Present Day Monday, October 30
Everyone is waiting for something-waiting to graduate from school, waiting for a better job, waiting for the holidays to come or to pass, for vacations to arrive, waiting for true love, for wedding days or divorce hearings, waiting for injuries to heal or diseases to be cured, waiting and hoping for mercy in the dying days of life. Me, I was waiting too, though I wasn't exactly sure what for. After Katherine died, I virtually left home and jetted around the country with a laptop computer over my shoulder and an Eddie Bauer duffel bag in my hand. My life became a maze of distant, upscale hotel rooms, waiting for room service or for calls to be returned, with nowhere I had to be and nowhere else I really wanted to go. I looked neither at my past nor toward my future as I lived for a moment that I didn't actually want.
I lost myself in my work, hoping the pain would eventually pass, and waiting was the only way I knew how.
Which is why I like flying. There is no shame in sitting back and doing nothing but waiting. Even better, the wait always brings results, except for those poor bastards unlucky enough to be on the business end of an airplane crash. I like to doze in and out while reading a trashy novel. I like to stare out the window. I like to flip through the in-flight magazine, charting our course on the maps in the back, looking at the advertisements for hotels and restaurants in different cities. I especially like sitting in first class on long flights, when leggy stewardesses-I'm sorry, flight attendants-supply me with hot towels, newspapers, Milano cookies, a choice between salmon and filet mignon for dinner, chocolate sundaes served from a pushcart, and after-dinner drinks from those tiny bottles.
Monday morning found me in this precise situation, in the first-class cabin of a US Airways Boeing 757 destined for Seattle, where I would connect to Spokane. For breakfast, I ordered the omelette rather than the steak and eggs. Take my advice: always order the omelette. Beef isn't meant to be served to the masses 37,000 feet above the closest mesquite grill.
It struck me, somewhere between the Mississippi and the Dakotas, after breakfast was over and I had taken my usual stroll back through coach to gain a better appreciation for my lot in life, or at least for my expense account, that I had a particularly significant amount of waiting going on. There was the big picture waiting, as an editor might say-the wait for the emotional pain to pass and all that, and in some obscure way, I felt a little of that pain ebbing away now. I had begun to notice women again, even if I felt no particular desire to pursue any of them.
Perhaps more pertinent was the short-term waiting. I was waiting for a true break in this story, and I hoped that I might dig up some form of it on my trip to Idaho and the interview with the head of the Idaho Minutemen. What I needed was to write a story that would trigger my anonymous source to fill my ear with some better information on what had the potential to be the biggest story of my life. And all the while, I was waiting to arrive at some sort of decision on the White House press secretary's position, though I couldn't help but feel that the story itself might ultimately decide my career fate. All this, for now, was good, productive waiting, if more than a bit tense, and it made the wait on the more serious matters go by with a little more ease.
On the ground at the Spokane airport, I rented a Pontiac Grand Am and headed west through Coeur d'Alene, then north up to Sand Falls. All the way, I traveled a near-barren two-lane highway, rimmed by towering pines and verdant hills-beauty that hides a land of inner desperation and the type of racism that is based on nothing more than raw ignorance. The boys up here, they'll rail against anything from the federal government to the blacks who steal the rightful jobs of the white men all across the country. Funny part is, most of the locals never vote, and I'd be willing to wager that a fair number of them have never met a black man in their lives. Their only enemy at work is their own laziness and incompetence.
Daniel Nathaniel was exactly this kind of guy. At forty-eight, he looked like a cross between the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Skipper on Gilligan's Island, minus their collective charisma and good cheer. He was a former undertaker who had lost his family funeral home to the IRS
for reasons that were suspect at best. The agents had harassed him, taunted him, and ultimately led him to bankruptcy, taking a guy with a latent distrust of the federal government and sending him over the edge. After a brief prison stint for tax evasion, he had hooked up with a group of militant farmers and ranchers in his small town and formed the core of the Idaho Minutemen. Within months, he ascended to the position of commander, inherited a farmhouse in the hills around Sand Falls from one of the other members, and surrounded himself with a team of bodyguards and a driver. In exchange, he served as a source of everlasting wisdom and strength for his growing legions in the eternal war against the federal government. Truth is, though, he just didn't look the part.
I arrived at the farmhouse on Freedom Lake at about 1:00 P.m." and was stopped at a rickety gatehouse by an almost deathly skinny high school underclassman with droopy eyes.
"Stop right there," he shouted, stepping out in front of my rental car.
I couldn't help but chuckle a bit to myself, knowing that once again I was about to step into an adult war fantasy of too many men with too much time. Trouble is, it really wasn't so funny, given the manifestation of all this hatred. One of their believers had blown up a federal building in Oklahoma City a few years back, and another just might be responsible for an assassination attempt on the president.
More serious, that would-be assassin could have killed me.
With this pencil-necked postadolescent playing the role of Patton, I couldn't really control my disdain. Rolling down my window, I said in my most dismissive tone, "Let Daniel Nathaniel know that Jack Flynn is here."
"Is the commander expecting you?" the kid asked, equally dismissive.
I didn't like that.
"I don't know what the commander is expecting. You'll have to ask him that when you call to tell him I'm here." I had decided to save all of my patience for someone who could actually help me, meaning Nathaniel, knowing that with him I'd probably need every ounce of it I could find.
