Union Bust Read online

  Remo spoke to a few delegates. They knew nothing about a new building just outside of Chicago. They asked Remo how things were in New York City.

  “Rolling,” said Remo. They didn’t think that was funny.

  “How’s Abe?” One asked.

  “Good. Good. A real stand-up guy.”

  “Yeah. He’s a stand-up guy. How’s Tony and Paul?”

  “Great. Great. They’ll be here.”

  “Billy Donescu?”

  “He’s fine. He’s not coming.”

  “I know he’s not coming,” said the delegate. “He’s been dead five years. Now, who the hell are you? Yo ain’t no driver.”

  “Don’t bother me with that nonsense,” said Remo. “I’m a driver in spirit.”

  The delegate called over a man known as the sergeant at arms. The sergeant at arms called over two guards. The two guards called over five more, and Remo was escorted to the entrance. But at the entrance a funny thing happened. The guards stumbled with painful groin injuries, the sergeant at arms suffered a broken collarbone, and the delegates were looking for fallen teeth. Remo strode back to the center of the Convention Hall, whistling pleasantly.

  “He’s for real,” said one delegate. “He don’t sound it but he’s for real. Abe has got himself a real boy this time.”

  The news—really important news in the drivers’ union travels from mouth to mouth—reached Abe “Crowbar” Bludner, as he was preparing for the real convention business in the afternoon. It came in the form of a delegate from Louisiana. A redheaded, rawboned man with a heavy drawl, for whom Abe had done favors from time to time.

  “You are some sweetheart,” said the Southerner with a grin. “You are some real, real sweetheart. Whoowee.”

  “What’s up?” asked Bludner, opening his collar two buttons.

  “Yo’ new business agent. Ain’t he a what fo’?”

  Abe Bludner felt a sudden stretching of his throat. He cleared it.

  “Remo Jones? He went to the convention alone?”

  “Y’all can bet yo danged mule,” said the Southern delegate.

  Just like these Southerners, thought Bludner, to castrate a defenseless animal. Well, at least they weren’t doing it to minority groups anymore.

  “Hold on,” said Bludner. “He’s all right. A little bit funny, but look. So’s Gene Jethro, you know. And every man has a right to act his own way. He’s okay.”

  “Ah know. That son of a gull lizard is one peck o’ nails,” said the Southern delegate.

  “You mean he’s got a set of kishkas,” said Bludner.

  “What’re kishkas?”

  “What’s a peck o’ nails?”

  “Hard. Real hard.”

  “Yeah. That’s what a kishka is, too, I guess.”

  “But ah ain’t seen nuthin like ah heard he is. Whoo-wee. Is that man a peck o’ nails.”

  Bludner looked at the other delegate, surprised.

  “Remo Jones? Our business agent?”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, Tony, Paul. Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah, we heard,” they called out from an adjoining bedroom where they were playing gin.

  “What do you know?” said Abe “Crowbar” Bludner. “What do you know?”

  “You guys from Local 529 are real stand-up guys,” said the Southern delegate. “Real stand-up.”

  “You gotta be,” said Abe “Crowbar” Bludner. “You gotta be.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  OTHER PEOPLE FROM REMO’S ORGANIZATION were at the convention. But he was the only one who knew his employer. Other people throughout the country sent their messages to destinations of which they knew not. Other hands and other eyes worked to stem the events which would lead to a union so powerful that a nation would be at its mercy. Moment by moment the reports, all ending at the desk of a man called Harold Smith, director of a sanitarium in Rye, New York, became worse. The plan to control American transportation seemed invincible.

  A union clerk, preparing the giant electrical boards in convention hall for the coming vote, noted that everything appeared to be running smoothly. No attempts to tamper with the machinery, no offers of bribes, no sudden influx of repairmen with strange credentials. Just a normal, routine, dull checking-out of the equipment.

  From a pay phone, he transmitted this information to a person he believed was doing a book on the union movement. Why the person should want immediate information the moment certain things happened, the clerk did not bother to ask. The money was regular, and since it came in envelopes, it was not taxable.

  A vice-president of an airline company routinely phoned his business adviser. The adviser was obviously CIA or something like that, but such matters were not the executive’s concern. He had risen fast with the help of this adviser—it was a small enough price to pay for a career. The president of his company was willing to make a deal for some strange upcoming contract that none of the other executives knew about. His airline would be the only one allowed to operate for an entire month if it gave the union everything it wanted. The airline had purchased extra planes for this planned overload of passengers. Strange, that any union could guarantee that. Stranger still was that the adviser had asked for just that kind of information recently.

  An accountant in Duluth, Minnesota, got angry with his employer, the Joint Council of the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen.

  “You can’t just say ‘contribution to unionism.’ You’ve got to list which union. If it is not called the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen, then, gentlemen, it is not your union, and I cannot put it in the books that way. I’m sorry. But should there be an audit of these books, if I did what you ask, I would be spending considerable time behind bars. Let alone losing my practice.”

