The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  “Love you,” she said lightly, taking him by the hand and leading him through the throng, as if on a tour. If there was any hesitation on Charlie’s part, Nick knew then that all that glitter was seductive, beyond his capacity, anyone’s capacity, to resist. There was, after all, much to learn about these people in this environment, and since they exercised a control over destiny, they were certainly worthy of greater inspection.

  “It’s a zoo, old buddy,” Charlie said later, when the dancing had begun and the great and powerful moved to the odd beat of Lester Lanin. It was unlike any rhythm Nick could remember, a special beat, as if even the music had to be refashioned to conform to the exotic tastes of the elite. They had moved through French doors to a stone patio which jutted out into a well-trimmed garden. People huddled in conversational tableaus, intent in their discussions, trading confidences. To Nick, other people’s conversations always seemed somehow more important to them than what he could muster, weightier. In the soft shadowy light of the garden, that impression was magnified as important looking men and women, elegant and mysterious in the night, pondered fateful decisions in whispered tones.

  “You seem to have found yourself in the eye of the universe,” Nick said, and immediately had the impression he was also posturing.

  “I think your description, like your prose, old buddy, is a trifle purple.”

  “Really, Charlie, I’m as impressed as hell. Christ, these people are just names in a paper to me. I’ve tried all evening to be superior to it. You’d think a reporter would be more blasé about it. I have to admit I do feel a wee bit inconsequential with all this brass.”

  “They all squat to shit,” Charlie said. He lit a cigarette, the light blazing briefly across his square, handsome face, the jet black full hair curled naturally over the edges of his high forehead. The flame caught glints in his myopic eyes, alert and perhaps fearful. Or was that just the effect of the flickering light?

  “Doesn’t it scare the hell out of you, Charlie?” Nick asked. He knew even then that it was an echo of something he might have said through half-frozen lips, crawling in the mud along a French hedgerow. Images of the war were locked into his perception. Charlie caught the reference, as Nick had known he would. The ambience of friendship had not deteriorated during their separation.

  “Not if you whistle loud enough,” Charlie said, slowly puffing on his cigarette.

  “The old man’s passing the relay stick, Charlie,” Nick said. He wondered then if there wasn’t an element of envy in it.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, “I like the dotty old bird.” He inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke from his nose. “Do you think I’m a goddamned phony, Nick?” Nick felt Charlie’s eyes bore into him through the shadows.

  “You’ve got a lot of faults, my friend. But phoniness isn’t one of them.”

  “It’s just that I feel that I’m hiding my flaws deliberately, knowing what he has in mind for me.”

  “It’s a temptation not to be sneezed at.”

  “You think I’m selling myself out?”

  “How the hell can I answer that one?” Nick knew that he was evading the answer. “The real question is: Do you love Myra?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said. “I suppose that is the real question.” They were silent for a long time. Strains of the music floated in the air. “I wonder what the hell they see in me?”

  “I’ve wondered about that myself,” Nick said, remembering the first time he had seen him, the gangling, sloppy soldier tossing his C ration into a puddle, defiant in the face of his own hunger. “Let them eat shit,” he had hissed. Nick hadn’t even stopped to consider, but had tossed his own ration into the same puddle, the act stupid in itself but validating the powerful chemistry of Charlie’s personality and its irrevocable effect on Nick. Perhaps Mr. Parker and Myra had felt the same compulsion.

  “But you can’t tell by me, baby. I’m a fan,” Nick added.

  “I knew better than to ask a dumb bastard like you. Boy, have they bought themselves a peck of trouble,” Charlie said. Perhaps he was remembering his trip around the globe in the lobby of the News, the pain of the aftermath. Or perhaps it was a burst of clairvoyance as he looked into his own future and the madness that he must have felt lay in his tissue waiting to mature.

