The Incumbent

by Brian McGrory

  The three of us fell quiet for a moment. It was nearing 4:00 P.m." so we divvied up the workload. As I've said, Havlicek is the best, most dogged reporter I know, but he writes as if English is a second language. With that in mind, Martin delicately suggested that he type up what he had and ship it to me, and I would combine it with my White House reaction and meld it into one story.

  But even the best-laid plans sometimes fall victim to circumstance. As I settled in at my desk, before I even checked my voice mail and computer messages, the telephone rang.

  "Jesus Christ, you're tough to reach. I thought you quit." It was the ever-personable Ron Hancock.

  "Been in with the president all afternoon," I said.

  "Yeah, right." He just kind of snickered. I was about to argue, but decided to save the energy.

  "They're feeding you a line of crap from over here," he said. "It's bullshit. They were calling this victim Tony Clawson right up until six A.m." when the news broke from your paper that they had the wrong ID."

  "Can you prove it?" I asked, starting to get excited but trying to keep myself in check. You don't want to show these guys too much, even if they're trying to help.

  "I'm an FBI agent. Of course I can prove it. What's your fax number?"

  I gave it to him, and he said, "Go stand by your machine. I'm sending you something right now. You don't know where you got it from. If you go before a grand jury, you'll tell them nothing. If you get called by the fucking director, you'll tell him nothing. If they stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails and make you eat boiled horse dick for dinner, you'll tell them you love it."

  There are weeks, even months, in this strange business of newspaper reporting when absolutely nothing goes right-when the only guy who can prove a tip that you know is true has gone off hiking in the Himalayas and ends up freezing to death in his base camp, or when a blockbuster corruption story you've been working for a month ends up on the front page of the Los Angeles Times because you've decided to take an extra day of writing to smooth out the tone. There are, of course, those times when there just aren't any tips or good stories, and the whole world seems set in different shades of gray. It's times like this that your sisters call and say they haven't seen you in the paper much lately, is everything all right with your job?

  I mention this because this obviously was not one of these times. In fact, on my way to the facsimile machine, unsure what I was about to receive, I kept quietly pumping my fist down at my side, as if I had just scored the winning basket for South Boston High in the Christmas tournament against Charlestown. This was better than sex, though truth be known, I was probably a bad judge of that, given the duration of time since I last had any.

  By the time I got to the machine, it was already spitting out a plain sheet of white paper with the typewritten words: "For Jack Flynn.

  Personal and Confidential. For Jack Flynn's eyes only."

  What followed was a detailed FBI internal case summary dated the day before, stamped late in the afternoon by whoever received it, which discussed the identity of the killer as Tony Clawson. Hancock, the rascal, had whited out some key parts about the investigation. Even while he was trying to help me out, he still had some allegiance to the FBI and didn't want the case blown. I respected that. I notified Martin and Havlicek. There was much backslapping and hand-wringing, and in the end, the three of us pored over every word of the story that I began by writing.

  "Nice clean hit," Martin said when we shipped the story to the national desk. We were standing in his office. It was pitch-black outside.

  The bureau was mostly empty. The soft light of his desk lamp cast a warm glow. "I'll assume you're on an early flight to Boston tomorrow."

  Before I could answer, Havlicek appeared in the doorway, smiling. "No I in the word team," he said.

  I furrowed my brow at him, expressing confusion.

  He shrugged. "I don't know what it means either. My Little League coach used to say it all the time. Just seemed to fit here. Let's head out. Drinks are on me."

  "I'm in," Martin said.

  I craved solitude and sleep, but couldn't really say no without looking like a curmudgeon. I was the youngest guy in the group, and so was expected to be a part of these things. "Where to?" I asked, as Martin put his coat on.

  Havlicek said, "University Club. Love that bar."

  So I guess the drinks would be on me, then.

  "Give me five minutes," I said.

  At my desk, I clicked through my electronic Rolodex to the telephone number for a dining and drinking establishment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, appropriately named the Pigpen.

