Here goes. Drinker was but fifteen feet from me now, a free throw in the NBA. I waited another second for him to get within range, and in one quick swoop I picked up the phone and fired it at his head. Mind you, in Little League, back when I was twelve, I once pitched a no-hitter, and in the dog park in Georgetown, I am widely considered to have the best arm in the neighborhood, at least among those who are inclined to think about such things.
And I'll be damned if this throw didn't prove it. Drinker ducked, and the phone smashed into his wrist, causing the gun to fly out of his hand and slide underneath a nearby desk. He shook his wrist violently in pain, scanned the floor quickly for the weapon, then looked at me with a hatred I hope never to see again.
I was very temporarily elated, pleased at my decision to choose the phone over the picture frame or the book, and wondered if this was what the nice ad people at ATANDThat had in mind when they coined the slogan
"The right choice."
"You fucking cocksucker," Drinker said. And he started toward me at a faster pace, almost a run, but something more controlled, more determined. Tellingly enough, he seethed the words, "You should have been dead at Congressional."
Um, Peter, I thought to myself, anytime you want to help out here, please feel free. I shot a glance back and saw him at the computer keyboard, and I realized quickly that he was transmitting the story to the Record. Good to know where I stood in the scheme of things.
When I turned, Drinker saw what I was looking at, and that made him panic. He charged me with the force of a linebacker, smartly throwing his forearms into my sore ribs and lifting me up off the ground and onto Reston's desk.
As Drinker started to move past me, I collected myself and dove off the desk for his leg, bringing him down in a heap, the sound of him screaming as he fell on his bad wrist filling the room. I punched him once in the face before he even knew what had hit him. Problem was, that didn't seem to faze him much, or at least it didn't impede his ability to knee me in the ribs and cause a measure of pain that I hadn't thought possible.
As I saw stars, Drinker, free from my grip, raced across the room.
From my perch on the floor, I could see Martin back away from the computer and stand aside. I could see the story quite literally scrolling across the screen, as it does when it is transmitting. When it finally arrives at its destination, the computer beeps twice and the screen says, "File sent without errors." If we could see that now, it would read like poetry.
Drinker arrived at the computer with an absolute cognizance of what was happening. He started pressing keys immediately, hitting what was probably the escape button again and again and again. Still, the story continued to scroll.
Frantic and frustrated-never a good combination-he picked the keyboard up to rip it out of the terminal, in a last, desperate attempt to save himself. Standing now twenty feet or so behind him, I assumed he finally had us, that the force would cause such technological havoc that the whole computer would shut down or explode and the story of Hutchins's past would end up in some netherworld of information. And we, of course, would end up dead.
Martin must have thought the same thing, because at that second, the slightly built Washington bureau chief of the Boston Record lunged for Drinker and shoved a ballpoint pen deep into the side of his neck.
Drinker collapsed, his eyes bugged out. The keyboard tumbled out of his hands and dropped to the floor, and as it did, the monitor beeped twice and the words "File sent without errors" flashed across the screen. Drinker rolled around on the ground, moaning, the pen still protruding out of his neck. Martin leaned on a desk, disheveled, licking a cut on his finger. I stood back in something of a fog, taking it all in. You'll forgive my lack of restraint in thinking for a brief moment, as I looked at Drinker's neck, that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.
Anyway, Martin casually picked up the telephone and called for an ambulance. I picked up Drinker's gun and told him, "You try to stand up, you're dead." As I stood guard, Martin made a second call, this one to Appleton.
"Yeah, you're right," I heard Martin say. "This really is a pain to have this story move so late at night."
twenty-four
Wednesday, November 8
So how important is truth, anyway? I don't mean small truths, and conversely, small lies, like, "Honey, you look great in that dress."
No, I mean larger, consequential truths, along the lines of "Are you having an affair?" and "Are you really behind me on this?" Sometimes lies hurt. Sometimes truths hurt more.
Of course, in the news business, we don't particularly care, and maybe that's part of both the problem and the majesty of the profession. We aim only for the truth, or what we think is the truth, or what may well prove to be the truth. Of course, all this is seen through the prism of time and competition and the driving need to be different and interesting, even while being mostly the same. When Moose Myers is doing a stand-up from the White House lawn twice an hour for CNN, when the New York Times and the Washington Post have an army of Ivy League graduates swarming for any scrap of news they can push their WASP-ISH
white teeth into, truth can suffer, even in the most indefatigable and valiant pursuit. Facts are molded to beliefs, decisions are rushed on deadline, calls aren't made for lack of time.
And in Washington, in politics, lies aren't told out of convenience, but out of necessity. No candidate or public official in his right mind will stand before a thronging crowd of supporters and yell out,
"Read my lips, I will raise your taxes," or tell a pack of nearly snarling reporters, "I absolutely had sexual relations with that woman." Lies are so ingrained into the Washington culture that sometimes people don't even realize they're telling them. Facts are simply contorted to conform with beliefs, melded to the moment. It's the American way.
So is the truth even important anymore? Do we really need it, in life, in the body politic, or is it just better, easier, to go with what feels good, to tell lies, to accept them, with the understanding that even if lies hurt, the truth too often hurts more? Well, I don't mean to climb too high on a moral pedestal, but I'm still a fan of the truth. Always have been, and expect I always will be. Truth is an immovable foundation. Lies shift and collapse. With truth, even at its most painful, you can address it, build on it, and move on. I happen to have a rather high regard for the public. I believe they can take the truth, decide if it's important, and make sound judgments on the people put before them. Which is why journalism, for all its drawbacks, for all the twits like Appleton who hold too much power, is still a good and decent calling.
Which brings me to the issue of Clayton Hutchins, or Tony Clawson, or Curtis Black, however you want to refer to him. Do I believe in redemption? Yes. I meant it in the Oval Office when I told him there was something uniquely, importantly American about it. I also believe the public had a right to know who he really was and how he got there.
There's something American about that as well. The free flow of information, of truths, is arguably the most significant attribute of a democracy.
Hutchins won the election. He won with 50.4 percent of the popular vote, and took the Electoral College by a nine-vote margin over Senator Stanny Nichols. On Election Day, the networks devoted full-time on-air coverage to the pursuit of the Record story, quoting liberally from our pages until the early evening, when they were finally able to confirm key aspects on their own. The all-news cable stations nearly burst at the seams. The Internet all but exploded from overuse. The bottom line: the people, the voters, knew what they were doing, and enough of them believed in the concept of redemption. Or maybe they were just happy with the rising stock market. Either way. The president as our first form of entertainment is not a novel concept. As has been said before, they don't limit your miles on Air Force One or your use of the White House by your margin of victory. Hutchins was the president for the next four years.