Watergate (66 page)
Authors: Thomas Mallon
The men called for another round, and while their empty glasses were being cleared from the table, they looked at the handful of LaRue’s possessions, ready to be turned over to his family, sitting amidst the coasters and napkins.
“You seen this?” One of the men picked up an envelope. “It’s the strangest goddamned thing.” The stamps on it were Canadian; the postmark was from 1957; the addressee was a law firm in Jackson. And there was that word “MOOT.”
“Never opened?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Ever heard of the law firm?”
“Oh, open the goddamned thing.”
The man holding it slit the envelope with a butter knife. He took out some thick stapled pages that were discolored where they’d been folded for forty-seven years. He flipped through the sheaf until he came to the fourth page, which had two paragraphs somebody had drawn a dark red box around. He positioned the paper so everyone could read it for himself under the sunlight filling the restaurant’s courtyard.
Investigators conclude that Mr. X could not have been killed by Mr. X Jr
.
When Mr. X Jr. stood up to fire at the birds
,
Mr. X
,
who had also been drinking alcohol (see medical appendix)
,
reacted with startlement from his semi-upright position approximately 25 feet away. Mr. X’s own weapon discharged itself into his upper-right torso
,
so quickly after the discharge from Mr. X Jr.’s that witnesses believed they had heard a single report
.
“Jesus, they’re talkin’ about his daddy.”
They all knew something of the story, most of it from people other than Fred.
The victim’s intake of alcohol may have been a matter of contributory negligence—his own—but otherwise his death was indisputably accidental
.
“And he kept this thing sealed up for fifty years? Never even opened it?”
“Fred had his own way of dealin’ with the world.”
“
Somebody
once opened it,” said the waitress, who’d liked Fred and had been eavesdropping. She pointed to the box outlining the two paragraphs. “That was made with lipstick, sure as shootin’.”
I am grateful, even more than usually, to my editor, Dan Frank, who guided me toward and through this book in innumerable ways.
I also appreciate the enthusiasm that my agent, Andrew Wylie, has shown toward this project over the past few years.
Thanks, too, to Ed Cohen, Altie Karper, and Jill Verrillo for all their skillful editorial and production help.
I owe a debt to all of the following people and institutions for archival resources and research help: Jeffrey M. Flannery at the Library of Congress; Susan Cooper and Marty McGann of the National Archives and Records Administration; Brian McLaughlin of the U.S. Senate Library; Margaret Zoller of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art; the Washingtoniana Division of the District of Columbia Public Library; Jonathan Movroydis at the Richard Nixon Foundation; the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California; the Biloxi
Sun-Herald
, Biloxi, Mississippi.
For various kinds of encouragement and assistance I would like to thank: Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Patricia Kenworthy; Dr. Joseph Abraham Levi; Priscilla McMillan; Charles Francis; Tom Duesterberg; Robert Nedelkoff; Michael Bishop.
For reminiscences of life within the Nixon administration and around Washington during the early 1970s, I am grateful to Robert Gray, Michael Balzano, and my dear friend Rene Carpenter.
James Rosen, author of
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate
, provided me with advice, Watergate lore, and research materials. Most of the latter pertained to Fred LaRue, and I am very much in his debt for them—though I should note here that, among the book’s main characters, LaRue’s life has undergone the greatest degree of fictionalization.
In this book, as in my previous novels, I have operated along the always sliding scale of historical fiction. The text contains deviations from fact that some readers will regard as unpardonable and others will deem unworthy of notice. But this remains a work of fiction, not history.
I owe thanks to John McConnell, who served in two presidential administrations, for a host of shrewd suggestions and free lunches in the White House Mess.
While writing this novel, my mind has often traveled back to conversations I had about Richard Nixon with my pal Kevin Morley when we were college freshmen during the tumultuous spring of 1970. I’m grateful for his friendship during that time and in all the years since.
Special thanks to Bob Wilson and Sudip Bose at
The American Scholar
.
But thanks, above all, to Bill Bodenschatz—for everything within, and outside, these pages.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
OCTOBER 15, 2011
Thomas Mallon is the author of eight novels, including
Henry and Clara
,
Dewey Defeats Truman
, and
Fellow Travelers
. He is a frequent contributor to
The New Yorker
and
The New York Times Book Review
, among other publications.
Also available in eBook format, by Thomas Mallon:
Fellow Travelers •
978-0-375-42516-5
Mrs. Paine’s Garage •
978-0-375-42192-1
Yours Ever
• 978-0-307-37864-4
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