And Joe knew. That was his new confidence. It wasn’t cocksureness—he’d always had that. This was quieter. He could do anything, everything he wanted, with Neilia. She’d take care of him. She’d take care of everyone else, too. He had the big piece of the puzzle locked in; now he could see the outlines of the others. He could live even more in the future, eyes to the horizon ... because he knew Neilia saw the path at their feet.
When he graduated, he moved straight to Syracuse. He could have moved into the big house on the lake—plenty of room, no problem, he was welcome ... but you had to understand how Joe was about this. They weren’t married yet. It might not have looked right. He took a room in a boardinghouse—he’d live there for more than a year—while he ran back and forth to Neilia’s.
That’s what he did his first year of law school: back and forth to the Hunters’ house ... a little waterskiing in the afternoons ... dinner dates at spaghetti joints with Neilia. Then, too, there was football or basketball with his new pals at school ... and riding around in the Chevy that Joe, Sr., gave him for a present. Joe told his pals he always had a new car in high school—brand-new Chrysler 300—whenever he had a date or something ... you know, his dad ran the dealership. He preened, too, about his driving—without question, Joe was the best driver ever. “You know I broke my record: four hours and seventeen minutes to Wilmington—six-hour trip.”
That’s the same way he was about sports: Biden was just ... too good. Some guys thought he must have lettered at Delaware—they started hearing stories that Biden broke every record at Delaware ... for God’s sake, he was Little All-American ... the only reason he’d fool with Syracuse intramurals was to get in shape for his tryout with the Baltimore Colts. ... That’s the way he carried himself: “If there was an Olympic event in football,” Joe said, “I’d be in the Olympics.”
In short, if Biden could have sucked as hard as he blew, Syracuse would have been a seaport.
But not with the guys who knew him best ... and not about academics. Most of his friends figured if they didn’t copy their notes for Biden (and make sure the notes got to Neilia so she’d read them) ... there was no way in hell Joe was going to make it to the second year!
Joe himself blew hot and cold about his prospects. Most of the time, he was aw-shucks ... Syracuse was going to cut a third of the class—it’d be a damn miracle if he didn’t flunk. ... But if anyone else suggested that Biden might not make the cut—well, Joe was ready to step outside and settle who was smarter. “I’ll tell you something you guys may not know: I can learn more of this shit in one day ... than you’re gonna get if you study three weeks!”
Joe sure as hell wasn’t going to be a grind. He didn’t need to be one of the four or five top guys in the class—the ones who’d get the call from the big Wall Street firms. He didn’t want to be a professor or a Supreme Court clerk. He was going back to Delaware; he just had to get through, pass the bar. And Syracuse couldn’t be that tough ... that’s how Joe had it figured: They took him, didn’t they?
They’d take a hundred twenty guys (it was almost always guys, in those days) and let about eighty-five come back for the final two years. It wasn’t that the competition was so hot—some of those guys you wouldn’t let fix a flat. But the cut was enough to put the wind up a lot of them. They worked like rats in a box! They’d get the assignments and skip lunch, run to the library.
Joe would never do that! ... Problem was, he’d never run to the library—he’d stay in the students’ lounge. The other problem was, the rats in the box saw that. Hell, you’d have to be blind not to see it: Biden didn’t think he had to scramble, like them.
That’s how he got into trouble, in fact—with that shithead Artie Cooper. It was in Legal Methods class, which was no big deal, just a course on how to cite a case, type up a brief ... sort of trade-school stuff. Joe didn’t pay it much mind. It was form, not content. He knew he could write. He’d hire someone to type the stuff up.
But in this course, they’d divide the students into groups, and then they’d grade one another’s papers. The point was, the teachers wanted to see not only how you wrote a brief, but how you could rip one apart, too.
So Joe handed in his crappy brief—he didn’t spend much time on it. He found a Fordham Law Review piece on the subject—“diversity jurisdiction”—and he took several cases from that. Thing was, when he took the facts of those cases from the law review, he took the journal’s description of the facts. And then he copied the footnotes, too.
