by Alan Glynn
In the evenings, he goes out and meets people, striking up casual conversations in bars. During one such encounter, with a dentist from Cleveland, he decides that he’s going to start playing cards. The dentist is in town for a poker game at a club out on Route 301, over the Maryland state line, and when he mentions the sums of money that are routinely involved, Sweeney figures he should give it a shot. He can play poker, just about, and gin rummy, but he doesn’t see why he couldn’t up his game considerably with minimum effort. It would be an easier way of making money than tricking innocent punters in hotel lobbies – though making money per se is not his motivation here. It’s a question of convenience. He needs walking-around money. He also wants to send some home to Laura.
Despite how it looks, he hasn’t actually walked out on Laura. Or Tommy.
Obviously.
So he tags along with the dentist. It takes them forty-five minutes to get to the neon-lit strip of 301 somewhere between the town of Waldorf and the Potomac River Bridge. When they arrive at the ‘club’, which is one of many, it’s very different from what Sweeney had imagined. There’s no mahogany bar, no thick carpets, no dress code. The front section is two long rows of slot machines, with a clientele comprised mainly of hicks and locals who are out to have a little fun. At the back, there are a few smaller rooms with tables set up for various card games, and the dentist retreats to one of these. Casing out the rest of the joint, Sweeney soon finds himself standing at a blackjack table, and although it’s not a game he’s ever played before, twenty minutes watching the dealer is enough to convince him that he could play it.
But not only that. He reckons he could beat the odds as well.
The goal for both the dealer and the player in blackjack is to draw cards that get as close to a total of twenty-one as possible without going over. Aces count as either one or eleven, and this is decided by the player. Jacks, queens, and kings all count as ten, and each numbered card counts as its face value. Now, if you weren’t thinking about it, you would probably assume that during play one card has the same chance of being dealt as any other. But as Sweeney stands there, watching closely, it strikes him that in fact the odds on this depend on which cards are in play and which are still in the deck – and that the advantage can therefore shift, sometimes in the dealer’s favor, sometimes in the player’s. So if he could keep track of the cards – of which ones were in play and which had yet to be dealt – and if he varied his bets accordingly, wouldn’t that give him a competitive edge?
After a while, he manages to get a spot at one of the tables and starts playing.
It takes a great deal of concentration, and the first few times he busts, but soon enough he gets a handle on things and his initial thirty-dollar stake increases to seventy-five dollars. This isn’t a lot, but he sees the potential. He returns over the next few nights – to a different club each time – and sees his winnings slowly climb into the hundreds. Then into the thousands.
With his pockets now bulging, Sweeney buys a black Pontiac sedan at a police auction for 750 dollars in cash and a used Remington portable typewriter for ninety dollars.
He wires 500 dollars to Laura. Then he decides to open a bank account.
But before he does that, he reckons there’s something else he should probably do, and that is to adopt – or acquire – a new identity. Given his circumstances, Sweeney doesn’t feel comfortable revealing information about himself, and since he’s finding it increasingly difficult to remain anonymous, or even get away with just being cagey, he makes arrangements through a guy at one of the Mob-run clubs he’s been playing at to get a fake driver’s license and a social-security card.
But he’s not sure what name to give himself.
He mulls it over for a while and in the end he settles on Tom Monroe.
*
Over the next few weeks, there’s a lot of talk around town about a dynamic young man who keeps showing up at Georgetown cocktail parties and expounding ideas that people find either disturbing or exciting. He has views on everything – from the McCarthy hearings to segregation to nuclear weapons – and he is refreshingly fearless about expressing them.
But just who is he?
He’s from New York and his name, it appears, is Tom Monroe. Everyone assumes he’s a writer of some kind, or a professor. He has an easy charm about him and a compelling manner that people find irresistible. But is there a particular reason he’s appeared on the scene now? Rumor has it that he might be angling for a job at the State Department or the Treasury, or that he might be eyeing a senate seat in next year’s midterms.
But is he a Republican or a Democrat?
No one seems to know.
