“That’s right,” I said.
“They didn’t think that Mix would go along with it if he got elected and found out?”
“They were right, too. The second thing that Mix did when he won the presidency was to dissolve the PWI, or at least dissolve the union’s ties with it.”
“What was the first thing he did?”
“He fired me — except that I’d already quit. But Mix fired me anyway, at least in the newspapers. Then he fired Murfin and Quane.”
“Mix didn’t care for you, did he?”
“No.”
“Did you know him well?”
“Probably better than anybody, except possibly his wife. By that I mean that I had studied him — the way that you might study an insect or something that lives in a tidepool.”
“You didn’t like him?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t like him or dislike him. I studied him so that I’d be able to predict his moves and his reactions to whatever moves I made.”
“You make it sound like a chess game.”
“It wasn’t any game. It was more like a fight. Or a battle, I suppose.”
“And you ran Hundermark’s campaign?”
“With the help of Murfin and Quane. The rest of the staff were mostly hangers-on that Hundermark had accumulated over the years. They tended to panic.”
“But Murfin and Quane didn’t?”
“No. They’re not the type to panic.”
“Wasn’t Hundermark of any help?”
I started to tell him about Hundermark, but then I decided not to. Hundermark was dead and Vullo was paying me to tell him about Mix, not Hundermark. But it came back to me then, at least some of it, especially the night that I had gone up to Hundermark’s office to tell him there was a fifty-fifty chance that he was going to get dumped.
He had sat there at his desk, a portly, pleasant, soft-looking man with rimless glasses who had never been able to bring himself to be one of the boys. He was something of a joke at AFL–CIO headquarters. Meany had despised him and Reuther had pitied him and I hadn’t been sure which was worse.
“I just talked to Murfin and Quane,” I had said. “We haven’t quite got it. We’re about two or three votes short. Maybe even four.”
Hundermark had nodded thoughtfully and smiled gently. “Oh, I think we’ll be all right,” he had said. Then he had reached into his inside pocket and brought out a letter and unfolded it. He had read the letter silently, nodding to himself in a curiously comfortable, gentle sort of way.
“This letter,” he had said, “is from my practitioner.” Hundermark was a Christian Scientist.
“He assures me that the forces of good will overcome the forces of evil.”
“Well,” I’d said, “maybe you’d better see if those forces of good can scratch up another ten thousand dollars.”
Hundermark had smiled gently again. “Well, yes, I’m sure that they will be able to do that.”
The forces of good, although I didn’t know it, had been the CIA, of course, and it had promptly come up with the ten thousand, all cash, which I had spent as wisely and well as I knew how. But the forces of evil won by four votes anyway and Hundermark was out of a job and sometimes I wondered if later he had ever discussed the mystery of it all with his practitioner.
Vullo didn’t want to talk about Hundermark anymore. He wanted to talk about me. “What happened to you after you got fired?”
“I quit,” I said.
“I mean quit.”
“I came down with mononucleosis and got an offer to jump into a senatorial campaign to see whether I could turn it around in the last four weeks. Or maybe three. I did and the guy won and paid me a lot of money and I paid off most of my farm and went to England.”
“What did you do in England?”
“I lay down for a long time until the mono went away.”
“Then what?”
“I met my wife.”
“Is she English?”
“No.”
Vullo sat there as if he were waiting for me to tell him some more about Ruth, but when I didn’t he gave up and said, “You came back from England when?”
“Sixty-six.”
“And took on a couple of campaigns, I understand. One for the Senate and one for the House.”
“That’s right. Both sure losers.”
“But they didn’t lose.”
“No.”
“And you gained quite a reputation.”
It wasn’t a question so I didn’t say anything.
“Between 1966 and 1972 you took on thirteen Congressional and Senatorial campaigns and won twelve of them and each of them was what virtually everyone considered to be what you call a sure loser. I’m curious how you did it.”
“I knew where to look.”
“For what?”
“Dead bodies.”
“Time called you a political gunslinger.”
“Time still gets a little vivid.”
“And sometimes you hired Murfin and Quane.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you really think of those two?”
I thought about it. “I’d hire them again should the occasion arise, which it won’t.”
Vullo went back to work on his fingernails again. After a moment or two he stopped gnawing at them, looked up at me, and said, “I’ll make you a proposition.”
I nodded. There was no reason to say anything.
“Two weeks,” he said. “That’s all. I want you to spend two weeks on Arch Mix and then come up with a report on why you think he disappeared. Not why he disappeared, but why you think he did.” Vullo came down hard on the you. He was watching me carefully to see how I was taking it. I tried to have no expression at all.
“For your two weeks’ work,” he went on, “I’ll pay you—” He paused. I decided that he was something of an actor. “Ten thousand dollars.”
I had always wondered what my price was. Apparently it was ten thousand dollars for two weeks’ work because I said, “All right,” and then started planning how Ruth and I were going to spend quite a bit of money in Dubrovnik. I had heard that it’s really quite pleasant there in the fall.
Chapter Four
Vullo called both Murfin and Quane into his office, told them about the arrangement he had made with me, and instructed them to lend whatever assistance I might require. When Vullo mentioned the amount of money that I was to be paid for my fortnight’s effort, Murfin’s mouth abruptly went down at the corners in a look of frank appreciation. It sounded as if I’d pulled off something slippery and that made Murfin admire it.
I suggested rather politely, I thought, that Vullo call in a secretary and dictate a letter of understanding, which would, I pointed out, be mutually beneficial.
“He means he wants it in writing,” Quane said.
Vullo frowned, thought about it, chewed on a fingernail, and then rang for a secretary. When she came in he dictated the letter rapidly and didn’t object at all when I suggested a couple of phrases that I thought might be nice.
“You’ll want to wait for it, I suppose,” Vullo said.
I nodded and smiled. “Well, you know what the mails are.”
“Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting in Murfin’s office. He’ll give you a copy of our file on Mix.”
With that Vullo picked up some papers on his desk and lost himself in them. I was dismissed. I was not only dismissed, but I also seemed to have been forgotten.
Murfin grinned, shrugged, and jerked his head toward the door. I rose and followed him and Quane out and down the hall into Murfin’s office where he handed me a large manila envelope.
“That’s our stuff on Mix,” he said. “How’d you and Vullo get along?”
“Okay,” I said. “He seems a little remote. But he’s probably just shy.”
“He doesn’t believe in what he calls unnecessary social pleasantries,” Quane said. “He thinks they’re a waste of time. So he’s eliminated hello, good-bye, please, thank you and a lot of other stuff like that from his vocabulary. It must save him a couple of minutes a year. Maybe even more.”