Firebird_A Spy Story of the 1960's

by Noel Hynd

  “Walter’s an old friend. He knows people. We had a drink. I introduced Lauren.”

  Murphy waved dismissively. “Ah, nuts to that, anyway. Come on, Frank,” Murphy continued. “You know how the benighted system works. Mr. Siegelman wants stories that grab the public by their small hairy regions each day or he doesn't want the stories at all. And, damn it, I agree with him! Nothing's coming together. Your story is a gargantuan yawn.”

  “So why are we here today, Steve?”

  “Kenneth wants me to reassign both of you to something more productive.” Murphy patted a pair of files at his elbow. “We have some feature stories around with some sex appeal. Otherwise it’s back to the Irish Comics with you and the pretty girl here goes back to the sports page where she can sniff jockstraps. You’ll get right on these stories if you know what’s good for you. I’m being generous. Generosity flows in my veins by the quart. Possibly the gallon. You know that.”

  Cooper and Richie exchanged a look.

  “No way, Steve,” said Cooper, pushing back. “Not till after the election.”

  “What the damned hell does the election have to do with it? I am positively seething with curiosity about what you’re suggesting.”

  “We don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. It’s an angle we’re working on.”

  Murphy’s gaze shot back and forth.

  “Ah! You two like working together? Is that it?” Murphy's eyes twinkled lasciviously. “Looks like you do. Word reaches me that you do. Fine. You can stay as a team. I don't care. Okay, she can come over to your department and write about interesting dead people, same as you. That brings me to something else? Are you having sex?”

  “Excuse me!” Lauren snapped.

  “Oh, you know,” said Murphy, now choosing his words deliberately. “I think you conceptualize my question. Are you two good folks fucking each other?”

  “Give me a break, Steve,” Cooper said. “Stop trying to shock Lauren, she’s a good reporter. Stop pinching her ass when she comes by your office.”

  Momentarily, Murphy blanched.

  “The answer is yes.” Lauren said. “We sleep together. Sometimes at my place, sometimes at Frank’s. Happy?”

  “Delighted,” said Murphy, who wasn’t. “You two ingrates deserve each other.”

  A wave of relaxation swept the room, as if Murphy had shot off all his bullets and the targets remained untouched. The managing editor leaned back at his desk.

  “I’m vexed by you, Frank Cooper. I pay you a sound wage and you make me look weak to Mr. Siegelman. Perhaps your joint resignations would be a good thing for everyone.”

  Cooper went back on offensee. “All right. Can we have two weeks?” Cooper asked.

  “Two weeks? What in God’s name for? Of course not! No!”

  “Be realistic, Steve,” Cooper countered. “What’s really going to work here?”

  “One week for you, Cooper,” Murphy said. “And I want you back on the Dead People page at the same time.” He looked to Lauren. “And you’re back to sports. The jock straps and the riding crops. That’s final! And neither of you will no sooner get a nickel of new travel expenses out of me than blood from an Orange Julius. Now. There's something else I need to take up with you as well,” he added. He looked at Lauren. “This publication will be making an endorsement in the Presidential campaign,” Murphy said. “I don't think I need to tell you where Mr. Siegelman's sympathies lie.”

  “With the crypto-Nazi from Alabama,” said Cooper.

  “Those are Mr. Siegelman's wishes,” said Murphy. He eyed the new wave of disgust on the faces of his two reporters. “On most of Kenneth's papers that would present no problem. The Eagle's a little different situation, this being a big city and all. What I want to know is whether it's going to be a problem, here.”

  “With the reporting staff? Or with labor?” Cooper asked.

  “Either.”

  “To answer your last question first, Steve,” Cooper said. “This paper busted the printers' union and reporters’ union pretty thoroughly when it started up. So your labor problems are minimal. As for the reporting staff…”

  “I'm not going to see any blood in the corridors, am I?” Murphy asked. “We won't have an insurrection of young misguided and frequently misinformed liberal reporters that's going to serve as an embarrassment, will we?”

