It was around 1:00 P.m. when White House Press Secretary Royal Dalton slid open the pocket doors that separate the press office from the briefing room and walked awkwardly up to the podium. He was about an hour late.
Hutchins was laying over in Washington amid a week-long campaign trip.
The room was electric this day. There is nothing that makes reporters happier than catching the government, especially a law enforcement agency, in a mistake or a lie, and this one about Tony Clawson could cut either way. Sure, other print reporters were frustrated at having been beaten to the story. The hell with them. Television reporters, they don't really care. The hotter the story, no matter who breaks it, means the more air time for them, and that means greater recognition-on the streets, at family weddings, and on the telephone with any of the young blond hostesses at the city's hottest restaurants when they call at five in the afternoon hoping for an eight-o'clock reservation, table for four.
Every seat in the room was filled with a reporter. Every inch of wall space was taken by cameramen who appeared layered on top of each other, creating a terrace of lenses, ready to beam this scene around the world in a matter of minutes. The lights were bright and hot, causing that unique-and, yes, unpleasant-odor of sweat and wool.
Dalton looked particularly uneasy today, his already pasty features washed even whiter, with the sole exception of the darkening circles under his beady eyes.
"I have a couple of policy announcements," he said, trying to maintain a casual demeanor as he looked around the room in something that more accurately approached fear. He went on to talk about a Medicare reform proposal that Republicans had been trying to sell for years, recycled, obviously, in time for some campaign season coverage.
After that, he opened the session to questions, and first up was Moose Myers, senior White House correspondent for CNN. Moose was actually anything but. On the screen, he looked big and foreboding, usually because the camera shot him from close range, so he'd fill the picture.
In person, he was five foot six, maybe five-seven in his favorite heels. I don't know why I bring this up. Whenever I talk to television guys, I tend to dwell on their features and come to the inevitable conclusion that aside from my reportorial pride, I could do that.
Moose asked: "Has President Hutchins talked to the FBI director this morning, and has he lost faith in the FBI'S ability to conduct this investigation, given the revelations in today's Boston Record?"
Sitting smack in the middle of the room, about three rows behind him, I made a mental note to extend my thanks for that high-profile mention.
It doesn't get much better than that. I actually had the feeling that a few of my colleagues were looking at me, and trust me when I say this is a tough lot to impress. You could walk on water, and the first thing most of them would want to do is inspect your shoes, and, finding them wet, ask, "Any reason why you went out and ruined a perfectly good pair of Cole-Haan wing tips?"
Dalton had obviously patched together a precisely worded answer to this question with senior White House aides and probably even Hutchins himself, then rehearsed it frontward and back over the past several hours. Here it came:
"The president," he said, "has spoken to Director Callinger of the FBI by telephone this morning. They had a pleasant and informative talk.
They have been keeping in regular contact since the assassination attempt. You've all seen reports"-the Record stories, I'd point out-"that there has been a security alert here at the White House, and the president has been receiving regular updates on that.
"The president was assured today that the investigation remains on track and is moving ahead with significant progress. The president is obviously in no position to discuss the particulars of the investigation. He was the victim. He is not a detective. But I am told the FBI will have something more to say on this shortly."
Immediately, a dozen hands and as many voices filled the air. Myers, the CNN reporter, talked down his colleagues. Asking a question in this kind of setting is like a verbal fencing match. You have to stay at it longer and harder, and eventually the vanquished sit down and shut up. "Royal, you didn't answer me. Has the president lost faith in the abilities of the FBI, given what the Boston Record is saying today about the misidentified shooter and the fact that they had previously identified a specific militia group, but were unable to stop the assassination attempt?"
Every time he mentioned my paper, I subconsciously felt myself push my shoulders back a bit further. I also felt the urge to hug him, but those are my own private issues. If I really had, I could see CNN using that footage in a commercial for how revered Moose is by his colleagues.
