The Henderson Equation (41 page)

"It's hardly that simple," Nick said, as the waiter
put their food in front of them. He had ordered a salad.

"That's my own special dressing," Duke said from
behind him, insisting on cataloging the ingredients.

It was all so casual, the big comfortable room, the light
smell of garlic that rose delicately from the shiny green pickles, the talk and
laughter of easy male companionship, the taste of pleasantly prepared American
food. To contemplate Henderson against this backdrop, while the words
registered their persuasive logic, seemed beyond comprehension, like a sudden
hailstorm on a summer's night.

"You see," Henderson said, as if in the phrase he
had set up an imaginary mind to debate, "you begin to wonder who your
constituency really is, who you are really accountable to. If you say the
people it becomes an abstraction, because reaching them, truly communicating,
is done through third persons. People like yourself. Editors of media. So you
see, I'm actually playing to you. And it is you--I'm speaking generically--who
determine what my constituency really knows."

The words seemed strained, cautious. But the sense was
clear.

"You exaggerate our power," Nick said, half
believing the well-worn phrase.

"You can make or break any one of us," Henderson
said.

"I suppose if you had your druthers you'd legislate us
out of business."

"As a matter of fact..." Henderson smiled,
relegating the response to humor.

"You see," Nick responded in the same vein.

"It boils down to who knows best."

"Somebody has got to keep you fellows honest."

"Who keeps you honest?" It was an accusation.

"Answer that question yourself and you get some
appreciation of what it means to be an editor."

"So you police yourselves."

"Yes we do." Nick knew he was being defensive.
"And if we goof, there are still the laws of libel."

"Political careers rise and fall on misplaced adverbs.
What good are damages to a damaged man? A kind of Pyrrhic victory at
best." He put his fork down and sipped the remains of his drink.
"We're at your mercy, Nick. That's the long and short of it. And it's not
what you say about us editorially. People understand when you clearly label
things 'opinion.' It's the other ways you express yourself. The subtleties of
story placement. What you choose to run and not to run. The pictures you print
or don't print. There are a thousand myriad ways to jab a guy."

"And build him."

"And build him."

"The sword cuts both ways."

"It's awesome. You've got too damned much
control."

"Power is always dangerous in the hands of the wrong
people," Nick said, conscious of the weakness of his argument. He wanted
to confront Henderson with his own cynicism, throw it back at him like a live
grenade. Here he was, he thought, America's most promising politician, with his
tongue literally stuck up Myra's ass. How he must have sickened at the notion!
And yet, who was he, Nick Gold, to challenge Henderson's image of his own sense
of goodwill? Evil, like love and beauty, could also lie in the eyes of the
beholder.

"What makes you so sure you know what's best for this
country?" Nick challenged. He knew he was playing to Henderson's strength.
But he wanted to see it displayed, needed to see it, as if to validate his own
helplessness, searching for a rationale for his surrender.

"See? You've phrased the question so that anything I
say could be suspect. 'When did you stop beating your wife?' You've invested me
with having some sort of magic potion, forcing me to acknowledge its
possession. The answer is that I'm not sure, not sure at all. I only know that
I am essentially a man of goodwill with the ability to attain office, to put me
in a position to exercise my goodwill."

"In other words, you're saying that your principal
expertise lies in getting yourself elected?"

"More or less. Any politician who speaks differently
is a damned liar."

"Are you saying you have no programs, no panaceas, no
real solutions?"

"I have a posture. I'd like to see a contented,
prosperous, creative America at peace with itself and the world. With every man
a king, every woman a queen, every one of us with a fine feeling about his own
self-worth."

"And how would you achieve that?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"You're applying for the job, not me."

"I couldn't possibly do much worse than my
predecessors."

"That's hardly a qualification."

"Then what is?"

Despite his preconditioning, Nick found himself enjoying
the exchange, the wonderful candor of the man, or so it seemed. Was it merely a
performance for his own titillation, this self-effacement, this light-hearted
humility?

"I'd say that if you were to drive my car, I'd first
find out if you drove well enough."

"Ask anyone who knows anything about traffic safety
and he'll tell you that a previous record of good driving is no insurance
against accident."

"You've got an answer for everything."

"That's my business, the word business. Like
yours."

"Only we don't have our fingers on atomic
buttons."

"Except by proxy."

"Again you exaggerate."

"I don't think so."

They had by now reached the abyss, the who-struck-John
stage. In a way it was comforting to know that Henderson was just as unsure as
himself, just as tentative, with the same fears and anxieties, the same cursed
humanness, the same realization of infallibility. He could see how easily it
must have been for Henderson to manipulate Myra. How blandly he had lied,
denied his involvement in the Diem thing. It was as if he believed in some
higher set of values, a chosen one, like himself perhaps, with the power to
decide what the people were entitled to know for their own good. Democracy is
dying, he thought. After all, did the people really have to know everything?
Every little thing?

