A President In Peril (A Snap Malek Mystery)

by Robert Goldsborough

  "Sounds compulsory enough for me. See you there."

  At five minutes to three the next day, Friday, I sauntered into the Trib's two-story high local room and said hellos to some old friends in the news staff, many of whom I hadn't seen for months or even a year. Like reporters assigned full-time to the other press rooms around town–City Hall, County Building, Federal Building, Criminal Courts–I rarely have occasion to set foot in the Gothic tower bearing the paper's name. This is fine by me, just as it is for those other beat reporters. There's something to be said for keeping one's distance from the home office, no matter what your line of work. For one thing, there's less chance of becoming entangled in company politics and intrigues, to say nothing of being forced to listen to the latest gossip. 'Out of sight, out of trouble' is my motto.

  A dozen or so of us gathered in the glass-walled conference room adjoining the local room. Managing Editor J. Loy 'Pat' Maloney sat at one end of the long table and called the meeting to order.

  "Gentlemen," he said, clearing his throat, "thank you all for coming. Our purpose here this afternoon is to go over our plans for the Truman and Dewey visits next Monday and Tuesday. This is an unusual situation, with both major presidential candidates coming to town on successive days. It's going to be a busy forty-eight-hour stretch for all of us."

  "Pat, I gather you don't count Strom Thurmond as a 'major' candidate," one of the veteran Washington Bureau reporters piped up amid laugher around the table.

  Maloney allowed himself a slight smile. "No, Walter, I don't," he said. "And don't even ask me about Henry Wallace and his so-called Progressive Party." More laughter.

  The managing editor continued. "Seriously, we're going to have to do a lot of planning. At this point, I'll turn the floor over to Owen."

  Stewart Owen, the news editor, looked around the table and then down at a sheet in his hands. "Our political writers already have their assignments to cover the speeches Truman and Dewey will be giving at the Chicago Stadium," he said. "And we–"

  "Is it true that Truman's address Monday night is going to be his concession speech?" one of the city desk reporters interrupted, generating yet another round of guffaws.

  Owen grinned and admonished him with a wag of his index finger, then went on reading off the various assignments. Finally, he got to me.

  "And Mr. Malek, our esteemed colleague who as a rule earns his salary toiling down at Police Headquarters, has graciously consented to once again regale us with colorful vignettes about the rabble who will line the route of the motorcades."

  "Rabble?" I reacted with mock outrage. "A fine way to describe the noble members of this great nation's highly educated and sophisticated electorate." That drew scattered applause around the table as I bowed.

  "Considering that a good percentage of the motorcade route both nights will be through Skid Row, we'll all be interested in just how sophisticated these so-called members of the electorate turn out to be, Snap," piped up Marty Walsh, one of the city desk reporters.

  "I'm sure Mr. Malek will give us an interesting potpourri of individuals, opinions, and reactions," Owen responded. "Anything to add, Snap?"

  "No, I don't think so. I plan to start in the Loop and work my way west on

  Madison Street gathering comments and observations, just as I did for those campaign motorcades in '40 and '44. There's bound to be a few eccentrics–and not just along Skid Row," I said, nodding to Walsh. "I'll be interested in whether Truman gets tomatoes thrown at him, given his current approval ratings," commented an assistant city editor.

  "Or something a lot worse than tomatoes," interjected Walsh. "Snap, you'd better be on the alert. There could be some real fireworks."

  Little did he know how much that possibility had occupied my thoughts over the last several days.

  Our weekend at home was fairly typical: grocery shopping, a trip to the dry cleaners, and a date Saturday night at the Lamar Theater in downtown Oak Park to see Rosalind Russell, Sydney Greenstreet, and Leon Ames in 'The Velvet Touch,' a murder mystery, which we both liked. Ever since I'd seen Greenstreet as the 'fat man' in 'The Maltese Falcon,' I had made it a point to catch every one of his films. But even in that darkened movie house, the president's visit lurked, never far from my consciousness. I was glad when Monday rolled around and I could head off to the normalcy of Headquarters before my evening assignment on

  Madison Street. It may have been my imagination, but the mood in the press room that morning seemed tense. Nobody was inclined to talk about Truman's visit–maybe they all were as edgy as I was. Packy Farmer wanted to talk about Northwestern's chances of winning the football championship of the Western Conference, or the 'Big Nine,' as it had been called since the University of Chicago had dropped out a few years earlier. Dirk O'Farrell and Anson Masters ignored him and argued about whether the United States had to drop the atomic bombs in 1945 in order to finish the Japanese off quickly–a debate they had had many times before, with Masters as usual arguing for dropping the bombs and O'Farrell against it.

