The Nominee

by Brian McGrory

  I remained silent another moment to see if I could wring any other emotions or facts out of him, but he only sat staring at the floor. So I said, “This hasn’t exactly given me great faith in Boston’s finest.”

  He replied, “Give them time, Jack. Give them time. They’re better than you think, and sometimes, breaks happen on major cases when you least expect them.” Jesus, don’t I know it.

  We both fell quiet again for a moment. I heard a siren on the street directly outside and listened to see if it stopped at the front door, but it continued on for destinations unknown. Hopefully Mongillo didn’t get excited at the prospect of a breaking story and follow it.

  I took my first sip of port. It was silken on my tongue but raw against my throat. The taste, the sensation, jolted me into action.

  I said in a strong, clear voice, “Robert, I have some unfortunate business to address with you.” I swallowed subconsciously and stared him in the eye. His expression didn’t change. He gave not an inch, showed no sign he had any expectation that anything out of the ordinary was coming his way. Outside, day was beginning to turn to night.

  “We go back too far for me to beat around the bush, and I respect you too much for that, so I’ll just be straight with you. I have hard evidence and credible allegations that you’ve fabricated information in at least two of your stories, and possibly many more.”

  He had been sitting cross-legged in the rocker, gently swaying. When I said what I said, nothing changed, nothing but the expression on his face, which turned from deadly serious—not to make trite use of such a strong phrase in this situation—and sincerely concerned, to a wry smile. It was an expression of understanding, of sympathy. It was, in a word, bizarre.

  “Jack, son, people have been gunning for me since I got into this crazy business nearly half a century ago. You know that. Reporters are inherently suspect of success, even—no, especially—amongst ourselves. What are they saying this time?” He brought his arms up over his head, as if he was stretching, which I suppose was better than reaching into his pants for a pistol.

  It was an interesting defense that momentarily caught me off guard. I was expecting a tirade, shouted demands to know the identity of his accusers followed by an indignant reminder of all he had done forThe Boston Record in general and me specifically. What I got was a superior attitude that said,Poor Jack, you imbecile. This was going to be even tougher than I first thought.

  I said, “It’s the governor, Lance Randolph. He says that back when he was district attorney, you lied about his conviction rate at the start of his first gubernatorial campaign, in an effort to help him. After that, he says, he was stuck with the lies, so he adopted them.”

  The smile got broader. For chrissakes, I think I saw his teeth, and no, they weren’t fangs.

  He replied, “So our youthful governor, in a desperate attempt to salvage his nomination as U.S. attorney general, blames a reporter for his inability to tell the truth. And Jack, you’re accepting his story at face value?” He shook his head slowly, his gaze never leaving mine. “Son, I thought I knew you better. I thought I trained you better.”

  Obviously I had at least partially considered this defense. Obviously I had considered that if you’re Lance Randolph, you’re going to blame anyone even remotely suspect, and you’ll spread that blame as far and wide and deep as it takes to cast any doubt in the minds of the reporters covering the story. But hearing Fitzgerald say it, hearing the words come out of his own mouth in that commonsense way in which he speaks, gave me sudden, though hidden, pause.

  It’s an odd sensation, making your accusations in an interview. It’s as if the roof above you has been lifted, the walls around you removed, the trees outside defoliated. You are suddenly, completely, irrevocably exposed, with no reliable idea as to what might come next and nowhere to turn for protection. There was no turning back now, so I said, “That’s not all. Roughly five years ago, in a story about a bungled drug raid in Mattapan in which a reverend and a young cop were killed, you blamed the wrong officer—the dead officer—for leading police to the wrong apartment.”

  He continued to meet my stare, squinting a bit as he thought back to the specific story, how he put it together, what he wrote. He said, “If I’m remembering right, Jack, and this was a long time ago by our standards, the police gave me the information, on a not for attribution basis, on which officer committed the fatal error. If you have proof that I had it wrong, I think we owe the public a correction, even these many years later.”

