Joe Steele

by Harry Turtledove

  Nothing wrong with Rudy’s, though. It gave off an aura of quiet class. The air smelled of grilled meat and expensive cigars. A gray-haired colored waiter escorted Charlie to a booth. “Mr. Mikoian is expecting you, sir,” he murmured.

  Stas stood up to shake hands. He had a dark drink in a tall glass. “Rum and Coke,” he said, seeing Charlie’s eye fall on it. “They get the rum straight from Cuba.”

  “Sounds great,” Charlie said, as he had on the telephone. The rum was smooth, and they didn’t stint on it. He chose lamb chops from the menu; Mikoian ordered a medium-rare T-bone.

  The Armenian steepled his fingers and looked across the table at Charlie. “I can tell you what you want to know,” he said.

  “But there’s a catch,” Charlie said. “There’s always a catch.”

  “Yes, there’s always a catch,” Mikoian agreed. “Anyone more than six years old knows that. You’d be surprised how many people in Washington don’t.”

  “Would I? Maybe not,” Charlie said. “Tell me what the catch is, and I’ll tell you whether I want to go on. If I don’t, we’ll have a nice dinner and talk about what kind of chance the Senators have for the pennant.”

  “Pretty decent chance this year, I think,” Mikoian said. “But all right—fair enough. The catch is, you can’t write about any of what I tell you. The President doesn’t mind if you know. He says you’ve always been fair to him—certainly fairer than your brother has. But politics is like sausage-making: you don’t want to watch how it’s done.”

  “That’s Bismarck.”

  “Uh-huh. He knew what he was talking about, too. He mostly did.”

  Charlie considered. “I could just lie to you, you know,” he remarked.

  “Oh, sure. And you’d have a story. But the President would know you weren’t someone he could trust. So is one story worth selling him out?”

  You asked that kind of question whenever you made a dubious deal. Another question also surfaced in Charlie’s mind. Do I want to go on Joe Steele’s black list for any reason under the sun? He knew damn well he didn’t. He sighed. “Tell me.”

  Stas Mikoian didn’t even smile. He also didn’t talk right away, because the waiter brought their meals then. Charlie didn’t think anything could go better with lamb than mint jelly. When he said so, Mikoian did grin. “I’d argue for garlic myself, but you’re Irish and I’m Armenian. What it really comes down to is what you got used to when you were growing up.”

  “That’s about the size of it.” Charlie chewed, then nodded. “This is mighty good. How’s your steak?”

  “It’s fine. Hard to go wrong with anything at Rudy’s. They’ve been here a long time, and you can see why.” Stas Mikoian cut another bite and ate it. He sipped from his rum and Coke. “Shall I tell you about Senator Glass?”

  “I wish you would.”

  “He’s a fine Virginian. Comes from a good family. Back when he was a boy, they owned slaves. Not after the Civil War, naturally, but they still had colored people working for them. Before he went off to college, they had this pretty little maid called Emma, Emma . . . well, you don’t need to know her last name. You won’t be writing a story about this.”

  “That’s right.” Charlie got a little farther down his own drink. “Can I guess where this is going?”

  “You probably can. Sometimes boys from families like that learn the facts of life from a maid or a cook. Carter Glass did. And nine months later he learned more about the facts of life than he thought he would when he gave her a tumble. Had himself what they call a high-yaller little boy.” He spoke the Southern phrase as if it came from a foreign language.

  “Did he try to pretend the whole thing never happened?” Charlie asked.

  “No. He was a gentleman. He—or his family—took care of Emma and the baby. It wasn’t fancy, but it was quite a bit better than nothing. The boy got as good an education as a colored kid in Virginia could. He’s a teacher there. He has children of his own. They’re doing well for themselves—as well as colored people can in that part of the country. And one of the reasons they’re doing well is that they never, ever let on that they’re related to Carter Glass.”

  “So it was a family secret, you’re saying?”

  “That’s right. That’s what I’m saying.” Mikoian raised a dark, bushy eyebrow. “Senator Glass was interested in keeping it a family secret, too. We were able to oblige him—and he was able to oblige us.”

