by Warren Adler
“Keep in close touch,” he said, watching them both. “We want to be the first out on the street with the victory story, so keep the copy moving.” He looked about him cautiously, opened a desk drawer from which he removed a front-page press proof.
“Dewey Wins,” it read.
“Used old wooden 108-point type for this. Couldn’t do it for Truman. We’re missing a T. The bastard doesn’t have a chance anyway.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that headline,” Charlie said coolly. McCarthy turned bloodshot eyes upward.
“What have we here? Another Washington pundit. What the hell happens to you guys in that burg?”
“You can’t fool the people. Dewey is a stiff-necked phony.”
“The people? Oh, shit. What have you been smoking?”
“I’ll lay you ten bucks even money.”
“Even money? Are you nuts?” He paused. “I wouldn’t say it so loud. They’re laying eight to five around here.”
“Even money,” Charlie repeated.
“Make it a hundred,” McCarthy said, sneering. “Why don’t you take some too, Gold?”
“You’re on,” Charlie said, turning to Nick in expectation.
“I’ll go for the ten,” Nick said.
“He was the best goddamned District Attorney this town ever had. Kicked the mob right in the ass. Those cocky sons of bitches. They tried everything to buy him. That man’s got it.”
“Well, you’ve got your money where your mouth is boss,” Charlie said.
“You bet your sweet ass,” McCarthy said, turning to answer the phone, an indication that they were dismissed.
“How can you be so damned sure?” he asked Charlie later as they walked toward the hotel.
“I feel it, Nick. Besides, I talked to old Harry. He’s got balls. I like a man with balls and I think the American people do too.”
“I think you’re getting naïve in your old age.”
“Maybe,” he said, a frown wrinkling his brow. Stopping, he bought a warm pretzel from a vendor. Tearing it apart, he offered it to Nick, who refused, and then stuffed a large piece into his mouth. “I miss these damned pretzels,” he said, chewing heavily, as if the taste were nostalgia itself. They walked silently now, Charlie continuing to chew on the heavy pretzel as they made their way through the crowds.
Nick followed Charlie as he elbowed into the lobby of the Commodore, awash with Dewey-Warren buttons, banners hanging from the baroque ceiling. American flags were everywhere. People overflowed from the public bar, crowding together in the lobby, waiting expectantly for the first returns. Flashing their press cards, they passed through a cordon of policemen and took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, which had been set aside for the candidate and his party, and the press. A bar had been set up in a large suite adjacent to one occupied by the Dewey people.
A crowd of reporters was busy chewing on chicken legs, taken from a silver chafing dish, which they washed down with booze. The large suite was a mess. A bank of typewriters filled one end of the room and clusters of telephones stood ready to pass the word to the world.
“Dewey’s napping,” a reporter said.
“They’ve already got his victory speech ready,” a woman reporter squealed, her face flushed with drink.
“Why don’t they just make it and let us all go home?” another reporter said.
“Am I glad this is nearly over,” someone else said.
A man wearing a badge which said “Official” came in and tapped a spoon on a glass. He was dressed in a pinstripe suit and wore round horn-rimmed spectacles. They could tell by his attitude and demeanor that he was the Press Secretary.
“The candidate is resting.” He looked at his watch. “He’ll be down in one hour and we’ll allow ten minutes for picture taking in the main suite. No more than ten minutes.” A group of scruffy photographers groaned in the corner.
“Any returns yet?” someone said.
“Just sporadic,” the Press Secretary responded. “You’ll be informed.”
“Could we get an advance of the victory statement?” a reporter asked.
“When the time is appropriate,” the Press Secretary said confidently. “We’ll try to wrap things up as fast as possible. As soon as we learn we’ve won, the candidate will make his victory speech from the podium of the Grand Ballroom. We’ll make arrangements to get you all down there on time.”
“And if he loses . . .” Charlie said loudly. The Press Secretary turned to him bristling with indignation. The question had a distinctly quieting effect on the other reporters in the room.
“We have contingent plans,” he said, lifting his nose, a caricature.
“Just asking,” Charlie said, smiling.
“Of course,” the Press Secretary said with an effort at politeness.
“I’d like to stick a pin up their ass,” Charlie whispered, moving to the bar and grabbing a bottle of beer from a silver tub. As he opened it he looked at Nick. “I can handle it, kid. Never touch the hard stuff anymore. It doesn’t seem to like me much.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
Charlie drank the beer quickly, smacking his lips. He looked around the room. “They’re all a bunch of lazy sheep,” he said. “Look at them, hungry lambs waiting to sip the milk from the waiting teat. I tell you, Nick, newspapering is changing. It’s strictly news by handout now, spoon-fed, manipulated. They manage us. It really pisses me off.” He looked ahead in silence, his eyes turning inward, glazed.
“We’re just twenty years too late,” he sighed.
Unwilling to penetrate his brooding silence, Nick picked up one of the phones and dialed the city desk. He described the scene to the rewrite man.
“The bastards are pretty cocksure, eh,” the rewrite man commented.
“Dead certain,” Nick answered.
