“Okay,” he said, palms out. “I admit it. It’s about love.” He cocked his head and gave me one of his billion-dollar smiles.
I thought he was joking. “Come on!” I said. “The Sun is a serious paper. All the serious people think so, anyway. It wins a Pulitzer Prize every other year. You’re just a businessman. What makes you think you can do better?”
“The Sun is awful, and you know it! It’s boring. It’s constipated. It runs interminable series like “Whither Rwanda?” and “The Future of the Foreign Service.” The editors are so worried about offending readers they’ve stopped having fun. I mean, honestly, do you read the thing? I’ve only been here a few months, and I’m already tired of it. The writers all sound like they have a rod up their ass. You know the first thing I’m going to tell the staff if we win? Lighten up!”
“What’s the second thing you’ll tell them?”
“I don’t know. Cut back on expensive trips. Stop wasting paper clips. How should I know? It’s going to be fun, that’s all. Wait and see.” He wagged a finger at me.
I had rarely seen him so animated. He was in stride, closing in on his quarry. But I was such a fool I didn’t begin to understand how complicated his pursuit really was, and I certainly didn’t see the real prize that was drawing him on.
He was still doing tricks with his yo-yo when the doorbell rang and the butler showed Ariane Hazen into the garden. She was wearing the same plain brown dress she’d worn that morning, but she’d added a French silk scarf for Galvin’s benefit.
Galvin took her by the arm and steered her toward the chairs by the pool. She had brought her bathing suit in a little gym bag, but I knew they weren’t going to swim. She was too excited by what Galvin had set in motion. This was patricide. They were going to oust her father, and she had the knife in her hand.
“You were magnificent this morning,” said Galvin. “What happened after we left?”
“It was noisy. There was a lot of arguing, but we agreed on a few things.” She explained that the two families had voted quickly to reject the PalmTrust offer. That was easy. Then, after much discussion, they had agreed that management changes were necessary at the paper. Mr. Hazen wasn’t happy about that, but he would have to live with it. Finally, they had taken up Galvin’s offer. That was the hardest part. Mr. Hazen was insisting that Galvin was manipulating the whole thing.
“Where are the votes, Ariane?” asked Galvin. “Who’s got control?”
“We do, I think.” She said it tentatively, girlishly, still not sure of her power. “My brother told Daddy at the end of the meeting that he’ll vote the 1963 trust in favor of your offer. Daddy said he’s still opposed, so there’s a tie—which means those shares will be voted by the trustee, who’s a New York lawyer. He’ll do what the board wants. But I don’t think it will come to that.”
“Why not?” Galvin’s big body moved in the chair. This was the moment.
“Because after the meeting, Mr. Crosby spoke with my father alone. The Crosbys have let Daddy have his way for twenty years, but they’re not pushovers, especially the old man. Mr. Crosby told Daddy it was over. The Crosbys won’t turn down an offer of fifty-five dollars a share for their stock. They can’t afford to. Which means they’ll vote their shares with you. So it doesn’t matter about the 1963 trust. You’re there.”
“Then do it,” said Galvin.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Pull the trigger!” he shouted. “Now! Call the question. Convene another meeting of the family tonight. The board will have my documents by late this afternoon. The directors are already being polled informally, by telephone. Do it! Don’t wait. Don’t let this slip out of our fingers.”
“Yes, of course.” She was shaken momentarily. He had frightened her with his sudden flash of temper. It was a moment when the cloak had parted, and you could see the raw power that was normally hidden. Galvin saw that he had blundered, and put one of his huge hands gently on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said, instantly recalibrating his voice and manner. “I’m just so excited about what we can do at the Sun. I get carried away. But I mean it about moving quickly. The longer we wait, the easier it becomes for Wolfe. When will the family be getting together again?”
“We have a meeting tomorrow morning. Would that be too late?” She sounded anxious, afraid he might become angry again.
“Just right. My lawyer will call your father’s lawyer tonight.” He took her hand. “We’re almost home,” he said, giving her another kiss on the cheek. “I hope you’ll never regret this.”
