The Last Debate (44 page)

The Famous Fabulous Williamsburg Four moved on to more comfortable subjects, like how being recognized everywhere had changed their lives, how being able to buy anything you wanted had changed their lives, how being the subject of countless seminars and Ph.D. theses, of constant attacks and abuse from a permanent class of press-activism attackers, had changed their lives.

They talked for a while about the opening weeks of the Greene administration. Not bad, was the consensus. Greene had gone to a few of the older Democrats for secretary of state and some of the other key cabinet offices, but there were some fresh and diverse faces as well. He had blundered a few times, but nothing that was fatal to him or the country.

Henry and Barbara told Joan and Howley about how each had been contacted separately—before the
Hank and Barb
show started—about the possibility of coming aboard as Greene’s White House press secretary. Talk about an appearance problem, Barbara said. I would have hated it, Henry said.

“I woke up a few nights worrying that if Greene turned out to be a really terrible president, then you know who everyone—now and forever—would blame,” Joan said.

“Wash that kind of thought from your mind,” Barbara said.

There was not much to say about David Donald Meredith. He had disappeared into that Oklahoma commune and off the face of the political and public earth.

“Nobody will ever get me to shed a tear for that crazy sunavabitch,” Barbara said.

Everyone agreed with her. Whatever doubts and second thoughts any of them might have had, there were absolutely none about the unfitness of David Donald Meredith to be president of the United States of America.

They compared stories on the mountains of mail, the speaking and autograph requests each had received. The offers of love, sex, and companionship ran second for all four to opportunities for financial investment.

And they laughed about the latest poll results. A Hart-Divall poll done two weeks ago on a variety of current issues asked a sampling of 1,128 Americans: “After further reflection, do you believe the four journalist-panelists in the Williamsburg Debate were correct and justified in doing what they did?” The results: 64 percent answered Yes; 22 percent, No; 14 percent, No Opinion.

“How could you have no opinion about us?” Henry said.

“I don’t believe there are fourteen percent without one,” Joan said. “I think it’s a hundred percent with opinions and I have heard from all hundred percent of them.”

You can say amen to that, said everyone.

It was when they got around to talking about movie and TV mini-series offers that Joan realized what had happened throughout their high spirits and give-and-take so far. In nearly two hours of talk between and among bites of food and sips of wine, Mike Howley, the man who had organized this dinner, had been almost silent. She and Henry and Barbara had been doing most of the talking.

And as she continued to pay attention to that fact for a few minutes, she thought she caught a whiff of something, of something dark, of something that needed to be gotten on with. Mike is clearly not in the same heigh-ho reunion spirit as the rest of us, she thought.

Barbara and Henry also had gradually become conscious of Howley’s quiet, dark presence.

It was Barbara who finally got it out there. “Hey, Mike, we haven’t heard much from you,” she said. “You have taken a leave of absence from the paper?”

“Right.”

“You’re living where?”

“An island in Greece.”

“To write a book?”

“Maybe.”

“Not about us, I hope,” Henry said.

There. That was it. A book. Joan was certain by the look on Howley’s
face that this was his destination for the dinner. He had listened and waited patiently until it was time. Now it was time.

“I want to talk to you-all about a book, that’s right,” Howley said. “But not mine.”

He’s going to jump us, Barbara thought.

We’re in trouble, Henry thought.

So much for the happy reunion of the Williamsburg Four, Joan thought.

Howley said: “We agreed in Williamsburg that we were free to tell the story of what we did as long as we did not go into specifics of what each of us said in that room and as long as we used good judgment and all of that. Do we all remember our agreement?”

Joan, Henry, and Barbara each felt like a little child about to get whacked by Mother or the principal. The chocolate-chip cookies are missing from the jar, or the cigarettes are missing from the top of Daddy’s chest, and they know I took them. Somebody poured white paste into the mimeograph machine, and they know I did it. A dead mouse was found in the drawers of my sister or in the drawer of my English teacher, and they know I put it there.

We all remember our agreement, Joan, Henry, and Barbara signaled with slight movements of their respective heads. You bet, we remember. No problem, no problem.

