The Henderson Equation (39 page)

"They're not," Henry replied.

Nick could not focus his concentration and the meeting broke
up earlier than usual.

Back in his office, he sat down heavily in his chair and
looked again at the front page of the morning's
Chronicle,
studying the
pictures of the bus massacre. Feeling someone staring at him, he looked up at
the chocolate brown face of Virginia Atkins, who stood in the doorway, tall,
defiant still, although he could detect a touch of contrition in her dark eyes.

"Can I see you a moment, Mr. Gold?"

"Sure," he said. Her voice was soothing, without
a trace of the stereotyped Southern caricature of the black man's tongue. She
looked at him without fear.

"I want to apologize," she said.

"For what?"

"For that outburst of mine yesterday."

He remembered.

"In the heat of battle passions run high."

"Mine went through the roof. I wasn't professional. I
let my blackness smother my objectivity."

That word again, he thought. "So you see it's not that
easy to achieve." He felt he might be lecturing himself. He did not want
to appear patronizing. Searching for a posture of grace, he wanted to match her
dignity.

"I hope it won't affect your judgment of me, Mr. Gold.
I've already talked to Mr. Madison."

"Did you square it with him?"

"Frankly, I wouldn't blame him if he screens my
assignments."

"He'll come around," Nick said, knowing that Ben
would bear his grudge.

"I'm prepared for the penance," she said, then
pausing, "I want you to understand that it's not just wanting to protect
my job. I know how lucky I am to be here. I just feel as if I let you all down
somehow. I had no right to get carried away, to have lost my objectivity."

"You're not alone, Atkins." She nodded, then
moved away, her dignity intact.

The city room was beginning to fill up again, although it
would never reach the pitch of midweek. Luckily there was enough follow-up from
yesterday's disaster to keep the reporters busy. The telephone rang.

"Nick?" It was a vaguely familiar voice.
"This is Burt." Henderson again. His heart sank. What now?

"I've just talked to Myra. You can't imagine how much
your decision means to me."

It was the insufferable ego of politicians to feel the need
to offer thanks, as if the utterance of gratitude carried with it some sense of
giving a kind of trophy. So she had called him immediately to be the harbinger
of the good news.

"I really feel so damned grateful. Could you join me
for lunch? I've got to be downtown and, frankly, Nick, I'd like to talk."

His first inclination was to refuse. There was nothing he
had to say to Henderson, whose point had been won, who had found the key to
press protection, an important commodity at this moment in his political
career. He felt himself mumbling a half-hearted excuse.

"I'll meet you at Duke's at twelve-thirty,"
Henderson persisted, not hearing, or ignoring the refusal. Instantly he felt
the sense of possession, the invocation of the rights of property. So they
think they've wrapped me up, he thought, irritated.

"Sure, Burt," he said, repeating the place and
time. The phone clicked off, leaving him to contemplate this subtle change in
his role. He had given the inch and she had taken the mile. And yet, as he
looked about the city room from his special perch, nothing had really changed.
He could still pick up the telephone and order a total remake of the front page
or the removal of a single offending word, a misplaced comma, the emasculation
of a semicolon, the obliteration of a dangling participle. More important, he
could deflect an offending idea at will, choke off an errant opinion, crush an
incompatible ideology, and with the stiletto surety of his pencil weapon, he could
exile a budding politician to obscurity at the flick of the lead. All but
Henderson. The change, he felt in his panic, could hardly be termed subtle.
Myra had made her move. He had given her veto power. He knew it was just the
beginning.

He felt the need to validate his power, his sense of
command. Picking up the phone, he asked the operator for Atkins' number, dialed
it, watched her pick up the phone languidly from a desk in a spot along the far
wall in the corner of the room.

"Come in here, Atkins," he commanded, watching
her stiffen to alertness, rise quickly, and stride across the room, her long
legs moving her gracefully toward him.

"I want you to put together a reflective piece on the
bus killer," he said. "Really probe. Look inside the man. Give us an
in-depth profile. I want motive, the things that prompted him to
violence."

"You want me to do that?"

"Why not?"

"You know how I feel."

"I don't care how you feel."

She seemed confused, torn between dignity and despair.

