Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  “Is he there?” murmured Torie Elden, from the bed.

  “No,” said Eddie. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Instead, she hopped up, crossed the room, stood behind him. Her hand on his back was affectionate but tentative, the touch of a woman who knows that her man is in love with someone else, and that her own perch in his life is so precarious that the stiff wind of a single argument would blow her away.

  “What about in the supermarket last night?” she persisted, kissing the back of his neck. “Are you sure that was him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And all you can say for sure is that he’s white and he has blond hair and he looks kind of familiar?”

  “Yes.”

  Another kiss. She pressed against him from behind. “Do you want to come back to bed?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have to work, Torie. I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, her hair rubbing his shoulders. “Because in half an hour I have to start getting ready for work. It’s lucky I left a few things here last time, huh?”

  “Very,” he said, not looking at her.

  About to say more, Torie released him and headed for the bathroom. Years ago, she had been considered a devastating beauty, one of Harlem’s most eligible bachelorettes. Then she had made a couple of bad bets, and now, at thirty-two, Torie was unmarried, and childless, and desperate, because as the Czarinas measured time she was already an old maid. She had her college degree and had worked on the Kennedy campaign, hoping to find true love. Instead, she had found Eddie, and even though, by dint of constant effort, she successfully penetrated his I-love-Aurelia reserve, Torie had never managed to dig any deeper. They both knew she never would. She stayed with Eddie a night or two each week. In an hour she would be off to work at the Labor Department, where she helped do the unemployment numbers, and one of these mornings, she would collect the things she had “luckily” left in Eddie’s house, take them when she headed out, and not come back.

  Eddie felt bad. He was using her. Torie liked to say that they both needed companionship, and were therefore using each other. But their situations were not the same, and both knew it.

  Never mind. Just now, he could not worry about it. He had to patrol the bedroom windows, in case the blond man showed up. One more sighting, Eddie kept telling himself. One more sighting, and he would surely remember where he had seen the man before.

  (II)

  THE BACK of the house held the dining room. Sliding glass doors opened to the cheap patio. This was where Eddie did his writing, on the dining-room table, in jeans and short sleeves. He still wrote on yellow pads. He would start at the beginning and end at the end and never go back to change a single word until he delivered the manuscript to a typist. Only then would he actually read it as a whole, for the first time. He wrote presidential speeches the same way, with the important difference that his early drafts were usually read by other people. Ted Sorensen had the final word.

  Eddie had not been sure whether working even half-time at the White House would leave him time for serious writing, but his discipline kept him going. Even in the evenings, he rarely went out. Now and then he might grab lunch with David Yee, now in the Washington Bureau of the Times, or Gary Fatek when he came through town, or any of the old crowd from Harlem. But only lunch. At dinnertime, nearly every night, he wrote. The main reason Torie came over no more than twice a week was that Eddie wanted no distractions. Once, she had dropped by without warning him first. The wrath in his face had kept her from trying the same trick a second time. Probably she thought him cruel. To Eddie’s way of thinking, it was his muse that was cruel. The next novel would be his fourth, and four, he hoped, would finally make him feel like a real writer.

  While Torie dressed for work, Eddie pulled a pad in front of him, and picked up precisely where he had left off yesterday afternoon:

  unless he wanted to be frozen out of society. Frozen out. That was what they called it. The salons were Harlem’s warmth and the Czarinas drew up lists

  “I’ll be going now.”

  Eddie turned. Torie stood in the hallway, dressed in a business suit. Her suitcase stood beside her. They stared at each other. He knew what she must think of him. He wished it were possible to touch another woman without seeing Aurelia, but it was not. Torie was the fourth woman to share his bed in the nearly seven years since Aurie’s wedding. Each entanglement had been brief. Each had ended in quiet pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, standing up, closing the space between them.

  “I know.”

  “I wish—”

  “I know.” A hug, sexless and sisterly. “Eddie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sooner or later, you’ll have to admit…Never mind.” She straightened. Her eyes were dry. She even smiled. “Keep sweet,” she said, and left.

  Eddie stood in the kitchen. He almost called her back. It was a very near thing. But he would only have postponed the reckoning. Better to have it behind him.

  He returned to the table. He wrote for another hour and a half, until a knock on the sliding glass disturbed him. He stopped, and looked up, annoyed.

  Special Agent Bernard Stilwell was peering in.

  (III)

  EDDIE MADE COFFEE while the agent made himself at home. The dining-room table was empty again. Eddie had asked Stilwell to wait, then collected his yellow pad and put it away on a shelf before inviting him in.

  But Stilwell did not seem to be in the mood to nose around. He switched on the small black-and-white Zenith television. A game show. The agent turned the knob, raising the volume, and when Eddie returned to the table, Stilwell had him sit close.

  “Do you enjoy the White House?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Kennedy? You like him?”

  “I do. Yes. What do you want, Agent Stilwell?”