  “If I could only be certain I’d be making the right move. There are a lot of problems with it.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said mysteriously. “Ah, what the hell,” he sputtered, flicking the lighted butt onto the trimmed lawn. Nick watched its glow fade into the darkness. “Maybe the die is cast,” Charlie said. “Besides, I like the idea of taking these bastards on.”

  “Now there’s objectivity for you,” Nick said.

  “The old man’s right about them, Nick. This place is a pit of self-delusion. Somebody has got to keep them on the straight and narrow. Can’t you just smell it around here?”

  Nick breathed deeply, sniffing only the perfumed air. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Oh, there you are,” Myra’s voice, high-pitched, faintly irritated, called from behind them. “Dad wants you to meet some people.” She put her arm through Charlie’s.

  “I was just talking to old Nick here, Myra. We were reminiscing about bachelor days in New York.”

  “I’ll bet they were quite racy,” she said.

  “Obscene.” Nick watched him resist her pull.

  “Come on, Charlie,” she said, “give father a break. He’s doing it for us, you know.”

  “Go on, Charlie,” Nick said, “I’ll be fine.”

  Charlie remained silent for a moment, stubbornly rooted. She pulled at him again, almost throwing him off balance.

  “Don’t be so inflexible,” Myra said petulantly, as Charlie yielded and followed obediently on her arm, like Alice proceeding through the looking glass.

  7

  When Nick arrived at the budget meeting they were all sitting around the polished table, reviewing their papers. His eyes swept their faces: Landau, Peterson, Prager, Madison, Phillips, Dover, and Margaret, with her persistent upsweep hairdo that defied all style changes.

  There was always tension at these meetings, with each editor presenting his story ideas for final inspection, ready to defend his judgments. It was, as he had lectured over the years, the moment of truth, the final screen of the information and events that they had chosen to record of that day in time, for all posterity to ponder. The daily meetings had taken on a special rhythm, the agenda fixed by the priority of his own interests. The consideration of the sports budget was always first, only because it was the least likely to be amended since Prager, consistently bucolic, sensed his advantage over the rest of them, both in knowledge and interest. To the rest of them, sports held only marginal interest, although they enjoyed the spectacle. To Prager it was a total world, as it was to many thousands of their readers, a gospel to be absorbed, passionately gobbled up, a religious experience. Prager dominated like a monarch, a man with monumental prejudices, favoring players, owners, cities, countries, even types of sports. He hated tennis because it had become the province of the new effete and doled out its coverage in niggardly doses. He had been Charlie’s choice, and a wise one. Despite Prager’s abrasiveness, he had kept the sports pages a gallop ahead of the rest of the Chronicle in accuracy, variety and interest. None of the others dared question his authority over his domain, although any of them would have given a month’s pay to see his superiority dented. Instead, they took refuge in humor, salted by Prager’s total inability to understand them.

  “Don’t you think you’re going a little ape on football?” Nick mumbled, a deliberate barb.

  Prager lifted his eyes to the ceiling, tapping a pencil. “It’s the season. You want me to feature the tiddledy-winks tournament?”

  Nick watched the tight smiles respond. Nobody would dare chuckle.

  It was a source of amusement to watch Prager at the Redskins’ games and observe his reluctant and disdainful greeting. He
would never ever set foot in the owner’s box, dismissing Myra and her guests as dissolute members of the ruling party, utterly contemptible.

  Nick passed over the Sports budget with perfunctory attention. To look it over with a lack of comment would have somehow been interpreted as a deprivation. Next he passed on to Margaret’s budget. His eye caught the line, “Interview with Norman Mailer—Jennie.” He had actually rewritten the first five paragraphs of the piece in its entirety, much to Jennie’s chagrin. She was protesting more and more. Although this morning her irritation had seemed to disappear.

  “Might be a good idea to increase your coverage of the Indian ambassador,” Nick said to Margaret. “The action seems to be shifting to that part of the world. Besides we’ve given the Iranians enough of a play.”

