The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  “And Henderson?”

  “He’s going to have to pay the piper.”

  “In 1963, it would have been concluded that it was an act of patriotism.” He felt he was going over old ground, stalling. He knew they could detect his hesitation.

  “Patriotic or not, it was still immoral.”

  “Absolutely,” Martha Gates chirped. She seemed certain that he would give them a complete go-ahead. “It’s not the moral question alone, Mr. Gold. It’s . . .”

  “But it is,” Phelps interrupted. “In the end it boils down to a moral question.”

  “We run a newspaper, Robert,” Nick said, thankful for the issues being raised, “not a church.”

  “You can’t deny we have a moral point of view,” Phelps persisted, looking at Martha, who was watching him with admiration. Had Phelps made love to her, Nick wondered, prancing like a cock in a barnyard, preening his feathers?

  “You can’t take it lightly, Nick,” Phelps said, flushing. “How can you preach a kind of national morality and deny this story? It’s wrong. Patently wrong.”

  “I agree,” Martha Gates said. Gunderstein kept his eyes on Nick, searching for a reaction.

  “I think if you’ll just read the story, Mr. Gold,” Gunderstein said, “it will speak for itself.”

  Peripherally, Nick could see Henry Landau’s tanned face peering through the glass. Welcoming the intrusion, he felt the emergence of a new idea.

  “We’re going to have an editorial meeting in a few minutes. Let’s submit the story to them.”

  They seemed caught unawares by his new tack. Phelps exchanged a knowing glance with Martha. He knew the two of them would be easily persuaded, led into the trap like sheep. After all, how could they possibly believe that other fair-minded men could not see the compelling moral position?

  “No,” Gunderstein said quietly, his pimples reddening, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. Phelps and Martha turned to him in confusion.

  “No,” Gunderstein repeated, “that wouldn’t be right at all.”

  “Why not?” Phelps asked as Martha’s eyes flitted between them.

  Gunderstein ignored them and looked at Nick, who could see the glisten of his contact lenses as they caught the light.

  “You know why, Mr. Gold,” he said. Of course, Gunderstein knew his motive. The men around the editorial table were too ideological, oriented to the Left, protective of the liberal view. It wouldn’t do to have them sit in judgment on one of their darlings.

  “I don’t understand,” Nick lied. “These are people of great independent spirit and judgment.”

  “That’s not the point,” Gunderstein said.

  “Then what is?” Nick snapped. He couldn’t understand why he could not simply will the story out of existence. He had the power to do so and he had accepted his surrender. Why did they complicate matters with their insufferable principles? He felt himself losing patience, knew that Gunderstein’s view of him was diminishing. If he were Gunderstein he might feel the same way. What would Gunderstein do in his place? He knew that too. Gunderstein would have walked, turned his back and simply walked away. What would Charlie have done?

  “The decision is yours to make, Mr. Gold. You’re our editor.”

  “If the story has integrity, it should stand up before these men.”

  “That’s not their job,” Gunderstein said with conviction.

  “I don’t see why you’re so wary, Harold,” Phelps said.

  “The story stands by itself. It has nothing to do with moral principles or your own feelings of guilt.”

  “That’s absurd,” Phelps said. “My feelings are not involved.”

  “I really don’t believe that, Robert,” Gunderstein said quietly. Nick knew he was right. “It’s not meant to be insulting. You’ve been very helpful to the story, Robert. You’ve been a corroborative source and a great help in shaping the story. In fact, your knowledge of events in Viet Nam in 1963 has been crucial, the missing link.

  “But this moral stuff is not relevant,” Gunderstein said, ignoring the attempt to be insulting. “The story is quite simple. Henderson is quite obviously running for President. He has something in his past that bears on the question of his future leadership. Many might condone his action or even the suspicion of his action. Others will detest it. Who are we to ascribe constituencies? Make prejudgments on the political impact of the story? That’s all irrelevant. You mustn’t let that inhibit your judgment, Mr. Gold.”

  “I’m afraid it does, Harold,” Nick said gently, feeling Gunderstein’s confusion.

