“We stole that from the National Geographic,” Quane said.
“What’re you going to call yours?” I said. “The Paranoia Review?”
“Nah,” Murfin said. “I came up with the title, as a matter of fact. We’re gonna call it The Vullo Report.”
“That’s catchy.”
“Vullo likes it,” Quane said.
“I bet.”
There was a pause and then Murfin cleared his throat and said, “Harvey.”
“What?”
“Vullo thinks Quane here and me are pretty hot shit.”
“So do I.”
“I mean he doesn’t know — well, every last detail about us.”
I smiled politely and said nothing.
“What I’m saying,” Murfin went on, “is that this is a pretty nice deal and we don’t want it fucked up.”
“You should know by now that I won’t dump on you.”
Murfin smiled his blackguard’s smile again. “Well, hell, we know that. I just thought I’d mention it.”
“How much does Vullo know about me?”
This time Murfin frowned and it made him look serious and grave and almost guileless. But not quite. “Well, you know, we had to tell him quite a bit.”
“What’s quite a bit,” I said, “everything?”
“Damn near,” Quane said.
“And what did Vullo say?”
Murfin quit frowning and started smiling. I almost wished that he had gone on frowning. “He said he thought you sounded fascinating.”
“Well, what the hell,” I said. “I am.”
Chapter Three
Roger Vullo bit his fingernails. He bit them so often and so thoroughly that the quicks had moved down at least a quarter of an inch from the tips of his fingers. In fact, he had very little nail left and I concluded he must have been biting them all his life.
I probably had read somewhere why people bite their fingernails, but I couldn’t recall it so I resolved to look it up. I also decided that while I was at it I would see whether I could find out something about another bad habit, which was the one that Mary Jane Wynne had had in the fourth grade, although hers may have been unique.
Mary Jane picked her nose and saved the treasures in a penny matchbox. She took them home after school, put sugar on them, and ate them. It should have been a secret vice, but Mary Jane bragged about it, and all of us in the fourth grade were very much in awe of her.
I was noticing Vullo’s fingernails and thinking about Mary Jane so I didn’t pay much attention to what Vullo and Murfin were saying because they were discussing some administrative problem. I perked up only when Vullo said, “That’s all, Murfin. Out.”
It was a peremptory dismissal, rude in its curtness, arrogant in its phrasing, and delivered in a tone that is usually reserved for dismissing army privates, indentured servants, and maybe even rotten little kids.
Murfin had brought me into Vullo’s office, introduced us, and I had sat down in a chair although nobody had invited me to. Murfin had remained standing while he and Vullo discussed their problem and I had admired Vullo’s fingernails and remembered Mary Jane.
Now Murfin had been abruptly dismissed and I thought I saw his back stiffen. But when he turned to leave he winked and grinned at me so I assumed that Vullo spoke to all the help like that and probably had since he was five.
I decided that Roger Vullo had treated himself to either the fifth or sixth largest office in Washington, possibly even the fourth. It also looked as though the decorator had been admonished to fill the room with an air of rich, permanent grandeur and hang the cost. Vullo ran things from behind a huge, gleaming desk that was at least two centuries old. During all those years it must have been waxed daily. Perhaps even twice daily. Jutting out from the desk was a narrow refectory table, long enough for two dozen Spanish monks to have dined around once, possibly five hundred years ago. I assumed that it was now used for staff conferences.
The rest of the furniture was mostly solid, leather stuff, including the chair that I sat in, the sixteen chairs around the refectory table, the divan against one wall, and the three wing-backed chairs that went with it. The place had the pleasant, mildly pungent smell of a shoe repair shop.
On the floor was a thick beige carpet and covering the walls was something that looked like pale burlap, but probably wasn’t because burlap would have been too cheap. One wall was lined with old leatherbound books, but I was too far away to read their titles. The wall opposite the books was hung with a series of Daumier drawings, six in all, and for all I knew they may have been the originals. Vullo could probably afford them. I rapidly was becoming convinced that he could afford almost anything.
The only thing that clashed with the decor was Vullo himself and, now that I think about it, me. After Murfin had gone Vullo sat slumped in his chair behind the immense desk staring at me coolly, maybe even coldly, with narrowed hazel eyes that seemed shrewd, clever, and possibly even brilliant. He quit staring only when he remembered that it was time to bite his fingernails.
He gave his right thumb a couple of fierce nips, admired the results, and said, “You live on a farm now.” It was an accusation the way he said it.
I decided that I might as well confess, so I said, “That’s right.”
“Near Harpers Ferry.”
“Yes.”
“John Brown.”
“Lee, too.”
“Lee?”
“Robert E. Lee,” I said. “He was a U.S. colonel then and he led the detachment of marines that wounded Brown and then captured him.”
“I didn’t remember that it was Lee.”
“Not everybody does.”
“They hanged him, didn’t they?”
“Brown? They hanged him all right. They captured him on October eighteenth and hanged him on December second.”
“What year was that?”
“1859.”
“He was quite mad, wasn’t he? Brown.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Everybody says so, but I’m not so sure. He was a fanatic anyway and maybe all fanatics are a little nuts. Crazy or not, they hanged him.”
Vullo abruptly lost interest in John Brown. He went back to me. “What do you grow on your farm?”
“Vegetables, clover, goats, honey, and Christmas trees.”
Vullo nodded as if all that were perfectly logical. But he needed more details. He would probably always need more details and that may have been why he had hired Murfin. They were two kindred spirits who could feast on a handful of details.
Suddenly Vullo frowned and it made him appear dubious and even a bit petulant. He looked as if he had just found out that I had lied to him. He had a lean, hollowed-out face with a bony chin and a nose so sharp and thin that I wondered if he had trouble breathing through it. His cheekbones seemed to be straining to be let out and his mouth was a small, pale, tight line about an inch long. It was a sullen, pinched-in face, wary and bitter, the kind that is sometimes worn either by slum kids or very rich old men.
“You don’t raise honey,” he said, catching me out in my lie.
“No,” I said, “you keep bees. We have four hives.”
“What kind of honey do they make?”
“Clover honey with a little goldenrod mixed in. It’s light colored and mild although the goldenrod adds a bit of tang.”
“Do they sting you?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ve never been stung by a bee. Does it hurt?”
I shrugged. “You get used to it. You build up an immunity and after a while they don’t bother you. The stings, I mean. The first thing you learn is not to wear blue jeans. Bees hate blue jeans.”
Now that was a detail he really liked. He liked it so much that he jotted it down on a pad. While he was making his note, he said, “How many goats do you keep?”