A President In Peril (A Snap Malek Mystery)

by Robert Goldsborough

"I'm not altogether surprised to hear that, Mr. President," I told him, smiling. "Just promise you won't shoot the messenger."

  Truman gave a hearty laugh and took a swallow of his drink, eyes twinkling behind steel-rimmed glasses. "Well, next time you happen to run into that old Colonel McCormick of yours see if you can convince him that not every Democrat has horns and a tail, and carries the devil's very own pitchfork."

  "I will do that, sir–if I ever get to see the Colonel myself. I'm just a lowly peon, one of the foot soldiers you might say. How do you like working with Mr. Attlee, now that he's Britain's man at the table?"

  Truman smiled benignly. "I was told there would be no questions tonight about the meetings. This is strictly a social gathering, isn't that right, Mr. Malek?" he said in his soft but not unpleasant Missouri twang. I was being admonished, but in a gentle way.

  "Right, Mr. President," I answered, coloring slightly as he smiled benignly again and pivoted to say hello to a New York Times reporter who had won one, or maybe even two, Pulitzer Prizes.

  "Overheard your question to the president about Attlee just now, Tribune scribe," a slurred voice said from behind me.

  I turned and saw the grinning face and watery eyes of a guy who was some sort of minor public affairs functionary in the large Truman entourage.

  "You know that questions like that are off limits, old fellow," he said, shaking his head and waggling an index finger at me like a fourth-grade teacher reprimanding an underachieving student. "Bad form, don't you know?"

  "Can't blame a chap for trying," I said, grasping for his name.

  "Course not, course not," he slurred, taking a healthy swig of his highball. He motioned me toward the bar. "Once a reporter, always a reporter. In the blood and all that, right? Buy you one?" he said, putting a hand on my shoulder to steady himself.

  I shrugged. "Why not?" As I stepped up to the bar in one corner of the high-ceilinged, ornate and chandeliered room, in what once had been a palace, I kept trying to recall my benefactor's name but wasn't sure I'd ever heard it in the days I'd been at Potsdam. Then I remembered that it was Mathieson or something like that.

  "What'll it be?" he asked with a lopsided grin showing nicotine-stained teeth.

  I told him beer, and he pronounced the word in German to the blond youngster in a white waiter's jacket behind the bar. The kid looked to be all of fifteen.

  "German beer industry's gone all to hell, like everything else in this miserable damned country," Mathieson (if that indeed was his name) said with a belch, "although this is the genuine stuff, the real thing. Some of our boys liberated kegs of it on the push toward Berlin. Amazing they didn't drink it all up before they got here." He slid the full pilsner glass with just the right amount of foam along the bar to me.

  It was the real stuff, all right. I took a sip and savored it as it went down.

  "Your question about Attlee was very funny," Mathieson said, leaning one elbow on the bar and ordering another drink for himself by gesturing at his empty glass to the young Teutonic bartender. "Very funny indeed."

  "Oh? And why is that? I assure you I wasn't trying to be a comedian."

  "This is off the record, of course, but I overheard Harry talking to Byrnes yesterday about Attlee." He was referring to James Byrnes, a confidant of Truman who had been a senator from South Carolina and later would become one of the president's four secretaries of state.

  "That so?" I grinned and let some more of that fine German beer trickle down my throat, wondering if Mathieson always referred to the president by his first name or only when he was loaded.

  "Yeah, that's so." He chuckled, only it came out like a giggle.

  "And…?"

  "He called Attlee a sourpuss. And the same with Bevan, that fat Brit who took Eden's place as foreign minister when Churchill left. Said both of them were sourpusses. You can't use that, o'course."

  "Of course not."

  "Yeah, old Harry, he's not one to mince words, no sir, not one to mince words at all. He sort of liked Churchill, even if he thought the guy could be something of a blowhard. Said he talked too much, you know?"

  I nodded as if I knew.

  "But he also said that for all his jawing and such, Winston was one damned interesting Limey, and damned smart to boot," Mathieson continued. "Harry was sorry to see Churchill go, especially with dull droning Attlee as the replacement, him with his heavy three-piece tweed suits in the middle of the damn summer, for cripe's sake. Isn't that something?"

