The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  “Where are you?” he asked, hardly interested.

  “Back at the grindstone.”

  He shrugged, saying nothing.

  “It’s good to hear your voice again, Nick. And it’s good to know you’re not mad at me.” Perhaps Myra, too, had noticed the pocketbook on the table and had urged Jennie to test him, probe for suspicions. He wondered, too, if Myra had developed an emotional attachment for her, a natural identification with a younger woman whose ambitions would not be stifled by the prejudices of her own father. Sad for Myra, he thought. Without it they could have bounced her between them, he for flesh, she for solace. Now that he had severed the cord, what did it all matter?

  “I’ll see you back at the apartment later, Nick. Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  “You sure you’re not angry?” She had detected the slight sarcasm.

  “Not at all,” he said, feeling a tug at his crotch, a hint of sexual delights to come. He chuckled to himself, knowing that he would no longer be rewriting her copy. Let Myra try, he thought, or Margaret.

  He noted as he hung up that he had been fingering Gunderstein’s copy, his attention caught by the compelling lead paragraph, drawing him into the story.

  “On the day that Diem and his brother were assassinated, Senator Burton Henderson, then a young intelligence colonel in the army, was on special assignment in Saigon,” the story began. It was written as all Gunderstein’s stories were written, in flat prose, short sentences, unemotional, with the complete absence of both adjectives and interpretive adverbs, which could be so devastating in the hands of devious writers. A person could be described as doing something slowly, feeling something keenly, acting swiftly, and the meaning of the observation could be focused toward a desired response. Gunderstein was careful to avoid any hint of bias, any faint echo of prejudgment. His method was the simple juxtaposition of facts, piled one on another, a relentless parade, almost monotonous, like a bill of particulars being read in a monotone. There was no accusatory tone, no attempt at moral interpretation, no use of abstract subtle nuances. The story emerged just as it had been discovered: Allison’s tip, his name appropriately omitted, and Phelps’ observations, with copious quotes. Here interpretation was allowed since it was scrupulously ascribed to Phelps. Doubts and lack of corroboration were carefully annotated, not woven into the story but stated straight out, leaving the door open to denial. There were quotes from the Pentagon Papers, which outlined in detail the last days of Diem, Kennedy’s motivation in having him removed by encouraging the coup of the generals, even the vague references to Diem’s assassination as having been carried out by “rivals.” And of course there were denials by the heads of the CIA, the State Department, and past officials of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

  As a piece of journalism, Nick gave it high marks, although he was upset with himself for having read it, since at this stage it could only be an exercise in self-flagellation. Of one thing he was certain, the story would certainly turn off a large segment of Henderson’s constituency. All the denials in the world would be powerless against the pregnant possibilities implied in the story. Henderson could cry foul from here to dooms-day, but the voice would be drowned in the swamp of accusation. And he could hardly blame it on a conservative conspiracy. Its very appearance on the pages of the Chronicle would negate that. He was tempted to pick up the phone and compliment Gunderstein on his story, but felt his inhibition keenly, cursing Myra and his own inability to stand firm against her. Instead, he could only utter a weak profanity, and push the copy aside to the farthest corner of his desk, as if it were unclean, coated with deadly bacteria.

  He was late getting to Duke’s, having left the Chronicle building later than he had expected. The story had kept him absorbed, perhaps a subconscious sign that he should not be going to lunch with Henderson at all, knowing that somehow it would make him a party to the cover-up—an odd word to be dredging up, considering the events of the past.

  Duke, his bald pate shining in the sunlight that streamed through the curtained windows, greeted him with a wisecrack and a heavy handshake. The restaurant was a hangout for politicians and athletes, a logical combination that gave the place a macho air, a den of masculine arrogance, clubby, with its front room kept carefully elite by its owner host. Huge cartoons showing the corpulent Duke as a paunchy athlete graced the walls while the smell of garlic in the ubiquitous pickles on each table set the gastronomic scene as distinctively New Yorky. Saturdays were strictly slacks and sport shirts, the front room filled with Washington high and mighty. He caught sight of Henderson, placed by Duke for prominent display in the center of the room. In the corner he saw Swopes, owner of the Redskins, who would be their host at tomorrow’s game. He waved a greeting. To be seen with Henderson, the act in itself, was a kind of bonding. Certainly, as Henderson and he both knew, it was a clue to relationship. In strictly Washington terms it dripped with special meaning. Enemies did not break bread in Duke’s, certainly not on Saturdays.

  Henderson stood up to greet him with a strong, pumping handshake, embellished by a squeeze to the biceps, as if to underline to those present that theirs was a tight friendship, not a casual encounter. Nick noticed that Henderson was nursing a half-finished straight-up martini, served with a little pile of olives in an adjoining shot glass.

  “Drink?” he asked politely, his blue eyes glistening as they encountered a shaft of sunlight. Nick nodded, pointing to the glass.

  “Benny, bring us a round,” Henderson said, turning to the middle-aged waiter. Nick sliced a pickle into small pieces as they waited for the drinks which arrived quickly. Duke’s was noted for its swift service and the independence of its waiters, who might have been rushing their service chores so that they could get back to handicapping, their notorious group affliction.

