The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  “Look, let’s shelve this one for sometime next week,” Henry Landau said, jumping to the rescue, leaving Bonville shattered and confused, a shade more shrunken than usual, puffing furiously on his cigarette. Nick felt compassion for the man, clumsily tangled in unseen wires, knowing that he could never explain it to his satisfaction. Surely he must have faith in his own instincts, he told himself, only half convinced that he wasn’t imagining the whole thing. Hadn’t Myra herself urged him to kill the Henderson story? Wasn’t that an obvious enough clue? Yet despite her revealed position, the real question was whether or not she had inspired an orchestration, was deliberately involved in a conspiracy to manipulate him. If he accepted that premise, then he was surrounded by traitors and informers, a concept too difficult to comprehend.

  Hearing the voices around him, he roused his concentration, determined to pick up their thread, to recapture a measure of his authority in their eyes. Landau was suggesting a position on the use of energy, a strong warning to the Administration on their neglect in not pressing for a more comprehensive energy policy.

  “I’d suggest, too, that Congress be equally roasted,” Nick said, satisfied that his voice had regained its resonance. “The stopgap measures have proven of little value.”

  “The motivating force has still got to be the Administration,” Peterson said, as Palmer began again to stroke his pad. They debated the premise until a firm line had been established. Nick was disappointed that Bonville could not be roused to participate. Surely they all sensed his depression, his despair. When they had finished the meeting, they filed out silently. Bonville hung back a moment longer, paused briefly as he passed through the door, then pressed on.

  Back in his glass cage, Nick picked desultorily at the heavy pile of hate mail. It had little interest for him that morning, the barbs blunted. He cursed his visibility, wondering if his mental state could be perceived by those in the city room. It had never occurred to him before that his visibility might provide a kind of feedback of influence, projecting his own mood on the people working in the big room, an invisible radiation of himself, of his own agitated psyche. He was being absurd, he told himself, an amateur metaphysician, definitely out of character for him, usually a pragmatist. Maybe he needed a rest, a vacation. Peripherally he noted that Gunderstein had come into the city room and was sitting at his desk staring into space, chewing his toasted English muffin, washing it down with black coffee. Henry Landau tapped on the glass and Nick waved him in.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Henry’s tanned face seemed calm though the lines were deeper, showing his worry.

  “I knew you would, Henry.”

  “Why is this Henderson thing getting under your skin?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?”

  “I’m not sure, Henry,” he sighed.

  “Is there some antagonism you have for him?”

  “You’re wide of the mark, Henry.”

  “Well, for crying out loud, Nick, what then?”

  He was asking himself whether Henry could be trusted, an obscene suspicion. Nevertheless he held back the confidence.

  “I think we’re losing our objectivity, Henry,” he lied. “And I’m afraid this CIA thing is going to blow up.”

  “But I understand that it can’t be adequately confirmed.”

  “I’m not as certain this morning as I was yesterday.”

  “It would be a damned shame, a damned shame,” Henry said, shaking his head. “Henderson would make a helluva President.” Nick watched him coolly. No, he was definitely not ready to confide in him.

  “Are you suggesting that we leave the story alone?” Nick snapped.

  “You know better than that, Nick.” He got up, pouting.

  “Easy, Henry. Don’t get your balls in an uproar. Why is everybody so damned sensitive on the subject?”

  Henry Landau sat down again. He pulled a pipe out of his side pocket, filled it from a leather tobacco pouch, and lit it with care.

  “I’ll tell you what I think, Nick. Maybe it’s this suicide that’s bugging me. Maybe it’s a reaction from the Watergate thing. We’re becoming too destructive, always chipping away. Too much of a watchdog syndrome. On my vacation I thought about it often. It’s really bothering me. As if we go out of our way looking for rocks to hurl. Maybe it’s guilt! We’re too damned powerful. They can’t fight back. Once we get a fix on someone, we dog him till he dies from exhaustion.”