  “I guess he was.” Charlie lifted a forefinger. The waiter appeared as if by magic. “I’d like another rum and Coke, please.”

  “So would I,” Stas said.

  “Comin’ right up, gentlemen.” The waiter went off to get them.

  Charlie aimed that forefinger at Mikoian like the barrel of a pistol. “How did you—how did Joe Steele—discover the old family secret?”

  “We could see who the leaders were in the faction that was trying to obstruct us,” Mikoian said. “We did a little poking around to see if any of them had skeletons in the closet. And what do you know? Carter Glass did.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks on an enameled tray. He ceremoniously set them down, then disappeared again. After he was gone, Charlie said, “You did a little poking around?”

  “That’s right.” Mikoian’s eyes twinkled.

  “You personally? Or Joe Steele personally? Or was it maybe Lazar Kagan?”

  That twinkle got sparklier. “You’re a funny fellow, you know? There’s a smart young guy in the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation who goes after these things like a bulldog. He takes a bite, and he won’t let go. He even looks kind of like a bulldog—he’s stocky and not too handsome and he’s got an underslung jaw. He dug up what we wanted to know.”

  Charlie named it: “The dirt.”

  “Uh-huh, the dirt.” Stas Mikoian’s smile invited Charlie to share the joke. “Go on, tell me nobody else ever did anything like this before in the whole history of politics. Go ahead. I dare you.” He leaned back against the booth’s brass-button leather upholstery and waited.

  “Don’t be silly. You know I can’t do that,” Charlie said. Joe Steele and his underlings might play rougher than most people did, but blackmail had always been part of the game. By the nature of things, it wasn’t a part that got talked about much. But it was there.

  Mikoian was still smiling. “You’re an honest man. I knew you were. That’s why I talked the boss into letting me level with you.”

  Which might be true and might be grease to slick Charlie up some more. “Well, thanks,” Charlie said, trying not to show how pleased he was. “And you didn’t need to worry—that’s not the kind of story I could print.”

  “Oh, you never know,” Stas Mikoian said. “We have plenty of enemies, people trying to stop us from doing anything just because we’re the ones who are doing it—or because they’re making money the way things are now. You think we play dirty? Some of the things they do . . .”

  “Get you fellas some dessert?” the waiter asked. “Some vanilla ice cream, or maybe scrumptious lemon-meringue pie?”

  They ate dessert. Mikoian put money on the table. “Trying to bribe a member of the working press, are you?” Charlie said, and then, with a sheepish grin, “Thanks.”

  “Any time,” Stas Mikoian answered easily. “Any old time at all.”

  * * *

  The hallway that led back to the records room of the Albany Fire Department was as black as the inside of King Tut’s tomb the year before Howard Carter found it. Only a flashlight beam pierced the gloom. The clerk who carried the flashlight was more nervous than Carter had been. He had no ancient Egyptian curses to worry about. His fear was more concrete.

  “If they ever find out I let you in here, they’ll fire me faster than you can say Jack Robinson,” he whispered.

  He’d said the same thing three times before. Mike Sullivan w
as sick of hearing it. “They won’t fire you,” he whispered. He’d had to pay the clerk fifty dollars of the New York Post’s money to get him to come here at two in the morning. He didn’t think the Post was paying him enough to listen to all the pissing and moaning.

  A brass doorknob gleamed in the skinny beam. “They’re in there,” the clerk whispered. He shifted the flashlight to his left hand. Keys clinked as he pulled a key ring from his pocket. He found the one he wanted, but the beam kept sliding away from the lock when he tried to use it.

  “Here. I’ll hold the light.” Mike took it away from him before he could say no. The clerk managed to open the door then, though he almost wet his pants at the click the key made turning in the lock.

  They went inside. The clerk closed the door after them. Since the room full of filing cabinets had no windows, Mike flipped the switch and turned on the overhead light. The clerk had more conniptions.

  “Easy, man. Easy,” Mike said. “Nobody can see through the walls. Now—where’s the report on the Executive Mansion fire?”