  "Yeah, that's something, all right."

  "Damned Attlee. Damned Bevan. Sourpusses, both of 'em. But you can't use any of it, of course," Mathieson admonished in fuzzy tones, wagging his finger again and gripping the bar as he ordered yet another drink.

  And I didn't use any of it, but I had a growing admiration for the man who some people were terming our 'accidental president'.

  Chapter Three

  F4 O1 O1 F4 A1 R1 A1 W4

  (n) a great fuss or disturbance about something very insignificant

  As it turned out, Catherine met with neither outright hostility nor even much resentment as she walked the tree-shaded streets of Oak Park, ringing doorbells and distributing pamphlets extolling the virtues of Democrats Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and Paul Douglas.

  "Hmm. I detect no sign of scars or bruises," I told her when I got home that night, running a hand over her smooth cheek before giving her what I like to think of as a passionate embrace.

  "It was really a good experience," she said, "although I admit that at the start, I was a little worried. Oh, there were a few bumps along the way, of course. A woman in the next block over, I don't know her name, said, quote, 'I never thought I'd see the day somebody would be handing out Democratic literature in this neighborhood. In all the years that other man was president, nobody came to my door with a pamphlet about him.'"

  "Couldn't bear to utter Roosevelt's name, eh? Did she by chance take any of your literature?"

  Catherine brushed my question aside with a hand and a laugh. "Oh heavens no, she just told me that if I wasn't going to vote for Dewey and the rest of the Republican ticket, I should be at home baking and cleaning and taking care of my family."

  Now it was my turn to laugh. "Any other 'bumps,' to use your word?"

  "Well, there was an old fellow over on Elmwood. He came shuffling to the door in his bedroom slippers with his Tribune clenched in one hand, peering over glasses perched on the end of his nose. When he found out why I was there, he waved the paper at me dismissively and said I'd be a lot better off knocking on doors south of

  Roosevelt Road. 'There's whole bunches of them Bohunks and Polacks and others like that down there in Cicero and Berwyn who like to vote for your guys. Someplace, they got this crackpot idea that the Democrats are the working man's friend. And God knows, there are enough union men in those two towns, working in that big telephone plant.'" "Did anybody welcome you with what could be described as open arms?"

  "Almost everyone else was very nice, or at least polite," Catherine said. "One woman farther south on Scoville even asked for an extra set of literature that she could pass along to her sister who lives in one of the ritzy North Shore suburbs. They'll never get anybody passing out Democratic fliers in their neighborhood, and they're interested in Stevenson," she told me.

  "And old Mrs. McGrath a block south of here, who knew my parents, invited me in for coffee and strudel, and I ended up staying for at least twenty minutes. She said she's always been a Democrat, but nobody had ever come to the door asking for the vote before. Said she thinks Dewey's a stuffed shirt who can't relate to people's everyday problems."

  "You'll get some agreement there, and not just from me," I told her. "You willing to go back out into the fray again tomorrow?"

  "But of course. Or would you prefer that I say home baking and cleaning and taking care of my family?"

  "I will choose to duck that highly loaded question, unless of course the baking part includes chocolate chip cookies. But t
his campaigning hasn't replaced your job at the library, I trust?"

  "I'll be there half a day tomorrow, until one. I'll hit the streets in the afternoon."

  "I could probably borrow a bulletproof vest for you from my fine friends at the police department downtown. Interested?"

  "Ver-r-y funny, sir," Catherine responded with an exaggerated pout, hands defiantly on hips. "But I really believe I can take care of myself on the streets of this rough-and-tumble community of ours."

  "I believe you can at that, as if I ever really doubted it," I conceded. "All right, go forth and fight the good fight as you see it. Just remember, there are some folks around here who may not want to have their world turned upside down by a very attractive woman knocking on their door and urging them to vote for–dare I say it…Democrats."