"Look," Dalton said. "The president believes today what he's always believed, and what, I would argue, most of America believes: that the FBI is the most talented, most exhaustive, most prestigious law enforcement agency in the world. He hasn't changed his opinion because of a newspaper story in Boston."
Dalton spit out those last words as if they were some distasteful bit of phlegm that had worked its way from his throat into his mouth. But if he thought he could outsmart the gathered press-and pathetically, he probably believed he could-he was about to learn the folly of his ways. Immediately, the Associated Press reporter shouted out, "So the president believes that the FBI was right, that the dead man is actually Tony Clawson?"
Good one. Dalton hesitated at the podium. You could see him twitching if you watched closely enough. "As I indicated before," he said, gathering a dismissive tone, "the president is the president of the United States. He is not a detective. He does not involve himself in the particulars of this investigation. He leaves that up to the trained inspectors with the most successful, most notable law enforcement agency in the world."
The Washington Post reporter asked loudly: "Does the president still have faith in that agency and its director?"
Dalton: "He does not see any reason, at this juncture, not to have faith in the FBI. He wants to let them proceed with their investigation, which is certainly difficult to do, given the intense publicity and the second-guessing that we're seeing now in the news media."
My first inclination was to stand up and tell him that the story wasn't second-guessing, it was just laying out a set of obvious facts, most notably, that the FBI misidentified a would-be presidential assassin.
My second inclination, the winning one, was that it might be unbecoming to stand and defend my own story. Significantly, Dalton had not called it wrong, and no one in the room thought it was.
The Baltimore Sun reporter, a twenty-year veteran of the press room who was demonstrably annoyed first with being beaten, and second with the mealymouthed responses from Dalton, asked, "Well, did the FBI director tell the president that they have the right identity or the wrong identity on the body of the alleged shooter? And is the FBI director prepared to offer his resignation?"
"You're not going to get much more from me on this one," Dalton said.
"The president is a victim in this shooting. The particulars on this case will have to come from the FBI, and as I said, I think they'll have something for you people in a short while."
This was interesting. Dalton effectively passed on the question of whether the FBI director would resign because of a Record story. This was also becoming futile, though it would be another twenty minutes before anyone in the room would be willing to let go.
Basically, from my read, Dalton was shying away from saying that the president had full faith in the FBI. He had very purposefully not used those words, probably out of fear that the FBI had screwed up and knowledge that they were about to make an announcement to that effect.
Dalton was also going to great lengths to distance the president from the investigation, repeatedly calling him a victim. This in itself was odd. White House aides prefer to depict the president as someone all-powerful, in control, not some hapless casualty of unfortunate circumstance. They were obviously being cautious about this, not setting anything in stone, leaving themselves an escape route. The question was, why?
As Dalton went around and around with reporters, my pager sounded.
It's one of those high-tech beepers with the text messages that shows me the most recent wire reports every few hours. This message was far better than the norm, which usually consists of this: "Call Peter Martin immediately." I read my beeper twice to make sure I saw it right. "Jack, you're an asshole. Come see me ASAP C.h."
I couldn't well get up in the middle of this briefing, mostly because the only way into the West Wing was directly past the podium, where all my colleagues, as well as Royal Dalton, would look at me with a mix of fear and loathing.
"Royal, is it the view of the president that the shooting attempt has hampered his ability to win reelection, or has it aided his cause because the country had the chance to see him perform in a difficult personal situation?" That was Jonathan Flowers with CBS News, with a subtle way of trying to reengage Dalton in the give-and-take, make him feel and act less like Larry Speakes, Reagan's press secretary, whose relationship with the news media was so awful that he would routinely stare down a particularly difficult questioner and bellow, "You're out of business." Then he'd ignore the reporter for the next week.
"I've said all I'm saying on assassination-related topics," Dalton seethed from the podium. He paused, then added icily, "Next subject."
Fuck him.
