by Warren Adler
“That’s what I told her, Jennie. I made a special point.”
“It was a shitty thing to do.”
“Don’t tell me how to run my business,” he said, edginess returning.
“You know what you can do with your copy?” Jennie began, her reserves starting to go. He lifted both hands, palms outward, and stood up, annoyed that the others could see this angry gesture. He could see her eyes move toward the glass into the city room, the sight quieting her, stifling the hysteria that seemed on the verge of bursting through.
“Just hold on, Jennie. I’ll explain it later.” He knew she was not placated and would certainly be difficult, pouting, aloof. “I’ll explain later,” he said again. “At the moment we’ve got two big stories running and I have no time for this shit.”
She flung the copy on the desk and turned, her shoulders pulled back, a contrived symbol of her hurt pride, as she walked swiftly out the door and through the city room. He looked dumbly at the sheets of copy that had floated carelessly over his Lucite desk, hiding the snapshots of his past, him and Charlie, him and Chums, him and his mother, his father, faces of his history. It seemed suddenly comforting to be reminded that he had not simply dropped into this glass cage, an egg hatched in limbo.
He pushed Jennie’s copy aside, too busy to cope with such trivia. Perhaps later, he thought, automatically judging the available time until deadline. He buzzed Madison again.
“Anything new on the killer?”
“Pratt just called in. He lived in Prince Georges County. Had three kids, wife, worked for GSA. Apparently one of his kids was recently knifed in school.”
“Motive?”
“I’d say it would be a good bet.”
He knew Madison’s prejudices, the conservative mind. Would objective judgment hold? It never did. He’d have to be watchful.
“Who’s writing?”
“Downes.”
He thought a moment, recalling Downes. He knew the styles, the subtleties and nuances, the points of view, the coloration of the lenses, the extent of vision, the tools of vocabulary and speed of each writer. Downes was a good choice, a master of the clipped sentence, the short paragraph, the absence of ideology. A classical journalist, hewing to the textbook line.
“Any casualty lists?”
“Not yet. They’re waiting for next-of-kin notification.”
Henry Landau came in, his tan fading swiftly.
“It’s like covering a war zone,” he said, shaking his head. Nick liked Henry, felt his softness.
“I hope you’re not upset with me, Henry.”
“I’m used to you, Nick. You take too much on yourself.”
“Inertia, Henry.”
“You can trust me, Nick. Let me inside that complicated head.”
“Sure, Henry.”
Landau had been carrying a ticker clip, which he put in front of Nick, holding it up as if it were a sign. Nick read it quickly. It was the Harris poll, another syndicated feature that the Chronicle had bought. Reporting a trial heat among Democrats, it indicated that Henderson was leading the pack. Henderson again!
“So?” Nick said.
“You’re the Henderson maven, Nick. Do we run it or don’t we?”
“You’ve heard about Stock?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Of course we’ll run it,” Nick said calmly. “Did you have any doubts?”
“No, Nick. Frankly, I’m fishing for answers. I just don’t understand your sudden passion for downplaying Henderson. I need some answers for myself, for my own . . .”
“Self-esteem.” Nick chuckled.
“You might put it that way.”
“You’ll get them,” Nick said, knowing that it would hardly be that simple, truth seen through distorted mirrors. How can you articulate gut feelings, little private clues? He determined to keep his own counsel. Henry Landau stood over him for a few more moments, shrugged, then stepped out of the office.
Actually, he knew he had been gratuitous. There was no way that he could not carry the Harris poll. The Times would have it. It would be splashed over every television screen in the country.
It was far beyond the province of his own control. Not like Stock at all. He remembered Jennie’s copy, took a pencil in hand, and began to read. Today he had little patience with her awkward phrases, her heavy quips. Henderson was embedded in the story, woven through it like a glistening thread, “the rugged Redford looks in brunette,” and “the incredibly blue eyes, still piercing, as others reddened.” He sliced with ruthlessness, enjoying the surgery, telling himself that he was restoring objectivity. When he had finished he motioned through the window for a news aide, who would return the copy to the Lifestyle department. Now Margaret would know for sure. Why this sudden delight in Jennie’s humiliation? he thought.
The phone buzzed. He picked it up. It was Madison.
“There’s been a fire-bombing,” he said. “The police moved in fast.”
“Does it look like the beginning?”
“The police think it’s merely a test. I think they’re right.”
When he hung up, Miss Baumgartner came in, harlequined, wearing a puzzled look.
“A Mrs. Henderson called. Said she was Senator Henderson’s wife. I told her you were in a meeting.” It was part of their silent understanding to take no calls without giving him preparation. He told himself that he had expected it. The counterattack. By now Henderson had established command posts, was sifting intelligence, calling in reserves, going over options. He knew the game, although the new tactic, coming in the midst of this new excitement, had taken him off guard. Perhaps they had done it deliberately. He wondered again who Henderson’s spies were in the Chronicle. Other than Myra.
