncle Priam’s first wife.”
She was writing it all down on the form as I slid back the sliding doors and went in. What I entered wasn’t an office or even a study. Rather, it was somebody’s impression of what the number two reception room of a turn-of-the-century London club must have been like. There was a fireplace with a fire that crackled in August and for a moment I wondered why I wanted to go over and warm my hands in front of it until I realized that the temperature in the room had been brought down to about sixty or sixty-five degrees by air conditioning.
There was no desk in the room, just an oak library table against one dark-paneled wall. The drapes were of plum velvet and the carpet was a deep mauve color. In front of the street windows were a couple of comfortable-looking wing-backed leather chairs with a small table in between them. The chairs would be nice to sit in after a good lunch and watch it rain on the pedestrians. There was also a couch or two in the room, one of which looked like it would be just right for an afternoon nap. Flanking the fireplace was a cane-backed settee and a deep leather armchair that a man was sitting in, an open grey file on his lap. He looked up at me, put the file down on a table that held a 1908-type telephone, and got up. He didn’t offer to shake hands; instead he nodded at me, and gestured that I should sit on the settee.
He was about forty-five or fifty, I decided, although it was hard to tell because of the brown beard that was formed by a moustache that ran back down his cheeks to join his long sideburns, leaving his chin bare. I couldn’t remember what that particular style of beard was called, but I remembered from old photographs that it had been popular during the latter part of Victoria’s reign.