When they had finished eating Henderson paid the check,
indicating a subtle change in their relationship, as if his confidence had been
bought for the price of a lunch. He had actually wanted to reach for his credit
card, raise a protest, make a stand. But Henderson had been deft, signing the
check swiftly. Nick noted that he had left the waiter an oversized tip.
Stopping at each table Henderson shook hands all around, while Nick merely
waved, avoiding the touch of flesh.

"See you at the game tomorrow?" Swopes called.

"Sure," Nick answered.

"I'll be there, too. Freeloading as usual."
Henderson laughed. "I hope they beat the shit out of the Skins."

"I'll convey the message. That could lose you
twenty-two votes. Not to mention mine."

"Hell, I've seen your ballot. You voted for Gold-water
and McGovern."

"The ridiculous and the sublime."

It was warm, heavy male banter. It was odd the way
Henderson suddenly reminded Nick of Charlie. He wondered if Myra could detect
the resemblance. It would be poetic justice, he thought, if someday Henderson
were to find himself dumped suddenly, unsuspecting, in midstream, never knowing
why. They said good-bye in the chilly sun-brightened street, Henderson's blue
eyes glistening in the cold, his hand strong as it gripped Nick's, not an
ordinary politician's handshake, but a symbol of brotherhood.

"Well, I've given you my balls," Henderson said,
smiling. It was a strange reference, disturbing. He had no right, Nick thought.
He watched as Henderson waved, a cab drawing up immediately as if it had
materialized at Henderson's command.

He walked back to the
Chronicle,
his hands shoved
deep into his pockets, annoyed at Henderson's carefully planted image. It was,
to him, an obscenity to sense the feel of another man's testicles in his hands.
He shivered and rolled his head, as if trying to shake the terrible obscenity
from his mind.

Walking through the city room, he found he could not keep
his eyes from seeking out Gunderstein, not without guilt now. He could not deny
his sense of shame, although he made ritual attempts to rationalize his
position. After all, he could not empty the knowledge from his mind, could not
will himself to upend his repository of secrets and spill them into some
special cesspool. Charlie, too, must have agonized over the secrets handed to
him, like IOUs from the young President, which he never had a chance to
collect.

When he had seated himself at his desk, the telephone rang.
It was the girl at the message desk reporting his calls. On Saturday there was
no Miss Baumgartner to screen them, remove the wheat from the chaff. He
listened with little interest, except to note that Margaret had called, the
mention of her name recalling last night's conversation. He had hardly dismissed
the idea of calling her back, when he saw that Henry Landau had followed him
into the office.

"Hot potato," he said, sitting down in the chair
in front of Nick's desk. Nick noted that his tan was fading fast, having lost
some hue even in the last few hours.

"I had Flanders do a piece on crimes of violence, a
sidebar to yesterday's mass murder. It started out as purely statistical. You
know how many murders were committed in the District last year?" Nick
shrugged, uninterested.

"You know how many were committed by blacks?"

When he did not answer, Henry responded: "Ninety-five
percent."

"So? It's a black city."

"Precisely why I'm here, Nick. I'm kind of torn. On
the one hand, my sense of journalism ethics screams out at me to run the story,
while on the other hand, considering the environment, our posture, where we
are, I think to run it would be inflammatory, an attempt to balance the fact
that the mass murderer was white. It'll look as if the honkies on board cooked
up a rebuttal."

Nick listened, feeling Landau's dilemma, knowing the taste
of it, the feel of it. He felt again the sense of his own exhaustion. Was it
the walk that had tired him? Weights seemed to press dowm on his mind. Wasn't
there anyone with whom he could share responsibility? What would Charlie have
said? But even that contest was no longer valid. The world had changed
considerably since Charlie's death, metamorphosed, like altered genes.

"What do you think?" he asked quietly.

"That's why I'm here, Nick."

"Put the shit on my stoop, eh?"

"That's the only place I know where to throw it."

"It's the system."

"In a way," Landau said, fidgeting, perhaps
feeling slightly diminished, "I don't want to make your life any more
difficult than it is."

"Then why didn't you kill the story?"

"Because"--Landau hesitated--"I probably
really want it to be told."

"And you distrust your gut feeling."

"Only because of the consequences."

"Run the fucking thing, Henry," Nick said,
feeling the heavy bile of anger again rise in his gorge. "We're not
sociologists. We've got to stop feeling so damned guilty."

Landau smiled.

