Yellow-Dog Contract

Chapter Twenty-Two

I didn’t count the money. I didn’t even look at it. I simply picked up one of the suitcases and put it in the trunk of the black Ford that was parked in the basement garage of Vullo’s building. The suitcase was heavy. About forty pounds. Slick put the other one in the trunk and then slammed the lid shut.

“Will you drive?” he said.

“Sure.”

There was a long red light at the corner of M and Connecticut. I used the time to roll a cigarette. I was just pushing the lighter in when the signal changed. I turned the corner, the lighter popped out, I lit my cigarette, and said, “I thought he was dead.”

“Mix?”

“Yes.”

“So did I, dear boy, until just a few hours ago.”

“You told me there was a chance he might be alive. A tiny chance, I think you said. What happened, did you get a tip?”

“It was a little more than a tip,” he said.

“Are you going to tell me about it or do you want me to beg?”

“It was a phone call. It was from a black woman — or a woman who was trying to sound black.”

“What’d she say?”

“She wanted to know how much the union would pay to find out what had happened to Arch Mix. Well, there’s the one-hundred-thousand reward that the union’s offering, but when I told her about it she said it wasn’t enough.”

“How much did she want?”

“She said she wanted two hundred thousand. I told her that was a great deal of money and that I would have to check with the union first. She asked how long that would take. I said at least four or five hours. She said she wasn’t talking about that. She was talking about how long it would take before she could get the money. I said at least twenty-four hours, possibly forty-eight. She said, and I’ll try to quote her exactly now, ‘He’d be dead by then.’ Then she said she’d call me back and hung up. She never called back.”

“When was all this?”

Slick thought about it for a moment as though trying to pinpoint it exactly. “It was mid-morning of the day that we had the picnic in Dupont Circle. About ten thirty.”

“The same day that Sally Raines got killed.”

“Yes.”

“And this was the tiny chance you told me about that Mix might still be alive.”

“That’s right.”

“You ever tell the cops about it?”

“Yesterday,” Slick said. “I told them yesterday.”

“What’d they say?”

“That it was probably a crank call. There’ve been a lot of them.”

“It’s funny,” I said.

“What?”

“That they’d mention the same amount of money.”

“Who?”

“The woman who called you and Max Quane. Max told his wife that he was about to pull off some deal that would net him two hundred thousand. Max was shacked up with Sally Raines. Just before he got killed Max called me, half petrified, and said he thought he knew what had happened to Mix. A woman called you and told you the same thing, except that she implied that Mix was still alive. She also talked about two hundred thousand dollars. But the woman never called back — possibly because she was Sally who got shot to death that same afternoon, but not before leaving half a word that everybody seems to think is a vital clue.”

“A what?” Slick said.

“A vital clue. It’s what the police are always finding except that Ward Murfin found this one. It supported what I call Longmire’s Yellow-Dog Contract Theory, which isn’t much of a theory anymore.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell me about your vital clue first, dear boy.”

“It was on a wadded-up piece of paper that was found in Sally’s room just before she got killed. It was one word. Chad. I thought it meant Chaddi Jugo.”

“Ah!” Slick said.

“You remember Chaddi.”

“Indeed.”

“That was your show, wasn’t it, Slick, dumping Chaddi?”

“I was merely on the periphery.”

“I thought you thought it up.”

“I was only in on the initial planning.”

“Which was why you got me to go work for Hundermark.”

“It was the start of a brand new career for you.”

“Sure. Well, anyway Arch Mix once mentioned to Audrey that he wasn’t going to let them do what they did to Chaddi Jugo — or something like that. Audrey remembers telling Sally that so she probably told Max Quane. I thought Max — and possibly Sally — had figured out who killed Arch Mix and why.”

“That was the basis of your Yellow-Dog Theory?” Slick said.

“Yellow-Dog Contract Theory.”

“I thought those contracts were against the law.”

“If my theory proved correct, they’d rewrite the law. My theory was that Arch Mix had been killed so that the PEU could strike ten or twelve of the biggest cities in the nation and create such a voter backlash that the Republicans would be guaranteed another four-year lease on the White House.”

Slick thought it over. “I can’t say that I object to the outcome, but the means seem a bit gamey.”

“They might even take the House of Representatives.”

“Another decided improvement.”

“You always did have funny politics, Slick.”

“Just soundly conservative. A few of us are, dear boy.”

“Of course there’s still a certain amount of validity to my theory.”

“In what way?”

“If whoever kidnapped Arch Mix doesn’t let him go, then those strikes are going to take place.”

“Unless—” Slick seemed to lapse into thought without finishing his sentence.

“Unless what?” I said.

“Unless, dear boy, the strikes were all Arch Mix’s idea in the first place.”

We drove into the Safeway parking lot at five minutes until four and parked the Ford about halfway toward the rear of the building. I handed Slick the keys and he opened the glove compartment and took out a plain sheet of 8½ x 11-inch paper. He gave me back the keys and I put them underneath the accelerator.

We got out of the car and Slick put the white sheet of paper underneath the windshield wiper. He looked at me. “Well, shall we take a cab?”

“Let’s wait a few minutes,” I said.

“I don’t think that would be wise, Harvey.”

“Mix didn’t say not to watch who picked up the car. He just said that we shouldn’t waste our time because whoever picks it up won’t know anything. I’m curious.”

Slick looked around. “I still don’t think it’s wise, but if you insist, let’s at least make ourselves a little less obvious.”

“What do you suggest?” I said. “After all, you used to do this for a living.”

“You have some curious ideas about my former calling.”

“Romantic notions, really.”

“I suggest that we go stand with those other people over there by the entrance.”

Some housewives were standing with their loaded shopping carts near the entrance of the store waiting for their husbands to drive up and put the groceries into their cars. Slick and I moved over and joined them.

At one minute past four a Yellow Cab pulled up in the driveway to the parking lot and discharged its passenger. He paid off the driver and started walking down a row of cars, turning his head from side to side. A few moments later he spotted the black Ford. He opened the door and felt underneath the accelerator for the keys. Then he removed the sheet of white paper from underneath the windshield wiper. He didn’t bother to unlock the trunk and open the suitcase and count the money. Instead, he got into the car, started the engine, backed it out, and drove right past us as he headed for the Connecticut Avenue exit.

When he had got out of the cab I had got a good look at him. He was dark brown, slimly built, about six feet tall, and all of eighteen years old.

“They picked him up off the street,” Slick said.

“You think so?”

“They probably paid him his cab fare and twenty dollars to pick up the car. They’ve probably got somebody on him to see if he’s being followed.”

“Then what?”

“He’ll probably stop and make a phone call — to another pay phone. They’ll tell him where to go next. It could go on like that for quite a while until they’re sure that there’s no one on his tail.”

“Clever,” I said.

“Crude, really, but effective.”

“I wonder what their next move will be?”

Slick shook his head. “I have the feeling that we’ve heard the last of them. They’ll probably wait until late tonight before they release Mix.”

“Unless they kill him first.”

“That’s right,” Slick said. “Unless they kill him first.”