Joe Steele
Page 6
Colored men and women who were out of work eyed Joe Steele with a painful kind of hope: painful not least because hope was something they’d been scared to feel and even more scared to show. But he was different from Hoover. He’d made them believe their worries were his worries, not just unpleasant noises in another room. If that turned out to be one more lie, chances were they wouldn’t just be disappointed. They’d be furious.
That same mix of people, rich and poor, white and black, packed the temporary bleachers on the Mall. Some construction firm or another had given day laborers work to run them up. Those same workers, or a different set, would get paid to knock them down after the ceremony ended.
One of the bleachers, the one right behind the podium with the microphones, was full of Congressmen and Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices and other movers and shakers. The one next closest was for reporters and photographers. Mike piled out of the Model A as unceremoniously as he’d got in. He grabbed himself a pretty good seat.
On the podium, awaiting Joe Steele’s arrival, stood Charles Evans Hughes. The Chief Justice seemed from even further back in time than President Hoover. Partly, that sprang from his flowing black judicial robes. And it was partly because of his neatly groomed but still luxuriant white beard. Most men who’d worn beards before the Great War were dead, and the fashion had died with them. Hughes and his whiskers lingered still.
Mike rubbed his own clean-shaven chin. He had a nick on the side of his jaw. Even when you didn’t slice yourself, shaving every day was a time-wasting pain in the neck. He wondered why beards had ever gone out of style.
More to the point, he wondered what Charles Evans Hughes was thinking as he waited on the podium. Chief Justice was a pinnacle of sorts. But Hughes had almost—almost!—taken the Presidential oath instead of giving it. He’d gone to sleep on election night in 1916 positive he’d licked Woodrow Wilson. Only when California’s disappointing returns came in the next day did he find out he’d lost.
Nimbly, his cap under his arm now, Joe Steele hopped up onto the podium with the Chief Justice. “Are you ready to take the oath, Mr. President?” Hughes asked.
“Yes, sir. I am.” Steele’s baritone had the flat lack of regional accent so common in California, the lack of accent that was a kind of accent in itself. Underneath that plain, plain General American lay a hint—no, a ghost—of something harsh and guttural, something that didn’t belong to English at all.
“All right, then. We shall proceed. Repeat after me: “‘I’—state your full legal name.”
“I, Joseph Vissarion Steele—”
“‘—do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’”
Hughes broke the oath down into chunks a few words long. Phrase by phrase, Joe Steele echoed it. When they’d both finished, Hughes held out his hand. “Congratulations, President Steele!”
“Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.” Joe Steele held on to Hughes’ hand for a few extra seconds so the photographers could immortalize the moment. Applause from the bleachers washed over the two of them. There sat Herbert Hoover politely clapping for his successor when he could have wanted nothing more than to take the oath of office again himself. Democracy was a strange and sometimes wondrous thing.
Chief Justice Hughes descended from the podium and took his place next to the now ex-President. Joe Steele put the cloth cap back on his head and stuck reading glasses on his nose before he fiddled with his mike for a moment, positioning it just the way he wanted it. He held his notes on cards in his left hand, and glanced down at them every once in a while. For the most part, though, he knew what he intended to say.
“This country is in trouble,” he began bluntly. “You know that. I know that. We all know that. If everything was great in the United States, you wouldn’t have elected me. You do not elect people like me when everything is great. You elect important people, fine-talking people, people like President Hoover or Governor Roosevelt, God have mercy on his soul.”
Mike looked over at Herbert Hoover. He was scowling, but he’d been scowling all day long. It wasn’t as if Joe Steele were wrong. It was more that he was saying what someone with better manners wouldn’t have mentioned.
“I grew up on a farm outside of Fresno,” the new President went on. “I worked with my hands in the fields. My father and mother came to America because they wanted a better life for themselves and their children than they could hope for where they used to live. Millions of people listening to me today can say the same thing.”
He paused. Applause came from the bleachers full of ordinary people—and, Mike noticed, from the one full of reporters and photographers. It also came from the bleachers full of government officials, but more slowly and grudgingly.
Joe Steele nodded to himself, as if that didn’t surprise him one bit. “And I had a better life,” he said. “I managed to study law, and to start my own practice. I said what I thought needed saying about how things were in my home town. Some people there thought the things I was saying deserved to be said. They talked me into running for the city council, and then for Congress, and Fresno sent me—me, a son of immigrants!—to Washington.”
More applause. Some Representatives and Senators were self-made men, but there as anywhere old family and old money didn’t hurt.
“When I look at the country now, I see it is not the way it was when I grew up,” Steele said. “We are in trouble. We do not have a better life than we did before. Things are bad now, and they are getting worse day by day, month by month, year by year. When I saw that, and when I was sure I saw it, that is when I decided to run for President. The way it looked to me was, I could not do anything else. Someone has to set things right, here in the United States. The people who were in power were not doing it. I decided I had to be the one who did.”
He wasn’t a great speaker. He didn’t make Mike want to charge out and do whatever he said. Hitler had basically talked his way to power in Germany a couple of months earlier. But Joe Steele did show a confidence not so very different from the German dictator’s.