The kid looked at me without moving. I wasn't quite sure whether he was unclear on what to do next or unwilling to honor my request, so I asked him, "That a new squirt gun in your Batman belt? It looks really neat."
"Fuck you," he said, putting his hand on the handle of some sort of high-powered weapon, the details of which would be lost on a novice like myself.
"The commander isn't going to like you talking to his close friend like that," I said. I saw the kid's eyes shift. He walked away to get his two-way radio, which was sitting in the guard shack. He pressed a button and spoke, then released it, and all these horrible sounds came out, like a goose being bludgeoned on a golf course. I saw that happen once, but no need to go into the details here.
"What did you say your name was again?" he asked me.
"Flynn, you dope."
This time he was too nervous to talk back. After a couple of minutes, he approached my car window. "You want to go straight along this dirt road-"
"Yeah, I've been here before," I said, dipping into my reservoir of aggravation to add more exasperation to my tone.
I drove off along a dusty dirt road about two miles, through groves of enormous pines that separated the narrow lane from burned-out farm fields tucked into the hills. At the dilapidated farmhouse, two men in what looked to be police uniforms came running down off the porch to meet my car.
As one of them opened my door, he said, "Welcome, Mr. Flynn.
Commander Nathaniel is expecting you." These guys were his bodyguards, and to that end, one of them frisked me through my clothes.
"You like having your hand on my crotch?" I asked as he worked his way down. He gazed at me with horror and what I sensed was a tinge of embarrassment, then continued silently down my thighs. Really, these guys were too easy.
"You're ready. We'll bring you in," the other one said.
They led me into the main room of the farmhouse. It was cold up here in the hills, and there was a fire burning in the fireplace. Nathaniel was sitting behind a large metal desk at the far end of the room. He stood up when I walked in and stretched his hand toward me.
"Welcome back," he said in a serious tone. "You here to enlist this time?"
What a card. I gave him a polite laugh. "You'd never take me," I said. "Flat feet. My father's black. Oh, and I'm gay."
He didn't laugh at my humor. Never has, come to think of it. And I saw his young bodyguards flash each other a look before scurrying from the room like a pair of rodents. Nathaniel's a rodent too, but he's a rodent in a position to help me out, so as we often do in the reporting business, I'd treat him with nothing but respect on this day. In journalism, this is called working toward the greater good.
"How's the fight going?" I asked as I settled into a plain wooden chair that sat atop the braided rug, which in turn covered ancient, scratched pine floors.
"We're going to win," he said, his voice flat, as if he were advising me that the waterproof coffin vault would make my family considerably more comfortable about my mother's burial. "The government is weak-weaker than you think. And one day, we will rise to conquer."
I observed him closely, again unable to tell if this mortician-turned-tax-evader- turned-ex-con-turned-freak actually believed some of these things he said, or whether it was all tongue-in-cheek, done in spite, as he looked for the best deal he could find coming out of prison, wifeless, jobless, homeless, and broke.
When I had met him the year before, I had been writing a three-part series on the burgeoning militia movement in America. Nathaniel, believe it or not, was one of the smarter ones, press savvy, and he allowed me into his enclave for a firsthand glimpse of the philosophies and activities of one of the more vibrant militias in the country.
That story, widely circulated among members of the movement, single-handedly caused Nathaniel to soar within the loose national structure of the militias. Other news organizations began quoting him regularly. Other state militias called on him for consultations.
Soon, he became a de facto national leader. And much as I hate to give him credit for anything, I must say that he has maintained some sense of modesty about it all, at least in his office, though perhaps that is due to nothing more than lack of money. Wall Street bankers and $400-an-hour attorneys don't normally join or bankroll their local militia, and that fact was readily apparent here.
I said, smiling, "Hopefully that day won't be today, because I was hoping you had a little time for me."
"All the time you need," he said, still flat.
He was fairly straightforward, I had learned, but like many potential sources of valuable information, he could lapse into spates of caginess, and often had to be asked just the right question to provide the knowledge I needed. I had nothing prepared on paper to ask. I never do. I've spent a career winging it, and I wasn't about to change that style now. I decided to start broadly.
I asked, "So, what do you know?"
"About what?" he replied. Okay, so I sensed he was in his cagey mood.
"What do you have?" I said in a conspiratorial tone, as if it were me and him against the world, two partners with different views and from different walks of life, thrown together in this remarkable situation.
"Tell me what you need to know. I'll tell you if I have it. Then maybe I'll even tell you what I have," he said.
I rolled my eyes, but only to myself. He wanted to make a game over this, and I had no choice but to play along.
"You mind tape?" I asked, pulling a microcassette out of my jacket pocket.
He said, "My words are meant to last forever." I couldn't tell if he was joking. I don't think he was.
"Good. The president himself tells me that the FBI has evidence that the militia movement is behind the recent assassination attempt against him. I'm wondering what you know about this, whether you believe this to be true."
"Maybe," he said. Then he fell silent and gave me a look that said, Next question.
Maybe was an interesting answer, even as it occurred to me that I gave up time with my dog and flew across an entire continent so some goddamned jackass ex-undertaker with a camouflage jacket pressing against an enormous beer belly could play mind games with me. And perhaps play them successfully.
