by Mario Puzo
Dr. Annaccone was the medical science adviser to the President of the United States. He was also the director of the National Brain Research Institute and the administrative head of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Security Commission. Once at a White House dinner party, Klee had heard him say that the brain was such a sophisticated organ that it could produce whatever chemicals the body needed. And Klee had simply thought, So what?
The doctor, reading his mind, patted him on the shoulder and said, “That fact is more important to civilization than anything you guys can do here in the White House. And all we need is a billion dollars to prove it. What the hell is that, one aircraft carrier?” Then he had smiled at Klee to show that he meant no offense.
And now he was smiling when Klee walked into his office.
“So,” Dr. Annaccone said, “finally even the lawyers come to me. You realize our philosophies are directly opposed?”
Klee knew that Dr. Annaccone was about to make a joke about the legal profession and was slightly irritated. Why did people always make wise-ass remarks about lawyers?
“Truth,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Lawyers always seek to obscure it, we scientists try to reveal it.” He smiled again.
“No, no,” Klee said and smiled to show he had a sense of humor. “I’m here for information. We have a situation that calls for that special PET study under the Atomic Weapons Control Act.”
“You know you have to get the President’s signature on that,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Personally I’d do the procedure for many other situations, but the civil libertarians would kick my ass.”
“I know,” Christian said. Then he explained the situation of the atom bomb and capture of Gresse and Tibbot. “Nobody thinks there is really a bomb, but if there is, then the time factor is crucially important. And the President refuses to sign the order.”
“Why?” Dr. Annaccone asked.
“Because of the possible brain damage that could occur during the procedure,” Klee said.
This seemed to surprise Annaccone. He thought for a moment. “The possibility of significant brain damage is very small,” he said. “Maybe ten percent. The greater danger is the rare incidence of cardiac arrest and the even rarer side effect of complete and total memory loss. Complete amnesia. But even that shouldn’t dissuade him in this case. I’ve sent the President papers on it, I hope he reads them.”
“He reads everything,” Christian said. “But I’m afraid it won’t change his mind.”
“Too bad we don’t have more time,” Dr. Annaccone said. “We are just completing tests that will result in an infallible lie detector based on computer measurement of the chemical changes in the brain. The new test is much like the PET but without the ten percent damage risk. It will be completely safe. But we can’t use that now; there would be too many elements of doubt until further data are compiled to satisfy the legal requirements.”
Christian felt a tinge of excitement. “A safe, infallible lie detector whose findings would be admitted into court?” he said.
“As to being admitted into a court of law, I don’t know,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Scientifically, when our tests have been thoroughly analyzed and compiled by the computers, the new brain lie-detector test will be as infallible as DNA and fingerprinting. That’s one thing. But to get it enacted into law is another. The civil liberties groups will fight it to the death. They’re convinced that a man should not be used to testify against himself. And how would people in Congress like the idea that they could be made to take such a test under criminal law?”
Klee said, “I wouldn’t like to take it.”
Annaccone laughed. “Congress would be signing its own political death warrant. And yet where’s the true logic? Our laws were made to prevent confessions obtained by foul means. However, this is science.” He paused for a moment. “How about business leaders or even errant husbands and wives?”
“That’s a little creepy,” Klee admitted.
Dr. Annaccone said, “But what about all those old sayings, like, ‘The truth shall make you free’? Like, ‘Truth is the greatest of virtues.’ Like, ‘Truth is the very essence of life.’ That man’s struggle to discover truth is his greatest ideal?” Dr. Annaccone laughed. “When our tests are verified, I’ll bet my institute budget will get chopped.”
Christian said, “That’s my area of competence. We dress up the law. We specify that your test can be used only in important criminal cases. We restrict its use to the government. Make it like a strictly controlled narcotics substance or arms manufacturing. So if you can get the test proven scientifically, I can get the legislation.” Then he asked, “Exactly how the hell does that work anyway?”
“The new PET?” Dr. Annaccone said. “It’s very simple. Physically not invasive. No surgeon with a blade in his hand. No obvious scars. Just a small injection of a chemical substance into the brain through the blood vessels. Chemical self-sabotage with psychopharmaceuticals.”
“It’s voodoo to me,” Christian said. “You should be in jail with those two physics guys.”
Dr. Annaccone laughed. “No connection,” he said. “Those guys work to blow up the world. I work to get at the inner truths—how man really thinks, what he really feels.”
But even Dr. Annaccone knew that a brain lie-detector test meant legal trouble. “This will be perhaps the most important discovery in the medical history of our time,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Imagine if we could read the brain. All you lawyers would be out of a job.”
Christian said, “Do you think it’s possible to figure out how the brain works, really?”
Dr. Annaccone shrugged. “No,” he said. “If the brain were that simple, we would be too simple to figure it out.” He gave Christian another grin. “Catch-22. Our brain will never catch up with the brain. Because of that, no matter what happens, mankind can never be more than a higher form of animal.” He seemed overjoyed by this fact.
He became abstracted for a moment. “You know there’s a ‘ghost in the machine,’ Koestler’s phrase. Man has two brains really, the primitive brain and the overlying civilized brain. Have you noticed there is a certain unexplainable malice in human beings. A useless malice?”