“The early returns here indicate that Dewey is beginning to build up a big lead.”
“You might as well get the victory story written. The old man wants to be the first on the street.”
When he returned he noted that Charlie was already sipping a second beer. “Where’s Myra?” Nick asked.
“Oh, Christ,” he answered, “I was supposed to call her. She’s up at the Democratic headquarters with the wheels. Old Myra is always with the wheels. She’s probably sitting quietly beside the campaign manager, holding his hand.” Nick noted a barely perceptible edge of envy. “Besides, she hates the fucking Republicans more than her father, and that’s going some.” He picked up the phone and, after some exasperation, got through to her.
“Gloom and doom, you say.” He turned toward Nick. “All is gloom and doom up there. Here?” He looked about the room. “The usual slobs and, as they say, the feel of victory in the air.”
He listened to her voice for a while. “Of course I do,” he said. “I’ll call you later.” He hung up. “She’s quite a woman,” Charlie said. “Quite a woman.” Knowing Charlie, Nick could sense an impending revelation. It came quickly, a gust of heavy air expelled in his face.
“She’s giving me a fit. They want me to quit the News right now and work for the Chronicle.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I’m not so sure anymore.” Charlie mused. “I’d be the damned Son-in-Law.”
“So what?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” He finished his beer and looked at Nick. “It’s an odd arrangement,” he continued. “The old man won’t put Myra in the business but he’s fixed it so that the Chronicle’s ownership stays in Myra’s hands after his death.” He shook his head.
“Apparently he believes in bloodlines and property, but not in women,” Nick said.
“Which makes me a kind of surrogate for Myra, a stand-in. What the hell happens when the old man dies?”
“You’ll be working for your wife,” Nick responded.
Charlie shrugged. A nerve palpitated in his jaw. “I’m not afraid of the responsibility,” he said suddenly ignoring the response
. “I’ve got a lot of ideas for that paper, but it requires absolute control, no democratic bullshit, one man at the helm. You can’t run a newspaper by committee.”
Apparently he had given the matter a great deal of thought. Nick sensed he was merely debating with himself now. He remained silent as Charlie moved to the bar and found another beer.
The Press Secretary darted back into the suite. Dewey was sufficiently rested to make his appearance, he told them. Photographers ran for their Speed Graphics. Then, on signal, they rushed into the corridors, jostling the Press Secretary as he attempted unsuccessfully to discipline their movements.
Pushed from behind, Nick and Charlie moved with the crowd. Charlie held his beer bottle up over the heads of the mob as it came to a halt in front of the elevator banks.
“What’s the latest results?” someone asked.
“Dewey’s winning.”
The elevator door opened. Cameras popped and a short smiling man with a heavy squared moustache and a shiny face walked into the center of the group, like a trained monkey about to perform. Questions burst from the crowd.
“How do you feel?”
“Confident.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“She’s still in the suite.”
“What did you have for dinner?”
“A piece of pie. I wasn’t very hungry.”
“Are you glad the campaign is over?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Will you vacation after your victory?”
“I haven’t won yet.”
“Who will be your Secretary of State?”
“That’s being presumptuous.”
“Are the returns going as expected?”
“Exactly.”
“When can we expect a victory statement?”
“When victory comes.”
“And suppose defeat comes?” It was Charlie’s question. Dewey squinted into the crowd, lights bouncing over his glistening forehead. Nick suddenly caught the anxiety in the man, the greediness for success. He seemed frightened, trapped. He stood in the midst of the crowd, small and vulnerable, a lonely figure. Charlie’s question was never answered as Dewey pressed on down the corridor in a trail of popping flashbulbs, beefy policemen making a path through the newspaper crowd. Then the group made a rush for the telephones. Charlie made the call this time, embellishing the story out of his own specially tinted observations. When he hung up the phone, he stopped again at the bar for a beer.
“What did you tell them?”
“I said he looked worried.”
“Christ, Charlie,” Nick said. “That could change the focus of the story. One simple observation like that.”
“I know.”
“It didn’t seem that way to me.”
“He is worried, Nick,” Charlie said. “They tell me at the News that the returns are beginning to show slippage.”
The other reporters were getting the same information, prompting a nervous reaction in the crowded room. Newspapermen were always catching things from each other: enthusiasm, depression, cynicism. The tone of the group began to change. The Press Secretary came in carrying notes. He was sweating, his arrogance dissipating. He read a statement.
“We have every reason to believe that the results are still favoring Mr. Dewey. The Western returns, just coming in, indicate the strength of our thrust.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Charlie shouted. The beer was beginning to have some effect.
“It means,” the Press Secretary said, with an effort to regain his former aplomb, “that the final Western returns will assure our victory.”
“Baloney,” Charlie said. “You’re starting to lose and you’re scared as hell.”
“That is simply not true,” the Press Secretary responded, glaring, the sweat beading on his forehead.
“How is Mr. Dewey taking it?” someone asked. The dam had burst. The tide of the press optimism had turned.
“Mr. Dewey is confident.”
“Has he got a concession statement ready?” Charlie asked. The question rattled the Press Secretary. “We intend to win this election,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Answer the question,” someone shouted.