"Royal," I said, and I could feel all eyes riveted on me. I wasn't just some casual questioner here. My name was on that story, and there's the operating assumption from every other reporter and White House aide that the writer always knows more than he's written. "As president, as commander in chief, as someone generally charged with protecting our country and government, shouldn't President Hutchins be taking a keen interest in the progress of this investigation and the abilities of the investigators, given the potentially serious consequences on the well-being of the administration?"
I liked it. Dalton froze at the podium, furiously flipping through the briefing book of his mind for an answer. Finally, he punted. "Look, he is monitoring this regularly and closely. He is as concerned as anyone else with today's report. But he is also leaving the particulars of the investigation to those who are expert investigators."
This far in, and finally a usable quote. Hutchins is concerned. As Dalton sought other topics, on this day, there were a round of questions on the Medicare reform proposal, on the latest tax cut measure being touted by Nichols, et cetera. Eventually, the briefing tailed off into a blur of quiet mayhem, with reporters talking to each other and cameramen packing up their equipment and Dalton hesitating at the front of the room before he slinked through the door. I quickly pushed my way through the masses to a wall phone, dialed the White House switchboard, and quietly asked for Sylvia Weinrich, Hutchins's assistant.
"Miss Weinrich speaking," she said, answering the phone in her finishing-school tone, one regularly heard by world leaders, cabinet secretaries, and major contributors, though typically not by some harried reporter from South Boston.
"Hello, Miss Weinrich. Jack Flynn here." I spoke to her, I realized, as if I were talking to one of my former grammar school teachers, forming my words and thoughts carefully, all with a mix of respect and affection and the long-shot hope that she might like me and think I was smart. "The president, I believe, was kind enough to page me with an invitation to stop by. I was wondering if he had a convenient time."
It occurred to me just before she spoke that the page had been some hoax and that Hutchins had no intention of seeing me, all of which would have meant that I was in the process of making a general ass of myself. Luckily, she cleared that up in no time.
"Mr. Flynn, such a pleasure to hear from you again. My, you've been busy. I know the president wanted to see you as soon as possible. As a matter of fact, he has some office time right now and was wondering how soon you might be able to come in."
More than perhaps anyone else on earth, when the president beckons, people-congressmen, activists, titans of industry-drop everything and come, whether they want to or not. That's one of the perks of leadership. Me, I explained that I was in the building-a fact, I had a hunch, that they already knew. Marvelous, we both agreed, and in a matter of minutes, I was inconspicuously walking from the briefing room, through the West Wing, and into the Oval Office for the second time in my life, this time, though, unclear of my purpose and unprepared, I suspected, for what was to come.
He was sitting at that big oak desk, in shirtsleeves, wearing one of those pairs of half glasses that Havlicek had on a couple of nights before, looking dignified. He was reading a sheath of papers in a black binder. The wan November sun streaked through the southern windows behind him and through the French doors that led out to the Rose Garden, where bunches of brightly colored chrysanthemums stood sentry against the early creep of winter. The room was bathed in light and warmth and quiet-just the gentle hum of moving air and the soft tick of the tall case clock. When Hutchins flipped a page, the sound was a relative explosion.
I sat on one of the two couches at the far end of the room, quietly waiting. Sylvia Weinrich had shut the door on her way out. My eyes scanned around from the jar of mints on the coffee table to the busts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy near his desk to the biographies of Truman and Lincoln that were carefully arranged on the ancient pale yellow shelves. It was mesmerizing, this room, where history wasn't just made but prodded and pulled, nipped and formed. As the moments drifted into minutes, I started wondering if he knew I was here.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." That was Hutchins, finally. He stood up from his desk, snapped his glasses off his face with one hand, and slowly walked toward me, looking haggard.
"You have any idea how much money this country sends to Israel every year in federal dollars?" he asked, not really seeming to want an answer. "Three billion. Three fucking billion fucking dollars. You have any idea how much private U.s. money is raised for Israel annually? Try another billion." By now, Hutchins was standing across from me, taking his seat on the opposite couch, talking softer with every word.