  “It shouldn’t be submitted to the editorial conference. They also deal in moral postures. It’s not their job. I’d rather you reject the story yourself than submit it to them.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t frighten me,” Phelps said, pouting.

  “Nor me,” Martha said.

  “It was just a suggestion,” Nick said sheepishly. “I wanted to be fair since my inclination is to reject it.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Phelps said.

  “On what grounds, Mr. Gold?” Martha Gates asked.

  He felt cornered, unable to come up with an adequate explanation.

  “I really feel put upon, Nick,” Phelps said. “You send for me from across the country. I feel misled. Used badly. Really, Nick. It wasn’t fair.” It seemed odd to hear protestations of unfairness from one his age. Coming from Martha Gates, who obviously agreed with Phelps’ assessment, it might not have seemed so out of character.

  “You’ll just have to live with your disillusionment, Robert. After all, you managed it for more than a decade. You’ve had lots of practice swallowing your sense of morality.” He paused, feeling rotten. “I’m sorry,” he said, tasting the backwash of his own cowardice.

  “Ours not to reason why,” Phelps said sadly. He seemed spent now, the optimism of his arrival gone.

  “I don’t see why you don’t let him submit it to the others,” Martha said.

  “Gunderstein is right,” Nick said. It was, after all, only a self-serving bureaucratic ploy, as Gunderstein knew.

  “The story should be run,” Gunderstein said.

  Nick fingered the copy on his desk.

  “I’ll read it,” he said. “I’ll continue to keep an open mind.”

  “That’s doubtful,” Phelps said bitterly. Nick let it pass. Leave him something, he thought.

  Gunderstein stood up, an action obviously protective of Phelps. He knew now why he admired Gunderstein.

  Gunderstein was truly the man in the hermetic room, untouched by the river of emotion that threaded its way through a personal life, the unencumbered observer, the true journalist. During the heady days when they were pulling down the President, Gunderstein had been the centerpiece of the drama, the man who shook the trunk of the tree itself, rattling the coconuts to the ground. And yet he had never, like them, been ideologically committed. Gunderstein had taken only the slice of the glory that was his, while he and Myra glutted themselves on the moral niceties.

  He would have liked to view the Henderson story from Gunderstein’s viewpoint. But he was hopelessly trapped, compromised by position, by power, by age, by fear.

  “I’ll read it. That’s the most I can promise,” he said.

  “I want you all to know,” Phelps began—one could easily see he was headed for personal martyrdom.

  “Don’t, Robert,” Nick warned, “it wouldn’t be any use.”

  “It’s contemptible, an outrage,” Phelps said.

  “Restrain it,” Nick pleaded.

  Phelps sputtered, a fleck of saliva on his lip. His eyes misted. “It’s wrong, Nick, wrong.” Martha Gates gripped Phelps’ arm and moved him out of the office.

  Let them think what they wanted, he decided. Somewhere along the line he would square it with Gunderstein. He watched them move from his office, not at all graceful in their defeat. Martha Gates turned back and watched him with unmistakable contempt.

  “I’m sorry,” he sai
d, then seeing Gunderstein hesitate, he waved him back.

  “There are wheels within wheels, Harold,” he said, knowing that such a ridiculous explanation would hardly be adequate.

  “Read the story, Mr. Gold.”

  “I will, Harold,” he said, hoping that he could explain his position without revealing his infamy. He could find no other word to describe it, annoyed that Gunderstein could still find hope in the possibility of publication. It is as dead as Kelsy’s nuts, he wanted to say and might have whispered it if Gunderstein had lingered a moment more.

  Lighting a cigarette, he proceeded into the editorial conference, where the men were waiting. Things went smoothly, the sourness of their last two sessions muted with Bonville still pouting, nodding with eyes fixed on his yellow pad, as they agreed on the positions of the next day’s editorials, bland subjects, it seemed.

  “We could do something on gun control,” Peterson suggested.

  “Shotguns will never be regulated,” Henry Landau said.