And, like Hitler, he was taking charge in a country that had just got knocked through the ropes. People would give him the benefit of the doubt for a while because of that.
“So we will have jobs in my administration,” Joe Steele said. “Labor is a matter of honor, a matter of fame, a matter of valor and heroism. Without jobs, all else fails. People of America, I tell you—we will have jobs!”
Surely not all the people in the bleachers who cheered themselves hoarse had no job right now. Just as surely, a lot of them were out of work. Again, the stands full of government functionaries cheered more slowly and less enthusiastically than ones full of ordinary folks.
“I can be rough. I can be harsh. But I am only rough and harsh toward those who harm the people of this great country,” Joe Steele said. “What is my duty? To do my job and to fight for the people. Quitting is not in my character. Whatever I have to do, I will do it.”
How did Franklin D. Roosevelt feel about that? He knew Joe Steele wasn’t kidding, anyhow. And a whole fat lot of good knowing did him. Mike shivered, though the day wasn’t cold.
“We will do whatever we have to do to get the United States on its feet again. You cannot set things to rights while you have silk gloves on.” The President held up his hairy hands. He wasn’t wearing gloves of any kind. He went on, “The ones who wear silk gloves, they use them to take from ordinary people without leaving any fingerprints. When banks fail, they steal the people’s money. Have you ever seen a hungry banker? Has anyone in the history of the world ever seen a hungry banker? If I have to choose between the people and the bankers, I will choose the people. We will nationalize the banks and save the people’s money.”
This time, the applause nearly blasted hi
m off the podium. Ever since the big stock crash, banks had failed by the hundreds—no, by the thousands. And every time a bank went under, the depositors who’d put money into it and couldn’t pull the cash out fast enough went down the drain with it. Everybody who was listening to him had either lost money that way him- or herself or knew someone else who had. Bankers were some of the most hated people in the whole country these days.
Mike looked over to the stands full of officials. Herbert Hoover was shaking his head, and he wasn’t the only one. He didn’t understand the nerve Joe Steele had struck. That he didn’t understand was one big reason he hadn’t won his second term.
President Hoover had tried to ignore the building whirlwind—and it had swept him away. President Steele would try to ride it. He’d have trouble doing worse. Mike feared he’d also have trouble doing better.
IV
Charlie Sullivan and a couple of other reporters watched Senator Carter Glass walk into the White House to confer with Joe Steele. Joe Steele had summoned Congress to a special session. Winning the kind of majority he had in the House made getting what he wanted easier.
President Steele didn’t have that kind of majority in the Senate. And a lot of Southern Democrats were more conservative than Republicans from the rest of the country. Carter Glass, a Virginian, was a case in point. He’d been born before the Civil War started, and apparently hadn’t changed his views a great deal since. He loudly opposed nationalizing the banking system. Since he’d been Secretary of the Treasury in the Wilson administration, his views counted.
One of the other newsmen, a skinny cub with the impressive handle of Virginius Dabney, was from the Richmond Times. “I’ve got a dollar that says Joe Steele won’t make him change his mind,” he said, lighting a Camel.
“You’re on,” Charlie said at once. They shook hands to make things official.
The kid from Virginia was in a gloating mood. “I’m gonna buy myself a nice dinner with your dollar,” he said. “You’ve got no idea what a pigheaded old coot Carter Glass has turned into. Neither does the President, or he would’ve picked somebody else to try to get around the logjam in the Senate.”
“Well, you could be right,” Charlie said.
“Damn right, I’m right,” Dabney broke in.
“Hang on. I wasn’t done yet.” Charlie held up his right hand, palm out, like a cop stopping traffic. “You could be right, but don’t get too sure yet. Carter Glass never had to deal with anybody like Joe Steele before, either.”
Virginius Dabney blew out a stream of smoke. “It won’t matter. Glass’ll just keep saying no. He’ll get as loud as he reckons he needs to. He’ll go on about Trotsky and the Reds, and maybe about Hitler and the Nazis, too. Then he’ll say no some more. He doesn’t reckon the Federal government’s got the right to do this.”
“One of the guys who doesn’t reckon Washington has the right to shake it after a leak, huh?” Charlie said with a sour chuckle.
“That’s him,” Dabney said, not without pride. “States’ rights all the way.” By the way he answered, he was a states’ rights man himself. He was a white Southerner. Not all of them filled that bill, but most of them did.
You couldn’t argue with them. Oh, you could, but you’d only waste your time. Charlie didn’t waste any of his. Instead, he said, “Let me scrounge one of your cigarettes, okay?”
“Sure.” Dabney handed him the pack and even gave him a match. Camels were stronger than Charlie’s usual Chesterfields, but he didn’t complain. He’d gone to France in 1918, though too late to see combat. With what they smoked over there, he was amazed that German poison gas had bothered them.
