by Thomas Ross
“I let you talk.”
“You let me talk for fifteen minutes and then started fidgeting.”
“I made a mistake,” I said. “I didn’t know how serious it was. Mix wasn’t the first married man you’d busted up with.”
“I keep forgetting that I’m the whore of the eastern seaboard.”
“I said I made a mistake. A bad one.”
“I reckon that’s as close to an apology as you’re capable of,” she said. Sometimes my sister used reckon, sometimes guess. The reckon came from the South and the guess came from the North. Her voice was much like our mother’s which had had a French tinkle to it although, unlike our mother, Audrey had no accent except upper-income, undefinable American.
She drank a swallow of her Scotch and water and made another face. “How do people drink this stuff?”
“Practice,” I said. “It helps if you don’t start before breakfast.”
“They came to see me.”
“Who?”
“The cops.”
“How were the cops?” I said.
“Polite. Firm. Thorough. And puzzled, I reckon. Or maybe that’s just how they try to appear. I haven’t had too much experience with the police.”
“What about Mix?”
“What about him?”
“I mean how did he seem the last time you saw him?”
Audrey lit another of her long brown cigarettes. This time it seemed to taste better to her. “Noble,” she said. “He was being noble. Sad, noble and nervous.”
“You mean about going back to the kids and the little woman?”
She nodded slowly. “It’s strange how some men get after they turn forty or maybe fifty, especially if they marry early. They find something younger and perhaps prettier and they think it’s going to be their last chance so they grab it. But then they get guilty or scared or both and go back to where it was safe. Dull, perhaps, but safe.”
“You said he was nervous. Was there anything else that was worrying him?”
“If there was, he didn’t talk about it. We talked about Us and Art and Literature and Life. I tried to capitalize all those things, but I’m not sure I made it.”
“You did all right.”
“And sometimes he’d talk about Her. That’s capitalized, too.”
I nodded.
“Well, one time he said that shortly after he’d turned forty he woke up, rolled over, and realized that for fifteen years he’d been married to a stranger.”
“That’s not very noble.”
“But think of the sacrifice he made by going back to her.”
“She’s not all that bad.”
“Mother would have said coarse.”
“Mother was a snob.”
Audrey shrugged. “So am I.”
“You can afford to be.”
“It’s funny, but he was never interested in that. The money, I mean. I can tell. Jesus, how I can tell.”
“Well, rich young widows are rather popular.”
“He mentioned you a couple of times,” she said. “In passing.”
“Oh? He spoke well of me, I trust.”
“Not very.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said that you were a man with principles but no purpose and that he felt sorry for you.”
“You defended me, of course.”
“I said I wasn’t too sure about the principles.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BLACK PLYMOUTH sedan was still parked across the street from my sister’s house and a few doors down. It had been there when I had driven around the block three times looking for a place to park an hour before. Although it was still there, the man behind the wheel was different.
I crossed the street and moved down the sidewalk until I reached the car’s front bumper. Then I stopped, took out my tin box, and started rolling a cigarette. The man inside the car watched me. I nodded at him and smiled. He didn’t nod back. He didn’t smile either. When the cigarette was rolled I walked around to the driver’s side and smiled down at the man. He gave me a bleak look.
“Got a match, mister?” I said, all friendly and country.
“I don’t smoke.”
I patted my pockets, grinned like a fool, took out some matches, and lit the cigarette. Then I gave the Plymouth the look of a man who knows his automobiles.
“Nice car, a Plymouth,” I said. “It’s the Fury, ain’t it?”
The man nodded, but only once. He was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine with a round, plump face, light blue eyes, not much of a nose, and a mouth that was much too harsh and cruel for the rest of him. His hair was a sandy blond and long enough to lap over his shirt collar.
“Bet it’s got the big engine in it though,” I said in the knowing tone of one who can’t be easily slickered. “Probably uses a lot of gas.”
The man made himself look exasperated.
I looked around carefully and then bent down so that my forearm rested on the door sill. I grew a confidential look on my face. “You wouldn’t be a kidnapper, would you?”
“A what?”
“My sister lives in that house right over there,” I said and pointed. “In about ten minutes her kids are gonna be comin’ home from the park. Now my sister’s got a little money so I just thought that if you and your buddy, the one who was sittin’ right here about an hour ago, well, I thought that if you all were kidnappers, maybe I’d just better go call the cops.”
“Aw shit, fella,” the man said, reached into his shirt pocket, and brought out a folding case and let me look at a badge and the ID card that went with it.
“Don’t reckon you’d mind, would you?” I said and reached for the case. The ID card said that he was a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department and that his name was James Knaster. It also said he was thirty years old. I studied the card and then handed the case back.
I gave him a huge wink. “Keepin’ an eye on her, huh?”
“What’s your name, friend?”
“Longmire. Harvey A. Longmire.”
“Why don’t you just run along, Mr. Longmire?”
