It was some time before Jill Hughes got Pace’s message because she was staked out in a hallway of the Hart Building, outside the closed doors of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, waiting for word on whether there would be an investigation into the bizarre behavior of Ohio’s senior senator, Harold Marshall.
At the same time, Marshall and Senator Garrison Helmutsen were meeting in the Minnesota Democrat’s office in the Russell Building to hash over Marshall’s demand for an investigation of Ken Sachs’s links to MacPhearson-Paige. Glenn Brennan had that one covered. He was stationed across the hall from Helmutsen’s office, at a point where he could watch all the exits—in case Marshall tried to get away without confronting the army of journalists waiting to intercept him. Two hours into the watch, the senator emerged.
“I have no comment on anything,” he said, trying to push his way through the crowd.
“Senator, will the committee hold a hearing?” someone asked.
“I suspect the committee eventually will hold a hearing on something,” Marshall snapped. “Most committees do.”
“Will there be an investigation of Ken Sachs?” another pressed.
“I’m not the chairman anymore. You’ll have to ask him.”
“Are you and the chairman at odds over this?” Brennan asked, pressing his way to Marshall’s side as the senator tried to move up the hallway, surrounded by journalists as tightly as a shell encases a walnut.
Marshall looked sharply at Brennan. “Over what could we possibly be at odds?”
“Over Ken Sachs’s handling of the ConPac investigation,” Brennan clarified.
Marshall stopped and looked down to the point on Brennan’s chest where his press IDs hung from a chain around his neck. Marshall frowned and squinted at the ID, then pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and first finger. Brennan thought he saw him sway.
“You’re from the Chronicle?’ Marshall asked.
“Yes, sir. Glenn Brennan.”
Marshall’s hand dropped from his face. “Get out of my way,” he snarled. “I have nothing to say to you or to anyone else from that scandal sheet.” He looked away and then turned back. “Did you people ever think about selling your product at supermarket checkout stands? That’s where it belongs.”
“Regardless of how you feel about the Chronicle, we’re all here for an answer to the same question, sir. Will there be an investigation of Ken Sachs?” Brennan was trying hard to be polite and not let Marshall’s insults provoke him. They stood toe to toe.
“Get out of my way,” Marshall hissed. “Get out of this hallway. Now!”
“Senator, with all due respect, this is a public hallway. I have every right to be here.”
Marshall’s face went scarlet, and the rest of the journalists grew silent. They sensed that Marshall was about to lose it unless he got himself under control and backed away from the confrontation he’d created. But backing away was not the style for which he was infamous. Around him, Brennan could hear the whirring of motor drives. He was certain the TV video cameras were rolling, too, but he didn’t want to break eye contact with Marshall long enough to look for them. He was willing to choke back his contempt for the man he faced, but his Irish temperament wouldn’t let him blink first.
In a low voice filled with rage, Marshall asked, “Do you want me to call the Capitol Police and have you forcibly ejected?”
“No, I don’t, Senator,” Brennan replied evenly. “Even if you called them, I don’t think they’d have grounds to throw me out. I’m not creating a nuisance or a hazard.”
“Well, what in hell do you call this?” Marshall thundered. Without taking his eyes off Brennan, he waved his right hand out expansively, meaning to underscore the huge crowd around them. But he miscalculated how closely the others had moved in, and his hand hit a camera and the side of the head of the Reuters photographer using it. The blow carried enough force to knock the camera to the floor and the photographer back into colleagues, who reached out to support him.
Someone picked up the camera and handed it back to the Reuters man. The front element of the lens was shattered, and there could have been other damage that ruined his film. Enraged at the prospect, the photographer turned on Marshall.
“Who the hell do you think you are, for chrissake?” he screamed at the senator. “You just bought yourself a lawsuit, you sonofabitch!”
That snapped Marshall’s last ligament of reason. He grabbed the battered camera from the photographer’s hand and began using it as a weapon to clear his way out of the crowd. Holding it by the shattered lens, he began swinging it back and forth in front of him, as though he were using a machete to clear a jungle path. When his eyes fell on Brennan, they filled with new anger, and he lunged at the Chronicle reporter, smashing the camera into his face. Brennan felt his nose break and warm blood flow into his mouth. The taste of iron was powerful. He reeled backward into a wall and fell over, conscious but stunned. Marshall hurled the camera at Brennan’s falling body, hitting him square in the neck and opening a deep cut. With attention turned elsewhere, Marshall hurried off, shouldering his way past four police officers running up the corridor toward the commotion. They recognized Marshall and made no effort to stop him. Not until a few seconds later did any of the journalists think to pursue him.
But by the time they reached the end of the corridor, he was nowhere in sight.
“He did what?”
If there was anyone in the Chronicle newsroom who didn’t hear Schaeffer’s bellow, it was a wonder. It fairly shook the glass of his office wall. Paul Wister’s head snapped up, as did Alec Stenofsky’s. Only Steve Pace didn’t appear shocked. He was on the telephone with Willis Worsely, an old friend from the Chronicle newsroom, now a highly-paid reporter for WRC-TV. Worsely had witnessed Marshall’s assault on Brennan and called Pace as soon as he filed an initial report with his own station.
“I think Avery just heard,” Pace said.
Worsely laughed. “I could hear him from here.”
“So how bad is Glenn hurt?”
“I don’t think it’s as bad as all the blood made it look,” Worsely said. “I’m sure his nose is broken, but they’ll pack it and he’ll talk funny for a few days.”
“He’s talked funny most of his life,” Pace said.
“Ta-da-ch-h-h,” said Worsely, giving Pace a vocal rim shot. “There’s a cut on his neck, too, but it’s not close to anything important. I’m not sure which hospital they carted him off to, but I think he needs some emergency-room types to throw some stitches into his neck and cotton wadding into his nose and he’ll be on his way back to you.”
“You saw the whole thing, huh?”
“Sure did. I’ll be a witness for him if he wants to sue the bastard.”
“Glenn didn’t provoke it?”
“Don’t you trust him?”
“He’s got an Irish temper. Didn’t you ever hear about getting your Irish up?”
“When we say that in the ghet-to,” Worsely pronounced it as two words, “we mean a guy’s ready to get laid. Never could figure why we all called our dicks ‘Irish.’”
Pace was convulsed. Worsely, educated at prep school, Yale, and GW University, loved to pretend he’d been raised in a slum. He did great comedy with that premise.