Anyway, Artie Cooper got Joe’s paper for correction, and of course he saw where the whole thing came from—hell, Joe didn’t try to hide it: he footnoted the law review piece at the end ... but only once. So Cooper started acting like Joe was trying to pull a fast one—those weren’t his citations, his research. ... Well, Joe was trying to pull a fast one, but no faster than normal, no faster than the rest of the shit he had to pull to get through law school. But Cooper went mental! Artie didn’t just rip up the research—he took Joe’s paper to the teacher!
Well, the teaching assistant was a first-year guy, a local lawyer helping out, and he didn’t know what to do with this, so he took it to the professor ... and then the dean! All of a sudden, it was a federal case. The dean wanted Biden to write a letter—his version of what happened.
Of course, Biden was sick to death. Not to mention pissed off. What he would have liked to do was hammer Cooper into the ground like a tent stake. But that wouldn’t help. Plus, then everybody would know. It would look awful. Nobody was gonna say that Joe Biden cheated. That just wasn’t him ... so what he had to do was write his letter, and show up at a faculty meeting to defend himself: he didn’t mean to dissemble. He didn’t know—word as a Biden. ... He hadn’t realized it mattered, where those citations came from, if he was only using the facts of the cases—he wasn’t taking their conclusions! It was just a mistake!
Well, Joe was good on his feet. And he had them, in that room that day—he could feel it. They liked him ... they believed him. But they couldn’t just drop it—not after shithead Artie turned it into Murder One ... so what they did was, they flunked him in that course, and let him take it again. Big deal.
He took it again, and did fine—got a B, which was a pretty good grade on Joe’s transcript.
By the end of that first year, it was Joe who was just about mental. He must have read a million pages in the last three weeks. One test—for the whole damn year!—he had to get hot. Game day!
But he did it. By a hair’s width. He ranked eightieth in the class, and they cut from eighty-eight down. ... Well, what of it? He made the cut, like he said he would. ... Hell, he had it figured from the start.
And that summer, he married Neilia. It was just like he’d imagined. No—it was better. It was a Saturday, August 27, 1966, and the day was glorious, with sunlight pouring down on three hundred guests at the country club, and sparkling on the water at the foot of the Hunters’ lawn. They did the service at St. Mary’s, Our Lady of the Lake—though Neilia was not Catholic, and didn’t plan to convert.
It was just like her, how she thought about that: she did consider converting—her religious beliefs and Joe’s were so alike—but then she thought she might somehow, someday, come to resent her conversion. And she didn’t want anything like that to come between them. She didn’t want to have anything to hold over Joe’s head. She knew herself so well, see ... just how she was.
And she knew what she wanted—to the smallest detail. Her bridesmaids’ gowns were long and completely straight from the neck to the floor—chiffon—in a shade between deep pink and deep red. She could have had their shoes dyed the same shade, but no—she wanted them green, to pick up the ivy in their bouquets of three white roses. Her own dress was stunningly simple: white brocaded lace that took her shape to the waist, with a long straight skirt, no train. She wore a chapel veil, with a headpiece intertwined with ivy, to match the greenery and shoes of her bridesmaids, and the matching ivy to set off her own white rose
s in profusion. ...
She was, as Joe would often tell her, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
But he looked every bit her match that day, in his striped pants, gray tailcoat, and pearly silver waistcoat. In fact, all the Bidens looked splendid: Joe’s sister, Val (every bit the princess of her own world), was Neilia’s maid of honor. And handsome brother Jimmy stood next to Joe, as best man. And the father! Such a distinguished man!
There were some guests at the country club who thought the Bidens must be quite a family in Delaware ... to have such style—must be rich! Everything about them looked so perfect. ... Wasn’t that part of their crowd landing in a seaplane? Right there on the lake!