  “You can’t imagine how it’s taken a great weight off me to know your decision, Nick. I’m really grateful.” He finished off the dregs of his first martini and carefully sipped the second.

  “Apparently your future means a lot to Myra,” Nick said.

  “She’s quite a wonderful person, Nick. Politically quite mature.”

  “You’ve apparently become good friends,” Nick said, careful to appear bland, disarming. Let him appear to be winning my confidence, he told himself smugly.

  “Right in front she said that all editorial decisions were yours to make, that she didn’t interfere with that aspect of the paper. She said you were your own man, Nick. That’s quite a compliment.”

  “I suppose it is,” he said cautiously.

  “But apparently both you and she think alike politically. There are those that think you’re too damned liberal. Like me. What they don’t understand is that the old labels are fading. Oh, there are still knee-jerk liberals around, but they’re no longer a factor. Today you’ve got to be eclectic in your ideology to make any sense at all.”

  “I quite agree,” Nick said, sipping his martini, watching Henderson, noting the deep blue in his checked shirt, chosen with meticulous care to match the incredible blue of his eyes.

  “Many of our friends in town think of the Chronicle as arrogant, too powerful.”

  “And you?”

  “It depends on whose ox is gored. I’m one of your fans. That’s why I felt so put out by your investigation. It was like being stabbed in the back by your best friend. Frankly, I felt a bit victimized. The staff beat it around for weeks. We felt that you were reacting from this thing with the ex-President, the resignation. There were those that thought you might hit me simply to show your nonpartisanship, your objectivity. You can’t imagine how helpless you can feel against that kind of action.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “A politician is made or broken by the way he appears to the public, through the media. It’s a damnable way to live. It’s a curse.” He paused. “But that’s the name of the game. Harry Truman said it all when he talked about the heat in the kitchen.”

 
“The polls seem to be quite favorable for you,” Nick said.

  “I’m grateful,” Henderson agreed. His gratitude suddenly seemed cloying, his humility stultifying.

  “With the right breaks you might actually be moving around the corner. They say the facilities are quite good. They even have a swimming pool again.”

  Henderson smiled broadly. He sipped his drink, then shook his head. “I’m really sorry about that little visit you had yesterday,” he said. “The one from my wife.”

  “You knew?”

  “After the fact. I’d never put her up to that. It was her own idea. I can assure you she felt like a damned fool.” He tossed down an olive. “Hell, she meant well.”

  “I’m sure she did.”

  “It’s a tough row to hoe to be a wife of a politician. She has me in bed with every broad in town. Bet she told you that Myra and I were playing around.” He said it casually, as if fishing for an answer.

  Nick’s caution increased. “Not at all,” he lied. “Besides, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “I’m glad,” Henderson said, as if he were intending to swallow the lie. “We have a fine relationship, Myra and I, purely platonic. She has a remarkable grasp of events. Her interest in me is purely political. We see eye to eye on the future.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “If I didn’t feel that I can make a contribution, I wouldn’t spend another minute in this business.” It was the routine plaint of all ambitious politicians, a common refrain. “And if I thought I had something in my past that would make my candidacy questionable, I can assure you that I would never have submitted myself to the grueling possibilities of the campaign.”

  “Of course,” Nick said. If Henderson had bothered to probe beneath the surface, get to know him better, he would have understood how platitudinous he was sounding.

  “I mean raking up what might have happened years ago, at a different time, a different climate, a wholly changed environment, would have been meaningless, a useless bit of information.”

  “Frankly,” Nick said, “that’s exactly what I concluded. What would be the point?”

  “Myra understood immediately,” Henderson said, growing expansive, unsuspecting. “To her credit, she said it was your decision to make. Obviously, Gunderstein must be getting too big for his breeches. How is he taking it?”

  “I don’t think he’s too happy about it.”

  “Do you think he might leave and take the story elsewhere?” Nick could feel his anxiety.

  “I doubt it,” Nick said. “But let’s face it. You’ve made enemies. The intelligence community is under fire. Don’t expect this to be the end of it.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “But the appearance in the Chronicle would have given it credence at exactly the wrong time. Later, its impact would not be as formidable, as the campaign jells.”

  “As we have learned. Besides, it wouldn’t be such an easy story to run down. Your intelligence boys have a tight club working. They don’t crack so easily.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Henderson said quickly. Nick could see a brief chink in the protective wall. Was he beginning to open up?

  “Anyway,” Nick said, cutting another pickle, “the Diem business hardly made a difference. The Viet Nam debacle was inevitable. Besides, Diem had already lost power. It wasn’t as if he were assassinated while still in power. Although the probably perceived it as insurance. Dead is dead.”

  “It was overkill. In the final analysis, sheer stupidity.”

  “You sound bitter,” Nick probed, deliberately averting his gaze.

  “The whole business was regrettable. I wished it had never happened.” He motioned the waiter to bring them another round. “The whole idea of it is obnoxious. To have to suffer for it so many years later, for such a stupid act . . .” His voice trailed off. Looking up, Nick saw in Henderson a distracted, regretful look, eyes glazed as if they were searching inward.