"Funny, Nick, I had expected a different
reaction."

"Shows you how unpredictable I am." Landau
continued to sit on the chair, rubbing his chin, eyeing Nick.

"I just don't feel comfortable about it," he said
finally, after a long silence, during which Nick had deliberately looked at his
watch. It was nearly time for the budget meeting.

"It's the knee-jerk thing, Henry. You've got to learn
to control it."

"But..."

Buts, buts. Nick felt his patience erode as anger seeped
upward, bubbling, pressed by mysterious inner gases. "Isn't it about time
we stopped pandering to all these sacred cows? Let's erase the labels we've
branded on their butts. Blacks are people, not a cause. Women are people, not a
cause. All those goddamned causes. What the hell ever happened to our
objectivity?"

He wondered if he were making any sense, feeling his palms
sweat again, watching Landau's surprise mature into confusion. Could Landau
ever fill his shoes, he wondered? Had he filled Charlie's?

"You look tired, Nick," Landau said, getting up.

"I am tired," he said.

The words came as a double echo, voices bouncing in the
cavern of his memory. McCarthy had said the same thing one night in Shanley's,
as he sat at the bar, hunched over his shot glass.

"I'm a burnt-out case," he had said, his
articulation pristine, although the hour was four in the morning and the
bartender had already begun to upend the barstools to leave room for his
sweeping.

"It's simply too much for one man," he had said.
Nick had thought it was only the plaint of momentary self-pity. "I'm tired
of being the keeper of their bloated souls."

And Charlie had said it, although somewhat differently, as
the twilight was descending. He could barely remember the scene, although the
words could not be erased.

"We count too much. We're the keepers of the
word," he had said.

"We count too much," Nick said, aloud, watching
Landau, who had frowned, not understanding. He was too tired to offer
explanations. "I am tired," he confessed again.

"Why don't you take off and get some rest?"

He nodded, lit a cigarette, puffed deeply. Landau sighed,
stood up, and left. Watching him go, Nick wondered how he might be observed,
felt himself observed by himself. It was an odd sensation, himself watching
himself. He simply knew too much to be objective. Surely it would be highly
unlikely that an ignorant, dispassionate observer could really understand what
was happening in his mind, since the tendency would always be to generalize,
simplify. When people talked of the media, the press, they meant
"them," a faceless band of insidious, immoral, effete elite, as Spiro
Agnew might have said. As dispassionate observer, Nick chuckled to himself.
There was some truth to it after all, he agreed. With a handful of replicated
minds, like his, they could control the country, the world. And maybe they did.
But he doesn't look like much, the dispassionate observer observed. He's just a
tired, frightened, over-worked, betrayed, unsure, anxiety-ridden, menopausal, middle-aged
man. He shivered slightly, returning to the unobserved isolation of his mind,
cursing the loneliness, the absence of viable competition. What if he were the
only editor left in America, the last screen? At least there were checks and
balances on the president, while he was reasonably free to work his will. And
if he were gone, there would be only Myra. He picked up the phone and dialed
Gunderstein.

"Get the hell in here," he hissed, hanging up,
leaning back in his chair as he puffed deeply, down to the darkest corner of
his lungs. Was he being mildly suicidal?

"I read your damned story, Gunderstein," he said,
knowing that Gunderstein could hardly understand the source of his anger.

"The budget meeting," Landau said in pantomime,
tapping on the glass wall.

"You go," Nick mimed. "Then report back
here." It was the reflex of control. Landau's eyes opened wide, as he
turned and started toward the meeting room. Nick could see the editors
gathering. He spotted Margaret's upsweep as she moved along the well-traveled
route, between the rows of desks with typewriters, now being furiously pounded,
as the deadline moments sped on.

"What makes you so damned sure?" he said, turning
to Gunderstein.

"It's really no mystery, just logical deduction based
on fact."

"A regular Sherlock Holmes."

"In a way."

"Nothing will ever be safe with you around,
Gunderstein. No one will have any more secrets. You're like the grim
reaper."

"It's hardly that esoteric," Gunderstein said,
confused, not smiling.

"Do you think we should print everything we
know?" he asked, watching Gunderstein registering the question in his
mind.

"I don't know."

"What kind of a dumb answer is that?"

"It's too broad a hypothesis, Mr. Gold. My focus is
much narrower than yours. If you asked me if we should print everything about
Henderson that we know, I'd say yes. Just as I said we should print everything
about the President, the former President, that we would find out."

"Regardless of the consequences."

"You see," Gunderstein said gently, "that's
where we just miss any contact. I'm a journalist. I don't think terms of
consequences, only in reporting the story."

"You're a great help."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Gold."

