The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  “Where?” he pressed. He knew he was baiting her now.

  “Damn it, Nick. On our friends!” The words had been hissed through clenched teeth, her jaw jutting defiantly. Watching her, he knew he had goaded her to her outer limits. A confrontation now, he was sure, would impel an action for which he was totally unprepared. Forcing himself to smile, he held up his hands.

  “Myra,” he said, disgusted at his fawning, “I haven’t advocated that we go after Henderson.” He hesitated. “I merely want to be certain. He could be a liability if we go too far.”

  “I’m prepared to take that chance.”

  “And there’s always the problem of credibility among our own people. Gunderstein, for example. We can’t just shut off the tap without adequate, rational explanations.” Would she see that he was stalling?

  “It appeared strange, Nick. As if you were moving backward.” She made two more martinis and poured them out, handing him a fresh glass. “You’ve got three reporters on it. You’ve killed Stock’s column. You’ve shut Henderson out from the editorial pages. Even a lousy Lifestyle story. Really, Nick.”

  “You’ve got one helluva spy system, Myra,” Nick said, feeling the anger rise. “You’re worse than the CIA.”

  “I don’t need a spy system, Nick. It’s going through the paper like a disease. Henderson’s extremely upset. Frankly, I can’t blame him.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake, Myra,” Nick said, conscious of his caution. “Suppose there is an involvement?”

  “I don’t think I’m making myself clear.”

  “On the contrary.”

  “Come on, Nick. If you look hard enough you’re bound to find something.”

  “I assume you think he’s clean as a pin.”

  “Probably.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes you do, Nick. Every public figure has something, some skeleton that we can dredge up.” She paused. “We all have.”

  “We’re not fishing. Merely investigating.”

  “Even Charlie knew when to stop,” she said suddenly. She could always invoke Charlie. “He was no saint either. He could look the other way when he wanted to.” What is she trying to say? he wondered.

  “He was privy to all sorts of things he never used. Toward the end, before the crack-up, he was being compromised all over the place.”

  He didn’t want to hear, he told himself, suddenly panicked, his own anger rising.

  “He and Kennedy were buddies.”

  “That’s no secret.”

  “He knew things.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “Things that he never told you.”

  Nick doubted that. Was it possible? She was heading into fertile ground.

  “You look skeptical,” Myra said. “I’m convinced he knew all sorts of backdoor things, especially during the Kennedy years. No, he didn’t confide in me. But there were bits and pieces that only the years have put together. I’m sure, for example, that he knew about the Bay of Pigs in advance and he was privy to all sorts of CIA things that he deliberately kept out of the Chronicle.”

  “That’s just supposition, Myra. I was around, too.” He was trying to remember. “We’ve always been asked to shut things out on the grounds of national security. They’re still trying. What about this morning? It’s all a crock of shit, Myra. And you know it.”

  “Charlie kept it all to himself.” She looked at him. “He adored Kennedy. He would do anything he asked.”

  “Maybe,” Nick said. “In those years you could still believe the national security ploy. Maybe. I didn’t have to know everything.” But he did know, or thought he knew, all about Charlie. Indeed, he and Charlie shared unbearable burdens, he thought, remembering that time in the funeral parlor. Even in the Kennedy days when Charlie would slip out to the White House or meet the young President in his place in Virginia, or Cape Cod, or Palm Beach, he always felt that Charlie had told him everything. It wasn’t the keeping out of things that bothered him. Rather, it was not knowing, the knowledge that Charlie had done it without his knowledge. That was Myra’s point, the wedge inserted between the living and the dead.

  “Even if Burt were involved,” she said, embarking on another tack, catching a wisp of wind from another direction, “which I don’t believe, would it matter now? It’s all over. 1963. That’s an age away. Even if, by some strange fluke, you could dredge something up, what would it prove? That he was acting on the orders of the President, that he was doing something to help the country, even if it was patently immoral. In those days it was perfectly acceptable to excuse the immorality . . .”

  “On the grounds of national security.”

  “Nick. You know how I feel about the CIA. All the lies and sham. All the horrors that were done in our name. I’m against it. I don’t need any special credentials. It’s just that there were people in those days who did these things and were victimized, just as we were, as Charlie was.”

  Charlie again, he thought, watching her method of pleading with growing interest, glimpsing the stubborn passion beneath the façade of calm.

  “If he was involved,” Nick said, feeling the morning’s weariness return, “then it deserves to be told. Now! Before the man becomes president.” He felt the paper folded in his pocket and pulled it out. “See,” he said, holding it up in front of her. “Look on the lower right.” He waited for her to read it. “I’m not exactly out of control on this.” He felt stupid justifying himself, wondering why she did not merely fire him, since she had the power and he had been taunting her to use it. Or was he simply testing the limits of his own power over her?

  He watched her stand up and walk to the bar where she mixed another beaker of martinis, pouring the liquid into fresh glasses. He emptied the dregs in his own glass and took another from her.

  “We’ve worked together so well these last few years, Nick,” she said.