And that’s how Sweeney would like to keep it.
It’s difficult, though. He has a hard time containing himself in conversation, reining in the impulse to share every thought that crosses his mind. Certain people have a higher tolerance for this than others, and these are the people he needs to seek out. Because it’s not just intelligence that counts, or intuition, or empathy. What shapes and informs the personality of a charismatic individual more than anything else is the power they have to influence others.
Sweeney has experienced this for himself recently, albeit in small doses. He certainly knows it when he sees it – or, rather, when he doesn’t quite see it, he knows why. At newspaper columnist Joe Alsop’s house, for example, he has met various characters who would generally be considered exceptional, but there’s usually something holding them back, and it never takes Sweeney long to identify what that is.
His closest brush with the real thing – apart, obviously, from his brief encounter with Marilyn – comes after nearly a month in DC. By this stage, having attended committee hearings, sat in the public galleries of both houses, and devoured the Congressional Record, he’s thoroughly bored with the entire political process – though, to be fair, it’s not so much the process as the people. And they’re not all boring. He has a morbid fascination, for example, with Joe McCarthy. The tail-gunner wields considerable power, it has to be said, even if it’s less the result of charisma than of a certain deftness at pulling off what is essentially a parlor trick. I have here in my hand a list of names. Fred Lawson, another newspaper columnist Sweeney has befriended, introduces him to McCarthy one day at La Salle du Bois on M Street. The senator, with his chief counsel Roy Cohn in tow, is passing their table on the way out and he stops to chat for a moment. Sweeney can tell right away that McCarthy is sizing him up.
‘Where you from, Mr Monroe?’ he asks.
Sweeney looks at the senator, at his hooded eyes, at the beads of perspiration on his brow.
‘Oh, I think I’m going to plead the Fifth on that one.’
McCarthy frowns and then pretends he didn’t hear correctly. Cohn’s eyes widen in disbelief.
Fred and the senator make small talk for a moment, agreeing that a poker game is long overdue.
As they leave, Cohn leans in to McCarthy and whispers something. It strikes Sweeney that a whiff of desperation has worked its way into their little double-act. If this is DC politics, he thinks, it belongs in the schoolyard. But then, a couple of days later, on the sidewalk outside the same restaurant, Sweeney is talking to Joe Alsop’s brother, Stewart, when a car pulls up and out get three men – one of them a tall, jug-eared, bug-eyed tornado of a fellow that Sweeney takes a moment to place as new Senate Minority Leader, forty-four-year-old Lyndon Johnson from Texas.
This, he thinks, is an entirely different ball game.
‘Stew, you old son of a gun,’ Johnson booms, stopping directly in front of Alsop, towering over both of them. ‘What’s going on?’ He looks at Sweeney. ‘And who’s your buddy here?’
Alsop does the honors. ‘Senator Johnson, Tom Monroe.’
Sweeney surrenders his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Senator.’
‘Oh, call me Lyndon, son. It’s easier.’ He pulls his head back slightly, examining Sweeney for a second. ‘So, are you another one of these j
ournalist fellas like this bow-tie-wearing reprobate here?’
‘Not exactly, sir, no,’ Sweeney says, and then, feeling a strange compulsion to engage, announces something that he didn’t know himself until this very moment. ‘But I am writing a book. It’s going to include a chapter on McCarthy.’
Johnson doesn’t seem particularly impressed by this and asks Monroe if he couldn’t find something more productive to be doing with his time.
Sweeney smiles. ‘I have to say, sir, and with all due respect … but if the Democratic leadership were a little more aggressive in taking a stand against McCarthy, there might not be a need for that chapter in my book.’
‘Hold on a damned second—’
‘I can see why you wouldn’t have much of a stomach for the fight, he’s a dangerous man, but surely if anyone is going to bring him down, sir, it should be you.’