  “They throw better parties,” Margaret said. “More people. Better picture stuff. Christ, Nick, the Indians are insufferably self-righteous, besides being boring.”

  “Maybe if we covered them, they’d get the message,” Nick said.

  “Nothing like a dose of exposure to motivate their media sensitivity,” Landau said.

  “Check it out, Maggie,” Nick said, looking up as Margaret scribbled on a notepad. “And you should know I got a scream from the advertising department on Carson’s review. Delaney really roasted me.”

  “You get it only occasionally, Nick,” Margaret said. “I get it daily. You should see the stuff I pencil out. Whenever he throws a bouquet to one of his pretty boy favorites, we go into psychodrama. Probably increases his venom with the other gender.”

  “I like his stuff,” Peterson said quietly.

  “Screw the advertising department,” Madison said, his voice booming, accentuating the perennial bone of contention.

  “They pay the freight, people,” Nick said. It was the traditional answer. He looked at the clock and pored over the Metropolitan budget.

  “Watch the mix, Ben.”

  It was almost a daily complaint, inevitable in the coverage of three jurisdictions: Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. And as they expanded circulation, it was becoming increasingly difficult to expand the county coverages. Even the split runs had not solved the problem.

  “It’s a bitch, Nick. I need more reporters. It’s becoming unmanageable. It’s like covering three different countries.”

  “Compress the stories.”

  “We’re trying, Nick. Then I get flack from my own guys. There’s just not enough space.”

  “There will never be enough of that commodity,” Landau said. They went down the list of stories, discussed some, passed through others quickly.

  “We should editorialize more on the Metro system,” Ben suggested. “The jurisdictions are trying to turn off the money tap. It’s purely racial, in my opinion.”

  “What do you think, Pete?”

  “We’ve got one in the works.”

  “And Maggie, you might search for a new angle for Lifestyle.”

  “We’ve covered everything on it but the commodes.”

  “That might be a hell of an angle,” Nick said. They could see he was serious. He watched Margaret nod her head.

  “Maybe, Nick. Might find some innovations there.”

  “Computerized johns,” Landau said. Prager snickered. Nick could feel his impatience.

  When he got to the budget from the national desk, his eye flicked over the list and stopped suddenly, a red flag wildly waving in his mind. He noted the neatly typed line, “Henderson health bill—Grinnel.” Grinnel was their senior Senate man.

  “What’s the Henderson piece?” he asked, trying not to show the flash of anxiety. He looked at Madison, who averted his eyes.

  “It’s a Senate speech, supposedly major. It’s Henderson’s pet project. Universal health insurance,” Arnold Dover said. He was a quiet man, the least pre-possessing of those around the table.

  Nick searched his mind. Hadn’t they covered it recently?

  “Anything new in it?” Nick asked.

  “Not really,” Dover said, his eyes darting toward Landau. It was, after all, a pet project which the Chronicle supported editorially.

  “We just had an editorial on it last week, complete with bouquets to Henderson,” Nick said, remembering.

  “That’s right, Nick,” Pete agreed.

  “We’ll overkill it with support,” Nick said, his tone argumentative. They must see he was making a stand.

  “It seems appropriate,” Henry Landau interjected.

  “Christ, Henry, you’re just off vacation.” Nick had meant the implication to be unmistakable.

  “It’s clearly in keeping with our policy of support,” Landau argued, his deep tan masking a flush.

  “It’s only a Senate speech, a contrived media happening. If we resort to that kind of coverage, we’ll blow our integrity.”

  “Every time Henderson passes wind, we cover the bastard,” Madison said, his private view intruding.

  “Was it contemplated as a front-page story?”

  Landau swallowed deeply. “I saw it as front page, yes. Lower left with a two-column head. Frankly, Nick, I think it’s an important story.”

  “Would you like to review it, Nick?” Dover asked, perhaps feeling that the passion expended seemed disproportionate to the issue. But then Henderson had always been good copy.