"What do you mean, maybe?" I said, trying to maintain patience.
"Maybe. Maybe means maybe. Possibly. Perhaps."
This was getting downright sophomoric, but I had to play along. Either that or I could start to slap him, but I quickly calculated that playing along might be better for my story, if not my health, given the information he might possess, as well as his phalanx of security goons at the ready.
"Help me out," I said. "I'm jet-lagged. I'm hungry. I'm stupid.
Walk me through this thing. I'm not precisely sure what you mean by maybe, even if I should be."
He sat silent, cowlike, though I'm not sure if cows ever sit. After a while he cast his eyes on my microcassette, which was sitting between us on his desk, slightly off to one side.
I said, "You want me to turn that off?"
He nodded. So much for his everlasting words.
"What do you know about this?" I asked, my anxiety easing, but only slightly, realizing we were getting down to the business of doing business.
He paused again, as if collecting his thoughts. "I have some reasonably reliable information that this assassination attempt was sponsored by a group of freedom fighters based in Wyoming. They're a relatively new unit, inexperienced, with a commander who's hell-bent on making a national mark. This, apparently, was intended to be it."
I sat for a moment in a stunned but relieved silence. Daniel Nathaniel was essentially confirming the initial FBI line on the shooting, cutting against the grain of most other stories since, including some in the New York Times. This was a significant development, not to be underplayed. A story indicating that a high-placed, well-up source within the militia movement was suggesting, if not outright saying, that the assassination attempt was militia-related would put me and the Record way ahead of the game. Sitting here in this cabin, it also gave me a surge of adrenaline, or maybe it was testosterone. Either way.
"Okay," I said, partly to Nathaniel, partly aloud to myself. Looking right at him, I asked, "How do you know?"
"What, you think I'm going to give away all my trade secrets? When you reported that time that the Michigan militia was on the brink of disbanding for lack of leadership, did I ask you how you knew?"
I hate when people I'm interviewing answer questions with questions.
Puts me on my heels. Wastes my time.
"Different situation, different set of circumstances," I said. "You know that. I'm trying to get something into print. I have to make sure I can use it before I just go zipping it into the paper.
Sometimes it's helpful to be accurate, even if it's just for kicks."
He said nothing, so I asked, "What's the guy's name in Wyoming, the commander?"
"Billy Walbin. Billy Joe Walbin to his friends. My understanding is he came up from Louisiana. He wears many hats, and maybe a cape, if you know what I mean."
I think I did. A too-typical antigovernment zealot who, for good measure, also railed against blacks, Jews, gays, and anyone else slightly different from himself. A Ku Klux Klan member sowing his oats.
I asked, "He accessible?"
"I don't know. Maybe not if one of his guys just took a potshot at the president and bought the farm."
I said, "I want to get this into print. I need to get this into print.
Too many swirling questions about all this back in Washington. The FBI brass is saying one thing. The rank and file is leaking something decidedly different to the New York Times and the rest of the press.
This assassination attempt is my fucking story. I was almost killed.
I need your information to get something together on this. I need to know how you know."
In police work, detectives say you don't really need a motive, that they can try you just fine based strictly on physical evidence, especially with the advent of DNA testing, and I suppose much the same is true of reporting. Information, especially good information, is valuable no matter how you come across it. Still, it's always good to know the motive of the person giving it to you, if that's how you're getting it. Subtleties can be shaded, or accented, or even omitted, all for the sake of the proper pitch. As a reporter, I like to know what I'm dealing with, and why.
In this particular case, I sensed that Daniel Nathaniel might feel threatened by the burgeoning strength of the Wyoming militia generally, and of Billy Joe Walbin specifically. Fear is a good and trustworthy motive, when properly understood. I knew I could play this to my favor.
He said, "Take the information to the bank."
I replied, "The only place I can take it is to my editor, who's going to demand to know how you know. And unless you tell me, it will never see the light of day. Never. And think what a waste that will be."
After a pause, Nathaniel looked me in the eye and said, "I have a pipeline into his group, but if that gets into print, my source is dead, and maybe so am I. But I know this reliably. They held a meeting. They have been planning this for about six weeks. The information is good."
That takes care of that. I felt my hand balling up into a fist again.
All that adrenaline. "What conditions are we talking under?" I asked.
Nathaniel knows the game pretty well, knows how to use the press to his advantage, like all those high government officials back in Washington who he claims to despise.
"A source familiar with the nation's militia movement," he said.
That seemed too vague, leaving open the possibility it was a law enforcement official. I didn't like it.
"No good. How about a well-placed militia leader?"
"And the day you print that, you can come out and cover the assassination of Daniel Nathaniel for your paper."
Fair enough, though I still grimace when people refer to themselves by name like that, as if their very sense of greatness transcends who they are.
"Right. An authority who monitors developments within the militia movement?" I suspected he'd like this, being called an authority and all.
He thought for a moment and said, "Good."
I checked my watch for the time: 2:30 P.m. Pacific, meaning 5:30 in Boston. West Coast stories are a killer, given the deadline issues.
Much to my joy, or maybe relief, I had achieved more than I thought I would on this trip. The problem now was getting it into print.