Neilia, of course, knew it was one of Joe’s classmates who’d rented the seaplane. She had no illusions of Biden wealth, Biden power. (On their second date, she had to slip Joe a twenty under the table, so he could pay the tab at the restaurant.) But she was very proud to become a Biden, and she understood, with her unerring instinct, exactly what it meant, how important it was for everything to look perfect. ... That’s how she explained it to friends, later: you just had to understand how Joe was.
31
Saturday Night
IT WAS A MEASURE of his own mentality of siege that Hart didn’t call the cops when he spotted the stakeout. Still, he couldn’t quite believe it. It was so obvious, it was ... comedic. There must have been five or six of these guys on the street and sidewalk across from his townhouse, and he saw they meant to look like neighbors—dressed in jogging suits, windbreakers, and such—but they kept checking with each other, at their car. Who the hell would be so amateurish?
He’d spotted the guy in the parka first—a parka—in May! He pointed him out to Donna Rice—it was Saturday night, they were walking to Hart’s car, on their way to Bill Broadhurst’s for dinner—and Hart told her, they were being watched. They turned right away and went back to the house. Gary meant to be calm. He was calm. It was just, suddenly ... he was walking too fast for her.
Hart’s front window, the kitchen window, gave a view of the street. He peeked out. Were they cops? Capitol Hill was a rough neighborhood, a lot of drugs ... but they were watching his house. Were these guys from another campaign? What campaign desperadoes would dare! ... No, they had to be press—were there cameras? Was there a van, or something, with a hidden camera?
Who were these guys?
What could he do?
Whom should he call?
He thought about the cops, but that would be a mess, and humiliating. What would he say? There’re these GUYS, watching me, they’re always WATCHING ... you have to make them STOP!
Yeah, sure, okay, Senator, just calm down now.
Was he supposed to have his own muscle—guys in bulging suits, who’d take care of snoopers? Uh, nice car you got there, fellas. Shame if it should get smashed up, parked out here on the street like this.
What had his world come to? He was being stalked, at his own house. Whoever these guys were, whomever they represented. Hart was sure of one thing: he was their prey. The awful part was, he wasn’t even shocked. He’d felt hounded for weeks, ever since announcement—those stories ...
Later—years later—he’d be asked: Wasn’t he pissed off? Furious? But after all that time (maybe because of it), Hart would not admit to anger.
He’d say he realized that night: it would never stop. He saw those guys on his street and he knew: the whole campaign, he’d be prey. They’d never leave him alone, with this stuff ... his marriage, his debts, his name, his age ... he was facing another year and a half of fighting for his life—one damned thing after another, he said—five years, or ten, if he won. And there wasn’t any way he could change that ... change them.
He would say: he felt “just sad.”
And worried.
But he was in his own home.
He hadn’t robbed any banks.
He didn’t shoo Donna Rice away, or shove her into a closet.
He didn’t call anybody—save for Broadhurst. “There’s somebody watching this place,” Hart said. “I don’t know who. ... I don’t think we ought to leave. Why don’t you bring the dinner over here?”
Like anyone besieged, Hart’s first thought was to shut the gates and stay in. He’d be safer—he’d wait. Maybe they would go away.
The guys from Miami never had a doubt:
Big story!
Amazing!
Part of it was the way it happened—it was like fate. It started with the rumors. Then Tom Fiedler, The Miami Herald’s political big-foot, wrote a column defending Hart against the rumors, and some woman called to complain: How can you defend him? He’s having an affair with a friend of mine!
Who’s the friend?
No names were named.
Fiedler tried to blow off the caller, but she phoned again. She offered pictures. She reported on calls from Hart to her friend. She said they went on a cruise—Hart and this gorgeous blonde! She said her friend was flying from Miami to D.C., this weekend, to meet Hart!
Well, you couldn’t not sniff around.
And when the caller’s dates checked out, and Hart headquarters said Gary had canceled Kentucky that weekend and was taking some time off in Washington, well ...
“What flight?” Fiedler asked his source.
She said she’d call back, but she didn’t.
So it was just a roll of the dice when the Herald’s top investigative hit man, Jim McGee—two hundred pounds, all swathed, for reasons unknown, in a parka—sprinted for a cab outside the newspaper office, whipped the driver to a lather for the airport, and made standby on Eastern’s flight 996, the first nonstop from Miami to Washington that Friday night.
