The Henderson Equation (17 page)

The bartender poured whiskey into two shot glasses placed
on the battered bar. Apparently the assumption of what a person drank was
preordained when one was drinking with Patton. He tossed off his drink with a
quick flick of his head, eyes tearing, loose jowls around his neck pulsating.

"So they got a hard-on for Pelligrino," Patton
said. "That old WASP cocksucker just can't stand to see a guinea get ahead
in New York."

"WASP? I thought McCarthy was an Irishman."

"Not him," Patton said, "Beardsley calls the
shots."

Beardsley was the publisher. He had seen him only once, a
shadowy figure who walked quickly through the city room, an innocuous, smiling
man with an easy ingratiating manner.

"But I thought McCarthy..."

"That drunken flunkey." Patton unwrapped a cigar,
bit its tip off spat out a lump on the floor, and lit it. "He was one hell
of a newspaperman in his day, kid. One helluva newspaperman." It seemed a
genuine tribute, peer to peer.

"Are you saying the only reason that they'd like to
see Pelligrino dumped is because he's Italian?"

Patton watched him, squinting through the fresh cloud of
smoke. "That's part of it."

"I don't understand."

"It's the power of the press, kid. Muscle flexing is
all. Nothing personal."

"Nothing personal. My God, we're about to ruin the
man's political career."

"That's the way it goes. They're all the same anyway;
a bunch of grafting bullshitters. One's as bad as another. The guinea's okay.
Beardsley doesn't want him for mayor is all."

"You mean, just like that."

Patton looked at him. He seemed mystified. "Don't take
it so hard, kid. Maybe Beardsley's wife got up on the wrong side of the bed one
day. Maybe he couldn't get it up and she had a bad breakfast and couldn't shit
and the first thing she sees on the crapper is this guinea's face in the paper.
How do you think you'd feel if all those things had happened to you and the
first face you saw was this guinea's cutting a tape, smiling for the cameras,
looking to beat hell like he was having a good time, and all she could get off
was one lousy little crampy fart?"

"That's ridiculous."

Patton sighed and pointed to his shot glass again, which
the bartender quickly filled. "Not so ridiculous as it sounds, kid,"
he said. "It's all a whim. Beardsley can do anything he wants. All he's
got to worry about is the laws of libel. He can chew up anyone he wants."

"We could refuse."

"What are you, a fucking Bolshevik? Don't cry over any
of them. Pelligrino's a filthy little wop. He'd sell his soul to the devil for
one more vote and you can buy him for the price of a piece of ass. What the
hell?" Patton shrugged, drank off his whiskey, then looked at Nick again
and laughed. "Don't be so fucking self-righteous. Who the hell do you
think's paying the bar bill?"

"Jesus," Nick said. He had just picked up the
shot glass to sip. He put it down again quickly, as if it suddenly had turned
to a burning coal.

"You're kidding me," Nick said. It was more in
the nature of a question.

"I shit you not," Patton said, but it seemed
inconclusive, tentative. It was then beyond Nick's realm of experience.
Watching Patton, his face drained of color in the dark bar, Nick tried to see
beyond the patina of cynicism that seemed to screen out all but the darker side
of human motivation. It frightened him. Was this the way he would wind up after
a lifetime of recording human folly? He felt perspiration begin to roll down
his sides as he reached again for his drink and drank it off with the same
quick motion as Patton's. He could feel the older man's eyes on him, cool and
observing; perhaps, watching the drink downed, with renewed respect.

"As to Pelligrino," Patton said, his voice
lowered, "he's got a trail of droppings from here to Canarsie. Just you
tell McCarthy to call his buddies at the Police Department and pull a raid on
Uptown Emma's. She's the City Hall pimp. Got a Park Avenue place. You'll get
all the dirt you need on Pelligrino. He's one of the regulars."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that." Patton snapped his fingers.

Nick remembered the night at Shanley's, the big beefy back
of the Police Chief, McCarthy's heavy cough-provoking laughter.

"It's disgusting," Nick said. "It makes a
mockery of the newspaper business, of the police, of government."

