by Jim Lehrer
We all remember our agreement, Joan, Henry, and Barbara signaled with slight movements of their respective heads. You bet, we remember. No problem, no problem.
“I have honored that agreement,” Howley said.
He waited for any one of the other three of the Famous Fabulous Williamsburg Four to say the same thing. He waited in vain.
“A tabloid creep named Chapman paid a call on me several days ago in Greece,” he said. “It was clear to me that he knew most everything that was said by the four of us in Longsworth D.”
(Joan, I think mostly to protect my feelings, said Howley said “reporter” instead of “creep.” Henry said it was “creep.” Barbara said she couldn’t remember exactly, but she thought it was either “creep” or “asshole.”)
Howley paused again, waiting for a volunteer to speak. There were no volunteers.
So he looked right at Henry and said: “Did you tell Chapman what was said in Longsworth D?”
Henry’s mind was on fast play. He’s got me, sure. Did Chapman, the creep, tell Howley I talked? Only one way to find out. “Yeah, I told him a little bit,” he said.
“So did I,” Joan said quickly.
“Me, too,” Barbara said almost at the same time. “Chapman clearly already had most of it by the time he got to me.”
“Right, right, same with me. He already seemed to know most everything,” Henry said. “He said he wanted to check the facts with me to make sure my quotes were correct.…”
“That’s what he said to me, too,” Barbara said.
“Me, too,” Joan said. “I assumed Henry or Barbara was telling him, so why play games?”
“You-all were Woodward-ized!” Howley said angrily, referring to the all-I-want-is-to-get-it-right approach made famous by the famous Bob Woodward of Watergate and other reporting fames. “You let him play you one off the other, acting like he already had more than he had, sucking each of you in.”
True.
“I didn’t tell him much about the last part—when we worked it out about who was going to ask and say what and all of that,” said Henry.
“Me neither,” Barbara said.
“Same with me,” Joan said.
True.
Henry told Howley how he had come to trust me and that he felt I was not out to hurt anybody—particularly the four of them.
“All he wants to do is tell the story,” Barbara said.
“He seems well-motivated and hardworking,” Joan said, admitting to me that she had wished she had come up with something slightly more dynamic.
“He’s motivated by money,” Howley replied. “He’s doing it for money, pure and simple.”
“Unlike who exactly in this room?” Henry said.
“We did not do what we did in Williamsburg for the goddamn money,” Howley said.
“But look at us now.”
“I’d rather not, frankly,” Howley said, making obvious his distaste for his three nouveau riche colleagues—and himself.
“What exactly is your problem, Mike?” Joan asked.
“You three people—each and every one of you—broke your word, that is my goddamn problem.”
“So what?” Henry said. “I am proud of what happened in Williamsburg, and if the public is interested in how we came to do it—so what? Tell them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Barbara said. “What’s the harm?”
“If I have to tell you what harm is done by going back on your goddamn word—”
Joan said that watching Howley catch himself in time, before he went too far, before he said too much, reminded her of how her father would grab her to spank her legs but then stop.
Henry was thinking, Can we get on with it? It’s almost ten o’clock already!
Barbara felt a draft.
Henry decided to lighten things up. He said to Howley: “Hey, Mike, you forgot to check this room for bugs. Don’t you want to do it before we say anything else?”
Howley almost smiled and said: “I had this place swept with dogs this afternoon. We’ll check the ice-cream bowls later. That one in Williamsburg turned out to be faulty, by the way. It didn’t work. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to plant a bug that wouldn’t bug.”
“How do you know that?” Henry asked.
“I know,” Howley replied.
Joan, Henry, and Barbara almost smiled. None could remember anything being said for a long time—several seconds.
Then in a slow, deliberate voice, Mike Howley said:
“First, I hereby confess that my purpose tonight was more than a reunion. I came to tell each of you to your face what I think of your violating our Longsworth D agreement. There may be honor among thieves but clearly not among journalists.”
