Union Bust

by Warren Murphy

  “Yeah.”

  And that was it. The phone was dead, and four of the nation’s leading labor leaders were going to die.

  “Damn,” said Dr. Smith. “Damn.”

  If the system could not tolerate collective bargaining, then maybe the American system was just false. Maybe the patch-up work CURE did only delayed the final outcome. Maybe business and labor were supposed to function as warring, hostile giants, with the public whipsawed in between. After all, Dr. Smith knew, business had a history of doing just what the unions were trying to do now. It was called cornering the market, and that was considered the height of business acumen. Why should the unions not be allowed to do the same?

  Dr. Smith spun to view Long Island Sound, deep and green and going far out into the Atlantic. Perhaps there should be a sign, “You are leaving the Sound. Now entering the Atlantic.” But there were no signs, either on the Sound or in life. It was wrong for the unions to blackmail the nation like this, just as it was wrong for businessmen to corner the market in a certain commodity and drive up its prices. He must begin to work the agency towards stopping that sort of crime. And so, staring at Long Island Sound, Dr. Harold Smith planned to enact a piece of American legislation. Without votes. Without writing. Without immediate public knowledge. But he would enact it somehow, someday: it would be illegal for corporations to corner the market and drive up the price of food. And he would not stop at using “The Destroyer,” just as he had not hesitated to use him today.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  REMO SLIPPED THE WRAPPED CROWBAR with Bludner’s fingerprints on it into the back of his pants. Then he put his shirt over it, and a jacket over that. He surrounded the crowbar with muscle, cushioning it between his shoulder blades, keeping the metal rod positioned on top and hidden behind the jacket. The forked end of the crowbar nestled right behind his reproductive organs, following the curve of his body. An X-ray would have shown a man sitting on a curved bar.

  A good tap on his back would, Remo knew, cause him great pain. He walked somewhat stiffly to the door of his hotel suite.

  “I’ll be back.”

  “You are going to that building?” Chiun said in caution.

  “No,” said Remo.

  “Good. When you return I will tell you why we must run. If I did not have to stay here and watch over an impetuous youth,” said Chiun. “I would leave now. It is no matter, however. We will leave later, after you expend your wasted energy.”

  “It will not be wasted, little father.”

  “It will be wasted, but feel free to indulge yourself. Amuse yourself.”

  “This is not amusement, little father.”

  “It is not work, Remo. It is not productive, mature work.”

  “I am going to set things right which must be set right.”

  “You are going to indulge yourself in wasted effort. Goodnight.”

  Remo exhaled his frustration. One did not reason with Chiun. For all his wisdom he could not know the threat of four unions joining into one. For all his wisdom he was wrong this morning.

  The lobby was aswarm with police, newspapermen, photographers, TV cameras. The ambulance drivers had left, most of them headed for morgues.

  Rocco “the Pig” Pigarello was perspiring under the television lights. His arm was bandaged, undoubtedly the result of a bullet from one of his own men.

  “Yeah. These crazy men were shooting at us for no reason. It was an assault against organized labor by gangsters.”

  “Mr. Pigarello, police say all the injured and dead were union men.” The newscaster held a microphone to Pigarello’s face.

  “Dat’s right. We had no way to defend ourselves. There must have been twenty, maybe thirty wid guns.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pigarello,” said the television newscaster. He turned to his cameraman.

  “That was Rocco Pigarello, a delegate to the International Brotherhood of Drivers’ convention here in Chicago, a union that has been severely hurt today in an outburst of senseless violence.”

  Remo watched Pigarello’s eyes. They spotted him. The Pig went to a police captain. He shot Remo a furtive glance. Remo smiled at the Pig. The Pig suddenly forgot what he was going to say to the captain, and Remo walked from the hotel out into the busy morning street through a corridor of police barricades. People gawked over the barricades, they leaned from windows across the street, they stood on tiptoes on the opposite sidewalk.

  A bright blue Illinois sky covered it all—with, of course, a layer of air pollution sandwiched in between. Remo hailed a cab to the convention hall.

  The driver talked about the horrible killings in the hotel, how Chicago wasn’t safe anymore, and how everything would be fine if only the blacks left Chicago.

  “Blacks weren’t involved,” said Remo.

