The Witch of Watergate

by Warren Adler

  Yet Harry Barker had presided over this city room for more than thirty years and, from the look of him, he seemed determined to preside here for another thirty.

  He leaned back on a big leather chair and lifted his thick-soled smooth-topped military-style shoes to the desk, his feet crossed at the ankles. The introductions had been cordial and they had been given coffee in cups and saucers of good china.

  “Been a long time, FitzGerald,” Barker said. “Wouldn’t have figured you’d wind up as a cop.” He turned to the Eggplant. “I interviewed her old man, the Senator. Helluva guy. What was it, twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago? You were a kid. I remember the Senator asked if it was okay for his daughter to sit in.”

  “And you said, ‘Sure. She looks like she can keep a secret.’ ” The recall had suddenly become vivid.

  “What a memory. He was quite a guy, your old man.”

  He watched her for a moment, made a clicking sound with his teeth and focused his watery eyes on the Eggplant, who was waiting patiently for the formalities and small talk to be over.

  “Polly Dearborn was a stiff pain in the ass,” Barker said. “But one helluva clever reporter. The ‘Witch of Watergate,’ they called her. Tougher than hardtack.” He shook his head and said “shit” through clenched teeth. “I’ll say this, if she did kill herself, which is doubtful, that’s the way she’d do it. Something bizarre like that for all to see, hanging there in the breeze.” He chuckled. “Maybe with a broom between her legs.”

  “There wasn’t any broom,” Fiona said, surprised by her retort. She was also surprised at Barker’s attitude. For some reason she had expected it to be different—if not grieving, at least respectful. Polly Dearborn was, after all, his ace investigative reporter.

  “We think she was murdered,” the Eggplant said flatly, then hedged: “Not that we’re ruling out suicide, but it’s become more and more doubtful.”

  “I think you’re right, Captain,” Barker said. “If you do rule out suicide then the ramifications for us are enormous. Let’s face it, the obvious conclusion is that she would have been killed because of something she did on the job. Nothing like that has ever happened to any of our reporters. Not in my memory. It has the stink of terrorism. I’m not saying she was murdered by anyone she wrote about. But I’m sure you’re not going to rule that out. There’s also a bigger picture here. Like she might have been murdered to intimidate us, to serve as a kind of warning. What do you think, Captain?”

  The Eggplant rubbed his chin, took his time. He had apparently decided how he wished to appear to this powerful editor. Fiona watched him transform himself into the wise old darkie, the philosopher who had seen it all. He was trotting out his garb of dignity.

  “We rarely theorize about the obvious, Mr. Barker. Not that everything you say might be correct. We’ve barely begun our investigation. The victim also had a personal life, a life away from the business. That, too, must be explored.”

  “Personal life?” Barker said. “Not Polly. She was always working. I never knew her to have a boyfriend. She had escorts.” He looked toward Fiona. “You know what I mean. No love interest. Not even a girlfriend. Aloof. That was Polly Dearborn. A loner. As far as I know, few people were ever invited up to her pad in the Watergate. ‘The witch’s lair,’ the wags called it. Not that she didn’t go out. She went out a lot. She could put it on. Be social, gregarious, sometimes funny. But she never fooled me. Nor did she try to. Her kind of work required obsession, dedication.”

  The day’s paper was on the desk near his elbow and he slapped it with the palm of his hand. “She couldn’t do what she did without that kind of focus. You could see it from the beginning, the moment I saw her. I hired her fifteen years ago. She had worked on a paper in South Carolina, had this sweet drawl, innocent face.” He shook a finger in the air. “Didn’t fool me. I knew a nutcutter when I saw one.”

  “I seemed to have formed the same impression from her stories,” Fiona said.

  “They passed muster, though. Lawyers raked over her stuff. I did, too. Not that we didn’t have protests. Some of the people she hit squealed like stuck pigs. We got hate mail, but we’re used to that. Hell, every day I get buckets of the shit, call me every name under the sun. Threaten my life, my children, my grandchildren, my wife. Sometimes, whenever I get too smug or cocky, I read a few. Sobers you up. Lots of crazies out there.”