  “This cabinet here,” the clerk answered. The filing cabinet also had a lock. “See—hot stuff,” the man said. Mike almost told him not to tell jokes, but decided he wouldn’t appreciate the advice. The clerk found the smaller key that unlocked the man-tall wooden cabinet.

  He slid out the second drawer and extracted a fat manila folder. STATE EXECUTIVE MANSION FIRE, said a typewritten label stuck to the tab. It also gave the date of the fire. “Thanks.” Mike grabbed it from him and started flipping through it.

  In lifeless bureaucratic prose, it told him how the fire had been reported, and how engines from several firehouses had converged on the scene. It told how the firemen had battled the flames, how some people in the mansion managed to escape, and how others, including Governor and Mrs. Roosevelt, hadn’t.

  There were photographs of the scene, and of the victims. Mike bit his lip hard, looking at those. A man who’d burned to death was not a pretty sight. He flipped on through the folder, looking for one thing in particular.

  He didn’t find it. “Where’s the arson report?” he asked the clerk. He wanted to see exactly how the inspector had decided he couldn’t decide whether the fire’s start had had help. But he couldn’t find it.

  The clerk frowned. “Everything should be there.” He quickly went through the folder, too. “Huh,” he said. “I’m sure it was in there when I filed this one. Let me see something.” He pawed through the folders between which the one detailing the Executive Mansion fire had rested. He also looked in the drawer itself, in case the arson report had somehow slipped out. He had no luck anywhere. “Huh,” he said again. “Isn’t that funny? I know it was there—I remember the heading.”

  “Did you read any of it?” Mike asked.

  “No.” The clerk shook his head. “I was just making sure the report was complete before I filed it.” How many times had he done that with reports no one would ever want to look at again? Not this one. This one had answers to important questions—among which was, had somebody got to the arson inspector? It might have had answers to those questions, anyhow. It didn’t now. The vital piece was missing.

  “Who else would have a copy of that report?” Mike asked.

  “I’m sure Mr. Kincaid would have kept one for his personal files,” the clerk replied. “He’s a very thorough man, Mr. Kincaid.”

  “You don’t know where those personal files are?”

  “In his house, I expect. Probably in a fireproof cabinet, Mr. Kincaid being in the line of work he’s in.”

  “Uh-huh.” Mike swore under his breath. If he wanted to get into the arson inspector’s personal files, a money-hungry clerk wouldn’t cut it. He’d need a second-story man.

  “Can we get out of here, please?” Even fidgety, the clerk stayed polite. “I’ve done everything for you I promised I would. I can’t help it if the report’s not there.”

  “Yeah, let’s go.” Mike didn’t want to get hit with a breaking-and-entering rap any more than the clerk did. When you were after stuff as politically explosive as that arson report might be, you didn’t want to get caught. And somebody else had been after it, too, and had got it before he had. He didn’t believe for a second that it had just fallen out of the manila folder. No, somebody’d lifted it, whether because of what it said or because of what it didn’t say he couldn’t guess without seeing it.

  They left the room. The clerk locked the door after them—you didn’t want to forget to tend to details. They made their getaway. The building didn’t have any alarms. No one had imagined anybody would want to sneak away with Albany Fire Department records. You never could tell when imagination would fall short of reality. It had this time.

  Sneakiness failing, Mike tried the direct approach. He did his best to interview Fire Department Lieutenant Jeremiah V. Kincaid, who had produced the report. His best turned out not to be good enough. Lieutenant Kincaid’s secretary, an uncommonly pretty girl, told him, “Lieutenant Kincaid doesn’t talk to reporters.”

  “Why not?” Mike asked. “Isn’t that part of his job?”

  “His job is to investigate,” she answered. “It isn’t to publicize.”

  “Son of a gun,” he said, in lieu of something more heartfelt. “Well, does the Albany Fire Department have a Public Information Officer or anybody else who is supposed to talk to reporters?”

