This far in, and finally a usable quote. Hutchins is concerned. As Dalton sought other topics, on this day, there were a round of questions on the Medicare reform proposal, on the latest tax cut measure being touted by Nichols, et cetera. Eventually, the briefing tailed off into a blur of quiet mayhem, with reporters talking to each other and cameramen packing up their equipment and Dalton hesitating at the front of the room before he slinked through the door. I quickly pushed my way through the masses to a wall phone, dialed the White House switchboard, and quietly asked for Sylvia Weinrich, Hutchins's assistant.
"Miss Weinrich speaking," she said, answering the phone in her finishing-school tone, one regularly heard by world leaders, cabinet secretaries, and major contributors, though typically not by some harried reporter from South Boston.
"Hello, Miss Weinrich. Jack Flynn here." I spoke to her, I realized, as if I were talking to one of my former grammar school teachers, forming my words and thoughts carefully, all with a mix of respect and affection and the long-shot hope that she might like me and think I was smart. "The president, I believe, was kind enough to page me with an invitation to stop by. I was wondering if he had a convenient time."
It occurred to me just before she spoke that the page had been some hoax and that Hutchins had no intention of seeing me, all of which would have meant that I was in the process of making a general ass of myself. Luckily, she cleared that up in no time.
"Mr. Flynn, such a pleasure to hear from you again. My, you've been busy. I know the president wanted to see you as soon as possible. As a matter of fact, he has some office time right now and was wondering how soon you might be able to come in."
More than perhaps anyone else on earth, when the president beckons, people-congressmen, activists, titans of industry-drop everything and come, whether they want to or not. That's one of the perks of leadership. Me, I explained that I was in the building-a fact, I had a hunch, that they already knew. Marvelous, we both agreed, and in a matter of minutes, I was inconspicuously walking from the briefing room, through the West Wing, and into the Oval Office for the second time in my life, this time, though, unclear of my purpose and unprepared, I suspected, for what was to come.
He was sitting at that big oak desk, in shirtsleeves, wearing one of those pairs of half glasses that Havlicek had on a couple of nights before, looking dignified. He was reading a sheath of papers in a black binder. The wan November sun streaked through the southern windows behind him and through the French doors that led out to the Rose Garden, where bunches of brightly colored chrysanthemums stood sentry against the early creep of winter. The room was bathed in light and warmth and quiet-just the gentle hum of moving air and the soft tick of the tall case clock. When Hutchins flipped a page, the sound was a relative explosion.
I sat on one of the two couches at the far end of the room, quietly waiting. Sylvia Weinrich had shut the door on her way out. My eyes scanned around from the jar of mints on the coffee table to the busts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy near his desk to the biographies of Truman and Lincoln that were carefully arranged on the ancient pale yellow shelves. It was mesmerizing, this room, where history wasn't just made but prodded and pulled, nipped and formed. As the moments drifted into minutes, I started wondering if he knew I was here.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." That was Hutchins, finally. He stood up from his desk, snapped his glasses off his face with one hand, and slowly walked toward me, looking haggard.
"You have any idea how much money this country sends to Israel every year in federal dollars?" he asked, not really seeming to want an answer. "Three billion. Three fucking billion fucking dollars. You have any idea how much private U.s. money is raised for Israel annually? Try another billion." By now, Hutchins was standing across from me, taking his seat on the opposite couch, talking softer with every word.
"How good are we to them? Cole just about promised fellatio to every senior Israeli official if they'd just be willing to meet with the Palestinians. Me? The second call I made after I was sworn in was to Jerusalem. No changes in policy, I said. They'd continue to be our best ally in the region. And how do they say thanks to all this money, to all this friendship, to the promise of all this history if they can reach a simple accord with people they know they'll be living beside from now to fucking eternity? They build tunnels and housing on sacred Palestinian land. They know the reaction they're going to get. They know they're fucking things up. Then they just shrug and ask me, "Are you with us or not?" And what can I say? "Yes, I am, though, gee, I was hoping you might behave differently." Well, you know what? Maybe I'm not with them anymore."
This scene was astounding for a few reasons, most notably that this was five days before a monumental presidential election. Hutchins should be standing before cameras, basking in the glow of favorable public opinion polls, looking down the pipe to four years in the White House in his own right. Granted, he was only taking a brief breather here, but the respite should not be spent laboring over the finer or broader points of the muddled and immovable Middle East peace process. It crossed my mind that the Record story might be one reason why Hutchins wasn't happier. The reality of his life was another. He was childless, wifeless, and really had no one with whom to share the moment aside from a group of aides I don't think he particularly liked.
So here was Hutchins, alone with a reporter he barely knew, fretting about issues he had frustratingly little control over.
I hadn't said anything yet, and Hutchins didn't appear interested in my opinion, so I sat in silence, watching closely the sad, almost sour look on his face, the toll of this job, listening to the words flow into what seemed a pool of self-pity. His reputation was that of a hard-charging bull, a man whom I once wrote had a steakhouse charm about him: straightforward, with few garnishments. Today, he appeared wilted, like some hound dog on a hot August afternoon.
