So Scriabin was. On his desk lay a copy of the New York Post from the day before yesterday. He slammed his small, pale fist down on an article headlined LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE LABOR CAMP! “What do you have to say about this?” he snapped.
“That I haven’t seen it yet,” Charlie answered-reasonably, he thought.
“Well, look at it, then. And tell me why your brother distorts everything Joe Steele is trying to do.”
Charlie read the article. Like most people in Washington, he’d paid no attention to the bill. He hadn’t spotted the column in the New York Times that Mike mentioned, either. When he finished, he looked up and asked Scriabin, “Okay, what’s your side of the story?”
“It’s simple.” Scriabin spread his hands. Even though they were pale, their backs were thatched with dark, wiry hair. He had five o’clock shadow, too, even if it was only half past ten. “We have, in jails and prisons across the country, thousands and thousands of young, healthy men sitting behind bars. Women, too. What are they doing? Sitting there eating their heads off. With this legislation, we can use their labor for socially important purposes. Your brother makes it sound like we’re going to turn them into galley slaves or something.” His glare said that was partly-more likely mostly-Charlie’s fault.
“Hey, for one thing, I’m not my brother’s keeper,” Charlie said.
“Someone needs to be,” Scriabin said.
“And for another thing, it sounds to me like he has a point,” Charlie went on. Joe Steele’s aide looked death and destruction at him. He plowed ahead anyhow: “Suppose you swiped a couple of baseball gloves and you’re doing sixty days in a county jail somewhere. This would put you out in the middle of nowhere at hard labor for as long as they feel like keeping you if Mike has things straight.”
“Yes. If,” Scriabin said scornfully. “But the provision of proportionality is included in the legislation whether your brother bothered to notice it or not.”
“Okay. Pull out a copy and show it to me,” Charlie said.
He got another first-rate glare from Vince Scriabin. Then the Hammer opened a desk drawer, grabbed a printed copy-it was at least as fat as a spicy crime pulp you could buy at a newsstand-and thumbed through it. After a minute or two, he grunted in triumph and pointed to a paragraph halfway down a page. “Here you go.”
Charlie read it. The gobbledygook was thick even by Washington standards. But it said, or he thought it said, nobody could be kept at labor in a Federal establishment beyond the terms of his original sentence unless he violated the regulations of the camp where he was assigned.
“What about that?” Charlie asked, doing some pointing of his own.
“What about it?” Scriabin returned. “If you keep breaking rules, you deserve more punishment. Be reasonable, Sullivan. It is an inch. Your fool of a brother thinks we will use it to take a mile. But it is only an inch.”
Mike was a hothead. Charlie knew that. A fool, however, he was not. If he saw the possibility of something, that possibility was there. Whether it would turn real might be a different question. Trying to turn the conversation, Charlie asked, “What do you want from me, anyhow?”
“A piece pointing out the positive features of this legislation might be appropriate,” Scriabin said. “That area does need restoration. Who could possibly doubt it? This is a way to accomplish that at minimal expense. It may even help reform criminals. At the least, it will keep them far away from new trouble. I ask you-where is the wickedness in that?”
“When you put it that way. .” Charlie said slowly.
“I do put it that way. So does the bill,” Scriabin answered. “Anyone who isn’t biased against us should be able to see that.”
“Why do you want me to do it?” Charlie asked. A story like that out of his typewriter would only make trouble with Mike. Didn’t they have enough already?
But Vince Scriabin said, “Partly to show the world that at least someone in the Sullivan clan can be a sensible human being and not see things that aren’t there like a drunken stumblebum with the DTs.”
Mike didn’t see things that weren’t there. Charlie knew him too well to believe that for a minute. He could be seeing things that might not be there. Anybody could do that; imagination was part of the human condition. One of the things Charlie could see right now was a door slammed in his face hard enough to smash his nose if he told Joe Steele’s flunky to take a long walk off a short pier. If he didn’t do the administration a favor now and then, he couldn’t expect it to do any for him. No less than any other segment of mankind, Washington ran on that kind of barter.
He sighed. He made a production of lighting a cigarette (Joe Steele’s pipe was better for that). He blew out smoke. Having stalled as long as he could, he mumbled, “I’ll take care of it.” He was a reporter, not a hero.
Had Vince Scriabin been a proper politician, he would have glad-handed Charlie till Charlie felt good, or at least not so bad, about doing what he saw he had to do. But the Hammer was an aide. He didn’t have to worry about getting elected. He was prickly, not greasy. He grudged Charlie a nod. “Okay. Good.” He shoved the Post at him. “Take this with you. If it stays here, I’ll use it in the bathroom.”
“Nice to see you’re still as charming as ever,” Charlie said, and had the small pleasure of walking out while Scriabin scratched his head.
He wrote the story. Where Mike had painted the bill as black as he could, Charlie chose pastels. He went on about the ruination of the Dust Bowl. He went on about how empty the states where the bill would take effect were, and about how much they needed labor. He talked about how the criminals who would be doing the labor were paying their debt to society. He put in so much sugar, if he were a diabetic he would have needed an insulin shot.
He wondered if he was laying it on too thick, if the White House would think he was mocking it by singing its praises too loudly. He also wondered if he really was doing that. You could insult somebody by calling him sweetie just as well as you could by calling him a son of a bitch.
But the story ran in papers from Bangor to San Diego. A few days after it did, he got a call from the White House at home. It wasn’t Scriabin this time. It was Stas Mikoian. “Good job, Charlie!” the Armenian said. “The wires and letters coming into the Senate about the bill are running close to four to one for it.”
“They are?” Charlie said. “How do you know?”
Mikoian laughed. “We have ways. You bet we do.”
He didn’t say what they were. Did someone report to Joe Steele from every Senator’s office? Did the President have spies in the mailroom at the Capitol? Did somebody in the Western Union office tally every telegram as it came off the wire? Charlie had trouble believing that, but he had just as much trouble not believing Mikoian. Vince Scriabin, without a doubt, would lie straight-faced. Mikoian seemed much more at home with the truth.
Which meant. . what? Suppose you were one of the minority, someone who didn’t like Joe Steele’s bill. Would a cop or a Justice Department agent knock on your door or rough you up on the street? Charlie shook his head. This was America, not one of those sorry countries far away across the sea. That kind of thing couldn’t happen here.
“Anyhow,” Mikoian went on, his voice warm and genial, “Joe Steele’s pleased with what you did. He told me to say thanks, so I am. See you.”
“What was that all about?” Esther asked as Charlie hung up.
“That was the White House-Mikoian.” If Charlie sounded dazed, well, he felt that way, too. “Joe Steele liked my piece.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Probably.” Charlie walked into the kitchen and fixed himself a stiff drink.
A week later, the bill for reconstructing the Midwest passed the Senate. Joe Steele signed it into law. Charlie was one of the reporters he invited to cover the signing ceremony. J. Edgar Hoover stood at the President’s right hand while Joe Steele put on his John Hancock. Hoover looked even happier about the law than his boss did. Seeing Hoover happy made Charlie wonder how big a mistake he’d made.