“Wait a minute, Mike,” Henry said. “We don’t have to take this taco shit—”
“Shut up, Henry,” Howley said, still not raising his voice. “I have come a long way. I will say what I have to say and you will goddamn listen.”
Barbara tried to calm and hush up Henry with a slight wave of her right hand. Let the man talk, so we can get out of here!
Henry read Barbara’s hand signal, all right. He also caught a similar message from a frown on Joan’s face. Cool it, Henry.
He cooled it. Howley went on.
“I want each of you to know that I will never forget or forgive what you did. If you were paid by Chapman, if you did it for the money—”
“No!” Joan yelled.
“We weren’t paid!” Barbara said.
“I didn’t get a dime,” Henry said.
“OK, OK, OK,” Howley said. “You weren’t paid. I have said what I wanted to say about what you did—”
“Fine, then,” Henry said, standing up. “Hasta la vista, Mike and girls.”
Howley gestured him back down. “One more thing, please. I came all this way to be with you here tonight to talk about one more thing. It has to do, I am sorry to say, with those statements we read from during the debate. It has to do with where they came from.…”
Joan felt some kind of invisible force behind her. Get out of here, Joan, said the force as it pushed on her.
“… I am sure you all remember what I said about those statements. I said they came from a source I could and would vouch for. I said I felt I was locked into a situation that prevented me from telling you my source. You—all three of you—went along with it, and we went out there and did our thing. The fact of the matter was—”
“Wait a minute,” Henry said. “Maybe I don’t want to know any more than I know. I don’t know how Barbara and Joan feel, but I am just fine not knowing a damned thing. What I do not know I do not have to lie about, put out of my mind, go to jail about, worry about spilling to Chapman, or do anything else with.”
“I agree—I think,” Barbara said.
“Why are you telling us now?” Joan said.
“It is clearly what that creep Chapman is trying to build his career on,” Howley said. “How and why those statements got into Longsworth D is his story.”
“I didn’t tell him where they came from because I didn’t know,” Joan said.
Henry and Barbara said that was true for them, too. They knew nothing about that, so they had nothing to tell.
The room was quiet.
“Are you absolutely certain you do not want to know how they came to me?” Howley asked. “I have come from Greece to talk about this—to tell you anything you wish to know.”
“Tell me nothing, I tell no lies,” Barbara said.
“I am with my partner,” Henry said.
Joan said: “Did they come from the Greene campaign, Mike? That’s all I really want to know.”
“Not from them to me, they didn’t. I am not sure of their origin. I got them from somebody who clearly got them from somebody else—who, for all I know, got them from another somebody else. Chapman told me in Greece they came originally from one of the campaigns, as I am sure he has told all of you.”
Barbara, Henry, and Joan said then
to Howley that, no, Chapman had not told them anything like that. They asked me afterward why I had not. I told them that the information had only come to me—I did not mention Nelson—right before I went to Greece to talk to Howley.
There was a knock on the door.
“Does anybody want an after-dinner drink?” asked Howley. “Sambuca, cognac … something like that?”
It had been a while since a waiter had been in their private room. Howley had told the restaurant people beforehand to keep intrusions and service to an absolute minimum. And he told them to knock before entering.
Joan normally had a liqueur only after meals of special distinction on special occasions. “A sambuca would be great,” she said to the waiter now without a second’s hesitation. Barbara, who could not remember the last time she had a liqueur after dinner, said: “A brandy, please.”
Henry was not a liqueur drinker. He ordered a beer.
Howley asked for a scotch on the rocks.
And in a few minutes the drinks were delivered, the door was again closed, and Mike Howley was again talking.
“I would hate to think that we were used by the Greene campaign. If it happened, then it was my fault. I certified those statements to the three of you because I trusted the guy who gave them to me. I did not press him on where he got them, just like you did not press me on how they came to me.”
He stopped. Joan asked: “What are you worried about, Mike?”