  "Sammy there," I said, in a tone as gruff and hard as I could gather, which wasn't particularly difficult to do.

  The sound of tinny music was prominent in the background, as was the constant din of discussion, which, in the case of the Pigpen, I can guarantee you was taking place at no cerebral level. As if the guy who answered the phone was trying to play some part in a movie, he said, matching my gruffness with impressive skill, "Who wants to know?"

  "Jack Flynn."

  I heard the receiver hit a hard surface, probably the bar, which I silently expressed thanks wasn't the cradle. After a minute, someone picked up on another line, and the background music sounded a little louder.

  "What the fuck do you want now? I thought I made you into some big-time Washington reporter these days."

  A word about Sammy Markowitz: he is about sixty, bald but for a little stubble around his crown. He has droopy eyes and bad teeth and smokes Camels all day, every day, sitting in a back booth of the Pigpen, which he owns, drinking Great Western champagne, playing gin rummy with any and all comers. He has a face that sags down to a formless chin, and all things considered, makes Don Rickles look like an Olympic athlete.

  He is also the most powerful force in Chelsea's most important industry-bookmaking-and therefore has the endless respect of the city's many hoodlums and wannabes, the entire police force, even the mayor, whom he graces with a $10,000 bonus every Christmas Eve.

  Many years before, I dedicated weeks of my life to researching his bookie network, in a story I hoped to do about the anatomy of an illegal gaming operation. Truth be known, I was making very little progress penetrating the layers of insulation he had built around himself, and was about to abandon the story, when one night I arrived home to my Commonwealth Avenue apartment in Boston's Back Bay and was greeted on my doorstep by what looked like an Italian undertaker in need of a shave and some manners.

  "Someone would like to see you," he said. "Come with me."

  I didn't seem to have much choice, courtesy of the gun in his hand, so I went, thinking this would make a good lead in a story that I didn't actually have. He brought me to the Pigpen, to Markowitz's table, where I was told in no uncertain terms that I should drop my research and walk away from the story. Unfortunately, or maybe not, he had caught me on the tail end of a night out with the boys at the Capital Grille, and I was feeling the bravado that only a full bottle of Duckhorn cabernet can really instill.

  "What's in it for me?" I asked him.

  He paused, taken aback. Looking me up and down in a bit of disbelief, he eventually said, "What do you want?"

  "Well, you're asking me to walk away from a good story that I've put a lot of work into. You have something else for me?"

  He paused again, scratching at his face and exposing his bad teeth, then asked, "What about police corruption?"

  "Police corruption is good. I like police corruption."

  In a matter of days, he played a critical role laying out a story on a group of a dozen Chelsea police officers who had led a decade-long reign of terror on the community they were paid to protect, ranging from thievery to assault to torture to, in at least one case that I was able to report, murder. The story resulted in the indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of the dozen cops, the resignation of the police chief, and the recall of the mayor. I was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Marko
witz remained very much in business. I hadn't spoken to him since.

  "I'm well, Sammy, thanks, and I hope you are too." No reaction, so I continued. "I need five minutes from you, and I need you in a cooperative frame of mind."

  "What do you want from me?" he said, his tone and attitude largely void of the joy that I would expect to hear from anyone I hadn't talked to in this long.

  I said, "I'm looking for someone, and it's crucial I find him. I've got more than a hunch you can help me."

  "Yeah? Who?"

  "I'm in your town tomorrow. What if I just stop by?"

  "Yeah? Well, maybe I'm here, maybe I'm not."

  He's always there, so I took that as something as close to an invitation as I'd get. "Good," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow.

  Drinks are on you."

