"Mother of merciful God," he said finally. He looked off across the room at nothing in particular, as if he were trying to fashion some thoughts in the dark space of the empty newsroom. "This is either one elaborate hoax or one wonderful newspaper story we're onto. Right now, all we can do is assume and hope to holy hell it's real."
I said, "We're in a rush, but I think I ought to hold off on going up to Boston, just for the day. This town is going to flip over these stories, especially yours, and we both ought to be around to handle the fallout."
Almost as if the scene were scripted, at that precise moment, on the small color television on Havlicek's desk, a photo of the front page of the day's Boston Record appeared behind a rookie anchorman still assigned to the early-morning shift on CNN. Havlicek saw me riveted to the television and grabbed for the remote control to turn up the volume.
"— The newspaper reports that the FBI has misidentified the attempted assassin in the shooting of President Clayton Hutchins last week-"
Havlicek hit the mute button, and I heard the ringing sound of my telephone on the other side of the room. I did my usual sprint and grabbed the phone on the fourth ring, barking, "Flynn."
"Why the hell didn't you tell me you had these stories?" It was the rather angry voice of Samantha Stevens.
"Excuse me?" I said, buying time, unsure of the right answer.
"I spill my fucking guts to you last night about not knowing about Wyoming, and you can't even tell me what the rest of the fucking world is going to be told in twelve hours?"
"Hey there, easy does it," I said. "Last I checked, you're not my editor. You're not even a subscriber, not that I know of, anyway. And if you'll think back, I did tell you to read the Record today. I told you that Clawson wasn't who you people say he is. As I recall, you told me, "Case closed.""
She said, getting angrier, "Look, I'm in a position to help you, but unless I know it goes two ways, you can go fuck yourself. Good luck."
With that, she hung up. No matter. My telephone was ringing off the hook here. Next up was my close, personal friend Ron Hancock of the FBI.
"Well, you've stirred up quite a hornet's nest," he said, flat, always flat, regardless of the words.
"Go ahead," I told him.
"The director has his entire top staff in his office now. There's so much chatter between here and the White House this morning that they might as well just hook up two cans to a piece of string."
I said, "That's interesting, but what does it all mean? Who is this guy you have over in the morgue, why is the FBI fucking up a presidential assassination attempt, and is the FBI fucking up, or covering up?"
"To questions one through three, don't know," he said, and I believed him.
I asked, "Do you think they're going to admit they made a mistake?"
"No idea," he said. "Those decisions are made about ten pay grades above mine. And let me tell you one thing: the FBI doesn't admit it made mistakes. If they do admit they made a mistake, know that it wasn't a mistake. Take that to the bank."
He paused, then added, "I wanted to ask you, you have anything else coming? Anything else I should know about as I work this from within?"
"Shot our load today," I said. "But I suspect there's a lot more work to do. I'll be in touch."
I hung up just in time to pick up another call.
"Sorry," Samantha Stevens said, sounding anything but. "I dropped the phone before."
"Right onto the cradle?" I asked.
"Look," she said. "I still think we can help each other. Let's keep our options open."
"Deal."
"Good. I have to go. All hell is breaking loose over here, thank you very much. I'll talk to you later."
When I turned around, Peter Martin was standing by my desk, almost levitating, he was so overjoyed, reading the latest wire service dispatch that recounted salient facts from the stories, with full attribution to the Boston Record. Thus far, no one, not the wires, not the networks, was able to obtain the photographs and autopsy reports that Havlicek had used to put our story together, so they had to repeatedly attribute all the information to the Record.
"We have this city by the balls today," Martin said, making a little vise grip with his chalky palm that made me flinch back ever so slightly.
I didn't engage. It was time for me to fill him in. "We have to talk," I said. "We have to talk about an anonymous source and a guy named Curtis Black."
He said, "The fuck are you talking about? We have a day of follows here on what may be the most important couple of stories this newspaper has ever broken."
"Let's go into your office," I said.
And we did. And after I was done with all the sordid details, from the first calls in the hospital to the uncertain encounter at the Newseum to the note on the airplane to the telephone tip in the dark of that very morning, Martin looked a shade lighter than Casper the ghost, only not as friendly. As I sat in one of his leather club chairs in front of his coffee table with my legs crossed and the weight of my upper body resting on one elbow, he paced around the office, silently, pushing his hair around so that it flew up at odd angles. At one point, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol, throwing a few in his mouth without the benefit of water, as if they were Good 'n' Plenties.
He said, "I understand why you didn't, and I am not going to hold it against you, but I wish you had told me earlier."
I nodded.
He said, "Tell me your gut feeling. Is this guy on the level?"
"Well, he had the Clawson part right at the same time Havlicek was getting it. He's sure urgent about all this. He sounds educated.
He's not spinning crazy conspiracy theories. He is going to considerable expense to make sure we take him seriously. I really don't know enough to draw a judgment, but I know just enough to know that we have to keep playing his game, or we're going to regret it for the rest of our careers."