‘Now don’t you go bringing my stomach into this,’ Johnson says, and pats his belly. ‘But let me tell you, Mr Monroe’ – he pokes Sweeney in the chest with his finger – ‘that son of a bitch is dangerous, you’re right, but if you want to kill a snake, you got to get it in one blow, there ain’t no second chance. McCarthy is riding high, sure, but as soon as the fever cools a little, that’s the time to act.’ He nods his head, in full agreement with himself.
In the background, Johnson’s two-man entourage seems anxious to get moving. Alsop is also clearly uncomfortable.
This is more important, though.
‘Yes, I understand that, sir,’ Sweeney says, ‘but I reckon the fever is cooling and that McCarthy has more or less exhausted his inventory of exposable communists. I mean, as I hear it, the joke going around now is that party membership is declining to such a degree that cells are mainly made up of government double-agents.’
Johnson stares at him, a flicker of bewilderment crossing his face. ‘Ha,’ he says. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘Yes. And as you know, McCarthy is not going to stop, so what that means is he’s going to overreach, he’s going to attack someone or some institution so revered that it’ll all backfire on him and there’ll be no route home.’
‘Well, exactly,’ Johnson says, patting his belly again. ‘But he hasn’t done it yet, has he? And as I explained to you, son, that’s what we have to wait for. We’ve got to be patient.’
Sweeney stops, realizing he’s just been making Johnson’s argument for him.
How did that happen?
‘Stew, give my best to your brother,’ Johnson says, turning to go.
‘You want to know the way to get him?’ Sweeney says.
‘Tom,’ Alsop mutters under his breath.
Johnson turns back. ‘Oh, and you’re going to tell me, is that it? Why don’t I just go ahead and make you my chief of staff, get this over with?’
‘You couldn’t afford me, Senator.’
Johnson laughs, but it has an edge to it. He approaches Sweeney, puts a hand on his shoulder and grips it tightly. Sweeney feels a surge of energy run through his body. Johnson’s face is inches away now and he can smell his hungry breath, see the telltale lines in his skin – the decades of bending everyone to his will, of cajoling and browbeating his way to one victory after the next.
‘Let’s hear it, son,’ Johnson says, ‘but make it quick – there’s a sixteen-ounce sirloin steak in there with my name on it.’
Sweeney doesn’t blink. ‘TV, sir.’
‘What?’
‘TV. Get him in front of the TV cameras. Whoever his next target is, or whenever the next hearings are, arrange it somehow for one of the networks to do a live telecast. And forget those nightly round-ups they edit from kinescope recordings, do all of it, gavel to gavel. You remember the Kefauver hearings a couple of years back? People ate that stuff up, and they loved Kefauver, but do you really think they’re going to love Joe McCarthy? I mean, hour after hour of the guy? That’s how you destroy him.’
Johnson relaxes his grip on Sweeney’s shoulder. ‘Oh my Lord.’
‘Let people see what a bully he is. Let him do the work.’
‘Right,’ Johnson whispers, withdrawing his hand slowly.
‘TV, Senator. It’s the thing this year. Don’t take it from me. Ask Dinah Washington.’
‘That’s pretty fucking smart, son. Why didn’t I think of that? You hungry? You want a sirloin steak?’
In the split second before Sweeney shakes his head and says no, he sees this man’s political career stretching out in front of him like strands of multi-colored bubblegum – sticky, relentless, entangling everyone, but in the end a mess, a waste.
And he doesn’t want any part of it.
‘No.’
‘No?’
He also feels dizzy under the hot afternoon sun.
‘No, Senator, but thank you all the same.’ He starts backing away. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m … I’m late …’
‘All right, son, no problem,’ Johnson says. ‘I’ll just get your telephone number off of Stewie here.’
Back in his hotel room, Sweeney gets out the typewriter he bought and sets it up on a small table at the end of the bed. He puts in a new ribbon, feeds in a sheet of paper and starts clacking away.
16
‘Why me?’
‘It wasn’t you specifically, Ray. I knew Ned had a son. I thought about him periodically over the years.’ He shrugs. ‘I wanted to see if he was still alive, or … if there was anyone else.’
‘Why? What for?’
