by Warren Adler
“Worried about your damned image?”
“Yes I am, Nick.”
He knew she had reached the stage of total capitulation, an addict in need of a fix. It was the one last ploy and he could assess it dispassionately. He reached for the copy paper and started to read it again, searching for the pencil, which she found on the carpet near the bed, handing it to him. Getting up from the bed, he walked to the den, where the typewriter stood on its little desk. He punched out the butt of his cigarette and lit another one, put paper in the roller, and quickly began the rewrite. “You know, Jennie, you’re almost an illiterate.” He typed swiftly, reconstructing the story, inserting the subtleties, the little nuances that might reflect what she had told him about the ritualized shame of it. After each sheet was finished, he handed it to her.
“Make sure the names are right.”
“Sure, Nick,” she said eagerly, looking over the finished copy.
When he had finished, she reread the entire story again, reaching out and grabbing his upper arm, which he shrugged off.
“Slug it thirty,” he said.
“Fini.”
“The end.”
She got up and started to the door, turning. He was expecting it, knowing how her mind worked now, her modus operandi.
“And tomorrow, Nick?”
“It’s all right, Jennie. We’ll make it look like a phase-out. I won’t leave you hanging by your thumbs. We’ll go to the game together tomorrow.” He wondered if she realized that he was delivering her to Margaret’s mercy. Surely she knew, and was even now imagining strategies, constructing scenarios, calculating a new method of survival in the newspaper business.
Objectivity, he sneered, as she crossed the threshold and closed the door quietly.
20
The sun burst against the cantilevered roof line of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, a glistening gem against a rare, deep-blue Washington sky. It was still too early for the crowds to begin their invasion. The only people around the stadium at that hour were stadium workers, or diehard fans determined to catch early glimpses of their heroes, or the special elite who picked their way up to the private club, sleepy-eyed but expectant. And then there were the lucky few, the elite of elites, who like Nick were invited to the owner’s box, the one remaining stronghold of the imperial city. Here the patron could exhibit his prize, the Queen of the City, Myra Parker Pell, who reveled in her glory, the tiara of her power clearly displayed, the mace of her authority held high for the assemblage to admire and, if necessary, kiss.
Nick had always observed the Sunday ritual with some humor. But having bowed to the mace—indeed, he thought bitterly, having shoved it up his ass—he could see himself as having joined the vassals in the imperial box, another fawning courtier. Which was apparently what Charlie was trying to warn him against from the depths of his inarticulate hell until he betrayed them all with that bullet and the splattered brains. Yet in an odd way Myra, too, was an innocent victim. Could she be blamed for wanting to accept the full measure of her inheritance, for taking what was hers? We are all innocent, he thought, although knowing it gave him little solace.
His mood was bleak as he waited for Jennie in the chill outside the stadium. It was all cross and double cross and double double cross again, everyone thrashing about in search of his private talisman—power, integrity, objectivity, honesty, truth, glory, admiration. Which was his? he wondered, not finding it in the catalog.
Despite the sun, the cold stimulated teariness in his eyes. He had told Jennie to meet him at the entrance, a gruff command, spat out between gulps of hot coffee as he sat with the New York Times spread over the refuse of his Lucite desk. The depth of the Sunday Times’ reporting was overwhelming. By comparison the Sunday Chronicle was an inept rag, swollen with trivia. Today he had counted seven advertising inserts, gaudy-colored with, it seemed, row after row of panty ads. He had never imagined that there could be so many different styles and qualities of panties.
The city room was quiet at that hour. A single typewriter clacked and a news aide sleepily opened what remained of a mountain of press releases. The absence of vibration from the presses made the atmosphere particularly unreal, almost eerie. In the far corner one of the older reporters, named McGaren, nodded over his desk reading a book. A widower, he had no home except here. Like me, Nick thought.
