Warren Murphy: Union Bust

"Good luck. We're counting on you. And when you're through, there's more than just that envelope. What the hell are you doing with those envelopes?"

Jimmy looked at the envelopes, puzzled.

"Don't walk out of here holding them in your hand. Put them in your pocket."

"Oh, yeah," said Jimmy McQuade. "Look, I'm working at another building and the company…"

"That's been squared. That's been squared. Get out of here. You're going to miss your plane."

Jimmy McQuade had opened the envelopes in the cab taking him to the airport. There was $3,500 for him, and $1,500 for the men. He decided to switch envelopes and give the men the $3,500, keeping the $1,500 for himself. This resolution kept wavering all the way to the airport, descending on the men's side, ascending on his until he was back to the original split.

He sat in first class and ordered a drink. He wasn't going to ask the stewardess to let him make a phone call from the plane. He would sound like an idiot asking that.

Halfway through his rye and ginger, the pilot came down the aisle.

"McQuade?"

"Yes."

"Why the hell are you sitting here? We got the linkup to ground telephone."

"Oh. Yeah," said Jimmy McQuade. 'I just wanted to finish my drink."

"You're wasting a fortune in time. Take the drink with you."

"Into the cockpit?"

"Yes. C'mon. Wait. You're right."

"I thought so. Federal Aeronautics Authority rules."

"The stewardess will bring it. No point unsettling the passengers."

When the surprised telephone crew reached Nuihc Street at two in the morning, they found only steel beams and men working under floodlights.

Jimmy McQuade looked for the builder. He found him guzzling coffee, yelling at a crane operator.

"I can't see the fuckin' roof. How the hell am I going to set it right?" yelled the operator.

"We'll get a flood up there. We'll get a flood," the builder yelled back. He turned to Jimmy McQuade.

"Yeah. What do you want?"

"We're the phone installers. It looks like we're four months early."

"No. You're late."

"Where do you want the interoffice lines, in the cement?"

"Well, do what you can now. You have the plans. You could be stringing outside wire."

"Most of my men are inside."

"So work 'em outside. What's the big deal?"

"You don't know too much about phones, do you?"

"I know they're going to be working by April 17, is what I know."

That was the first complaint. The president of the local said it wasn't up to him. Call the vice-president. The vice-president told Jimmy McQuade he didn't receive the money because it was an easy job.

Two weeks later, one of the inside men threatened to quit. More money came for Jimmy McQuade from Washington. When the other installers found out about this episode, they all threatened to quit. They all got more money.

Then one of the men did quit. Jimmy McQuade ran after him down Nuihc Street, now paved to a three-lane-wide thoroughfare. The man wouldn't listen. Jimmy McQuade phoned the vice-president of the union and asked if he could recruit another man to fill the crew.

"What was his name?" asked the vice-president.

"Johnny Delano," said Jimmy McQuade. But he did not get another man. Nor did the quitter return.

And when the lineman committed the mistake of a rookie and the installer passed out, Jimmy McQuade had had it. Enough.

The kid slept over his tool box, and all the others filed into the new elevators, which they hoped would work this time. Jimmy McQuade went with his men.

He went home to his wife who had not known his body since he started the job. She embraced him passionately, shooed the kids off to bed, and undressed him. She took great care in the shower, and put on the special perfume he loved.

When she entered the bedroom, her husband was dead asleep. No matter. She knew what would wake him. She nibbled at his ear and ran a hand down his stomach to his navel.

All she got was a snore.

So Mrs. McQuade accidentally spilled a glass of water on her husband's face. He slept with a wet face. At 3 a.m. there was a buzz at the door. Mrs. McQuade nudged her husband to answer it. He slept on.

She donned a bathrobe, and mumbling curses about her husband's job, answered the door.

"FBI," said one of two men, holding forth identification. "May we speak to your husband? We're awfully sorry to disturb you at this hour. But it's urgent."

"I can't wake him," said Mrs. McQuade.

"It's urgent," said the spokesman of the pair.

"Yeah, well lots of things are urgent. I didn't say I wouldn't wake him, I said I couldn't."

"Something wrong?"

"He's dead tired. He's been working without any really good sleep for almost two months."

"We'd like to talk to him about that."

Mrs. McQuade looked up and down the street to make sure no neighbours were watching, and reassured that at 3 a.m. this was highly unlikely, she invited the two agents into the house.

"He won't wake up," said Mrs. McQuade, leading them to the bedroom. They waited at the bedroom door.

"He won't wake up," she said again, and shook her husband's shoulder.

"Wha?" said Jimmy McQuade, opening his eyes.

"For this he wakes up," said Mrs. McQuade.

"It's the FBI. They want to talk to you about overtime."

"Tell them to do all the work they can outside if inside isn't ready yet."

"The FBI."

"Well, ask one of the older men. Do what you can. We can order any special parts we need."

"The FBI has come to put you in jail for the rest of your life."

"Yeah. Good. Do it." said Jimmy McQuade and went off into his comfortable dark world.

"See," said Mrs. McQuade with a strange sense of relief.

"Could you shake him again?" asked the spokesman for the pair.

Mrs. McQuade grabbed the closest piece of her husband and squeezed.

"Yeah. OK. Back to work," said Jimmy McQuade bounding from bed. He looked around, saw two men without tools in their hands, and finding nothing in the room that needed connecting, suddenly realized he was not at the building site.

"Home. Yeah. Hello, honey. What are these men doing here?"

"We're from the FBI, Mr. McQuade, we'd like to talk to you."

"Oh," said Jimmy McQuade. "Well. Okay."

His wife made a big pot of coffee. They talked in the kitchen.

"Some pretty interesting things are going on at your new job aren't they?"

"It's a job," said Jimmy McQuade.

"We believe it's more than a job. And we'd like your help."

"Look. I'm a good citizen but I'm a union man, too."

"Was Johnny Delano a union man also?"

"Yeah."

"Was he a good union man."

"Yeah."

"Was he a good union man when he quit?"

"Yeah. He couldn't take it and walked off the job. But he's a good union man."

The spokesman of the pair nodded and put a candid-size glossy photograph on the white formica of the kitchen table.

Jimmy McQuade looked at it.

"So. You got a picture of a pile of mud."

"The pile's name is Johnny Delano," said the FBI man.

Jimmy McQuade looked closer. "Oh, no," groaned Jimmy McQuade.

"They were able to identify him because there was a finger left. All the teeth had been crushed. Often we can identify someone through bridgework. But Johnny Delano's teeth were crushed. The body was dissolved and crushed at the same time. Police lab still can't figure it out. Neither can we. We don't know what did this to him. One finger was left intact. You see that thing protruding from the pile. It looks like a bump."

"Okay. Okay. Okay. Stop. I got the general drift. What do you want? And put that picture back in your pocket."

"I'd like to stress that we're not in union busting. It's just that your union is providing something that is going to hurt your members. We're also not in the union business. But we have evidence, and we suspect that your union and other unions, specifically the International Brotherhood of Drivers, the Airline Pilots Association, the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen and the International Stevedores Association, are planning to harm this nation in such a way that neither the nation nor the union movement would survive."