Watergate

by Thomas Mallon

  An enormous roar from the crowd finally put her conversation with the Magruders out of its misery. They waved goodbye to Rose while the source of the excitement, Martha Mitchell, entered the big room. After hugging Kissinger and some astronaut just back from the Moon, she began signing autographs, while the light of a hundred Instamatic flash cubes bounced off the silver tinsel hanging from the ceiling. “Honey,” Martha cried to a big bald businessman, “you can snap me next to the dinosaur—so long as you don’t ask which of us is older!”

  Once boredom overcame her, as it always did within minutes, she began a push for the main ballroom. The crowd made way for Martha, dragging Kissinger into her wake. He followed along until he came to the VIP boxes, which overhung the ballroom from a height no greater than the upper berths on a train.

  Elliot Richardson stood in one of them, telling a reporter that he’d tried to do a bit of jitterbugging right where he was rather than venture into the mob scene below. “Still, it’s rather nice that the people here get a chance to see the faces that belong to all those names they’re always seeing in the newspaper.”

  “How should I identify you?” the reporter asked. “With HEW, or as secretary of defense designate?” The confirmation hearings for all the new and repositioned Nixon nominees had gotten a little backed up.

  “The latter, I should think,” said Richardson, leaning over to talk to Kissinger, several feet below. He’d seen him yesterday, too, during the “Heritage Groups” reception over at the Corcoran, where Henry had told him, as a hundred ethnics swirled around his tall Brahmin presence, “At last you know what the Jewish quota at Harvard felt like.”

  Richardson bid goodbye to the reporter and pointed to a little doorway that could bring the national security advisor up into the box. A moment later Henry was at his side, first bemoaning how he had to return to Paris in the morning and then confessing his latest anxieties.

  “He’s been talking to Haldeman about the disposition of my papers. Who’s entitled to what when the time comes.”

  “Posterity is just around the corner,” mused Richardson.

  “Do you think he still has confidence in me?”

  Richardson’s reply was lost in a sudden new cacophony, when the ballroom’s two orchestras, supposed to be alternating, struck up different numbers at the same time. Kissinger and Richardson watched Ehrlichman dance with his daughter to the competing strains of “Picnic” and “Moon River” until another great roar from the crowd made everyone, even Martha Mitchell, look toward one of the doorways.

  A false alarm: it was Agnew who’d just arrived, not the president.

  “A heartbeat away,” said Richardson.

  “And about fifteen IQ points,” replied Kissinger.

  Alice Longworth was falling asleep with the television on. The station had been showing film of the parade, the announcer remarking on Dick’s unusually happy expression and then pointing out the empty seat in the front row that had been reserved for none other than herself.

  As her fever persisted, thought and dream began to merge, making her believe she was actually at the parade and that it was 1957, Dick’s second inaugural as vice president. The little Nixon girls were shrinking from her while Pat whispered to them that they shouldn’t be afraid of the old lady.

  Old? Why, Alice had been only seventy-two that morning, with her own daughter much on her mind: poor Paulina, alone on Twenty-eighth Street, a drunk’s young widow now drinking herself through despair. The dream of ’57 ran on—past the overdose and the body’s discovery to Dick’s shouldering of the coffin; past her coming to his study on Tilden Street, clutching the detestable Post article with its reference to the empty bottle of sleeping pills.

  This dream, like the fever, came and went for two more days, during which Alice sometimes thought Joanna, her granddaughter, was really Paulina passing in and out of the room.

  And then, on the twenty-third, the fever at last broke. The flu and the dream went with it, and she was lucid once more, back in the here and now of 1973. As Janie fed her broth, Joanna came in with news that the first lady was on the telephone. Both housekeeper and granddaughter expressed doubt that she was well enough to take the call, but Alice overruled them: “Don’t give me those looks. I know which first lady it is. I know it’s not Mrs. Taft, and I know it’s not Eleanor. It’s Pat. Tell her to hold the line while you bring me the phone.”

  They did as they were instructed.

  “You were beginning to give us a scare!” said Mrs. Nixon.

  “Not to worry. I’m paper thin, but I’ve decided to stick around for another year or two.”