  This I had thought of as well, but once again, stated bluntly by Fitzgerald, the evidence sounded so circumspect, or circumstantial. I exhaled slightly and felt myself slouching, fading into the leather chair, giving ground, losing confidence.

  I said, “Robert, I’ve also conducted a detailed analysis of two years worth of your human interest stories. And in more than two dozen of them, we’re unable to locate the people you quoted, or even prove that those people ever existed.”

  Now he seemed to be getting agitated. His cheeks flashed red and his eyes showed anger. He said, “Which stories? Which people? I don’t sit in the newsroom like all these pseudo-journalists that come in these days, kids whose idea of reporting is making a few telephone calls over to Harvard and MIT, then writing their big think pieces on the direction of our society.

  “I’m out there talking to real people on real streets, and often those people move on, live in different places, and maybe a few of them, out of self-preservation, even give me wrong names. Maybe.”

  He collected himself a bit, sat back in the rocking chair, folded his hands in his lap, and said, “Jack, you’re better than this. Much better than this. The pressure of the week, of the future, must be getting to you, which is understandable.”

  He calmed himself down to the point that he almost seemed to be enjoying this, because he believed the outcome was preordained. But this wasn’t some60 Minutes interview, or a Barbara Walters special on ABC, where attitude was paramount. In the ground game of newspaper reporting what mattered most was the information, not the emotion. So I fell back on an old Fitzgerald lesson: commune. Create sympathy, mutual interest, between the reporter and the subject. Involve him in your needs, in your life, in your story.

  I brushed my hand through my hair. I looked at him in silence. I said, “I’ve been blessed in life, Robert, not by the success I’ve had in this business, in Washington. No, it’s something more meaningful. I’ve been blessed by the people in my life. I’ve had three great and wonderful men, each of them a role model in their own distinct way—my father, Paul Ellis, and you.”

  I paused, probing him with my eyes through the descending shadows. My father died before he saw me become aRecord reporter, though more than anyone, he taught me the importance of hard work and the glory of a career in newspapers. Paul Ellis died earlier this week. They were gone before any of their inevitable weaknesses were exposed to me, though if they were, I’d understand. Just as I knew they were great men, I also knew they weren’t perfect men. They had flaws, each of them, some minor, others, I would bet, far more significant.

  “And what I have left, Robert, is you, my journalistic mentor.” My eyes drifted from his handsome Irish face to the window, to the darkening patch of sky beyond. “I understand you’re going to have shortcomings. I understand that not even the greatest among us is as perfect as we would like to seem. And I also understand that those faults don’t take away from the immense virtue and accomplishments accumulated over all these years, through the course of a life.”

  I slapped my hand softly against the rolling armrest of the leather chair. I stared at him so hard it’s as if I was trying to bore into his brain. “Robert,” I said, “I need you now like I’ve never needed you before. I’ll be straight. The governor, Lance Randolph, says that if we write a follow-up to our story about him lying in his first campaign, he will go to theNew York Times —theNew York Times —with hard evidence that you, a seniorRecord reporter, aided and abetted hi
m in that lie.”

  Fitzgerald tried to interrupt, but softly, not loud. I talked over him.

  “He says that John Cutter knew about the fabrication. He sent him a note. He got a reply. He claims to have copies of both. He will, in essence, be accusing the lateRecord publisher of being part of an orchestrated lie—a great man who isn’t here to defend himself.”

  I brushed my hand across my mouth. I was starting to work myself up, feeling angry, as I detailed the accusations.

  “Robert, this comes as the board of directors ofThe Boston Record are about to meet to decide the future of a newspaper that has been in the Cutter-Ellis family for the last one hundred and twenty-seven years. One of their options, arguably their easiest option, is to accept the takeover bid submitted by a guy who you yourself call a huckster. And if they read on the front page of theNew York Times that the controlling family was complicit in a crucial fabrication, they’re going to take that money and run. Candidly, in that case, it’s tough to even blame them.”

  I took a quick measure of the situation to see if I was having any discernible impact. Fitzgerald was leaning back in the chair, his legs crossed, one foot on the ground rocking ever so slightly, staring blankly back at me.