  “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, eh, Henry?”

  “Yes.” Landau’s face brightened. “That’s it.”

  “Why is it”—Nick paused, choosing his words—“that we suddenly become chicken-livered and guilty when we are attacking someone we essentially agree with? Why all this selective guilt? When we were after the President, you were all for turning the knife in the wound. How come you weren’t being philosophical and guilt-stricken then?”

  “He deserved what he got,” Landau said. “In the end we proved he was guilty as hell.”

  “In other words, we went by gut feeling.”

  “And facts.”

  “But would we have made the commitment if we didn’t hate the man to begin with?”

  Nick could tell by the accelerating clouds of smoke being puffed out of his pipe that Henry was becoming agitated.

  “The truth is, Henry,” Nick continued, “that you would hate like hell to see us bomb the darling Henderson, because Henderson’s supposedly like us, or so it is believed.”

  “You’ve misunderstood me, Nick,” Henry said, becoming defensive.

  “You really believe that?”

  “Yes, Nick, I do,” he said with conviction.

  “As long as I’m in this chair the chips will fall where they may.”

  “I liked the other one better . . . the business about casting the first stone.”

  “If we did it that way, we’d run nothing but social announcements and garden news.”

  “I really don’t think I’m getting through, Nick.” He got up and tapped the half-smoked pipe into Nick’s ashtray before he went out.

  When he had gone, Nick felt oddly refreshed, as if the conversation had somehow refocused his thoughts, cleared his mind of the uncertainties. The lines of demarcation were becoming more defined now. The perception of it dispelled his fatigue, raised the adrenaline. He picked up the phone and dialed Margaret. The familiar voice responded strongly.

  “Maggie. What pictures do you intend to use on the British Embassy do?”

  “I’ve just been looking them over. We’ve got a good shot of the Ambassador and a group.”

  “Is Henderson in any of them?”

  “As a matter of fact, he is.”

  “Kill the ones with Henderson.”

  “You’re kidding, Nick. He’s always good copy.”

  “Just kill it, Maggie, okay?”

  “Sure, Nick. I’ll kill it. What about the story?”

  “I’ll work that out.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said, sarcastically.

  “You just remember that, Maggie.”

  “How can I forget it?” She slammed the phone down angrily. He made a mental note to call Jennie. Searching the city room, he waited to catch Gunderstein’s eye. When he did, he waved Gunderstein toward him. Madison, too, back turned, caught the movement, and strained his neck to watch.

  “Okay, kid,” Nick said as Gunderstein fell into a chair, like a puppet whose strings were suddenly released. “I want to give you a little back-up on this story.” Gunderstein straightened in his chair. “Who the hell of our people was in Nam in late 1963?”

  “Robert Phelps,” Gunderstein said. “I’ve talked to him. He feels the same way I do, but here again he could produce no basic confirmation.”

  Phelps was now their West Coast man.

  “Suppose I put him on temporary assignment?”

  “That would be helpful. He could find a lot of old Nam hands that he might be able to pum
p. Yes, that would be helpful.”

  “What else do you think you need?”

  “Someone to chase down leads. Someone I could work with.”

  “How about Martha Gates?” She had remained somehow on the surface of his consciousness.

  “Martha would be fine.”

  “She’s got the bit in her mouth, although she suffered a setback today.”

  “I know,” Gunderstein said. “It happens.” Gunderstein, as always, betrayed no emotion, hidden as he was behind the cerebral myopic glazed look, his eyes in their perpetual squint-through contact lenses.

  “Have you heard from Allison this morning?” Nick asked.

  “I tried calling him. No answer. He must be sleeping it off. I’ll try later.”

  Nick felt a brief pang of worry, mirrored as a barely seen frown on Gunderstein’s brow, a minuscule betrayal of some inner uncertainty. Nick turned from Gunderstein, his attention deflected by the arrival of a news aide who laid a pile of copy on his desk. He could feel Gunderstein suddenly standing over him, rocking on his feet, waiting for some sign of dismissal.