"You said you were a professional. Now here's your
chance to prove it." Was he making her a victim simply to prove something
to himself? he wondered. Perhaps. But he had the right, the authority to order
her to take the assignment, to direct its point of view, to dictate its conclusions.
It was the perfect yardstick of his power. It was too bad she had chosen the
wrong moment for apology. He had needed to throw something and she had become
the handy rock at his elbow.

"I'll try, Mr. Gold," she said, fearful now,
surely regretting her apology.

"You'll do more than try, Atkins. You'll
perform." He watched her leave, picked up the phone, and dictated a note
to the pool steno for Madison. Madison was off, he saw on the scheduling sheet.
Weekends off were a prized possession at the
Chronicle,
the option of
the privileged few.

Thumbing through the pile of wire copy, he noted that it
would be a light news day. The world was strangely quiet; it would require
deeper penetration to find the "hot" news stories. The pressure to
fill pages was relentless and finding material that would measure up to
front-page story value was difficult on doldrum days like these. The events of
recent years had made them jaded. Wars, assassinations, corruption in the
highest places in the land. The public was callous now, demanding more than it
was in their capacity to purvey. Gone were the days when a simple killing could
be thought of as an event. Murder had become too commonplace. Now only a mass
murder like yesterday's could have enough impact to titillate the masses.
Looking down the road, years from now, he wondered what the level of horror
would have to be to create the kind of sensation that warranted a front-page
headline. He could envision parameters requiring deaths by the score as even
worthy of consideration. As for corruption, after a president, all else was
anticlimax. Even war, after the horror of Viet Nam, would require weaponry of
massive killing power, body counts in the millions, to bring the interest up to
snuff. His eye roamed through the wire copy looking for news of India. Perhaps
that was why his interest in India was becoming acute, the guerrilla warfare
beginning, the impending deaths multiplying, the possibilities tantalizing in
that sweaty, crowded, starving subcontinent on the verge of explosion. Would
there be a story there?

It was no wonder that groups espousing causes sought ever
greater levels of horror, staged events that by their sheer disgust could
magnetize the media. Blow the head off a baby and it was a certainty that you
could squeeze a few paragraphs into the story that would hawk your case in the
crowded arena. Punch nails into the skull of an old lady and you might even get
a picture out of it. He could envision the day when such horrors would require
massive duplication to be worthy of mention, a world in which the gas chambers
of Auschwitz could hardly merit a paragraph or two, when one might have to
choose between that and say, the total obliteration of an island, like Ireland,
for example, by atomic disintegration or nerve gas. A big kill of the whole
population in one swoop. It was coming. The IRA might say: "If we can't
have her, no one will." Given the state of destructive weaponry, it was
quite possible. Now there would be a story! Against all that, he thought, what
was Henderson, a mere annoyance, a pimple on the head of an erected penis,
irritating, but not able to prevent one's using it. He found it pleasant to
contemplate the situation in terms of sexual symbols. Something how it took the
sting out of the humiliation, assuaged the feeling of helplessness, as if the
remembered pleasure of orgasm were more potent than the purely mental anguish
of a bruised ego. It was like that Italian game of hands, where paper, the
outstretched hand, covered rock, the tight fist. The telephone rang. He picked
up the receiver. It was Jennie.

"You pissed off, Nick?" She was making an effort
to emulate a little girl's voice, always a refuge, a weapon in her repertoire
that had its effect in the past. He mocked her silently.

"Hell no, Jennie. Are you over your pout?"

"Completely. I was mad as hell at you, Nick."

"Maybe I was too damned heavy after all. I've got to
leave you some pride."

"You mean all is forgiven?"

"Hell yes."

"You must have been worried. I was even too mad to
leave a note."

"Forget it."

He was sure now how little he felt for her, and he found it
liberating to know it. In a way he was grateful for the discovery of her--how
could he characterize it?--peccadillo, disloyalty, brown-nosing the boss. The
last was a potent image; she did have an infallible nose for power. Now Myra
would have to protect her.

"Where are you?" he asked, hardly interested.

"Back at the grindstone."

He shrugged, saying nothing.