  “You want an honest opinion or a polite opinion?” Cooper asked.

  “Maybe you could endeavor to give me both.”

  “I doubt if you got five people in this place, other than the two sitting in front of you, who have any scruples, much less who care who's President.”

  “Excellent,” said Murphy. “Would you like to write the editorial endorsing Wallace?”

  “Who, me?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes. Who they hell do you think I’m talking to? You!”

  “I don’t like Wallace.”

  “So what?”

  “I’m not writing an endorsement, Steve.”

  “All right. I’ll get Marty Friedkin to do it.”

  “Is that a joke? Friedkin loathes Wallace.”

  “Like most Englishmen, Marty’s fey and a whore. He’ll write anything.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Well, then, I’ll demand it from him. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll quit.”

  “Why don’t you write it yourself?”

  “I’m too busy.”

  “Why don’t you ask Topher Wilson to write it,” Cooper suggested.

  For a moment, the name stumped Murphy. “The colored kid who’s now on your death page?”

  “It was a joke, Steve,” Cooper said. “And stop using the word ‘colored.’”

  “That’s another thing, you damned blue collar Irish Socialist,” Murphy said. “Look at who you surround yourself with. If you had your way you’d have the Hebrews, the women and the minorities running this paper.”

  “It would be a better paper if we did,” Cooper said.

  Murphy waved them away. “All right. Enough! This meeting is over. Out of here. Both of you. I pay you good money and you bite my hand. I don't know why I keep you on.”

  “We don’t either,” Cooper said.

  “Are we fired or what?” Lauren asked, standing. “I’m not following.”

  “No! Just get moving. Out!” Murphy said, indicating the door.

  Cooper and Lauren left Murphy’s office and took the elevator down to four. They were alone in it. Lauren’s arms were folded in front of her.

  “How do you get away with that?” she asked.

  “With what?” Cooper answered.

  “Talking like that to the boss?”

  “He knows I’m a friend and will look out for him. Otherwise he’s frightened.”

  “He’s got a big salary and a house in Connecticut. Frightened of whom?”

  “Of everyone,” Cooper said. “He’s scared of the reporters because they might not turn in good copy. He’s afraid of the readers because they might stop reading and he’s afraid of the advertisers because they might stop writing checks. And he’s afraid of Kenneth Siegelman because if any of the above things happen, Kenneth will fire him. He’ll no longer have his house in Southport, his mortgage, his new Jaguar and his yacht club membership. He uses all the profanity in a fake show of strength to prove how tough he is, because that’s exactly what he isn’t. Tough. This is an Alice In Wonderland sort of place,” Cooper said. “What appears so, isn’t. The owner, Ken Siegelman, hates profanity. He’d fire anyone who ever printed any. That’s why Murphy uses it so much: to indicate that he’s independent from the boss, which he also isn’t.”

  They arrived at the fourth floor. The elevator doors rattled open.

  They went back to work in obituaries and sports as if nothing had happened.

  Chapter 77

  The next morning, Cooper was spreading the day’s obituary photographs on Cooper’s desk. Lauren had come by to share some coffee and was pitching in, the sports page being ready to c
lose. They had four photos and only had space for two. Beside the obituary layout was a folder on Firebird, with the picture of David Charles clipped to the outside.

  Marty Friedkin, back from a doctor’s appointment, appeared at the door as they worked.

  “I am a Jew,” began Marty, startling them. Friedkin walked into Cooper’s office. “Hath not a Jew eyes?” he continued. “Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”

  Lauren looked up and smiled. So did Cooper.

  “Am I not fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?” Friedkin asked. “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And,” he added, “if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”

  “Revenge is a beautiful thing, Marty,” Cooper said. “You should grab some.”

  “Knowledge of Shakespeare is impressive, too,” said Lauren.

  Topher Wilson, the young CCNY man, was passing in the hallway. He stopped and strolled with curiosity into the office to listen.

  Friedkin, sporting a new bandage on the back of his head, went for the close.