  “Then how are these matters preventable?” Peterson retorted.

  “They’re not,” Henry replied.

  Nick could not focus his concentration and the meeting broke up earlier than usual.

  Back in his office, he sat down heavily in his chair and looked again at the front page of the morning’s Chronicle, studying the pictures of the bus massacre. Feeling someone staring at him, he looked up at the chocolate brown face of Virginia Atkins, who stood in the doorway, tall, defiant still, although he could detect a touch of contrition in her dark eyes.

  “Can I see you a moment, Mr. Gold?”

  “Sure,” he said. Her voice was soothing, without a trace of the stereotyped Southern caricature of the black man’s tongue. She looked at him without fear.

  “I want to apologize,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For that outburst of mine yesterday.”

  He remembered.

  “In the heat of battle passions run high.”

  “Mine went through the roof. I wasn’t professional. I let my blackness smother my objectivity.”

  That word again, he thought. “So you see it’s not that easy to achieve.” He felt he might be lecturing himself. He did not want to appear patronizing. Searching for a posture of grace, he wanted to match her dignity.

  “I hope it won’t affect your judgment of me, Mr. Gold. I’ve already talked to Mr. Madison.”

  “Did you square it with him?”

  “Frankly, I wouldn’t blame him if he screens my assignments.”

  “He’ll come around,” Nick said, knowing that Ben would bear his grudge.

  “I’m prepared for the penance,” she said, then pausing, “I want you to understand that it’s not just wanting to protect my job. I know how lucky I am to be here. I just feel as if I let you all down somehow. I had no right to get carried away, to have lost my objectivity.”

  “You’re not alone, Atkins.” She nodded, then moved away, her dignity intact.

  The city room was beginning to fill up again, although it would never reach the pitch of midweek. Luckily there was enough follow-up from yesterday’s disaster to keep the reporters busy. The telephone rang.

  “Nick?” It was a vaguely familiar voice. “This is Burt.” Henderson again. His heart sank. What now?

  “I’ve just talked to Myra. You can’t imagine how much your decision means to me.”

  It was the insufferable ego of politicians to feel the need to offer thanks, as if the utterance of gratitude carried with it some sense of giving a kind of trophy. So she had called him immediately to be the harbinger of the good news.

  “I really feel so damned grateful. Could you join me for lunch? I’ve got to be downtown and, frankly, Nick, I’d like to talk.”

  His first inclination was to refuse. There was nothing he had to say to Henderson, whose point had been won, who had found the key to press protection, an important commodity at this moment in his political career. He felt himself mumbling a half-hearted excuse.

  “I’ll meet you at Duke’s at twelve-thirty,” Henderson persisted, not hearing, or ignoring the refusal. Instantly he felt the sense of possession, the invocation of the rights of property. So they think they’ve wrapped me up, he thought, irritated.

  “Sure, Burt,” he said, repeating the place and time. The phone clicked off, leaving him to contemplate this subtle change in his role. He had given the inch and she had taken the mile. And yet, as he looked about the city room from his special perch, nothing had really changed. He could still pick up the telephone and order a total remake of the front page or the removal of a single offending word, a misplaced comma, the emasculation of a semicolon, the obliteration of a dangling participle. More important, he could deflect an offending idea at will, choke off an errant opinion, crush an incompatible ideology, and with the stiletto surety of his pencil weapon, he could exile a budding politician to obscurity at the flick of the lead. All but Henderson. The change, he felt in his panic, could hardly be termed subtle. Myra had made her move. He had given her veto power. He knew it was just the beginning.

  He felt the need to validate his power, his sense of command. Picking up the phone, he asked the operator for Atkins’ number, dialed it, watched her pick up the phone languidly from a desk in a spot along the far wall in the corner of the room.

  “Come in here, Atkins,” he commanded, watching her stiffen to alertness, rise quickly, and stride across the room, her long legs moving her gracefully toward him.

  “I want you to put together a reflective piece on the bus killer,” he said. “Really probe. Look inside the man. Give us an in-depth profile. I want motive, the things that prompted him to violence.”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “Why not?”