She pulled back from his kiss this time, surprised by his words. “That’s a silly thing to say. How could I regret it?” Her question hung in the air, requiring an answer. She caught Galvin with her eyes, rimmed with years of disappointment and regret, and forced him to look back.
“I’m forty-seven years old,” she said. “This is the most important thing I’ve ever done—probably the most important thing I’ll ever do. It has to be right. Promise me that it will work.”
He was wise enough not to sweet-talk her. “I can’t promise you I’ll succeed,” he said. “But I will do my best to make the paper better and more profitable. I’m a complicated person—like you, probably—but for me, this is simple. I wouldn’t let any of us take the risk if I wasn’t confident I could succeed.”
She studied him, holding her hand over her eyes to shield the afternoon sun. “I wasn’t sure I could go through with this, so I asked my friend Candace Ridgway about you. I needed some advice, and she’s smart about people.”
The stillness in the garden was total for a moment. “What did Candace Ridgway say?”
“She said it was the right thing to do. She said the paper needed a change, and you looked like a decent person who would do a good job. And I trust Candace. That’s why I know I won’t regret it.”
IT WAS OVER QUICKLY. At the end, Galvin was like a bull-fighter who plunges the sword in all the way to the hilt, so that the bull crumples to its knees even as it is charging toward him.
Galvin stayed at home by the telephone the next morning. He sent me out at one point to buy some cigarettes. He never smoked any of them, but he seemed reassured to know that they were there. Every so often he would throw his head back and laugh, or mumble some phrase of wonderment from his tie-dyed youth, like “Can you believe this?” or “Far out!” That enthusiasm was part of his secret. He hadn’t lost the ability to be surprised by his good fortune.
He sent his attorneys over to negotiate final details with the Hazens and the Crosbys. Mr. Hazen wanted a severance package, in addition to the money for his stock. Galvin had anticipated this, and his lawyers had a proposal ready, which, after several rounds, was approved. Mr. Crosby wanted an extension of his consulting contract, and that too was quickly settled.
Ariane Hazen wanted a continuing role at the paper, so Galvin promised she could run its new charitable arm, The Washington Sun and Tribune Foundation. Everyone wanted evidence that Galvin actually had the money to complete a tender offer that would be worth more than a billion dollars. A senior representative of a New York investment bank was on hand to explain the complex financing, which would involve a syndicate of banks that had lent money to Galvin over the years. Under the terms of the agreement, Galvin would retain control only of the Hazen-Crosby voting stock—the rest would be refloated to the public.
Just before noon, one of his lawyers called to say that a deal was near. Galvin told him to send champagne up to the conference room, and then had his chauffeur drive him there so that he could be present for the final agreement. He had arranged for a photographer to record the historic handshake between a worn, embittered Harold Hazen and an ebullient Sandy Galvin. There was a family picture too, with Ariane gazing up at her white knight. The other Hazens and Crosbys had empty smiles, but you knew what they were thinking: fifty-five dollars a share, in cash!
Galvin went to the Sun’s headquarters that afternoon to meet with th
e board of directors. Only half of them had managed to get to Washington on such short notice; the rest were linked by conference call. Galvin and his lawyers made a detailed presentation that lasted nearly two hours. The directors asked a few questions, but from what Galvin told me later, it was obvious that the fix was in. He had several friends on the board. It turned out that he’d begun quiet conversations with them soon after he arrived in Washington.
The board authorized a brief statement that was released at four o’clock, as rumors were circulating that a new bid for the Sun was imminent. It said that the directors had received an offer from an investment group headed by Carl S. Galvin, and that the board’s preliminary determination was to recommend that shareholders should accept it. There was a new flurry of buying, in expectation that PalmTrust would top Galvin with a revised offer of its own. But the real estate king was silent. After the market closed, PalmTrust announced that it was withdrawing its bid and would tender its shares to Galvin.
Galvin returned to the Georgetown house at five-thirty, looking tired but immensely relieved. “We did it,” he said. “Thanks for your help.” That was all. He wasn’t a strutter in victory. Perhaps he regarded success as inevitable, and thus uninteresting.