After about an hour and fifteen minutes, Carter Glass came out of the White House. He always looked kind of weathered. He was in his mid-seventies; he’d come by it honestly. Now . . . Now Charlie wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Unless he was imagining things, Glass looked as if he’d just walked into a haymaker from Primo Carnera. The giant Italian wasn’t heavyweight champ just yet, but he had a fight with Jack Sharkey set for the end of June.
“Senator Glass!” Charlie called. “Did the President bring you around to his way of thinking, Senator?”
Glass flinched at the question, as if he were afraid Primo Carnera would belt him again. He took a deep breath, like a man coming off the canvas and trying to stay upright. “After some discussion with President Steele, I have decided that the nationalization bill is, ah, a worthy piece of legislation. I intend to vote for it, and I will work with the President to persuade my colleagues to support it as well. Right now, that’s all I have to say. Excuse me.”
He scuttled away. Up till that moment, Charlie had always thought T. S. Eliot stretched language past the breaking point when he compared a man to a pair of ragged claws. If ever a man walked like a dejected crab, it was Carter Glass.
Charlie held out his hand. “Pay up.”
Virginius Dabney was still gaping after the Senator from his home state. “Dog my cats,” he said softly, more to himself than to Charlie. He took out his billfold, fumbled, and pulled out an engraved portrait of George Washington. “Here y’are. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. The President, he’s got some big mojo working.”
After pocketing the dollar, Charlie said, “Some big what?”
“Mojo,” Dabney repeated. “It’s nigger slang. Means something like magic power. I can’t think of anything else that would make Carter Glass turn on a dime like that.”
“Mojo, huh? Have to remember that,” Charlie said. “But didn’t I tell you Joe Steele had a way of getting what he wanted?”
“You told me. I didn’t believe you. Nobody who knows anything about Glass would’ve believed you.”
A couple of other recalcitrant Senators went to confer with the President. When they came out of the White House, they were all for nationalization, too. Charlie didn’t see them emerge, so he didn’t know whether they looked as steamrollered as Carter Glass had. He figured it was likely, though. Joe Steele could be mighty persuasive. Look how well he’d persuaded Franklin Roosevelt, after all.
The Senators remained among the living. Like Carter Glass, though, they had their change of heart. With their loud new support, the nationalization bill passed the Senate by almost as big a margin as it had in the House.
Joe Steele went on the radio to talk to the American people. “We are heading in the right direction at last,” he said. “Some folks make money when others are miserable. A few want to wreck all the progress the rest support. We almost had that kind of trouble over this bill. But I talked sense to a few men who didn’t see things quite the right way at first. Most of them took another look and decided going along would be a better idea. I’m glad they did. We need to get behind the country and push so we can start it going. If some push at the wrong end, that won’t work so well. We’re all together on this one, though. We are now.”
Since he was speaking from the White House, no one on the program tried to tell him he was wrong. Hardly anyone anywhere tried to tell Joe Steele he was wrong at first. He was doing something, or trying to do something, about the mess. Herbert Hoover had treated the Depression the way the Victorians treated sex—he didn’t look at it, and he hoped it would just go away.
That hadn’t worked for the Victorians, and it hadn’t worked for him, either. They were mostly dead, and he’d lost the election. For a politician, that was the fate worse than death.
* * *
Even a reporter who came into Washington only every so often knew where the people who worked in the White House ate and drank. Charlie went to half a dozen of those places. He talked to more than half a dozen people who typed things and filed things and answered wires and telephone calls. And they all told him they didn’t know how Joe Steele got Carter Glass and the other Senators who’d opposed the bill that nationalized the banks to turn around and vote for it.
Most of them didn’t even know who knew. Charlie knew what that meant: Joe Steele wasn’t just good at holding his cards close to his chest. He was terrific at it. One or two people suggested that Charlie might talk to Kagan or to Mikoian or to Scriabin.
He could have figured that out for himself when the wells he drilled at lower levels came up dry. He pretty much had figured it out, in fact. Vince Scriabin still scared the crap out of him. Lazar Kagan’s moon of a face was as near unreadable as made no difference. That left Stas Mikoian. Of the President’s longtime henchmen, he seemed the most approachable.
Chances were Charlie didn’t get a phone call from Mikoian completely by coincidence. “I hear you’ve been trying to find out a few things,” the Armenian said after they got through the hellos and how-are-yous.
“Didn’t know that was against the rules for a reporter,” Charlie said.
Mikoian laughed. Charlie judged Scriabin would have got mad. He couldn’t guess about Kagan, or about what the Jew’s reaction would have meant. Yeah, Stas was the most human of the three. “Why don’t you have dinner with me tonight?” Mikoian said. “We can talk about it there.”
“Sounds great. Where do you want to go?” Charlie asked.
“There’s a chop house called Rudy’s, across Ninth from the Gayety,” Mikoian answered. “See you there about eight?”
“Okay.” Charlie eyed the phone in bemusement as he hung up. The Gayety was Washington’s leading burlesque house. Was Stas only using it as a geographical reference point, or was he human all kinds of ways? Charlie, of course, had never ogled a stripper in his life. Of course.