  Next I called Diego Rodriguez, an assistant United States attorney in Boston and a sometime source of information, leaving a message on his voice mail that I needed to speak to him tomorrow, in person, preferably in his office. And with that, a day that felt like it should be over was really just starting.

  fourteen

  Frank Sinatra was singing "The Best Is Yet to Come" as I strode through the wide doors of the University Club grille and up to the bar, where Peter Martin and Steve Havlicek were talking animatedly about whether Carl Bernstein had received his proper due covering-or rather, uncovering-the Watergate affair. I had just been out in the hallway calling my dog sitter. My first thought coming into this conversation was that maybe I should bow out straight away and head home for the night.

  But good manners prevailed, as they so often do, at least with me.

  Lyle was there, working his typical magic. Actually, what Lyle was doing was reaching deep into the coldest ice chest in the District of Columbia, pulling out bottles of Miller Highlife, and pouring them into frosted pilsner glasses. Seems like magic, especially when he's doing it for you.

  Frank seemed to be hitting all his notes especially well in this particular rendition. It was my wedding song, and to that end, I felt a certain kinship to it, but I wasn't sure how I felt about hearing it here tonight. I guess all right, but the song can't help but bring back memories, fond and sad at the same time.

  Katherine and I got married by a justice of the peace in a secluded corner of the Boston Public Garden as dusk settled on the second Saturday of October. The leaves were brilliant shades of orange and red. The air was slightly cool, perfumed with the sense of passage.

  About eighty friends and family members gathered to watch us, and after the brief ceremony, we all strolled up the Commonwealth Avenue mall two blocks to my friend Roger Schecter's condomonium, where we ate a catered feast on his moonlit roof deck, danced to a five-piece swing band, and toasted a future that shone as bright as all those autumn stars. Who knew then that just as stars flicker, futures do as well?

  The wedding itself was part of a whole weekend of festivity. The night before, at our rehearsal dinner in the downstairs dining room of Locke-Ober, one of Boston's most venerable restaurants, I stood up with three glasses of cabernet already flowing through my system and made a toast. "I'm a cocky sort," I began, to some snickering from a couple of tables filled with my wiseass friends. "I expect to accomplish a lot in life. Maybe my newspaper reporting will make me famous. Maybe I'll win a prize. But this marriage," I said, "this relationship, is the greatest accomplishment I will ever have, and I plan to guard it and nurture it and always be more grateful for this than anything else in my life. I am in love," I said in a bit of uncharacteristic openness, "and this love is greater than I could ever have imagined."

  Katherine, when I sat down, had tears in her eyes. So did my mother, but I think that's because the nice general manager, subtle as he was about it, had just delivered the bill. The room was silent, then filled with applause. Later, a group of friends headed to the bar at the Tennis and Racquet Club, where I was also a member in good standing. I remember Frank Sinatra singing "Get Me to the Church on Time" as I ran into Katherine in the hallway to the rest rooms. I suggested to her that we follow tradition, that on this night we sleep apart, two remade virgins awaiting their big day. She put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled my lips down toward hers, kissing me hard. She pulled her mouth away ever so slightly, still holding my face close. "Not a chance in the world," she said. Okay.

  Back to our wedding reception. Roger being Roger, and, well, the roof deck being his, he got up midway through the evening and gave a toast of his own. He raised the issue of his vast portfolio, as he sometimes tends to do-a fortune that extends into the tens of millions of dollars, all money made in timely investments in some Route 128

  software and Internet startup companies. "For all my material wealth, for all I'm financially worth, I have nowhere near the happiness that these two have," he said. "Look at them. Look at what they have.

  They have a joy that no amount of money can ever buy. They are wealthier than I ever hope to be, and on this night, I'm not ashamed to proclaim my jealousy."

  That was nice. I think I saw one of my sisters wipe a tear off her cheek. Later, I handed the pesky wedding photographer a twenty-dollar bill and told him to go buy himself a couple of Scotch whiskies around the corner at Joe's American Bar and Grille, and take that Polaroid with him. Katherine sidled up to me along the railing of the deck.