"And you," he said, more politely now, paternal. "Where are you on our proposal? You make up your mind yet? You ready to do the right thing and join the team, help make history? I'm about to win four more years. I'll be able to do anything I want, go anywhere I want to go.
I probably won't even run for reelection. I might just use this term to kick an awful lot of ass and let things fall where they may. You could be there, every step of the way, for every kick and all the applause that follows."
Hutchins paused, staring out the French doors. His feet were up on the coffee table. He held his half glasses in one hand, letting them dangle by the stem as some people do, occasionally flipping them around. He reached up and rubbed his eyes with two fingers, massaging them hard as if he were trying to push them back into his head. He looked as if he were about to lose the election rather than win the damn thing.
I said, "I'm putting an enormous amount of thought into your offer, sir. But I think it's fair to warn you that I don't think this is an appropriate time for me."
Hutchins just kind of looked at me for a minute, allowing his eyes to scan over my face, probing, silent.
"Howa your ribs?" he asked, surprising me.
"Much better," I said. "I'm getting a lot more comfortable."
"Hasn't affected your work, for chrissakes," he said, getting that mischievous smile again, looking at me hard, playfully, waiting for a response.
I smiled. "Busy time."
"Oh, it's a busy time all right. It's a busy fucking time."
He let that hang there, and the two of us sat facing each other, waiting for reactions.
I broke the silence. "Sir, do you have any reaction beyond what Dalton has said on the performance of the FBI? Are you worried they're going to botch this shooting?"
He resumed his serious look and tone. "I can't help you on this one."
Then he did. He repositioned himself on the settee and said, "Look, they're the FBI. You hope to God they know what they're doing. You believe in your heart that they do. You look at their record, at their history, at their tradition, and at their reputation, and you just have to be
lieve they're going to get things right."
Nice little quote that my paper will have exclusively-certainly a lot better than that patter of Dalton's.
"Here's the point, though," he continued. "You're a smart kid. I want you in my trench, not shooting at me from someone else's. If it takes money, I promise you, we'll max out on your pay. I'll dip into my own pocket to supplement it. I'll give you hiring power over at the press office. You bring in whoever you want. You know you have my ear.
I'll give you virtually open access to the Oval. You come in here anytime you want and talk things through. You'll be one of my most important advisers, cutting across the board."
Holy shit. Essentially, what he was now offering me wasn't just the position of press secretary, though that slot alone was pretty damned good. He was talking about senior presidential adviser, at the very center of his inner circle, a fixture in the Washington power structure. Senators would have to kiss my ass. Network anchors would vie for my time. My financial future would be set. This was interesting, though probably not interesting enough to sway me. The story-this assassination attempt and all the mystery that surrounded it-was too good. My roots in newspapers ran too deep.
"It's all very flattering," I said. "I really will think about it."
My deadline was supposed to be the next day, Friday. "Take whatever time you need," he said. "The sooner the better, but I'd rather have a yes in a week than a no in a day."
I said, "I don't want to leave you hanging. I'll move as quickly as I can. But like I said, right now, to be perfectly honest, I'm leaning against it."
There was a moment of silence. I gazed around the room again, thinking this could be in some way mine, this hold on power.
With the quiet mounting toward God knows what, my curiosity got the better of me, and I took a chance. "You don't look so good, sir.
Given that the polls show you creeping ahead, I would think you'd be in a better frame of mind."
He focused on me-bore in on my face, still silent, his gray eyes locking in on mine, not in an angry way but almost in some odd way pleading, but for what, I had no idea.
"Are we talking, me and you, or am I talking to 700,000 Record readers?" he asked.
I think he inflated our circulation figures, not that I mind. "Me and you, sir," I said.
He sighed loudly. "This job, it's not what you might think. Hell, it's not what I had thought. There is the swarm of attention, and in the middle of that swarm, the sense of total isolation. There is the dangling prospect of accomplishment, matched against the overriding reality of constant failure."
He paused for a moment, looking out toward the Rose Garden. He continued, "Look, it sounds foolish to complain about all this, and there's a lot that's great-this house, the limousines, the helicopter, Air Force One, Camp David. I have a staff of valets who'll help me put my boxers on in the morning if I ask them to. They lay out my clothes every day, freshly pressed, always nice and clean. I can play golf at any frigging private club in America without even calling for a tee time. But for the rest of my life, I'll never be able to sit at a bar and order a hamburger. I'll never be able to go for a Sunday-afternoon drive. I can't even go for a walk in my own neighborhood. Hell, I don't really even have a neighborhood. I am the neighborhood."
He was on a roll. The stream of consciousness seemed to be turning into a tidal wave. "I'm not a professional politician. Maybe that's my biggest problem, at the same time it's my greatest asset. I didn't spend my entire life praying and scheming to be president. I didn't ask for this job."
He paused, and I cut in, my tone noticeably sympathetic even if I didn't yet feel any great sympathy. "Sir, with all due respect, you did ask for this job. You're in the process of asking for it right now, in this election."