  “You can try like hell after that to defend yourself, Robert. You can go on the talk shows and in print to salvage your name and reputation. The rest of the media will love the story. Lying reporter speaks out—film at eleven. But the upshot is, you will have effectively ruined the newspaper that made your career. TheRecord, as we know it, as we love it, as we respect it, will be no more.”

  He rocked with his head down, his eyes, if they were even open, staring into his lap. He said nothing, and in this position, he conveyed even less. I don’t know whether it was a posture of disappointment, dis-belief, regret, or perhaps all or none of the above.

  I said, “Robert, I need your help. I need you to come clean, because by coming clean, you might save this newspaper and allow it to continue in its great tradition. You might also be able to save yourself and your own reputation. You don’t want to be in the midst of a feeding frenzy, which you will be if this gets out first in theTimes. Once that happens, we’ve lost control. The story’s not ours anymore. You want to handle this within the family, on the pages of our newspaper, with readers who revere you and will understand, as I do, that even the greatest among us have faults. If we print it first, it’s clean, it’s concise, and then we move on.”

  I didn’t think this was a bad little speech. Like I’ve said, I’m pretty good at what I do. But still, I got no reaction—not an eye flutter, not a syllable, not so much as a stalling cough.

  Then I saw it. It was but a passing glint in the subtle light, the flash of a moment, so quick that had I blinked I would have missed it. It started near his face and ended on his left hand that rested in his lap—a teardrop, the most telling reaction of all.

  He kept his head bowed. I went to the second prong of my attack. Fitzgerald himself taught me that in any adversarial interview, always project the aura that you’re holding three aces, even if all you have is a couple of fours. Overplay your reporting hand in a way that you can never do in print. In fact, that may have been Fitzgerald’s ultimate downfall—he overplayed on the pages of theRecord.

  “I have no choice,” I said to him, my voice suddenly sounding strange in the gloomy silence of the office. “I have to go with something. I’m not letting Governor Lance Randolph and theNew York Times control this story, and in effect, control the fate of our paper. My father worked here in the pressroom. The publisher sent me through college, offered me a job, and recruited me to come work in the front office.”

  He remained bowed, at least physically, though hopefully emotionally as well.

  I continued, “I have enough. I have the details of the police raid. I’ll use the governor’s accusations, whether he likes it or not. Through my own reporting, our own internal investigation, I’m unable to find many of the people whom you’ve quoted in the last two years.” I always like using whom, though I’m not sure why.

  “It would be better to have a decisive, definitive story that includes you conceding error, the paper taking action, and then everyone moving on. But Robert, I have to do what I have to do. I will not allow Randolph to hold this paper hostage. I will not allow him to make accusations about us to another newspaper. I’ll do this story with you or without you. And the paper will be the better for it.”

  I saw another glint in the light, another tear rolling off his lower cheek, falling through the air and landing with an imperceptible splash on the back of his hand. Still, he didn’t move. He didn’t wipe his hand. He didn’t dry his eyes. It was as if he was frozen in thought, in despair, confused that a life so successful could ever lead to a moment of such profound tragedy. The gloom in the office seemed to have a sound to it, and that sound gradually, quietly, became stifling.

  Without warning, he ran the back of his hand across both his eyes and lifted his head. He looked for the first time like a truly old man, like someone whose time had come and long since gone. When he spoke, his loud, sonorous voice was reduced to a tear-stained whisper.

  “I lied in print, Jack. You have me. I made something up. I did wrong by the paper I love.”

  He spoke these sentences in rapid order. He stared at me, his face appearing as if it might dissolve into tears. I adhered to another lesson gleaned through years of experience: never get in the way of someone trying to tell their story. I sat there with my mouth shut and my expectations rising.

  “But it’s not the lie you think.”

  He paused here and looked at me, looked at me hard until his eyes slowly fell to the floor.

  “Randolph’s father, Bert, was a great governor and an even better man, a statesmanlike figure. He’s the best politician I’ve ever known, and I’ll admit, he became a good friend.