He saw three blondes—two pretty ones. He walked up the aisle of the plane to get a good look. He tried to watch them deplane. One of the blondes met a boyfriend. The other was met by a dark-haired woman ... no Gary Hart, no campaign types.
What could McGee do? He got Hart’s address—Sixth Street, SE—and went to take a look. At the end of Hart’s block, and across the street, there was a park. McGee found a bench, sat down to watch the door, and an hour later, here came Hart ... with the second blonde from the plane!
Holy shit! It’s HER!
It was like God Himself had thrust this juicy pork chop into their mouths! ... After that, it was a rush of phone calls, rent-a-cars, and fresh manpower (a photographer!) from Miami ... Chrissake, get up here! ... They had to tie this down!
It was Friday night when McGee spotted Hart and the blonde leaving Hart’s house, late Friday night when McGee saw Hart and the blonde reenter the house. It was Saturday morning when the rest of the Herald troops boarded a plane in Miami, almost noon Saturday by the time they showed up on Sixth Street, with three more rent-a-cars. Someone, besides McGee, had to see Hart and the blonde! (Hey! Two sources! This was, you know, an investigative team!) ... So they’re sitting with the pork chop in their mouths, for hours—it’s HUGE, there’s juice on their chins—but none of the Miamis had seen Hart all day, and then it was Saturday night, which meant ... shit! They were gonna miss the Sunday paper.
Finally, 8:50 P.M., darkness again, and McGee, in the alley, saw Hart and the woman walking from the back of the house. McGee made for the street, whispered to Fiedler, who trotted by in his jogging suit. Fiedler crossed the street to the park so Hart wouldn’t spot him: Hart would know his face. Hart and the woman were headed for Hart’s car. ... But then, they turned and walked back to the house.
Fiedler thought Hart looked spooked.
This was big!
Of course it was ... Hart was in there, in his house, with this, this ... this cutlet! From MIAMI! ... She was young, she was blond, she was ...
Who was she?
They didn’t know.
What was she doing in there?
They didn’t know.
But, come on—what do you think they were doing in there? Anyway, what did it matter?
This was legit—a political s
tory—because the guy had spent the last few weeks denying ... well, denying stories like this!
Broadhurst came over with Donna’s friend, Lynn Armandt—and with barbecued chicken for dinner. But no one paid much attention to dinner. Hart was fidgety, stiff with worry and suppressed rage. What were those guys after?
He’d been set up! He was sure he was being set up. They’d been following him! ... Or maybe, the girl. Maybe they followed the girls! Maybe one of these girls in his own kitchen ... had set him up! At once, Hart was distant, removed, and angry. Everybody felt it. Broadhurst thought they should leave—him and the girls—they should just get out. Broadhurst always knew what the other fellow wanted—or needed.
In the aftermath, months later, some of Hart’s people would blame Bill Broadhurst for the whole mess. They’d say he was the one who invited Lynn Armandt to Washington, he was the one who made that weekend happen. There were true believers who could excuse Gary for hanging around with two young women—but they’d never forgive him for Broadhurst! The guy was a fixer—wasn’t he? ... He was a political back-scratchin’ lawyer who made it big when his pal Edwin Edwards got to be Governor of Louisiana. The true Hart wonks wanted to know: Why would Gary connect himself, politically, with that sort of backroom dealer?
But it wasn’t all politics with Broadhurst.
32
Bill and Gary and Lynn and Donna
RAY STROTHER, HART’S OLD ad man, introduced Bill Broadhurst to Hart after the ’84 campaign. Broadhurst did a couple of political events, at his Washington house, for Hart—and they hit it off.
Like so many people who attracted Hart, Broadhurst was a man of personal ease. If Bill was sitting with Washington politicos, he could chat urbanely about press and polls. With good ol’ boys from Louisiana, Billy B. could drink hard and tell raunchy stories.
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