  “You can call me Bernie.” He sipped his tea rather daintily. His fingers, like his body, were very long. “We’ve been friends for so many years.”

  “We’re not friends.”

  Stilwell smiled his devil’s smile. The dark brows danced. “Have some information for you. The Director wanted to make sure you had it first, before you have to read it in the papers. The Kennedy people won’t tell you.”

  Eddie was a moment catching his breath. “Junie? Is it Junie? Is she—”

  “It’s not about your sister. Oh, don’t worry, Eddie. We’ll find her. We’ve been close a couple of times, but she skipped town ahead of us. But before too long, Eddie, you can talk to her over a table just like this. I promise. Of course, the two of you won’t be hugging, with the bars between you and all.”

  And he laughed his nasty laugh.

  Eddie spoke coldly. “What do you want, Agent Stilwell?”

  “Remember that U-2 pilot that got himself shot down over Soviet Russia year before last? Name of Powers?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “And the spy you helped us catch back in ’57? Name of Rudolf Abel?”

  “Yes,” said Eddie, remembering the long pink envelope he still possessed, the one Abel—then known as Emil Goldfus—had tried to get him to collect. His wife has it. Eddie was nowhere nearer translating the phrase, although at least he knew from Aurelia what the it had to be. Eddie had tried three times to get permission to visit Abel in prison, to press him on the Project, but his requests had been denied. “I remember, Agent Stilwell.”

  “They’re being exchanged.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “One week from now, in Berlin. They’re giving us Powers. We’re giving them Colonel Abel.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  Eddie felt the room constricting, another avenue cut off. He had imagined somehow that, with the additional prestige of his White House job, he might yet be allowed in to see Colonel Abel. Now that avenue was closed.

  “I see,” he said, when he
was himself again. He longed to be free of Stilwell, and get back to work. “Was there anything else?”

  “Tell me what you think of your President.”

  Eddie framed his answer with care. He knew that whatever he said would go directly into Hoover’s files. “I admire him. I think he could do great things for the country.”

  Stilwell snickered. “Huh. Heard that one before. Great things. They’ll all do great things, if you listen to their speeches. Then they get in there and rob the place blind. How’s his health?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a story out there that he’s lying about his health.”

  Eddie forced a calm, delivered the line already crafted for careful leaking to reporters as the question arose. “That was a campaign smear concocted by the Johnson people. The truth is—”

  “So—what about the women?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Director is interested in anything you hear about Kennedy’s women. And about his health. Anything you can find out.”

  Eddie sat straighter. “You can’t possibly expect—”

  “You want us to help you find your sister, right? Well, then, this is what we want in return.”

  “You’re asking me to spy on the President of the United States?”

  “Not to spy. To report. You never know where an issue of security will arise these days.”

  Eddie remembered a favored mantra of one of his professors. “You can call it reporting. You can call it Thucydides or you can call it banana peel, but it’s spying all the same.”

  Stilwell yawned ostentatiously, then waved Eddie silent. “As it happens, we have some information for you.” He pulled out another of his endless supply of leather notebooks. “Last fall, as you may or may not remember, somebody shot up a car belonging to a Klan leader just outside Tupelo. Ring a bell? They didn’t hurt anybody, just shot his car to pieces. Our informants say it was Jewel Agony who did it, and your sister who got them to shoot the car instead of the man. And you know what happened? The Klan shot a civil-rights leader’s car in retaliation. Only he was in it with his kids.”

  Eddie was on his feet, furious. “Are you saying that it is my sister’s fault—”

  “No.” Stilwell towered over him. “I’m in law enforcement, Eddie. We always tend to think a shooting is the shooter’s fault. Anyway, it’s just an informer’s report, and half of them are lies. More than half.” He put on his hat. “Think it over, Eddie. And understand something. It makes no difference to me personally if you want to help us out on Kennedy. Tell us to go to Hell if you want. That’s up to you. But remember, Eddie, we didn’t have to give you a security clearance for the White House. What with your sister’s situation, we could just as easily have flunked you.” Arresting Eddie’s reply with a raised finger: “One more thing. If you do decide to tell us to go to Hell? There’s nothing we can do to force you. But the Director is a very vindictive man.”

  Eddie thought it over. Hoover was always trying to extend his influence. He plainly lacked sources in the Kennedy Administration and wanted them. He hoped to use Eddie’s love for his sister as the lever that would crack open the Kennedy White House.

  The following week, Eddie was seated in his basement cubicle beneath the West Wing when he had a call: the President wanted to see him. Eddie pulled on his suit coat and climbed the stairs. When he entered the Oval Office, Kennedy was just finishing a meeting. Eddie waited politely. Everyone else left. The President took his seat behind the Resolute desk and waved Eddie to an armchair. For a moment neither man spoke. Jack Kennedy was tall and slim, with wide challenging eyes and a way of going very still when he gave you the full weight of his attention. Eddie felt that weight now. Despite his affable and charming public persona, Kennedy was deadly serious about the work of leading both the nation and the Free World. This seriousness was part of what Eddie so admired. Yet Eddie was nervous. For all his admiration of Jack Kennedy, the writer had spent little time alone with him.