"Yeah, you're right," Martin said, collapsing onto his couch, fading into the soft pillows.
"And what about this Graham and Wilkerson tip?" Martin asked.
"Been pursuing it, but I've gotten nothing back. Nothing. I just don't see it being true, or someone, somewhere would have given me a wink or a nod."
We both fell quiet for a moment, until he said, "Does this shooting ultimately win the election for Hutchins?"
While I considered an answer, he provided one of his own. "It seems like Hutchins has gotten a modest boost over this whole thing, but maybe not as good a boost as they expected. The public really doesn't seem to know what to make of all this confusion over the investigation.
They've edged toward Hutchins in the polls, but it's been anything but decisive. I bet it's driving the White House crazy."
I nodded and said, "Yeah, I think you're about right. After the shooting, I know I thought Hutchins would jump ahead, especially with that Reaganesque quote that the ambulance driver remembered, though wrongly. The White House thought the same thing. And now, I don't know. I can't get my mind around how this is playing out, or even if the election had something to do with the assassination attempt."
"I suspect we'll find that out soon enough," Martin said. "I want you to hang in here today, mop up with Havlicek, and late tonight or tomorrow, you get on up to Chelsea and work like a tyrant on this guy Black. I have a hunch we'll know whether this information is any good in the next days or so."
I said, "Sounds like a plan." At least, it was the closest thing I had to one in this topsy-turvey thing we call life.
thirteen
It was around 1:00 P.m. when White House Press Secretary Royal Dalton slid open the pocket doors that separate the press office from the briefing room and walked awkwardly up to the podium. He was about an hour late.
Hutchins was laying over in Washington amid a week-long campaign trip.
The room was electric this day. There is nothing that makes reporters happier than catching the government, especially a law enforcement agen
cy, in a mistake or a lie, and this one about Tony Clawson could cut either way. Sure, other print reporters were frustrated at having been beaten to the story. The hell with them. Television reporters, they don't really care. The hotter the story, no matter who breaks it, means the more air time for them, and that means greater recognition-on the streets, at family weddings, and on the telephone with any of the young blond hostesses at the city's hottest restaurants when they call at five in the afternoon hoping for an eight-o'clock reservation, table for four.
Every seat in the room was filled with a reporter. Every inch of wall space was taken by cameramen who appeared layered on top of each other, creating a terrace of lenses, ready to beam this scene around the world in a matter of minutes. The lights were bright and hot, causing that unique-and, yes, unpleasant-odor of sweat and wool.
Dalton looked particularly uneasy today, his already pasty features washed even whiter, with the sole exception of the darkening circles under his beady eyes.
"I have a couple of policy announcements," he said, trying to maintain a casual demeanor as he looked around the room in something that more accurately approached fear. He went on to talk about a Medicare reform proposal that Republicans had been trying to sell for years, recycled, obviously, in time for some campaign season coverage.
After that, he opened the session to questions, and first up was Moose Myers, senior White House correspondent for CNN. Moose was actually anything but. On the screen, he looked big and foreboding, usually because the camera shot him from close range, so he'd fill the picture.
In person, he was five foot six, maybe five-seven in his favorite heels. I don't know why I bring this up. Whenever I talk to television guys, I tend to dwell on their features and come to the inevitable conclusion that aside from my reportorial pride, I could do that.
Moose asked: "Has President Hutchins talked to the FBI director this morning, and has he lost faith in the FBI'S ability to conduct this investigation, given the revelations in today's Boston Record?"
Sitting smack in the middle of the room, about three rows behind him, I made a mental note to extend my thanks for that high-profile mention.
It doesn't get much better than that. I actually had the feeling that a few of my colleagues were looking at me, and trust me when I say this is a tough lot to impress. You could walk on water, and the first thing most of them would want to do is inspect your shoes, and, finding them wet, ask, "Any reason why you went out and ruined a perfectly good pair of Cole-Haan wing tips?"
Dalton had obviously patched together a precisely worded answer to this question with senior White House aides and probably even Hutchins himself, then rehearsed it frontward and back over the past several hours. Here it came:
"The president," he said, "has spoken to Director Callinger of the FBI by telephone this morning. They had a pleasant and informative talk.
They have been keeping in regular contact since the assassination attempt. You've all seen reports"-the Record stories, I'd point out-"that there has been a security alert here at the White House, and the president has been receiving regular updates on that.
"The president was assured today that the investigation remains on track and is moving ahead with significant progress. The president is obviously in no position to discuss the particulars of the investigation. He was the victim. He is not a detective. But I am told the FBI will have something more to say on this shortly."
Immediately, a dozen hands and as many voices filled the air. Myers, the CNN reporter, talked down his colleagues. Asking a question in this kind of setting is like a verbal fencing match. You have to stay at it longer and harder, and eventually the vanquished sit down and shut up. "Royal, you didn't answer me. Has the president lost faith in the abilities of the FBI, given what the Boston Record is saying today about the misidentified shooter and the fact that they had previously identified a specific militia group, but were unable to stop the assassination attempt?"