“I am worried that Chapman runs a story which says we were the tools of the Greene campaign, that I was the conduit from them to Longsworth D—and the three of you.”
Henry was shaking his head. “Maybe I’m slow or Mexican or something, but I don’t follow the problem. It’s what those people said in those statements; what it caused that bastard to do and scream out there on that stage is all that counts. What difference does it make whether that stuff came from Greene or from Mars?”
Joan said: “Henry’s right. If it turned out to be untrue, if those women had been figments of somebody’s imagination … well, I don’t even want to think about what might have happened to us. I still have nightmares sometimes thinking about how we didn’t make one call to check out anything. We just took them and walked out there and used them. It’s amazing, really. But it turned out all right. It was all straight stuff. The women existed. They stood by their stories. It was a close call, but no harm was done.”
Barbara said: “In those immortal words—I’ll say amen to that. We got away with it.”
“Nobody ever needs to know how close a call it was,” Henry said.
“Good point,” Joan said.
“A really good point, ‘Hank,’ ” Barbara said.
Henry, according to Joan, gave Barbara a look that would have fried a bean in his mother’s restaurant. “Thank you, ‘Barb dear,’ ” he said.
No wonder they don’t want to talk romance, thought Joan. There ain’t nothing to talk about.
Joan had something to talk about—again. The nightmare. She said: “The one thing nobody will ever understand is how we took those statements the way we did, checked out nothing, and just went out there and used them. My own husband doesn’t even understand it.”
Barbara said: “You just said that, Joan.”
“I know. And I am saying it again. I think back on that and I shiver and shake and sweat. We walked right out there and read those things on television.…”
“Our fear of Meredith made us do it like that,” Barbara said.
“And our trust in the great Mr. Howley here,” Henry said.
“I still can’t believe we did it,” Joan said. “Not a one of us made even one call—”
“Right, right, but look, the only point now is that it worked and the hour is late,” said Henry. “I need to hit the road to the hay.”
“Not quite yet, Henry—or do you prefer ‘Hank’?” Howley said.
Joan had also begun to think Jeff and the twins would be sending the cops out before long. But then she knew nobody was going to be going anywhere anytime soon. She saw a look of pure hostility on Howley’s face. She hoped it was the Italian wine, of which he had had much, and the scotch. Whatever, Mike Howley was going to be heard.
“Henry,” said Henry. “And I am out of here, OK?”
“You are not out of here, OK?” Howley said. “I have a couple more things on my agenda—”
Henry, on his feet, held up his right hand as if to direct traffic to stop. “Alto, amigo. I ain’t hearing no more from you, OK, hombre?” Henry took a step toward the door.
“Sit down and listen to me, goddamn it!” Mike Howley screamed.
Joan leapt to her feet and put her hands on Henry’s shoulders. “Hear him out, Henry. We owe him that.”
“I don’t owe him one tiny little piece of a corn-husk wrapper from a mildewed tamale.”
Barbara, still in her chair, said: “Forget it, Hank boy. If it hadn’t been for Mike, we’d both still be nothing.”
“I was never nothing, Barb girl.”
According to Joan, Henry’s stare at Barbara matched for hate and loathing anything Howley had managed up till then. The match made in television heaven was clearly a product of hell. The hell of a network contract that made them household names and multimillionaires.
Howley said to Henry: “Hey, I’m sorry. I should not have yelled at you like that. That was out of line.”
Henry waved him on and sat back down. Henry was seriously afraid if he hadn’t, Howley might have gotten out of hand. He, like Joan, didn’t know if it was the drink or what, but this was a man in a state of serious agitation. So, all right, all right, late or not, he would hear him out.
Howley asked if everyone wanted another round.
Everyone but Joan said yes. She wanted coffee. Then Barbara changed her order to coffee. Henry stuck with beer. Howley stuck with scotch.
And after all those drinks were on the table in front of them, Howley continued.
“I want a new covenant of silence,” he said to Joan, Barbara, and Henry. “And this time I want you three to keep it.”