  “So, in this one incident,” said the driver, “they weren’t involved. Don’t tell me that if we didn’t have coloreds the crime rate wouldn’t drop.”

  “It would drop even faster if we didn’t have people,” said Remo.

  The convention hall was, strangely, all but deserted. No uniformed guards to take delegates’ tickets, no vendors preparing for special bars with the early tubs of ice, no last-minute scurrying of workers giving the microphone system a last-minute check. No one was even placing the day’s agenda on the seats as they had done every day since Monday.

  Even the gates were locked. At the third gate, Remo decided to stop looking for someone to let him in. He walked in, right through the crowdproof, locked gate. His footsteps echoed down the dark, deserted corridors that smelled freshly cleaned. The stands exuded a faint yesterday’s beer odor. The air was cool yet without freshness. A lone worker stood on a ladder installing a light bulb. Remo stayed in the shadows enough not to be recognized but not enough to appear suspicious.

  “Hi,” Remo said, walking on as though he belonged in the deserted corridor.

  “Hi,” said the workman.

  Remo scampered up to the top tier and paused. He was two aisles away. The banner was still and flat.

  “Welcome, International Brotherhood of Drivers.” Not a ripple. The crowds would change that. The body heat would change that. Yet even with no one inside the huge structure, it should get some air currents. Perhaps too many doors and windows were closed on the outside. Remo ducked back into the corridor and came out perfect. Fifty feet above him was the joint of the beam that stretched across the huge dome of the hall. He eased the crowbar from the back of his pants with the protective paper still on it. An edge of the paper was smeared with his blood. The wound had coagulated, but apparently not fast enough to keep the paper dry. He checked the crowbar, looking for the glistening hint of his own blood. He did not want blood on the crowbar to complicate things. It should be a very simple crime. Abe “Crowbar” Bludner had somehow unriveted the beam and was stupid enough to leave the crowbar. The police, desperately in need of a suspect for the murder of four union officials, would gratefully and rapidly pick Bludner. Blood would be a minor complication that might set their minds to working on other angles. Not that he would be implicated, but as Chiun had said, fools and children take chances.

  “It is the height of arrogance to fling your chances of survival into the lap of the goddess of fate, demanding that she perform what you will not. This arrogance is always punished.”

  Remo eased out of his shoes. He rewrapped the crowbar. There was no blood. He leaped to a small overhang and held with one hand. Working with feet forward and one hand behind it, he slithered up the curved wall. His free hand was used as a foot now because two feet were better for grabbing than one free hand. In the other hand was the evidence against Bludner.

  Suddenly walking sounds, hollow, leather, clicking walking sounds came towards him. Two men. Remo pressed against the wall. His blood rushing headward, but unlike ordinary men he could sustain this pressure and function for three hours.

  “Hey, Johnny. One of those idiot driver delegates left his shoes.”

  “They s
hould have been picked up by cleaning. That contractor we use is getting sloppy. I mean it. Sloppy. You never should have hired him.”

  “What’s this ‘you’ jazz? We both hired him.”

  “You recommended him.”

  “And you said ‘Okay.’”

  “I said ‘Okay’ because you recommended him. I’m not going to listen to your recommendations anymore.”

  They stood directly beneath Remo, a bald head and a grease conglomerate swirled in such a way as to hide impending departure of hair. This was very evident to anyone who wanted to cling upside down directly above a grease-coated head.

  “I recommended the drivers. You want to give back their money?”

  “So one of your recommendations finally turns out all right. What do you want, a medal?”

  “I want a little appreciation. You know any other outfit that would pay for a place like this on a day they’re not using it?”

  “Yeah, anyone else who signed a contract and at three in the morning said they weren’t going to use the place that day.”

  “They could hold up the final payment. They could talk deal. They could talk settlement. The people I rent to pay in full, anyway.”

  “When you rented at the last minute, I was the one who told you to go ahead. I was the one who, with two pathetic months, broke the contract for that horse show.”

  “Because I got you the drivers, dumbbell. For the drivers I’d break a contract with God.”

  “For five cents you’d break a contract with God. He could fall down right now and you’d break a contract for five cents.”