"Let's go back over some of this," I said. "Have you had any direct contact with Walbin? Did he send a bulletin around to other militias that this was going to happen? Did he seek your advice?"
Nathaniel said, "Look, we're not the fucking King Sisters. You know us better than that. I mean, we don't all pick up the phone every night and make small talk with each other, telling everyone else what we're doing the next day. And some of these guys, they're just weird, I don't know what the fuck they're doing."
"You learned about this but didn't go to the feds with it?"
"I don't like the feds."
Good point. I pressed him but didn't get any more. He did say he had received calls in the last couple of days from reporters with the New York Times and the Washington Post, but hadn't returned them. I love it when people tell me that.
"I'll pass on your regrets when I see them," I said. Finally, I added,
"I have to run. I appreciate your help. You around tomorrow? I'd like to call you for some more info, or some clarification. But I'm on deadline right now, right up against it."
"Call me," he said, nodding his head at me, still flat. He hit a button on his desk, and his two security goons came in. The interview was over. I bade a quick farewell to Nathaniel. It wasn't exactly friendly, because we're not exactly friends.
Outside, I drove down the dusty road as fast as the rental Grand Am would take me, slowing down at the guard shack on the way out only so the kid there could see me flipping him the middle finger. I thought I saw him reach for his gun, but was far out of view by the time he would actually have been able to pull it. He was probably just scratching a sore.
Decision time. No matter how I argued it in my own mind, I knew this story would benefit from another day of responsible reporting and thinking. Problem was, this was daily journalism, and responsibility and thought didn't have a fixed place here. I was caught in what is known as a cycle, when newspapers and networks breathlessly publish and broadcast scraps of information, half-truths, even nontruths, all, ironically, in the name of prominence and respect. This was about competition, not about reader enlightenment.
As I sped down the highway toward Coeur d'Alene, the pines smacking past me out my side windows, I replayed the day. The most prominent militia movement leader in the nation was saying, for the first time, that the assassination attempt was likely part of a militia-related conspiracy born in the hills of rural Wyoming. It was enough of a story to get the Record credit on the morning wires and network shows again. Whether it was enough to get this anonymous old man to call me again, I couldn't be sure. He hadn't called after my last Hutchins interview, which was beginning to make me nervous.
Still, there were many unanswered questions here, chief among them, Who was Billy Walbin and what might he have to say about this? Could Stevens or Drinker add anything? Would they? Was the FBI already on to the Wyoming angle, or would this be news to them? Right now, the story had more holes in it than Tony Clawson. On deadline on a Monday evening, I doubted whether I would be able to fill them.
It was only 3:00 P.m. here, but already the sun was getting weak, and I flipped the heat on low. I had a batch of calls to make on my cell phone. The first was to my travel agent, to see what time their last flight of the day left from Spokane. The destination of the second call was a little less clear. Should I put my hopes in Stevens, or in Drinker?
I had had more contact with Stevens, but doubts nagged over whether she had the stature, the authority, or even the confidence to leak me information of any great quality. Actually, I doubted that she did.
Drinker was a more interesting case. From my research, I knew he had helped reporters in the past on significant stories.
It's like a narcotic, the modern information game. Suddenly, obscure bureaucrats or hamstrung officials can see their secretly leaked information appear in print or on television before hundreds of thousands of people, shaping public discourse, influencing policy, getting results. And all without attribution. Once in, always in, and I decided right then that Drinker would be my best shot, so I placed my next call to FBI headquarters in Washington.
"Director Drinker's office, please," I told the receptionist.
The phone rang six times before it kicked over to a woman's recorded voice, asking me to please leave a message. I hung up and called back the main number.
I said, sounding both confident and dismissive, something that came a little too naturally, "Hi, I'm trying to get Assistant Director Kent Drinker paged. Can you help me out?"
The man was anything but helpful. "Can't do that," he said. "If his secretary's not in, I can pass you through to his voice mail and you can leave a message there."
He seemed about to do just that when I butted in. "Look, this is Jack Flynn calling. I'm a witness to the assassination attempt on President Hutchins. I have some new information on the incident, and it is urgent that I talk to Drinker right away."
The operator hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then he said gruffly, "Hold on." A couple of long minutes later, he came back on the line. "I can try him, but I can't guarantee anything. You have a number he can call you back on?"
I gave my cell phone number, asked for his name in a not-too-subtle bit of pressure, and hung up. I had one other call to make, but kept the line open just in case.
As I cruised down the highway toward Coeur d'Alene, it occurred to me I was about as far away from home as possible, not so much in distance as in life, surrounded by all this wilderness, all this craziness. As the heater blew warm air on my feet and hands and the pale sun seemed to balance on the tops of the tall pines ahead, I wondered what Katherine and I might have been doing on this Monday night. Maybe we would have ordered food from an upscale delivery service and would be spooning little bits of mashed vegetables to our baby between taking bites of grilled swordfish for ourselves. Maybe she'd be pregnant again, glowing as she did the first time around. Maybe we'd be strolling the neighborhood, pushing the carriage with the dog padding along beside us, exchanging knowing, amused looks when we awoke about how much our lives had changed.
As I stared blankly out the window, the cellular telephone rang, thank God.