"It's good to hear your voice again, Nick. And it's
good to know you're not mad at me." Perhaps Myra, too, had noticed the
pocketbook on the table and had urged Jennie to test him, probe for suspicions.
He wondered, too, if Myra had developed an emotional attachment for her, a
natural identification with a younger woman whose ambitions would not be
stifled by the prejudices of her own father. Sad for Myra, he thought. Without
it they could have bounced her between them, he for flesh, she for solace. Now
that he had severed the cord, what did it all matter?

"I'll see you back at the apartment later, Nick.
Okay?"

"Sure," he said. "Why not?"

"You sure you're not angry?" She had detected the
slight sarcasm.

"Not at all," he said, feeling a tug at his
crotch, a hint of sexual delights to come. He chuckled to himself, knowing that
he would no longer be rewriting her copy. Let Myra try, he thought, or
Margaret.

He noted as he hung up that he had been fingering
Gunderstein's copy, his attention caught by the compelling lead paragraph,
drawing him into the story.

"On the day that Diem and his brother were
assassinated, Senator Burton Henderson, then a young intelligence colonel in
the army, was on special assignment in Saigon," the story began. It was
written as all Gunderstein's stories were written, in flat prose, short
sentences, unemotional, with the complete absence of both adjectives and
interpretive adverbs, which could be so devastating in the hands of devious
writers. A person could be described as doing something slowly, feeling
something keenly, acting swiftly, and the meaning of the observation could be
focused toward a desired response. Gunderstein was careful to avoid any hint of
bias, any faint echo of prejudgment. His method was the simple juxtaposition of
facts, piled one on another, a relentless parade, almost monotonous, like a
bill of particulars being read in a monotone. There was no accusatory tone, no
attempt at moral interpretation, no use of abstract subtle nuances. The story
emerged just as it had been discovered: Allison's tip, his name appropriately
omitted, and Phelps' observations, with copious quotes. Here interpretation was
allowed since it was scrupulously ascribed to Phelps. Doubts and lack of
corroboration were carefully annotated, not woven into the story but stated
straight out, leaving the door open to denial. There were quotes from the
Pentagon Papers, which outlined in detail the last days of Diem, Kennedy's
motivation in having him removed by encouraging the coup of the generals, even
the vague references to Diem's assassination as having been carried out by
"rivals." And of course there were denials by the heads of the CIA,
the State Department, and past officials of the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations.

As a piece of journalism, Nick gave it high marks, although
he was upset with himself for having read it, since at this stage it could only
be an exercise in self-flagellation. Of one thing he was certain, the story
would certainly turn off a large segment of Henderson's constituency. All the
denials in the world would be powerless against the pregnant possibilities
implied in the story. Henderson could cry foul from here to dooms-day, but the
voice would be drowned in the swamp of accusation. And he could hardly blame it
on a conservative conspiracy. Its very appearance on the pages of the
Chronicle
would negate that. He was tempted to pick up the phone and compliment
Gunderstein on his story, but felt his inhibition keenly, cursing Myra and his
own inability to stand firm against her. Instead, he could only utter a weak
profanity, and push the copy aside to the farthest corner of his desk, as if it
were unclean, coated with deadly bacteria.

He was late getting to Duke's, having left the
Chronicle
building later than he had expected. The story had kept him absorbed, perhaps a
subconscious sign that he should not be going to lunch with Henderson at all,
knowing that somehow it would make him a party to the cover-up--an odd word to
be dredging up, considering the events of the past.

Duke, his bald pate shining in the sunlight that streamed
through the curtained windows, greeted him with a wisecrack and a heavy
handshake. The restaurant was a hangout for politicians and athletes, a logical
combination that gave the place a macho air, a den of masculine arrogance,
clubby, with its front room kept carefully elite by its owner host. Huge
cartoons showing the corpulent Duke as a paunchy athlete graced the walls while
the smell of garlic in the ubiquitous pickles on each table set the gastronomic
scene as distinctively New Yorky. Saturdays were strictly slacks and sport
shirts, the front room filled with Washington high and mighty. He caught sight
of Henderson, placed by Duke for prominent display in the center of the room.
In the corner he saw Swopes, owner of the Redskins, who would be their host at
tomorrow's game. He waved a greeting. To be seen with Henderson, the act in
itself, was a kind of bonding. Certainly, as Henderson and he both knew, it was
a clue to relationship. In strictly Washington terms it dripped with special
meaning. Enemies did not break bread in Duke's, certainly not on Saturdays.