There was a long pause in which Nick contemplated the
younger man. "You're just a guardian of the truth, Harold," he
sighed.

"I'm just a reporter, Mr. Gold. No more. No less. What
about my story?"

"I'll bet your two colleagues are pissed at me."

"That doesn't matter," Gunderstein answered. Nick
could see his pimples flushing.

"Then what the hell matters?" Nick hissed.

"The story, Mr. Gold."

"The story. The story." Nick stood up and paced
the floor. "If it were only that."

"It is only that, Mr. Gold," Gunderstein said,
refusing to be intimidated, Nick observed, unbending, obsessed.

"Don't you give a shit about what this will do to
Henderson?"

"That's not the issue," Gunderstein persisted.

"You're so fucking above it all. So damned
superior."

"I'm not," Gunderstein responded quietly.

A sense of intimidation rolled over him, like a wave of
thick molasses. He felt like an animal with his paw caught irrevocably in a
trap. "Well, I'm not going to run your damned story, Gunderstein." He
was shouting now. Heads turned in the city room.

"May I ask why?" Nick could see a slight tremor
in his lip, the flushes around his pimples expanding.

"I don't have to tell you why," he said,
surprised at his belligerence. If only he could summon some justifying
response, some caustic argument, a raw human response of antagonism. "This
power tripping has got to stop." He half hoped Gunderstein would see it as
unworthy of him, a measure of his ignorance. Was he giving a good enough
performance? he thought. Judging from the reaction of his one-man audience, he
was failing abysmally.

"You're insufferable, Gunderstein," Nick said,
sitting down again behind the desk. "Why don't you even argue for
it?" he said, his voice weakening.

"Because it speaks for itself."

"Yes. Yes. I suppose it does." He could feel the
bile of his own resignation. He paused again. It was difficult to do this
without conviction. "I suppose you could walk," he said quietly.

"Walk?"

"Quit. Hell, Harold, you don't need the money.
Besides, half the newspapers in the country would grab you."

"Who said anything about quitting?"

"Harold, I'm rubbing your nose in it. Where the fuck
is your self-respect?"

By then, he knew that he had gone too far, although he
could not find in himself the power to stop. He would not have been in this fix
in the first place, he told himself, if it weren't for Gunderstein and his
infuriating ability to ferret out a good story.

"All right," he said, "it was a dumb
remark."

"Sooner or later we'll have to carry the story,"
Gunderstein said. He got up and stood for a moment watching him. Then he turned
and walked away. Nick reached for printed copies of the Sunday sections for
review. But the words swam before his eyes. He wanted to call Gunderstein back,
to plead his forgiveness.

Unable to concentrate, he turned again to the wire-service
copy, its large pica type clearly spelling out the day's events in tight flat
sentences. It was a light news days and the wire-service people were stretching
their news sense, seeking ways to keep the words flowing, to satisfy the
never-ending appetite of the member papers.

He was interrupted by the sight of the budget session
disbanding, the editors or their weekend substitutes beginning to walk back to
their departments. He could see Margaret coming toward his office. He wanted to
run, to hide in the adjoining small conference room. He had seen quite enough
of Margaret.

"Are you okay, Nick?" she asked, hovering over
him, as he played at looking over the wire-service copy.

"Of course," he mumbled.

She said nothing for a few moments, her eyes continuing to
stare.

"I'm genuinely sorry about last night, Nick. I hadn't
meant to ever say anything about that time with Myra. I made it sound as if you
owed your job to me."

"Forget it."

"I just hope there'll be no recriminations."

"Recriminations?" he asked, looking at her for
the first time. She looked tired, aged, sagging. "Still worrying about
your job, eh?"

"I just want to be sure everything is kept on a
professional level."

"Isn't that the way it's always been, Margaret? Very
professional."

"Yes, Nick. But..."

"But what?"

"It shouldn't make any difference."

"It doesn't."

He could feel her struggling with herself, obviously
searching for some lever to bond their understanding. For his part, he enjoyed
her discomfort.

"I've given Jennie the White House assignment tonight.
There's a big state dinner." He felt a compulsion to laugh. Who did she
think she was kidding? Surely she must know about Jennie, Jennie the ambitious
ass-kisser, the betrayer, the spy. Was she thinking of him with such contempt
that she assumed he could not know about Jennie? But then, he hadn't known
about Margaret.

"That's terrific," he said with blatant sarcasm,
the kind that couldn't be missed. He knew she wanted to speak further, but he
had already reached for the telephone, dialing Landau's number. He could feel
the responding ring through the adjoining wall, as Margaret turned. He noted
that her upsweep was not so carefully arranged as usual, as if her toilette
that morning had been somewhat distracted.