"Well, you've stirred up quite a hornet's nest," he said, flat, always flat, regardless of the words.
"Go ahead," I told him.
"The director has his entire top staff in his office now. There's so much chatter between here and the White House this morning that they might as well just hook up two cans to a piece of string."
I said, "That's interesting, but what does it all mean? Who is this guy you have over in the morgue, why is the FBI fucking up a presidential assassination attempt, and is the FBI fucking up, or covering up?"
"To questions one through three, don't know," he said, and I believed him.
I asked, "Do you think they're going to admit they made a mistake?"
"No idea," he said. "Those decisions are made about ten pay grades above mine. And let me tell you one thing: the FBI doesn't admit it made mistakes. If they do admit they made a mistake, know that it wasn't a mistake. Take that to the bank."
He paused, then added, "I wanted to ask you, you have anything else coming? Anything else I should know about as I work this from within?"
"Shot our load today," I said. "But I suspect there's a lot more work to do. I'll be in touch."
I hung up just in time to pick up another call.
"Sorry," Samantha Stevens said, sounding anything but. "I dropped the phone before."
"Right onto the cradle?" I asked.
"Look," she said. "I still think we can help each other. Let's keep our options open."
"Deal."
"Good. I have to go. All hell is breaking loose over here, thank you very much. I'll talk to you later."
When I turned around, Peter Martin was standing by my desk, almost levitating, he was so overjoyed, reading the latest wire service dispatch that recounted salient facts from the stories, with full attribution to the Boston Record. Thus far, no one, not the wires, not the networks, was able to obtain the photographs and autopsy reports that Havlicek had used to put our story together, so they had to repeatedly attribute all the information to the Record.
"We have this city by the balls today," Martin said, making a little vise grip with his chalky palm that made me flinch back ever so slightly.
I didn't engage. It was time for me to fill him in. "We have to talk," I said. "We have to talk about an anonymous source and a guy named Curtis Black."
He said, "The fuck are you talking about? We have a day of follows here on what may be the most important couple of stories this newspaper has ever broken."
"Let's go into your office," I said.
And we did. And after I was done with all the sordid details, from the first calls in the hospital to the uncertain encounter at the Newseum to the note on the airplane to the telephone tip in the dark of that very morning, Martin looked a shade lighter than Casper the ghost, only not as friendly. As I sat in one of his leather club chairs in front of his coffee table with my legs crossed and the weight of my upper body resting on one elbow, he paced around the office, silently, pushing his hair around so that it flew up at odd angles. At one point, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol, throwing a few in his mouth without the benefit of water, as if they were Good 'n' Plenties.
He said, "I understand why you didn't, and I am not going to hold it against you, but I wish you had told me earlier."
I nodded.
He said, "Tell me your gut feeling. Is this guy on the level?"
"Well, he had the Clawson part right at the same time Havlicek was getting it. He's sure urgent about all this. He sounds educated.
He's not spinning crazy conspiracy theories. He is going to considerable expense to make sure we take him seriously. I really don't know enough to draw a judgment, but I know just enough to know that we have to keep playing his game, or we're going to regret it for the rest of our careers."
"Yeah, you're right," Martin said, collapsing onto his couch, fading into the soft pillows.
"And what about this Graham and Wilkerson tip?" Martin asked.
"Been pursuing it, but I've gotten nothing back. Nothing. I just don't see it being true, or someone, somewhere would have given me a wink or a nod."
We both fell quiet for a moment, until he said, "Does this shooting ultimately win the election for Hutchins?"
While I considered an answer, he provided one of his own. "It seems like Hutchins has gotten a modest boost over this whole thing, but maybe not as good a boost as they expected. The public really doesn't seem to know what to make of all this confusion over the investigation.
They've edged toward Hutchins in the polls, but it's been anything but decisive. I bet it's driving the White House crazy."
I nodded and said, "Yeah, I think you're about right. After the shooting, I know I thought Hutchins would jump ahead, especially with that Reaganesque quote that the ambulance driver remembered, though wrongly. The White House thought the same thing. And now, I don't know. I can't get my mind around how this is playing out, or even if the election had something to do with the assassination attempt."
"I suspect we'll find that out soon enough," Martin said. "I want you to hang in here today, mop up with Havlicek, and late tonight or tomorrow, you get on up to Chelsea and work like a tyrant on this guy Black. I have a hunch we'll know whether this information is any good in the next days or so."
I said, "Sounds like a plan." At least, it was the closest thing I had to one in this topsy-turvey thing we call life.
thirteen
It was around 1:00 P.m. when White House Press Secretary Royal Dalton slid open the pocket doors that separate the press office from the briefing room and walked awkwardly up to the podium. He was about an hour late.
Hutchins was laying over in Washington amid a week-long campaign trip.
The room was electric this day. There is nothing that makes reporters happier than catching the government, especially a law enforcement agency, in a mistake or a lie, and this one about Tony Clawson could cut either way. Sure, other print reporters were frustrated at having been beaten to the story. The hell with them. Television reporters, they don't really care. The hotter the story, no matter who breaks it, means the more air time for them, and that means greater recognition-on the streets, at family weddings, and on the telephone with any of the young blond hostesses at the city's hottest restaurants when they call at five in the afternoon hoping for an eight-o'clock reservation, table for four.
Every seat in the room was filled with a reporter. Every inch of wall space was taken by cameramen who appeared layered on top of each other, creating a terrace of lenses, ready to beam this scene around the world in a matter of minutes. The lights were bright and hot, causing that unique-and, yes, unpleasant-odor of sweat and wool.
Dalton looked particularly uneasy today, his already pasty features washed even whiter, with the sole exception of the darkening circles under his beady eyes.
"I have a couple of policy announcements," he said, trying to maintain a casual demeanor as he looked around the room in something that more accurately approached fear. He went on to talk about a Medicare reform proposal that Republicans had been trying to sell for years, recycled, obviously, in time for some campaign season coverage.
After that, he opened the session to questions, and first up was Moose Myers, senior White House correspondent for CNN. Moose was actually anything but. On the screen, he looked big and foreboding, usually because the camera shot him from close range, so he'd fill the picture.
In person, he was five foot six, maybe five-seven in his favorite heels. I don't know why I bring this up. Whenever I talk to television guys, I tend to dwell on their features and come to the inevitable conclusion that aside from my reportorial pride, I could do that.