Free Yellow Dog Contract by Ross Thomas Page A

the better.”
    There was that about Slick. You didn’t have to spend the afternoon explaining things to him. He thought for a moment, working up his pitch, I assumed, then picked up the phone, dialed, and after a few more moments got through to Warner B. Gallops. It was a pleasure to listen to Slick sell. First he was charming, then he was winning, and finally he was convincing—especially when he lied, which he did beautifully, particularly about what a valuable contribution I was making to the investigation.
    â€œWell?” I said after he hung up.
    â€œEleven o’clock tomorrow.”
    â€œNot today?”
    â€œNo. Not today.”
    â€œAll right then. Tomorrow. What was that Gallops called me when you first mentioned my name?”
    â€œA shitbird, I believe,” Slick said. “After that it got somewhat less complimentary.”
    The last I had heard, Max Quane was still living with his wife and two sons out in the Bannockburn section of Bethesda, Maryland, just off Wilson Boulevard not too far from the old Chesapeake and Ohio canal. It was a fairly upper middle-class section whose residents had tended to shun grapes, boycott lettuce, and now worried a great deal about what the Japanese were doing to the whales.
    On the other hand, Mintwood Place was a fairly seedy block of row houses just off Columbia Road back of the Hilton about half a block from Kalorama Park. The block that contained the address that Quane had given me was partly black, partly Cuban, and partly white. If you didn’t know where to look it was a street hard to find, hard to get to, and impossible to park near. It was also, I decided, a rather good place for a man to keep a small furnished apartment that was none of his wife’s business.
    It was nearly two o’clock by the time I found a place to park on Nineteenth Street near Biltmore. I took off my coat, loosened my tie, and walked up Nineteenth to Mintwood where I turned left. It was hot—hot for Washington, hot for New Orleans, hot even for Africa, and by the time I had gone half a block my shirt was damp. By the time I had gone a block it was wet. A couple of small, dark Cubans without shirts sat quietly on a small stoop and shared a bottle of something in a brown paper sack. They watched me carefully as I went by, probably because they had nothing better to do and I was something to look at. Not much, just something.
    The address that Quane had given me was a three-story row house built out of beige brick. It still had a porch and on it two small children, a boy and a girl with solemn Spanish eyes, were trying to screw a lightbulb into an empty wine bottle. They weren’t having much luck, but they seemed interested in their problem.
    I went through a screen door into a small foyer whose only furnishing was a stolen supermarket cart with a missing wheel. There was a row of six mailboxes with locks, but most of them had been pried open at one time or another. The mailboxes had small spaces for the names of the building’s tenants. Four of the spaces were filled in; two weren’t. In the space for number six, which supposedly was Quane’s, someone had printed in Johnson.
    I started up the stairs and didn’t meet anyone until I reached the second landing and turned to go up the remaining flight to the third story. A man came down the stairs. He was in a hurry, maybe even a rush, because he took the steps two at a time. I stepped back out of his way. He didn’t see me at first because he was watching his feet, making sure not to trip. He looked up finally, saw me, hesitated—or seemed to—and then kept on going. I thought he even picked up a little speed.
    He was a wide, stocky man with short legs. He had heavy black eyebrows and a dark face that could have been tanned, but wasn’t. He was about thirty-five. He wore a suit. A light blue one. I turned to get a better look at him because I thought I’d seen those heavy