"How good are we to them? Cole just about promised fellatio to every senior Israeli official if they'd just be willing to meet with the Palestinians. Me? The second call I made after I was sworn in was to Jerusalem. No changes in policy, I said. They'd continue to be our best ally in the region. And how do they say thanks to all this money, to all this friendship, to the promise of all this history if they can reach a simple accord with people they know they'll be living beside from now to fucking eternity? They build tunnels and housing on sacred Palestinian land. They know the reaction they're going to get. They know they're fucking things up. Then they just shrug and ask me, "Are you with us or not?" And what can I say? "Yes, I am, though, gee, I was hoping you might behave differently." Well, you know what? Maybe I'm not with them anymore."
This scene was astounding for a few reasons, most notably that this was five days before a monumental presidential election. Hutchins should be standing before cameras, basking in the glow of favorable public opinion polls, looking down the pipe to four years in the White House in his own right. Granted, he was only taking a brief breather here, but the respite should not be spent laboring over the finer or broader points of the muddled and immovable Middle East peace process. It crossed my mind that the Record story might be one reason why Hutchins wasn't happier. The reality of his life was another. He was childless, wifeless, and really had no one with whom to share the moment aside from a group of aides I don't think he particularly liked.
So here was Hutchins, alone with a reporter he barely knew, fretting about issues he had frustratingly little control over.
I hadn't said anything yet, and Hutchins didn't appear interested in my opinion, so I sat in silence, watching closely the sad, almost sour look on his face, the toll of this job, listening to the words flow into what seemed a pool of self-pity. His reputation was that of a hard-charging bull, a man whom I once wrote had a steakhouse charm about him: straightforward, with few garnishments. Today, he appeared wilted, like some hound dog on a hot August afternoon.
"And you," he said, more politely now, paternal. "Where are you on our proposal? You make up your mind yet? You ready to do the right thing and join the team, help make history? I'm about to win four more years. I'll be able to do anything I want, go anywhere I want to go.
I probably won't even run for reelection. I might just use this term to kick an awful lot of ass and let things fall where they may. You could be there, every step of the way, for every kick and all the applause that follows."
Hutchins paused, staring out the French doors. His feet were up on the coffee table. He held his half glasses in one hand, letting them dangle by the stem as some people do, occasionally flipping them around. He reached up and rubbed his eyes with two fingers, massaging them hard as if he were trying to push them back into his head. He looked as if he were about to lose the election rather than win the damn thing.
I said, "I'm putting an enormous amount of thought into your offer, sir. But I think it's fair to warn you that I don't think this is an appropriate time for me."
Hutchins just kind of looked at me for a minute, allowing his eyes to scan over my face, probing, silent.
"Howa your ribs?" he asked, surprising me.
"Much better," I said. "I'm getting a lot more comfortable."
"Hasn't affected your work, for chrissakes," he said, getting that mischievous smile again, looking at me hard, playfully, waiting for a response.
I smiled. "Busy time."
"Oh, it's a busy time all right. It's a busy fucking time."
He let that hang there, and the two of us sat facing each other, waiting for reactions.
I broke the silence. "Sir, do you have any reaction beyond what Dalton has said on the performance of the FBI? Are you worried they're going to botch this shooting?"
He resumed his serious look and tone. "I can't help you on this one."
Then he did. He repositioned himself on the settee and said, "Look, they're the FBI. You hope to God they know what they're doing. You believe in your heart that they do. You look at their record, at their history, at their tradition, and at their reputation, and you just have to believe they're going to get things right."
Nice little quote that my paper will have exclusively-certainly a lot better than that patter of Dalton's.
"Here's the point, though," he continued. "You're a smart kid. I want you in my trench, not shooting at me from someone else's. If it takes money, I promise you, we'll max out on your pay. I'll dip into my own pocket to supplement it. I'll give you hiring power over at the press office. You bring in whoever you want. You know you have my ear.