The Press Secretary seemed to deflate entirely, a pricked balloon. “We will prepare any statement that is appropriate,” he said disdainfully.
“Why the hell can’t he tell the goddamned truth?” Charlie hissed. “Why can’t he just say that he’s scared, that Dewey is scared, that it’s not at all going as they expected? Why do they all have to be such a bunch of liars?”
Finally the Press Secretary retreated. Nick phoned the paper. The rewrite man put him through to McCarthy.
“What do they think up there?” McCarthy asked. He seemed depressed.
“They say that they’re hopeful about the Western returns, although they’re not as cocky as they were earlier.”
“Shit!”
“Worried about your bet?”
“I just took a chance on getting a victory edition on the street. Hell, the Chicago Tribune is out with a victory extra saying that Dewey has won. What a goddamned donnybrook!” He had never observed such confusion in McCarthy. “One edition is already on the street with O’Donnell’s column congratulating Dewey as the new President-elect.”
Nick looked around the room. The crowd of reporters was thinning out. “Where the hell is everybody going?” Nick asked the waning group.
“To Democratic headquarters,” someone answered. “That’s where the action is now.”
“I think you better hold that edition, boss,” Nick said. “There’s a mass exodus here.”
“I need a drink,” McCarthy said suddenly.
“Apparently,” Nick said, holding a bulletin of the latest returns that someone had brought from Dewey’s suite, “California will decide. It looks like a long night.”
“Yeah,” McCarthy said, hanging up abruptly. Nick went to the bar and poured himself a shot of Scotch, gulping it quickly, feeling it burn as it dropped downward. Charlie had sprawled on a couch in the now quiet room. A tipsy reporter stood in the door.
“I just came from the Ballroom. It’s now a wake. Even the band has stopped playing.”
“The fortunes of war,” Charlie said. “The Chronicle was one of the few papers that supported Truman. The old man was right.”
“Stubborn, I’d say. He was a tiny minority.”
“The power of the lone voice.” Charlie became silent, staring into space. “It would be one helluva challenge, Nick,” he said after a while. “If only . . .”
Nick remembered Margaret. He looked at his watch. It was getting late, nearly two A.M.
“If only what?” he said abstractedly.
“You think I could handle it, kid?” Charlie asked. It was an appeal. “I want it so badly I can taste it, but I’m scared shitless.”
“Of what?”
“Of myself. Of Myra. Of the kind of commitment required.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, Charlie,” Nick said.
“Do you think I can handle it?”
“I think you could fuck an elephant if you put your mind to it, Charlie.”
“You’re a blind boob, kid. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Yeah, you.”
After a while Myra appeared at the door of the press room, squinting through the stale smoke. She looked neat and cool and bending over Charlie’s sprawled form, she kissed him on the forehead.
“Come to kick the carcass of the Republicans,” Charlie said, sitting up.
“I thought I might get you to come up to the other place. They’ll be having a victory celebration.”
“It won’t be definite until California comes in,” Nick said after he greeted Myra with a kiss on her cheek. Her flesh felt cool on his lips.
Charlie looked at his wristwatch and got up. “What’s the latest?” he asked.
The Press Secretary came in again and stood before the thinned-out group of
reporters. “We are confident that the returns from California will assure our victory,” he said, tight-lipped, like a little boy whistling in the cemetery. A wave of chuckles greeted his statement.
“How is Dewey taking it?”
“Mr. Dewey is confident,” the Press Secretary said.
“Bullshit,” Charlie hissed. The Press Secretary turned to him. “There’s no need for profanity,” he said.
“Why don’t you just tell us the truth?” Charlie said.
“I have.”
“Bullshit again,” Charlie said.
“I don’t have to stand here and take this.”
“Well then, don’t.”
The Press Secretary’s humiliation hung in the air.
“Why don’t you just say that Dewey is concerned?”
“Because he isn’t.”
“Then let him come out here and tell us so.”
The Press Secretary shook his head and flushed, then turned angrily and walked back to the candidate’s suite.
“They’ve probably got him tied down so he won’t jump out the window,” a reporter said. Charlie went to the bank of telephones and called the office. Nick felt a pressure on his elbow as Myra edged him into a corner of the room.
“Can I ask you a favor, Nick?” she asked quietly, coolly, with deliberate articulation. Her hair was short, bobbed then, almost mannish, the green in her hazel eyes accentuated by a kelly green kerchief she wore tied around her neck.
“Sure, Myra.” Even then, Nick thought, she had the ability to radiate humility.
“We’ve been trying to get Charlie to quit the News and come to Dad’s paper,” she whispered.
“You mean there is some question about it?” Nick lied, trying to sidestep the responsibility.
“He vacillates like a pendulum. He’s afraid of something.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be the Son-in-Law.”
She looked at him coldly. “That’s part of it.” Then she smiled. “Nick, I think you can help him decide.”
He could sense her urgency.
“We’re offering him a brilliant future,” she said. “It’ll all go down the drain if he decides against it. My father will sell it before he lets me have it,” she said bitterly. “Please, Nick, I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