  “Well, that’s the best news yet,” Pat declared. After a pause, she added, “What a combination of the sad and wonderful we’ve had while you were under the weather!”

  “I haven’t heard any of it. Give me the sad stuff first,” said Alice, realizing that Pat might well have a different idea than she about what was sad and what was happy.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that Lyndon Johnson died last night.” Pat said it slowly, thinking to cushion any shock.

  “I imagine there’ll be loud grief in the animal kingdom,” responded Alice. “Will they be putting him in the Rotunda?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Pat imagined that even Johnson’s corpse might still attract pickets, but offering such an observation seemed rude, so she settled for saying, “It would be such a long trip for Lady Bird.”

  “You said there was good news, too.”

  “Yes!” cried the first lady. “And it’s brand new. Dick’s going on television tonight to make the announcement. Henry Kissinger is on his way back from Paris with the agreement.”

  Alice remained silent.

  “The war is over,” Pat explained. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  Perfectly aware of which war she spoke, Alice nonetheless thought back to the Paris Treaty of 1898, which had settled the Spanish-American War; and to the Versailles treaty after that; and then to her half brother, Ted Jr., dropping dead of a heart attack after hitting the beach at Normandy when he was fifty-six.

  She sighed in a way that alarmed Janie and Joanna. She shut her eyes and waited a moment, still lost in thought, until she at last told Pat: “I want you to enjoy it, dear.”

  Chapter Twenty

  FEBRUARY 23, 1973, 9:00 P.M.

  1030 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY

  “Mr. LaRue is downstairs,” the doorman announced.

  The reply coming through the telephone was loud enough for the arriving guest to hear. “Send him up!” cried Martha Mitchell. “And tell him not to mind the elevator lookin’ like a horse stall!”

  To LaRue’s confusion, the elevator car did contain a considerable litter of hay and straw—as well as the mayor of New York City, John V. Lindsay, wearing a tuxedo. “Didn’t have time to change,” he said to LaRue with his movie-star smile.

  “There’s a little ole square dance goin’ on two flights up,” explained Martha, as she took LaRue’s topcoat. “A birthday party for Mr. Teddy Kennedy.”

  Martha rarely engaged in lengthy exposition, but allowed that the senator’s sister and brother-in-law, Jean and Stephen Smith, lived in the building. From the open living room window of the Mitchells’ apartment, LaRue could hear an old-fashioned square-dance caller speaking commands into a microphone: “Bow to your partner!”

  “Just don’t drown her!” shouted Martha, to the unseen guest of honor, who was turning forty-one. Down below on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, near the building’s canvas canopy, a handful of tabloid photographers and TV cameras were hoping to catch late arrivals.

  “That poor little wife of his, Joansie, is travelin’ out West, so I wonder who they’ve got lined up to be Mr. Teddy Bear’s birthday present tonight.”

  LaRue just smiled.

  “Sit down, honey,” Martha ordered. “Mr. Mitchell’s on the phone.” She mixed LaRue a drink. “I understand that Miss Triciabelle and Mr. Eddie Coxman are about to move smack into my neighborhood. Rig
ht down Eighty-fourth Street, from what I hear.”

  LaRue wondered if this development amounted to cachet or competition; either way, he was sure Martha found it nowhere near as exciting as having Jackie Onassis just one block away.

  “So, honey,” she said, settling herself next to him. “Is Mr. President doin’ any work at all?”

  “He’s mostly scramblin’ to figure out how he can sell Congress on givin’ reconstruction aid to North Vietnam.” LaRue laughed softly at the thought of how only two months ago everybody in the White House had been worried about funds for the war being cut off.

  “You always love the one you hurt,” said Martha, conclusively. The only topic she wanted to pursue right now was Richard Nixon’s sudden new social life in Washington. The president and first lady had, in recent days, been photographed dining out at Trader Vic’s, visiting Alice Longworth in advance of her eighty-ninth birthday, and going to the theater with Tricia to see Debbie Reynolds in a musical whose wholesomeness was above reproach.

  LaRue smiled. “It’s kinda like the ‘peace dividend.’ Or normalcy. He’s showin’ that, with the war over, even he’s allowed to enjoy himself. I doubt it’ll last long.”