He seemed not in the least bit offended. "Yeah, you're right, I am asking for it," he said. "But tell me this, how do you not ask for this job when you know you could have it? How do you turn your back on being in every history book of every junior high kid in the country from now until the end of time? How do you walk away from that?"
Fair points. We sat in silence again for a moment. He was brooding; I was stunned, for a variety of reasons. I had never seen him this reflective, this thoughtful. He usually put forth the veneer of a fraternity brother, ever mischievous, involved only in the moment. I recalled his great delight at watching me drive the ball into the woods at Congressional. I remembered his fascination with the presidential suite at the Bethesda Navy Hospital. But you always knew that below the surface there was an inner, driving force with this man. It was part of his great charm.
Still, I didn't know it ran this deep, or this purple. Here was the president of the United States, heading toward probable victory in an election just five days away, outright depressed at the prospect of four years in the White House. I thought back to past presidents, how they arrived and how they left, John Kennedy embodied a new age of Camelot. Three years later, he was shot and killed, his brains spattered across that convertible limousine in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson was broken by the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon fulfilled his greatest dreams with his election in 1968, outdid himself in 1972, and then left in disgrace two years later, standing at the entry of Marine One on the South Lawn, his staff and friends on the grass below, giving a final, two-handed victory sign, his suit jacket awkwardly scrunched up below his arms as his face was formed into a forced, bittersweet smile. Ford was only given a taste of power. Carter was given only a little more than that. He arrived so young, with so much promise. He left a gray-haired man obsessed by a group of hostages he was unable to help until he couldn't even help himself. Reagan may be the only one who left with his heart intact, though even he was ridiculed in his parting days. Bush rode higher than anyone before him, the victorious conquester of the Gulf War, only to be brought down by economic forces he failed to understand. Clinton embodied a new generation of leadership, with all its hopes and with all its failings, and in the end, his entire life was torn asunder in a clash between the weakness of his own personality and the immense personal responsibilities of the office.
"Look, I'm unloading too much," Hutchins said, interrupting my stroll through history. "I'm tired from the campaign. Maybe I'm intimidated by the work ahead. And when a guy takes a shot at you out of nowhere, you start thinking about the fragile nature of life. Bottom line: I'm going to be fine."
Hutchins slapped his two hands against his knees, in a sign that the conversation was over. I hesitated, then rose slowly from the couch, assuming this was my signal to leave. He stayed slumped down. "Your wife, she died, right?" he asked, and the first thing I thought was, it would be a hell of a question to get wrong.
I said, "She did, about a year ago."
I was standing now. He was sitting, deep in the couch, showing no signs of getting up. He said, "I'm sorry." There was a silence. I started to turn around to leave. He added, "I hope you find someone else. No matter who you are, no matter where you've been, no matter where you're going, life isn't meant to be lived alone, not for normal human beings, anyway."
I nodded at him, "I think you're right," I said. I walked slowly out the door, leaving him slumped into the couch, looking painfully sad.
As I left, Sylvia Weinrich walked in carrying a silver tray holding a can of Diet Coke, a crystal bowl filled with ice, and a frosted glass.
She smiled as she passed me. I turned to see Hutchins walking slowly to his desk.
"Hey there, slugger."
That was Havlicek, looking up from his computer, the headset to a microcassette recorder covering his ears as he transcribed a tape.
He asked, "You hear about the FBI statement?"
"I've been out of touch for the last hour," I said. "What did they say?"
Peter Martin approached from his office and leaned on Havlicek's desk without saying anything.
"Very interesting," Havlicek began. "They issued a bullshit response that the original identification of Clawson was only tentative, and
it only became public because it was released by a junior agent who was speaking without authorization. They also said they had realized in the past forty-eight hours that this initial identification-their words-was wrong, and they had reopened that facet of their investigation to learn the identity of the attempted assassin."
I asked, "So they still don't know who the guy is that they killed, this dead person in their morgue?"
"They won't say. They said that because of the initial, false release of the tentative ID, they will make certain that in the future no parts of their investigation are released to the news media until they are ready. They claim that today's story hindered their investigation, so they're going to button down even tighter."
I laughed a sneering laugh. "Those pricks. They screw up, then blame us for hindering them. What a bunch of jackasses."
"Bingo. But at least they've essentially confirmed our story. This makes for good print tomorrow. On Wyoming, they have declined to comment, except to say they did have a security alert at the White House. They were adamant that they do not discuss anything to do with any federal informants."
Martin spoke for the first time. "This also means that every paper in the country, including the New York Times and Washington Post, have to mention us in tomorrow's stories, giving us full credit. The FBI made sure of that today by admitting this and blaming us at the same time.
This couldn't be better."
"Well, yeah," I said. "It could be better if we could prove those bastards are lying, that they really didn't know they had the wrong ID, or that they did know, but they misled us on purpose." For the first time, I brought up the Hutchins session. "And they'll all have to follow us again tomorrow. I have exclusive quotes from the president.
I sat with him in the Oval Office this afternoon while he unloaded to me."
I reviewed those quotes for them, and Martin made a move as if he might hug me, then apparently thought better of it. He clenched his fists together. "This keeps getting better," he said. "We are on a colossal roll."
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