The Henderson Equation (20 page)

Standing up, he felt a slight nausea as the overdose of
coffee sloshed in his stomach. He looked at his watch.

"I'll talk to Gunderstein," he said.

She followed him into the hallway. From a table in the
foyer he reached for a copy of the
Chronicle
which lay there on a pile.

"Trust me on this, Nick," she said.

"You've never given me reason to do otherwise,"
he answered. Not until now, he told himself, bitterly, feeling the cutting edge
of her growing obsession. He wanted to say more, but turned instead and let
himself out into the chilled air. Once outside, his nausea dissipated as he
breathed deeply.

In the back of the cab, Nick watched the stately embassies
of Massachusetts Avenue flow past, sensing his smallness, a bit of flotsam
churning in the whirlpool of the epicenter. Even as he swirled in the
agitation, he marveled at the manner in which power flowed, seemingly with no
logical design, pursuing an obscure continuity.

It could happen with equal force at breakfast over-looking
a sunlit garden dotted with pre-Columbian sculptures or beside a urinal.
Decisions affecting millions could turn on a minor affliction like acid in the
stomach or a father's long-remembered affront or a mother's withholding of
natural protection. Because Hitler as a boy had observed his parents in a
sexual encounter, whole armies could be laid to waste on the frozen steppes of
Russia. And Johnson, his macho exploding as the cells in his afflicted body
aged, could send 50,000 boys to their death and another 400,000 to the crucible
for ritualized maiming. We are all trapped by our own genetic code and how we
observe experience, Nick thought, wondering about his own lonely vulnerability
in this minuscule gasp of time. He felt his exhaustion and fought against it.
The
Chronicle
needed his strength. After all, life ebbed and flowed;
victory and defeat were simply other sides of the same coin, quivering like a
leaning horseshoe at the edge of the rounded stake.

It had been the primary lesson of Election Eve, 1948, the
odd, maddening duel between the man on the wedding cake, Thomas E. Dewey, and
bumbling, bespectacled, hickish Harry S Truman. It was before the use of computers
for election vote counting and the
News
brought in all the bodies it
could muster, including its entire Washington staff, and rearranged its city
room to calculate and process election results swiftly. Newspapers were still
obsessed, in those days, with the idea of scooping the competition. An army of
copy boys were enlisted to rip the copy off the banks of Associated Press,
United Press, and International News Service tickers and feed it to people,
ranged in desks, representing the complicated geography of states, districts,
and precincts.

A few blocks away, the floors of two major hotels had been
booked for the brass of the two opposing political armies. The Democrats were
ensconced in the Roosevelt Hotel and the Republicans in the Commodore. The Democrats
were enveloped in the heavy gloom of impending disaster, all except old Harry
who had gone to sleep in the family bed in Independence, Missouri, while the
Dewey team waited for its certain victory.

Aside from the excitement generated simply by the break in
routine, Nick looked forward to seeing Charlie again. They'd been in touch by
telephone since Nick's visit to the Parker place in September, although Nick
had noted that their calls were diminishing in frequency.

By then, his involvement with Margaret had reached
pinnacles of possession and passion, and although she officially resided in
Brooklyn, she had moved part of her clothes to Nick's apartment. By going home
on most nights, Margaret was able to somewhat placate her father, whose
simplistic moral code was beyond breaching, and more important, she could still
maintain the hopeless charade that she was "uninvolved." As for Nick,
Margaret had become the quintessence of his existence, the gift of herself an
unbearable joy, a delight so excruciatingly ecstatic that he passed through
moments away from her suspended between afterglow and expectation. Seeing her
walk through the city room, her large wonderful breasts jiggling in their
supports, turning the lecherous eyes of his co-workers, gave him a special
selfish pride.

It was not uncommon for them to slip away to the apartment
in the middle of the day, after a few hours' respite, and, like beasts in
season, clutch each other, transferring their body heat into an awe-inspiring
sexuality. Even now he recalled the memory of the passion in great detail. The
tremulous hands unhooking her brassiere strap, the falling free of the great
white globes with their perfect adornments of large red nipples, the gentle
hands unzipping him and pressing together those marvels around the urgent
swelling of his manhood. Nothing that occurred later could ever erase the joy
of that brief time of his life.

