The Henderson Equation Read online

  Nick felt the slight tremor of his lower lip, a signal that anger was stirring. Peterson had noticed. Nick searched Henry Landau’s face, stained deep tan by a southern sun. Landau’s eyes broke first as he scribbled on the pad. It was his first day back after a month’s vacation. He was being cautious.

  Landau was his own handpicked managing editor, as Nick had been Charlie’s. He had been placed into the empty slot, as Nick had inserted everyone; an extension of his own intelligence, a note on the keyboard. He had been brought in from the competing paper five years before.

  Nick had sought talent and perception, guarding against emotional commitment, the thing that he had had with Charlie. Landau was a gamble, a roll of the dice. “I need clarity, intelligence, vision,” he had told Landau, hoping that the unspecified requirement of emotional, distance would be, somehow, grasped. He had hinted at loyalty as essential.

  “I won’t be a flunky, Nick,” Landau had said in interviews that had gone on for weeks.

  “Do you know how to lose gracefully?” Nick had asked.

  “Yes,” Landau had said cautiously, after a long pause. “The same way I take my victories.”

  Nick had liked that, and the chemistry had worked better for his self-imposed distance.

  “For once, just once,” Bonville continued, “let those bastards come in and justify every last nickel of the taxpayers’ money. Not just cosmetics this time. Let them prove the cost of every lousy little bullet, every goddamned G.I.-issue condom. It’s one thing to criticize like gentlemen. I think we need a much more finite weapon. I think that the Chronicle’s asking for a fifty percent cut, fifty percent, would put them on their mettle.” He looked around him, searching for reactions among the cards. Perhaps, in his own odd method of perceiving, he saw something affirmative. He continued.

  “I think we’ve been too bland. Biteless. We have wasted our national sustenance on adult toys, not to mention the blood of our young men. No, I don’t believe that fifty percent is the practical end result in this fiscal year, although I personally believe it to be correct. But the Chronicle’s demand of fifty percent would be enough to send them back to the cutting room.” He held a black pencil in the air, made a circle, then speared it through its center, a dramatic flourish, signifying finality.

  “I think we should attack the defense budget,” Nick said evenly, remembering that the assemblage was not a democratic forum, purely advisory to him, “but asking for a fifty percent cut—there’s an air of fantasy about it.”

  “It is a bit much,” Peterson said, his ruddiness deepening. “Frankly, I can’t see why we have to be so specific.”

  “Clear, specific stands,” Bonville said, almost in mimicry.

  Nick had always insisted on the clarity of specification. “We don’t make abstract charges,” he said again now. “We don’t bury malicious hints. We don’t make unspecific recommendations, unless we clearly label our own ignorance at solutions.” Nick had made it a litany. It was amazing how many times it had to be reiterated, repeated, burned into the human brain. He hardly dared to blink his eyes, fearing the betrayal, the ignoring of his caveats.

  Peterson had looked at Nick with some slight loss of aplomb, then quickly recovering, he said: “Percentages seem so abstract. Why not simply urge cutting off specific programs?”

  “That leaves us vulnerable to attack by the war games buffs,” Bonville pressed. “The military science boys. That’s just it, the damned war business is not a science at all. For every tactic, there are five opinions on its use. For every strategic scenario, a thousand variations. I don’t want to tell the gentlemen of the Pentagon how to play their hopscotch, I’m only interested in the conceptual, the broad picture, the essential stupidity of bleeding our resources in obsolete causes and egocentric internal empire building and bureaucratic bullshit.”

  You fucking eloquent bastard, Nick thought, the anger finally hissing through the containing membrane. He saw Landau’s eyes smiling at him in agreement.

  “Bonnie,” Nick flashed, his jaws tight, “every time I hear your rhetoric I give special thanks to God for inventing erasers on pencils. You take a perfectly legitimate policy, the holding down of the defense budget within reason—reason, Bonnie!—manageable limits!—enemies do exist, you know, they really do—you take our policy, twist it, exaggerate it, then vomit all over it. Now go back to your cell and write the editorial and if I see one fucking overstep, I’ll kick your ass to here and sundown.”