  “Yes, I would, Arnie,” Nick said. He was groping for control now. Was he having a slight attack of paranoia or was Myra’s hand clearly visible?

  “I don’t understand all the fuss, Nick,” Landau said. His rest, so obviously refreshing, had them all at a disadvantage. Perhaps Landau was simply an innocent victim of this uncommon tactic on Myra’s part. But it was enough to raise Nick’s antenna.

  “Let me see the story,” Nick said, determined at least to keep it off the front page. He passed over the issue and continued with the meeting, but the idea persisted in his mind. He’d need time to examine this new wrinkle.

  Surveying again the faces of the people who sat around the polished table, he could envision a scenario of conspiracy. It seemed obvious, circumstantially, at least, that Myra was making an attempt to force her will on the Chronicle, which, in the final analysis, meant forcing her will on him, the last screen through which the information must pass. In theory, it was her right to do so since she held the controlling stock interest, the corporate majority voice. It was, after all, a business which made no claims to democratic processes. But even monarchs could be captives of their courts and, following Charlie’s lead, Nick had built layers of protection to cushion blows, absorb shocks, even allow for occasional breaches. Both he and Charlie had chosen their people carefully, although that did not insure perfection. People had needs, yearnings, dreams, conflicting motives, levels of ambition, different strategies. As a conscious puppeteer, Nick knew only that the voice of the Chronicle, with all its tones and dialects and impressions, must be his own.

  Looking back now to that first moment of exposure to Mr. Parker and Myra, he could understand the inevitability of Myra’s challenge. It came as no surprise, except for the manner in which she had marshaled her forces. At least her objectives were clear. She would try capture first, conquest without pain in the guise of shared power. If that didn’t work, she would attempt envelopment, containment, a choking off of authority. Barring that would come the frontal assault, a battle in which she knew the Pyrrhic victory would leave the foundations in ruin, a price perhaps too high, although she might calculate that it was worth the gamble.

  But if the strategies were clearly outlined, the question of her motive was less clearly defined. Was it, after all, inevitable that power once tasted increased the appetite, feeding upon itself? Was it, then, a mistake for him to have conspired to go after the jugular of a President, however deserving? Was he merely a willing tool of hers, or she of his? Had it left them with the kind of power that was unmanageable? Was she now testing how far the Chronicle could go? Was he, after all, defending a moral principle or his own power o
ver other men? Was Henderson, inside his cool blue eyes, cringing in fear? Nick thought of Charlie’s battle to stay free of Myra. But how much of that was the product of his madness, the warped focus of a deranged mind? Was she, at long last, making her move? If that were so, then everyone around the table was suspect, all possible agents.

  After the meeting broke, Margaret followed him back to the office, exercising, as she had rarely done, the prerogative of the ex-spouse. He knew that his concentration had been deflected as the meeting had progressed. They had, in a sense, worked around him, conscious of his darkened mood. But only Margaret, with the benefit of their shared experience, could see beyond the public face, closer to the pain.

  “You’ve got a bug up your ass, Nick,” she said, when she had closed the office door behind her and perched stiffly on the facing chair, inspecting him. He remembered being once titillated by her profanity, so unique, almost charming in their generation.

  “Change of life, I guess,” he said. He could tell by the way she was making up to hide the wrinkling on her thin skin, that hormonal imbalance could be a credible excuse.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Well then, the usual pressures. Maybe I can’t take them the way I used to.”

  “More than that, Nick,” she said. Her gaze seemed always magnified when she concentrated hard to see inside of him.

  “I’ll work it out,” he blurted.

  “Nothing I can do?”

  “Nothing.”

  He searched her face for any trace of doubt. He had lost the habit of confiding to her. He felt the sudden heat from an old ash.

  “Really, Maggie, I’ll work it out,” he said gently.

  “Sorry for prying.”

  “Hear from Chums?” he asked, as if it were necessary to validate their link.