I'll give you virtually open access to the Oval. You come in here anytime you want and talk things through. You'll be one of my most important advisers, cutting across the board."
Holy shit. Essentially, what he was now offering me wasn't just the position of press secretary, though that slot alone was pretty damned good. He was talking about senior presidential adviser, at the very center of his inner circle, a fixture in the Washington power structure. Senators would have to kiss my ass. Network anchors would vie for my time. My financial future would be set. This was interesting, though probably not interesting enough to sway me. The story-this assassination attempt and all the mystery that surrounded it-was too good. My roots in newspapers ran too deep.
"It's all very flattering," I said. "I really will think about it."
My deadline was supposed to be the next day, Friday. "Take whatever time you need," he said. "The sooner the better, but I'd rather have a yes in a week than a no in a day."
I said, "I don't want to leave you hanging. I'll move as quickly as I can. But like I said, right now, to be perfectly honest, I'm leaning against it."
There was a moment of silence. I gazed around the room again, thinking this could be in some way mine, this hold on power.
With the quiet mounting toward God knows what, my curiosity got the better of me, and I took a chance. "You don't look so good, sir.
Given that the polls show you creeping ahead, I would think you'd be in a better frame of mind."
He focused on me-bore in on my face, still silent, his gray eyes locking in on mine, not in an angry way but almost in some odd way pleading, but for what, I had no idea.
"Are we talking, me and you, or am I talking to 700,000 Record readers?" he asked.
I think he inflated our circulation figures, not that I mind. "Me and you, sir," I said.
He sighed loudly. "This job, it's not what you might think. Hell, it's not what I had thought. There is the swarm of attention, and in the middle of that swarm, the sense of total isolation. There is the dangling prospect of accomplishment, matched against the overriding reality of constant failure."
He paused for a moment, looking out toward the Rose Garden. He continued, "Look, it sounds foolish to complain about all this, and there's a lot that's great-this house, the limousines, the helicopter, Air Force One, Camp David. I have a staff of valets who'll help me put my boxers on in the morning if I ask them to. They lay out my clothes every day, freshly pressed, always nice and clean. I can play golf at any frigging private club in America without even calling for a tee time. But for the rest of my life, I'll never be able to sit at a bar and order a hamburger. I'll never be able to go for a Sunday-afternoon drive. I can't even go for a walk in my own neighborhood. Hell, I don't really even have a neighborhood. I am the neighborhood."
He was on a roll. The stream of consciousness seemed to be turning into a tidal wave. "I'm not a professional politician. Maybe that's my biggest problem, at the same time it's my greatest asset. I didn't spend my entire life praying and scheming to be president. I didn't ask for this job."
He paused, and I cut in, my tone noticeably sympathetic even if I didn't yet feel any great sympathy. "Sir, with all due respect, you did ask for this job. You're in the process of asking for it right now, in this election."
He seemed not in the least bit offended. "Yeah, you're right, I am asking for it," he said. "But tell me this, how do you not ask for this job when you know you could have it? How do you turn your back on being in every history book of every junior high kid in the country from now until the end of time? How do you walk away from that?"
Fair points. We sat in silence again for a moment. He was brooding; I was stunned, for a variety of reasons. I had never seen him this reflective, this thoughtful. He usually put forth the veneer of a fraternity brother, ever mischievous, involved only in the moment. I recalled his great delight at watching me drive the ball into the woods at Congressional. I remembered his fascination with the presidential suite at the Bethesda Navy Hospital. But you always knew that below the surface there was an inner, driving force with this man. It was part of his great charm.