  "I like the 'very attractive woman' part," Catherine responded, kissing me. "Care to discuss it further in a more intimate setting?"

  "I thought you'd never ask," I said, encircling her waist with my arm and guiding her up the stairs.

  First thing the next morning, in the Police Headquarters press room, we got into a bull session about whether the Democratic candidate for Illinois governor, Adlai Stevenson, could beat the two-term incumbent, Dwight Green.

  "I like this bald-headed Stevenson's chances, even if he does come off sounding like a high-falutin' intellectual," Packy Farmer pronounced.

  My phone rang. As I usually do, I just answered, "Malek."

  "Tribune man, right?" the somewhat nasal voice on the other end asked.

  "Yeah, I'm with the Tribune, all right. And who might you be?"

  "My name is not important, but what I have to say is important, very, very important, Mr.…Malek, is that the name?"

  "You got it right. It's your nickel. What do you have to say?"

  "Truman's supposed to be coming to town in a couple of weeks."

  "That's the plan now, although the date and details haven't been firmed up. Now tell me something I don't know."

  "Oh, believe me, I am going to, Mr. Malek," the masculine voice on the telephone said. "The…president…will…not…leave…Chicago…alive." If he was striving for dramatic emphasis by spacing the words, he achieved it.

  "What?" The word came out as a croak, given that my throat was suddenly as dry as a slice of unbuttered whole-wheat toast.

  "He will be shipped out of this town in his own gleaming casket, maybe even with the presidential seal on it."

  "Who the hell are you?" I shouted into the receiver as my fellow reporters halted their conversation and turned toward me with questioning looks.

  "I told you before that my name is unimportant. What is important is that with Truman gone, Dewey will of course win the election, which should make you and your Tribune people very happy indeed."

  My hand gripped the receiver so tightly that I felt I might strangle it. "Don't you think Dewey might win anyway?" I said, swallowing hard.

  "Maybe, but we don't want to take the chance."

  "Who's 'we'?"

  He cleared his throat. "We who don't like certain things about this man."

  At that moment, I wanted more than anything else to keep the nasal-voiced man talking. I scribbled the words 'see if you can get this call traced' on my note pad and waved it at Dirk O'Farrell, who peered at the sheet with raised eyebrows and turned to his own phone.

  "What don't you like about Truman?" I asked my caller, figuring he might be a union man who had a grudge about the way the president had handled one of the strikes that had beset his administration.

  He answered a question with a question. "Which was the first country to recognize Israel?"

  "Uh, we were. What do you have against Israel?"

  "A better question would be what don't we have against that kike country. It needs to be erased from the map of the world," he said in that overdone nasal tone that probably was an attempt to blur his identity, not that his true voice would have provided me with any clues.

  "What makes you think Dewey will be any less supportive of Israel than Truman?"

  "We will take our chances there, Mr. Malek. Anything would be better than that sickening Jew-lover in the White House. You'll be hearing from us again."

  "Wait a minute, I–" But the line went dead. I hung up and looked at three staring faces. "Were you able to get a trace?" I asked O'Farrell.

  He shook his head. "Nope. I called down to police communications, but they said they needed at least five or ten minutes, and you weren't on nearly long enough, Snap. What was all that about?"

  I filled them in, to varying reactions. "Obviously a crackpot," Anson Masters pronounced, dismissing the call with the wave of a hand. "I had one of those years ago when I was working nights on the Daily News city desk. A guy called and said he was going to blow up the Michigan Avenue Bridge. He told us the exact time it would happen, and we had reporters and a photographer there, with armed plainclothes police all around. The nut never showed up and we never heard from him again."

  "That will probably be the case with the looney you just talked to, Snap," Dirk O'Farrell said.

  "I'm not so sure," Packy Farmer put in. "Look at all the times in our history that presidents and guys running for president have been shot–or at least shot at. They killed Lincoln, of course, and Garfield, and that other guy…uh…"

  "William McKinley," Masters supplied.

  "Yeah. And they shot Teddy, too," Farmer said. "Story goes that he was saved because the bullet got deflected when it hit a pair of eyeglasses in his vest pocket, although he ended up pretty bloodied anyway."