"Jack Flynn here," I said, my throat surprisingly thick as I shook off my thoughts and brought myself back to the realities of death and life.
"Kent Drinker here. What can I do for you?"
Small talk, I assumed, carried no water with this guy, so I replied,
"I'm running with a story tomorrow saying that an authority familiar with the inner workings of the militia movement believes the assassination attempt was orchestrated by an insurgent, newly formed militia unit in Wyoming. I'm trying to get FBI reaction, to see if the bureau has been pursuing that lead or has independent knowledge.
Conversely, if you believe I'm wrong, it would be helpful to be guided away from the story."
There was nothing but dead air on the other end of the line-dead air that carried on so long that I began to wonder if we had been disconnected. "Hello?" I finally asked.
"Hold on," Drinker said. "I'm just trying to figure out what I can safely tell you."
Not the answer I was anticipating. I was assuming he would tell me nothing.
Another stretch of silence, then he added, "You would not be inaccurate in reporting that FBI investigators have been probing the relationship of a Wyoming militia group to this assassination attempt. I would be willing to say that on the condition of anonymity, as a senior law enforcement official."
Here we go again. "How about a senior FBI official?" I asked.
"No. I need at least some cover."
I asked, "How did you get turned on to the Wyoming group? What's your best link?"
"No way am I going that far with you," he said. "You have enough for a significant story. You sure have more than your competition. That's all I'm going to tell you."
My mind was racing with more questions, but Drinker interrupted, saying in a clipped way, "I have to go. I've helped you enough." And then the click of his telephone.
It was abrupt, but it didn't really matter now. I had hit pay dirt.
Immediately, I dialed up another number, that of directory assistance in Cody, Wyoming, the supposed hometown of the Wyoming Freedomfighters.
They weren't listed, but a B. J. Walbin was, so I took it and called.
On the other end, I got the expected rigamarole-the snotty kid asking my name and my intended business, a referral to their so-called spokesman, who seemed to be inaccessible.
"Handle this however you want," I told him. "But if I were you, I would inform Billy Joe that there will be a story in tomorrow morning's Boston Record that will highlight his role in a presidential assassination conspiracy. He might want to know about this before it runs. If he wants to know more, have him call me at this number."
I gave him the number and hung up before the kid could say another word. Fuck him.
Finally, I called Peter Martin at the office. I walked him briskly through what I had and told him where I wanted to go. He appeared in full agreement.
"How long before you can file?" he asked.
I said, "I don't have a word on paper yet. I'll have to write it from the road and hunt down someplace to transmit. Can you buy me a couple of hours?"
Other editors were sticklers for things like deadline times, story lengths, and the like. Martin, to his credit, was an advocate of reporters, and as part of that would try to get me what I needed to do my job well, which in this case was a few extra minutes, like maybe sixty of them.
He said, "No sweat. File to me. I'll buy you some time in Boston.
Write the shit out of it."
I continued down the highway, urgently scanning the darkening road for a fast food restaurant, a bar, or even a mini-mart where I could pull over to put the proverbial pen to paper. So far, nothing. So I had started writing the story in my mind, getting through the first few paragraphs with some nice turns of phrase, when I spotted a faded red neon sign that announced "The Dew Drop Inn." It was a log building with just one window and smoke billowing from a chimney. The University Club of Washington it was not.
Outside were about a dozen pickup trucks and an olive-colored Buick LeSabre, vintage 1970's, which I assumed was owned by the town's one business executive. Nearby were another ten motorcycles-hogs, the owners probably called them.
Inside, the wood floors were dusty and seemed to scratch and slide underfoot. Everything was made of unfinished particleboard-from the beamed rafters to the bar to the simple booths and benches. Music played from a jukebox. Smoke filled the air, along with the smell of old beer and hot nachos. I stepped up toward the bartender as a few of the patrons looked my way.
I said, "White wine spritzer please, with a wedge of fresh lemon."
Just kidding. Mrs. Flynn didn't raise any fools. I ordered a Budweiser, specifically saying "Longneck," figuring, correctly, that's all they'd have here.
The bartender, a fifty-something gentleman with pleasant features and salt and pepper hair, popped it down on the bar. "Buck and a quarter,"
he said.
My, my, I thought. Maybe this place wasn't so bad after all. "You mind if I plug a laptop computer in over at that booth?" I asked. My goal was to get this bartender on my side, just in case I'd need him.
"All yours," he said.
I laid a pair of twenties between us and told him, "Hit the bar all around."
That gesture of goodwill bought me exactly what I had hoped: a few words of thanks from the boys, but mostly some privacy to sit back and type out a story as fast as I could, without interruption.
As I finished writing my second graph, my cellular telephone rang.
"Mr. Flynn, Billy Joe Walbin here," the caller said in a voice thick with a southern, good ol' boy accent.
I had no time for niceties or introductory, fruitless conversation.
"Thank you for calling back, sir," I said. "I am a Washington reporter for the Boston Record. I am planning on running with a story in tomorrow's paper saying that the Wyoming Freedomfighters, and you specifically, masterminded the failed assassination attempt on President Hutchins."
"Hey there, aren't you the boy, the reporter, who was shot in that thing?" he asked. Always nice to be remembered.
"I was, yes."
