Yellow-Dog Contract

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.”

“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.

“You two,” the blond man said to a couple of the hecklers. “Take out the guy with the blackjack.” The blond man was still clutching his left arm. “You other guys take out the one with the bottle.”

They started moving toward us carefully, but confidently, as if they had done this sort of thing often before. They probably had. They stopped suddenly at the sound of another bottle being smashed against a metal chair. Freddie Koontz appeared at my side, a broken beer bottle in his big right hand.

“Come on, you cocksuckers,” Freddie said.

The five hecklers hesitated for a moment until the blond man said, “There’re only three of them.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a big, heavy-set man in his forties rise from his chair, hitch up his pants over his belly, and move to Murfin’s side. “There’re four of us now,” the big man said.

Another man, frail-looking and grey-haired with glasses, got up, took out his spectacle case, put his glasses into it carefully, and then took up a position next to the big man with the belly. The frail-looking man didn’t say anything.

After that another man got up and joined us and then another and then seven or eight more until we outnumbered the hecklers more than two to one.

“Like I was saying,” Murfin said to the blond man, “these folks would sorta like to get on with their meeting, so I think you’d better haul ass outa here.”

The blond man didn’t say anything. Instead he gazed coolly at the union members who almost formed a half circle around him and his five look-alikes. The blond man, still clutching his left arm, jerked his head toward the door. The five other hecklers started to back toward it, never taking their eyes from the union members until they were halfway across the room. The blond man went with them. Then he stopped and looked back at Murfin and then at me. “I think I’ll remember you guys,” he said.

“I think you will, too,” Murfin said.

The blond man nodded thoughtfully, then turned, and followed the other five out of the room.

Murfin and Freddie Koontz and I had a final drink in The Feathered Nest bar and grill. Koontz hadn’t tried to get the meeting going again. Instead, he had let the members stand around and tell each other what they had seen and what heroes they had been. After they finally got tired of that, they went home.

Koontz now sat with us in a booth staring morosely into his glass of vodka and tonic. “That gave ’em a little boost,” he said finally, looking up at Murfin and me, “but it won’t last. They’ll get home and start thinking about it and wondering what might happen the next time if they’re damn fools enough to stick their necks out like that. Or they’ll start wondering about what might happen if a couple of those guys catch ’em somewheres by themselves.” He shook his head. “Well, at least you guys saw for yourselves.”

“Uh-huh,” Murfin said. “We saw.”

“Whaddya think?”

Murfin shrugged. “It don’t take much more than six guys like that, especially if they’ve got plenty of money.”

“They’ve got it,” Koontz said.

“So what I think is that you’re probably gonna have yourself a strike, if that’s what those six guys want.”

“It’s sure as shit what they want,” Koontz said. He looked at Murfin and me and then dropped his eyes to his drink again. “You guys couldn’t see your way clear to sort of stick around, could you?” He said it without hope, as though he knew what our answer would be.

“I don’t see how we could, do you, Harvey?” Murfin said.

“No,” I said. “It’s just not possible.”

“I didn’t think it would be,” Koontz said. His face screwed itself up into what seemed to be a painful expression and his mouth worked a little as though he wanted to say something that would make him hurt. Finally, he got it out. “I wantcha to know I appreciate what you guys did tonight. I’m much obliged.”

“Forget it, Freddie,” Murfin said. “Hell, me and Harvey enjoyed it. It was almost like old times, wasn’t it, Harvey?”

“Almost,” I said.