  It was as good a time as any to collect his shoes. The drivers would not be meeting in the giant hall that day, and there was no point getting Abe Bludner indicted for murdering a circus or a basketball team or whoever was there when the vibrations, unaided by Remo, would determine that the beam would fall.

  Remo dropped gently, missing the greasy head.

  “My shoes, please,” said Remo indignantly. He grabbed the shoes from the startled men and handed the greasy-headed one the paper-wrapped crowbar. The paper was still flecked with blood.

  “And here’s your crowbar. You shouldn’t leave it lying around. People could trip over it and get hurt.”

  “On the ceiling?” asked the bewildered men.

  Remo slipped into his shoes. “Anywhere,” said Remo. “Carelessness cannot be excused.”

  And with that he was back into his shoes and walking briskly down a corridor towards anything that resembled an exit. He had wasted his effort, as Chiun had said he would. The crowbar would not be needed now. It was as useless as the Maginot Line. Besides, one didn’t need a crowbar when one was going to die.

  · · ·

  Gene Jethro listened as the Pig, his arm getting a fresh bandage from Sigmund Negronski, explained how it had all happened. The Pig was awash in sweat despite the even chill of the air-conditioned basement of the new building.

  “I had it set good. In the lobby like you told me. Twenty-seven guys including me. I was in your third layer central. The first layer was in the lobby or facing it like we planned. You know, rooms surrounding the lobby and the stairs we used for first layer and beginning of second. And the third, I placed it myself because I was in it. I mean I was really careful. The registration desk, I had a guy behind. I had ’em waiting just right, and the guns concealed and every man knew what he was supposed to do. The first layer was the dining room right, the registration clerk center and the…”

  “Go on. Go on,” said Jethro.

  Negronski gently taped the bandage and eyed Jethro. The smiling confidence was no longer there. The joyous manipulation of men was no longer in the face grown suddenly old. Deep lines clouded his face. He worked a white handkerchief in his hands. He was wearing yesterday’s clothes. He had not changed them. Negronski took both joy and pity in Jethro’s condition. He fervently wished that they could return to the Nashville local and wrestle with pensions, threatened layoffs, and jurisdictional disputes. A jurisdictional dispute would be good now. Of jurisdictional disputes, he knew. This was all strange.

  “Okay,” said the Pig. “So I got Connor up close to the door as the first layer right. He would fire the first shot. And he’s good. He hunts a lot and you know his rep. Like he’s made of bones. He’s the best man for that first…”

  “Get to it. Get to it, dammit,” said Jethro.

  “Connor misses. He’s three feet from the guy and he misses. The first time in his life and he misses. Bang. And nothing. This Remo creep moves like he ain’t even been touched. Goodbye, Connor. Like three feet and…”

  “Dammit, Pig. Get on with it.”

  “Then he goes through the first layer right, and he’s into and partially through the second layer, and fast. I mean you think you know fast. You think you’ve seen fast. You think Gale Sayers is fast. Gale Sayers is a cripple. Bob Hayes is a slug. And shifty? Willie Pep is a plodder. Muhammad Ali walks on his heels.”

  “Get on with it, Pig!”

  “Okay, okay. I’m telling ya what went wrong.”

  “You’re telling me why you’re not responsible for what went wrong, not what went wrong.”

  “I did what ya told me.”

  “Go on. Go on, damn you.”

  “Yeah, well, okay. Then he starts to really move. I mean move. Sometimes you don’t see him, he’s so fast. I swear on my mother’s grave, you don’t see him he’s moving so fast. And I try to get off a shot. Other guys try to get off shots, and pretty soon we’re shooting back at the people who are shooting at us. And then we’re in a firefight with ourselves and we don’t even see this guy Remo get away.”

  “That’s what I thought, Pig.”

  “It wasn’t our fault, Mr. Jethro. Honest.”

  Jethro sulked. He turned away from Negronski and Pigarello. He twisted the handkerchief, looked at it a moment, then threw it into a wastebasket.

  “You’re going to have to wait here, Pig.”

  “You ain’t gonna do a job on me, are you?”

  “No. No. I don’t think so.”

  “Whaddya mean ya don’t think so? I mean what is that? You don’t think you’re gonna kill me. I mean, what is that?”

  “That, my dear fat New England friend, is where it is at.”