  I spent a few minutes off in one corner with Jeff, the current City News Bureau reporter, advising him, at his request, on his next career move in journalism. Being a local boy from the north suburbs, he wanted to move right on into a job at one of the Chicago dailies. I suggested he go to a middle-sized paper someplace like Peoria or Rockford or Madison, where he could get a wide variety of experience in a relatively short period rather than going straight to one of the local rags where he would, in all likelihood, get quickly pigeonholed.

  "You can always get back here," I told him. "All four dailies are loaded with reporters and copy editors who have had experience on papers all over the Midwest–and the country." He acted doubtful, but was polite enough to say I had given him something to think about.

  In a departure from our routine, I said I was going down to see Fergus Fahey even before Masters had a chance to pronounce that the morning bull session was ended. Anson and Dirk were still arguing when I walked out and took the flight down to the chief's quarters.

  "Is there some coffee in the pot for a battered old warhorse?" I asked Elsie as I stepped into her anteroom.

  "No sir, but I've saved some for you," she said sweetly, filling a mug with the brew and handing it to me. I thanked her and knocked on Fahey's door, announcing myself.

  I got a "come in" and went in. "Big day," I told him.

  "If you want to call it that," he muttered. "To me, it's nothing but headaches and more headaches."

  "I see you're in one of your periodic funks, Fergus," I remarked, dropping a half-full pack of Luckies on his desk. "Normally I would try to jolly you out of it, but today I seem to have run out of jolly. Are you still worried about Truman?"

  "Damn right I am. I would be even if we hadn't had these killings. A president comes to town, it's a pain in the ass. And this week, we've got a second pain in the ass, Dewey. By Wednesday morning, I'll be ready to ask for admittance to the funny farm."

  "You couldn't get in. They would turn you away as being too ornery," I said as I torched a Lucky. "You going to hang around here tonight?"

  "Damn right again. I won't leave until I know the president's safe back in his hotel. Same tomorrow night with Dewey. And the commissioner will be sticking it out in his office, too, getting reports every quarter hour. Part of what makes the job so much fun."

  "Well, I'll think about you back here keeping the lonely vigil while I'm out on the street asking people why they're wasting a perfectly good late October evening standing on a curb waiting for a bunch of waving politicians to pass by in convertibles–an event that for the onlookers will last for all of thirty seconds."

  "Maybe a little longer than that, if you count the marching bands and bugle corps and bagpipers," Fahey grumped.

  "Okay, maybe ninety seconds then," I conceded. "Anyway, seems like there are a lot better ways to spend time–for them and for us."

  "Amen. And Snap?"

  "Yes?"

  "For Christ'
s sake, be careful, will you?"

  "You know me, Fergus."

  "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

  Chapter Twenty

  L1 O1 N1 G2 E1 V4 I1 T1 Y4

  (n) long life; great duration of life

  At a few minutes after three I said my goodbyes to my fellow reporters and turned the Tribune desk in the press room over to Hoskins, who would hold down the fort until Garrity, the night man, came in. I walked north toward the Loop and had a late lunch of franks and beans at a quiet little café on South State in the neighborhood of the burlesque houses.

  By four-fifteen, I was back out on the street, armed with my reporter's notebook and five newly sharpened No. 2 pencils. It was still too early for crowds to begin gathering along the motorcade route, so I killed time at Marshall Field's looking for a birthday present for Catherine. I narrowed it down to a necklace that would go well with a blue dress of hers and a boxed set of six leather-bound novels by Jane Austen, one of her favorites, but I couldn't decide by the time the big store closed, and I found myself out on

  State Street. I walked to the corner of Michigan and Madison, where the northbound motorcade from Truman's hotel would turn west for its long march to the Stadium. The only indication so far of the event was a lone elderly gentleman sitting in a folding canvas lawn chair on the sidewalk with a hand-lettered sign nailed to a stick that said TRUMAN AND BARKLEY–OUR TRUE SALVATION.