  “And Polly Dearborn,” Fiona asked, “did she get hate mail?”

  “Piles.”

  The Eggplant shot her a glance of rebuke. This was to be his show and he made it perfectly clear that she was to keep her mouth shut until prompted.

  “You ever report these threats?” the Eggplant asked.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You’d clog up the system. In my experience, they’re empty threats, sounding off by wackos. Why bother? They want to knock you off, they knock you off. No need to advertise.” He looked up at them. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  The Eggplant shrugged acknowledgement then took his time absorbing the information. It carried little surprise for each of them. Yes, there were crazies out there. Yes, the media could trigger inflammatory conduct. She watched the Eggplant struggle to keep his dignified image intact.

  “Has Polly Dearborn ever been threatened by the people she wrote about?” he asked.

  “Horse of another color,” Barker said. “Many of them bitch like hell. They protest. They threaten legal action. Imply worse. They come running to me or Mrs. Grayson and scream smear or distortion or excoriate us for printing lies. Oh, they threaten dire consequences. Say things like, ‘I’m gonna getcha.’ We’re all used to that. We expect it. Hell, we expose dark deeds, bring down the liars, the cheats, the scum. That’s our mandate. We cut through the bullshit. We’ve been wrong sometimes and we’ve paid the price. But I’ll say this, Polly Dearborn didn’t make too many mistakes. Go through her copy over the years, you can find lots of murder suspects. The point is, it never really happens. They think it, wish it, hope it. But, in the end, it’s just talk.”

  “Until now,” the Eggplant said.

  Harry Barker nodded and lifted his feet off the desk. He leaned over and rested his elbows where his feet had been.

  “You really think that, don’t you, Captain?”

  Fiona could see now what was in the forefront of Harry Barker’s mind.

  “I told you, Mr. Barker, it’s difficult to theorize at this stage.”

  “How do you connect the Downey thing?” Barker asked suddenly. So there it was, Fiona thought.

  “It’s a suicide. No question. Man left a note more or less apologizing for the mess.” The Eggplant cut a glance at Fiona, who nodded confirmation.

  “That I got, Captain,” Barker said. “What about the other note, the one to the son?”

  The Eggplant showed his cynical smile, complete with the twitching nostrils of a genuine sneer.

  “You’ve got your ear to the ground, Mr. Barker.”

  “One of the tricks of the trade,” Barker said, but it was not meant to amuse.

  “Then you might know more than we do,” the Eggplant said. “We didn’t read the note. The feds got it first.”

  “It was addressed to Robert Downey, the son,” Fiona interjected. “I hope they’ve handed it over to him by now.”

  The Eggplant nodded his approval of her remark, then blinked his eyes, signaling her to remain silent.

  “National security,” the Eggplant said. “That’s the ploy they use to preempt our jurisdiction. You can bet they’ve read the contents.”

  Harry Barker moved his head closer to them and lowered his voice with an air of extreme confidentiality.

  “If Polly Dearborn was not a suicide . . .” Barker paused, watching the Eggplant’s face. “You think Chester Downey could have done it, Captain?”

  “It did cross my mind,” the Eggplant said. “But we haven’t found any evidence to that effect.” He turned to Fiona.

  “Not yet,” Fiona agreed, adding
hastily, “But nothing can be written off.”

  “It occurred to me that maybe the letter to his son was a confession,” Barker said. A deep frown wrinkled Harry Barker’s brow.

  “A confession?” the Eggplant asked.

  “It bothers the shit out of me,” Barker said. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “Fact is I cut out the really bad stuff in her story. I tried like hell to reach her last night and this morning to tell her that. It bugged me, nagged at me, and finally I cut it out.”

  Fiona had seen it countless times. Someone out on the limb of conscience, itching to let it out. Harry Barker, despite all his power, was not immune to such an urge. There was only one way to handle it: wait, listen, prod cautiously. Barker needed no prodding.

  “Polly Dearborn and her computers,” he sighed. It sounded very much like a beginning. “She was plugged into all these data banks. Indefatigable, that one. Never stopped. She picked up, from God knows where, this testimony of a case nearly twenty years ago. It seems that the Downey kid had got himself mixed up in a cult.