“I have honored that agreement,” Howley said.

He waited for any one of the other three of the Famous Fabulous Williamsburg Four to say the same thing. He waited in vain.

“A tabloid creep named Chapman paid a call on me several days ago in Greece,” he said. “It was clear to me that he knew most everything that was said by the four of us in Longsworth D.”

(Joan, I think mostly to protect my feelings, said Howley said “reporter” instead of “creep.” Henry said it was “creep.” Barbara said she couldn’t remember exactly, but she thought it was either “creep” or “asshole.”)

Howley paused again, waiting for a volunteer to speak. There were no volunteers.

So he looked right at Henry and said: “Did you tell Chapman what was said in Longsworth D?”

Henry’s mind was on fast play. He’s got me, sure. Did Chapman, the creep, tell Howley I talked? Only one way to find out. “Yeah, I told him a little bit,” he said.

“So did I,” Joan said quickly.

“Me, too,” Barbara said almost at the same time. “Chapman clearly already had most of it by the time he got to me.”

“Right, right, same with me. He already seemed to know most everything,” Henry said. “He said he wanted to check the facts with me to make sure my quotes were correct.…”

“That’s what he said to me, too,” Barbara said.

“Me, too,” Joan said. “I assumed Henry or Barbara was telling him, so why play games?”

“You-all were Woodward-ized!” Howley said angrily, referring to the all-I-want-is-to-get-it-right approach made famous by the famous Bob Woodward of Watergate and other reporting fames. “You let him play you one off the other, acting like he already had more than he had, sucking each of you in.”

True.

“I didn’t tell him much about the last part—when we worked it out about who was going to ask and say what and all of that,” said Henry.

“Me neither,” Barbara said.

“Same with me,” Joan said.

True.

Henry told Howley how he had come to trust me and that he felt I was not out to hurt anybody—particularly the four of them.

“All he wants to do is tell the story,” Barbara said.

“He seems well-motivated and hardworking,” Joan said, admitting to me that she had wished she had come up with something slightly more dynamic.

“He’s motivated by money,” Howley replied. “He’s doing it for money, pure and simple.”

“Unlike who exactly in this room?” Henry said.

“We did not do what we did in Williamsburg for the goddamn money,” Howley said.

“But look at us now.”

“I’d rather not, frankly,” Howley said, making obvious his distaste for his three nouveau riche colleagues—and himself.

“What exactly is your problem, Mike?” Joan asked.

“You three people—each and every one of you—broke your word, that is my goddamn problem.”

“So what?” Henry said. “I am proud of what happened in Williamsburg, and if the public is interested in how we came to do it—so what? Tell them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Barbara said. “What’s the harm?”

“If I have to tell you what harm is done by going back on your goddamn word—”

Joan said that watching Howley catch himself in time, before he went too far, before he said too much, reminded her of how her father would grab her to spank her legs but then stop.

Henry was thinking, Can we get on with it? It’s almost ten o’clock already!

Barbara felt a draft.

Henry decided to lighten things up. He said to Howley: “Hey, Mike, you forgot to check this room for bugs. Don’t you want to do it before we say anything else?”

Howley almost smiled and said: “I had this place swept with dogs this afternoon. We’ll check the ice-cream bowls later. That one in Williamsburg turned out to be faulty, by the way. It didn’t work. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to plant a bug that wouldn’t bug.”

“How do you know that?” Henry asked.

“I know,” Howley replied.

Joan, Henry, and Barbara almost smiled. None could remember anything being said for a long time—several seconds.

Then in a slow, deliberate voice, Mike Howley said:

“First, I hereby confess that my purpose tonight was more than a reunion. I came to tell each of you to your face what I think of your violating our Longsworth D agreement. There may be honor among thieves but clearly not among journalists.”

“Wait a minute, Mike,” Henry said. “We don’t have to take this taco shit—”

“Shut up, Henry,” Howley said, still not raising his voice. “I have come a long way. I will say what I have to say and you will goddamn listen.”