“Chapman’s already finished with his interviewing,” Joan said.
“Right, right,” Barbara said. “He doesn’t have anything else to ask us.…”
“He told me he was through except for some quote-checking stuff,” Henry said.
Mike Howley’s light blue eyes got small. He said: “No more talking to Chapman about anything, OK?”
Joan said that no one responded. Not her, not Henry, not Barbara.
“Mike, please,” Joan said. “I already told you that I have told Chapman everything I have to say.”
Barbara and Henry said—again—that was true for them as well.
Howley said: “When I left that room that night in Williamsburg, I thought I had an agreement with three people I could trust to keep their word. I find that they did not keep their word. They spilled their guts like little kids at the first interview. They got so carried away with being stars, with people out there kissing their asses and giving them money, they couldn’t even resist the offers of a sleaze jockey from some shit-pot magazine—”
Henry was back on his feet. He said: “Whatever happened to make me, whether you approve or not, I am Hank. Hank don’t have to take this shit-pot stuff from you, Howley. Whatever, whatever. Hank and Henry both say, Good night. And adios—for tonight and forever. OK, amigo?”
Howley stood. So did Joan and Barbara. Joan motioned for Henry to hold on a minute and said to Howley: “What exactly do you want from us?”
“I want each of you to look me straight in the eye—”
Henry interrupted. “What in the hell is really going on, Howley? What are you trying to hide? What are you really trying to protect? Your own ass? A little more truth than you can—”
Barbara said: “Shut up, Henry!”
“Orders from you I do not take either, Barb.”
“Everybody now, cool it,” Joan said. “And I mean it. You, Henry, you, Barbara—y
ou, Mike. Hush, all of you.” Then back to Howley she said: “You want us to raise our right hands—”
“Like Boy Scouts, yeah,” Henry said. “Well, it’ll snow in Laredo before that happens.”
Joan stared him quiet.
Howley said: “I want each of you showboats … Sorry. Each of you—”
To Joan, Henry said: “No more. If he wants to see me, he can see me every Sunday morning at nine, Eastern Standard Time, along with the rest of the millions.”
To Henry, Barbara said: “I cannot believe what you have become.”
“There are two of us, remember. You and me, me and you.”
Joan said to Howley: “I hereby look you straight in the eye and give you my word.” Then to Barbara she said: “Say it and let’s get out of here.”
To Howley, Barbara said: “I don’t know …”
“Henry?” Joan said.
“Maybe. Maybe anything to get out of here. Here we are, the four most famous journalists in America, swearing to keep things from the American people. It stinks.”
“I need no lectures from you on journalism, ‘Hank,’ ” said Joan.
“Easy, lady,” Barbara said.
Easy, lady, indeed, thought Joan. Easy, everybody.
Barbara said to Howley: “We can break a glass, cut ourselves, suck a sip of each other’s blood, Mr. Howley, and promise to die before we ever say another word about anything having to do with us and what we did. And it will not matter. Not one drop of that blood, will it matter. It will eventually get out. Everything will eventually get out. If Chapman doesn’t get it, somebody else will. Somebody else always does. You know that, Mr. Howley. You know that probably better than any of the rest of us just because you have been doing what we do longer than the rest of us. So, I swear, you swear, everybody swears, and it don’t mean shit. Now can we go?”
Henry admitted to me that he was not proud of what happened next. He said he must have had too much beer and wine. He was now as pissed at Howley as Howley was at him and the others. So why not make some mischief?
He said: “Wait just a minute. We are reporters, let’s not forget. Muy Bueno Son knows better than this. We have to tell the full story to Chapman and anybody else who asks. We can’t sit on our own story. Reporters don’t sit on stories. Reporters don’t participate in cover-ups. They uncover cover-ups. Cover-up! Did I really use that word? Yes, I did. Cover-up. The great Mike Howley is asking us to be a party to a cover-up.”