  “All right, Harold, get going,” Nick said without looking up, his eye traveling down the typewritten columns.

  “I just wanted to say, Mr. Gold,” Gunderstein stammered, his articulation difficult, a sure sign of his inner agitation, incongruous in his impassive face, “I think you’re doing the right thing. The story is crying to be told.”

  Without looking up, he waved Gunderstein away. It annoyed him to be the object of Gunderstein’s judgment. Or was it simply a comment? It was one of the observed aberrations of Gunderstein’s mind that the only judgments he made were of story values, a kind of perpetually set steel trap that snapped shut only on the flesh and bone of story tissue. Perhaps his own affinity for Gunderstein was based on the same set of values. Where did humanness end and the idea of story begin?

  He watched Gunderstein move toward his desk, then rang Madison and filled him in.

  “Now you’re talking, Nick.” Madison could barely restrain his enthusiasm.

  “Keep an eye on them, Ben. And be careful with Martha. She’s still shaky from the Ryan thing.” Madison’s bias was almost refreshing, an unabashed conservative in this den of bleeding hearts, Nick thought, chuckling. For the first time that day he felt in command of himself, strength surging back into him, the defined battle lines dispelling his own previous uncertainty. It was good to see the path through the jungle again.

  He continued to read through the overseas dispatches, a cacophony of discordant notes from distant places, details of the world in ferment, shifting balances in the superpower chess game, the lives of millions ransomed for power. As he read, he was conscious of his own screening process, the filtering through of the word, as he read with the habit of years, a copy pencil stuck between knobbed fingers ready to stab at an errant phrase. There was always some pedantry in his action, as if it were necessary to mask a changed word in the cloak of the grammarian and the stylist. Besides, he felt he had an unfailing sense for spotting the preachiness of the moralist or the propaganda of the ideologue among the reporters and correspondents. He had his private jokes too, since he knew he had mastered the art of defusing a biased thought by the mere elimination of a word or two, a word surgeon’s deft stroke. He worked swiftly, filtering the information through his mind punctuated by occasional jabs with his copy pencil. He felt strength returning, his purpose defined. He was resisting, he told himself joyfully, his eye searching for hidden meaning among the words.

  His eyes scanned Gordon Stock’s column. Stock was a syndicated black columnist, a former speech writer for Kennedy, who had come to terms with his blackness at the very moment it became fashionable and profitable to flaunt it. Nick had decided to carry the column a few years ago, knowing that the Chronicle would be the flagship, the showcase of the Stock syndication. He had, he knew, made the decision on the basis of race, bowing to the not-so-subtle pressure of the times. Perhaps it was, after all, his own feeling of guilt, then a national affliction, or the remembered caveat against the reporting of Harlem murders in New York. Lately he had begun to regret his decision as Stock’s columns grew more strident with the growth of the black political voice, and he found himself repeatedly berating Stock for his racial muckraking. The premise of the column was setting up a straw enemy—a traditional ploy—then taking the offensive against the imaginary windmills.

  Worse still, Stock had developed a penchant for buck chasing. He was picking up large lecture fees, and it was obvious in his columns that he was on the take for causes that could meet his price.

  It was one of the problems of the business that the syndicated columnist, unlike the employee of a newspaper, had the freedom to choose his subject matter and, therefore, the freedom to espouse, to favor, to condemn at will. Many, like Stock, maintained life-styles that matched their bloated self-image. Unfortunately, in the context of today’s world Stock’s black face gave him a measure of protection, vested him with arrogance. One could not forget that Washington was a black city.