  “Yes, we have, Myra.” He tried to read her implication. Was it a warning? Or was this a sign of her narrowing vision, the consequences of too much power, too many victories? Or was she merely validating her ownership, asserting her right to possession? That, he knew, was the heart of the problem, his problem. He had become what he could never own. The Chronicle had seeped into his brain, his tissues, his cells. He was its living embodiment. He was the Chronicle. His blood had turned to ink. The drinks must be getting to him, he thought, shivering.

  A news aide brought in the first street editions and laid them on the edge of her desk. Reaching for the top copy, he opened it and began to study the words, the habit drowning his agitation.

  “How terrible!” she sighed, looking at the pictures on the front page. Suddenly he longed to be in the city room again, the comfort of his own domain. He started toward the door.

  “Do we have an understanding, Nick?” she asked gently. He had resolved to act as if he hadn’t heard, but her tone was compelling.

  “Haven’t we always, Myra?” he answered, feeling the full measure of his helplessness.

  14

  Seeing Charlie in the environment of the Chronicle for the first time came as a shock, as if his friend had remolded himself into a totally different shape. They were still in the old building then, and Charlie’s office, glass-enclosed, looked out over a crowded city room which, compared to that of the News, seemed a hodge-podge of misdesign. Desks were crowded together, people bunched against each other.

  “I’ve reworked things a bit,” Charlie had said, noting his confusion.

  It was an unfamiliar format. The traditional desk system had been scrapped.

  “It looks funny. But it works better,” he had said. It was an odd sensation seeing Charlie in the center of the storm, in full command, totally absorbed, barking orders.

  That first day, Nick had felt clumsy, an appendage, the center of a vacuum, with activity swirling about him as he floated rudderless. Charlie paid little attention to him, working nonstop at fever pitch.

  It was only when the
street edition had finally been delivered to Charlie’s desk that he saw his friend unbend, lean back, put his feet on the desk and his arms behind his head.

  “Another day, another dollar,” he said, watching Nick. “What do you think, kid?”

  “I think you’re working your ass off.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it loverly?”

  It seemed in retrospect to have been a Thursday, since the paper piled on Charlie’s desk was unusually thick.

  “It looks prosperous as hell,” Nick had said, thumbing through the pages.

  “Food day. We’ve really had to scratch to fill it up.”

  Later, Charlie had taken him on a tour. He remembered that it seemed endless and that Charlie seemed to know everyone who worked for him by first name, and that all who greeted him seemed to take pride in the operation.

  “We’re building the best goddamned paper in the United States,” Charlie had said, repeating the phrase over and over again as they roamed through the building.

  “It seems awesome,” Nick had commented.

  “Nothing to it,” Charlie had responded proudly. “And we’re well in the black.”

  Nick was content, in those early days, to stand in Charlie’s shadow, follow him, learn the rudiments of his special brand of personal editorship.

  The move to Washington had brought other benefits. Charlie had given Margaret a job as feature writer on the woman’s pages, which had for the moment brought a respite from their bickering. Even Chums had settled into their new life with contentment.

  “You see, Charlie came through for us,” he taunted Margaret, who was silent now.

  But mainly those first months at the Chronicle served as indoctrination into the mysteries of the Charlie he had not known before. He had given Nick the title Assistant to the Managing Editor, much to the displeasure of the rest of the staff. It was, after all, an intrusion, the insertion of a total stranger into what had been a tight family group. He could feel their mistrust and aloofness.

  It was not unnatural, he thought. He was, he knew, a contrivance of Charlie’s friendship, pure nepotism. If Charlie saw the staff’s reaction, he said nothing, having endured his own sticky journey as the Son-in-Law.

  To complicate the adjustment, Charlie gave Nick no specific duties in the chain of command. As he saw it then, Nick’s role was to watch Charlie, to observe carefully. Charlie pursued his editorship frenetically, with consuming concentration. Hardly a moment of his day was given to any activity other than to feed the Chronicle’s greedy hunger for information.

  Only when the building began to vibrate with the workings of the presses did he allow the old wisecracking Charlie to emerge. But even that was a brief respite. The delivery of the street edition would set him off again and he would bury his eyes in the inked pulp, flipping each page swiftly, commenting often into the telephone, as he continued to refine and reshape the day’s offering.

  Sometimes Charlie was hard to follow. It was as if he had calibrated his mind only to the special rhythm of the Chronicle. Every word, every phrase, every sentence seemed to carry a special meaning, an important note in a full orchestration, the complete conception of which was carried only in Charlie’s mind. And when a single note was off-key, Charlie could catch it instantly. Like the incident with Lighter.

  Charlie had spotted it first as a buried paragraph in a New York Times story under the by-line of a Pentagon reporter. It referred to a new missile delivery system now under active consideration by the military, soon to be submitted for congressional approval.

  “Goddamned son of a bitch,” Charlie muttered under his breath.

  “What is it?” Nick had asked.

  “It’s Lighter.” He was referring to Martin Lighter, the Chronicle’s Pentagon reporter.

  “You’ll see,” Charlie said, relishing the mystery. He picked up the phone. Through the glass, Nick could see Lighter stir in his desk in the rear of the city room. Looking up at Charlie’s glass office, he rose and began the long trek toward them. Charlie waited, absorbed, his eyes narrowed, gathering the threads of the planned confrontation.