Every time he mentioned my paper, I subconsciously felt myself push my shoulders back a bit further. I also felt the urge to hug him, but those are my own private issues. If I really had, I could see CNN using that footage in a commercial for how revered Moose is by his colleagues.
"Look," Dalton said. "The president believes today what he's always believed, and what, I would argue, most of America believes: that the FBI is the most talented, most exhaustive, most prestigious law enforcement agency in the world. He hasn't changed his opinion because of a newspaper story in Boston."
Dalton spit out those last words as if they were some distasteful bit of phlegm that had worked its way from his throat into his mouth. But if he thought he could outsmart the gathered press-and pathetically, he probably believed he could-he was about to learn the folly of his ways. Immediately, the Associated Press reporter shouted out, "So the president believes that the FBI was right, that the dead man is actually Tony Clawson?"
Good one. Dalton hesitated at the podium. You could see him twitching if you watched closely enough. "As I indicated before," he said, gathering a dismissive tone, "the president is the president of the United States. He is not a detective. He does not involve himself in the particulars of this investigation. He leaves that up to the trained inspectors with the most successful, most notable law enforcement agency in the world."
The Washington Post reporter asked loudly: "Does the president still have faith in that agency and its director?"
Dalton: "He does not see any reason, at this juncture, not to have faith in the FBI. He wants to let them proceed with their investigation, which is certainly difficult to do, given the intense publicity and the second-guessing that we're seeing now in the news media."
My first inclination was to stand up and tell him that the story wasn't second-guessing, it was just laying out a set of obvious facts, most notably, that the FBI misidentified a would-be presidential assassin.
My second inclination, the winning one, was that it might be unbecoming to stand and defend my own story. Significantly, Dalton had not called it wrong, and no one in the room thought it was.
The Baltimore Sun reporter, a twenty-year veteran of the press room who was demonstrably annoyed first with being beaten, and second with the mealymouthed responses from Dalton, asked, "Well, did the FBI director tell the president that they have the right identity or the wrong identity on the body of the alleged shooter? And is the FBI director prepared to offer his resignation?"
"You're not going to get much more from me on this one," Dalton said.
"The president is a victim in this shooting. The particulars on this case will have to come from the FBI, and as I said, I think they'll have something for you people in a short while."
This was interesting. Dalton effectively passed on the question of whether the FBI director would resign because of a Record story. This was also becoming futile, though it would be another twenty minutes before anyone in the room would be willing to let go.
Basically, from my read, Dalton was shying away from saying that the president had full faith in the FBI. He had very purposefully not used those words, probably out of fear that the FBI had screwed up and knowledge that they were about to make an announcement to that effect.
Dalton was also going to great lengths to distance the president from the investigation, repeatedly calling him a victim. This in itself was odd. White House aides prefer to depict the president as someone all-powerful, in control, not some hapless casualty of unfortunate circumstance. They were obviously being cautious about this, not setting anything in stone, leaving themselves an escape route. The question was, why?
As Dalton went around and around with reporters, my pager sounded.
It's one of those high-tech beepers with the text messages that shows me the most recent wire reports every few hours. This message was far better than the norm, which usually consists of this: "Call Peter Martin immediately." I read my beeper twice to make sure I saw it right. "Jack, you're an asshole. Come see me ASAP C.h."
I couldn't well get up in the middle of this briefing, mostly because the only way into the West Wing was directly past the podium, where all my colleagues, as well as Royal Dalton, would look at me with a mix of fear and loathing.
"Royal, is it the view of the president that the shooting attempt has hampered his ability to win reelection, or has it aided his cause because the country had the chance to see him perform in a difficult personal situation?" That was Jonathan Flowers with CBS News, with a subtle way of trying to reengage Dalton in the give-and-take, make him feel and act less like Larry Speakes, Reagan's press secretary, whose relationship with the news media was so awful that he would routinely stare down a particularly difficult questioner and bellow, "You're out of business." Then he'd ignore the reporter for the next week.
"I've said all I'm saying on assassination-related topics," Dalton seethed from the podium. He paused, then added icily, "Next subject."
Fuck him.
"Royal," I said, and I could feel all eyes riveted on me. I wasn't just some casual questioner here. My name was on that story, and there's the operating assumption from every other reporter and White House aide that the writer always knows more than he's written. "As president, as commander in chief, as someone generally charged with protecting our country and government, shouldn't President Hutchins be taking a keen interest in the progress of this investigation and the abilities of the investigators, given the potentially serious consequences on the well-being of the administration?"
I liked it. Dalton froze at the podium, furiously flipping through the briefing book of his mind for an answer. Finally, he punted. "Look, he is monitoring this regularly and closely. He is as concerned as anyone else with today's report. But he is also leaving the particulars of the investigation to those who are expert investigators."
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