He went upstairs to change into a fresh shirt for the round of newspaper and television interviews that was about to begin. Galvin had arranged that too. A procession of reporters marched through the living room, taking fifteen-minute slices of the new publisher. He had me in the pantry, safely out of the way, but I watched through the door as he gestured, scowled, shrugged, opined. He was the man of the hour; everyone wanted a piece of him now.
IT IS A NATURAL impulse, surely, to ask after the magician has completed a trick: How did he do it? I grant that nobody likes the kid who tugs at Grandpa’s sleeve when he’s doing his famous Magic Pink Ball trick and says, “Look! He’s got another pink ball right here in his hand!” But it was my fate to be that kid, now and forever. So as Galvin was taking his bows as the new owner of the Sun, I found myself reviewing the events of the past few weeks, trying to understand how he had put together this invincible assault with so little apparent effort. Had I missed something?
What was obvious, on reflection, was that Galvin had planned the operation meticulously, like a military campaign. He had prepared the financial details of his offer long before that first meeting with the Hazens and the Crosbys—his touching statement that he “hadn’t planned” to offer himself as white knight had been nonsense. Of course he had—he’d costed out his offer to the last dollar. But the white knight had needed an adversary to threaten the damsel. Where had the mysterious black knight come from, and how had Galvin known so much about his moves? But obviously I suspected the answer. I worked for the magician; I didn’t need to look in his pocket to know that he was hiding something. I hadn’t any moral qualms about it, really—these people were all rats, as far as I was concerned—but I wanted to be sure it was true.
So I asked him. That was a near-fatal mistake, as it turned out, but it was in character. I called Galvin two days after his purchase of the Sun was announced, as he was winding down the round of interviews, and said gravely that I needed to see him immediately about a very important matter. He laughed out loud—he wasn’t used to such seriousness from me—but said I should come to the Georgetown house right away.
It was midmorning when I arrived. He was sitting outside in a silk dressing gown, sipping coffee and reading the Sun.
“This really is a terrible paper,” he said as he saw me coming. “It’s like one of those new tomatoes they sell in the supermarket—big and red and juicy, but it has no flavor. The life has been squeezed out of it—you know what I mean? It will be so easy to make it better.”
“You stole it,” I said.
“What are you talking about, boy? Sit down and have some coffee. Have you lost your mind?”
“You stole it,” I repeated. “You arranged for PalmTrust to make its offer so that you could top it. That’s how you knew so much about their hostile offer—because you had set it in motion. There never was a black knight—other than you.”
“Now, that is an outrageous accusation,” he said. “What you are describing would be illegal.” I thought I saw a trace of a smile on his lips. “And besides, you don’t have any evidence.”
“Maybe not, but it’s true, isn’t it?” I was looking him square in the eye, something a court jester never did. “Tell me the truth. I’m not just a bag carrier. I want to know.”
“Be careful, David,” he said. “Opportunity is about to knock. Good things are about to happen. Don’t blow it.”
“I could ask the SEC what they think. I’ll bet they could get to the bottom of this pretty damn quick.” His self-confidence annoyed me. I didn’t want him to think he could just manipulate me, the way he had done everyone else. I wanted to be in on the joke—part of the scam. He saw that, thank goodness, before we went any farther.
“Let’s make a deal, you and me, right now. You won’t push me about business details, and I won’t push you about journalism. Okay? There are a lot of things you don’t know about this transaction, and this is one of them. Do we understand each other?”
I nodded. That was as much of a confirmation as I was going to get, or needed. It was enough, for now, simply to know the truth—or what I imagined it to be.
“Good.” He relaxed. “Now let me tell you another thing you don’t know. I have decided to appoint a new editor for the Lifestyle section. And that is going to be my own trusted lieutenant, Mr. David Cantor.”
He smiled and shook my hand. He loved bestowing presents.
“Hey, great!” I said. That was an idiotic response, but frankly, I was overwhelmed. This was the sort of job I would have dreamed about, if I hadn’t foresworn ambition.
