Damn! He didn’t go over with that too well. It was phrased too baldly. Goddamit! I’d worked over that foreign policy speech with him for a solid weekend, just the month before, when the Iranians had first jumped into Kuwait. He had bowled over the Washington press corps with what they had described as “shrewd political sense and uncommon candor.” You’d think he could remember the goddamned wording. It’s all-important in this game; it’s not merely what you say, it’s the way you say it. You can carry candor too far.
McMurtrie nudged me gently with his elbow. For a guy his size, “gently” can leave your ribs sore. “Now you look worried.” He came as close as he ever does to smiling. “Welcome to the club.”
I had begged off attending the dinner before we’d left Washington. The First Lady flew into Logan late in the afternoon and met Halliday at the hotel. Then they went off to their quiet little thousand-buck-a-plate dinner at the Harvard Club.I kept wondering what old Harry Truman would’ve said to that.
Vickie covered the dinner for me, letting old Wyatt escort her. It was unusual to see her so dressed up, in a long gown and everything. With her slim figure, she looked like a high-schooler going to her first prom. But she had good color sense; her gown was sea-green, and it picked up the color of her eyes while setting off her sunstreaked blonde hair beautifully.
His Holiness looked stunning in an old-fashioned tuxedo. His parchment-smooth face glistened; he had reached the age where his skin had taken on that translucent look that only infants and octogenarian have. He made a stately old gentlemanly figure. Vickie could have been his grand-daughter, making her debut in society.
I assured them both that I’d show up for The Man’s speech in Faneuil Hall at nine, and they left for the Harvard Club. I debated with myself for a moment when I got to the hotel lobby, then decided to walk to my own dinner appointment.
It had been only a little more than two years since I’d left Boston to join Halliday’s campaign and eventually become a member of his White House staff. The city hadn’t changed much. A couple of new towers going up in Back Bay, their gaunt skeletons outlined against the dusk. The same gaggles of students in their raunchy Guccis and carefully scuffed sneakers, out looking for an evening’s fun. The same chill wind that cut through you, no matter how heavy a coat you wore.
I walked briskly through the deepening shadows, watched the evening star duck in and out behind the buildings, and refrained from making any wishes. I felt cold, alone, and suddenly damned bitter. I was heading for the North End, to have dinner with an old newspaper buddy, and the past couple of years were unreeling in my mind like a rerun of a TV documentary. I should have been proud of every minute of it. It should have been a great time in my life. No one except me knew that it wasn’t. At least, that’s what I thought and hoped.
There’s a particular rhythm to a city, different for each one. After so many months in Washington, which is really a Southern town with ulcers, I could tell that I was in Boston even with my eyes closed. The chaotic snarl of traffic, with each driver making damned certain King George III won’t tell him which side of the street he could drive on. The anguished nasal bleat of the improper Bostonian telling his neighbor to “Have a haaaht, willya?” or “Open th’doah, fir the luvva God!”
It was fully dark by the time I got to the North End. The street market around Faneuil Hall, on the other side of the expressway overhead, was closing down. So were the store owners in Little Italy, taking in their sidewalk wares. Still, there was an aroma of spices and olives, and the sound of old men playing morre under the shadow of Paul Revere’s Old North Church spire. It made me incredibly homesick.
Johnny Harrison was halfway through a water tumbler of red wine when I stepped into Rita’s. The place hadn’t changed at all. It was tiny, actually just the front room of a private house. Only six little booths. Linoleum floor covering. Steam radiators hissing and making the place almost uncomfortably warm. Paintings of Naples and Venice by one of the neighborhood kids fading on the walls. Conchetta, the waitress, still bleaching her hair in the hope that it would make her glamorous. Kitchen in the next room.
You had to know Rita’s existed in order to find the place. The entrance was on an alley that used to be blocked all the time by a Mafiosi Cadillac. Now it was an electric Mercedes. Word of mouth was the only advertising that Rita went in for, and most of it was in Italian.
There’s a vague air of Groucho Marx about Johnny Harrison. Maybe it’s because he’s an old movie buff. He always looks as if he knows more than you do, and he’s always got a quip ready. He’d put on some weight in the year or so since I’d last seen him, but I knew that if I mentioned it, he’d spill out a string of skinny jokes about me. Besides, sitting next to him was a stranger, a compact young soccer-player type who had the eager puppy dog look of a new reporter all over him.
I slid into the booth. “Hiya, Johnny.”
He made a grin. “I was starting to wonder if you’d show up.”
Three minutes late. I didn’t bother answering that one.
“This here’s Len Ryan,” Johnny said. “He’ll be covering the President’s speech tonight from the local angle. Y’know… historic Faneuil Hall, where Sam Adams’s patriots put on their Indian disguises for the Boston Tea Party, was the scene tonight of another great moment in American democracy…”
Ryan clapped his hand to his head. “May my word processor blow a fuse if I ever write crap like that!”
We all laughed. Then Johnny got just a little formal. “Leonard, me lad, this is Meric Albano, the press secretary to the President of the United States. One of my protégés. We started together on the old Globe, and have spent many a lonely dinner hour right in this very booth.”
Ryan extended his hand. “An honor, Mr. Albano.”
His grip was very muscular. “Meric,” I told him.
“Americo,” Johnny said. “The son of an overly patriotic would-be poet.”
“My father was a civil engineer,” I said. “I was born the day he and my mother landed here.”
“In Boston?” Ryan asked.
“No. Cleveland. The flight was supposed to land in Boston, but a snowstorm had closed Logan. We got to Boston on a bus, finally.”
“Three weeks later,” Johnny said. “A fascinating beginning to a fascinating life.”
“I’ve been very fortunate,” I kidded.
“And we are honored,” Johnny went on, “that you could pull yourself away from your duties to break bread with us.”
“And bend elbows,” I said.
“Indeed.” He took his glass in hand, squinted at the reflections of the overhead bulbs in the red wine, then realized that I didn’t have anything to drink. He signaled to Conchetta, who nodded and smiled hello at me.
Dinner was pleasant enough, except when Johnny’s bantering got around to Laura.
“She did arrive okay, didn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes. They’re having dinner at the Harvard Club.”
“Laura?” Ryan asked. “You mean the First Lady?”
“Indeed so,” Johnny said, twirling a forkful of linguini like an expert. “Laura Benson and Meric were childhood sweethearts…”
“Hardly childhood,” I said, trying to keep the anger from showing. “She was in Radcliffe and I was going to Boston University.”