  “I’d like your advice,” said the President.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Off the record.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Too many leaks, Eddie. Information everywhere. Security’s all to hell.” He lifted a newspaper, then tossed it aside. “Every bureaucrat whose responsibilities allow him to learn the confidences of this government seems to think it’s his right and duty to call the nearest reporter. We could never have won the war this way.”

  “Yes, sir.” Eddie wondered if the President knew about Stilwell’s visit. And if protocol allowed him to bring it up.

  “Allen Dulles wrote me.” Kennedy gestured to a letter on his desktop. “Dulles says we need an Official Secrets Act. Like the British have. They tell me it would be unconstitutional, but we have to do something, Eddie. The leaks are getting out of hand.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, meaning, you agree?”

  Eddie shook his head. “No, Mr. President. I don’t agree. With all due respect to Director Dulles, I think it’s a terrible idea.”

  “You don’t think people should be punished for telling our secrets?”

  “If you catch the leaker, yes. But not the newspaperman who prints what he’s told. No, sir.” About to embark on a disquisition about the importance of free speech to democracy, Eddie read in those thoughtful eyes the message that a lecture would not be welcome. Besides, he sensed that he was merely speaking the President’s own thoughts. So he said instead, “I think you as President have the right to expect that the people in whom you confide will not pass what you say on to others. I agree with that strongly, sir.”

  The appointments secretary came in. The President had to run.

  That night, Eddie walked for hours along the Mall, working things through. He told himself that Hoover, three years after Maxton, was only stringing him along. But even if the Director really planned to trade information on Junie for dirt on Kennedy, Eddie knew that he could not be a part of wrecking the Administration of the only President he had admired in his lifetime. And so, two days later, he resigned his post. He kept the house on I Street, but severed all contact with the White House. He publicly wished Kennedy well, and explained to his astonished friends that he needed to devote more time to his writing.

  “You think you’re clever,” said Stilwell afterward, the two of them walking along the Mall.

  “Not often. Sometimes.”

  “You do understand this terminates our deal.”

  “Yes.”

  “No more protection.”

  “Protection?” Eddie thought again of the blond man, the face so familiar. “You’ve been protecting me? From what?”

  The agent did not deign to answer. “No more protection, and no more information.”

  “Maybe I’ll do better on my own.”

  Stilwell laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder. “You know something, Eddie? Everybody thinks they will. But hardly anybody ever does.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The Chess Player

  (I)

  IN NOVEMBER of 1962, Richard Nixon’s campaign for governor of his native California ended in heavy defeat. The next morning, wild-eyed and sleepless, Nixon made a surprise appearance at his hotel before the reporters who had covered the campaign. Nixon did not like the press. The press did not like him. Nixon thought he had been smeared by journalists when he ran for President two years earlier, losing to Kennedy in one of the closest elections in history. The press thought it had told the nation only the unsavory truth. Now Nixon looked around the room at the assembled reporters. He told them it was fine to give the candidate the shaft if they disliked him, but added that they should put one “lonely” man on the beat who would just report what was said. He concluded, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Everyone believed him, many with pleasure. Syndicated columnists buried his career. ABC News even ran a nighttime special titled The Political Obituary of
Richard Nixon. Newspaper cartoonists despaired, for they had loved his jowly face and long curving nose.

  As it happened, Edward Wesley Junior was in the back of the room when the former Vice President made his announcement. Eddie was covering the campaign for The Nation, where he had a contract to write four essays a year on politics. He was not sure what to say about Nixon.

  By this time, Eddie was a huge name. His fourth novel had made his literary reputation. Entitled Netherwhite, it told the story of an obsessive social climber who, rejected by the Negro upper classes, resorted to violence, waging a one-man guerrilla war until cut down by the police. The book opened with a line that was later so often quoted that people forgot where it came from: “Plotting revenge can be such wonderful therapy.” Langston Hughes, who never stopped loving Harlem, had urged Eddie not to publish it, but Eddie’s judgment had proved correct. The white critics praised its sharp satiric eye, not realizing that everything Eddie wrote about Harlem he meant literally. The critics did not believe, even after reading the novel, that a wealthy black society actually existed in the secret uptown shadows of their own. This was the liberal era in our politics, and the Negro was understood by all to be poor, oppressed, and in special need of white solicitude. The Negro was a seamstress refusing to move to the back of the bus. The Negro was a sharecropper stymied by a literacy test for voting. And for once Eddie’s political judgment proved superior to his mentor’s. The Harlem society biddies, as he called them not only behind their backs but also in print, were enchanted. Delighted to be the subjects of a serious novel, they played round upon round of “who’s who,” skewering each other happily with Eddie’s furious words. Jet magazine ran a column guessing at the true identities of his characters—and, in most cases, getting them right.