"Well, your story's bullshit. And I don't waste my time talkin' to the Jew media. You're all the same, all you Jew editors and Jew publishers and Jew reporters. Fuck youse all. Fuck you."
And just like that, the line went dead. So I inserted that in the story, minus the profanity. I quoted Nathaniel, anonymously. I quoted Drinker, anonymously. I backfilled all the details of the assassination attempt. I gave the whole thing a dose of context, and I was through, in time to make deadline, in time to get my flight back to civilization.
The bartender-Gerry, he had introduced himself as-cheerily allowed me the use of his telephone to send my story east. A few of the customers appeared riveted by my actions. Once it was gone, at 6:00 P.m. local time, I had some time to waste before my flight, so I ordered another Bud and took a seat at the bar. A rather large man in a leather biker jacket came over and asked how much memory I had in my machine.
"Can't remember," I said.
He laughed. The bartender laughed. With something of a beer glow from lack of food, I took it another step. I asked, more loudly this time,
"What, you some kind of computer nerd?"
There was a long moment of absolute silence as the biker processed this question. I caught Gerry out of the corner of my eye, put a couple of glasses down on top of the dishwasher and draw a little closer, in case there was trouble. At last, the biker burst out laughing and clubbed me on my back with his hand.
"Computer nerd-ha," he said, quaking in delight. All the other customers were laughing. Gerry was laughing. I was laughing. My pager sounded, and I took a quick look at it. "Great show. Peter," it said, his signal that he was done editing. I thought for a second about how Peter would do in this bar, and that made me wonder whether the nice clientele here would start with sodomy or would gnaw his legs off first for kicks, pardon the pun. Didn't really matter, I concluded. Another trip, another success. This one seemed so easy.
But life tends to throw you little curve balls when you least expect them, and one came at me at that moment in the form of the pimply guard from Nathaniel's compound, walking through the tired wooden door of the Dew Drop Inn. He spotted me at about the same time I spotted him, which is to say, immediately. I saw him reach instinctively inside his coat to make sure he was still packing his gun. I also saw no obvious look of worry on his face, which meant he was.
He came walking right over and took the bar stool right next to mine without actually looking at me and ordered a rum and Coke. I didn't think people drank those anymore. I was packing my computer away in its case when I heard him say, without ever turning toward me, "The little faggot's going to run right on out of here, huh? Scared?"
"Faggot's not exactly scared," I explained to him as I zipped up the case and put my arms through my coat. "Got a plane to catch." I turned to him and smiled what I thought was a pretty winning smile.
He apparently didn't think so. As my arms were just going into the sleeves of my coat, his left hand shot out, grabbed the back of my head by my neck, and tried slamming it down into the bar. Luckily, I was able to shoot my own left arm across the bar so my face collided only with my coat and my forearm, rather than the particleboard. When I pulled my head up, in a something of a daze, he kneed me in the crotch, causing me to double over in pain toward the dusty floor.
I'd been a reporter all my life, and the most violent situation I'd been involved in up until recently was when a pen once broke in my jacket pocket on the way to cover the statewide finals of a national spelling bee. But in the last week, I'd had bullets come at me twice, and now fists and knees. Time for a raise, or at least a clause in my union contract that would provide for hazard pay.
As I gasped for air, I could see and hear all the other nice patrons push their bar stools out and surround us in a state of collective surprise. He was one of them, a homeboy. I was the guy who no more than an hour ago had bought everyone a round of beer. There's no doubt they were shocked that the two of us would have any reason to fight.
I calculated in those briefest of moments that this situation could unfold in a couple of different ways. One, the entire bar could fall in line behind their own and kick the living Christ out of me, if not outright kill me. Two, they could recall that I had bought them the aforementioned round and side with me over some punkish kid who no one had ever particularly liked. Or three, they could stay neutral, which is exactly what they appeared to be doing. The group encircled us, but no one stepped in. One guy even called out, "Don't go too hard on him, Bo." Gee, thanks for the good wishes.
Bo didn't actually adhere to what I thought was reasoned, and reasonable, counsel. As I remained crunched down, trying to collect myself and protect my sore ribs from his onslaught, he took a roundhouse swing at the side of my face. I flinched back, and his fist grazed my cheek and kept going. That's when he glared at me and said something I thought to be quite interesting, even in my current state.
He said, "I should have kicked the crap out of the last fed who came here, too."
Kicked the crap out of the last fed. We had someone who was confused, but potentially helpful, if I could just put him in a situation where he might find it in his best interest to provide that help. I didn't know what he meant, but I had a nagging, if unformed, suspicion. All the while, the crowd surrounding us continued to watch in confusion that now seemed to be transforming to glee. In retrospect, one more round of beers, and I think I would have had them on my side.
In an instant, I rose up out of my pain-induced crouch and faked a punch to Bo's greasy face. In a typical trait of youth, he overreacted, bringing both his arms up toward his head, exposing his entire midsection. I zeroed in with a ferocious punch to his stomach, so hard it virtually lifted him up off his feet and landed him on his ass, where he rolled into a ball.
Young Bo didn't seem to have a warrior's instinct. He stayed down, groaning. Pain shot through my ribs, but I had neither the time nor inclination to be burdened by it. No one in the circle of spectators made any move toward me, so I approached Bo, grabbing him by his stringy hair, pushing his face into the dirty floor, and asking, "What fed, Bo? What fed?"
