“About time,” Mike answered. He wondered if he meant it. Well, he’d get the chance to find out.
VII
When Lazar Kagan called Charlie to the White House, it might be anything. When Stas Mikoian wanted to meet with him, what came from that was more likely than not to be interesting. And when Vince Scriabin told him to get his tail down to the President’s residence, chances were Joe Steele was steamed at him.
Charlie knew why Joe Steele was steamed, too, though he figured he would do better to seem taken by surprise. So when the man they called the Hammer slammed his fist down on a copy of the New York Post from three days earlier and growled, “Have you seen this crap from your brother?”, Charlie just shook his head. Scriabin shoved the paper across his desk. “Well, look at it, then.”
It didn’t come right out and accuse Joe Steele of roasting marshmallows in the flames while Franklin Roosevelt sizzled. Then again, you didn’t need to be Lord Peter Wimsey to see what Mike was driving at.
“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Charlie said when he got done. “Mike is Mike, and I’m me. I didn’t have anything to do with this.” That was true, and then again it wasn’t. If Charlie hadn’t overheard Scriabin in that diner, and if he hadn’t told Mike about it, his brother wouldn’t have been able to invite the people who read his story to connect the dots.
Scriabin remained coldly furious. Like the man he worked for, he was scarier for not making a show of losing his temper. “I know you didn’t,” he said now. “You’d be sorry if you did.” Charlie gulped, and hoped it didn’t show. Scriabin went on, “Your brother had better think twice before he libels the President of the United States.”
“There’s no libel in this,” Charlie said.
“Saying things you know to be untrue, saying them with malice, is libel even when you say them about a public figure,” Scriabin insisted.
“There’s no libel,” Charlie said once more. “He quotes the arson inspector’s report. That says the fire might have been set or it might not. He says that Joe Steele was just about sure of the nomination after Roosevelt died. Both those things are true. But he doesn’t say anywhere that Joe Steele had anything to do with starting the fire.”
Vince Scriabin stared at him, pudgy face hard as a stone. “I know he is your brother. I make allowances for that. I know your own stories have been more fair and balanced toward this administration. I also make allowances for that. But if your brother writes another piece that is so monumentally prejudiced against the President and everything he’s working to accomplish, there will be no allowances left to make. Do you understand me?”
“I hear you,” Charlie answered.
“All right,” Scriabin said. “Make sure your brother understands me, too. Have you got that?”
“Oh, yes.” Charlie nodded. “You’re coming in loud and clear.”
“Good.” Vince Scriabin spat the word out. “I do not want anyone to have any doubts whatsoever about how we view this. . trash. Now get the hell out of here.”
Charlie made his exit. As if he were walking out of a police station, he was glad he could make his exit. The back of his shirt was wet with sweat, and it hadn’t sprung from Washington humidity. He’d never had that narrow-escape feeling walking out of the White House before. He hoped to heaven he never did again.
The sun wasn’t over the yardarm yet. Charlie didn’t give a damn. He ducked into the nearest bar and ordered himself a double bourbon. If anything would smooth him out of his jitters, that ought to do it.
“There you go, sonny,” said the white-haired man two stools down from him. “Two or three more of those and you’ll be a man before your mother.”
By the way he talked and by the empty glasses on the bar in front of him, he’d already had at least two or three more. What the hell business is it of yours? Charlie started to ask. But then he recognized the other barfly. “Mr. Vice President!” he exclaimed.
John Nance Garner nodded. “You got me, sonny,” he said, the bourbon only thickening his Texas drawl. “And a hell of a git you got. I was Speaker of the House before Joe Steele tapped me. Remember? Speaker! That was a real job, by Jesus! Not like this one.” He nodded to the bartender. “Fill me up again, Roy.”
“Comin’ up, Cactus Jack.” The colored man made him another tall bourbon. John L. Lewis had called Garner a poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man. Charlie didn’t know about the other attributes, but drink whiskey Garner could.
“What’s wrong with being Vice President?” Charlie asked. “You’re a heartbeat away from the White House. That’s what everybody says-a heartbeat away.”
“A heartbeat away, and further’n the moon,” Garner said. “Thing with being Vice President is, you don’t do anything. You sit there an’ grow moss, like I’m doin’ here. Sure got nothin’ better to do. I tell you, bein’ Vice President ain’t worth a bucket of warm piss.”
“What would you do if you were President? How do you like the job Joe Steele is doing?” Charlie hadn’t expected to run into Garner, but he’d take advantage of it now that he had.
The Vice President’s eyes were narrow to begin with. They gimleted more now. “You won’t get me to say anything bad about him, kiddo,” he replied. “I may be drunk, but I ain’t that drunk-or that stupid. He’s a man you don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”
“Really? I never would have guessed,” Charlie said, deadpan.
For a second, Garner took that literally. Then he chuckled and coughed, shifting all the smoker’s phlegm in his chest. “That’s right. You’re one of those reporter bastards. You know all about Joe Steele, or you reckon you do.” He chuckled and coughed some more. The horrible sound made Charlie want to swear off cigarettes for life. “Yeah, you reckon you do-but you’ll find out.”
* * *
The proceedings against the Supreme Court Four opened that autumn. They opened suddenly, in fact, before a military tribunal, only a few days after J. Edgar Hoover-that man again! — announced an arrest in the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby more than two years earlier. Charlie wondered if the timing of the two events was a coincidence. A cynical newspaperman? Him? Even he laughed at himself.
He wondered about the fellow J. Edgar Hoover arrested, too. Bruno Hauptmann was a German in the USA illegally. He had a criminal record back in the Vaterland. Considering how Joe Steele felt about Adolf Hitler, couldn’t he be a sucker who got caught in a net way bigger than he was?
And, considering that the four justices were accused of plotting with the Nazis, couldn’t arresting a German for the Lindbergh kidnapping be set up to show that you couldn’t trust a kraut no matter what-and that you couldn’t trust any Americans who had much to do with krauts? Again, Charlie didn’t know about that. He couldn’t prove it. But he did some more wondering.
He did that wondering very quietly, either by himself or with Esther. None of it got into the bull sessions that political reporters had among themselves or with the big wheels they covered. Not even liberal doses of bourbon made his tongue slip. He noticed he might not be the only one who wasn’t saying everything he might have had on his mind. It was a careful time. Everybody seemed to do his best to walk on eggshells without breaking them.
Charlie also didn’t do any wondering that Mike could hear or read. Mike, of course, could get ideas on his own, but Charlie didn’t want to give him any. A small but noisy segment of the press hated Joe Steele and everything he did. To those folks, Mike was a hero, a man who’d uncovered secrets and pulled the blankets away from dark plots.
Joe Steele’s backers tagged Mike for a hateful, lying skunk. Anyone would think they’d listened to Vince Scriabin, or something. And the vast majority of Americans paid no attention to the name of Mike Sullivan. Times were still tough. They tried to get by from one day to the next, and didn’t worry about anything much past Tuesday’s supper or the month’s rent.