The Henderson Equation Read online

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Don’t worry. I got a rundown on Higgins. Got a good description. They were drinking buddies. When he asks you about him, just say: “That man puts away two fifths a day and is the best fucking newspaperman in Ohio.”

  “All he has to do is pick up the phone and check me out.”

  “He won’t. You say it the way I’ve explained and he’ll think you’ve known the man all your life.”

  Nick watched him standing in the corner of the bar, backlit by the red and green neon sign—tall, curly hair, short-cropped, big ears, a high nose with a little indentation near the ridge where the glasses he hated to wear pinched too tightly, smiling broadly with incredibly even teeth. He patted Nick on the back with a heavy paw. “You’re in, kid.”

  “I’m scared to death.”

  “You’re a reporter, kid. Just do the reporting. Let me handle the rewrite.”

  They walked back across Forty-first Street, past the loading pier lined with high-backed News trucks. Beyond the pier, Nick could see huge metal rollers.

  “That’s where the rag rolls off the presses. Two million of them a night.”

  They waited for the freight elevator in the musty corridor, heavy with what were then strange odors. Paper and ink. From that moment it attached itself forever to the hairs of his nostrils, as if a family of bacteria had migrated there for permanent settlement.

  In the elevator, Charlie grabbed at Nick’s tie, loosened it, and unbuttoned the collar.

  “I’m just unstiffening you a bit.” When he had mussed Nick’s hair slightly, he stood back, an artist surveying the quick dabs on the canvas.

  “Not perfect, but it will have to do.”

  As the elevator door opened into the city room, they got out and Charlie turned to face him again.

  “One more thing, kid.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a Kerryman.”

  “A what?”

  “A Kerryman.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A county in Ireland.”

  “Kerryman?”

  “No, Kerry. County Kerry, dummy. That’s where your family is from.”

  “With a name like Gold? Worse still, my father told me it used to be Goldberg.” Actually, he had had an Irish grandmother on his maternal side, northern Irish, he recalled, the hated Protestant Orange. He was an authentic American mishmash, his Semitic father had told him.

  “Tell him it used to be Goldic, Gaelic. Get it?” He remembered his stomach had turned as he followed Charlie toward the managing editor’s desk, planted imperiously at one end of the city room. His palms had begun to sweat.

  “Don’t worry. He thinks I’m Irish, too. For a High Episcopalian, that’s really grand fraud. I told him my middle name was Xavier, like his. I didn’t know about the Kerry thing till later. Besides, I drink Irish. That’s the ultimate identifying clue.”

  Whatever Nick’s misgivings, he had followed Charlie’s stage direction to the letter. The thing about Kerry was the clincher. McCarthy spent the first ten minutes of the interview tracing the history of George Higgins and his mammoth appetite for the grape, like an old school tie, the memory warming the older man’s heart. From a corner of his eye, Nick could see Charlie peering over his typewriter, tense with expectation.

  “Kerry, you say.” Nick had, as agreed, injected the subtlety. McCarthy did not notice Nick’s bobbing, nervous Adam’s apple, or question the Goldic blarney. But there was one moment of panic as McCarthy looked into him with pale blue bloodshot eyes, then shifted suddenly beyond his head to a big wall clock.

  “Boy!” McCarthy boomed and a copy boy came running obsequiously. He opened a desk drawer and peeked in swiftly, writing a word on a piece of copy paper and folding it. Nick saw the edge of a scratch sheet. The boy took the paper and hustled away.

  “Kerry, you say,” McCarthy repeated, the pale eyes turning inward to some embedded memory of the Emerald Isle. He imagined he could actually hear the hint of a brogue in McCarthy’s speech cadence. Beyond the voice, the tempo in the city room seemed to accelerate. Typewriters clicked loudly. The cry of “Boy!” echoed in the big room.

  “Never trust another Irishman,” McCarthy said. “They’re all black inside.” Nick felt his heart palpitate in his chest.

  “But that’s what we must have in this business. Black Irish, and the Kerryman is the blackest, a cursed lot,” McCarthy said, a heavy scent of booze rushing out with his sudden odd anger. “Stubborn. Tenacious. Vipers. The lot of ’em. We Corkmen hate them more than the devil.” He paused. “But we need them, as we need the angels, witness to man’s venom.” He laughed suddenly, wrote out something on a piece of paper, then handed it to Nick.