He was actually crying now. Crying. I forced his head around in the grit, and he barely resisted. I also reached into his coat, felt around for a moment, and grabbed his gun. I put it on the floor and slid it far away from the two of us. No one else bothered to pick it up, which was a good sign.
"What fed?"
He continued to whimper and took a flailing shot at my face with his right fist. He missed. I pulled my left arm back, then rabbit-punched him in the nose, breaking it, I think, because blood came spurting out.
The Columbia Journalism Review might not deem this the best way for a reporter to seek information, but fuck the Columbia Journalism Review.
All their writers sit in offices in Manhattan thinking their big fucking thoughts without a rat's ass of an idea what it's like out here in the real world of daily reporting.
Young Bo yelped. I pushed his face around on the dirty floor again.
"Tell me about the fucking fed before I break your fucking neck," I said, surprising even myself with the primitive tone of voice.
I pulled my fist back again, prompting Bo to squeal, "Stop. Stop.
I'll tell you."
"Tell me."
Bo tried collecting himself. It wasn't a pretty scene. He was on the floor, facedown. I was on top of him, holding him by the scruff of the neck. A crowd of about twenty gawkers stood around us at a respectable distance. I tightened my grip.
"He was here last week," Bo said softly, through his whimpering. "No, two weeks ago. Guy wouldn't tell us his name or who he was with, but he had an appointment and we were told to show him right in. Someone said he was an FBI guy, named Kent, I think. Met with the commander at headquarters for about two hours, then left. Never seen a fed at the compound before. First him, now's you. I'd like to know what's going on."
"I'll tell you over tea sometime," I said to him, loud enough for others to hear, mostly because I thought it was a pretty good line.
Then I whispered into his ear, "Until then, don't move a fucking muscle or I'll kick your fucking brains out." I got up, straightened out my clothes, pulled a $20 and a $10 out of my pocket and put them on the bar in front of Gerry, and said, "Set Bo up with his next couple of drinks, and buy the rest of the boys a round."
I gathered up my stuff and was off into the night with one immediate, crucial piece of business ahead of me. Hurtling down that two-lane road, I called Peter Martin's condominium in Arlington, Virginia. He answered on the first ring. Best I could tell, when he wasn't at the office, he was always home, though I'll be damned if I knew what he did there. Like everyone else in the newspaper business, he was divorced.
I always figured he was just watching TV, probably CNN or C-Span.
"Flynn here," I said. "Kill that story in the second edition."
"What?"
"Something's going on with it, and I'm not sure what it is. But I think maybe we've been had. I just found out that Drinker might have been out here a couple of weeks ago, must have been before the assassination attempt. I don't know why, but I don't like it."
"We kill that story," Martin said, "and we look ridiculous."
"We leave it in for the full run, and we look even worse. We look negligent."
I explained my half-formed fears to him in greater detail.
There was a silence before Martin said, "I'll do what I can."
It was a long ride down to the airport, and an even longer walk to my room in the miserable airport hotel where I was forced to spend the night because I had missed the last flight. It all gave me just enough time to convince myself that by completely fucking up, perhaps I learned something about this story far more valuable than anything I previously had.
Tuesday, October 31
When I awoke the next morning, Tuesday morning, I was a jumble of uncharacteristic nerves. In reporting, rare were the times I screwed up, and rare were the stories when I was so dependent on any one person. But here, all my actions were geared toward getting a call from an elderly gentleman who was out of my control. I couldn't help but wonder if he read the version of the Boston Record with my story or without it.
For these reasons, the flight back to Washington seemed arduously long, even with another soft leather seat up in first class. From the airport, as they announced the final boarding, I called my message services at home and work for the third time of the morning, and it wasn't yet 9:00 A.m. Nothing. My pager sounded, and I fairly jumped through the ceiling of the USAIRWAYS Club. "Jack," the message scrolled across my Skytel. "Have important new information. Need to discuss tonight. University Club at eight? I'll buy. Steve."
I shook my head. It's 6:00 A.m. in DC, and Havlicek was already working the story. Maybe the source called him because he couldn't reach me. I picked up a telephone and belted out Havlicek's number at the bureau, but got no answer, so I left a message saying eight was fine. What could he have?
My only other wish of the morning came true: the seat beside me was vacant, meaning I was at no risk of having a chatterbox salesman spend the next six hours discussing the critical advantages of spreadsheet software for personal accounting. I admit, I'm not much of a good sport on airplanes. I don't make small talk with seatmates, and I don't encourage those who do. Only once do I remember really liking someone I met on a plane. He was an airport fireman, and taking off from Logan in Boston on a late-night flight to Las Vegas, he pointed out for me all the different spots on and around the runways where there had been, in his words, "aviation mishaps." "Look over there,"
he said, pointing his finger against the dark windows at something I couldn't see. "World Airways jet overshot the runway and slammed into a stone wall. Two dead, father and son. They were sitting in the front of the plane, just like we are. Assume their bodies fell into the harbor, and they probably were carried out to sea." Absolutely riveting.
