The senator had a crowd waiting for him at the airport and Liz was there to take pictures. I skipped the bus and walked with her to the company car, where she gave me a long kiss.
“Boy, have I missed you.”
“Good. I think after what’s happened, I’ll be home for a while.”
“That’s good, too. I was going to call you—something funny has been going on.”
“At the paper?”
“As usual. But I mean at ytnir apartment building. I was coming home the other night and saw that lunk friend of Kirk Bright’s coming out of the building. I thought I saw him driving away yesterday morning, too. I don’t think he saw me either time.”
“Kehler? What the hell could he have been doing at my place? I think he and Kirk live in that new condo building by the river.”
“I don’t know, Bob, but he scares me. He looks as though he couldn’t light up a fifteen-watt bulb, but he’s got the meanest way of looking at you I’ve ever seen—like he’s just waiting for an excuse to use those ham hands on you. Anyway, I was going to stay at my place tonight if you were going to go out with the campaign.”
I didn’t much relish the idea of running into Kenny Keh-ler in an unfriendly situation either, but I took the macho stance with Liz.
“Has he said anything to you? At the Next Door? Maybe he’s one of these crazies that likes to track girls.”
“No. He hasn’t said word one to me, even when we were sitting at the same table. I don’t think he pays attention to anyone except Kirk. Like a dog sitting at its master’s feet or something. But I don’t think Kirk’s gay… he’s dating at least two women at the paper.”
“Well, whatever Kehler’s up to, he’ll probably steer clear now that I’m back. If not, well have the cops on him.”
We arrived at the paper and I went in while Liz parked the car.
I glanced at that day’s paper in the vending box outside the building. Swift had chosen a picture of the senator taken during one of his more energetic speeches. It showed him flailing his arms, his hair flying, and his mouth wide open. It was correctly calculated to make him look nuts and, as always, the headlines were even more fevered than the story if that was possible.
SENATOR USING PSYCHO PILLS
CANDIDATE TAKING MENTAL MEDICINE
Swift wasn’t in his office, so I went to an empty desk and started a story on the senators press conference and his rally when he arrived in the capital. I led with the rally, telling myself it was the freshest stuff and the local angle, even if it wasn’t the newsiest event of the day. In truth, I figured Swift wasn’t about to print a piece with a lead knocking down our own front page expose.
I was wrong again. Swift came up behind me as I was working on the piece and said, “Put the stuff about the senator denying he’s taking that drug at the top. Do a full piece on the press conference. Direct quotes if you taped it.”
I turned to look at him.
“We’re backing off Knocko’s piece?”
“Have to. I’ve just spent an hour in Shiu’s office with the lawyers. From what the wires carried this morning, that bloody Newton bollixed the piece completely. Fetched us a whopping libel threat. We’re running a separate retraction too, and the lawyers think the senator will just let it drop there. The bugger must have been drunk again.”
He stepped back and looked around the newsroom. “And where the hell is he?”
I told Swift about the episode at the bus that morning and Newton’s sudden decision to clear out. Another surprise; he didn’t seem all that upset.
“Just as well. The lawyers told me to send him packing or at least keep his stuff out of the paper for the rest of the time we’ve got him on contract. Now we’ll just pay him off through yesterday and be well rid of him.”
Without thinking about it, I took a chance with Swift. “I thought you admired his work.”
Swift sat down on the edge of the desk. “I did and I do. He is one of the few American reporters I’ve seen who is willing to go for the big play, and when he finds it, knows how to write it. Of course, that means taking chances and sometimes mucking up a story. That’s the price you pay and this time we’re paying it.
“The reason I sent you along with him was to give us some insurance against Newton’s well-known affection for the bottle—and the weed, from what you tell me now—and keep him somewhere near the ground. He told me yesterday you walked out on him, but he seemed so sure about the story that I let it go. You didn’t call to argue about it. By the way, why not?”
This is what I had been thinking about on the plane, and I had come to the conclusion that it was time to stop imitating a bowl of Jell-O every time I dealt with Swift.
“This may be my job, Mr. Swift, but I figured you were going to run whatever Newton wrote, and nothing I could say would tout you off him. The guy is a total flake. I don’t think he has the foggiest idea what is going on in politics nor gives a damn… and I’m not sure you do either.”
It was out and I expected so would I be in the next minute. But Swift had a mild expression behind all the whiskery growth.
“Bob, cool down. I can understand why you feel that way and to some extent it is true that I don’t know or care about what you and your confreres call the nuts and bolts of politics.
“I knew my man when I hired Newton. I didn’t want another dead serious, political science analysis of the primary campaign. I wanted something with excitement and zing in it—and you have to admit I got it. I knew it was a risk to take Newton on and it was my responsibility, not yours, to keep him from going too far. You probably are right that I would have run the piece even if you had registered an objection. He seemed to have the story cold, and I would have been hard put to dump it. As your President Truman had it, the buck stops here.”
I told Swift about my discovery that Newton had read or copied the name of the senator’s drug wrong and about Knocko’s refusal to accept the possibility that he had made a mistake.
Swift sighed and looked over the newsroom.
“I think perhaps I am looking for something here that I won’t find. I’ve been in this business for thirty-odd years and only once or twice have I found people who have the knack I seek. Some reporters and writers and editors have what I would call a natural bent for the situations and the language facility that make people who buy newspapers sit up and pay attention. Just as born salesmen seem to know instinctively how to approach and persuade, I am looking for newspeople who know without fail the ‘buttons’ that command readership and when to push them.
“I like to think I have that knack myself and a feeling for others that do as well. The first week I sat down at a copy desk the paper had a story about a controversy over a picture the local museum had acquired—a very explicit figure painting. Some local politician had pronounced it pornographic, and our reporter went to the mayor for comment which he declined. The moment I looked at the story I saw the headline: ‘Mayor Mute on New Nude.’ Egotistically, I thought that was a classic headline. But when I began seeing the work of real professionals, I realized it was at best a fair first effort. The best I’ve seen was in the New York Post a few years back—‘Headless Body Found in Topless Bar.’ Someday I will better that.”
I had swiveled in my chair to face Swift and he paused, looking embarrassed, like a man surprised while talking to himself. He smiled faintly and continued.
“That’s the kind of quality I was looking for in Newton. It’s more of an instinct or a reflex than any learned response—the quick and sure knowledge that certain kinds of people and behavior and events described in certain words will lift everyday situations out of the mundane and make them exciting. Exciting, damn it!”