‘I didn’t get it back then, Ray. None of us did, really. We were Company men, or corporate men, in suits. There was nothing you could tell us. We knew everything.’ He pauses. ‘And look how that turned out.’
I wait for him to say more, but he just stares down at the wooden slats.
‘That’s not much of an answer, Mr Proctor.’
‘I know, Ray. But what do you want me to tell you?’
‘Some facts?’ I glance up at Molly, expecting bewilderment and irritation. I definitely see bewilderment. I also see a fleeting smile, and I’m grateful for it. I look back at Proctor. ‘You told me my grandfather’s death wasn’t a suicide. Let’s start there.’
Proctor clears his throat and shifts his position on the bench. ‘I also told you he was one of the most extraordinary men I’d ever met. And when I first met him, by the way, he wasn’t Ned Sweeney, he was Tom Monroe.’
‘What? I don’t—’
‘That was the name he was going by, Tom Monroe. This was out in California, Santa Monica—’
‘What? Are you—’
‘Listen to me, Ray. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t. Now, 1953, Santa Monica, the RAND Corporation. This guy Tom Monroe shows up looking to speak with John von Neumann. Tell me you know who that is, right? Smartest guy who ever lived. Game theory, computers, the hydrogen bomb, artificial intelligence? Johnny set the whole show on the road.’ He pauses. ‘So he and Monroe meet, they get talking, they become friends. What are they talking about? Who knows. Certain people are interested, though. Because even then, as far as the Pentagon was concerned, and the Defense Department, and the Joint Chiefs, von Neumann was infallible, he was it. So they started paying attention.’
‘You mean the CIA?’
Proctor holds his hands up, palms out. ‘Look, Ray, everything was murky in the fifties. What do you want me to tell you? But yeah, it was because Monroe came out of nowhere and suddenly he’s hanging out with John von fucking Neumann. I mean, please. Word was also filtering out that someone with the same name was causing a stir back in DC, and that Lyndon Johnson of all people was going crazy trying to track him down.’
‘LBJ? That’s ridiculous.’
‘Apparently they’d met, I don’t know how, and there was a series of phonecalls – Johnson wanted Monroe to come and work for him, Monroe refused and then disappeared. A couple of weeks later, he shows up in California.’
I want to stand up and leave at this point, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
‘This m
akes no sense,’ I say. ‘I thought it was the CIA who gave him the MDT in the first place. You’re making it sound like he was already on it.’
‘He was. It’s a long story.’
‘WELL FUCKING TELL IT TO ME THEN.’
This is pretty loud. Molly jumps, but Proctor doesn’t react. Janek comes to the door. He opens it and looks in.
‘It’s okay, Janek,’ Proctor says. ‘We’re fine.’
Janek doesn’t seem convinced, but he withdraws.
Proctor looks at me. ‘I was on the RAND campus at the time and I was assigned to keep an eye on Tom Monroe, and in the course of doing that, I met him a few times. I had a few conversations with him. And I’ll say it again, he was extraordinary.’
‘How so?’
‘Look, it’s an overused word, but he had charisma. It was like electricity, just talking to him. I was originally at RAND to do statistical analysis of data relating to mental illness and he knew all about the field, he understood the new psychodynamic approach, he’d read the DSM, the first edition that had just come out. But it wasn’t only that, he’d loop and spin a conversation in ways you couldn’t even imagine.’
‘So what happened?’
Proctor looks up at Molly, then back at me. ‘Someone recognized him. Someone who knew him as Ned Sweeney. It was a few months later, but—’
‘Who recognized him?’
‘It was an Agency guy. He saw a photograph in the newspaper. There was some event, a big dinner in a hotel, a lot of the RAND people were there, and so was Monroe. This guy followed up on it. He later claimed that Ned had stolen a quantity of MDT back in New York.’
‘Stolen it?’
‘Yes, it was—’
Janek reappears at the door. He’s got a cell phone in his hand. ‘Mr Proctor?’ he says, and holds out the phone. Proctor takes it.