by Zev Chafets
Grossman ignored the question. He took a sheet of paper from the top drawer of his desk and pushed it across the polished surface toward his nephew. There was a name already written on it; clearly this meeting was not a spontaneous whim. “Tomorrow, go and see this man,” Max said. “He’s a friend of mine. He’ll give you a job as a foreign correspondent.”
Cy Malkin, whose name and phone number were written in longhand, was the editor in chief of the New York Tribune. He was a legendary figure in American journalism. Gordon was so surprised that he laughed out loud.
“Cy Malkin? Why don’t I just go and talk to President Kennedy? Uncle Max, it doesn’t work that way. I mean, I appreciate it, but Cy Malkin doesn’t meet with journalism students. Besides, it takes years to work your way up to getting a foreign assignment—”
“Who’s talking about working your way up?” Max said reasonably. “I want to give you a graduation present, Velvel. Somebody gives you something, take it. You’re a good kid.”
Gordon was more surprised by the compliment than by his uncle’s naïve notion that a casual friendship with an editor could get him a job. “Thank you, Uncle Max,” he said. “I’ll call Mr. Malkin tomorrow.” He doubted that he actually would, but he didn’t want to spoil the moment.
“Fine,” said the old man, pushing himself up from the desk. “Let’s go back and get strudel.”
Gordon put Cy Malkin’s number in his wallet, and walked around New York with it for three days before getting up the nerve to call. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t get past the editor’s secretary. Finally, on the morning before he was scheduled to return to Madison, he rang Malkin’s office.
“This is William Grossman,” he told the secretary, instinctively using his real name. “My uncle, Max Grossman, said to call Mr. Malkin.”
“Oh, we’ve been expecting to hear from you, Mr. Grossman,” said the woman. “I’ll put you right through.” There was a brief pause, and then a man’s voice boomed through the receiver.
“Grossman, this is Malkin,” he said. “Are you free for lunch?”
“Excuse me, sir,” Gordon said, certain that the editor was under the impression that it was his uncle on the line. “This is William Grossman, Max’s nephew. He told me to call.”
“I know who it is,” Malkin said in an impatient voice. “You like Italian food?”
“Yes, sir,” Gordon said, polite as a West Point cadet.
“Fine. Meet me at Castello della Mar on Seventh and Fifty-first at one, can you do that?”
“Yes, sir,” said Gordon. When he hung up the receiver, he realized that his palm was sweating.
Cy Malkin was an imposing man in his mid-sixties with a bald head and a large, tubular nose. During World War II he had been America’s most famous battlefield reporter, and was wounded at Normandy. After the war, as a syndicated columnist, and later as editor of the Tribune, he was a crusader for liberal causes and an eloquent critic of Senator McCarthy. His articles were studied in journalism schools around the country, and Gordon knew parts of his stirring defense of the First Amendment, delivered before the House Un-American Activities Committee, almost by heart.
Gordon arrived at the restaurant twenty minutes early. When Malkin walked in he was greeted like a visiting head of state, and Gordon was almost too shy to approach the great man. But Malkin made it easy. He spotted Gordon near the bar, waved a long arm and called for him to join him. “You look like a Grossman,” he said in his large voice. “You old enough to drink yet?”
“I’ll be twenty-one in June,” Gordon said. The drinking age in New York was eighteen, and he was visibly offended by the question. Malkin smiled. “Twenty-one, eh? You think you’re ready for the big bad world?” He turned to the waiter who was standing at attention. “Bring us two Chivas on the rocks,” he commanded.
Lunch with Cy Malkin proved to be a monologue. He ate without seeming to notice, and lectured nonstop about the affairs of three continents. It was stimulating talk, spiced with personal, sometimes scandalous anecdotes about international figures. He talked familiarly about Ike and Winnie, De Gaulle and Khrushchev, Ben-Gurion and Nehru. It didn’t sound to Gordon like name-dropping; Malkin discussed world leaders with the bored self-assurance of a man gossiping about members of his club.