  The Albany Fire Department did. His name was Kermit Witherspoon. He wasn’t at his post. His wife had just had a baby boy, and he was using vacation time to be with her. No one wanted to tell Mike where he lived. Mike found out for himself. He was no great threat to Sherlock Holmes. But the Albany telephone book gave him all the clues he needed—not a hell of a lot of Kermit Witherspoons lived within the city limits.

  When he knocked on the front door, a baby inside the white clapboard house started to cry. Junior had a good set of lungs. A harried-looking man answered the knock. “Are you Kermit Witherspoon?” Mike asked.

  “That’s right. Who are you?”

  “Mike Sullivan. I write for the New York Post.” Mike handed him a card. It was much more convincing than simply saying who he was and what he did. “I’d like to ask you some questions about Lieutenant Kincaid’s report on the Executive Mansion fire.”

  Witherspoon’s face froze. “That happened almost a year ago now. I’ve talked to I don’t know how many reporters. I don’t have anything new to say to anybody, so I’ve stopped talking. It isn’t news any more.”

  “It still could be. Can you tell me why Kincaid wouldn’t state whether he thought the fire was arson or not?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember the details, Mr., uh, Sullivan,” Witherspoon answered. “You’d do better asking Lieutenant Kincaid.”

  “He says he’s not talking, either.”

  “There you are, then.”

  “Yeah, here I am—up a dead end. And I shouldn’t be. This was a public tragedy, Lieutenant Witherspoon. What happened at the Executive Mansion shouldn’t be a secret.”

  “I can’t do anything about that, I’m afraid.”

  From inside, the baby’s wails got louder. “Kermit, can you give me a hand here?” a woman called. “Who are you talking to, anyway?”

  “A peddler.” Witherspoon closed the door in Mike’s face. He locked it, too. Mike stood on the front porch for a moment, then turned and walked away.

  * * *

  Stella Morandini gnawed meat off a purple-red sweet-and-sour pork rib at Hop Sing’s. She eyed Mike. “You know what’ll happen if you write a story like that?” she said.

  “A little piece of the truth will come out,” he answered, and bit into a fried shrimp. “Not a big piece, ’cause it’s buried pretty deep, but a little one. That’s better than no truth at all.”

  “You can’t prove any of it.”

  “I can prove what people aren’t saying, what they w
on’t say. I can prove that reports that ought to be part of the public record have walked with Jesus—or with somebody. Somebody’s hiding things. People don’t do that unless they’ve got a darn good reason to.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “And who would those people be?”

  “Has to be Joe Steele, or the so-and-sos who work for him. He’s the one who stood to get the most when Roosevelt cooked.”

  “Okay. Say you’re right. Say he did all that stuff,” Stella said. “So you write a story that says he oughta be in Sing Sing, not the White House. So what does he do to you right after that?”

  “Uh—” Mike stopped with what was left of that fried shrimp halfway to his mouth. Till that moment, that he might put himself in danger with a story like that had never crossed his mind. He wondered why not. ’Cause you’re stupid, that’s why. Joe Steele didn’t stop at anything to get what he wanted. Charlie had laughed when he told how the President blackmailed Senators into voting his way. Mike didn’t think it was so funny, especially now.

  Stella nodded. “‘Uh’ is right, Mike. This isn’t a game, or it won’t be if you write a story like that. You’re playing for keeps.”

  When you strike at a king, you must kill him. Mike didn’t remember offhand who’d said that. Bartlett’s would. Whoever’d said it, he’d known what he was talking about. Because if you didn’t kill the king you’d struck at, he’d do some striking of his own.

  He ate the rest of the shrimp. “Gotta do it, sweetie. Do you want somebody that, that cold-blooded and merciless running the country? As bad as Trotsky and Hitler, you ask me.”

  “You’re gonna land in more tsuris than you know what to do with.” Yes, she spent a lot of time working around Jews. So did Mike, who had no trouble with the Yiddish.

  He wrote the story anyway. One of the Jews he worked around was Stan Feldman, the managing editor of the Post. Feldman called Mike into the cramped little office where he turned stories into newspapers. Pictures of scantily clad girls lined one wall. The office stank of stale cigar smoke.