Undertow

by Warren Adler

  XXVIII

  A reporter is a hunter, Ernie knew, and all true hunters develop instinctive maneuvers, intuitive machinations. Just as man adapts to his environment and develops strategies of accommodation, Ernie moved with the surefootedness of a deer in the forest.

  In the end he had agreed with Chalmers about proof or, at the very least, a kind of corroboration. He could not bring himself to believe that the great Charles Chalmers could prostitute himself, the newspaper, his vision.

  The truth could be viewed through any prism. Every good reporter knew this. The light could change the angle, distort the image, but in the end, the prismatic illusion dissipated. And even when all light failed, the truth was there to touch. Preconception was always dangerous. The model could be wrong; the prefabricated matrix, a bad fit.

  Chalmers was simply goading Ernie to produce the truth, absolute truth, or at least to discover a set of facts leading to a single logical, unalterable conclusion.

  Even now, Ernie could feel his role of hunter, as the blood scent taunted his nostrils and urged him to the kill.

  The drive back to Washington was tiring. His mind raced around on a track of white heat. His spirits ranged from unbridled elation to adject depression. He believed he found, in the almost mute evidence of the grieving father, all the proof he had needed. But intuition, feelings, sentiment could be deceiving, expecially to a reporter. What he needed was concrete, dispassionate proof to satisfy Chalmers. Piecing together a played scenario involving two adults in a sexual encounter seemed reasonably simple for an experienced reporter. Something literally exuded from the pores, antennae sharpened, sixth senses operated. Clues were everywhere.

  The core of the issue was not the sexual encounter itself, but rather the calculated moves to deceive, to manipulate the public. The so-called proof was merely trivia. So Senator James was having an affair with a black girl. Hardly a startling act in itself. How did that affect his ability to govern, his concept of political leadership, his beliefs, if he had any, in ethical principles? That was the wheat. He was in search of the chaff.

  Senator James’s office was a beehive of studied moves. People moved around the reception room of his office like cheery automatons with smiles pasted across their mouths. Doors to inner offices were closed. A bright-eyed woman sat at the reception desk clicking away at her typewriter, crisp and busy. Undoubtedly the order had come down to look crisp and busy. Four staff people sat in the reception room: the receptionist and three others, two women and a man, a black man. All seemed preoccupied and intense.

  “May I speak to someone in charge of the office?” Ernie said, humility oozing. He identified himself haltingly, searched for his press card, conscious of acting out the mannerisms of the unslick, the inarticulate. It was the standard investigative device to get people to put down their guard.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Rowell,” the girl said, aggressively sweet. “No reporters are being seen.”

  “Yes, I can understand that,” Ernie said. “You see, I’m just looking for someone who could tell me a little about Miss Jackson.”

  “So sad about Miss Jackson,” the receptionist said with sincerity. Then adding quickly, “She worked for the committee. The committee office is down the hall.”

  “Did you know her?” Ernie asked.

  “Oh, yes,” the girl said. “She was a wonderful, a fabulous person.”

  “So I understand.”

  “A really fabulous person.”

  He looked at the girl, knew she had been programmed in advance, but took the plunge anyhow.

  “You think she was having an affair with the senator?” he said, certain he was being heard by everyone in the room.

  It washed over her like burning lava, bowling her over with its swiftness.

  “Mr.—”

  “Rowell.”

  “I really think that you’re being rude. How can you be so rude at a time like this?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ernie said, retreating. He had watched the three other staff people in the outer office for effect. Only the black man had stirred perceptibly. He could almost see the man’s ears cock.

  Afterwards, he had gone to the offices of the committee. There, his interviews were more businesslike. They wouldn’t let him speak to the clerks. He would have to come back. Only the committee’s executive director would see him. The man was loquacious, casual, but skillfully guarded.

  “You know how it is when you’re finishing up a report,” he said. “Hell, it was extremely important to the senator. Let me tell you, these birds have to write legislation based on that report that will affect our educational process for generations. Marlena was a key person in its preparation. It was very proper for her to be there, very proper.”

  Ernie listened carefully, hoping for an echo, a hint. There were plenty of those, but no fresh leads. The executive director was too deflective, dwelled too much on the report, the nonessentials. Ernie wondered if the man really thought he was being convincing, if he felt satisfied that he was outwitting him. He would probably tell his boss, “Reporter from the Chronicle was snooping around. I sent him packing. He was a nosy bastard.”

  “Come on,” Ernie said, deliberately reassembling his features, erasing the humble bumpkin look. “Are you seriously expecting me to believe that horseshit? All I want to know was how long the affair was going on. What kind of a girl was Jackson? Everybody in town knows your senator would fuck a wall. Stop this bullshit.”

  The man feigned indignation, a favorite ploy of the obvious liar. “You guys always making something out of nothing. Anything for a story.”

  “We’re not going to print your bullshit.”

  The man turned white. He was the perennial bureaucrat, his job on the line. He was undoubtedly wondering whether he had said anything, even the slightest hint of something quotable.