  The Hancock Building and Prudential Center were on one side of us, the Charles River on the other. She put her hand on my cheek in the only moment of privacy we had had all night. "You're the only thing I've ever wanted in my entire life," she said. She stared up at me, her eyes glistening and growing wet. After a minute, she stood on her toes and kissed me warmly on my ear, whispering, "I will love you, Jack Flynn, every minute of every hour until the day I die." That's when I felt a flashbulb go off again, and I thought to myself, My God, I love this woman, and boy, can that photographer toss back twenty bucks worth of Johnnie Walker fast.

  "But it was Bernstein who had all the personality. People wanted to help him. People told him things they wouldn't tell Woodward." That was Havlicek, still engrossed in one of the more inane conversations that I had ever had the misfortune of hearing.

  "Boys, boys," I said. "Why don't we sit at a table and start over on something that might actually matter to somebody."

  My mood had quickly declined. But we sat down, and they shut up, and that seemed to make things a little better. A minute later our waiter stopped by the table with a basket of onion rings, some smoked salmon, and a couple of hamburgers. In the three minutes it had taken me to make my call, these guys had ordered the left side of the menu and put it on my tab. I started to say something, then figured, why bother.

  Havlicek's mouth was already filled. Martin was cutting up several onion rings with a fork and knife.

  "Carlos, could you bring me over a swordfish sandwich?" I said.

  Havlicek looked up from his plate, alarmed. "They have swordfish sandwiches? I didn't see any swordfish sandwiches on the menu."

  "Not on the menu," I said, immaturely restaking my claim to a club that I felt sliding away. "They make them up for me, special."

  There was a pause, then Martin asked, "What time are you heading north in the morning?"

  I said, "I figured I'd grab the six A.m. flight, get me in around seven-thirty. I'll be on the ground reporting by nine. This voice seemed to think that we didn't have a whole lot of time to waste on this thing."

  "How we supposed to know?" Havlicek added, accidentally spitting a caper next to my fork, which I found more than unappetizing.

  "We don't. We trust," I said.

  They seemed to be thinking about that for a while, as if trust, to newspaper people, anyway, was such a novel idea. They ate. My swordfish arrived. Martin eventually asked, expansively, "So who is this guy and why does he want to help us so bad?"

  We didn't answer, so Martin asked, "He some conspiracy theorist with a few good hunches? He someone in the White House, one of Cole's old loyalists trying to k
ick up trouble? Is it some agent of Stanny Nichols, like these guys Graham and Wilkerson, trying to leak out their opposition research, and if so, why be so covert?"

  Havlicek looked down at his plate, I assumed in thought, but I realized it was because he was sopping up the last drops of burger juice and mustard with the remnants of a roll. "Don't know," he said. "But maybe we're working this puzzle backward. Maybe we ought to be trying to figure out what he has, and see if what he has holds up, before we worry about who he is. His identity could be the least of our issues, provided his information is any good."

  Havlicek meant this in a friendly way, three guys sitting around a table with a few beers and some red meat discussing a good story. But Martin took it as a slight challenge to his intellect, as editors tend to do. When you're not on the street working a story, when you're not writing for the paper or producing anything of great consequence, you tend to get territorial and defensive about the power and value of your ideas, mostly because that's all you have.

  "Look, I know what matters," Martin said. "I'm just figuring maybe we can shortcut this thing. And more than that, I'm just curious over who's spending so much time and money trying to help us out."

  "So am I," I said, interjecting in my role as diplomat. "I'm curious as to who this guy is and what he's got. Keep in mind, it's me he's following around. It's me who was shot at over at the Newseum."

  Carlos came over dangling dessert menus, asking if we were interested, prompting Havlicek to just about jump out of his chair at him. Frank was singing "Hello Dolly" by now, and very well, I might add. Waiters were carrying plates of prime rib and shrimp. The room was filled with the gentle clink of china, the hum of conversation, staccato bursts of laughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught an unusual sight-unusual, at least, for this particular club: a beautiful woman coming through the doorway, alone, and taking a place at a corner table. I turned to look, and my heart almost came through my chest.