  He could see Landau looking down at the yellow pad, embarrassed. Peterson flushed and Bonville simply stared in haughty outrage.

  Nick was annoyed by his sudden tantrum. Such an outburst was stupid and unnecessary. Ordinarily, handling Bonville was a game, a stretching exercise. He had appointed him to the editorial committee under Peterson because he wanted the outer edges of the Left doctrine to be heard. He had deliberately sought out Bonville, welcoming his sometimes ridiculous intellectual posturing.

  “Bonnie,” Nick said, seeking to placate the stunned and pouting Bonville, “easy on the acid.” He smiled, knowing that the attempt at lightness simply hung in the air like pollution. They passed quickly to other editorial matters.

  After the meeting, he followed Landau to his adjoining office.

  “I flipped, right?” Nick asked. Landau slipped behind his desk, looking at him through calm brown eyes.

  “You missed me,” he said, the tanned skin crinkling on his forehead.

  “It was a lousy trick to leave me to those jackals. Did you rest up?”

  “Fit as a fiddle and ready for love. You look as if you could use a rest, Nick.”

  How could he explain the necessity of standing guard?

  “I’ve spent the time busting egos. Everybody around here is becoming a hot dog. They all want to write books now.”

  “It’s your monster. Remember, I opposed setting up Wentworth’s operation.”

  Wentworth had been hired as an in-house literary agent in the aftermath of their ultimate victory, the unseating of the hated President.

  “I still say it’s better to control it from the inside.”

  “We’re a newspaper, not a glory factory. I can smell a book germinating in Bonville.”

  “It’s not germinating. It’s hatched.”

  “You’re encouraging their egocentricity, Nick. It’s only going to make it tougher on us.”

  He wanted to explain about Myra, the subtle beginnings of change in her, but he held back.

  “You play catch-up. I’ll see you later,” Nick said.

  Back in his office, he started to thumb through the New York Times, casting his eye for possible follow-ups, briefly noting how they treated aspects of the news. He found it difficult to concentrate. Things seemed vaguely awry, a distorted image, a modality changed. Was Myra meddling with the Chronicle’s calibration? Making, not breaking. He had himself set the dials, as Charlie had done, years before. Had he really found the balance between power and responsibility? Was Myra suddenly beginning to tamper with the settings?

  He tossed away the Times and looked over the front page of that morning’s Chronicle, carefully studying the headlines, then swiftly reading every word. Was their point of view subtly expressed? Were the sentences tight, the words clear, the information accurate? It was, after all, the measure of himself, the manner in which he perceived the world, its humanity and justice; its fairness and outrage; its honor and decency. It was he who had constructed the frame, and while there was great latitude in scribbling on the canvas, the frame was still the frame, quite finite. Let them scribble. Let the ink run. Let the passions roar. Let them write their reviews, express their by-lined opinions, rail away at gods and demigods, but never, never could a single errant scrawl go beyond the frame, his frame.

  Looking up, he saw a blonde young woman standing in his doorway, a long thin finger raised, like a schoolgirl asking to leave the room. Beyond her he could see that Miss Baumgartner’s desk was empty and that the girl, Martha Gates, ha
d taken the opportunity to get his attention. She had been hired a year before, in the second wave of a staff protest urging more women on board. Nick had responded to keep the peace, although his private revenge for the pressure was to pick the most attractive of the bunch that flooded in on him.

  Martha Gates was tall, slim-hipped, with long shiny blonde hair parted in the middle and resting lightly on her shoulders, a picture of madonna innocence, but she had proven herself a damned good reporter.

  “Got a minute, Mr. Gold?” she asked sweetly, showing even polished teeth.

  “Make it quick,” he snapped.

  “I’ve stumbled onto a yarn that’s rather sensitive,” she said, stepping haltingly deeper into his office. He was certain she knew she was violating the traditional chain of command.