Barbara tried to calm and hush up Henry with a slight wave of her right hand. Let the man talk, so we can get out of here!

Henry read Barbara’s hand signal, all right. He also caught a similar message from a frown on Joan’s face. Cool it, Henry.

He cooled it. Howley went on.

“I want each of you to know that I will never forget or forgive what you did. If you were paid by Chapman, if you did it for the money—”

“No!” Joan yelled.

“We weren’t paid!” Barbara said.

“I didn’t get a dime,” Henry said.

“OK, OK, OK,” Howley said. “You weren’t paid. I have said what I wanted to say about what you did—”

“Fine, then,” Henry said, standing up. “Hasta la vista, Mike and girls.”

Howley gestured him back down. “One more thing, please. I came all this way to be with you here tonight to talk about one more thing. It has to do, I am sorry to say, with those statements we read from during the debate. It has to do with where they came from.…”

Joan felt some kind of invisible force behind her. Get out of here, Joan, said the force as it pushed on her.

“… I am sure you all remember what I said about those statements. I said they came from a source I could and would vouch for. I said I felt I was locked into a situation that prevented me from telling you my source. You—all three of you—went along with it, and we went out there and did our thing. The fact of the matter was—”

“Wait a minute,” Henry said. “Maybe I don’t want to know any more than I know. I don’t know how Barbara and Joan feel, but I am just fine not knowing a damned thing. What I do not know I do not have to lie about, put out of my mind, go to jail about, worry about spilling to Chapman, or do anything else with.”

“I agree—I think,” Barbara said.

“Why
are
you telling us now?” Joan said.

“It is clearly what that creep Chapman is trying to build his career
on,” Howley said. “How and why those statements got into Longsworth D is his story.”

“I didn’t tell him where they came from because I didn’t know,” Joan said.

Henry and Barbara said that was true for them, too. They knew nothing about that, so they had nothing to tell.

The room was quiet.

“Are you absolutely certain you do not want to know how they came to me?” Howley asked. “I have come from Greece to talk about this—to tell you anything you wish to know.”

“Tell me nothing, I tell no lies,” Barbara said.

“I am with my partner,” Henry said.

Joan said: “Did they come from the Greene campaign, Mike? That’s all I really want to know.”

“Not from them to me, they didn’t. I am not sure of their origin. I got them from somebody who clearly got them from somebody else—who, for all I know, got them from another somebody else. Chapman told me in Greece they came originally from one of the campaigns, as I am sure he has told all of you.”

Barbara, Henry, and Joan said then to Howley that, no, Chapman had not told them anything like that. They asked me afterward why I had not. I told them that the information had only come to me—I did not mention Nelson—right before I went to Greece to talk to Howley.

There was a knock on the door.

“Does anybody want an after-dinner drink?” asked Howley. “Sambuca, cognac … something like that?”

It had been a while since a waiter had been in their private room. Howley had told the restaurant people beforehand to keep intrusions and service to an absolute minimum. And he told them to knock before entering.

Joan normally had a liqueur only after meals of special distinction on special occasions. “A sambuca would be great,” she said to the waiter now without a second’s hesitation. Barbara, who could not remember the last time she had a liqueur after dinner, said: “A brandy, please.”

Henry was not a liqueur drinker. He ordered a beer.

Howley asked for a scotch on the rocks.

And in a few minutes the drinks were delivered, the door was again closed, and Mike Howley was again talking.

“I would hate to think that we were used by the Greene campaign. If it happened, then it was my fault. I certified those statements to the three of you because I trusted the guy who gave them to me. I did not press him on where he got them, just like you did not press me on how they came to me.”

He stopped. Joan asked: “What are you worried about, Mike?”

“I am worried that Chapman runs a story which says we were the tools of the Greene campaign, that I was the conduit from them to Longsworth D—and the three of you.”

Henry was shaking his head. “Maybe I’m slow or Mexican or something, but I don’t follow the problem. It’s what those people said in those statements; what it caused that bastard to do and scream out there on that stage is all that counts. What difference does it make whether that stuff came from Greene or from Mars?”