Still, I didn't know it ran this deep, or this purple. Here was the president of the United States, heading toward probable victory in an election just five days away, outright depressed at the prospect of four years in the White House. I thought back to past presidents, how they arrived and how they left, John Kennedy embodied a new age of Camelot. Three years later, he was shot and killed, his brains spattered across that convertible limousine in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson was broken by the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon fulfilled his greatest dreams with his election in 1968, outdid himself in 1972, and then left in disgrace two years later, standing at the entry of Marine One on the South Lawn, his staff and friends on the grass below, giving a final, two-handed victory sign, his suit jacket awkwardly scrunched up below his arms as his face was formed into a forced, bittersweet smile. Ford was only given a taste of power. Carter was given only a little more than that. He arrived so young, with so much promise. He left a gray-haired man obsessed by a group of hostages he was unable to help until he couldn't even help himself. Reagan may be the only one who left with his heart intact, though even he was ridiculed in his parting days. Bush rode higher than anyone before him, the victorious conquester of the Gulf War, only to be brought down by economic forces he failed to understand. Clinton embodied a new generation of leadership, with all its hopes and with all its failings, and in the end, his entire life was torn asunder in a clash between the weakness of his own personality and the immense personal responsibilities of the office.
"Look, I'm unloading too much," Hutchins said, interrupting my stroll through history. "I'm tired from the campaign. Maybe I'm intimidated by the work ahead. And when a guy takes a shot at you out of nowhere, you start thinking about the fragile nature of life. Bottom line: I'm going to be fine."
Hutchins slapped his two hands against his knees, in a sign that the conversation was over. I hesitated, then rose slowly from the couch, assuming this was my signal to leave. He stayed slumped down. "Your wife, she died, right?" he asked, and the first thing I thought was, it would be a hell of a question to get wrong.
I said, "She did, about a year ago."
I was standing now. He was sitting, deep in the couch, showing no signs of getting up. He said, "I'm sorry." There was a silence. I started to turn around to leave. He added, "I hope you find someone else. No matter who you are, no matter where you've been, no matter where you're going, life isn't meant to be lived alone, not for normal human beings, anyway."
I nodded at him, "I think you're right," I said. I walked slowly out the door, leaving him slumped into the couch, looking painfully sad.
As I left, Sylvia Weinrich walked in carrying a silver tray holding a can of Diet Coke, a crystal bowl filled with ice, and a frosted glass.
She smiled as she passed me. I turned to see Hutchins walking slowly to his desk.
"Hey there, slugger."
That was Havlicek, looking up from his computer, the headset to a microcassette recorder covering his ears as he transcribed a tape.
He asked, "You hear about the FBI statement?"
"I've been out of touch for the last hour," I said. "What did they say?"
Peter Martin approached from his office and leaned on Havlicek's desk without saying anything.
"Very interesting," Havlicek began. "They issued a bullshit response that the original identification of Clawson was only tentative, and it only became public because it was released by a junior agent who was speaking without authorization. They also said they had realized in the past forty-eight hours that this initial identification-their words-was wrong, and they had reopened that facet of their investigation to learn the identity of the attempted assassin."
I asked, "So they still don't know who the guy is that they killed, this dead person in their morgue?"
"They won't say. They said that because of the initial, false release of the tentative ID, they will make certain that in the future no parts of their investigation are released to the news media until they are ready. They claim that today's story hindered their investigation, so they're going to button down even tighter."
I laughed a sneering laugh. "Those pricks. They screw up, then blame us for hindering them. What a bunch of jackasses."
"Bingo. But at least they've essentially confirmed our story. This makes for good print tomorrow. On Wyoming, they have declined to comment, except to say they did have a security alert at the White House. They were adamant that they do not discuss anything to do with any federal informants."
Martin spoke for the first time. "This also means that every paper in the country, including the New York Times and Washington Post, have to mention us in tomorrow's stories, giving us full credit. The FBI made sure of that today by admitting this and blaming us at the same time.
This couldn't be better."
"Well, yeah," I said. "It could be better if we could prove those bastards are lying, that they really didn't know they had the wrong ID, or that they did know, but they misled us on purpose." For the first time, I brought up the Hutchins session. "And they'll all have to follow us again tomorrow. I have exclusive quotes from the president.
I sat with him in the Oval Office this afternoon while he unloaded to me."
