He too was shaky, but I convinced him the story would stand up under the counterattack that was sure to come.
It would, I told him, blow the election wide open. It would catapault the eminently respectable Mayor right out of City Hall. It was the shocker the campaign needed.
When the Bulldog Edition hit the street at 8:45 P.M., I was there to catch it on the first bounce. McCardell had played the story beautifully. He had a double-line streamer across the front page and a three-line, two-column bank head, with the body of the story set two columns all the way down the right side and jumped inside.
He had five pictures splashed over the page with cutlines meaty enough to give the gist of things to the town’s laziest semi-literates.
He had played it for what it was — the juciest, messiest local stink ever to hit our front page:
Two bellhops swore in a notarized affadavit today that Mayor Marshall W. Taylor, Jr., entered a Denver Hotel Last spring with the beautiful wife of his press aide and stayed there alone with her for three hours.
The tryst between the 38-year-old Mayor and 30-year-old Mrs. Pamela Fulton occurred during a week-long junket to Denver at a cost to the taxpayers of $925.
Elsewhere on this page is a secretly-taken photograph showing the couple partially undressed and standing in the hotel room with an unmade bed in the background, the Mayor in undershirt and trousers, Mrs. Fulton in a slip.
Also on this page is a photograph of the City expense voucher, complete with the Mayor’s signature, which he submitted following the trip and for which he was reimbursed $925.
The voucher covers travel and other expenses, including liquor, for four people.
It itemizes expenses ostensibly incurred not only by the Mayor and Mrs. Fulton, but also by the Mayor’s wife and by Mrs. Fulton’s husband, the Mayor’s press aide.
But records of the Angelsea Hotel in Denver and of the Alcanna Airlines fail to provide any evidence that either the Mayor’s wife or his press aide were in Denver during the convention.
A third photograph shows the sworn, notarized statements of the two bellhops, Daniel A. Styles, 36, 103 N. Haneover Street, and Andrew S. Jackson, 23, 4721 Broughton Street, both of Denver.
Other pictures include a portrait photo of the beautiful Mrs. Fulton, and a group shot of the Taylors and the Fultons in happier days smiling together in front of City Hall following the Mayor’s first election victory four years ago.
Political observers agreed last night that the shocking disclosures concerning the Mayor and Mrs. Fulton, plus the Mayor’s extraordinary expense account, would likely prove disastrous to his chances for reelection.
In a campaign notable for its closeness, a scandal of these proportions would provide fast-closing Gino Rinauldi, the Mayor’s opponent, with the margin needed for victory, according to political figures who make a career of picking winners.
The story continued for another column and a half, replete with additional political speculation and the details of the charges.
So there it was, all laid out for the city to see — the biggest, best-documented, most persuasive newspaper bomb I had ever dropped.
I folded the paper into a fly swatter, turned away from the direction of my apartment and walked six blocks to the Algonquin Heights Hotel. The fat man at the desk grunted to his feet and rode me to the fourth floor in the world’s smelliest elevator.
My room was at the end of the hall. I set my alarm for 1 A.M., turned back the sheets, hunted without luck for bedbugs, and slept.
When the alarm sounded, I washed my face and dressed again. I went back to the street carrying a small suitcase, bought a second edition of the Banner, and took it to a slezy cafeteria to read.
It was everything I expected — an absolute surrender!
The Banner made a complete retraction of the charges in my story, which it said were libelous and false, and offered an unqualified apology to Mayor Taylor.
In a front-page story which carried a two-line streamer and which was played as big as the original story, the Banner also reported these facts:
1) The picture of the Mayor and Mrs. Fulton was a composite photograph, shown by laboratory examination to consist of one shot of their heads and another of the partially undressed bodies of persons who could not be identified.
2) The two Denver bellhops had completely repudiated all statements and affadavits attributed to them.
3) The expense voucher was a phony, the Mayor’s signature on it was a forgery, and a bad one at that, and there was no record that the Mayor had ever charged any part of the Denver trip to the city.
4) Hotel and airline records showed clearly that four persons, including the Mayor’s wife and his press secretary, had taken the trip.
5) The reporter who had written the story, one Tom Ballard, could not be located.
6) The Banner was paying the Mayor and Mrs. Fulton $50,000 in cash in settlement of damages, and, in view of the “untenable position” in which the story had placed it, was withdrawing from all further comment on the election.
I had seen papers eat crow before, but never like this. But then I had never seen a paper so completely wrong before. The money settlement easily could have been larger, but the Mayor had apparently bargained away money in return for the withdrawal of the paper’s opposition to his reelection.
I was tempted to slip into a phone booth and call either McCardell or Purnelle or both and tell them that the story was my way of saying thanks. But I restrained myself.
I walked instead two blocks to an all-night parking lot and bailed out my tin can. I slid behind the wheel and drove past dark piers and warehouses to the intersection of Hull and President Streets, a waterfront area which bustled in day and died at night.
I turned right into President Street and parked behind the only car in sight. I left my engine running, got out and went up to the driver, who looked carefully at my face in the night light before haning me a bundle.
“How much is here?” I asked.
“Fifty thousand, like we agreed.”
I said, “Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”
Then we both got the hell out of there.
The Proof Is in...
by S. K. Snedegar
Harry was a patient, methodical man. For fifteen years he had been collecting evidence of his wife’s infidelity. Now... the proof was irrefutable!
Harry Pulver sat on his haunches, concentrating intently on the job at hand. The job, one that he performed immediately upon his return from every road trip, consisted of sorting and analyzing the garbage.
Harry was convinced that his wife, Blanche, was cheating on him, but Harry was an auditor for a fairly large banking concern, and his training would have made him require some positive proof if a vainglorious obsession about his fair-mindedness had not. On a number of occasions at the bank Harry had held off making a report of discrepancy when it was fairly obvious that someone had their fingers in the till. When Mr. Wexler asked him why he waited so long to make his report, Harry would reply, “Mistakes can be made,” and then he’d take out the ubiquitous black notebook and detail each step in the closing of the mathematical snare that trapped the culprit. When finished, he’d return the notebook to its nest in his inside breast pocket, finger his rimless glasses to settle them on his beaklike nose, waggle his almost chinless jaw twice, and gently chide, “...and remember the Cleveland Branch, Chief.”