  “Forget it,” Ernie said, taking him off the hook. “Just show me Marlena’s desk.”

  He took him to a back room and pointed to a cluttered desk in a corner, piled high with publications and memoranda. There was a picture of Mr. Jackson on her desk, his face shiny from too much flash, the face without a trace of the dignity he had seen in person. Casual photography was not kind to a black face.

  Ernie started to touch the desk.

  “Please, Mr. Rowell, I’ve showed you the desk. There’s little to be learned from it. The fact is that we all respected Marlena. You’ll find very few people who had anything bad to say about her. She was brilliant and dedicated.”

  “And beautiful.”

  “Yes, she was beautiful.”

  All he had wanted was to get the feel of her environment, to put her in context. He knew that despite her death, she was a trivial actor in the upcoming events. She had said her lines, had done her gig, and then had exploded, her remains scattered, like confetti, over everything. His focus remained narrow. He hadn’t the patience to go through the whole staff learning about Marlena Jackson’s character or ambitions. He felt guilty about it. He was not doing the sidebar feature on Marlena Jackson, the why’s and wherefore’s of her life, the momentous event of her death. That was another story, perhaps, for another time, another place. A Sunday supplement piece, perhaps. The kind that always started with a question: “Did she know that her death would change the course of history?”

  He tried a few questions on some members of the staff as he departed. They were tight-lipped, banal, and finally insulted when he probed deeper. One girl called him a “dirty bastard.”

  “Only filth. That’s all you guys are interested in. Only filth,” she said.

  He could understand their feelings. But the method was essential. He had made sure that each person had heard his name. Feedback would come. Sexual secrets were impossible to keep on the Hill, where the starfuckers were as thick as Indians in an old Western and carried their scalps on public display like badges of honor. The result of all this probing wasn’t even worth more than a paragraph buried deep in the story like a mine. He
turned and, without an acknowledgment or good-bye, left the office.

  Walking into the cafeteria, he filled a cup of coffee at the counter, paid the check and sat down. His bones ached. He sipped deeply. In his mind, he began to write his story, toying with leads.

  “Every philanderer has a nightmare fantasy,” one began. “There is a moment in life when the vectors of disaster interconnect. It happened this week to Senator Donald James,” another began. “Last weekend Armageddon came to a golden knight,” went another. They were all too conclusive, too damning, too unfair. He would have to think about it. His mind was too tired.

  “Was it conceivable that he was wrong?” he thought. Tiredness had brought doubt in its wake. He waited until the coffee was lukewarm, swallowed it down to the grounds, and stepped up to the counter for a refill. It was then that the voice intervened.

  “I’ll pick you up in front of Union Station—” the black voice said. There was no escaping the inflection. “—in twenty minutes.”

  He knew without turning that the voice was directed at him. He nodded, filled the coffee cup, and walked slowly back to his table. The man’s back receded as he moved away. It was the black man in the reception area of the senator’s office. “Paydirt,” he thought. Judas had shown himself.

  Looking at his watch, he let five minutes pass before he finished off the second cup. He moved swiftly out the door of the cafeteria, through the corridors into the street.

  It was almost his first bit of acquired knowledge of the Washington scene. The army of blacks that worked for the government had a built-in underground, an infallible communications system, like prisoners in a penitentiary. They cleaned the huge government buildings, emptied the trash bins, polished the brass, served the food. Wherever leaders moved, blacks moved in invisible battalions, a fixed part of the scene, like the gold frames on the oil paintings of the celebrated which graced the walls of the offices of the high and the mighty.

  He walked quickly now, monitoring his time as he approached the station, the Greek temple monument to the Iron Horse. The symbolism seemed so appropriate. They couldn’t recapture the truth and purity of the Hellenes and so they copied their buildings instead. Reaching the cavernous entrance of the columned building, he stood at the curb, a beacon for the black man to navigate towards. He did not have long to wait.

  It was a big, nondescript, white Buick, old and dented, its grill smashed. The man opened the door. He got in quickly, and the car lurched forward.

  “I’m Pierce,” the man said.

  He was youngish, a scraggly black moustache sprouting valianty over thick Negroid lips. His hair was in the natural style. The eyes drooped slightly, long eyelashes curving over the lids.

  The car cranked up and swerved in a sharp right into North Capitol Street, then right again into the colorless jungle of Northeast Washington, a section long abandoned by the Whites, now decaying like forgotten fruit. In the security of the endless black neighborhoods, the car slowed.

  “She was jazzing the honky,” the man said, the accent and idiom in exaggerated street-nigger dialect. Ernie remained silent. The black man looked at him bitterly.

  “She was jazzing the honky, man,” he repeated. “That nigger bitch.” He opened the window and spat.

  “How do you know?”

  “I seen ’em.”

  “Where?”