Christian said, “Call the President about the PET. Try to persuade him.”
Dr. Annaccone said, “I will. He is really being too chicken. The procedure won’t damage those kids a bit.”
The rumor that one of the White House personal staff would sign the petition to remove Kennedy from the presidency had set off warning signals in Christian Klee’s head.
Eugene Dazzy was at his desk surrounded by three secretaries taking notes for actions to be taken by his own personal staff. He wore his Walkman over his ears but the sound was turned off. And his usual good-humored face was grim. He looked up at his uninvited visitor and said, “Chris, this is the worst possible time for you to come snooping around.”
Christian said, “Eugene, don’t bullshit me. How come nobody’s curious about who the rumored traitor on the staff is. That means everybody knows, except me. And I’m the guy who should know.”
Dazzy dismissed his secretaries. They were alone in the office. Dazzy smiled at Christian. “It never occurred to me you didn’t know. You keep track of everything with your FBI and Secret Service, your stealth intelligence and listening devices. Those thousands of agents the Congress doesn’t know you have on the payroll. How come you’re so ignorant?”
Christian said coldly, “I know you’re fucking some dancer twice a week in one of those apartments that belong to Jeralyn’s restaurant.”
Dazzy sighed. “That’s it. This lobbyist who loans me the apartment came to see me. He asked me to sign the removal-of-the-President document. He wasn’t crude about it, there were no direct threats, but the implication was clear. Sign it or my little sins would be all over the papers and television.” Dazzy laughed. “I couldn’t believe it. How could they be so dumb?”
Christian said, “So what answer did you give?”
> Dazzy smiled. “I crossed his name off my ‘friends’ list. I barred his access. And I told him I would give my old buddy Christian Klee his name as a potential threat to the security of the President. Then I told Francis. He told me to forget the whole thing.”
Christian said, “Who sent the guy?”
Dazzy said, “The only guy who would dare is a member of the Socrates Club. And that would be our old friend Martin ‘Take It Private’ Mutford.”
Christian said, “He’s smarter than that.”
“Sure, he is,” Dazzy said grimly. “Everybody is smarter than that until they get desperate. When the VP refused to sign the impeachment memorandum, they became desperate. Besides, you never know when somebody will cave in.”
Christian still didn’t like it. “But they know you. They know that under all that flab you’re a tough guy. I’ve seen you in action. You ran one of the biggest companies in the United States, you cut IBM a new asshole just five years ago. How could they think you’d cave in?”
Dazzy shrugged. “Everybody always thinks he’s tougher than anybody else.” He paused. “You think so yourself, though you don’t advertise it. I do. So does Wix and so does Gray. Francis doesn’t think it. He just can be. And we have to be careful for Francis. We have to be careful he doesn’t get too tough.”
Christian Klee paid a call on Jeralyn Albanese, who owned the most famous restaurant in Washington, D.C., naturally named Jera’s. It had three huge dining rooms separated by a very lush lounge bar. The Republicans gravitated to one dining room, the Democrats to another, and members of the executive branch and the White House ate in the third room. The one thing on which all parties agreed was that the food was delicious, the service superb, and the hostess one of the most charming women in the world.
Twenty years before, Jeralyn, then a woman of thirty, had been employed by a lobbyist for the banking industry. He had introduced her to Martin Mutford, who had not yet earned the nickname “Take It Private” but was already on the rise. Martin Mutford had been charmed by her wit, her brashness and her sense of adventure. For five years they had an affair that did not interfere with their public lives. Jeralyn Albanese continued her career as a lobbyist, a career much more complicated and refined than generally supposed, requiring a great deal of research skill and administrative genius. Oddly enough, one of her most valuable assets was having been a tennis champion in college.
As an assistant to the chief lobbyist for the banking industry, she spent a good part of her week amassing financial data to persuade experts on the congressional finance committees to pass legislation favorable to banking. Then she was hostess at conference dinners with congressmen and senators. She was astonished by the horniness of these calm judicial legislators. In private, they were like rioting gold miners, they drank to excess, they sang lustily, they grabbed her ass in a spirit of old-time American folksiness. She was amazed and delighted by their lust. It developed naturally that she went to the Bahamas and to Las Vegas with the younger and more personable congressmen, always under the guise of conferences, and even once to London to a convention of economic advisers from all over the world. Not to influence the vote on a bill, not to perpetrate a swindle, but if the vote on a bill was borderline, when a girl as pretty as Jeralyn Albanese presented the customary foot-high stack of opinion papers written by eminent economists, you had a very good chance of getting that teetering vote. As Martin Mutford said, “On the close ones it’s very hard for a man to vote against a girl who sucked his cock the night before.”
It was Mutford who had taught her to appreciate the finer things in life. He had taken her to the museums in New York; he had taken her to the Hamptons to mingle with the rich and the artists, the old money and the new money, the famous journalists and the TV anchors, the writers who did serious novels and the important screenplays of big movies. Another pretty face didn’t make much of a splash there, but being a good tennis player gave her an edge.