  “If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that,” Friedkin declaimed. “If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

  Friedkin bowed halfway.

  “Bravo!” said Lauren.

  Topher put his hands together and applauded. So did Richie and Cooper.

  “So how’s your head, Marty?” Lauren asked.

  “Still attached to the rest of me,” Friedkin said. “And I’ll have my proverbial pound of flesh yet from this bloody awful Wallace campaign. Jesus! I’ve got a headache that feels like someone’s working a jackhammer in my head. Apparently, I’ve got a mild concussion from being sucker punched in Cobo Hall, Detroit.”

  “What can we do?” Cooper asked.

  “Anything?” Lauren pressed.

  “You need ice, Marty?” Topher asked.

  “No, no. I just need a sane campaign to follow. How about Dick Gregory for a change? That might be more peaceful.” He glanced at Cooper and Richie. “You two joining me at the Garden for the insipid ‘Fighting Judge’ Wallace rally? I got you both credentialed. You can talk to Happy Chandler, the former baseball commission, if you can catch him. Then if you’d watch my back so I don’t get clubbed to death by fine otherwise-upstanding Americans who happen to be members of the White Aryan Resistance, that would be most appreciated.”

  Friedkin could raise facetiousness to an art form.

  “Do you expect it to be rough?” Lauren asked.

  “The rally in the Garden?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said.

  “Not any more than any other Wallace rally. Just bigger. The racists are emboldened out in the hinterlands. Here in New York they’re on the defensive. They know they should be ashamed of themselves but they’re racists, anyway. It’ll be rough outside the Garden but hearts ’n’ flowers ’n’ Dixie music inside. Like a Buck Owens concert, but without the lederhosen. That’s my guess,” he concluded. “But I guess wrong all the time. You got a bottle of aspirins in your desk, Cooper, or just booze?”

  “Both,” Lauren answered.

  “Let’s all have some of each,” Friedkin suggested. “Murphy asked me to write the editorial endorsing Wallace. I told him to shove it. He’s trying to get me to quit, you know. Claims he’s paying me too much. I’d be happier to get fired and collect the unemployment. What a way to make a living.”

  Thereupon, the 1968 Presidential campaign entered its final week and a half.

  Chapter 78

  The next afternoon, October twenty-forth, 1968, George C. Wallace, the flyweight from Alabama, arrived by private jet at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. He was finally on his way to Madison Square Garden to fight a heavyweight event.

  Heavy security lined the route into Manhattan. More than a thousand city police ringed the Americana Hotel on Sixth Avenue, where Wallace would be staying and where he would hold a fund-raising dinner before the event at the Garden.

  As the afternoon faded into evening, the area of midtown Manhattan from Fifth to Ninth Avenues and from 32nd Street to 34th went into a lockdown. Thirty-five hundred policemen turned the Garden into a fortress, complete with wooden horses set up as barriers and a battalion of mounted police. The mounted units blocked the only accesses to the Garden to everyone except ticket holders and those holding media passes. All vehicle traffic was rerouted.

  On 32nd Street, Wallace supporters and anti-Wallace demonstrators taunted each other. Then the rocks, batteries and soda bottles filled the air. A surly crowd of anti-Wallace protesters surrounded a busload of Wallace supporters from Long Island and rocked the bus. They shouted obscenities and pounded the windows. Those in the bus flipped raised index fingers and pressed Confederate flags to the windows. Police charged and managed to rescue the occupants. The crowd receded but then turned on pedestrians wearing Wallace hats and waving Rebel flags.

  Someone grabbed a Confederate flag from a Wallace supporter and set it on fire.

  “Burn, baby, burn!” the anti-Wallace crowd chanted.

  At the same time, mounted police charged a thousand demonstrators on the north side of 34th Street. The crowd had thrown rocks and bottles and taunted the police with fascist salutes and chants of “Sieg Heil.” The crowd formed again on the south side of 34th and worked its way through its repertory of taunts, starting with “Two, four, six, eight. We don’t want a Fascist State.”

