“You do that. How’s the Washington paper?”
“My sister hangs on.”
“She can’t forever.”
“John McLean has said he’ll stake her if she ever needs money, to keep you out of town.”
Hearst’s thin mouth ceased to be a mouth; a thin fissure now split the white face. “I’ll buy the Post one day. To keep McLean out of town. He wants it. But old Wilkins won’t sell to him. He will to me.”
Blaise both admired and deplored the Chief’s certainty that, in time, he would have everything that he had ever wanted. “I’m looking at the Baltimore Examiner.”
“Not bad,” said Hearst. “Cheap. Potential for growth.” He echoed, unconsciously, Carvalho’s businessman’s talk. “They need it-or they could need it-in Washington.”
George announced Mr. Richard Croker, lord of Tammany and the Democratic equivalent of Senator Platt, with whom he was never too proud to do business. In fact, the Irish-born Croker regarded himself as nothing more than a simple businessman who, for a fee, would work with any other businessman. He controlled the politics of the city. He enjoyed the company and even the friendship of the magnates of the Democratic Party, particularly William C. Whitney. But then each kept stables, and raced horses. Croker had stud farms not only in New York State but in England. He was an impressive figure, all gray from hair and beard to expensive English tweeds.
Croker shook Hearst’s hand as languidly as Hearst shook his; then he shook Blaise’s hand vigorously. Blaise was somewhat awed by this street youth who had risen so high. He had begun as a henchman of the infamous Boss Tweed, in whose behalf he might or might not have murdered a man on a long-ago election day. The jury-twelve bad men and false-had been unable to make up its mind; and so he was allowed to go free; and rise. “I seen my opportunities,” he would say of his long career, “and I took ’em.” He took “clean graft,” money for city contracts. Dirty graft was the sort of thing that the police went in for, extorting protection money from saloon-keepers and prostitutes. Although Croker highly disapproved of dirty graft and never touched it himself, he had once said, almost plaintively, to Blaise, “We’ve got to put up with a certain amount. It’s only common justice. After all, the police see us doing all this good business, and then they see the Astors making all that money out of all those tenements, and breaking every law, which, Heaven forgive us, we let them do because we do business with the Four Hundred like everyone else who’s respectable, so how can I be too hard on an overworked police sergeant with ten children who asks for ten dollars a week from some saloon-keeper for a bit of protection?” Blaise had had several fascinating talks with Croker; and tended to admire him more than not. Croker was particularly fierce on the subject of the reformers. He now displayed his ferocity to Hearst and Blaise.
“I have never known such a bunch of hypocrites in my life.” He lit his cigar; puffed smoke at the Chief, who coughed, unnoticed by his guest. “The worst is Roosevelt, because he knows the game. He plays the game…”
“He takes money?” Blaise regretted his question, as two sets of pitying eyes were turned, briefly, on him.
Neither man bothered to answer so naive a question. “He acts, every day, as if he’s just discovered sin when his family and every other grand family in this city is supported by us, by the city, by the way we get around the laws he and his sort make, so a man can do business here, and do well here. Who is Platt?“ The deep voice rumbled stagily. The gray eyes turned on Blaise, who was wise enough to attempt no answer. “Platt’s Croker and Croker’s Platt, with a brogue and no education. But we do business the same way. We get out the vote of the quick and the dead and the immigrants, including the ones who think they’re living in Australia. Heaven help us! Well, I’ve no heart to tear the scales from their eyes, you can be sure.” Croker continued, comfortably, in this vein until the Chief signalled for him to stop.
“You know, Mr. Croker, whenever I want to know what the Republicans are up to, I ask you, and when I want to know about the Democrats, I ask Platt.“
Croker nodded; and nearly smiled. “You’ll get something close to the truth, going round the back way, you might say.”
The Chief nodded; and put his feet up on the back of the sphinx, a creature plainly puzzling to Croker. “What’s Platt doing about Roosevelt?”
“He wants him out of the state fast. We all do. It’s not that he does anything. Don’t get me wrong. But he talks so much. He gets the rich folks all riled up on account of us, not that they don’t know better.”
“He’s a demagogue.” Blaise made his vital contribution.
Croker nodded. “You could call him that. Poor old Platt’s gone and broken a lot of ribs. He’s in plaster of paris up to here.” Croker indicated the place where his own neck was, assuming that he had such a feature, hidden back of gray beard, gray tweed. “He’s poorly, today. With a fever. But he’s made up his mind he won’t let Teddy run again for governor.”
“How does he stop him?” asked Blaise.
“Throw us the election is one way. Teddy didn’t do all that well first time around. It’s not like Platt and me haven’t arranged an election together before. But Platt’s got other plans this year. He wants McKinley to take Teddy on as vice-president.”
Hearst scratched his stomach, idly; gazed into the middle distance at a cow-headed Egyptian goddess, who stared back. “Dewey’s done for,” he told the goddess.
Croker laughed, an unpleasant sound. “That interview in the World did the trick.”
“I could have managed him.” Hearst shut his eyes. “I could’ve elected him president.”
“But you couldn’t have managed Mrs. Dewey, and that’s the truth.”
Like everyone else, Blaise had read, with wonder, the Admiral’s interview. After a bit of thought, the Admiral had declared his readiness to be president, an easy sort of job, he declared, where you simply did what Congress told you to do. Mrs. Dewey was given full credit for the resulting farce.
“No one,” said the Chief, opening one eye and keeping it firmly on Croker, “wants Teddy.”
“Since when does that matter? Platt wants him out of New York. The only way is to make him vice-president. Boss Quay in Pennsylvania-”
“Got thrown out of the Senate.”
“A bag-,” said Croker, enjoying each syllable, “a-telle. Who needs the Senate? But everyone needs Pennsylvania, and Matt Quay’s got that. New York and Pennsylvania will make Teddy vice-president.”
“Bosses.” Hearst’s tone was neutral; he had now widened both eyes in imitation of the cow-goddess.
“So what’s Mark Hanna? He’s boss of the whole Republican Party.”
“No.” Hearst was unexpected. „McKinley runs the show, and lets Hanna collect the loot, and take the blame. Teddy was in Washington last week, begging for the job, and Hanna said, no, never, and McKinley said, may the best man win. McKinley wants Allison.”
Blaise had yet to learn the entire roster of American statesmen. Vaguely, he was aware of an elderly Iowa senator named Allison, who, with serene fidelity, represented not Iowans but corporations in the Senate. “McKinley won’t get Allison,” said Croker. “Which means he don’t really want him.”
“Maybe that’s why he says he wants him.” The Chief, each day, sounded more like a politician than an editor. Blaise doubted the wisdom of this metamorphosis. Bright butterflies ought not to change into drab caterpillars. “Dolliver’s the man the White House boys like. Dawes wants him.”
“Dolliver.” Croker allowed the name to remain in that perpetual limbo from which those who might have been figures of the highest degree in the great republic fail to rise even to the surface, like iridescent scum, wrote Blaise in his head. He was beginning to get the knack of newspaper writing. Whatever phrase came first and most shamefully to the mind of someone who read only newspapers was the one to be deployed in all its imprecise familiarity.