During that time, too, his by-lines were appearing
regularly and he was building a reputation as a zealous reporter, enjoying the
admiration of his peers. Dutifully, he would cut clippings of his stories and
send them to his mother.

Margaret, too, was moving into a new orbit and her name was
frequently seen on movie posters, proclaiming carefully contrived praise.

Only occasionally, usually around the onset of her period,
did the old demon of feminine insecurity assail the idyllic nature of their
relationship. "I will never marry you, Nick," she would say, the
thought articulated at incongruous moments, as if she had suddenly been
compelled to eject it. It was always near the surface of her consciousness.

"I didn't ask you," he would respond testily.

"Well, then, don't."

"I won't."

"Promise me you won't."

"I promise."

She would pause then, her eyes glazed, moistening.
"That doesn't mean that I don't love you."

"I know."

"We're just good chums, Nick."

"Good chums."

In its way, the return of Charlie to New York became an
uncommon intrusion, a break in the rhythm of their harmony. They were both
assigned to cover Dewey headquarters. Charlie had arranged it with McCarthy.

"It'll get us the hell out of the office,"
Charlie said into the telephone.

"Great," Nick had answered, calculating the time
frame in connection with Margaret's assignment, which was to assist in the city
room vote count. He assumed then that Dewey would win early and they would all
be finished working by midnight.

"I'm bringing Myra up," Charlie announced.
"We'll have a helluva time."

By six the city room was a mass of activity. Desks had been
moved into a huge circular chain manned by everybody the paper could muster.
The first brief returns began to be ripped off the ticker machines by the copy
boys and passed around to the appropriate desks. McCarthy's face was already
beet red with booze and excitement.

"Keep in close touch," he said, watching them
both. "We want to be the first out on the street with the victory story,
so keep the copy moving." He looked about him cautiously, opened a desk
drawer from which he removed a front-page press proof.

"Dewey Wins," it read.

"Used old wooden 108-point type for this. Couldn't do
it for Truman. We're missing a
T.
The bastard doesn't have a chance
anyway."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that headline,"
Charlie said coolly. McCarthy turned bloodshot eyes upward.

"What have we here? Another Washington pundit. What
the hell happens to you guys in that burg?"

"You can't fool the people. Dewey is a stiff-necked
phony."

"The people? Oh, shit. What have you been
smoking?"

"I'll lay you ten bucks even money."

"Even money? Are you nuts?" He paused. "I
wouldn't say it so loud. They're laying eight to five around here."

"Even money," Charlie repeated.

"Make it a hundred," McCarthy said, sneering.
"Why don't you take some too, Gold?"

"You're on," Charlie said, turning to Nick in
expectation.

"I'll go for the ten," Nick said.

"He was the best goddamned District Attorney this town
ever had. Kicked the mob right in the ass. Those cocky sons of bitches. They
tried everything to buy him. That man's got it."

"Well, you've got your money where your mouth is
boss," Charlie said.

"You bet your sweet ass," McCarthy said, turning
to answer the phone, an indication that they were dismissed.

"How can you be so damned sure?" he asked Charlie
later as they walked toward the hotel.

"I feel it, Nick. Besides, I talked to old Harry. He's
got balls. I like a man with balls and I think the American people do
too."

"I think you're getting naïve in your old age."

"Maybe," he said, a frown wrinkling his brow.
Stopping, he bought a warm pretzel from a vendor. Tearing it apart, he offered
it to Nick, who refused, and then stuffed a large piece into his mouth. "I
miss these damned pretzels," he said, chewing heavily, as if the taste
were nostalgia itself. They walked silently now, Charlie continuing to chew on
the heavy pretzel as they made their way through the crowds.