  “Bring this up to Personnel,” he said, dismissing him, opening his drawer again to choose the horse for the next race.

  “Like falling off a leprechaun’s log,” Charlie told him later at Shanley’s, clinking glasses in a toast.

  But two weeks later he had nearly blown the whole opportunity; and watching the beefy back of the Police Chief as it moved heavily in the chair, Nick saw in its bulk the impending termination of his budding career.

  As low man on the totem of general assignment, they had him writing obits and fillers and interviewing an assortment of characters that floated into the city room, as if the paper were a court of last resort. Mostly they were forlorn, defeated remnants of the human chain seeking solace, vindication, or revenge. Or people who had lost something, a son, a daughter, a father, a mother, their pride, money; empty souls spewed up along the city beach. The News, a tabloid, written in tight, simple declarative sentences for the masses, had come to be known as the people’s press, the literature of the little man. It could be digested in one 20-minute ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan and was the largest circulated paper in the United States.

  “There are more of us than them,” the city editor, O’Hara, told Nick not long after he had arrived, pointing to a New York Times lying like a tattered corpse in his wastebasket. As if to emphasize the lesson, he had spread a penciled cross through “Mr.” in Nick’s first obit.

  “Even when a man dies, he’s no ‘mister’ in this sheet. He doesn’t get born ‘mister’ and he doesn’t die ‘mister.’ ” The admonishment seemed to Nick painful at the time, as if a man’s dignity were somehow diminished by this final penciled act.

  In two weeks he had seen more human misery walk into the anteroom, where a red-faced retired fireman acted as receptionist, than he had seen in the war. There, at least, death arrived with grim certainty. Here it seemed as though death waited in the wings while some mad manipulator injected weird forms of agony before a final demise.

  “The woman out there knows who murdered Elwood Johnson,” Nick told O’Hara on the first occasion of his being sent to interview one of these unfortunates.

  “Who?”

  “Elwood Johnson.”

  “Colored?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ass,” O’Hara hissed. He motioned to Donnelly, a grey-headed reporter lounging on the copy bench. “Explain it to old wet ears.” Nick repeated the woman’s story to Donnelly.

  “Colored murders aren’t news, kid. We get ten calls a night on those. Who cares?” Donnelly said sleepily.

  “Elwood Johnson must have cared.”

  “We don’t report Harlem murders. What’s another dead shine?”

  “You mean we don’t report murders?”

  “Oh, we’re big on murders. We love murders. But colored murders are hardly news.”

  “Then what do I tell the woman?”

  “Give her a nickel for the subway and tell her to go back to Harlem.” Which he did, but not without shame. He got the same rebuff on people who wanted to find a missing relative or friend.

  “People are always losing each other. It’s not news unless it happens to someone important, a name you know. Like President Truman searching for a bastard son. We’re a newspaper, dummy, not a damned catalog.”
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  After the first week he hardened his stance, perfected the technique of the brush-off. Then one day a little Italian with a running nose walked into the anteroom. The city desk sent Nick out for the interview. Mucus was leaking onto the man’s lip and his dark eyes kept darting from side to side. He was petrified with fright. In heavily accented English he explained that he had a fruit store on Twenty-first Street that had just been burned down. The man’s fingers were encrusted with grime, chapped into frozen stumps from long cold mornings handling fruit.

  “They burna my store because I see dem payoffa da cops.”

  “Who?”

  “Da bookie.” He looked at Nick as if wary of his youth.

  “They take my fruita, too. I see dem taka da money froma da bookie, den dey taka da fruita.”

  “Who?”

  “Da cops.” The little man continued. “I tella dem, ‘Taka da appla, or oranga. That’sa okay.’ Buta dey taka away da bushela full. I say, ‘Looka, I donna wanna no troubla.’ Buta dey laugha. I say, ‘Looka, you getta money froma da bookie, so paya me something. I gotta twelva kids.’ Dey laugha. Luigi’s justa dumb wop. I foola dem. I writa down da badge numbera. Here.” He dipped his shattered hand into a tattered pocket of his stained pants and pulled out a scrap of brown paper bag. Nick smoothed the paper on his knees, looking at the long line of primitive numbers. He felt the man’s frustration, his outrage.