“You vice?” I said and before he could reply I went on with my rube act, which even Ruth says isn’t bad. You know what she’s doin’, don’tcha? She’s sittin’ up there in a fancy wrapper you can see right through drinkin’ Scotch whiskey and hit not yet noon.”
“Look, fella—”
“Reckon the best thing I can do is go tell her that you’re out here keepin’ an eye on her sinnin’ ways. Dear Lord, I’m just so glad our old Mom and Daddy ain’t alive to see this.” I shook my head sorrowfully and patted the sill of the car door. “Well, Detective Knaster, it sure has been pure inspiration just talkin’ to you.”
I turned and started back toward Audrey’s house. Behind me I could hear the Plymouth’s engine start. I looked back as Knaster pulled the car out from the curb and drove off. He didn’t look at me. I waved anyhow.
Like Georgetown, Washington’s Foggy Bottom was once a slum. A black slum. But now it’s home for the State Department and there isn’t much fog to speak of, although there are those who will argue that it has increased markedly since the State Department settled in.
What’s left of the Foggy Bottom residential area is still rather fashionable, and therefore expensive, and Jean-Jacques Le Gouis, my Uncle Slick, wouldn’t have dreamed of living in any other kind of neighborhood. Home to him was a small house on Queen Anne’s Lane where it was even more difficult to park than in Georgetown. However, I found an empty slot after only fifteen minutes and perhaps two quarts of gasoline. Taking the gasoline into consideration I estimated that the free parking space had saved me approximately thirty-five cents. Somehow I resisted the temptation to jot it down.
The house was a narrow, two-story, flat-front frame building painted a light pastel blue with cream trim. The front yard was about the size of your average living room rug and a lot of painstaking care had been spent on turning it into a Japanese garden. Ther
e was even a little pool with a little bridge that had a little stone troll on guard. The troll looked faintly Asiatic. I had been assured that the garden was quite authentic, but I could only think of it as precious. I refused to think of it as cute. After all, he was my uncle.
I rang the bell twice and while I waited I admired the thick old wooden door that had been cut down from one that once had provided entrance into a century-old Presbyterian church that had been razed to make way for a McDonald’s. My uncle was always scouting demolition sites for fine old wood, stained glass, marble, and other interesting doodads that he somehow incorporated into his decorating scheme that included an all-marble bathroom with a huge stained glass window depicting Moses in the bullrushes.
I was about to ring again when I heard his voice ask, “Who is it?” He didn’t open the door to just anyone. Not many people in Washington do, other than my sister. But Slick had grown especially wary since the time he reluctantly had opened it to a soft-spoken young couple who claimed to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had promptly bopped him over the head and made off with about $2,000 in cash and valuables.
When he said, “Who is it?” again I replied, “It’s your poor nephew, Uncle. Come to seek a boon.”
He opened the door then. “Well, dear boy.”
“I’m forty-three, Slick.”
“Almost a child. I’m fifty-six.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Don’t lie to an old man, Harvey.”
I wasn’t really. He still had all of his hair and it was thick and glossy and black on top and silver at the sides. He had kept his weight down and there wasn’t much sag to his lean face that had some interesting lines that a stranger might have taken for character. It was, all in all, a handsome, faintly hawkish face that easily could have passed for fifty or maybe even forty-nine and if I hadn’t known that he couldn’t see three feet in front of him, I would never have suspected that his green eyes were covered by contacts.
My uncle’s living room was furnished with antiques that he had collected over the years so I sat down gingerly on a couch that looked to be the sturdiest of the lot.
“Have you had lunch?” he asked.
“Audrey fed me.”
“Well. How is Audrey?”
“All right.”
“I was about to have a martini, but since you’ve eaten perhaps you’d like something else.”
“A beer would be fine.”
My uncle nodded, went through the dining room into the kitchen, and came back with a tray that bore a tall Pilsener glass, a bottle of imported Beck’s beer, another glass, and a small silver shaker that I presumed contained his martini. He put the tray down, poured my beer, gave the shaker a couple of swirls, filled his glass, and carefully sipped his drink.
The final part of his ritual was a solemn, judicious nod and after he was through with that I said, “What do you care what happened to Arch Mix?”
“I like your moustache. Is it new?”
“It’s two years old.”
“It makes you look faintly like Fredric March. A young Fredric March, of course.”
“Come on, Slick.”
He reached inside his blue blazer, brought out a silver cigarette case, politely offered me one, which I refused, took one for himself, lit it, and then smiled and said, “Audrey told you of my interest, of course.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you might say I have a professional interest in what happened to Arch Mix.”
“I thought you’d retired.”
“From the agency, dear boy, but not from life. I started up my own little consultancy about a year ago. Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t know about that because we haven’t seen each other in almost two years, isn’t it?”
“About that.”
“I got your Christmas card. Did you get mine? Yours was really quite clever.”