Jeralyn had more men fall in love with her because of her tennis playing than because of her beauty. And it was a sport that men who were mere hackers, as politicians and artists usually were, loved to play with good-looking women. In mixed doubles, Jeralyn could establish a sporting rapport with partners, flashing her lovely limbs in their struggle for victory.
But there came a time when Jeralyn had to think of her future. At forty years of age she was not married, and the congressmen she would have to lobby were in their unappealing sixties and seventies.
Martin Mutford was eager to promote her in the high realms of banking, but after the excitement of Washington, banking seemed dull. American lawmakers were so fascinating with their outrageous mendacity in public affairs, their charming innocence in sexual relationships. It was Mutford who came up with the solution. He, too, did not want to lose Jeralyn in a maze of computer reports. In Washington her beautifully furnished apartment was a refuge from his heavy responsibilities. It was Mutford who came up with the idea that she could own and run a restaurant that would be a political hub.
The funds were supplied by American Sterling Trustees, a lobbyist group that represented banking interests, in the form of a five-million-dollar loan. Jeralyn had the restaurant built to her specifications. It would be an exclusive club, an auxiliary home for the politicos of Washington. Many congressmen were separated from their families while Congress was in session, and the Jera restaurant was a place where they could spend lonely nights. In addition to the three dining rooms and lounge and bar, there was a room with TV and a reading room that had a copy of all the major magazines published in the United States and England. There was another room for chess or checkers or cards. But the ultimate attraction was the residential area built on top of the restaurant. It was three stories high and held twenty apartments, which were rented by the lobbyists, who loaned them out to congressmen and important bureaucrats for secretive liaisons. Jera was known to be the very soul of discretion in these matters. Jeralyn kept the keys.
It amazed Jeralyn that these hardworking men had the time for so much dalliance. They were indefatigable. And it was the older ones with established families, some with grandchildren, who were the most active. Jeralyn loved to see these same congressmen and senators on television, so sedate and distinguished-looking, lecturing on morals, decrying drugs and loose living and emphasizing the importance of old-fashioned values. She never felt they were hypocrites really. After all, men who had spent so much of their lives and time and energy for their country deserved extra consideration.
She didn’t like the arrogance, the smarmy self-assured smugness of the younger congressmen, but she loved the old guys, such as the stern-faced wrathful senator who never smiled in public but cavorted at least twice a week bare-assed with young “models”—and old Congressman Jintz, with his body like a scarred zeppelin and a face so ugly that the whole country believed he was honest. All of them looked absolutely awful in private, shedding their clothes. But they charmed her.
Rarely did the women members of Congress come to the restaurant and never did they make use of the apartments. Feminism had not yet advanced so far. To make up for this, Jeralyn gave little lunches in the restaurant for some of her girlfriends in the arts, pretty actresses, singers and dancers.
It was none of her business if these young pretty women struck up friendships with the highly placed servants of the people of the United States. But she was surprised when Eugene Dazzy, the huge slobby chief of staff to the President of the United States, took up with a promising young dancer and arranged for Jeralyn to slip him a key to one of the apartments above the restaurant. She was even more astonished when the liaison grew to the status of a “relationship.” Not that Dazzy had that much time at his disposal—the most he spent in the apartment was a few hours after lunch. And Jeralyn was under no illusion as to what the rent-paying lobbyist could get out of it. Dazzy’s decisions would not be influenced, but at least he would, on rare occasions, take the lobbyist’s calls to the White House so that the
lobbyist’s clients would be impressed by such access.
Jeralyn gave all this information to Martin Mutford when they gossiped together. It was understood that the information between the two of them was not to be used in any way and certainly not in any form of blackmail. That could be disastrous and destroy the main purpose of the restaurant, which was to further the atmosphere of good fellowship and earn a sympathetic ear for the lobbyists who were footing the bill. Plus the fact that the restaurant was Jeralyn’s main source of livelihood and she would not allow it to be jeopardized.
So Jeralyn was very much surprised when Christian Klee dropped in on her when the restaurant was almost empty between lunch and dinner. She received him in her office. She liked Klee, though he ate at Jera’s infrequently and had never tried to make use of the apartments above. But she had no feeling of apprehension; she knew that there was nothing he could reproach her for. If some scandal was brewing, no matter what newspaper reporters were up to, or what one of the young girls would say, she was in the clear.
She murmured some words of commiseration about the terrible times he must be going through, what with the murder and the hijacking, but was careful not to sound as if she were fishing for inside information. Klee thanked her.
Then he said, “Jeralyn, we’ve known each other a long time and I want to alert you, for your protection. I know what I’m about to say will shock you as much as it does me.”
Oh, shit, Jeralyn thought. Somebody is making trouble for me.
Christian Klee went on. “A lobbyist for financial interests is a good friend of Eugene Dazzy and he tried to lay some bullshit on him. He urged Dazzy to sign a paper that would do President Kennedy a great deal of harm. He warned Dazzy that his using one of your apartments could be made public and ruin his career and his marriage.” Klee laughed. “Jesus, who would ever have thought Eugene was capable of a thing like that. What the hell, I guess we’re all human.”