I reviewed those quotes for them, and Martin made a move as if he might hug me, then apparently thought better of it. He clenched his fists together. "This keeps getting better," he said. "We are on a colossal roll."
The three of us fell quiet for a moment. It was nearing 4:00 P.m." so we divvied up the workload. As I've said, Havlicek is the best, most dogged reporter I know, but he writes as if English is a second language. With that in mind, Martin delicately suggested that he type up what he had and ship it to me, and I would combine it with my White House reaction and meld it into one story.
But even the best-laid plans sometimes fall victim to circumstance. As I settled in at my desk, before I even checked my voice mail and computer messages, the telephone rang.
"Jesus Christ, you're tough to reach. I thought you quit." It was the ever-personable Ron Hancock.
"Been in with the president all afternoon," I said.
"Yeah, right." He just kind of snickered. I was about to argue, but decided to save the energy.
"They're feeding you a line of crap from over here," he said. "It's bullshit. They were calling this victim Tony Clawson right up until six A.m." when the news broke from your paper that they had the wrong ID."
"Can you prove it?" I asked, starting to get excited but trying to keep myself in check. You don't want to show these guys too much, even if they're trying to help.
"I'm an FBI agent. Of course I can prove it. What's your fax number?"
I gave it to him, and he said, "Go stand by your machine. I'm sending you something right now. You don't know where you got it from. If you go before a grand jury, you'll tell them nothing. If you get called by the fucking director, you'll tell him nothing. If they stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails and make you eat boiled horse dick for dinner, you'll tell them you love it."
There are weeks, even months, in this strange business of newspaper reporting when absolutely nothing goes right-when the only guy who can prove a tip that you know is true has gone off hiking in the Himalayas and ends up freezing to death in his base camp, or when a blockbuster corruption story you've been working for a month ends up on the front page of the Los Angeles Times because you've decided to take an extra day of writing to smooth out the tone. There are, of course, those times when there just aren't any tips or good stories, and the whole world seems set in different shades of gray. It's times like this that your sisters call and say they haven't seen you in the paper much lately, is everything all right with your job?
I mention this because this obviously was not one of these times. In fact, on my way to the facsimile machine, unsure what I was about to receive, I kept quietly pumping my fist down at my side, as if I had just scored the winning basket for South Boston High in the Christmas tournament against Charlestown. This was better than sex, though truth be known, I was probably a bad judge of that, given the duration of time since I last had any.
By the time I got to the machine, it was already spitting out a plain sheet of white paper with the typewritten words: "For Jack Flynn.
Personal and Confidential. For Jack Flynn's eyes only."
What followed was a detailed FBI internal case summary dated the day before, stamped late in the afternoon by whoever received it, which discussed the identity of the killer as Tony Clawson. Hancock, the rascal, had whited out some key parts about the investigation. Even while he was trying to help me out, he still had some allegiance to the FBI and didn't want the case blown. I respected that. I notified Martin and Havlicek. There was much backslapping and hand-wringing, and in the end, the three of us pored over every word of the story that I began by writing.
"Nice clean hit," Martin said when we shipped the story to the national desk. We were standing in his office. It was pitch-black outside.
The bureau was mostly empty. The soft light of his desk lamp cast a warm glow. "I'll assume you're on an early flight to Boston tomorrow."
Before I could answer, Havlicek appeared in the doorway, smiling. "No I in the word team," he said.
I furrowed my brow at him, expressing confusion.
He shrugged. "I don't know what it means either. My Little League coach used to say it all the time. Just seemed to fit here. Let's head out. Drinks are on me."
"I'm in," Martin said.
I craved solitude and sleep, but couldn't really say no without looking like a curmudgeon. I was the youngest guy in the group, and so was expected to be a part of these things. "Where to?" I asked, as Martin put his coat on.
Havlicek said, "University Club. Love that bar."
So I guess the drinks would be on me, then.
