But this caller was different. For starters, he had somehow found my telephone number at the hospital within hours of my arrival, though Drinker explained how that would be a virtually impossible thing to do.
He had spoken clearly, and made realistic, though cryptic accusations.
He was not bothersome, and seemed to have a goal in mind. And beyond even that, my anonymous caller had followed me from my house, on my evening dog walk, all the way to this restaurant, where he slipped the waitress a note containing a directive on how I might learn more about the assassination attempt on the president of the United States. He meant business, and he seemed to know how to conduct it. This was all just terrific. I sat there on the restaurant patio, Baker blithely sleeping at my feet, spooning rice and swordfish into my face, wondering if he was watching me now, wondering why.
The walk home, to say the least, was an anxious one, every crunch of the leaves sending my head turning in search of any mysterious presence. A man in a sweatshirt carrying a briefcase walked about ten yards behind me. I tried maintaining pace with a young couple up ahead, figuring no harm would come with witnesses around. A van approached and seemed to slow down as I walked up Twenty-eighth Street, the man with the briefcase still behind me. I braced for some sort of confrontation-physical or otherwise-but nothing. Suddenly I didn't hear his footsteps anymore. I turned around, and he was gone, as was the van. I kept my eyes peeled for suspicious cars, but saw nothing.
The couple ahead walked up the stairs to their house, leaving me all alone on what felt like an empty stage set, not a street. Baker acted uncharacteristically nervous, heeling close to my left knee.
As I arrived at my front door, that same van rounded the corner and slowly passed my house. I thought I spied the face of the man walking behind me sitting in the passenger seat. I hurriedly jammed the key into the lock and stepped inside.
"You're an idiot," I said to myself, even the sound of my own voice in the dark foyer raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I pulled the note from my pocket and read it one more time, then trundled upstairs to try to get some rest from this action-slash-melodrama that had become my life.
six
Sunday, October 29
In a world where precise planning and endless advance work serve as the foundation for success, every morning, a motley group of highly educated reporters and editors start the day from scratch, floating into America's newsrooms and bureaus at staggered hours, thinking big thoughts, working the telephones, pecking away at keyboards, struggling with word meanings and sentence flows, making and breaking careers and even lives in the communities they cover. In perhaps no other business, certainly not in insurance, not in the most prestigious law firms, not in the big-money brokerage houses on Wall Street, will you find so many employees living out their professional dreams.
Reporting, to many, is not a job but a calling, and the privilege of doing it at a big-city daily paper makes them minor celebrities in their families, their circles of friends, and at PTA meetings, where another parent is liable to approach them in a quiet way and say,
"You're a reporter for the Record. Can't you do something about this?"
Maybe. Reporters can pick up the telephone and reach governors, senators, captains of commerce. A few reporters, and I immodestly but irrefutably put myself in this category now, can reach the president of the United States. Reporters can drive to work in the morning and assume their day will be spent in the office, then by night end up on a flight to New Mexico for a week in the desert covering the mass suicide of a religious cult that believed Carl Sagan's death signaled the end of all virtue in the world. A reporter's story can cause the indictment of a mayor, the firing of a rogue police officer, the release of a prisoner wrongly convicted on false testimony. All this, and no license required, nothing but the ability to ferret out the elusive concept we call truth and to present it in a readable and hopefully stylish way. At the end of the day, when it all comes together-a front page, a sports section, a style page, feature stories, and the summation of hard news events-the publication of a newspaper is nothing short of a daily miracle, an act of democracy and freedom celebrated with a simple read.
Okay, so I'm biased. Why then, you might naturally ask, do reporters seem so unhappy? Well, there is the matter of pay, which is low, given the measure of responsibility they have. There are the foolish editors who fail to understand the brilliance of a reporter's idea or copy, the meek and self-righteous copy editors who take an evening's delight in catching a reporter's grammatical mistake. There are the mundane assignments-the Brockton City Council meeting, the routine drug smuggling arrest, the eighty-seventh inner-city murder of the year-set against the reporter's understanding of the better, more glamorous uses of his or her time. And there is the unimpeachable fact that reporters are natural complainers. It is what they do best, and when they are not complaining in print about the performance of professional sports teams or the lack of clout of the state congressional delegation, they complain about their own human condition, about the very same newsroom that once seemed to have so much romantic appeal. And finally and most importantly, reporters, as well educated as they are, are resigned to being life's witnesses, recorders of the great and not so great deeds of all those around them but rarely in the spotlight themselves. They do not set policy, they write about it. They do not run for office, they follow around those who do. As important as they are to the very essence of our country, reporters are relegated to the sidelines, not coaches, not really even fans, just supposedly impartial observers whose only voice is expected to be set in ramrod-neutral tones.
I mention all this because as I walked back into the bureau Sunday morning for the first time since I was shot, these were the sparring elements highlighted in my current situation. On the one hand, I had the president of the United States offering me a position as his press secretary, a move that would lead to great fame, policy making, a seat at the very center of power. On the other, I had what appeared to be a legitimate anonymous source ready to guide me toward the biggest story of my career, one that potentially led right to that same seat of power. Of course, I didn't know what that story was about yet, but such are the mysteries of a typical day in journalism.
This cerebral battle would have been lost on the likes of Peter Martin, who hustled up to my desk moments after I arrived in the bureau.
"Thank God," he said, breathlessly. "Jesus Christ, we're getting creamed." While he spoke, he rubbed his hand absently across the side of his face, as if exhausted, though it was not quite 9:00 A.m.
"You see the Times this morning?" he asked. "Havlicek could only say what they had yesterday, maybe advance it a little, but they're way out front again today."
I had read the Times already, out on my back patio after my morning walk with Baker. The story at issue was a pretty damned good one. FBI sources, quoted anonymously, said they had serious questions over the motive of the assassination attempt, mostly because they had no clear idea of who the would-be killer was. Havlicek was at least able to match the part of the Times story that said no family members of the attempted assassin Clawson could be found, no history, no criminal record based on his fingerprints.