“I hope that means yes. You suggested it yourself a few weeks ago, and I decided it was a good idea. You’re a troublemaker. You don’t care about offending people, and that’s what I need right now—a bomb thrower who has no ties to the old regime. So, do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” I said, still numb. I was as happy as an unhappy person can be. There was a nagging question, then and later, of whether I had been anointed as his viceroy, or simply bought off. That was a disturbing thought—that I was really just like the Crosbys and the Hazens, and he had figured out my price—but I could live with it.
I CALLED THE OWNER that night, to tell her that I was quitting Reveal. I should have done it in person, but I was afraid she would make a scene, and I couldn’t handle that. You’d think it would have felt good to tell her I was taking a hike after so many years of humiliation—she was still paying me just $48,000 a year, for God’s sake!—but it was sad. I was all she had left. We had limped through the last issue—I decided finally to do the cover story on “Washington’s Power Hairdressers.” The printers were now threatening a lawsuit, after the ruse with the unsigned check. And at the end, we hadn’t even been able to afford delivery for about a third of the circulation, and stacks of the Power Hairdressers issue were piled up in the offices on Connecticut Avenue.
“I have some sad news,” I told the owner. “At least, I hope you’ll think it’s sad news. If you don’t, then it’s even sadder.”
“What is it?” she asked in a louder voice than I expected, leading me to suspect that cocktail hour had already begun.
I couldn’t just say it flat out. It was like shooting an old dog. “We’ve had a good run, you and I, some good times.”
“No, we haven’t. The magazine is going bankrupt. We have failed completely. People have stopped reading us. They don’t even care anymore whether we run their pictures. How can you say that we’ve had a good run?”
“Well, we tried.” I didn’t want to get into an argument with her, and besides, she was right. The magazine was a piece of shit. “Listen, there’s something important that I have to tell you.”
“You want to change the name again? Fine. Call it whatever you wan
t. I don’t care anymore. Lush, Moist, Throb, Flaccid. It doesn’t matter. You can call it Blow Job, for all I care.”
“It’s not that. I don’t want to change the name. I like Reveal. It’s grown on me. No, it’s something else.”
“You want to be paid. Of course you do. I’m sorry. Maybe you’d like something from one of the catalogues. How about The Sharper Image? They have nice things. Or some meat from Balducci’s.”
“I’m quitting.” There wasn’t any easy way to say it. “I’m taking another job. Power Hairdressers was my last issue.”
“Oh, God!” The line went quiet. I thought she’d had a heart attack, but eventually, after fifteen seconds or so, I heard the sound of weeping. “It’s over,” she said between sobs. “My baby is dead.”
This was even worse than I had feared. The woman was unhinged. “You can find another editor,” I said. “I’ll help.”
The offer of charity infuriated her. Her self-pity was replaced with indignation. How dare I offer to help? That was intolerable, the notion that she might need assistance from a clod like me. She would never sink so low. “I don’t want your help, you bastard. I thought you cared about journalism!”
“I do. It’s just that I got a better offer.”
“Ha!” she cut in. She didn’t want to hear what it was. “Whatever it is, it’s too good for you. I should have listened to Annabelle Paige. She warned me that you hated women.”
The conversation was degenerating. “I’m sorry it’s ending this way,” I said. “I’m grateful for all the help you’ve given me. I’ll clean out my office tomorrow morning.”
“You’re a shit!” She hung up. When I got to the office the next morning, the lock had already been changed.
TEN
GALVIN DECIDED TO THROW HIMSELF A VICTORY celebration—a black-tie dinner dance, no less—at his Virginia mansion. It was his way of announcing to Washington that its newspaper—known for sagacious editorials and worthy local reporting, but not for its sense of fun—was in glamorous new hands. The invitations went out a few days after he closed the deal with Harold Hazen. They were printed on thick, creamy paper and stuffed into massive envelopes lined with gold foil, like invitations to a wedding. There was something delightfully childlike about Galvin’s enthusiasm. He had bought himself a fantastic billion-dollar toy, and he couldn’t wait to show it off to the other kids.
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