Warren Murphy: Union Bust

Negronski felt his jaw, Pigarello handed him a handkerchief.

"Cold water would be good on that," said the Pig, shamefaced.

"Yeah," said Negronski. "Cold water would be good."

"You got any cold water down here? I mean not far."

"No water in the basement."

"You got water. Look at those pipes."

"They're not for water."

"What are they for?"

"I don't know. But they're not for water."

"Yeah. But they look like water pipes. Don't they look like water pipes, fellas? I mean those are water pipes. Right?" said the Pig.

"Shut up," said Connor. "Just shut up."

"They look like water pipes to me," said the Pig, resigned to the peculiar emotional outbreaks of his cohorts.

The door opened. Out popped the shaggy head of Gene Jethro.

"Uh, McCulloch wants to see you, Connor. You're the one who swiped Siggy."

"He had a pipe," said Connor.

"Right," said Jethro sweetly. "I understand. C'mon in. McCulloch has something to tell you."

Maybe, just maybe, Jethro's old charm had worked. Beautiful. Negronski didn't even feel any animosity towards Connor. These things happened. Negronski wasn't one to hold grudges. Everything would work out fine.

"Whaddya think happened?" asked Ryan.

"I don't know, maybe they made a deal," said Wolcyz.

"Nah. McCulloch ain't making deals with that fag," said another union delegate.

"He ain't not making any deals," said another.

"He's making a deal," said Wolcyz, suddenly smiling at Negronski.

"I know exactly," said Pigarello. "I know exactly."

Everybody looked at the Pig.

"Those are definitely water pipes," said the Pig. "Those are water pipes. They're even sweating."

"Drop dead," said Wolcyz.

"Jeez," said Ryan.

"Those aren't water pipes," said Negronski. Another half hour passed. The door opened.

"Won't you gentlemen come in, please?"

The group nodded, and like schoolboys lining up for their turns at bat, all filed into the office.

"We got a deal," whispered Wolcyz.

But there was no deal apparent. The room, about three times the size of the elevator, was bare but for an iron desk. One small bulb cast an inadequate yellow light in the room, making the pipe endings and nozzles on the wall seem like eerie extensions of shadows. McCulloch and Connor were nowhere around and there was no other exit. No window or door.

"McCulloch and Connor said they preferred Miami Beach. They didn't like modern ideas. They've left," said Jethro.

"How'd they go out? There's no other exit," said Wolcyz looking around the one-door, windowless room.

"They've gone. Now, lets get down to business. You gentlemen are the blocks to my presidency. Do you want to be rich or do you want to be left behind in the moribund, reactionary, penny-pinching practices of the previous regimes?"

"We ain't voting without McCulloch and Connor," said a driver president from Maine.

"Then you'll never vote, baby," said Jethro sweetly.

This proved not to be so because suddenly it became obvious to all what had happened. Immediately, the motion was unanimously passed, by voice vote, that the New England bloc did not wish to be left behind in the moribund, reactionary, penny-pinching practices of the old regime.

"The best throw is Jethro," shouted one of the delegates, repeating a slogan he had seen on a batch of circulars he had thrown away the week before. He wished he had them now.

"Go with Jethro. The best throw is Jethro," chanted the other delegates.

Gene Jethro quieted his new admirers. "Gee, fellas. I don't know what to say. I guess a new consciousness has come to the International Brotherhood of Drivers."

Pigarello had one question. It still bothered him.

"Mr. Jethro," he said. "Are they or aren't they water pipes coming into this office?"

"They're water pipes, Pig," said Jethro.

Pigarello beamed. "See. I told you." He was so happy he even offered to take out the garbage since there didn't seem to be any janitors around the building as yet, and Mr. Jethro had two big plastic Garby bags sitting by the door.

CHAPTER FOUR

The doctor stared at the dying man who lay on a white padded table breathing faintly, the surgical lamps casting a pale glow on his trim body. If one were to look at him like this in the white tiled room with the surgical sinks and medical instruments, one would think he was looking at a normal human being about to undergo an operation.

One would also think he was in a hospital. But Dr. Gerald Braithwait knew better. He stared at the patient who in occasional moments of consciousness called himself Remo.

If this were a normal person, he would say the man was in shock. The pulse was irregular. The temperature was down. And the breathing was chaotic. Shock. But the patient recovered briefly every so often, as if he were not in shock, and the proper medical treatment for shock had only produced in this person a dangerous closing in on death.

Dr. Braithwait shook his head. He started to say something to the nurse, to tell her, to tell someone, anyone in this insane Alice in Wonderland madhouse, the problems this patient faced. The beginning of a word came out, then nothing. That would be useless also. The nurse did not speak a word of English.

But why should Dr. Braithwait be surprised? This wasn't even a hospital. Nothing was what is seemed. From the outside, this was a coal barge anchored in the mouth of a river in some southern state. He believed it was southern because he had seen the stars before the plane landed at a small airport which had not signs and no other airplanes. Just a helicopter to take him to a coal barge in the mouth of a river. When one walked through an opening in the pile of coal, one was immediately in a small hospital. One should have started complaining then, but when one is greedy for a cherished dream one does not start questioning until it is too late.

Dr. Braithwait looked at his nurse, an eastern European of some sort. He could not place the language.

The patient moaned. Dr. Braithwait signalled that the steel-belted straps on the ankles and wrists should be replaced. One did not want to witness another performance by this patient. Yesterday, he had fallen off the table. That was bad. He could have hurt himself. He did not. That was shocking. The patient was semi-conscious, and in midair, like a cat, turned his body to land on his hands and feet. Human beings did not do that. They did not turn like cats in midair.

But why should Dr. Braithwait be surprised? Only the body looked human. The nervous system, as Dr. Braithwait had discovered when he first stepped into this bad, bad dream, was not that of a human. The cells were human. The structure was human. But so enlarged were some aspects of the nervous system, so supersensitive, that it was not the human nervous system at all.

Dr. Braithwait pointed to the straps again. He smiled, not a sincere smile, but an indicator that he wished something done. The nurse smiled back. She applied the straps. The steel straps were on hand. Dr. Braithwait didn't have to order those. They were shown him by that Dr. Smith first day on the barge during a tour of the hidden hospital with room for twenty and a staff of three: Dr. Smith, the nurse who did not speak English, and that incredible, insane old Oriental.

"The normal restraining straps are already on this table," Dr. Smith had said. "But we have others that are stronger."

"No need," Dr. Braithwait had said. "Nobody can break out of one of those straps. Veterinarians have even used them for gorillas." Oh, how foolish he had been. The normal straps had broken the first day.

Dr. Braithwait stared at the shiny steel webbing being snapped to the large wrists. Dr. Smith was behind all this. Dr. Smith's reputation would be mud when word of this… this kidnapping got out.