Yellow Dog Contract by Ross Thomas Page A

wasn’t she, for this guy Quane?”
    I nodded. “Don’t blame her too much. Max was awfully good at manipulating people. It was a specialty of his. One of several.”
    Audrey looked out the window to where her children were playing in the garden. They were playing tag although Nelson seemed to be bopping his sister a little harder than was really necessary. “I wonder if I told her what your friend Quane wanted to know?”
    â€œYou probably told her exactly what he wanted to know.”
    â€œHow can you be sure?”
    â€œMax called me yesterday. He was as you said, twitchy, which wasn’t at all like Max Quane. He said he had to see me. When I asked him why he said it was because he thought he knew what had happened to Arch Mix.”
    Audrey rose, went over to a cabinet, took down a cannister labeled “pepper,” took out a cigarette, and lit it. It wasn’t a real cigarette though; it was dope. She drew the smoke down into her lungs, held it, and then let it out slowly.
    â€œShit,” she said. “Does that mean that what I told Sally got Quane killed?”
    â€œQuane got himself killed,” I said. “If he’d really figured out what happened to Mix, he must have tried to get cute with it. He got cute with the wrong people.”
    â€œI wonder what I told her?”
    â€œWas there any single thing that Sally kept coming back to, pressing you on?”
    Audrey took another drag on her marijuana, picked up the pepper cannister, and sat back down at the table. She offered me the cannister but I shook my head.
    â€œSally’s too smooth for that,” Audrey said. “I mean she would never make it obvious.”
    â€œThere must have been something,” I said.
    Audrey thought about it. “In bed,” she said.
    â€œShe was interested in you and Mix in bed?”
    â€œNot really. But I once told her that after Arch and I had had a really good fuck he liked to just lie there and think out loud. I didn’t mind because I was feeling good and remembering how fine it had been. But it was then that he was relaxed and confident and felt that he could talk about whatever was on his mind.”
    â€œSo what did he talk about?” I said.
    â€œThat’s what Sally asked—and kept asking, although I didn’t notice it at the time.”
    â€œShe must have been more specific than that.”
    â€œUh-huh, she was, now that I think about it. She was especially interested in what Arch talked about just before we broke up. She kept coming back to that with the excuse that maybe there was something in what he’d said that would give me some clue about why it really happened. I mean our bust-up. So I told her what he’d said as best as I could remember.”
    â€œBut then she would come back for something even more specific?” I said.
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œThat’s how I would have done it,” I said.
    â€œYou are a shit.”
    â€œCome on, Audrey. What the hell did you tell her?”
    â€œShe kept coming back to a couple of nights right toward the last when Arch was talking about you and the union. He wasn’t bad-mouthing you. It was just that he’d found out something that made him think of you and the union back in sixty-four.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI told you I didn’t take notes. Anyway, I was half asleep.”
    â€œJust tell me what you told Sally.”
    â€œI told her that Arch had told me that they were going to try to use the union just the way they had used it back in 1964 but that he, by God, was going to put a quick stop to it. Or something like that.”
    I slumped back in my chair. “When did you tell her this?”
    â€œA few days ago. Maybe a week. It was all very casual. Just talk. Or at least that’s the way it seemed then. Does it mean anything?”
    â€œIt sure as hell meant something to Max Quane.”
    â€œDoes it mean