  "Not half bad on your history, Packy," Masters pronounced with a dip of the chin. "Teddy Roosevelt, who wasn't the president any more at the time, was running for what would have been his third term on the third-party 'Bull Moose' Progressive ticket back in 1912 when he was shot while giving a speech up in Milwaukee. Some reports say the bullet was deflected by a copy of the speech wadded up in his pocket. They rushed him by train to a hospital here in Chicago, where he got patched up. I was a reporter on the old Evening Post at the time."

  "My God, you've got to be damn near as old as Methuselah, Anson," Dirk O'Farrell said. "You probably put in some time on the Inter Ocean as well," he added, citing another long-gone Chicago daily paper.

  "As a matter of fact, I did," Masters responded with a snort. "I was a cub reporter there for a year or so just after the turn of the century. Those were great days in Chicago journalism, let me tell you."

  "We'll have to take your word for that, Antsy," Packy Farmer said. "Hey, who'd become president if Truman did get shot here? Old Barkley, his running mate?"

  "I take back what I said about you knowing your history," Masters said with a sniff. "There's no vice-president right now, so until the end of the current term, Secretary of State George Marshall would serve as president. He's next in the line of succession."

  "I'll be damned," O'Farrell said. "The things you learn in this place. Snap, what are you going to do about that phone call?"

  "I'll bounce it off Fahey and see what he thinks. My guess is that the cops are getting this sort of thing too. Goofy stuff always happens when a president comes to town." I tried to sound casual, but in truth the call had shaken me more than I was about to let on.

  "Good morning, dear and lovely lady. Can I have an audience with his eminence the archbishop?" I asked Elsie Dugo Cascio as I eased into her minuscule office.

  "Seems to be a modest enough request, although quite irreverent, bulldog reporter. Let me announce you." She pushed the intercom button, spoke my name, and got the okay for me to enter.

  As usual, the chief of detectives was at his desk with a stack of paperwork. "No rest for the overworked, eh, Fergus?" I said as I slid into one of the guest chairs and laid a just-opened pack of Lucky Strikes on his desk blotter as Elsie came in with a cup of coffee for me.

  "You're late," he muttered, pulling out a cigarette. "I've been dying for a smoke for a half hour."

  "Mig
ht try buying your own for a change," I said, holding a match for him and then lighting up myself.

  "Naw, I'm trying to quit."

  "In that case, I'll stop feeding your habit," I countered. "Anything new?"

  "Mainly all the foofaraw about Truman's visit. Still don't have the details, but, God, what a damned headache, including dealing with the Secret Service and all their demands. By the way, that last is off the record, as if you didn't know."

  I nodded. "Well, Fergus, I may just be adding to that headache of yours." I proceeded to tell him in detail about the call from Nasal Voice.

  When I finished, he leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his head, and scowled. "Sounds like an anti-Semitic moron, of which there are too many around. He may just be venting his prejudice."

  "Possibly. Presidents are always handy targets for people who like to vent about all sorts of things. You've been around long enough to see lots of presidents and presidential candidates come through town. Have you seen many situations like this?"

  Fahey shrugged. "A few. We try to follow 'em up, of course. Here's one for you: In '44, when both nominating conventions were held here, we got wind of a death threat against Dewey, of all people."

  "Is that so? I never heard about it."

  Fahey smiled thinly. "That was our aim, to keep the lid on things. A weekly community newspaper up on the Northwest Side, it doesn't matter which one, received a series of threatening notes by mail a few weeks before the Republican convention, at which Dewey, of course, got nominated."

  "And you caught the sender?"

  "We did. The paper showed us the threatening notes, and one of our dicks went up to their office, talking to members of the staff. The woman who edited their letters column recognized the handwriting as similar to that of a nutcase who was always writing cranky and often irrational letters to the editor. She had never laid eyes on the writer, but she knew his name–or at least the name he signed to the letters. Well, turns out he was using his real name and we nailed him at home."

  "What was his story?"