McCarthy was on the phone, seated behind his big square government-issue desk, which was piled with file folders. He was in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his food-stained red-and-green splatter-design tie loose around a bull neck, the suitcoat of a double-breasted ready-made dark blue suit (he seemed to buy them by bulk) flung over a hardback chair. He was the kind of guy whose socks matched his tie only by accident.
In his early forties, McCarthy—who was chummily talking with “Dick”…Nixon, it soon became clear—had a blue-jowled, barrel-chested, unchiseled masculinity that was close enough to handsome for government work. His dark hair was just starting to thin, and his muscular physique seemed fleshier than when I saw him last, maybe a year before.
My host, in his nasal Irish baritone, was working on Nixon, trying to get him to share current Un-American Activities Committee files. McCarthy kept referring to the “cause.”
His manner made me recall the first night I’d played poker with him. McCarthy had invited me along to the National Press Club. Sitting down with seven men he’d never played with before, he tried to bluff each one of them out of a pot; and no matter what he had—even a pair of deuces—McCarthy would bet heavily.
He also tried to bluff me, and I won a healthy pot of mostly his money; I heard whispering that McCarthy was a “sucker,” and that was when I caught on. He’d been acting the hayseed, and when the cards started to run in his favor, he bet heavily and everybody stayed in—assuming he was bluffing. At one point down five hundred bucks, he wound up winning twelve hundred.
I wondered if Drew Pearson knew that this grinning, blue-jowled ape was far more resourceful than his enemies gave him credit for. Watching him twist Nixon’s arm over the phone, I could see this son of a bitch played politics like he played poker—committing well-calculated highway robbery.
The office, by the way, was barren of the sort of celebrity photos and mementos that characterized Pearson’s study— though McCarthy was every bit as big a public figure. The only item on display was a baseball bat on a little pedestal, on a counter at left, between file cabinets.
The bat had the name “Drew Pearson” burned into it.
McCarthy was hanging up the phone. He grinned at me, rising to his six feet, and reached a long arm across his cluttered desk, offering me a big square hand.
I shook that powerful paw, and when he told me to sit down, I did, in the hard wooden chair opposite him—next to the one with his suitcoat slung over it.
He was still grinning after he sat back down—but the grin seemed strained, almost a grimace. He said, “Should I have agreed to see you, Nate?”
“Why not, Joe?”
He nodded toward the baseball bat. “Word is you and Pearson patched up your differences.”
I shrugged. “Only to the extent that I’m willing to take his money again.”
Thick black eyebrows climbed his Cro-Magnon forehead. “Not to look into my business, I hope?”
“No. That’s never happened, Joe…never will.”
The grin relaxed into a smile; he sat forward, leaning on the file folders, brutish shoulders hunched. “I’m going after him, Nate,” he said, still referring to Pearson. “I mean, no holds barred. I figure I’ve already lost his supporters—and now I can pick up his enemies.”
“Do what you want to do.”
“I’m going to break him, Nate—put him out of business.”
I figured long after McCarthy was out of the Senate, Pearson would still be around, destroying careers on the Hill; but I said, “That’s between you and the skinflint.”
The latter made him laugh. “You know, I’d be a hero on the Hill if I could pull a few of his teeth, break his insteps, or maybe bust a few ribs. Say fifteen of ’em.”
“That bat would do the trick,” I said, wondering if he was kidding.
He leaned back, gestured with a big hand. “You know, you could have called me on the phone. You didn’t have to come all this way.”
“Some conversations shouldn’t be sent through the air. Phones can be tapped.”
“I guess you’d know.” He scratched his nose. “A fella in your position can acquire enemies, after all.”
That seemed an odd remark.
But I just said, “That’s true. Not everyone loves me. Listen…I wanted to talk to you about a friend of mine.”
“The pinko singer.”
I sighed. “Joe, he’s no pinko. Frank’s about as political as I am.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Something was crawling at the base of my neck. “Am I missing something?” I asked.
He selected a file—whether randomly or not, I couldn’t say. He thumbed through it and, either referring to it or pretending to, he said, “I’ve been approached about you. About your background.”
“What?”
“Your father was a Communist, wasn’t he? Ran a Commie bookstore on the West Side of Chicago? You grew up there, among those radicals?”
I felt like I’d been sucker punched in the belly. I managed, “He was a Wobbly, Joe—a pro-union guy. He killed himself, back in ’32.”
“Terrible tragedy. Terrible.”
“He killed himself because I wasn’t like him—I wasn’t idealistic. I just wanted to make a buck.”
“That’s the American way.”
My head was swimming. “Jesus—what are you saying to me, Joe?”
He heaved a huge sigh; shook his head, sorrowfully. “There are people…powerful people…good Americans, like my friend Pat McCarran…who would like me to take a hard close look at you, and your background.”
“…Are you saying, somebody’s told you to paint me with a red brush?”
His beady eyes turned into slits. “Let me say this. This fellow Kefauver, he’s like a bull in the china shop. He’s causing trouble for a lot of fine Americans. He’s abusing the system, with these hearings of his—I can’t abide seeing our fine system, the most nearly perfect system of government ever to find a place under God’s blue sky, abused for personal aggrandizement. That Tennessee turncoat will never be president if I have any say in it.”
The panic had been brief, but terrible—I’d had a tiny glimpse of the horror of having your world imperiled by government-sanctioned lies.
But that panic was gone.
“McCarran,” I said, smiling just a little, nodding. “Senator from the great state of Nevada. As in, Las Vegas. Joe—do you have friends who don’t want me to testify in the Kefauver hearings?”
He cleared his throat. “If you’re called, you’ll have to testify. That’s the law. But what you choose to share with these witch-finders, that’s another matter entirely.”
I laughed; the laughter was genuine but tinged with hysteria. The great Commie hunter was mobbed up!
He folded his hands, prayerfully; he had knockwurst fingers. “Nate…I couldn’t let this happen to you. I was so pleased when you called, and wanted to meet. After all, you were friends with Jim Forrestal…another great man Drew Pearson assassinated with his pen.”
That was why Pearson and I had fallen out: the columnist’s unremitting, merciless attacks had contributed to Forrestal’s suicide.
“Jim was my mentor,” McCarthy said. “He was the one who informed me about the Communists high up in our government.”
Forrestal was also a delusional paranoid schizophrenic.
I folded my arms. “Joe, I’ve already talked to the committee, who I basically told to go fuck themselves…and to Charley Fischetti, and Sam Giancana, given them my assurances that I’m not talking.”
“Those names mean nothing to me.”
“Yeah, right. You tell McCarran I’m no problem. And Christ, neither is Sinatra. You’ve got to give that kid a pass, too, Joe. You’ll destroy his career.”
“Mr. Sinatra is also on Kefauver’s list.”
“Oh. Wait…. I think I’m finally getting this.” I shook my head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “You’ll lay off Sinatra, if he doesn’t cooperate with the Kefauver Committee.”