“He says he’s not talking, either.”
“There you are, then.”
“Yeah, here I am-up a dead end. And I shouldn’t be. This was a public tragedy, Lieutenant Witherspoon. What happened at the Executive Mansion shouldn’t be a secret.”
“I can’t do anything about that, I’m afraid.”
From inside, the baby’s wails got louder. “Kermit, can you give me a hand here?” a woman called. “Who are you talking to, anyway?”
“A peddler.” Witherspoon closed the door in Mike’s face. He locked it, too. Mike stood on the front porch for a moment, then turned and walked away.
* * *
Stella Morandini gnawed meat off a purple-red sweet-and-sour pork rib at Hop Sing’s. She eyed Mike. “You know what’ll happen if you write a story like that?” she said.
“A little piece of the truth will come out,” he answered, and bit into a fried shrimp. “Not a big piece, ’cause it’s buried pretty deep, but a little one. That’s better than no truth at all.”
“You can’t prove any of it.”
“I can prove what people aren’t saying, what they won’t say. I can prove that reports that ought to be part of the public record have walked with Jesus-or with somebody. Somebody’s hiding things. People don’t do that unless they’ve got a darn good reason to.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “And who would those people be?”
“Has to be Joe Steele, or the so-and-sos who work for him. He’s the one who stood to get the most when Roosevelt cooked.”
“Okay. Say you’re right. Say he did all that stuff,” Stella said. “So you write a story that says he oughta be in Sing Sing, not the White House. So what does he do to you right after that?”
“Uh-” Mike stopped with what was left of that fried shrimp halfway to his mouth. Till that moment, that he might put himself in danger with a story like that had never crossed his mind. He wondered why not. ’Cause you’re stupid, that’s why. Joe Steele didn’t stop at anything to get what he wanted. Charlie had laughed when he told how the President blackmailed Senators into voting his way. Mike didn’t think it was so funny, especially now.
Stella nodded. “‘Uh’ is right, Mike. This isn’t a game, or it won’t be if you write a story like that. You’re playing for keeps.”
When you strike at a king, you must kill him. Mike didn’t remember offhand who’d said that. Bartlett’s would. Whoever’d said it, he’d known what he was talking about. Because if you didn’t kill the king you’d struck at, he’d do some striking of his own.
He ate the rest of the shrimp. “Gotta do it, sweetie. Do you want somebody that, that cold-blooded and merciless running the country? As bad as Trotsky and Hitler, you ask me.”
“You’re gonna land in more tsuris than you know what to do with.” Yes, she spent a lot of time working around Jews. So did Mike, who had no trouble with the Yiddish.
He wrote the story anyway. One of the Jews he worked around was Stan Feldman, the managing editor of the Post. Feldman called Mike into the cramped little office where he turned stories into newspapers. Pictures of scantily clad girls lined one wall. The office stank of stale cigar smoke.
Feldman jabbed a finger at Mike’s piece. “I’m not gonna run this,” he said. “Get me some real evidence and maybe I will. But nothing is just-nothing.”
“It’s not just nothing,” Mike said. “It’s nothing where there ought to be something. That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s not enough, either,” the editor answered. “Show me something and I may change my mind. Something real, not This ought to be here and it isn’t, so they’re all a bunch of crooks.”
“But-” Mike spread his hands. “If I can see it, Stan, other people will be able to see it, too.”
“I can see it. Seeing it’s not good enough, not for something like this,” Feldman said. “You have to nail it down tight, so there’s no possible doubt. If you don’t, we’ll have more libel suits than Hart Schaffner and Marx has of the kind with two pairs of pants.”
“Funny. Ha, ha. See how hard I’m laughing?”
Feldman lit another nasty cheroot. “I ain’t laughing, either, Mike. We can’t run it like it is, and that’s flat. Besides, we’re a Democratic paper, remember? This kind of stuff, it sounds like Father Coughlin. Ever hear of giving somebody the benefit of the doubt?”
“Sure, where there’s a doubt to give the benefit of. Is there, with Joe Steele? Some of the things I’ve heard from Washington-” He stopped there. He’d heard those from his brother. Charlie’d got them off the record, and passed them along even further off the record. They weren’t for other people’s ears.
“He’s better than Hoover. So he’s not as slick as Roosevelt woulda been. So what?” Feldman said. “He’s getting stuff done. He’s putting people to work, and he’s putting the rich bastards in their place. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”
“‘They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,’” Mike said. Ben Franklin always sounded better than some dumb cliché.
Ben Franklin sounded enough better than the cliché to make Stan Feldman turn red. “I’m not giving up essential anything, except a story that doesn’t prove what it needs to. Show me the proof and we’ll go on from there. In the meantime, haven’t you got something to write about besides Joe Steele?”
“Nothing as important.”
“So go write about something that ain’t important. Go on. Beat it. I’ve wasted too much time on you already.”
Muttering, Mike left. Go write about something that ain’t important. Now there was a battle cry to send a reporter rushing to his typewriter! Yeah, the cub who covered a Long Island flower show knew his deathless prose would never make the history books. He still wrote better if he wrote as though those roses and peonies were as important as Mussolini and Picasso.
“You okay, Mike?” another reporter asked. “You look like you could use some Bromo-Seltzer or something.”
“Got anything in your desk that’ll cure me of humanity, Hank?” Mike said.
Instead of Benjamin Franklin, Hank quoted Dorothy Parker: “‘Guns aren’t lawful;/ Nooses give;/ Gas smells awful;/ You might as well live.’”
“Heh,” Mike said. But then he chuckled in genuine appreciation. “Okay, that’s pretty good. Thanks.”
“Any time, man. Seriously, though, what’s eating you? Is it anything I can help you with?”
“Not unless you want to charge in there and convince Stan to run a story I just wrote. He doesn’t think I did enough to tie the can to Joe Steele’s tail.”
Hank whistled, soft and low. “You don’t think small, do you?”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah, you. You better watch yourself, is all I’ve got to say.”
“Everybody keeps telling me that.” Mike knew it was good advice, too. The safe, sane, calculating part of him did, anyhow. But how safe, sane, and calculating should you be when you were sure the President knocked off his main rival for the nomination when it looked as if he was going to lose? Was anybody who did something like that fit to lead the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The problem was, most people didn’t want to believe it. Easier to think Roosevelt died in some sad accident. Then you wouldn’t have to wonder about yourself when you voted to toss Herbert Hoover on the rubbish heap of the past. And people had voted that way. Joe Steele got one of the biggest wins in the history of the USA, the kind of win that would change politics for years to come.
It would unless people decided Joe Steele was a murderer, anyway. Would they impeach him and throw him out of office? Or would they just not reelect him? But that would bring back the Republicans. Wasn’t the cure worse than the disease? Wouldn’t most people think it was?
So they went by on the other side of the road. They turned their eyes away from the burnt bodies in the ditch. Pharisees, the lot of ’em. I’ll show them what Joe Steele did, Mike thought. I’ll show them whether they want to see it or not.