I ordered the Sonoma chicken, having absolutely no idea what it would be, and opted for water instead of wine, assuming there might well be work to be done when the plane landed on the other end. Try as I might, with a book, computer hearts, the new November issue of Attach'e magazine, I couldn't shake the questions: Had he called? Would he call? Was he real? What did he have? Is this, I wondered, what it is like to be a woman?
Ends up, the chicken was a smart move. Everyone who ordered the fish seemed to be sick as a dog, and I don't mean a nice purebred dog, like Baker, but some mangy thing with matted-down fur and funny ears, constantly picking up ticks.
A doctor came wandering up from coach to first class to make the rounds. He announced that they had apparently contracted a minor case of food poisoning and that life would go on, just not as well as if they had ordered the chicken. None of this seemed to alleviate any of the pain. The guy in front of me was groaning and moving about in his seat. I had to just get up and get out of there. Mother Teresa I am not. So I headed for the back of the plane on my usual walk. When I pushed through the curtain, everyone seemed so calm, so fresh. They had eaten these meager little boxed lunches-salads with three pieces of lettuce and a chunk of a tomato, a microscopic sliver of cheese lasagna, a hard chocolate chip cookie-and now they were fine. I wondered if this might all be the start of the revolution, right here on US Airways Flight 906. No time, though, for a revolution. I had a story to break.
I dawdled. I chatted with the stewardesses back in the galley, wondering if I sounded like the moronic middle-aged executives who always seem to get such a charge out of engaging the flight attendants.
I probably did, but they didn't seem to mind. We traded hotel stories from Seattle.
"My fucking toilet wouldn't flush at two this morning," the blonde said.
My goodness. Such a pretty woman; such a tart mouth. I found myself pleasantly aroused as I made my way back up the aisle toward our mile-high version of Chicago Hope.
As I settled back into my seat, several people around me were clutching their stomachs. The captain had come out of the cockpit and announced to them that he could land the plane in Kansas City if the passengers thought this was necessary, or he could carry on through to Philadelphia. The doctor advised them to keep going, saying that the airport wouldn't provide much more relief than this airplane, and that the sickness would pass in a short time anyway. I suspect he had a golf game back east the next morning that he didn't want to miss.
As I leaned toward the seat pocket for a book, I felt something crinkle beneath me. I reached behind my back and pulled out a single sheet of white paper, folded three ways, with my name written across it, by hand. This had an odd feeling of deja vu, as I flashed back to that restaurant in Georgetown. I shot looks all around me to see if I could catch anyone watching me, however discreetly. Nothing. The woman across the aisle was sound asleep. All the other people within view appeared consumed by pain.
I gingerly opened the sheet up and saw just a few lines of perfect penmanship. "Dear Mr. Flynn," it began. "You are on the right track.
I am here to help you. I will be in touch in the next couple of days to guide you. Do not believe what they tell you. The would-be assassin is not Tony Clawson."
Jesus mother of holy Christ. My informant was right here on the plane.
I was within a few yards of him. Quickly I stood up and flagged a flight attendant hurrying by. I didn't have the time or inclination to be coy.
"Ma'am, did you happen to see the person who dropped this paper on my seat?" I asked, as I held up the folded-up note.
She couldn't have cared less. She said, "No, I'm sorry, we've been really busy," as she pushed past me. I scanned everyone's face around me, looking for some reaction. I got none. Then I stared at the sleeping woman across the aisle. Had she been there at the beginning of the flight? I couldn't be sure. Maybe she delivered the note, but wasn't the actual informant. I bore into her with my eyes, looking to see if she was faking, if this sleep was an act. But I couldn't see so much as a flutter of her eyes.
Clutching the note, I walked down the aisle into coach, determined, hoping to spook the writer into some sort of mistake. I looked around hard at virtually everyone, focusing even harder on the few older men.
One man sat by the window doing a crossword puzzle, still wearing a blue blazer in his cramped seat. He looked proper enough to be my voice, so I stopped and stared at him. Eventually, he looked up at me and stared back. Our eyes were locked on each other when he asked,
"Can I help you?"
It was a completely different voice than the one I had heard on the telephone. "My mistake," I said. "I thought I might know you."
I returned to the front, slumped down into my seat, and read the note again. The writer had repeated, generally, what the voice had told me before: "Do not believe what they tell you." Far more important were the first and last parts of the message. I was on the right track, this story would get much bigger, and finally, a piece of concrete information: the assassin was not who the FBI said he was. I would be contacted in a couple of days. Obviously, this guy meant business.
Either he was on the plane, or an emissary was, at no small expense.
He had followed me across the country. He watched me diligently, waiting for me to get up out of my seat so he could drop this. And then he sat back, immune to my desperate, silent appeals for help. Was this some sort of game to him? Was he just having fun? What was the point of catching me midflight, of not waiting until I was on the ground? Did he just want to show me how serious he was? And had he already read the story I had in the early editions today? Did he think I had screwed up? Apparently not.
I sat rigid in my seat for the next three hours, assuming I was being watched. As the stewardesses handed out cold compresses to the sick, the groaning all around me eventually stopped. When we landed, I carefully, self-consciously collected my carry-ons and walked off the plane.
When I jumped into a taxicab, I said, "Downtown, please." In that sense, I knew where I was heading. In another sense, I had no idea at all.