  “I say, ‘You stopa taka da fruita or I tella.’ One big cop, he coma and smasha da melons witha da club. I bega dem on da life of da virgin to stopa. Dey coma every day for a week and breaka upa da fruita.” Nick felt the man’s anger and his craving for justice. “I writa down da badge numbera,” the little man repeated proudly. “Then dey burna me down.”

  “Why haven’t you gone to the precinct to talk to the Captain?”

  The Italian looked at him and snarled, “You crazy?” Nick felt foolish. He looked at the scrap of brown paper on his knees, finding a special meaning for himself, the power to redress a wrong. Perhaps this explained his compulsion to be a journalist; his belief in the power of the word, the inked word that brought truth and forced justice.

  “You sit there,” he told the little Italian, surprised at the authority of his command. He walked back into the city room, and sitting down at a typewriter desk, slid the pulpy paper in the roller. The lead had etched itself into his mind fully composed before his fingers reached the keys.

  “The promise of America died on the pyre of Luigi Petrucci’s fruit store last night,” the story began. Nick pondered the grey words, then ripped the paper out of the typewriter. Would they laugh at his passion? He put another paper in the typewriter, remembering the discipline of the newspaper’s style.

  “An immigrant Italian fruit merchant today accused the police of burning down his store.

  “In an allegation, stemming from his observation of police pay-offs by bookmakers, Luigi Petrucci, whose store is located at 231 West 21st Street, claimed that he was threatened repeatedly by the police when he attempted to protect his produce from their greed.” Nick knew greed was heavy, unacceptable, but he let it stand.

  The story went on to mention the list of badge numbers and alluded to Luigi’s fear of further reprisals. When he had finished, Nick put the story under the nose of Baldwin, one of the deskmen, who chuckled as he read it, then tossed it over to O’Hara. After a quick glance, O’Hara squinted over his glasses. Nick slouched on the copy bench, watching him, his arms folded belligerently over his chest. Deny that’s news, he said to himself angrily. He heard O’Hara scream for a copy boy and watched the story make its way toward McCarthy’s desk. Nick had slugged the story “Gold-Corruption” in the upper left-hand corner.

  “Gold!” he heard McCarthy’s voice boom. Something in its timbre frightened him; his stance of anger softened like ice melting in a midsummer sun. With a pounding heart he made his way to McCarthy’s desk.

  “Gold?” McCarthy looked at him as a butcher might observe a fly on a hindquarter.

  “Yessir.”

  “You wrote this shit?”

  “Yessir.” Only it’s not shit, he wanted to say, but couldn’t find the courage, his throat constricting.

  “You believe the guinea?”

  “Yessir,” Nick whispered.

  McCarthy pondered the story a moment.

  “The dumb wop,” he said. Nick remembered Luigi’s words. McCarthy reached for the phone at his side and dialed a number.

  “Hello, you old bastard,” he hissed into the phone, watching Nick as he spoke. He paused, absorbing a voice at the other end of the line. “Meet me at Shanley’s. Yeah, about eleven.” He hung up and pointed a finger at Gold. “You, too.”

  He had interpreted McCarthy’s reaction as vindication. Walking back to the anteroom, he gripped Luigi’s arm.

  “You got lots of balls, Luigi,” Nick told him. “We’re going to do right by you.”

  The little man stood up, smiling.

  “I know I comma to da righta place. You a gooda boy.” He took Nick’s hand. For a moment, Nick thought he was going to kiss it. Instead he held it awkwardly in his rough hands and shook it, tears welling in his eyes. Nick watched as he walked off, bowlegged in his baggy pants.

  Later, in Shanley’s, over their first beer, Nick told Charlie what had happened.

  “You are unquestionably the dumbest asshole I have ever met,” Charlie had exploded. “Do you really believe that he’ll allow that story to see the light of print?”

  Nick looked at his watch. The Bulldog would roll in less than half an hour.