"Not a mockery, kid, a game. It's all a game. Either
play the game or get the hell out. What did Harry say? If you can't stand the
heat, get the hell out of the kitchen. Now there's your example, kid."

Standing there, watching Patton, Nick felt a sudden tinge
of nausea. Perhaps it was the whiskey or the heavy acrid smell of the cigar
smoke or the stink of human mendacity and self-disgust, but Nick quickly left
the bar and began to walk, at first through the park, then detouring, heading
uptown on the sidewalk. Somehow his inner agitation and the physical exertion
of the swift walk dispelled his nausea. His first impulse at rationalization
was disbelief. These things only happened in movies, contrivances to further
the plot, exaggerations to hold interest, broad strokes of the brush to make a
point. Surely this was not the way it was in real life. He tried to imagine
what Beardsley was like, the smiling face, hardly worthy of a second look. Was
it possible for one man to wield such power? It was, he told himself, unjust,
immoral, patently wrong. And yet, if one were to take Patton's analysis as gospel,
what did it matter? Pelligrino, after all, was just a venal little bastard, a
fraud. Or was it simply another prejudgment, inflamed further by Patton's
cynicism? Perhaps Beardsley was acting out of outrage, decency, faith in the
democratic process. Patton could be wrong, after all, wrong about Beardsley's
motives, wrong about Pelligrino, wrong about life in general, the old mean
drunk. People weren't all that bad. Besides, perhaps the Pelligrino story was
all McCarthy's idea, an instinctive feel for the jugular of corruption. What
did he care about Pelligrino? The people! The poor put-upon minions who lived
in this pressure cooker of a city were entitled to honest government. That was
their right, their heritage. Bits and pieces of speeches floated in his mind,
bands playing, flags waving in the breeze on the public square of Warren, Ohio.
Hell, he thought, he had nearly got his ass shot off fighting for that
principle. Fuck Patton and all his posturing horseshit, all his meanness, all
his sick twaddle. The issue was corruption. If Pelligrino was corrupt, he
deserved his fate. Truth will out.

When, finally, Nick recovered his sense of place, he was
crossing Third Avenue on Forty-second Street, passing the Horn and Hardart,
chugging up the hill to the
News
building. When he arrived in the city
room again, his feet ached. Sweat soaked into his clothes. He walked directly
up to McCarthy and gave him the message about Uptown Emma's, watching as the
older man reached for his private phone and dialed the number without
hesitation, leering into the mouthpiece. "Good work, kid," he said.

When Gunderstein returned, Nick poured himself another
Scotch and watched the younger man pace the room, his thin body taut, stooped,
hands pushed deeply into his pants pockets.

"I believe him," Gunderstein said. Instinct
again, Nick thought, observing him coolly, appraising the way Gunderstein's
mind groped forward like a caterpillar on clusters of tiny feet.

"That's not enough," Nick said. He felt his own
ambivalence. By now he had learned that there were no certainties, the prism of
truth changed with the direction of the light source. It was all a question of
will and interpretation, his will, his interpretation. To Gunderstein, the
story was the story, impersonal, a brief photograph from many angles of a
single subject.

"Frankly, Harold, without any attributable quotes the
story has no weight, becomes pure speculation. The implication that the Diem
assassination triggered the Kennedy killing is unsupportable, another
mythmaker."

"That would depend on how I wrote the story."

"You'd still have to write it with Henderson somewhere
up front. In today's climate even the allegation that he was part of the CIA
action would be damning. The accusation that he was actually part of an assassination
plot would kill his career off entirely."

"But it's the truth."

"You don't know that for sure."

"You heard Allison."

"I also saw him: a bitter, frustrated drunk."

"Would you run the story if I got him to allow himself
to be quoted?"

Nick paused. It was time to be cautious. "I wouldn't
want to commit myself." It's a lot different with palace favorites, he
thought, ideological cousins. "Why is it that these informer types wait
for years to surface?"

"They apparently fester until the boil breaks."

"And all we have to do is stand there with our cups
out to catch the pus." He was revolted by his own image, finishing off the
dregs of his drink.

"I know I could write the kind of story that could
pass muster. Suppose I left out Henderson's name?" He would not give up.