A mailbag lay crumpled on the floor near Miss Baumgartner’s desk. He stifled the urge to open the bag and poke through it, searching out the hate mail. But knowing it was there, the hallucinatory ravings, the focused anger, was enough. He would read the letters tomorrow and they would provide their bizarre reassurance.
He thumbed through the Times, seeking ideas for stories and editorials. Because of the game, he would miss the morning’s editorial meeting. Of course, Monday’s editorials were already tentatively programmed. He knew his search was merely a mask for his real intent. Like old Mac sitting in the corner over a book, he simply had nowhere else to go. His life had boiled down to this, at last. The final reality!
Ripping tearsheets from the Times, he checked story possibilities in red grease pencil and flung the remainder on the floor, revealing again the slightly soiled copy of Gunderstein’s story. He glanced over to Gunderstein’s empty desk, expecting to see the intense pimpled face, calm and myopic.
A news aide brought wire copy. The rest of the world was in motion now. The week had begun in other hemispheres, reality had descended, agony stirred, conflicts awoke, birth and death happened, pain began. Words! Everything was words. Media! He wondered if Martha Gates was scheduled to work that day, but he refused to look at the attendance roster.
When he had completed the tearsheets and written in grease pencil the names of the deskmen to whom he wished them directed, he walked out to the city room and handed them to a news aide. Returning, he caught sight of Bonville sitting stiffly in his office, a plume of smoke from steaming coffee rising in the quiet air. Bonville did not see him, could not feel his eyes watching, even as Nick stood in the doorway, casting a shadow. Bonville’s concentration was beyond destruction. It was only when Nick banged his fist against the open door, knuckles against the wood, that Bonville looked up, expressionless.
“Still got a copy of that health insurance editorial, Bonnie?” Nick asked gently, as if the need to ingratiate himself were suddenly of primary importance. Bonville looked at him quizzically.
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” His long bony fingers reached into a desk drawer. Unlike his own, the surface of Bonville’s desk was neat and organized. Finding the copy quickly, he held it out for Nick to grasp. When he had not, he laid it carefully on the desk top as if it had been something delicate, fragile.
“I’m surprised to see you today, Bonnie.”
“I’m rather surprised I’m here,” Bonville said, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny throat. “I mean that figuratively as well as literally.” Nick could sense the beginnings of another confession. Please don’t, he told himself.
“Frankly, I’m going through a bit of a crisis,” Bonville said.
“You too?” It was a tribute to Bonville’s insensitivity not to have caught the obvious. The man was totally within himself, Nick knew. He searched for the right moment to leave, but Bonville was continuing.
“I can’t seem to make a dent. I feel I’m talking to the wind.”
“You’re the house radical, Bonnie. You keep us on our toes.”
“I see the truth with such clarity,” he said, avoiding Nick’s eyes. “Sometimes I feel as if all my nerve ends were reaching out and finding the meaning, right at the heart of things. If only I had the power to persuade you, to verbalize the sense of truth.”
“Come on, Bonnie. There’s a hell of a difference between truth and ideology.”
“That’s exactly the point. I don’t think of myself as an ideologue.”
Nick found himself getting edgy. He hadn’t meant to be drawn in. There was no point to it, no possibility of resolution. Bonville
was a classic Leftist ideologian, handpicked by him to leaven the editorial committee.
“I really don’t think I can continue to take the beating,” Bonville said suddenly, his pain showing now.
“You take things too seriously, Bonnie.” Would he sense the hypocrisy?
“Not seriously enough,” Bonville said, looking at him as if for the first time. “The world is falling apart.”
“Old Cassandra.”
“There is injustice everywhere,” Bonville said.
Another one, Nick thought. What is it about this business? he wondered. That damned sense of justice that ran like a stream through all of them. He felt engulfed by it. Enough!
“We’ll discuss that health piece tomorrow, Bonnie,” Nick said, escaping, conscious that he had left some of Bonville’s words in midair.