Under different circumstances Gordon would have been thrilled to be the audience for such heady talk, but after his reception that morning he had dared to hope that Malkin might indeed offer him a job, perhaps as a city reporter. Now he saw that this was no job interview. The editor hadn’t even asked him what he was studying. He was being taken to lunch as a favor to his uncle Max, nothing more.
This realization made Gordon relax. He even began to fantasize about how he would tell the story to his professors in Madison. “Stopped off at the Trib when I was home and had lunch with Cy, you know, Cy Malkin. He’s an old family friend.…” He was imagining the look on Professor Jarrard’s face when Malkin touched his arm, and he snapped back to attention.
“—and so, I think that the situation in Southeast Asia is going to get worse,” he said. “William, do you know anything about Vietnam?”
It had been so long since Gordon had said anything that he had to clear his throat. “A little bit,” he said. “I’m not an expert.”
“Good,” said Malkin. “I don’t trust experts. A reporter should never become an expert, it makes him stop listening. How would you like to go out there for us?”
“Are you kidding?”
“We just opened up a bureau in Saigon,” he said. “The bureau chief is a young fellow named John Flanagan, who’s been on the city beat for us. He’ll need a number two man. Do you want the job?”
“Why are you offering it to me?” Gordon asked. “You don’t know anything about me. What makes you think I even want to be a reporter?”
Malkin smiled and signaled for more wine. “Those are reporter’s questions,” he said. “Shows you’ve got good instincts. As it happens, I know a lot about you. Max sent me a copy of your college transcript and the articles you’ve done for the Daily Cardinal and I had our guy in Milwaukee check you out.”
Gordon remembered meeting the Trib’s Milwaukee correspondent. He had come to Madison to research an article on left-wing movements on campus, and he had interviewed Gordon for several hours. Now he realized that the article had been a subterfuge, and it thrilled him to think that Cy Malkin had gone to such trouble.
“You’ve got the makings of a very fine reporter, William,” Malkin said. “So, that’s one thing. And I’ll be honest with you—people aren’t exactly standing in line to go to Vietnam. It’s hot, it’s muggy, and right now there isn’t much of a story there. It could turn out to be a dead end. But I’ve got a feeling that something’s going on that we don’t know about, and I want somebody with strong legs. That’s why I’m offering you the job.”
“My uncle Max said it was a graduation present,” Gordon blurted out. He knew it was a fresh thing to say, but an instinct told him that he had better get things straight right at the beginning. The truth was, he didn’t completely trust his uncle.
“I don’t give away jobs to the nephews of old friends,” Malkin said evenly. “I’ve made you an offer. If you want to think about it, that’s all right. Just let me know within ten days.”
“I can tell you right now,” he said. “I’ll take it. When do I start?”
“When do you graduate?” Malkin asked.
“June first.”
“Good. Take a month off, have some fun. You can leave for Saigon on the first of July.”
In the summer of 1961 Vietnam was not even a name on the map for most Americans. The U.S. buildup was just getting under way, but it was still almost imperceptible, except to the handful of American reporters stationed there. They were mostly young, ambitious, tentatively irreverent men trying to become full-fledged trench coats, which is what John Flanagan called foreign correspondents. Flanagan had a nickname for everything and everybody. He called Vie
tnam “Chinatown.”
Gordon met Flanagan for the first time at the Tribune bureau, a cramped suite of rooms in a downtown office building not far from the American embassy. Flanagan had sent his Vietnamese driver, whom he referred to as Tonto, out to the airport to collect Gordon. When he got to the office he found Flanagan sitting in front of an old Underwood typewriter, a cigar in his mouth and a glass of whiskey on the table next to him. When Gordon knocked on the open door, Flanagan looked up and blew a puff of Havana smoke at him. “Dr. Grossman, I presume,” he said.
“Reporting for duty,” he said, relieved to see that Flanagan’s grin was friendly and welcoming. “By the way, I’m going to use my professional name. Gordon.”
“Gordon Grossman?” he said.
“William Gordon.”