  “Mostly in that cat Lou Castle’s pad over in Southwest. I’d bring ’em messages, packages. I’m a messenger. Once I seen her naked in the bedroom with the big man. They closed the door. She knowed I seen them. But they never paid me no mind. Not this motherfuckin’ lackey nigger. He laks his jelly roll, man. And nobody rolls jelly like a nigger girl.” He paused and lit a half-smoked cigar.

  “Don’t you like the senator?” Ernie asked.

  Pierce was silent for a moment. He chewed on his cigar. “He a good man, good man. It’s that uppity Jackson woman. All the time so high. Nevah talked to me. I ain’t dirt.”

  So there it was, Ernie thought. Simple jealousy with a racial base. “Anybody else know about this?”

  “Besides Mr. Castle, Miss Donato, few more people.”

  “Like who?”

  “Doorman maybe at Mr. Castle’s. Maybe Marlena told some people. Lotta jazzin’ goes on up on the Hill.”

  “Why are you telling me these things, Pierce?”

  “Ah got my reasons.”

  Ernie felt foolish pursuing the obvious. Here was the classic inferiority complex, the bane of the black male, sharpened by frustration. He understood. Senator James had ripped off one of their women. If the girl had been white, there would be a different set of reasons. Betrayal had no racial base. Confirmation would come from others. He was sure of that. He wanted to tell the man that his malice, his revenge, was nothing really, a small useless fire giving no heat. But jealousy, compounded by frustration, was a strong enough motive. Soon, he was certain, he would find a snakepit of other motives. Girls whose loneliness sapped their compassion. Bitter older women who fantasized that they too might park their shoes at the foot of the senator’s bed. Ambitious people to whom Marlena was a threat. He would spend this day of penance on the Hill, and he would hate every minute of it.

  He felt certain that this was the kind of “proof” that Chalmers really wanted. It seemed so pointless, somehow. Only a healthy helping of self-delusion would deflect the truth. It was a valid point in the story even as speculation. The denial was pure sophistry, cynicism of the highest order. Why was he pursuing this make-work?

  The black man dropped him off at Union Station. Without a word, he got out and walked back toward the Capitol. He knew he would find an endless chain of witnesses to corroborate the story.

  XXIX

  “Chuck—this is Don James.”

  “Great to hear your voice, Don.”

  “Good to hear yours. A friend in need and all that.”

  “How are you bearing up?”

  “Under the circumstances, I’d say fair to middling.”

  “And Karen?”

  “Middling.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “There’s only one way, Chuck. I’m going to tell it like it is.”

  “Don, you know you don’t have to tell me anything. After all, I am a reporter.”

  “I know, Chuck. I also know that this blows me out of the water as far as the nomination is concerned. God, how I wanted to take on that bastard in the White House. Well, I guess I made his day.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “Chuck, I hate to disappoint all the vultures, but it’s not the way it looks. You know me well enough to know that the worst piece of strange sounds pretty good to me. But not this weekend. We really went out there to work. The whole thing was a fluke. One rotten fluke. The damned tides were vicious. She was right at the edge—and poof.”

  “Frankly, Don, I really don’t think that’s important. But how in the name of hell did you allow yourself to wait so damned long before calling for help?”

  “Chuck, Lou and I nearly killed ourselves trying to save that girl. Christ, they had to pull me out of the water. I thought I was finished. I was out. I was actually out. If you’ve ever been confronted with a circumstance like that you’d know that it’s difficult to act rationally. I had to assemble my thoughts. I had to get it together.”

  “I understand. But why so long? That bugs me. I could see two, three hours at the outside, but eleven. That’s the tough part.”

  “We searched up and down the beaches. We thought maybe the tides would roll her back. You don’t lose hope so fast in situations like this. Chuck, she was a wonderful girl, a fine person. I’ve talked to her father.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “He’s destroyed. What could I tell him? We’re all going to the funeral. It’s sad. The whole thing is sad.”

  “I know, Don. I don’t quite know what to say. It’s too damned bad. We’ll just have to put up with another five years of that fascist animal in
the White House.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic. The Democrats could surprise you.”

  “No, Don. You were the man.”

  “I haven’t given up, Chuck. I’m going to fight this thing. That’s one of the reasons I was so anxious to talk to you. I need some advice.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’m thinking of going on television in California. I’ve got to tell my side of the story. I’ve got to make a record of it. There’s too many ambiguities about this incident. I know the time lag thing will haunt me. But that’s what happens when you’re in the frying pan. Besides, nothing a politician says is wholly believed, anyway. There has actually been some hint that I murdered the girl. Can you imagine?”

  “Yes, I can imagine. Let’s face it. You’ve got passionate enemies.”

  “Then I’ve got to explain this business of no immorality, no sex.”

  “That will be a tough one to swallow.”

  “You’re too cynical, Chuck.”

  “You mean logical. I know you, Don.”

  “It’s either that or hang up my cleats.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I’m fighting for my political credibility, Chuck. I’ve got my constituency. I owe them. Look, it’s one hell of a responsibility. I’ll need their patience. I hope they’ll be able to wait five years. I hope I can tough it out.”