Back in his glass cage, he could feel the day begin, as the room began to fill, actors taking their places, the play beginning. At the moment their audience was stirring in their warm beds, the prospect of a lazy Sunday before them, the expectation of the big game, which magnetized their attention. In his absence a news aide had piled on more copy, the columnists’ filings, the overnights from around the world, the flood of words converging. He began to read, trying to pick up again the rhythm of his work, the exquisite balance, as comforting as a pair of old shoes that had grown to fit the contours of his feet. If only he could stay in his glass cage forever, never stirring from within its perimeter and the mental boundaries it symbolized. Here is where he wanted to live and here he wanted to die. Thank you for this gift, Charlie, he told himself, feeling the gratefulness of a loyal old dog who would not stir from its master’s grave. The loss of this world would be his thirty, he knew, taking pride in the newspaperman’s symbol, the origin unremembered. Telephones began to ring. Typewriters clacked. Voices hummed. The giant was stirring.
“Yes,” he said into the mouthpiece of his own telephone which had rung.
“Nick.” It was Myra. She seemed surprised. “I tried your apartment.”
“Some loose ends,” he said. He would not show her how much he needed to be here.
“Just wanted to be sure you wouldn’t forget the game.”
“Not a chance.”
“And Jennie?” There was the slightest change of pitch, or had he imagined it?
“Jennie, too.”
She had paused, her breath expelled, perhaps, in relief. He was certain now that Jennie had not confided, a mark of her own strategy for survival.
“And, Nick. I just want you to know how grateful I am for your attitude on Henderson. He called me late last night. I’m very thankful.”
“He admitted it, Myra. He implied you also knew.” It was important for her to know that he shared their little conspiracy. The pause was longer now, as she gathered her thoughts for some adequate response. She also knew the limits of her powers.
“He’s our kind of guy,” she said, ignoring the accusation. She could hear only the sound of her own drummer, he knew.
“Yes, Myra. He’s our kind of guy.” The words came out rippling, as if they were dragged over an old-fashioned washboard.
“It’s going to be one helluva year,” she said, girlish, gleeful.
“We needed an encore,” he said. “See you later.”
He had barely hung up when the telephone became persistent again, drawing his eyes away from the overnights. Finally he picked it up. It was Gunderstein’s flat quiet voice, a slight quiver revealing a tenseness that might not be detected in a face-to-face talk.
“Will you be in for a while?” Gunderstein asked.
“I’m going to the game.”
“I must talk to you.” It was a confrontation he wanted to avoid. Could Gunderstein ever really be placated? The man’s tenacity was superhuman.
“I’m leaving early.” He knew then that he should just hang up the phone and run, as far as he could go. But there was no escape, not from the all-seeing myopic cyclops that was Gunderstein.
“Please, Mr. Gold. I can be there in ten minutes.” The phone clicked off, leaving the receiver in a wet and trembling hand. When he had finally returned it to its cradle, Nick felt his concentration drain away. Moving his body in the chair, he looked into the city room again. Down the line of desks he could see the dark face of the Atkins girl, caught, he imagined, in the agony of nonobjectivity. Even at that distance she must have felt his eyes on her. She looked up, her head bobbing slightly, then returned to her typing.
The overnights seemed suddenly hollow, pretentious, as if the reporters were forcing themselves to fill space, injecting interpretations and stretching them to the point of pontificating. He was tempted to take his pencil and emasculate the copy, remove all the opinions and propagandizing, extract the spice of the newspaperman’s art like a bad tooth. Usually it was impossible for him to see this kind of blatancy and do nothing about it. Sometimes he would excise a word, a paragraph, sometimes kill an entire story. This morning, though, he felt his powers ebb, a man caught in a never-ending dream sequence reaching for an object that his fingers refused to hold. Media! The word buzzed in his head like an insect beating its wings against a light. Later, he knew, he would read the printed paper with growing anger as he viewed the words he should have destroyed. It wasn’t enough that he had set the line, at best fuzzy and ill-defined except in his own brain, but policing the line was a special problem, requiring the alertness and vigilance of an army. It was impossible for one man’s brain to monitor it all. If only the information would just stop coming for a single day. Even when there were strikes, and they knew they would skip publication, the information continued to come. It was always processed and kept in readiness for the moment when the public would be let in, the zoo reopened.
