Haere circled the hatrack two more times and then turned to the white-haired man. “Where’d you say you found it?” he asked.
“Out in Alexandria. I was just poking around one Saturday afternoon and there it was, all by itself, way at the back.”
“Did you recognize it?”
“Draper, I can’t say I did. But I swear it looked familiar. You know, I was out to his place a time or two back when I was just a kid, no more’n twenty-six, twenty-seven, so I asked about it and when they said it’d belonged to John L., well, I thought of you, dickered a bit, and bought it.” The white-haired man reached out and touched one of the knobbed pegs. “On this peg hung the hat that sat on the head of John L. Lewis. Of course, old John L. wasn’t exactly a politician in the sense that he ever ran for public office. But he was something.”
“He’ll do,” Haere said softly, using his coat sleeve to give one of the curving arms a quick brush. “He’ll do fine.”
The white-haired man had arrived unannounced and unexpected at 7:45 while Haere was watching MacNeil-Lehrer, which he did religiously despite having privately nicknamed the pair, not unkindly, the dull boys. After the white-haired man rang the buzzer, Haere asked who it was over the intercom.
“It’s me, Draper. Or more properly, it is I, Dave Slipper, and I’ve got a pair of fine lads down here with me who’re going to tote something up the stairs, if you’ll just ring the buzzer.”
Haere rang the unlocking buzzer and then went out onto the small landing and watched with surprise as the two men from Bekins lugged the hatrack up the stairs and into the room, supervised by David Slipper.
The white-haired man was then seventy-one years old and had first arrived in Washington in 1935 after graduation from Swarthmore with an additional year of postgraduate study at the London School of Economics. He had been, at various times, a New Deal White House aide, or to hear him tell it, “Harry Hopkins’s office boy”; a spy of sorts for the wartime Office of Strategic Services; a syndicated columnist (121 daily newspapers); a biographer of the iron-willed Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas Brackett (Czar) Reed; an Assistant Secretary of Agriculture (six months); a deputy Undersecretary of the Interior (ninety days); ambassador to Chad (one year, “the longest year of my life,” he later said); and for the past fifteen years a political fixer and consultant who charged outrageous fees for his sensible, hardheaded advice.
Many in Washington considered David Slipper to be the village wise man. He dwelt in a small mews house behind the Supreme Court, the same house he had lived in off and on since 1936. Joe McCarthy had once been a neighbor. A man of infinite grace and Southern charm, although some despised his elegance, Slipper still retained a trace of a Memphis accent that came and went depending on the grimness of the situation. For when they needed to send the bad news, they often sent it by David Slipper. And as one party wheel-horse in Boston had once told Haere, “When old Dave cuts your throat, Draper, you don’t smell no fuckin’ magnolias.”
Haere took another admiring walk around the hatrack. “How the hell’d you ever get it out here?”
Slipper shrugged. “Oxy was deadheading one of its 727s back out, so I made a couple of calls and bummed a ride.” Oxy, of course, was Occidental Petroleum.
“Just to see me?”
“Among other things. Have you dined?”
“Not yet.”
“Got any eggs?”
“Sure.”
“Then I’ll just whomp us up an omelette.”
The omelette was perfect, as was the salad that Slipper created out of a head of rather dubious iceberg lettuce, garlic, and some hot bacon grease. They ate at the scarred library table in the dining area and shared a bottle of wine. The table had once graced the study of Rep. Vito Marcantonio (D., N.Y.), or so it was claimed by the Brooklyn dealer who had sold it to Haere.
Slipper put down his fork, patted his lips with a paper napkin, and said, “So. How’s the Candidate?”
“Veatch is fine.”
“And the lovely Louise?”
“Great.”
Slipper produced a thin silver cigarette case that was almost the size of a Number 10 envelope. He offered it to Haere, who shook his head. Slipper selected a pale-brown cigarette and lit it with a gold Ronson that Haere knew to be forty years old. Slipper inhaled, blew out the smoke, and smiled. “I didn’t see you at Jack’s funeral,” he said, “but then you don’t go to funerals, do you?”
“No,” Haere said. “I don’t.”
“It was a nice do, a fine crowd. The Unitarian preacher mentioned God once — in passing, of course — and Maureen was awful, but then Maureen always is, isn’t she?”
“I talked to her on the phone. She was a bit put out at having been turned into a widow.”
“Stick to your rule, Draper, and keep away from funerals. They’re simply a reminder of mortality, and, God knows, at my age, I don’t need any reminders. But I go, I go, and the amazing thing is, they’re all growing younger — the departed, I mean. What was Jack? Sixty or thereabouts.”
“Around in there.”
“When I was young, sixty was ancient. Now it’s what — middling middle age? Roosevelt, for example. Only sixty-three when he died. Almost a young man by today’s standards. But old then. Old and tired and used up.” He shook his head sadly. “The war, I suppose.” His moment of mourning over, Slipper looked at Haere again. “Jack was in the war, wasn’t he?”
“Navy pilot.”
Slipper nodded, as if remembering. “What was it, hit-and-run? You were with him, Draper. What d’you think — really?”
Haere sighed, produced his own cigarettes, and lit one. “Slippery, when you come on like that, my ribs get all tensed up waiting for the blade to slip between them. Now, I want to thank you for the John L. hatrack. It’s a fine addition, and I really appreciate it. And you make just one hell of an omelette. But deliver it, will you? The message. Whatever it is.”
Slipper smiled. “Do you have a drop of brandy by any chance?”
“Martel.”
“Why don’t we have a drop and some coffee? That be too much bother?”
As Haere poured coffee from the Bunn Pour-Omatic and measured out two brandies, Slipper’s eyes wandered over the room. “Remarkable place, Draper. It must be unique. Do you still have that wicked cat?”
“He’s around,” Haere said and set the coffee cups on the table.
“Hubert, right?”
“Hubert,” Haere agreed, served the two small brandy snifters, and resumed his seat.
“How was New York?” Slipper said. “I’m curious.”
“He couldn’t make up his mind, so I saw his mother. She told me to forget it.”
“Remarkable woman,” Slipper said. “She and I had a small thing going once. My Lord, it must have been back in the late ’forties, around in there. We planned a tryst, an assignation, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, of all places. I showed, of course; she didn’t.” He sniffed deeply. “I can still remember the smell of all that chocolate.” He sighed. “Well, that’s one down, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I told Veatch.”
“What d’you really think his chances are?”
“In ’eighty-four? Zero.”
“I’m, well... I’m not so sure,” Slipper said carefully. “His name keeps cropping up here and there in some rather interesting places. After all, California will have twenty percent of the delegate strength. That’s a sound base. He’s got time — two years. Money should be no problem, right? I mean, hell, Draper, you can take care of that. And, my stars, he is presentable, if a trifle glib for my taste, but they’re all that way nowadays. Glib, I mean. They have to be. A mumbler, a hemmer and hawer, just won’t do. Not on television. The only thing is...” Slipper let his sentence fade away.