  "Wanted to make sure you got a good spot, eh?" I asked, identifying myself as a Tribune reporter and crouching down next to him.

  "Dang right!" he exclaimed, his voice betraying a slight twang. "I'm from down Missouri way and I knew some of Harry's people around Lamar, the place where he was born. Never did meet the president, though, so I figgered I'd at least lay eyes on the fella this one time. I'm eighty-four, so I ain't likely to git me another chance."

  "I don't know," I said after I'd taken down his name and address. "You look to me like you've got a lot of good years left in you, Cyril."

  He cackled. "You might just be right at that, lad. My daddy, he lived to be ninety-five. And my daddy's daddy, they say he was over a hunnert when he died, but nobody knowed for sure 'cause he didn't have no record whatever of his birth. That's the way things was back in them days."

  I congratulated the Missourian on his longevity and his loyalty to a native son, and started west on the north side of Madison. By now, little groups were gathering, and some of them had professional-looking signs, most of which read GIVE 'EM HELL HARRY. Others said things like CHICAGO FOR TRUMAN AND BARKLEY and KEEP THE G.O.P. WHERE THEY BELONG–AT HOME.

  At the corner of Madison and Clark, there he was: the 'red-white-and-blue man' from the Dewey parade four years earlier. "I'll bet you don't remember me, Mr. Davidson," I said as I went up beside him.

  He eyed me from beneath his tri-colored beanie with its propeller. "I surely do, sir," he said, bowing. "You are the fine gentleman from the Tribune who I had the pleasure of meeting on this very street four years ago." He may have been batty, but there wasn't a damn thing wrong with his memory.

  "But that was at a parade for Dewey," I said. "He won't be here until tomorrow night."

  "Oh, you are quite correct, sir. I am still a supporter of the great Mr. Dewey and I will be present at this very spot tomorrow to applaud him. I am here tonight to express my opposition to this Truman." He scowled as he pronounced the president's name and then spun his sign around so I could read it: LET'S BREAK THE DEMOCRATIC STRANGLEHOLD.

  "Aren't you afraid of being attacked and berated by the Truman supporters who are beginning to fill the streets?" I asked him.

  "I am capable of defending myself if need be, sir. And I am earnestly hoping some of these misguided souls might see my sign and engage me in conversation so that I can help them to see the error of their ways."

  "That's hoping for a lot."

  "It is all part of my mission, sir. Mr. Dewey has enlisted me in his cause."

  "Has he really?"

  "Oh yes. And I have reason to believe that after his election I will have the great honor to be named Secretary of the Treasury."

  "I seem to recall that the last time we met, it was Secretary of Agriculture you were hoping for."

  "Your memory is excellent, sir," he said, favoring me with a dreamy smile. "Treasury is a more highly valued post, as I am sure you know, and Mr. Dewey is rewarding me for my work in his 1944 campaign against King Roosevelt, who has gone to his reward, whatever that may be."

  "You figure Dewey is going to win this time?"

  "It is ordained," he said, looking skyward. "Yes indeed, ordained."

  I shook my head and began to move off, wondering at the religious tone I had heard so far. First the old fellow from Missouri with his 'true salvation,' and now the Dewey man's 'ordained.'

  The skies were darkening on this final week of Daylight Savings Time, and the crowds had thickened, parade onlookers sharing the sidewalks with suburbanites hustling west along

  Madison Street to the North Western Railway station to catch their homeward-bound trains. I stopped a few of the commuters, identifying myself as a Tribune reporter and asked if they were staying for the motorcade. "Are you kidding?" demanded a graying and prosperous-looking fiftyish man carrying an alligator-skin briefcase. "I wouldn't cross the street to see that son-of-a-bitch Truman. He's nothing more than the second coming of FDR, and without as much brains."