“Ruth did it.”
“How is that charming woman?”
“Fine.”
“Remarkable woman.”
“Yes.”
“However does she stand the isolation?”
“She has me.”
“Yes, she does have you, doesn’t she, and the goats, too, of course.” He made it sound as if the goats were her salvation.
“Let’s get back to Mix,” I said.
“Well, dear boy, I suppose I really should ask why you would even care that I’m interested in what happened to Mr. Mix.”
“Roger Vullo is going to pay me a lot of money to tell him what I think happened.”
“Just for your thoughts on the matter?” He had picked up immediately on the think I had used, which was another good reason to call him Slick.
“Just for my thoughts,” I said.
“Little Roger,” Slick said in a musing, almost dreamy tone. “I knew his daddy quite well, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, we served in the OSS together. Little Roger wasn’t born then, of course.”
“No.”
“I understand he has set up a foundation of sorts to look into all kinds of interesting things.”
“Conspiracy,” I said. “He sees it everywhere.”
“Well, they do seem to be burgeoning everywhere.”
“Conspiracies?”
“No, dear boy, organizations or foundations or committees or what have you that have been set up to poke about in them. Most of the time they seem to be dead set on casting my former masters as the villain in each piece.”
“The agency has always been blameless, of course.”
Slick smiled. “I prefer to think of us as having been a bit careless here and there.”
“Mix,” I said. “Let’s get back to him.”
“Yes. Let’s. Well, after I retired I was really at loose ends so I talked to some old friends who suggested that I might set up my little consultancy. Which I did.”
I looked around the living room. “Where?”
“Right here. I fixed up one of the spare bedrooms into quite a nice little office. In fact, I found a rolltop desk in Leesburg that was an absolute steal. My office has rather a charming 1904 air about it.”
I drank some of my beer and then took out my tin box and started rolling a cigarette. “Try not to spill any, dear boy,” Slick said. “I’ve just vacuumed.”
I didn’t spill any. “What do you consult on, Slick?”
“Shall I be modest?”
“Don’t even try.”
“Well, during my years of service I acquired a certain amount of expertise that a number of old friends seem to think most highly of. They recommend me to firms and organizations and even individuals who are having a spot of trouble.”
“Give me an example.”
“I’ll give you two. They were both cases of industrial espionage. Some Germans were the culprits in one, which concerned pharmaceuticals. The Japanese were mixed up in the other. Electronics. Down in Dallas. It was really rather quite like old times.”
“Which pharmaceutical company was it?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, it was Vullo Pharmaceuticals. Something of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Sure.”
“Young Roger, of course, has nothing to do with the company’s operations.”
“So I understand.”
We sat there in silence for a moment, eyeing each other, waiting to see who would be the first to say something inane about the twists of fate. When neither of us did I said, “Who hired you to look into Arch Mix?”
“Well, I wasn’t really hired. I was retained.”
“Sorry.”
“Actually, I’ve been retained by the union.”
I shook my head and I think I kept on shaking it as I said, “I don’t believe it. I honestly don’t believe it.”
“Well, there was never anything to tie me to that other dismal business back in 1964,” Slick said. “And besides, I was only on the periphery of it.”
“You were in up to your ass.”
“So how did the union stumble over you?”
“They retain eminent legal counsel. After Mix vanished they felt they should do something so they turned to counsel for advice. Counsel suggested the Pinkertons, but when it was pointed out that the Pinkertons have rather a spotty labor record, my name came up.” He waved a hand. “Mutual friends, you know.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Four weeks ago.”
“Who’s your contact at the union?”
“The vice-president. Warner B. Gallops. A black gentleman. Do you know him?”
“I know him.”
“I wonder what the B stands for?”
“Baxter.”
“Oh my. Well, he seems quite shrewd. Or perhaps I should say clever.”
“He’s both.”
“How well do you know him?” Slick asked.
“At one time we were friends, but then he decided that he’d rather be friends with Mix than with me so we’re not friends anymore.”
“There’s more to it than that, of course.”
“He doublecrossed me a long time ago,” I said. “But if you asked him about it, he’d probably tell you that I doublecrossed him. It was internal politics. Anyway, it’s one of the reasons that Gallops is vice-president of the union.”
“An opportunist?”
“Aren’t we all.”
“I didn’t ask, of course, but I obtained a copy of the union’s constitution and it provides that the vice-president will serve as president should the incumbent die, be absent, or incapacitated.”
“I like the way your mind works, Slick.”
“One has to look for motive.”
“That’s probably why you were hired. Sorry. Retained.”
“Oh, quite. Mr. Gallops made that most clear. I think I can remember his exact words. He said, ‘You got two jobs, buddy. First, you’re gonna find out what happened to Arch and, second, you’re gonna prove that I had fuck all to do with it.’” Slick was an excellent mimic.
“So what’ve you turned up?” I said.
“Virtually nothing.”