  The accountant assured his clients, however, that he could proceed without listing the expenditures until the end of the fiscal year.

  “That’s all right. That’s fine,” said the president of the joint council. “We’ll only need a week at the outside.”

  The accountant gave the books and records of the recent money transfers to his secretary to put into the office safe. This she did, but only after she had made a photocopy for the lovely person at the big department store who liked to collect things like this. He was so nice, that person, he had given her a special charge account. Extended time payments. Nothing down and one percent a year for two years, and the store would make up the difference. The account would be allowed to jump at various very pleasant times. Like when one of their clients was engaged in an oil swindle with a Wall Street stock brokerage firm. That paid for the dinette, the playroom, and the new color TV. What she wanted most now was a new kitchen. She should get it. The man at the department store had specifically asked for this information. Maybe a new washer-dryer, too. Although she already had two of those.

  The lovely person at the department store was thrilled with the photocopies of the documents, so thrilled that he suggested the secretary redecorate her living room. He dialed a special number and surrendered the copy of the documents to his contact, a man he believed was in the FBI. The man was in the FBI, having been transferred to special assignment four years ago. He gave the documents immediately to an undercover office where a woman received them. She knew she wasn’t working for the FBI. She was working on a secret mission for the State Department. She was one of their top programmers. She punched the information into the terminal in her office. She had never been able to generate any feedback to see if she were correct. But that was all right. That was a safety device always used by secret operations so that unauthorized personnel would not have access to the information. Only those special people in Washington would be able to get the information from State Department computers.

  The information did not go to the State Department, however. The lines led to a sanitarium in Rye, New York, called Folcroft. There, another computer expert supervised the input. Like many computer programmers, he was not sure where the information fit or even how it fit. But if
everything worked right, and he was sure it was working right, the gigantic study on the effect of the economy on national health would most certainly prove a momentous and significant report.

  Only one terminal could draw feedback from the Folcroft computers and that was in the office of Dr. Harold Smith, director of the sanitarium and director of the study.

  Under the oak veneer of his desk was a control panel. There was also a slot for a computer printout. This printout did not drop into a basket, but was fed directly into an electric disposal device passing for only nine inches under a visible glass panel, visible when the veneer slid away to reveal the controls.

  The panel was open now and Dr. Smith’s lemon face was even more bitter than usual. He watched the green paper with the square typing move like a long green river under the reading glass from computer terminal to electric disposal. He could signal a return of any information, but he could not hold it in his hands.

  Outside, through the one-way glass behind him, the Long Island Sound lapped at the shores, a dark body extending into the Atlantic. People had crossed this ocean to establish a new land, a land of law, a land of justice, a land where a piece of paper protected poor and rich alike. And that piece of paper did not work. And justice was a sometime thing. But the hope was left. The hope was coming out of this computer terminal: these times would pass, and one day, without it ever having been known to anyone but those whose lives were dedicated to its secrecy, each President who passed the secret to his successor, the organization would just dissolve. Having not existed, it would not exist.

  That was why Dr. Smith could not hold the paper in his hands. Evidence could not be allowed to exist. Like the organization, it would be secret for a few moments in time, then disappear.

  Smith read the flowing printout and his face became more bitter with each line.

  “Damn,” he said, and spun his swivel chair from the machine to look out on Long Island Sound in the darkness of night. A few boats blinked off shore. Smith drummed his fingers on the leather arm of the swivel chair.

  “Damn,” he said again. He watched the lights a moment, then reran the printout. It was, of course, the same. Nothing had changed, and as he realized that he could not alter the inevitable conclusion, his mind wandered to the time when there was no glass paneling over the printout and he could pick it up and file it in a locked drawer.

  One of the sheets—accidentally, despite all precautions—had gotten mixed with the normal sanitarium work, and his brightest assistant, who had nothing whatever to do with the real work of the organization, just the medical cover, had discovered it. That had set him off on a little puzzle. And one day he happily told Dr. Smith he knew what Folcroft really did. He was smiling as he outlined a function all too close to the way CURE really operated.

  “Very interesting,” Dr. Smith had said smiling. “What do others think?”

  “What others?” said the assistant.

  “You know. One man couldn’t figure all this out.”

  “I most certainly did,” beamed the assistant. “I know you, sir, and I know you are an honorable man, and you wouldn’t be involved in anything illegal or immoral. So I figured what you were doing must be for a good cause. And I didn’t want to hurt the cause, so I kept it strictly to myself. Besides, it was more fun that way. This was a most interesting problem.”

  “I commend you,” said Dr. Smith. “Well, I guess our secret’s safe with you.”

  “It most certainly is, sir. And good luck in your good work.”

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Smith. “The work is very trying. I’m leaving on vacation in about a half hour. The coast, Malibu beach.”

  “I was born there.”

  “Oh, were you?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you read my application? Born there twenty-six years ago this August. I can still smell the Pacific. You know it breathes easier than the Atlantic.”

  “Then come with me,” Dr. Smith said with sudden joy. “Come. We’ll both go. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I want you to meet my nephew, Remo.”