  “You know how I feel.”

  “I don’t care how you feel.”

  She seemed confused, torn between dignity and despair.

  “You said you were a professional. Now here’s your chance to prove it.” Was he making her a victim simply to prove something to himself? he wondered. Perhaps. But he had the right, the authority to order her to take the assignment, to direct its point of view, to dictate its conclusions. It was the perfect yardstick of his power. It was too bad she had chosen the wrong moment for apology. He had needed to throw something and she had become the handy rock at his elbow.

  “I’ll try, Mr. Gold,” she said, fearful now, surely regretting her apology.

  “You’ll do more than try, Atkins. You’ll perform.” He watched her leave, picked up the phone, and dictated a note to the pool steno for Madison. Madison was off, he saw on the scheduling sheet. Weekends off were a prized possession at the Chronicle, the option of the privileged few.

  Thumbing through the pile of wire copy, he noted that it would be a light news day. The world was strangely quiet; it would require deeper penetration to find the “hot” news stories. The pressure to fill pages was relentless and finding material that would measure up to front-page story value was difficult on doldrum days like these. The events of recent years had made them jaded. Wars, assassinations, corruption in the highest places in the land. The public was callous now, demanding more than it was in their capacity to purvey. Gone were the days when a simple killing could be thought of as an event. Murder had become too commonplace. Now only a mass murder like yesterday’s could have enough impact to titillate the masses. Looking down the road, years from now, he wondered what the level of horror would have to be to create the kind of sensation that warranted a front-page headline. He could envision parameters requiring deaths by the score as even worthy of consideration. As for corruption, after a president, all else was anticlimax. Even war, after the horror of Viet Nam, would require weaponry of massive killing power, body counts in the millions, to bring the interest up to snuff. His eye roamed through the wire copy looking for news of India. Perhaps that was why his interest in India was becoming acute, the guerrilla warfare beginning, the impending deaths mu
ltiplying, the possibilities tantalizing in that sweaty, crowded, starving subcontinent on the verge of explosion. Would there be a story there?

  It was no wonder that groups espousing causes sought ever greater levels of horror, staged events that by their sheer disgust could magnetize the media. Blow the head off a baby and it was a certainty that you could squeeze a few paragraphs into the story that would hawk your case in the crowded arena. Punch nails into the skull of an old lady and you might even get a picture out of it. He could envision the day when such horrors would require massive duplication to be worthy of mention, a world in which the gas chambers of Auschwitz could hardly merit a paragraph or two, when one might have to choose between that and say, the total obliteration of an island, like Ireland, for example, by atomic disintegration or nerve gas. A big kill of the whole population in one swoop. It was coming. The IRA might say: “If we can’t have her, no one will.” Given the state of destructive weaponry, it was quite possible. Now there would be a story! Against all that, he thought, what was Henderson, a mere annoyance, a pimple on the head of an erected penis, irritating, but not able to prevent one’s using it. He found it pleasant to contemplate the situation in terms of sexual symbols. Something how it took the sting out of the humiliation, assuaged the feeling of helplessness, as if the remembered pleasure of orgasm were more potent than the purely mental anguish of a bruised ego. It was like that Italian game of hands, where paper, the outstretched hand, covered rock, the tight fist. The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. It was Jennie.

  “You pissed off, Nick?” She was making an effort to emulate a little girl’s voice, always a refuge, a weapon in her repertoire that had its effect in the past. He mocked her silently.

  “Hell no, Jennie. Are you over your pout?”

  “Completely. I was mad as hell at you, Nick.”

  “Maybe I was too damned heavy after all. I’ve got to leave you some pride.”

  “You mean all is forgiven?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “You must have been worried. I was even too mad to leave a note.”

  “Forget it.”

  He was sure now how little he felt for her, and he found it liberating to know it. In a way he was grateful for the discovery of her—how could he characterize it?—peccadillo, disloyalty, brown-nosing the boss. The last was a potent image; she did have an infallible nose for power. Now Myra would have to protect her.