  “The man I see in these pictures is not havin’ a good time,” said Martha. “We are dealin’ with a most irregular Joe here.” She was back at the window, leaning out and giving the photographers a chance to catch on. “No Vertigo for me!” she suddenly cried, pulling herself back in. “Neither the condition nor the movie, which is what Mr. President and old Thelma are gonna be watching at Camp David tonight. That comes straight from Mr. President himself, I’ll have you know. He told Mr. Mitchell so when they talked an hour ago. Oh, yes, Mr. President still calls when he wants something. Tell me, are you and Mr. Mitchell still tryin’ to raise money to keep everybody quiet and protect him?”

  “I’m hopin’ that’ll come to an end soon,” said LaRue.

  Martha snorted. “One way or the other!” She was back at the window yet again. “Oh my! Look at the mop of curls on little John-John! Do not tell me that boy doesn’t belong to Mr. Agnelli. He’s not pink and pasty enough to be a real Kennedy.” She returned to the couch and her drink, exclaiming, “I just love it here! Aside from everything else, it’s safer. John Stennis ought to get himself out of Washington, D.C., and back home before some other colored mugger finishes him off.”

  Mississippi’s aging junior senator, a wizened stalwart who would never catch up to James O. Eastland in seniority, remained at Walter Reed, recovering from gunshot wounds sustained in a robbery that had taken place on his front lawn.

  “He’s doin’ pretty well, from what I hear,” said LaRue.

  Martha suddenly remembered that gunshots, like cancer, gave her the willies.

  “Mr. Mitchell!” she shouted in the direction of the bedroom. “Freddy LaRooster is here!”

  She liked to tease him about old amatory exploits. She imagined they weren’t very great, but kept poking in hopes of a revelation or two. Certainly he had never told her about Clarine Lander.

  “How does Mr. President get everybody to keep workin’ for him without pay?” she asked, pointing toward the bedroom where her husband was still transacting Richard Nixon’s business. “Everybody’s half in and half out, still at it, even when they’ve got no more title and no more office. There’s my husband, and now there’s Cole Slaw.”

  Chuck Colson had returned to private law practice, but he was still an official, if unsalaried, consultant to the president. Nixon could continue to get his advice and, if need be, still claim executive privilege for him.

  “There he is!” cried Martha, as Mitchell at last emerged from the bedroom. His appearance, only five weeks after the inauguration, shocked LaRue. His hands were shaking and two gin blossoms had burst across his nose. His silvery whiskers matched the hair curling over his collar. It also looked as if this might be the second day for the shirt he had on.

  Martha strode back to the window. LaRue noticed that her right hand was twirling a little red-checkered scarf she’d picked up from a table.

  “Come on in,” said Mitchell, as if the bedroom were an office. “Bring your drink.”

  LaRue noticed newspapers and legal pads, as well as the phone, lying all over the unmade bed. Mitchell lay back down on it, propping himself against the headboard.

  “I talked to the president a couple of hours ago,” he said.

  “So I hear,” said LaRue. “He’s supposed to be watchin’ a movie about now. You should be doin’ the same on a Friday night.”

  Mitchell, whose mind was never completely off his wife, replied, “You know, she wants to go upstairs to that party.”

  “Yes,” said LaRue, who’d seen the red-checkered kerchief. “But tell me the latest.”

  Mitchell took out a pad with some notes. He pointed to the telephone. “If you listen to him,” he said, meaning the president, “you’d think it was all in the past. I could barely get him to discuss our little troubles. He’d rather talk about our new North Vietnamese friends.”

  LaRue laughed softly. “Next thing you know we’ll be raisin’ money to pay off McGovern’s campaign debt.”

  Mitchell looked at the notepad, pausing before he made a suggestion. “Maybe clemency for Hunt is not so outlandish. We’d take tremendous heat for a few days, but we could slip it into a bunch of other amnesties and pardons. Not for the draft dodgers,” he hastened to explain, knowing LaRue’s feelings on that subject, “but, say, for some GIs with Lieutenant Calley’s kind of problems.”