"Give me five minutes," I said.
At my desk, I clicked through my electronic Rolodex to the telephone number for a dining and drinking establishment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, appropriately named the Pigpen.
"Sammy there," I said, in a tone as gruff and hard as I could gather, which wasn't particularly difficult to do.
The sound of tinny music was prominent in the background, as was the constant din of discussion, which, in the case of the Pigpen, I can guarantee you was taking place at no cerebral level. As if the guy who answered the phone was trying to play some part in a movie, he said, matching my gruffness with impressive skill, "Who wants to know?"
"Jack Flynn."
I heard the receiver hit a hard surface, probably the bar, which I silently expressed thanks wasn't the cradle. After a minute, someone picked up on another line, and the background music sounded a little louder.
"What the fuck do you want now? I thought I made you into some big-time Washington reporter these days."
A word about Sammy Markowitz: he is about sixty, bald but for a little stubble around his crown. He has droopy eyes and bad teeth and smokes Camels all day, every day, sitting in a back booth of the Pigpen, which he owns, drinking Great Western champagne, playing gin rummy with any and all comers. He has a face that sags down to a formless chin, and all things considered, makes Don Rickles look like an Olympic athlete.
He is also the most powerful force in Chelsea's most important industry-bookmaking-and therefore has the endless respect of the city's many hoodlums and wannabes, the entire police force, even the mayor, whom he graces with a $10,000 bonus every Christmas Eve.
Many years before, I dedicated weeks of my life to researching his bookie network, in a story I hoped to do about the anatomy of an illegal gaming operation. Truth be known, I was making very little progress penetrating the layers of insulation he had built around himself, and was about to abandon the story, when one night I arrived home to my Commonwealth Avenue apartment in Boston's Back Bay and was greeted on my doorstep by what looked like an Italian undertaker in need of a shave and some manners.
"Someone would like to see you," he said. "Come with me."
I didn't seem to have much choice, courtesy of the gun in his hand, so I went, thinking this would make a good lead in a story that I didn't actually have. He brought me to the Pigpen, to Markowitz's table, where I was told in no uncertain terms that I should drop my research and walk away from the story. Unfortunately, or maybe not, he had caught me on the tail end of a night out with the boys at the Capital Grille, and I was feeling the bravado that only a full bottle of Duckhorn cabernet can really instill.
"What's in it for me?" I asked him.
He paused, taken aback. Looking me up and down in a bit of disbelief, he eventually said, "What do you want?"
"Well, you're asking me to walk away from a good story that I've put a lot of work into. You have something else for me?"
He paused again, scratching at his face and exposing his bad teeth, then asked, "What about police corruption?"
"Police corruption is good. I like police corruption."
In a matter of days, he played a critical role laying out a story on a group of a dozen Chelsea police officers who had led a decade-long reign of terror on the community they were paid to protect, ranging from thievery to assault to torture to, in at least one case that I was able to report, murder. The story resulted in the indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of the dozen cops, the resignation of the police chief, and the recall of the mayor. I was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Markowitz remained very much in business. I hadn't spoken to him since.
"I'm well, Sammy, thanks, and I hope you are too." No reaction, so I continued. "I need five minutes from you, and I need you in a cooperative frame of mind."
"What do you want from me?" he said, his tone and attitude largely void of the joy that I would expect to hear from anyone I hadn't talked to in this long.
I said, "I'm looking for someone, and it's crucial I find him. I've got more than a hunch you can help me."
"Yeah? Who?"
"I'm in your town tomorrow. What if I just stop by?"
"Yeah? Well, maybe I'm here, maybe I'm not."
He's always there, so I took that as something as close to an invitation as I'd get. "Good," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow.
Drinks are on you."
Next I called Diego Rodriguez, an assistant United States attorney in Boston and a sometime source of information, leaving a message on his voice mail that I needed to speak to him tomorrow, in person, preferably in his office. And with that, a day that felt like it should be over was really just starting.