  “Apparently the First Lady’s assistant, a Mrs. Ryan, is on the take of a foreign lobbyist, a Mr. Kee. It’s not that she’s in a sensitive spot, but it looks like a clear violation of the White House code of ethics. It seems that Kee and the Ryans have gone on trips together and my informant tells me the trip was paid for in cash by Kee’s girl friend.”

  “Who is the informant?” Nick asked.

  “I have this friend who works for Pan American. She’s the one that made out the tickets. It’s all a coincidence, really. Washington’s such a small town. And she has a friend in Puerto Rico at the hotel where they stopped. Actually, it was all so blatant.”

  The fools, Nick thought. The arrogance of power and position. It was Washington’s most rampant disease. Didn’t they ever learn?

  “I want to do this one myself, Mr. Gold,” she said, obviously fearful that the assignment might be given to someone with more rank. He understood.

  “All right, Martha.”

  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me, Mr. Gold.”

  “I’ll tell Madison that I’ve put you on it.”

  “Will he be angry that I went over his head?”

  “I’ll square it,” he said. She became misty-eyed with gratefulness. “Just check it out. Don’t go ape-shit without checking with me.”

  “Thank you again, Mr. Gold,” she said, straightening and going out the door, nearly stumbling over the returning Miss Baumgartner. He watched her approach, the confident stride, the still trim figure of the mid-fifty woman whose sense of importance is not subject to dispute. She wore harlequin glass frames on a beaded security string hanging from either ear beneath her blue-grey hair. He wondered if she knew how it dated her, like his own sleeveless undershirts. In her arms she held the heavy folders of the daily mail.

  “The natives are restless today, Mr. Gold,” she said, standing over him, her even, false teeth, too greyish in cast, lined in a tight smile. It was a quirk, he admitted to himself, a comparatively recent aberration, to glance through the hate mail. He couldn’t quite understand himself whether it was flagellation, paranoia, or simple curiosity. After years of ignoring these letters he had chosen to see them as part of his regular morning fare.

  “They’re obscene and meaningless,” Miss Baumgartner had protested, “and a waste of time.” There was a slight pedantry in Miss Baumgartner’s speech.

  “Just curiosity,” he had answered. Was it somehow a way to escape the sense of isolation, the glass cage? Or to confirm a vague sense of guilt?

  He opened the folder and glanced through the heavy pile. The letters had all been opened and stapled neatly to their envelopes.

  “Don’t forget lunch with Mrs. Pell,” Miss Baumgartner reminded him.

  “Oh?” He looked up at her. Had he forgotten? “Anyone else coming?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Another blip on the screen. It was not Myra’s method to set a date through secretaries. He let it pass, looking over the letters. He picked one from the pile and held it out, reading quickly to himself.

  “Commie Bastard,” read the salutation. “You fucking Jew Nigger Cunts with your giveaway liberal shit words better keep your assholes tight. Because we real Americans are just waiting for the chance to get you. We watch you all the time, you prick-faced Russian spy fuck. And one night when you least expect, we’re gonna get you and strip you and stick a poker straight up your ass until we fry your gut.” It was signed “Spirit of ’76.” He chuckled to himself and shook his head. Wouldn’t know if I was doing the job if old Spirit here didn’t respond. “Spirit” was a recurrent correspondent, a regular, always the same half-printed scrawl on the same blue-lined cheap paper torn out of a child’s notebook. The postmark was always from some different spot in the area, vaguely circular geographically, as if the correspondent had deliberately devised some special method of posting. He put it back on the pile and thumbed through the letters again. He glanced through the first paragraph of another letter, neatly typed.

  “Dear Mr. Gold: In the name of Jesus why are you deliberately wrecking the values of country, patriotism, chastity, simple goodness. All we read is bleeding heart dribble favoring niggers. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  The themes rarely varied. There were piles of postcards, envelopes of all types and sizes. He estimated about seventy-five in the pile, calculating that the yearly haul might be four thousand. Once he had assigned a story on the hate mail of the President. He was careful to urge the differentiation between simple protest, however angry, and pure hate. He remembered being disappointed in the totals; the President’s was running ten times heavier than his. Must be doing something wrong, he had told himself.