  LaRue managed no more than a skeptical nod. If it would keep himself out of trouble, the Old Man probably would pardon the draft dodgers, same as he went to Red China without a by-your-leave to the Formosans. It sometimes felt to LaRue that there were no deal-breakers anymore, no about-faces that weren’t beyond the pale. If the subsidy paid better than the crop, why plant?

  “John, I don’t know about clemency for Hunt. It’ll intensify the investigation.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Mitchell. “There’s only one way to really fix this thing, and I’m afraid you’re looking at him.” LaRue shook his head in protest.

  “I can tell he wants me to come forward and take the blame,” said Mitchell. “Colson wants me to do it, too, and so does Haldeman. Just step up to some microphone and say I ordered the break-in. The Democrats will think they’ve solved that mystery where even the trial couldn’t. And they’ll lose interest in our little cover-up, because it will have failed.”

  “There’s only one problem with that,” said LaRue.

  Mitchell nodded. “The small fact that I never ordered the break-in.”

  “I know you didn’t,” said LaRue.

  “Who did?” asked Mitchell.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. I’d say it was Magruder. And so would Liddy, I’m pretty sure, if he decided to talk instead of playing the tough guy.” The lead defendant at the burglars’ trial had winked theatrically at Jeb when his despised former boss at CRP entered the courtroom to testify, not very forthrightly, last month. Liddy had wound up being convicted along with McCord, and could expect the longest prison term of all once the judge sentenced everybody, including Hunt and the Cubans, a few weeks from now.

  “But why would Magruder even think to bug the DNC?” asked Mitchell. “Why would it even be on his mind?”

  “It makes no sense,” said LaRue. “And Jeb’s not going to admit anything to you, or to me, any more than he’s going to admit it to a jury. Not with four kids who could wind up seeing their daddy go to jail.”

  After a pause, Mitchell said, “I’m not sure I’m ready to do it.”

  LaRue looked at his blotchy face and supine posture and thought he didn’t look ready to do anything.

  “Aside from everything else,” Mitchell continued, “she’ll kill me if I agree to be the fall guy.” He pointed toward the living room.

  “Hell,” said LaRue, “I’ll kill you, too.”

&n
bsp; He wondered, when he caught himself using that expression, if his partner in conversation might be thinking, And that’s more than a figure of speech to him. But Mitchell looked at him and said nothing. LaRue was, he supposed, being “paranoid”—that word the Old Man’s enemies loved to toss around. But this momentary fear, just a second or two of social awkwardness, stemmed from a genuine terror, his unquenchable dread that the shooting in the duck blind, years ago, had been something other than an accident; a catastrophe brewed by drink and dark, deliberate impulse.

  Mitchell had said no more than “hell of a thing” when he first heard about the incident from LaRue, during some otherwise casual talk of their childhoods. By that point LaRue had already come to understand that Mitchell didn’t especially care what a man’s secret was, so long as he could keep it; but LaRue was keeping a secret he didn’t fully know himself. The whole truth of what had happened up in Canada was probably knowable even now—and had been so for fifteen years—but there was sufficient trouble in this room without straying toward an old mystery that no prosecutor was pursuing.

  Mitchell at last spoke. “The only thing to do right now is keep a lid on it and get ready for the Senate hearings. The president did manage to see Howard Baker the other day.”

  LaRue frowned. He didn’t think the investigative committee’s ranking Republican—Everett Dirksen’s son-in-law or not—was likely to provide much protection.

  “The president’s strategy,” said Mitchell, “is to look as if we’re cooperating even while we claim executive privilege for everybody down to the janitor. And, oh yeah,” he remembered to add, “the president says we’re supposed to draw everyone’s attention to ‘the good things.’ ”

  LaRue smiled. “Colson says the return of the POWs equals one thousand Watergates.”

  “If that’s his idea of math,” said Mitchell, “I’m glad he isn’t running NASA.”

  The president’s hopes for joyful distraction were getting him involved with every detail of the prisoners’ release: checking to see that all the wives had orchids to wear as their men got off the planes; picking just the right entertainers—cornball was okay, but not too ancient—for the welcome-home evening at the White House. LaRue had heard how the Old Man choked up, nearly sobbed, the other day when talking to what he now called his “peace cabinet” about the staunch Nolde family, whose father had been the last American to die in the war.