  “You ain’t gonna kill me, you shitkicker,” said the Pig. He grabbed a chair. “You’ve had it, pretty boy. We ain’t in your little room now, Shitkicker. You get yours now. I seen what McCulloch did to you before he went into that room, and you ain’t in that room now.” The Pig advanced on Jethro and Negronski went for the chair. With massive, hairy arms the Pig flipped Negronski aside.

  “Stay out of this, Siggy. This is me and Jethro.”

  Like a lumbering truckload of gravel, Pigarello moved on Jethro, the heavy oak chair raised above his head as if it were light as matchsticks. Negronski raised himself and saw the chair move towards Jethro’s head.

  But Jethro was standing in a strange position, not like when they’d have to face an occasional challenge in a Nashville bar, but like a peculiar old man with a spine injury. The toes were pointed in. The hands outstretched and curved loosely. The wrists stiff. The face impassive and free of hate, as though listening to a column of tax figures.

  The Pig put his bulk into the downward swing of the chair, but Jethro was no longer there. His left hand, with the light-quickness of a laser, was into the Pig’s stomach. The chair tumbled harmlessly behind Jethro. The Pig stood as if watching a surprise party for a ghost. The mouth was open. The eyes were popping wide, and his hands dropped to his sides.

  Jethro brought what looked to be a dainty slap to the Pig’s head. It was like touching a blood faucet. The Pig spit a stream of red. Like a bowling pin, he began to wobble straight-legged, then down, face forward. Crack. Negronski heard the head hit, and shuddered.

  “I had to do it, Siggy,” said Jethro.

  “You want me to get a doctor down here?” Negronski’s voice was fiat.

  �
�No. He’s dead, Siggy.”

  “I guess we’re going to have to move him to that special room.”

  “Yeah,” said Jethro.

  “We ought to have rollers to that room and a regular conveyer belt.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know what I mean. You know the Pig isn’t the last. You know that room is gonna be filled every week. You know it’s never going to end, Gene.”

  “No. It will. It will. As soon as we get the transportation lock on the country, we’ll be home free. Everything will quiet down then. It’ll be beautiful, Siggy. Beautiful.”

  “It’ll be more of this,” said Negronski, absently reaching over to the fallen Pigarello and straightening the bandage, for reasons beyond his comprehension. “It was supposed to be beautiful when we got the convention switched to Chicago. It was supposed to be beautiful when we got the building built. It was supposed to be beautiful when you become president of the drivers. Yeah. And the only thing we got was more killing and more bodies, and more of that room over there. It’s never gonna end, Gene. Let’s give up and go home. I wouldn’t even mind doing time now. Going to the cops, leveling the whole thing. There’s no death penalty anymore. And I don’t think we’d get the chair anyhow even if there was. Give a full confession. Maybe we’d spend most of the rest of our lives in jail, but it would be our lives. Not running to kill this guy because of this, or that guy because of that. It never ends, Gene. What do you say. For old times’ sake. Let’s chuck this thing.”

  “We can’t,” said Jethro. “Help me with the body.”

  “It used to be Pigarello. He’s not just a body.”

  “It’s a body, Siggy. And it’s either our bodies or his body. Now which do you want it to be?”

  “Nobody, Gene. I’m through.” Sigmund Negronski rose to his full height. His legs planted firm, he stared the new president of the International Brotherhood of Drivers directly in the eye.

  “I’m through, Gene. No more. Maybe you can’t stop. Maybe you can’t get out, but I can. I quit. Right now I wouldn’t even touch a sparrow if it were pecking at my head. I’d run. And right now, I’m running. I’m through. I helped you. I stepped aside for you. I helped you, but I’m not helping you anymore. I’m not gonna talk to the police because I know you’d kill me, Gene. That’s the way it is nowadays, and I want to live. I want to see tomorrow so bad I can breathe the morning already. Back home. Not here in Chicago. I want to wake up with my wife next to me with her cold cream and curlers and bitching for me to make the coffee, and I want to worry about getting up the mortgage money, not the body counts. I want to walk down the street and be happy to see people, not happy to not see them, if you know what I mean. I want to live and you can take this union and shove it up your velvet bell bottoms. Goodbye. I’m going back to driving a truck. I’m good at that.”