  From the moment his eye caught the name “Henderson” in Stock’s first paragraph, the message was telescoped. Stock had been recruited for Henderson’s counterattack, an obedient soldier, doing his bit for money or favor. There was a massive conspiracy afoot, he was alleging, to discredit Henderson, here cast as the blacks’ friend, which was, of course, politically accurate. Henderson had at one time courted black affirmation, was anointed by King and, when it was fashionable, was in the forefront of the civil rights movement. Of late, however, he had been backing off; there was even the somber hint of an anti-busing stance as he tried to move rightward over the thin ice. Nevertheless, the Stock column, Nick saw, was a clever weapon to select at this moment, and few would see through it.

  Although he worked in a building next door to the Chronicle, Stock was hooked in by extension. Nick looked for his number in the Chronicle telephone book, began to dial, hesitated, then hung up. He wanted to be sure that he held no anger, that he was cool inside. He wanted his reactions to be pointed, unemotional, steady. Was the evidence of Stock’s column conclusive? Why was he so trusting of his judgment today? He picked up the phone and dialed Stock’s extension. The arrogant coolness of a receptionist’s voice responded. Without having ever seen her he could picture the woman, good-looking, sexually enticing, and white, a kind of intimidating symbol of black mastery.

  “Whom shall I say is calling?” the cool voice asked. He was tempted to say something sarcastic but held back, answering traditionally. Stock’s voice came on resonant, carefully modulated in the phone’s speaker.

  “I think your column’s full of shit, Gordon,” Nick said.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time, Nickie baby,” Gordon said good-naturedly. Obviously he thought Nick was joking. It seemed a clue to his lack of knowledge of any counterattack, as if he had been merely a pawn himself. After all, Henderson was a Chronicle favorite. Who could suspect that such a column would not pass muster?

  “And I’m not going to run it.” There was a long pause.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can.” There was a clause in the contract with the syndicate allowing the paper to reject whole columns at its own option.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a Henderson plant, transparently self-serving, a piece of pure puffery. More than that, it’s patently dishonest.”

  “That’s a crock.”

  “It may be. But I’m not going to run it.”

  “I think you’ve flipped, Nick.” He could hear the snicker of bravado. “It’s the Israel thing. I knew it. You’re too damned frightened to call me on that one, so you rap me on this.” Nick let the shot pass. He could almost smell the Arab oil money through the telephone and he’d heard about the poker games with the Arab ambassadors in which Stock had won huge sums of money.

  “I know all about the
poker games, Gordon.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Stock spluttered, his temper rising.

  “I wouldn’t go to the barn on that one.”

  “You’re out to get me,” Stock said, “and I know why.”

  “Why, Gordon?”

  “I can tell every time I shave.”

  “Don’t push it, Gordon.”

  He could feel Gordon’s retreat. Losing the Washington Chronicle exposure would be a serious blow to Stock’s prestige. Nick knew he had him by the short hairs and enjoyed the exercise of his power, the release of his timidity.

  “You’re making a mistake, Nick.”

  “I make them every day.” He hung up, feeling good. There was a partial truth in what Stock had said, he knew, and yet he could honestly tell himself that it was no challenge to his objectivity. He had never killed a Stock column before and was fully prepared to accept the pressure that he knew would come. He wondered whether Stock, in his first flush of anger, would cry censorship by the Chronicle in a future column. He knew that Stock was too smart to challenge him, although he would fight back. The strategy was predictable: a call to Henderson, who would call Myra, and the battle would be joined, wide open now, steel on steel.

  “You’d really be proud of me, Charlie,” he caught himself whispering, remembering the exact moment when he had said it before.

  He had just been appointed Assistant City Editor of the New York News and had, almost at once, after McCarthy had broken the news as a barked decree, sat down at the typewriter and dashed off a letter to Charlie. It did not occur to him that there was any illogic in his reaction, feeling that, after all, Charlie had first claim on the outpouring of joy on his good fortune. Hadn’t it been Charlie who had planted the seed at the beginning? The Kerryman thing had somehow stuck in McCarthy’s brain, a first unerasable impression that had provided a bizarre kinship, however inaccurate. Mysteriously, doors had opened and Nick and McCarthy had found the magic denominator that cuts across the demarcation of age.