Gunderstein arrived breathless, the front of his hair sweaty, plastered to his forehead. Little red circles had already outlined his pimples, a sure guide to the state of his agitation. He looked furtively from side to side as if someone might be expected to intrude at any moment.
“I’ve refocused my story,” he said, taking a sheaf of copy paper from the side pocket of a rumpled jacket. The pages were folded vertically. He opened and smoothed them as he thrust them on top of the pile of dispatches.
“It’s really a closed issue, Harold,” Nick said looking blankly at the copy, refusing to stir his eyes to read it.
“I’ve actually cleared the major hurdle, Mr. Gold,” he said. “Allison has agreed to be quoted. I assume that’s your major objection.”
“Allison?” He had barely remembered the man’s name, although he had invoked the idea of his non-quotability as a major stumbling block to publication. Why couldn’t Gunderstein let sleeping dogs lie?
“Yes. He has agreed to be quoted.” Gunderstein pointed to the copy.
“He’s not afraid?” Nick asked.
“He’s frightened to death.”
“Then why?”
“I paid him,” Gunderstein said simply.
“You paid him?” The cadence of his words indicated that he wanted to say more. Gunderstein waited for the words that did not come.
“It was my own money,” Gunderstein said, before Nick could protest that he had not authorized the payment.
“You’re crazy, Harold,” Nick said finally.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“You’re crazy,” Nick repeated.
Gunderstein smiled thinly, his meaning unmistakable. The story is everything, the means to acquire it merely incidental. They had been down that road before.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Harold.” He knew before it was uttered that it was an unworthy response, a naïve admonishment. “If it ever gets out . . .” He had heard that before as well. Indeed, he remembered having said it in just that way, fear and outrage curdling his guts while the mind sought adequate rationalizations.
“The story is everything, worth anything, the ethics of the payment directly proportional to the necessity of the story’s being told,” some
one had said. Had it been Gunderstein? Or Myra? Or himself?
“Is it really worth that much to you, Harold?” Nick asked.
“I guess it speaks for itself, Mr. Gold,” Gunderstein said. “It simply must be told.”
Nick looked dumbly at the pages before him, despite himself starting to read, then checking himself after the lead paragraph:
“A former CIA operative has accused Senator Burton Henderson, the Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination, of being the principal engineer of the assassination of Diem of South Viet Nam in 1963,” the paragraph began.
“Right out on the limb,” Nick said.
“The limb will hold.”
“And the concept of two sources?” Nick could barely dislodge the words.
“There aren’t two sources, Mr. Gold. The Dallas and Los Angeles bullets took care of that.”
“And Allison? The man’s a drunk and frightened. He’ll crack when the others start pressing him for motivation. He’ll be sure to mention the money.”
“It’ll be too late by then. The story will be out. Besides, I doubt if he’ll mention it.”
“And if he does?”
Gunderstein shrugged.
“Sooner or later it all comes out.”
They had gone over that ground, too. Who would finally be the first to tell the story of the quarter of a million? What will it matter then? The President was gone now. History had marched on. Was it he who argued for the price of the truth?
“In the end, Allison finally agreed with you,” Gunderstein said. “He’d be safer with the story up front than hiding in the shadows, a potential victim.”
McCarthy’s words, too, cascaded downward from the vault of time. “Find out,” he had said. “Whatever it costs, find out.” It had echoed and reechoed in space and time.
“People will think this whole business of democracy is one gigantic license to steal, a fraud. Aside from Henderson’s career, have you assessed the impact on this country?” The words sounded like his, familiar in the delivery, but their integrity seemed suspect, even to him. He wondered if Gunderstein could detect the hollowness, the false ring.