  “One of the parents of a kid also in the cult kidnapped his own child, but the deprogramming didn’t work and the kid, with the backing of the cult, sued his parents. Nice people. The point is that young Downey was a witness for the kid. One of the cult’s bonding techniques was to have these kids confess to the group any abuses they had been subjected to at the hands of their parents. Idea was to make the kids hate their families, substitute the cult for the family.

  “The Downey kid takes the stand and the parent’s lawyer presses him. He testifies that he was sexually abused by his father. Didn’t go much further than that. But Polly Dearborn picks it up on one of her data banks. Damned FBI never had it in their report on Chester Downey. Don’t ask me how I know this.

  “Okay, we’ve dumped on the guy for keeping his assets hidden from his ex-wife, for favoring his kid’s firm. Bad enough. But this? Oh she had it wrapped up with every hedge in the book. I tell you I agonized over it, then got up this morning and said “nada.” It won’t be in the paper tomorrow.”

  He lowered his head and studied his hands. No question, Fiona decided, he was genuinely contrite.

  “Did Downey, the father, think it was going to appear?”

  “Polly wouldn’t write it without confronting him.”

  “But you wouldn’t tell him you had cut it out?” the Eggplant asked.

  “No I wouldn’t. But my deal with Polly was to let her know when we were cutting her stuff.”

  “Would she have called Chester Downey?”

  “I doubt it. She would have been too pissed.”

  “Publishing that kind of information could really cut a man down. Innocent or guilty,” the Eggplant said.

  “Of course, he denied it,” Barker continued. “Which was also in the story. The lawyers cleared it and it was ready to go. I just didn’t feel comfortable with it. I didn’t deny the truth of it. But Christ, it’s so . . . so deeply personal and damning. Hell, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill peccadillo. Frankly, I felt it was overkill.”

  Fiona was surprised at his vulnerability. He wasn’t as tough as he made himself out to be. The Eggplant, ever eager to exploit the slightest sign of weakness, jumped into the silence.

  “I’d be curious to know how you intend to carry that story tomorrow.”

  “I’m on the horns of a dilemma, Captain,” Harry Barker said. “That’s exactly the point of this exercise. Maybe we can help each other.”

  “I’m sure we can,” the Eggplant agreed. He was, Fiona knew, loving this.

  “There is a delicate balance here,” Barker said. “A tricky business. The wrong spin could give the wrong impression.”

  “I’m sure it would,” the Eggplant said cautiously. “Considering the power you wield.”

  “Sometimes we get more credit than we’re due. Everyone will be climbing on this story. We don’t have a monopoly.”

  Fiona snickered to herself. Was he really expecting them to buy that? The power of the Post was awesome. No single media enterprise came close. To imply that a reporter could be killed for destroying a man’s career, whatever the truth of the allegations presented, was, from Barker’s perspective, a dangerous idea. Punishment was a judicial function. Trial by journalism, while an old American tradition, was in danger of going out of fashion, irritating people. Fiona could understand Barker’s interest.

  “You do have a considerable voice, Mr. Barker,” the Eggplant said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his tone.

  “What I want is to keep our lines open,” Barker said, disengaging from the subject. “I’ve been very forthcoming here. And I want to report the facts as they are, without speculation. Others may theorize, but, unless the theory is official . . .” He raised his head and looked pointedly at the Eggplant, who, to his credit, did not turn his gaze. “I will not allow it in print. Not in this paper.”

  Fiona could see the deal emerging. Barker was going to downplay the notion that Downey killed himself because of Polly Dearborn’s story. And the Eggplant was not going to indulge in speculation that Downey killed Polly Dearborn. Unless it was absolutely, positively proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

  What Barker was attempting was to minimize the impact of the obvious, that media bashing could, one way or another, kill, that reporters could be terrorized, that great newspapers could be intimidated. He wanted to set the tone, steer the direction of the story, keep all the players in check. He knew his power, knew his manipulative strength and he knew a thing or two about intimidation.