“I don’t care what you call yourself,” he said. “I’m gonna call you kid, and you call me Flanagan. When I started out, they called me kid. It’s like basic training. Then, after a while, I’ll start to call you Gordon. William sounds like an English butler. You’ll really appreciate it when I start to use your name. It’ll make you feel like you’ve arrived, know what I mean?”
As Gordon soon discovered, the appearance of candor was part of Flanagan’s style; he made a habit of explaining his plans and motives in a seemingly ingenuous way. After they had become friends, Gordon often heard Flanagan use the technique on women. “I’ll pick you up, we’ll have a romantic dinner, a little walk through the city, and back to my apartment,” he’d tell a prospective date. “Then we’ll bullshit each other about the meaning of life for a couple of hours and get loaded, but we’ll really be thinking about going to bed. Then I’ll make a move, and we can make love. In the morning we’ll have a big breakfast and then we can see what comes next. Sound all right?” Not everybody appreciated this direct approach, but a surprisingly large number of women found it funny and refreshing, and it often worked.
“Maybe you want me to call you chief?” Gordon said, and Flanagan squinted, thinking about it. “Sure, kid, call me chief,” he said. “It’s a good act. The chief and the kid. Not bad at all. How old are you, kid?”
“Twenty-one, chief. How old are you?”
“Great, we’re bantering already. I’m twenty-seven,” said Flanagan. “You want a drink?”
“No, thanks,” Gordon said. “It’s a little early for me.”
“That’s a banker’s answer, not a reporter’s answer,” said Flanagan. “A reporter says, ‘Christ, yes’ or ‘I’m on the wagon.’ Either way, you want to let the guy you’re with drink. People talk when they drink, and this business is about getting people to talk.”
“If I get drunk, I won’t be able to remember what they’ve said.”
“Right, kid. The idea is not to get drunk. How about a cigar?”
“Sorry, I’m on the wagon.”
Flanagan laughed. “A quick study. OK, lesson number two. Cigars are a tool of the trade. You give them to people you want to cultivate, but you’ve got to smoke along with them, otherwise it looks like you just had a baby. And they fit the stereotype—reporters are supposed to have a certain image, it makes people think they’re in a movie. Then they want to tell you things, just to keep up their part of the script, see what I mean?”
“OK, I’ll take a cigar,” said Gordon.
“ ‘Gimme a cigar’ sounds better,” said Flanagan, handing one over. “Try not to sound too smart. You’re an SAT and there’s nothing you can do about that, but you gotta be a little bit of an actor in this job.”
“What’s an SAT?” Gordon asked.
“A member of the Hebrew persuasion,” said Flanagan. “I hear your uncle is Max Grossman.”
“My uncle has nothing to do with anything,” Gordon said defensively, but Flanagan just laughed. “That’s not what I hear,” he said. “I hear he’s got something to do with everything. I hear he’s even got some pull with Big Cy.”
Gordon flushed with anger and embarrassment; he had hoped that Flanagan wouldn’t know how he had got his job.
“Look, kid, don’t sweat it. My old man’s a big wheel in the printers’ union, that’s how I got here. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Let’s go have lunch, and I’ll fill you in on the local color.”
In the three years they spent together in Saigon, John Flanagan became William Gordon’s big brother. Within a month or so he stopped calling him kid and began using “Gordon,” and the young journalist was surprised to discover that it did make him feel good, just as Flanagan had predicted. It didn’t take Gordon long to realize that although they were only a few years apart in age, Flanagan was in a whole other league when it came to street smarts and professional savvy.
One of his constant themes was the importance of stereotypes. “The reason the fuckers exist is because they’re basically true,” he told Gordon one day that first summer over dinner in a restaurant near the bureau he called the Poison Chopstick. “Micks do drink. SATs are smarter than everybody else. Shvartzers can dunk a basketball. Generals are stupid. Chinamen are inscrutable. You ever hear anybody say that Norwegians have natural rhythm, or Mexicans are good at business?”
“Can’t say that I have, chief,” said Gordon. He had learned to encourage Flanagan when he was on one of his flights of imagination. He was aware that a lot of the Irishman’s style was rubbing off on him.