  Then, shortly before eight o’clock, with most of the ticket holders seated, Wallace men wearing Wallace buttons on their lapels stepped outside the Seventh Avenue entrance to the Garden, the only entrance remaining open. They handed out free tickets to an upper reserved section. They made sure to give them to groups of blacks and long-haired white youth. What would a Wallace rally be without hecklers? Incomplete, that’s what.

  By this time, Wallace was inside the Garden, having arrived by armored car via the automobile ramp normally used by the Knicks and Rangers. Martin Friedkin covered the event for the Eagle. He circulated among the attendees and asked them why they were here.

  Friedkin got an earful. "Working people have been taken advantage of long enough," said a man who worked as a plumbing contractor and lived in Forest Hills, Queens. "Look at your paycheck. That tax money they take out goes to a colored man who stays at home and loafs."

  “The politicians, they all suck up to Negroes and other minority groups,” growled another man who identified himself as a retired fireman from Union City, New Jersey. “How about a change?” The man’s heavy arms displayed the tattoo, U.S.S. Spencer. He rested his elbows on his knees as he continued. “All them giveaway programs. They'd rather give away money than make minorities work.” He paused. “I was in the U.S. Navy for six and a half years," the man said, his face growing dark with rage. “You sing God Bless America and say the Pledge of Allegiance and you really believe it and the liberals think you're a kook. That's why I'm here tonight.”

  Another man put a strong hand on Friedkin’s shoulder and continued the theme. “This country is going to pot, it's being run down, little by little. And people are sick and tired of what's going on. Those college demonstrators and everything. Everybody is against America, even the people who live here. Wallace will get rid of all the Communists in government,” he said.

  “How will he do that?” Friedkin asked.

  “I don’t know. Arrest them. Shoot them. Hang them along with the hippies and the faggots. I don’t care as long as he does it. Make America a great country again!”

  Shortly before nine o’clock. General Curtis LeMay took the stage.

  The dissenters section booed noisily and screamed obsc
enities. The General never looked up or acknowledged them as he bloviated through his standard fifteen-minute vent.

  Cooper watched from a position in the press box. Lauren sat next to him, looking aghast. Friedkin returned after his trip to the floor. A moment after returning, Friedkin tapped Cooper on the shoulder.

  “I’m going back to the press room,” he said, “for coffee or a belt of something stronger. Want to come along? Oh.” Friedkin cupped his hand on front of his mouth, turned toward Cooper and spoke in a loud side whisper. “If you want to catch Happy Chandler,” Friedkin said, “there’s your chance. I think he just went back there, too.”

  “Why would I want to meet him?” Cooper asked. “Aside from to chat about baseball?”

  “He’s sore because he got pushed off the national ticket with Wallace. He wanted the celebrity. Some far-right money people pushed Chandler aside. He’s quietly fuming. See if he’ll talk about it. I’m trying to interview Wallace after he’s finished spewing fresh racist bile and vomit to his adoring public.”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” Cooper said.

  Cooper signaled to Lauren. “Come on along,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

  Passing the first layer of security, local police, was not difficult with press credentials, nor was getting past two muscular Alabama state troopers who stood by the corridors sealed off for official business. Cooper and Lauren passed the final inspection by the Secret Service in the hallway that led to the press lounge. Cooper saw the back end of Happy Chandler’s suit and shoes disappear into the room and knew he was close to his mark.

  “You can handle this one,” Lauren said.

  Cooper nodded.

  Chandler was at a refreshment table in a no-frills lounge. When Cooper and Lauren arrived, Chandler was helping himself to pastries and lemonade from a long unattended serving table with a white paper tablecloth.

  Cooper moved to a position about ten feet from Chandler’s left side. Nothing made an ambush-interview more successful than making it look like an impromptu conversation. Cooper watched as the governor tipped a few ounces of bourbon from a personal silver flask into the lemonade. Cooper gave Chandler time to sip, savor and maybe even catch a buzz.