Christ, he should be applauded. He's part of the elite. And you guys won't cut him a break." He paused and laughed a breathy, bittersweet laugh to himself.
He looked down at his drink, took another sip, and continued. "And now here I am. I'm on the verge of winning the election. I'm going to get my own four-year term. Things are going all right. We're getting a good team in place, even if you're not on it. The economy's doing well. Wall Street breaks a new record every other day. And you guys, you're bored. You're fucking bored. You need something else, something to get your teeth into. So you turn on me because that's just what you do. You can't help yourselves."
He stared at me. Maybe glare is a more appropriate word. I stared back. That's easy to do when you're in the right. He eventually averted his eyes, giving me some small victory. He said, decisively,
"All right, tell me what you think you know."
I took my own sip of Scotch. I don't particularly like whisky on the best of days, but the taste seemed especially harsh tonight, almost medicinal.
After grimacing, I showed him all my cards. It was coming up on 8:00
P.m. and I didn't have the time or the creativity to do anything cute.
"Sir," I said, "you are living under an alias. You were born Curtis Black. You were a convict in Massachusetts. You turned government's witness. You were relocated under the federal witness protection program under the name of Tony Clawson. After being in the program for eight or nine years, you switched names a second time, to Clayton Hutchins. Through a combination of luck, timing, and skill, you have risen to the top of the world."
This time, he laughed a devilish laugh, then leaned back in his high-backed leather chair. "I'm the fucking president of the United States, young man. President Clayton Hutchins. What you have is some cockamamy story that's probably been put out by my political opponents in a final, desperate attempt to defeat me. You're embarrassing yourself by even bringing it up."
If that was true, what was he doing sitting here with me alone in the Oval Office on election eve drinking a Scotch whisky?
"Sir," I said, always talking to him in that formal way, "I have two men involved in the armored car heist on the record-"
"Bullshit," he said harshly, leaning forward this time. "Armored car heist? There's no fucking armored car heist. You've been set up, by my opponent or someone who is desperate to make sure I don't win.
Check my fucking biography. I was never involved in any fucking armored car heist."
He was pursuing the precise strategy that I feared the most-a hard-and-fast denial, followed, no doubt, by complete inaccessibility, at least long enough to be elected president the next day. Basically, what he was doing was issuing a challenge, daring me to go with the information I had, which he realized was pretty damned flimsy. His arguments would be almost identical to the ones I would hear from the paper's editors, from Martin to Appleton, as they tried to protect the institution from libel and shame.
There are a lot of reporters, mind you, who are all too willing to stretch their information in stories, to make supposition appear as fact with a few careful twists of phrases and subtle caveats. I'm as willing as anyone to stretch my information, but I do it before I write the story, like now, as a device to achieve the truth.
"Sir," I said, "we have a source, someone familiar with your transition into the witness protection program, who is helping us out. Later tonight, this source, who has intimate knowledge, will agree to go on the record to discuss your case. He is familiar with all the details-the initial criminal charges, the name change, the cosmetic surgery."
I eyed him carefully to see if I was having any effect. I couldn't tell. Hutchins shook his glass some more and gazed back at me with a look that was tough to read.
Maybe I was just having a tough time with perspective. I was physically exhausted and mentally drained, and perhaps because of that, Katherine's image kept rolling through my mind. I thought of that ride to the hospital the year before. I thought of how she put her face against my shoulder and held my arm and kissed my hand and told me that she felt as if she were born to have children with me. She told me that even after we had our baby, I would always, always, be the most important person in her life, the one she cherished the most, and that I had damn well better feel the same way about her. And I did. I did.
Which is why ever since, the emptiness had been so overwhelming, the loneliness unbearable, even when I wasn't alone.
Then, sitting there in the Oval Office, I had another thought, as if Katherine had all but whispered it to me in this time of need.
"Sir, it's god-awful to have your wife and child die the way yours did," I said. "Unbearable." I paused for a long moment, then added,
"I understand that all too well. I understand what it can do to your heart, to your mind, to your very sense of being. It can change everything, even if you don't realize that it's changing anything at all."
That was followed by a long stretch of silence. He wasn't looking at me, but rather down at his glass, if, in fact, he was looking at anything at all.
I said, "You don't need me to tell you how much of a monumental success you've become," I said. "And against all odds. I have a hunch you didn't turn to crime until after your wife and son died, when you didn't know what else to do. I have a feeling that their memory gave you an awful lot of support when you left crime behind and started your new life. I have a feeling that you miss them now in a way that only the two of us could ever really understand, that you'd like to be true to them, that you want to stop living this lie."
He still stared down at his desk. I couldn't be positive, but I thought I saw a drop of water-a tear-roll off his face and splash into his glass.
I paused for effect more than anything else, took another deep breath, and said, "Sir, tomorrow morning, I'm fairly certain I will have a story on the front page of the Boston Record explaining that your past is fictitious, that you are a rehabilitated felon." I then added in an admittedly lame attempt at humor, "At least I think you're rehabilitated."
He didn't laugh.
Behind me, on the other side of the office, the burning logs in the fireplace snapped several times, sounding like gunshots, making me jump, but imperceptibly so, I hope. Darkness engulfed the room, the reflection of the desk lamps shining on the inside of the French doors and the tall windows. In front of me, Hutchins held the glass in his hand on the surface of the desk and shook it back and forth again, then lifted it to his mouth for another sip. He still hadn't met my eyes.
The quiet seemed interminable.
"I am Clayton Hutchins," he said finally, looking up, his voice softer, his tone less resolute. "The government says I'm Clayton Hutchins.
All my records say I'm Clayton Hutchins. I have a birth certificate.
I was home-schooled by parents who have since died. I worked on a farm, went to college later in life."
I stayed silent. I saw that his cheeks were damp. I shook my head slowly in a sign of disappointed disbelief.
More silence. He took a deep breath, focused on some point beyond me, and said, "It's one thing I always liked about you, Jack, one thing that always drew me to you. You know what it's like to have everything taken away from you by some arbitrary hand. You know what it's like to lose everything you've ever wanted, all of your hopes and all of your dreams and all of your expectations for the future, all in one incomprehensible act of a God who you could never, ever even pretend to understand. You know what it's like to live the rest of your days knowing you can never get it back, no matter who you are, even if you're the president of the United States. You know all that."