  “When he was shot, when he died, his advisers panicked. They didn’t want to relinquish control of the State House. The consultants didn’t want to lose their cash cow. His son was the heir apparent. But politically, it looked awful that the kid was the lone survivor. He always had a reputation as being soft, living off his famous name rather than making one for himself. And the shooting just fed into the perception. Everyone’s blood was shed at the high school that day but his.”

  He again stared down at the floor as he spoke, occasionally looking up and meeting my gaze. I reached quietly into my coat pocket, pulled out the cassette player, flicked it to record, and set it down unobtrusively on the coffee table between us.

  “So that very night the governor was killed, they called me out to his house. Lance and his father’s two top aides were there. They fed me a story about how the son tried to protect the governor against the assault, and how it was nothing more than raw luck that he wasn’t killed as well. The kid told me that the shooter aimed the gun right at his face, but when he fired, his clip was empty. After he loaded another one in, he shot himself in the head.”

  Fitzgerald shook his head as he was finishing the sentence. When he resumed, he was looking into the far corners of the room, his voice far away, his eyes even farther.

  “I knew it was a lie. They knew I knew it was a lie. When I got back here to my office that night, I made a call over to Boston PD, to John Leavitt, who was the head detective back then, and confirmed with him that there was no spent clip. But I put it in print anyway.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Fitzgerald suddenly focused on me as if he had forgotten I was there. He said, “Because Bert Randolph was my friend. I didn’t think it right that his only son should have to suffer because, for whatever good or bad reason, he survived this ferocious attack. I wanted to preserve my friend’s family name. And I wanted to make life better for that wonderful widow who lost her husband at far too young an age.”

  His gaze headed back to points unknown, and he added in that distinctly distant voice, “I knew it was wrong. But I thought in the back of my mind that
it was the most human thing I could do.”

  His voice grew louder, but no less distant. “And I wondered, Jack, I wondered, can’t we ever just be human in this business? Must we always lord the truth, like it’s something far greater than any individual or all of us combined. Can’t we extend a common courtesy? Can’t we practice basic human decency? That’s what I was thinking when I did this. Why must we, as journalists, always bask in human weakness, in the foibles of mankind?”

  Good questions, all, some of which we had indirectly addressed in our weekly gatherings in this very room. You know the old saying: A plane lands successfully at Logan Airport every nine seconds and we don’t write about it. The one that crashes—or is hijacked—is splashed on the front page. That’s simply the nature of news—something new, something different. It can be an uncaring, unforgiving business.

  With Lance Randolph, it wasn’t necessarily news that he survived the attack. But his survival fed into a latent distrust of the man, that he was soft, not valorous, that he might have bolted from harm’s way, even instinctively, and left his father to die. That suspicion could kill his career, much like the gunman killed his father. So he tried to overcome that perception by creating the news that he was in fact a hero. And that’s where he, and Fitzgerald, went awry.

  I asked, “So why, after that, did you continue to lie in other stories?”

  There was a long pause. He stared at the floor, then looked up at me.

  “Jack, I’m an old man trying to make my way in a young man’s business, and the conceited fact of the matter is that it’s not so easy being Robert Fitzgerald anymore. People have high expectations. I have high standards. I like to break news, be interesting, write fresh, and at my age, these tired legs aren’t as fast and sturdy anymore.”

  Another pause, then he added, “After I lied once, they had me, and they knew it.” He was gazing downward, again close to tears. The very act of speaking seemed to come as a relief, as if he was unburdening and didn’t want to stop. I resumed my stone silence, not wanting to get in the way. “The ever-unseemly Benjamin Bank, his political adviser, held it over me that I had lied once, and pushed and prodded me to do it again. So I did, with the conviction rates. And then they began feeding me news, unveiling public proposals to me, giving me things a day ahead of everyone else. I became an addict, and in exchange for the news breaks, I treated them with kid gloves, and on occasions, when they needed it, I’d contort the facts.”