  And that was when the glass was installed on the printout mechanism designed to clean the machine whether Dr. Smith pressed the button or not. He hated what he had to do, hated what he did to his luckless assistant, hated the very cunning and duplicity which ran counter to his nature. It was not so difficult, when a former employee of another government agency attempted to blackmail CURE. That had a moral justification. But what was Dr. Braithwait’s crime? That he was an internist? That he was closer to death than another internist of his caliber? What was the young assistant’s crime? That he was clever. That he was honest and meant well, and that if he had wished the organization evil and given the information to the New York Times, he would be alive today? Was that his crime, punishable by death?

  Smith turned off the terminal and watched the electric disposal pull the last few paragraphs into its blades. Woodpulp returned to woodpulp, with its interim existence as a communication form gone forever.

  He looked out at the Sound, then checked his watch. Remo would be phoning in five hours and twelve minutes, when the juxtaposition of the special circuits was right. Not enough time to go home and sleep. Better to sleep here in the chair. Perhaps there would be new information in the morning, and he would not have to tell Remo what at this point he must tell him. Perhaps the problem-solving team, which worked with symbols, would come up with a different answer. After all, they were at Folcroft as a human check on a mechanical function.

  They were never informed as to what the symbols really meant, of course, but they had often produced creative ideas—ideas beyond the capability of the computer—never knowing how these management theory ideas would be translated into action.

  Smith closed his eyes. Yes, maybe the problem-solving team would come up with a different solution.

  Long Island Sound was gray-blue and white, sparkling in the sun, when Smith awoke. It was 8 a.m.; the problem-solving team would have its overnight report in a few minutes. He had asked for it early. The buzzer was ringing on his desk. He pushed intercom.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “We got it, sir,” came the voice.

  “Come on in.” said Smith. He pressed another button and the large oak door silently unlocked. As the door opened, the computer panel shut automatically, catching Smith’s elbow and giving him a nasty pain.

  “Are you all right, sir?” asked the member of the problem-solving team. He was in his late thirties and worry showed very well on his face.

  “No. No. I’m all right,” said Dr. Smith grimacing. “What do you have?”

  “Well, sir. According to the relationships of all the groups in this contract to buy and sell grain, we get, considering all variables, a breakdown in the bargaining process.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Smith.

  No way around it, sir. If there is no other major basic staple on the market, the person who represents the multitude of heretofore loosely connected grainsellers has got a gun at the buyer’s head. He doesn’t ask for a price, he sets it.”

  “There’s no other way around it?”

  “No. Not offhand. But you see, with the increasing price there will be a fall in demand and the price will settle. Settle high, but settle.”

  “And what if the grain-seller doesn’t want to sell?”

  “That’s absurd, sir. He’s got to want to sell. Otherwise, why corner the market? That’s the purpose, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I guess so. Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Glad to be of help.”

  “You have been, thank you.”

  When the man left the office, Dr. Smith slammed the arm of his chair again.

  “Damn. Damn. Damn.”

  Remo’s call came through at 8:15.

  “Remo?” said Dr. Smith.

  “No. Candace Bergen,” came Remo’s voice.

  “I’m glad you’re in fine spirits. You can move to the next stage now. It looks as though we are going to the extreme plan.”<
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  “The one you said you were sure we wouldn’t have to use?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why don’t you just bomb the convention hall and have done with it?”

  “I am in no mood for your humor now, young man. No mood at all.”

  “Look. Feed this into your computers. I’m not going to do it. Work out something else. Or I will.”

  “Remo. This is a hard, hard thing for me to ask. But you must prepare for the extreme plan. There just isn’t anyone else.”

  “Then there isn’t anyone else.”

  “You will do it.”

  “As a matter of fact, I won’t. As a matter of fact, since I recovered from that little incident, I have been depressed as I have never been depressed before. But that’s a human emotion and you wouldn’t understand that. I am a human being, you sonuvabitch. Do you hear that? I am a human being.”

  The receiver clicked dead. It had been hung up in Chicago. Dr. Smith drummed his fingers on the chair arm. It had sounded foreboding, but it was really not. Remo would do what he would have to do. There was no way he could not carry out his function, any more than he could eat a hamburger laced with monosodium glutamate.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE CONVENTION BUZZED AND ROARED AND YELLED and clapped and paraded up and down the aisles for candidates, beer, and washrooms, the last receiving less vocal but more sincere enthusiasm. There were three nominations for president of the International Brotherhood of Drivers at convention hall, and after each name, the delegates flooded the center aisle, placards aloft, as if it were a political convention. They went onto a frenzy of screaming, as though victory depended upon decibel instead of delegate count.

  When Jethro’s name went into nomination, Abe “Crowbar” Bludner grabbed a two-by-four with a poster stapled to it and led the local delegates and the New York City joint council delegates into the stream of driver delegates demonstrating for the young man from Nashville. Remo did not rise with the delegation. He did not move. He crossed a leg and rested his chin on his hand.