  “What’s up, Charlie?” Lighter said, confused by his editor’s somber mood.

  “Have you seen the Times?”

  “Of course.” Lighter exuded a sense of pedantic superiority. He was the Chronicle’s military affairs reporter and in Washington that carried with it all the geegaws of rank and prestige, which he bore with appropriate arrogance.

  “There isn’t a single reference to it in any of your copy. Obviously, it’s one of the most important military stories percolating.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Charlie looked at him, his frown deepening as Lighter’s veneer seemed to harden. He was a thin, balding man, with glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose and thin lips which curled with indignation. There was also the air of the old-timer about him and the usual contempt for the youngish hotshot editor, the Son-in-Law.

  “Then why are you sitting on it?” Charlie asked.

  “I gave my word,” Lighter said. Charlie’s anger began to seep through his studied control.

  “Your word?”

  “My word,” Lighter repeated. “You don’t think that anything goes on around there without me knowing about it, do you? It’s my beat, remember?” He had said these words with no attempt to hide his contempt for Charlie’s questioning. “Obviously the Times man broke his word.”

  “Or never gave it.”

  “Of course he did. I know Jack O’Brien quite well. He probably used it because Senator Bowker of New York is head of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate and it was conceived as a kind of trial balloon, to test the local waters.”

  Charlie watched him, his anger rising. “Around here,” Charlie said slowly, “you give your word only to me. You are responsible only to me.”

  “I gave my word to the Secretary of Defense.”

  “You have no authority from me to give your word to anybody. As editor of this newspaper that is my option. Not yours.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit dictatorial?” Lighter asked, his contempt rising fearlessly. “My success is built on these confidences. I’m a responsible reporter. If I violated their confidences they would shut us out of a wide range of legitimate information. After all, they’re in the business of guarding our security. Frankly, Charlie, I should think you’d be more mature about this.”

  “That makes you an accomplice in their shenanigans.”

  “I think that’s a rather strong word. I can’t be a good authoritative reporter if I am not in their confidence. You can’t expect me to reveal all my knowledge.”

  “I certainly can. How am I supposed to make editorial judgments if you keep me in the dark?”

  “You have to trust my judgment,” Lighter said, lured somehow into feeling he was getting the upper hand.

  “Are you telling me that if I asked you this minute to empty your mind of all your little so-called confidences as to new weapons systems, manpower plans, planned base shutdowns, and all the other intriguing bits of information, you would refuse to give them to me?”

  “Probably.”

  “In other words, I buy what you give me on copy paper. Take it or leave it.”

  “You have the option to reject my copy.”

  “But how can I make an intelligent judgment if I’m not privy to the background information?”

  “You’ve got to play it as it lays.”

  Charlie stood up to his full height. He towered over Lighter, who still faced him bravely.

  “Listen, you turd,” Charlie said. “You’ve become nothing but a damned flack for them, a goddamned conduit for anything they want to do. You’ve been bought, you dummy, by their insufferable deference to your egomania. I won’t run my paper like that. We’re adversaries, not cohorts in league against the public’s right to know.”

  “You’re being naïve,” Lighter said, swallowing his words, betraying the first signs of fear.

  “I d
ecide,” Charlie said. “You either accept that or you can’t work for the kind of newspaper I run.”

  “If you were around Washington as long as I’ve been you’d understand,” Lighter said, trying to recover his flagging courage.

  “Thank God I haven’t been. Lighter, you’re working on the wrong team. You should be a damned government flack, intriguing with them on how to perpetuate the bureaucracy.”

  Lighter swallowed now, his thin lips tightly pursed, feeling at last the weight of his defeat.

  “You’re too fucking big for us, Lighter,” Charlie pressed, turning the knife. “You don’t seem to understand what we’ve been trying to do here. Kick open a few windows. Let in some fresh air.”

  “Muckracking,” Lighter said, obdurate now, having reached the outer edge of his courage, his last line of defense. Despite Charlie’s power over him, he was not bending easily, not accepting graceful defeat. Nick had to admire his last-ditch effort to vindicate himself.

  “There is room on this paper for only one final arbiter, one editor.” Lighter stood silently, obviously taking refuge in a stubborn pride. Nick felt compassion for the older man, staring bravely into the mirror of his defeat.

  “I’m sorry, Lighter. You’re being reassigned as of now.”

  “Obviously I couldn’t accept that,” Lighter said, his voice cracking. But Charlie betrayed no mercy.

  “You know where the door is.”

  The words hit Lighter now with almost physical velocity, his body bending briefly to absorb the blow.

  “If that’s the line you’re establishing you’ll have to fire half the staff.”

  “If that’s what it takes to follow the disciplines of this newspaper, then so be it.”

  Lighter’s eyes moved from side to side, as if searching for a clear exit. But before his body could move, he held out his hand. Almost as a reflex, Charlie took it.

  “I’m sorry, Lighter,” he said.

  “You’re in command,” Lighter said, making an effort to remain rigid, to keep intact all symbols of his pride.

  When he had gone, a forlorn figure despite his attempts to preserve a sense of dignity, Charlie fell into a chair.