  “Yes,” he said, firmly but hesitantly. Charlie drained his beer glass and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Now, dummy. Lesson one. That telephone was a direct line to the Police Chief. McCarthy is hooked in by private wire. Lesson two. Police corruption is a purely political matter. We don’t go after the cops unless there is good political return for the paper. Lesson three. All, well almost all, New York cops are on the take. It’s a way of life. It’s hardly news in itself. Not to our readers.”

  McCarthy sat with the Police Chief at a table in the corner, their heads bowed together in intense conversation.

  “I can’t believe it,” Nick said, looking at his watch. “You’ve got to be kidding. Paying off the police is corruption, pure, unvarnished, raw corruption. I can understand screening the news, but things like police corruption, Charlie, are just too blatant to suppress. I mean we’re supposed to be the little man’s friend.”

  “Jesus, don’t lay that shit on me,” Charlie said, motioning to the bartender for a refill. They both watched as the bartender pulled the tab lever and the amber brew foamed in the glasses. He jerked a thumb in the direction of McCarthy.

  “Does that little scene look like an adversary relationship?” Charlie asked.

  Nick watched the two men drinking together. Occasionally one of them would explode in laughter. His optimism waned.

  “We didn’t attack the whole force. Only the corruption of a few.”

  “The whole thing is corrupt, from top to bottom,” Charlie said, downing his beer in a huge gulp.

  “But we’re the press, Charlie. We can keep them honest by telling the truth.”

  “The truth? What the hell is that?”

  “The truth is”—Nick hesitated—“the truth.” He pouted.

  “The truth is whatever McCarthy decides.”

  “But he’s only one man.”

  “He decides,” Charlie said emphatically. “Don’t assume that his truth is the same as yours.”

  “But in this case,” Nick protested, “it’s a clear-cut case of police persecution. The man was injured by the people paid to protect him.”

  “So?”

  “It demands to be told. If you don’t tell it, they’ll continue to repeat the same damned thing.”

  “Who gives a shit about one lousy little greaseball?”

  “I do, damn it.”

  “Stop bleeding all over the bar.”

/>   Nick felt his anger rising. Charlie seemed to sense it and softened.

  “Try to see it from McCarthy’s point of view,” Charlie said. “He could run the story and embarrass the shit out of the Police Department. But he’s a lot smarter than that. He’ll just file it away, use it as collateral. Trade-off for a closer relationship with the Chief. Think of all the story leads we’ll get, the inside dope. This damned rag comes out every day. Every damned day. What’s one poor little guy against that? It’s a trade-off.”

  “It’s blackmail,” Nick said. “And it’s wrong.”

  “As for your Italian friend,” Charlie said, brightening, “the Chief will bust the asses of those cops. But not for the reasons you think. They were stupid.”

  A nightside reporter came in for a quick shot. He carried the Bulldog under his arm. Nick slid it out from the crook in the man’s arm and thumbed through it hurriedly, tearing the freshly inked pages in the process.

  “Confirmed?” Charlie asked gently. Nick pushed the mangled paper toward the reporter.

  “Confirmed,” he nodded. “It just compounds the felony. It makes us all a part of it, accomplices.”

  “I suppose you’re right there. But you’d better harden yourself, old buddy. You’ll bleed to death early in this game if you let your sense of justice get in the way of your good sense.”

  “Never,” Nick said quietly, holding down his agitation. “I hope to hell I never get like him.” He jerked a thumb toward McCarthy.

  “Don’t be so hard on him,” Charlie said after a long pause.

  “God forbid it should ever happen to me,” Nick said.

  “Or me,” Charlie whispered. “Just because I understand how it works doesn’t mean I believe in it.”

  Nick felt the closeness to his friend.

  “So you burn as well,” he said.

  “Yes, I burn too, kid.”

  When the Police Chief had lumbered off, his heavy, beefy face red with drink and the banked fires of humiliation, McCarthy turned watery, glazed eyes to them. He scowled as if suffering a twinge from a passing pain in his midsection. His lips rearranged themselves into a thin smile. It seemed a signal for Nick to come closer. Charlie followed and they sat down at the table.