Political wives, he thought contemptuously, searching for some excuse not to call her back. Her face was familiar to him from pictures and he had met her once or twice a few years back, when he was traveling the Washington cocktail circuit, before he had deliberately hermitized himself. He dreaded making the call, as if the conversation would somehow personalize his judgment. Thankfully Nichols intervened. He laid a group of pictures on Nick’s desk. Incredibly graphic, they depicted unrelenting brutality and gore.
“Beauties,” Nichols said. Nick studied them. The photographer had concentrated on mutilation.
“They’re pretty raw,” Nick said.
“They’re good, Nick. The boys got turned on to it.”
“The poor bastards.” He weighed the emphasis he would give them, remembering the Mayor’s words. He set aside those where the faces were clearly visible, showing expressions of pain, horror, impending death.
“That would have been my choice, too, Nick.”
“I’m rejecting them.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Too inflammatory,” he said, bracing himself for an argument.
“These are one in a million, Nick. Better than a thousand words, as the saying goes.”
“That depends on the message we’re trying to convey.”
“I thought we were just reporting the facts. These pictures tell the facts.” He paused. “Accurately!”
Nick knew Nichols was sneering at the wordsmiths, part of the natural competition.
He put an arm around Nichols’ shoulder. “The buck stops here, kid,” Nick said, an echo of Charlie. God, he missed Charlie.
“I think you’re wrong, Nick.”
He moved the pictures about on his desk, picking a group in which the faces were hidden, although the puddles of blood were quite visible.
“You’ve killed the best of the lot, Nick.”
“I want them laid out on five columns on the front page.” He handed Nichols the chosen pictures. Nichols gathered up the rejects and tucked them solemnly under his arm, walking out of the office, crestfallen.
As the deadline for the street edition neared, the copy rolled over his desk like an avalanche. Reading every word, black pencil in hand, he cut and refashioned, correcting even the
most inconsequential typo. Was it a measure of his word greed, he wondered? He would brook no philosophical intrusion from himself, the years of training assuring his discipline.
Madison’s gruff voice and his heavy form standing over him destroyed his concentration.
“I’ve sent her back to the well twice,” Madison said, dropping a sheaf of copy paper on Nick’s desk. “She’s getting pissed off at me.” He looked at the name of the writer, the slug on the upper left-hand corner, Atkins. He visualized a black face, chocolate-toned, fierce Afro cut, belligerent expression, dark soft eyes.
“Carried away, eh, Ben?” he asked, his eyes beginning to read the copy. The girl’s emotion spilled out, an avalanche of white-hatred. “Jesus,” Nick whistled. “She’s really pushed it. ‘He had found his own personal solution to relieving the white man’s burden.’ My God. ‘His lily-white fingers pressed the instrument of death.’ We can’t print this.”
“I know, Nick. I think you better handle it. She thinks I’m nothing more than a prejudiced honky bastard.”
When she came in, he could feel her outrage. A tall woman, with delicate long fingers, the knuckles wrinkled in the special way of black hands, she refused his offer to sit down, as if her full stature was needed to fend off intimidation. Nick consciously sought to choose his words carefully. But time was pressing.
“This story is inflammatory, Virginia.”
“I can’t write it any other way.”
“You’re a professional, Virginia. You’ve taken the racial thing and spread it over the story like butter. The man was unbalanced.”
“His motives were quite clear.”
“You’re being superficial, making assumptions based on your own fixed attitudes.”
“I can’t forget that I’m black.”
“You asked us to forget it when we hired you. We don’t use racial references, nor do we identify reporters by race.”
“I was hired because you were forced to do so.” Even beyond her anger, he felt that she knew she had over-stepped. She blinked away a mist from her eyes.
“I’ll let that pass, Virginia,” he said gently, knowing that she was partially correct.
She stood, awkwardly erect, facing him. Was she taunting him?
“You’re a professional, Virginia,” he repeated. “We haven’t got time to fool around. Either you take out the inflammatory racial references or I kill the piece. If you make the white race responsible, you’ll have to accept the blame for any consequences. Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly.” She was not going to compromise.
“You’re putting pride and emotionalism before your sense of duty, your professionalism. Don’t you see that?”
She stared at him, the hatred burning beyond reason.
“I wish you would see me as a person, not a delegate,” Nick said. He picked up her copy and tore it in two, flinging it in the wastebasket.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, watching her turn to hide her tears. She rushed from the room, past his window, sweeping through the city room. Angrily he pushed the buttons on Madison’s extension.
“I saw,” Madison said.
“Put someone else on that piece, Ben. We’ll use it in the next edition.”
When the front-page proof came in, he looked it over carefully, satisfied that it was a reasonable facsimile of what he had suggested to his editors. His eye roved over the headlines, the pictures, the captions. The report of the disaster seemed balanced, honest but restrained. He was rather proud of himself. Not that they had achieved perfection. There was never enough time for that. But pride quickly dissipated when he saw the lower-right story on the results of the Harris poll. Had Henry Landau sneaked it in on the front page, a deliberate confrontation? His fingers started for the phone, then stopped, caressing its coldness instead.
He let himself calm down. After all, he had approved the insertion. But the front page? Perhaps Henry had seen it as an act of protection, a sop to the Henderson troops who, by now, were spreading into the tissue of the Chronicle, probing for soft spots. Moving his hand from the telephone, he completed the front-page proofing, then he called for a news aide. As the young man left the room, he stopped him.
