We waited.
Connie whispered, “Overnight visit?”
I nodded.
“Mayflower?”
“Statler.”
“Doing anything later?”
“You tell me.”
“Ten?”
“Ten.”
After a while, he pulled a page from the machine, added it to a small stack and glanced over at us, just outside his sanctum. “Ah! Nathan. Come in, come in.”
Connie nodded to both of us and evaporated.
I sat opposite him on a visitor’s chair of unforgiving hard wood designed to keep stays short. The office around me was more a study, its chocolate plaster walls awash in framed political cartoons pertaining to Pearson and signed celebrity photos with him in them; a fireplace, cold in summer, had its mantel lined with warm family photos; behind him, a sleeping cat shared a windowsill with stacked books and magazines. The desk had the expected in-and-out box, a single telephone, and a glass jar of Oreos, freshly filled, perhaps by Connie.
“Drew,” I said by way of noncommittal greeting.
We’d had something of a contentious relationship over the years, mostly based upon his skinflint ways, which extended especially to paying my legitimate expenses. But having Drew Pearson as a client could lead one into the corridors of power, and that had paid off well over the years, even if Pearson himself hadn’t.
He rocked back comfortably in his comfy chair, folded his arms in a loose, easy manner, a small smile making the mustache twitch, a maitre d’ pleased with his tip. “I understand you’re heading back to Chicago tomorrow.”
I didn’t bother asking him how he knew that. He had sources all over town, high and low and in between.
“Tomorrow, yes,” I said. “This was a short trip. I spent a day with Bob Kennedy going over some things — nothing I can share.”
He raised a palm, then returned it to his folded arms. “When Bob has something, he’ll let me know. He’s good about that. I have a very simple task for you.”
I helped myself to an Oreo. Did “simple” mean it didn’t pay much? Or anything? Still, I said, “I’m listening.”
“I have it on reliable authority,” he said, “that you were far more entwined in the Greenlease kidnapping case than is commonly known.”
None of that pleased me to hear, but the word “entwined” was especially troubling. I chewed Oreo casually and did my best not to show any reaction at all. I’m pretty good at that.
When I didn’t fill the silence, he did: “I notice you’re not denying it. You know me well enough by now, Nathan, to understand that I make damned sure my facts are solid before sharing them.”
He rarely swore — he was a devout Quaker, despite a long line of “fair-haired girls.” So “damned” from him was a big fucking deal.
Chewing, I said, “Who are you sharing this with?”
“You. Just you.”
I swallowed Oreo; managed not to choke. “You said you had a task.”
He nodded slowly. “I am looking into the possibility that the missing three hundred thousand dollars of ransom money, if I might round off the figure, has long since made its way into the coffers of the Teamsters. Specifically, into that ignoble union’s pension fund... the final stop on a money-laundering train. Likely used to cover up embezzlement.”
I folded my arms. Tried to do so as casually as had Pearson. “An interesting theory. Or is it more than a theory?”
His shrug was as slow as his nod. “More than a theory, but less than a fact.”
“This is a story you’re working on.”
He nodded.
I got up. “I wish you the best of luck with it. It was a tragic goddamn affair. A little boy died — this isn’t petty politics. But my role is covered by client confidentiality and there’s nothing I can share with you about it.”
His eyes popped. “Sit down, man! I’m not asking you to share anything. Didn’t I say this was an errand? A task? Sit down!”
I sat. But I was on the edge of my chair — partly in the way a kid does in a scary movie, partly to enable a hasty exit.
His voice was studiously calm. “You are acquainted with a gentleman... and I use the term loosely... by the name of John Oscar Hagan. A former cab driver from St. Louis, I believe.”
Jesus Christ! How much did Pearson know?
I remained on the edge of my seat. Did not say anything, but stayed put.
He sat forward, elbows on his desk now. “My investigation into the unrecovered Greenlease money has hit something of a snag. No, I’m not asking you to re-open the case. Not asking you to personally dig in. But we believe that Hagan holds the answers to questions that will lead to the missing money... or at least where it went. If James Riddle Hoffa knows about this, he is finished. And what a gift to America that would be.”
“Have you talked to Bob Kennedy or his brother about this?” Both Bob and Jack were on the Senate Rackets Committee.
“Premature,” the journalist said. “If I can get Hagan to talk — after he’s given me an exclusive interview, of course — I’ll hand him over to that committee of yours with my blessing.”
I’d been working for Bob on that committee, on and off, for several years. Mostly on Chicago aspects, but sometimes farther reaching — I had L.A. and New York branches now, after all. Its formal title was the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field.
You know — rackets.
I asked, “What’s the task?”
“I want you to offer Hagan $25,000 for his exclusive, on-the-record story.”
Now my eyes were popping. “Twenty-five grand? Since when do you pay twenty-five cents for a story? First of all, it’s against your highfalutin journalistic ethics. Second of all, we both know you’re the cheapest goddamn bastard on the face of the earth.”
He frowned and he had a lot of forehead to do that with. “Now, that was uncalled for!”
“Hell it was! What is going on, Drew?”
His wave tried to be conciliatory but came off as slapping the air. “All I’m asking you to do is approach Mr. Hagan with the offer. We have his address in Los Angeles — he moved there from St. Louis several years ago. He’s living in rather dire circumstances. You have a, shall we say, certain cachet with him that perhaps no one else does. After all, you were in that motel room with Hagan and Carl Hall... Carl Hall, the kidnapper?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I snapped, “who the fuck Carl Hall was.”
Goddamn. The most dangerous columnist in D.C. knew I’d been in the thick of the events the night “Steve” had been caught and the ransom money reclaimed... short by three hundred grand.
“The job pays two thousand dollars and expenses,” Pearson said. “I have the two thousand in cash, in my safe. Right here, right now. Or is the A-1 Agency, with its various branches coast to coast, so successful now that you can sneeze at a mere ‘two grand’... hmmm?”
Two thousand in cash. Everything in this damn mess was cash. Even when I was dealing with the most notorious tightwad in the nation’s capital.
“When can you work in an L.A. trip, Nathan?”
“Soon,” I said.
Bunker Hill had once been home to the wealthy of Los Angeles, but the rich and powerful had long since moved on, leaving it to the poor and helpless, the neighborhood’s formerly magnificent Victorian homes subdivided into shabby apartments whose inhabitants clung to the leaning walls like poison ivy on a trellis.