"You're like a damned sea nettle, Harold."

"We should tell it," he said, with emphasis on
the collective pronoun.

Nick rubbed his chin, the beard bristles rough against the
heel of his hand. He felt his energy drained, looked at his wristwatch. It was
after midnight. The liquor had hit him quickly, confirming his tiredness, his
age, the fallibility of the human body. Rising, he felt the sluggish unlocking
of his knees, a brief stiffness, more signals of time's encroachment.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," Nick said,
putting his empty glass on one of the Stonehenge piles, drawing his tie
tighter, straightening his jacket. He let himself out, leaving the puzzled face
of Gunderstein to its angular contemplation.

Outside, the air was chilling, although his head cleared
and by prodding his legs along the pavement, he was able to loosen up a bit.
For years he had been able to judge his energy by the use of his legs. In youth
the early morning movement in the bright, clean, sunlit air always came as a shock,
like cold water on a sweaty brow, cool and sweet and powerful. Later he could
measure the progress of his life, the decline of the tissues, by this yardstick
of remembered energy in his legs. Walking now, he could feel the slippage, and
by the time he reached Foxhall, less than a quarter of a mile away, he was
struggling to catch his breath and perspiring heavily. The security guard,
alerted by his step, peeked out the door of the guardhouse and waved as he
proceeded uphill to the entrance of the building, a glass palace built on one
of Washington's highest points. When he had purchased the apartment a few years
ago, the view with its unobstructed visibility of legendary landmarks seemed
somehow a deserved gift to himself.

In his apartment, he moved from the foyer into the living
room where floor-to-ceiling windows offered fantastic views of the city at his
feet. He stood watching it for a long time, as he had often done, until a small
clock chimed one and reminded him again that he was tired. It had been a long
day, he thought, smiling to himself, remembering how it had begun. He removed
his clothing in the bathroom, slipped into his pajamas which hung on a
doorhook, brushed his teeth, then, clothes in hand, tiptoed into the bedroom
where a big double bed stood on a raised pedestal. The bedspread was still
pulled taut. Jennie had not come in yet.

If there was a brief flash of anxiety it was only, he told
himself, based on the level of his expectation; he had assumed she was there.
Lying down, he refused to allow his anxiety to proliferate. She had, he
imagined, simply joined the party she was covering. Perhaps she had checked
with the night desk, who told her that the story was spaced out for the late
editions.

He could visualize her, without jealousy, flirting, being
pursued, tantalizing, charming, in her special chic, with-it manner, always a
delight, except when she groped for expression on the typewriter. There the
charm and fluidity sickened and withered.

From his bed he watched the flickering lights on the nearby
radio towers, feeling his muscles unstiffen in his legs. The residue of alcohol
in his blood made his head swim at first, but soon he slipped into sleep. The
jiggling of a key in the lock and the clock chiming three sounded in his mind
simultaneously and he opened his eyes, listening for her step, fully alert.

She had taken her shoes off and was proceeding quietly
through the apartment. He heard a bump.

"Shit," she cried.

"Jennie!"

"I woke you. I promised I wouldn't wake you, darling.
And now I've done it." She sat on the side of the bed, the heavy sweetish
scent of champagne mingled with her perfume.

She reached for his forehead, smoothed his hair. "Poor
baby," she said. He looked upward, focusing on her face, the smooth
cheekbones, large, carefully shadowed brown eyes, the frosted hair long and
silky against the side of his face. "We danced and danced. It was quite a
do. Then the ambassador invited us upstairs for scrambled eggs and champagne,
which he made himself on a big skillet. It was so veddy British, so naughty,
yet so proper."

"How cozy," he mumbled.

"Did you miss old Jennie?" she asked, pinching
his side.

"Old
is hardly the
correct adjective."

"It was lovely, a charming party. I really don't think
I'll be half bad on them. It all had a certain anglicized ambience that was
refreshing. And the champagne was divine."

"I can smell it," he said.

"I'm gloriously smashed." She lay her head on his
stomach over the blanket. He could feel the light pressure of her hand against
his penis. The suggestion of sexuality recalled his feeling of tiredness.