“Now, there’s only two things you can do with a stereotype,” Flanagan continued. “You can play on it, which makes you a pro, or you can play against it, which makes you an anti. There are some advantages both ways.”
“How about just being yourself?” Gordon asked, but Flanagan shook his head.
“No such thing, kid. Most people don’t have a self. They have to invent one. And they don’t have enough imagination to come up with something original. You figure out which way they’re going, with the stereotype or against it, you’ve got them. Then you know what buttons to push.”
“You include yourself in this analysis?” Gordon asked.
“Sure,” said Flanagan. “First of all, I’m a hack. That’s a profession for Irishmen who are too honest to be cops. I drink, I talk tough, I have a certain sweetness of character under the wise-guy facade, you’ve noticed that, right? The thing is, I know what I’m doing; most people don’t. So, in a way, I’m going against type, because nobody expects a Mick to be devious. It’s a kind of variation. Sophisticated.”
Gordon raised his glass in tribute to his friend’s subtlety. “What about me?”
“A born anti,” he said. “I saw it the first time I met you. SATs have a special problem, because they’re so self-conscious. If I was trying to show you how smart I really am, I’d say introspective. Actually, that’s why I did say introspective, although I know you’ve already figured out that my Jimmy Cagney routine is an act. But, anyway, the point is, you don’t want to be a yeshiva bucher, right?
“Go ahead, it’s your soapbox,” said Gordon.
“See what I mean? You already talk like somebody out of The Front Page. It’s a good pose if you can pull it off; do it long enough, and it’ll become your real personality. It’ll make you distinctive. Good for getting girls, too.”
Flanagan was right about one thing; Gordon had no desire to be a sensitive, brooding moralist. In any case, Vietnam in those days was no place for idealism. The covert buildup was already under way, and even a novice like Gordon could tell that the diplomats and CIA officials were lying about what was going on.
One day Flanagan returned from a CIA briefing with sparkling eyes and a light step. “What the hell are you so happy about?” Gordon asked.
“Gordon, these mo-humpers are bullshitting us,” said Flanagan.
“Yeah, what else is new?”
“Well said, kid. Like Humphrey Bogart. But do you know what they’re lying about?”
Gordon shrugged. “Everything, probably.”
“Everything means nothing,” said Flanagan triumphantly. “They want to start a war, Gordon, that’s what they’r
e planning to do. A full-scale, shoot-’em-up, send-in-the-marines bang-bang right here in Chinatown.”
Gordon hadn’t thought about it in exactly that way, but he realized that Flanagan was right. “OK,” he said, “but what difference does it make? I mean, you can’t prove that’s what they’re doing, and you don’t have a story without proof.”
“Correct. Which means we get proof,” said Flanagan. “What we really need is to get close to Henderson.” Henderson was a senior CIA operative, the kind of Wasp that Flanagan called “a white guy.”
“How do we do that?”
“The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his gatkas, kid,” said Flanagan. “That means underwear, in case your Yiddish is rusty.”
From then on, Flanagan made Henderson his special project. He gave Gordon most of the daily work—attending embassy briefings, interviewing local politicians and writing long color stories on Vietnamese teenagers who loved Hula-Hoops and Elvis that wound up spiked in New York. In the meantime, Flanagan spent his time cultivating the CIA agent.
Flanagan’s technique was simple; he pimped for him. First, he took Henderson out to dinner and filled his Yankee skull with stories about exotic Oriental whorehouses, most of which he invented on the spot. Henderson was married to a relentlessly wholesome girl with thick ankles who spent all her time and energy making their stay in Saigon a replica of life in Ames, Iowa. Flanagan guessed that she wasn’t much fun to come home to.
At the end of their first dinner, Flanagan suggested that a working acquaintance with Saigon’s nightlife was a necessary weapon in the arsenal of a compleat CIA operative. Henderson agreed, and declared himself ready to sacrifice some of his precious personal time in the name of national security. He wanted to go out on the town that very night, but Flanagan sent him home in his chauffeured government limo and let him stew for three days. Then he called to suggest another dinner.