  He had cleverly shown them his human side. He seemed genuinely shaken by Downey’s response to Polly Dearborn’s story, although he felt absolved, to some extent, by his own self-righteous act of charity by eliminating the homosexual incest reference. He was, Fiona decided, one clever son of a bitch.

  He was saying to the Eggplant, who wasn’t at all dense, that he wanted to be in the loop, that he did not wish the Eggplant to mouth off theories, speculations or assumptions about these deaths to the media, a major sacrifice. In a way, he was anointing the Eggplant with his favor, downgrading the Mayor, who, by law, was the boss of the cops, and bestowing on the Eggplant powers far beyond the mandate of Homicide.

  “If Polly Dearborn was murdered,” the Eggplant said cautiously, “our mission is to bring the perpetrator to justice. That . . .” the Eggplant paused and stared directly into the editor’s eyes, “. . . is our mandate.”

  “Indeed it is, Captain. Indeed it is.”

  “But unfortunately, Mr. Barker, we are operating under a severe handicap.”

  “This sudden jump in gang-related murders,” Barker said, shaking his head. “It’s awful. Unbelievable.”

  “And it doesn’t reflect well on us for this city to be referred to as ‘the murder capital of the world.’ It also does not help us when you roast the Mayor as if it were all his fault.”

  “Our Mayor is a little too mouthy. Lot of blab and not enough jab. He’s not doing the job. Everybody knows it.”

  “You certainly have made your point about him. Over and over.” The Eggplant’s tone was calm, almost serene.

  “Well, he can’t blame it all on us. The media. We have to meet that challenge. Besides, he’s been indiscreet; some of his cronies are corrupt and he can’t keep his pants zipper up.”

  “He’s done some good things, too,” the Eggplant said. He knew his politics and he wanted Fiona to witness his defense of the man who had the power to appoint him Police Commissioner.

  On the subject of the Police Commissioner, the paper had been harsh. Unfortunately the Police Commissioner, while hard-working and intelligent, was both inarticulate and a bad administrator. His days were numbered and Captain Luther Greene was one of those favored to succeed him. The Dearborn case and its growing ramifications, Fiona knew, had the visibility that could make or break him. He would have to handle that part gingerly. In that regard, Barker would be a powerful ally.

  “We have a
constituency, too, Captain,” Barker said calmly. “We owe it to our readers and our advertisers. A fucked-up city isn’t good for business. Mustn’t forget that part of it either.”

  “And I’m not here to defend the Mayor. He’s a big boy and can take care of himself. I’m just a cop trying to do my best. We’re overworked and understaffed. The fact is that MPD homicide is one helluva professional outfit.” He looked toward Fiona. “Sergeant FitzGerald here can testify that we have one of the best departments in the country, top professionals with great skills.”

  “Have we ever questioned that?” Barker said defensively.

  “No, you haven’t. But the implication is clear. I’m not saying it’s deliberate on the part of your reporters and editors. But it only makes our job harder. More than anything, we want the killers off the streets. We, too, have our institutional image to protect.”

  Rarely had Fiona seen him more eloquent. He was taking his shot. He would probably never have a chance like this again. Harry Barker’s eyes narrowed. They were still locked with the Eggplant’s. Granted, his display of courage was grandstanding, hotdogging. But the Eggplant had calculated the odds and taken this opportunity to burn his identity into the editor’s mind, show him his character, elicit his respect. From the looks of things he was doing just that.

  “I see your drift, Captain,” Barker said. He did, indeed, Fiona reasoned.

  What the Eggplant saw, Fiona speculated, was his name in blazing headlines, a huge picture on the front page of the Style section: Captain Luther Greene, MPD’S Brilliant Homicide Chief, A Sure Bet for Commissioner.

  “You see then that what we have here is a two-way street,” the Eggplant said.

  “Yes, I do,” Barker said, nodding in emphasis.

  “Worst thing that can happen is if we get surprises when we pick up the paper. It makes our job that much harder.”

  The contract between them, Fiona observed, was getting broader. They were forging a common front, merging agendas.