“Bring me another copy,” he said. The young man looked awkwardly at the sheet in his hand, then hurried off, coming back quickly with another copy of the front page which Nick shoved into the inside pocket of his jacket, hanging on its hook on the clothes tree.
“Shall I get Mrs. Henderson?” Miss Baumgartner asked, seeing him stir toward his coat.
“No,” he answered sharply, then softening, “not yet.”
Watching the still frenetic activity in the city room, Nick saw Gunderstein come into the room, walking quickly, his jacket thrown over his shoulder, held there by a single finger in the hanger loop. He walked to his desk, looked over a sheaf of messages, then, perhaps feeling Nick’s eyes on him, looked up. Nick waved him in. As he waited a news aide came in with additional copy on the bus murders. He looked them over. No recognizable names. Random victims, he sighed, feeling the horror of the act. Five of the victims were children, their single-digit ages glaring beside the neatly typed names. His fists tightened in anger. Please, no emotion, he begged himself, remembering Virginia Atkins. It was then that he felt the vibrations of the big presses seeping through the floors and walls. He put his hands flat on his Lucite desk, feeling the coolness and the vibrations through his fingers. The feel of it gave him comfort.
“Well?” he said, as Gunderstein came closer, searching his face.
“Phelps is flying in. He’ll be at my apartment tonight.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Odd,” Gunderstein said. “He said he had waited thirteen years for my call.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“That’s what I asked him. He said he’d talk about it when he got here.”
“And Martha?”
“She says she’s also onto something. She said she’ll call if she can pin it down.”
Gunderstein stood over him awkwardly, picking at his face.
“Henderson’s wife called,” Nick said.
“She’s a mess. Insecure. Maybe even unstable.”
“Do you think she wants to blow the whistle on her husband?”
“I doubt it.”
“What could she tell me?” Nick asked. “Defend her husband. Make an emotional appeal. Try to work herself back in her husband’s good graces.”
“She’s been avoiding me,” Gunderstein shrugged. His concentration seemed elsewhere. “I’ve been down more blind alleys on this story than anything I’ve ever tackled. That’s why I know I’m right. It’s something you can feel.”
“We’ve had quite enough feeling around here for one day,” Nick said, remembering Virginia Atkins. Gunderstein looked tired, edgy. He moved toward the door.
“Let me know,” Nick said. Was he suddenly pressing? Were their roles being answered? What was this new compulsion to know? The reporter’s sixth sense in operation? The telephone jingled on his desk. He looked up, saw Miss Baumgartner forming words with her lips: “Mrs. Pell.” He picked up the phone.
“Are you coming up, Nick?”
“Yes, Myra. I’m on my way.”
“All right, Nick.” She hung up, her tone urgent.
As he came into her office, Myra got up from behind her big desk and moved toward the bar, where she fixed martinis, a ritual she had mastered. Nick noted that her fingers shook as she lifted the cocktail glass and passed it to him. Sipping, he smacked his lips, the expected compliment dutifully proffered.
Raising her glass, she began to say something, then, stopping, sipped her drink instead and walked toward the sofa. Primly she sat down and placed her glass on the cocktail table. Nick knew she was winding up, feeling the temperature, toes in the water. He kept silent, refusing to make it easy for her with small talk.
“I feel I’m handling this Henderson thing badly,” she said. “You may think
I’m trying to shove things down your throat.” He had to hand it to her. She had struck right to the heart of the matter, the frills gone. He shrugged, determining to prolong his silence.
“I want to make my position clear,” she continued, her voice constricting, betraying emotion. She seemed to try to cover the weakness with a cough, as if she had swallowed badly.
“What I mean to say, Nick, is that I don’t want you to react as though I’m telling you what to do.” He persisted in his silence, knowing it was a growing annoyance. “This man does not deserve to be destroyed.” He continued to watch her, waiting for her to unwind. “Henderson is a good man,” she said softly. “He stands for those things that we believe in. I’ve talked to him. I’ve watched him. This is the kind of leader that we have got to have. He stands head and shoulders above any other candidate on the horizon. Really, Nick. Burt Henderson is our kind.”
“A news source has made serious allegations about him that deserve to be checked out,” he said firmly.
“Since when do we run down every flimsy allegation?” she asked.
“We did it when we went after the President.”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
“He was an enemy. We knew what he was: a liar, a cheat, and a fraud. He deserved what we gave him.” She flushed. Her upper lip quivered.
“Myra. We committed ourselves. We put everything we had behind it. We made it happen.”
“He deserved it.”
“We hung him right here, Myra. Long before the end.”
“We were right, Nick.”
“But we didn’t know it in advance.”
“We were sure.”
“. . . and he deserved it. In our view. From the beginning. Right, Myra?”
“Right.” She paused. “Surely, Nick, you’re not having second thoughts?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “I’m merely comparing.”
“There is no comparison.”
“We’re dealing here with the same basic ideas. The credibility of a public figure.”
Her eyes narrowed as she pulled herself straight. “Well, it’s about time we drew the line, then.”