  When he had completed the file—the process lasted less than ten minutes—he thumbed through his regular mail, became quickly bored, and looked out into the city room. A finger went up, perceptible only to him, like a signal in an auction. It was Ben Madison, the Metropolitan editor. Nick waved him in, convinced that they had devised some odd system of telepathy. Like with Jennie. He could always tell when Jennie moved through the city room, however distant from his glass. He could actually feel her presence and, looking up, he knew in advance that she was somehow there, or had been there, just brushing past on her way through. Perhaps she had looked toward him briefly, barely enough to charge the air.

  “You were in the city room today,” he had always told her later, when they were alone.

  “How did you know?”

  “I felt it.”

  Madison lumbered into the office, a big man with huge feet and big ham hands. His face seemed larded, the features thick, but the eyes clear and serious.

  “It’s Gunderstein. He’s pressing away on the CIA story. He wants to meet on it again today.”

  “Ben. You know, and I know. Two sources of confirmation!”

  “He says it’s unimpeachable.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Just meet with him once more.”

  “No, Ben.”

  “He’s driving me crazy,” Madison said.

  “Why can’t he just rest on his laurels? What is this compulsion of his to look under every rock?”

  “Just meet with him one more time,” Madison urged.

  “Not until he can show me two sources.” He held up two fingers. “Two.”

  “It’s one helluva yarn.”

  “Without two sources, it’s fiction as far as I’m concerned.”

  It was, of course, intriguing. Not merely that the spooks were involved in foreign assassinations—that seemed common knowledge—but that Senator Burton Henderson, the great liberal, front-runner for the presidential nomination of his party, was involved.

  “Not Henderson!” he had exclaimed when Gunderstein had first broached the story to him a few days ago. “In the first place he’s a liberal, and no one who ever came out of the spook factory could lay claim to that.”

  “He was an NSA spook, assigned, attached, or whatever, to the CIA covert operation in Viet Nam in 1963,” Gunderstein had answered. The reporter was thin with a pale, sickly complexion, marred by pimples, which further embellished his sloppy appearance.

  “My source says that there is
reason to believe that Henderson was an essential part of the Diem assassination. It was he who arranged the rendezvous with the killers after the Ngu brothers were given safe-conduct. There is also the allegation that the order was given to him directly by the Kennedy brothers.”

  “Your source has a great imagination,” Nick said.

  “I’m convinced it’s correct.”

  “Then confirm it.”

  “I’ve been trying.”

  “Heavy stuff,” Nick said. “It would, as the spooks say, blow Henderson’s cover. Maybe destroy him politically.”

  Gunderstein did not respond. This was not his province. His interest was never in consequences, Nick knew, only in the story itself.

  “I’d say it was worth pursuit, but don’t give me copy. Not now,” he had told Gunderstein, dismissing him, watching as his unkempt figure—the hair long and matted, clothes wrinkled, shoes scruffy—slumped out of the office.

  Watching Madison now, Nick thought of Henderson’s name on Myra’s list. He rubbed his chin and looked thoughtfully at Madison.

  “We’ve whipped that CIA beast pretty hard,” Nick said.

  “It’s got a certain fascination, you’ll have to admit.”

  “They argue that if we push too hard we’ll be naked to our enemies.”

  “They’re probably right,” Madison said, revealing his bias.

  “It’s their line, Ben. Like a private domino theory.”

  Lines, he thought. Everyone had a line.

  “It’s worth pursuing,” Madison said cautiously, his eyes watery in their wrinkled chicken-skin pouches. “Besides, the two-source system is tough to pin down in dealing with the CIA. TWO disconnected informers are almost impossible to find. They protect each other. And, of course, Henderson emphatically denies any involvement.”

  “What would you do? His guts are on the line.” That word again, he thought. “A revelation like that will blow his constituency. Imagine a liberal candidate with a past like that.”

  “Yeah,” Madison said. “Wouldn’t it be lovely?”