  Another commuter, at least ten years younger than the first, was equally dismissive. "Truman? No thanks. It's a wonder somebody hasn't taken a potshot at him by this time. This country deserves better." When I asked if he thought Dewey was better, he answered a question with a question: "How in the hell could he be worse than what we've got now?"

  The next station-bound person I stopped was a trim woman who looked to be in her early twenties, probably somebody's secretary. "Truman and the Democrats? No. My family–my dad and mom–have always voted straight Republican. And I can't see that ever changing for me either."

  I kept moving west, swept along by the inexorable tide of commuters. Finally I reached the station itself, at

  Canal Street, and the surge was over. Now, suddenly on a less-populated sidewalk, I had the next stretch to look forward to–that grimy section of West Madison Street that Chicagoans had known for decades as Skid Row, home to uncounted numbers of the city's down-and-out. Politicians and civic groups and other organizations termed as 'do-gooders' had railed for years against the squalid conditions in this district, but up to now, these blocks of Madison Street misery had seemed immune to alteration. As I walked west into this valley of lost souls, I felt a sudden chill, although the temperature was mild for this late date. The wind must have shifted, I told myself, although there wasn't even a breeze.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  S1 C3 R1 A1 G2

  (n) a lean or scrawny person or animal

  I hadn't set foot on Skid Row in the four years since the last presidential motorcade came this way, but it seemed at first glance as if nothing had changed. The ratty saloons still abounded, alternating with clothing resale stores, pawn shops, strip joints, and hotels. The 'hotels,' as they termed themselves, were two- and three- and four-story firetraps, 'flophouses' in the popular parlance, where the denizens of this sad urban stretch dwelt–if they could afford even the rock-bottom rates. Those who couldn't lived in parks or alleys in the summer and at places like the Pacific Garden Mission and the Salvation Army shelters in the winter.

  "Evening, Senator, can you spare a gent a few pennies for a bowl of soup?" a gaunt, hunchbacked scrag implored, clutching my sleeve. I started to shake him off, then reached into my pants pocket and laid two quarters in his grimy palm, knowing full well they might be spent on something other than soup.

  Other residents of the area–they were all too easy to spot–either wandered the sidewalks aimlessly and often unsteadily or gathered in clusters of three or four, smoking and nipping from pint bottles in paper sacks. I approached one suc
h huddle and asked its number if they looked forward to seeing the president pass by.

  "Is that who's headed this way tonight?" one snaggle-toothed specter asked. "Must be why so many cops have been a-racing by in their cars and on them motorcycles of theirs."

  "The president, huh?" another one ventured. "Why's he coming through here?"

  "Hey, dummy," a third snarled after a pull on the pint in the sack. "Don't you know nothing? President Truman, he's giving a speech out at the Stadium tonight. Passin' right by here pretty soon."

  "Who the hell cares?" the short and bald fourth member of the circle chimed in. "Do you think he gives a shit about any of us? Screw him, I say. Screw them all."

  "That's a terrible way to talk about the president," Snaggle-Tooth said, shoving the bald complainer, who pushed back before one of the others got between them.

  "Hey, hey, cut it out," the peacemaker implored. "We don't want no trouble here. We need to show the president some respect in our neighborhood. How's it going to look if we're fighting when he rides by?"

  I drifted away from the motley foursome, scanning the sidewalks on both sides of Madison for anyone who might be a visitor to the block and a good interview. But all I saw were the area's habitués, at least half of whom probably had no idea that the most powerful man on earth would soon be in their midst, if only for a few moments.

  The sound of a band came from the east, which meant the motorcade was now just minutes and blocks away. In the slim hope of finding someone interesting, I continued walking west and found myself staring up at a newly painted sign attached to a nondescript building and hanging out over the sidewalk. The sign's two words hit me like a slap upside the head: ARGO HOTEL.

  I passed through the doorway under the sign and found myself in an entry hall, where a wizened clerk of uncertain years wearing a derby hat and a sweat-stained undershirt sat sullenly behind a counter reading a pulp magazine that had a leggy blonde on the cover.