  “What’s done is done,” Nick said quietly, his voice modulating, not wishing to interrupt Henderson, obviously on the verge of revelation.

  “The fact that the whole sordid mess was official business—it’s hard to comprehend. The blind fools. As if the elimination of a man would eliminate the problem.”

  Nick could feel the man’s discomfort, a personal thing, tightly walled in. Suddenly he had no desire to know, since knowing would somehow make him a party to the conspiracy, forcing his confidence. It was the curse of his business, this knowledge surreptitiously received, as a tendered gift, humanizing the information. He could feel his heart beating heavily, his palms begin to sweat. He wanted no special rights to the knowledge. He would rather accept the man’s denials, the empty protestations, the self-serving protective machinations. Don’t trust me! he wanted to scream out, but the dikes were already opened.

  “How can you be so sure you’d make the moral decision if you were president? Considering the times, Kennedy may have considered his act as moral. The coup, I mean. The assassination would have required a different view of morality. The ends justifying the means.”

  “When you see it from the underside as I did, you can understand what it means. There is never any justification. By engaging in an immoral act, you become immoral. You can’t fling mud without getting some of it on your hands.”

  He wondered who was the cleverer of the two. There was an absolute ring of sincerity in Henderson’s tone, in his distracted manner, in the whole aspect of concealed pain. He could see how Myra might have been seduced; mind-fucked, as the younger generation might put it. It was a heavy-gauged appeal. You could be easily suckered in, as he was now, almost. He searched the man’s face for some validation of his own cynicism. Was it possible that this politician could exercise a great sense of moral responsibility? The test of a good leader was his conduct in office, Myra had said. He cursed the obvious fact that he had become what he had feared he would become, a judge. That was the one role he must avoid at all costs.

  “You know, Senator,” Nick said, “I would have preferred that you let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Henderson looked up from the contemplation of his drink, frowning. “We’re family now,” he said simply.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I have great faith in Myra’s judgment.”

  “Don’t.”

  He seemed quizzical, suddenly unsure. He drank deeply, threw his head back, and smiled. “Look, Nick. I’m laying myself bare. If I didn’t feel I could trust you, I wouldn’t have said a word.”

  Nick shrugged. At least he wasn’t denying anything. He felt the man’s vulnerability, the offering of his head to the chopping block. As much as he wanted not to hear any more, his curiosity was piqued.

  “How was it done?”

  “Are you asking professionally?”

  “You said I was family.”

  Henderson hesitated, rubbing his chin. “What the hell,” he said, “that’s the fucking trouble with this business. Who can you trust?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Henderson’s eyes looked around the restaurant furtively, his head coming closer to Nick’s, his voice modulated to a barely audible whisper.

  “Actually it was quite simple. The brothers had enemies who were easy to flush out. It was purely a question of logistics. Getting the lambs to the slaughter. The release of the brothers was timed so that their enemies could arrive on the scene at exactly the right moment. We handpicked the people, although even they never realized it. The motive was revenge. You’d be surprised how potent it can be. Actually, all I did was serve as the matchmaker.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “Frankly, I felt quite proud of myself at the time. Real professional.”

  “No compunctions?”

  “Not one. They were butchers. The jails were filled with their enemies. They were corrupt, greedy, disgusting men. I felt that I was on the side of the angels. Besides, I loved that man.”

  “Who?”

  �
��Kennedy,” he said, swallowing, perhaps tamping down the bile of regret.

  “You mean you got direct orders?”

  “Not direct in the sense that it was from the horse’s mouth. But I believed the orders came direct from him, through a third party.”

  “Who?”

  “His brother Bobby. I believed it. I could feel their agony. It was not an easy decision. They foresaw what might happen, what did happen. It was a long shot. And it lost. It only drew them in deeper.”

  “The President was assassinated three weeks later.”

  It was like a lion unleashed in a herd of antelope.

  “I’ve thought about that. You can’t imagine the endless nights of wondering if the killings were connected. They keep talking about the relationship between a plot on Castro and the Dallas horror. But I can’t get it out of my mind that somehow it was the Diem thing.”

  He could understand now why Henderson’s compulsion was so overwhelming, the terrible sense of guilt.

  “We could still believe we were invincible in those days,” Henderson sighed. “It was inconceivable that anyone could mount a counterattack against us. We were on the right side, the side of freedom. History might mark the Dallas shot as the beginning of the end of America.”

  It was more than the stink of ambition he had scented, Nick thought. Henderson had revealed a far more powerful obsession, a kind of fanaticism. But surely the pursuit of the presidency demanded that brand of single-mindedness, the sense of mission, a searing bolt of lightning that could strike down anything in its path. He felt like one of the victims now, as if he had stood in the path of the spear of fire.

  “So you see, I would not have been the only casualty,” Henderson said, almost smugly, as if he had won a victory and was now searching for magnanimity.

  The waiter, who had been watching them, came over to take their order. Henderson put a hand over his glass to signify that he had had enough liquor.