“Who did see it?”
McClintock thought for a moment then and shook his head. “It’s the strangest thing.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know who saw.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Sometimes…” He tried to think again, but the words would not stop coming now. “Sometimes I can’t trust the boys who are down there. You know? They said it was an accident. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see. They said it was. But I couldn’t be sure. Tommy never said who did it. He died not long after. Infection. But he was scared when he was alive. And Tommy was never…”
“Never what?”
“Never liked so much.”
“Why not?”
“Some damn thing,” said McClintock. “I don’t know. Something about wages. They don’t talk to me about those things, you know? I’m their boss, not their friend.”
“I know. You’re right. But they should still trust you that much.”
“They should. They absolutely should. I’ve never done them wrong before. Not ever. I’ve fought for them time and time again, I’ve fought to keep jobs and shifts and wages. Things keep getting scarcer down there, moving labor around. But you look at them and they’re all looking right back at you and you can see it. Right there. They don’t trust you. They don’t trust anyone who’s not with them. Who’s not suffering same as them. But I was on the line way back and I suffered plenty. I just survived long enough to get up to where I am. You know?”
Hayes watched him silently, eyes still unfocused. Then he said, “They were for Mickey, and Tommy wasn’t.”
McClintock nodded. “They were. Tommy didn’t want to truck with it. Didn’t care for it.”
“Who were the ones involved?”
“I don’t know.”
“But who would be likely?”
“Naylor and Walton, I’m almost sure. Those bastards. The fucking bastards. And Evie’s always palling with them, too. The past few months I got no idea what’s going on with those boys.”
Hayes nodded. “I see,” he said. “All right.”
He asked more questions. Asked about the social life of McClintock’s team, about where they went to drink. Not professional stuff, just two boozers chatting and loafing. Sure, said McClintock, they hang at the Third Ring Pub, down where Southern meets the Shanties. Hayes asked about girls and McClintock said sure, they have a few, what working man doesn’t? Rumor had it John Evie had a few boys, but he couldn’t say for certain. Peggy had been Naylor’s girl, maybe still was, off and on. Little redheaded thing, he said, he’d seen her with him more than a few times. Got to be a good fuck, but any fuck’s a good fuck if you’ve been as dry as he had, and he prodded Hayes with an elbow and the two of them laughed. More names breezed by, just idle gossip being passed along. And in the corner of the room Samantha wrote them all down, every single one.
At the end of the three hours Hayes and McClintock both wobbled to their feet and helped one another to the door, laughing and stumbling. They went to the hallway to chat and left Samantha to finish up her notes. When she was done Hayes returned, sober and distracted again, hardly drunk at all.
“Who’s Mickey?” she asked. “I don’t have any record of a Mickey in here.”
“Mickey Tazz is the union man,” said Hayes as he sat. “He’s the boy Evans painted the target on, whether he knows it or not.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Rumor mill.”
“Would that be the same place you heard about the hands?”
“Sort of. We have ten minutes ’til our next interview, right?”
“We do.”
“Right,” he said, and put his feet up and fell genuinely asleep this time.
There were three others that day: Mueller, Ferdig, and Andersson. Each time Hayes waited in the broom closet next door, and each time when he emerged he began an interviewer and ended a friend. Always there with a sympathetic ear, always smiling sadly or nodding in concern. For Mueller, who oversaw the booking office in the detailing facility, he was stiff and cordial, the consummate bureaucrat, asking detailed questions and receiving detailed answers. Lovers of due process, the both of them. For Andersson, who was so big and dour and blond, Hayes was a comrade, a fellow soldier, another hard worker who was paid for his efforts with more problems, more bullshit, more lazy coworkers. The more advanced the world gets the less everyone gives a shit, they both agreed. And for Ferdig he was a coconspirator, the two men finding some neighborhood link in their histories, some district or corner they both used to frequent, and they traded rumors and cigarettes like old thieves.
Each one had names. None quite so many as McClintock, but names nonetheless. And each had heard of Mickey Tazz, the shining hope of the Shanties. A clean, smart man supported by a nasty crowd, there was no doubt. He was riding the lightning, wasn’t he? Some days he seemed like Christ himself.
Andersson seemed to almost support the man. “He is not a criminal,” he told Hayes. “He is not dangerous. These are just dangerous times. He is just voice. Speaking of unhappiness, yes?” Hayes nodded, understanding. He worked his way close to the melancholy Swede, the two of them frowning and sharing small scraps of their days, Hayes as a simple paper-pusher, Andersson as a spot-welder for the Tramlines. Hayes professed some admiration for Andersson’s admittedly dangerous job, and the man took pride in that. When he left Hayes walked him all the way out of the building, sharing oaths and gloomy head-shakes along the way, and Hayes returned with a small bevy of information about the union leader.
Mickey Tazz, born Michael Tazarian, half-Irish, half-Czech. Came from the Shanties, worked on the dock and rose up to foreman damn quick. When the Chinese and the blacks started eating up wages he tried to fence them out and put a freeze on the wage levels. Started his own little band of stevedores, they say, but wasn’t a thug about it. He was a political animal, right from the start. Wanted to talk to the big boys. Full of high ideas about the rights of man. Naturally, things got ugly and a bunch of them got arrested, including Tazz. He wound up spending a nickel spot in Savron Hill, but on getting out he started to organize, looking to band everyone together under one big banner. If Evesden was the city of the future, then Mickey Tazz was the man who would make it a future where everyone lived in peace. Tomorrow is coming, he told everyone. We just have to make it the tomorrow we want.
“That’s a charming little picture,” said Samantha at the end.
“Yes,” said Hayes. “It is.” And he sat down and waited for the end of the long day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next three weeks passed in nearly the same way. Each day a new list of names. Each morning a new set of blank little rooms with blank men. And at the end of each day they had a new list of their own to deliver to Evans, who would then presumably deliver it to Brightly, or at least someone higher up on the Security chain.
However, what happened after that was never made known to them. Hayes was not sure if there were arrests made, or inquiries, or if other investigators were following up on the allegations brought to light by their interviews. Samantha once asked him about it, wondering if this was procedure, but Hayes could do no more than shrug. This union angle was completely new to him, he admitted. He’d no idea what the procedure was, or even if there was any.
Then one day on one of their rare free mornings Hayes swung down to Payroll and checked on a few suspicions he’d been nursing. He frowned when he heard the answers to his queries, and then took the elevator up to the Communications Office for Securities and sent off a telegram directly to Brightly, asking to meet. Then he sat in the waiting room of the office and watched the gray clouds drifting by outside.
It was extraordinarily difficult to get a meeting with Brightly. The man moved constantly. As far as Hayes was aware he didn’t even have an office. There was a rumor that the short, red airship that they saw hovering near the McNaughton cradle so often was his own personal vessel, ready to swoop him up and drop him down wherever and whenever he needed it. Hayes felt sure this was a lie. Brightly wasn’t one for flash and style. Whatever he was, he was far from Father Christmas.