Nick followed Charlie as he elbowed into the lobby of the
Commodore, awash with Dewey-Warren buttons, banners hanging from the baroque
ceiling. American flags were everywhere. People overflowed from the public bar,
crowding together in the lobby, waiting expectantly for the first returns.
Flashing their press cards, they passed through a cordon of policemen and took
the elevator to the fourteenth floor, which had been set aside for the
candidate and his party, and the press. A bar had been set up in a large suite
adjacent to one occupied by the Dewey people.

A crowd of reporters was busy chewing on chicken legs,
taken from a silver chafing dish, which they washed down with booze. The large
suite was a mess. A bank of typewriters filled one end of the room and clusters
of telephones stood ready to pass the word to the world.

"Dewey's napping," a reporter said.

"They've already got his victory speech ready," a
woman reporter squealed, her face flushed with drink.

"Why don't they just make it and let us all go
home?" another reporter said.

"Am I glad this is nearly over," someone else
said.

A man wearing a badge which said "Official" came
in and tapped a spoon on a glass. He was dressed in a pinstripe suit and wore
round horn-rimmed spectacles. They could tell by his attitude and demeanor that
he was the Press Secretary.

"The candidate is resting." He looked at his
watch. "He'll be down in one hour and we'll allow ten minutes for picture
taking in the main suite. No more than ten minutes." A group of scruffy
photographers groaned in the corner.

"Any returns yet?" someone said.

"Just sporadic," the Press Secretary responded.
"You'll be informed."

"Could we get an advance of the victory
statement?" a reporter asked.

"When the time is appropriate," the Press
Secretary said confidently. "We'll try to wrap things up as fast as
possible. As soon as we learn we've won, the candidate will make his victory
speech from the podium of the Grand Ballroom. We'll make arrangements to get
you all down there on time."

"And if he loses..." Charlie said loudly. The
Press Secretary turned to him bristling with indignation. The question had a
distinctly quieting effect on the other reporters in the room.

"We have contingent plans," he said, lifting his
nose, a caricature.

"Just asking," Charlie said, smiling.

"Of course," the Press Secretary said with an
effort at politeness.

"I'd like to stick a pin up their ass," Charlie
whispered, moving to the bar and grabbing a bottle of beer from a silver tub.
As he opened it he looked at Nick. "I can handle it, kid. Never touch the
hard stuff anymore. It doesn't seem to like me much."

"So I've noticed."

Charlie drank the beer quickly, smacking his lips. He
looked around the room. "They're all a bunch of lazy sheep," he said.
"Look at them, hungry lambs waiting to sip the milk from the waiting teat.
I tell you, Nick, newspapering is changing. It's strictly news by handout now,
spoon-fed, manipulated. They manage us. It really pisses me off." He looked
ahead in silence, his eyes turning inward, glazed.

"We're just twenty years too late," he sighed.

Unwilling to penetrate his brooding silence, Nick picked up
one of the phones and dialed the city desk. He described the scene to the
rewrite man.

"The bastards are pretty cocksure, eh," the
rewrite man commented.

"Dead certain," Nick answered.

"The early returns here indicate that Dewey is
beginning to build up a big lead."

"You might as well get the victory story written. The
old man wants to be the first on the street."

When he returned he noted that Charlie was already sipping
a second beer. "Where's Myra?" Nick asked.

"Oh, Christ," he answered, "I was supposed
to call her. She's up at the Democratic headquarters with the wheels. Old Myra
is always with the wheels. She's probably sitting quietly beside the campaign
manager, holding his hand." Nick noted a barely perceptible edge of envy.
"Besides, she hates the fucking Republicans more than her father, and
that's going some." He picked up the phone and, after some exasperation,
got through to her.

"Gloom and doom, you say." He turned toward Nick.
"All is gloom and doom up there. Here?" He looked about the room.
"The usual slobs and, as they say, the feel of victory in the air."

He listened to her voice for a while. "Of course I
do," he said. "I'll call you later." He hung up. "She's
quite a woman," Charlie said. "Quite a woman." Knowing Charlie,
Nick could sense an impending revelation. It came quickly, a gust of heavy air
expelled in his face.

"She's giving me a fit. They want me to quit the
News
right now and work for the
Chronicle."