“Umph.”
“It’s good, real good.”
“They aren’t going to run it now. Going to save it for some Sunday when they need some filler. If they run it at all.”
“It’s still a good story.”
“Too many murder stories are bad for a paper, y’know? The matrons in Bethesda don’t want to read that crap. The White House and political reporters take all the space anyhow. What could possibly be more important than Senator Horsebutt’s carefully staffed and massaged opinion about what the Soviets ought to do to qualify for American foreign aid?”
“So what are you working on today?”
“Oh, just trying to get someone in the police or the DEA or the FBI or the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to say that there is a connection between the Harrington murder — he was the cashier at Second Potomac S and L — and the Judson Lincoln murder. Lincoln ran a chain of check-cashing outlets here in the metro area. Apparently they’ve just been sold to some outfit nobody ever heard of.”
“What makes you think the killings are connected?”
“The men were shot about four hours apart, apparently by professionals. Both were in finance. Harrington, at least, was laundering money for someone. Coincidence, maybe, but I got this feeling.”
“What do the pros say?”
“They aren’t saying anything. Absolutely nothing. They just listen and grunt ‘no comment.’ ”
“So what else is new?”
“The world just keeps on turning.”
“That’s page one news.”
“This rag needs some real reporters. Not blood-and-guts guys like me, but some dirt sniffers who will get the real news, like who Senator Horsebutt is fucking on Tuesday nights and an opinion from his doctor on how he manages. Perhaps a think-piece listing the names and vital statistics and track records of all of America’s top bimbos. Why are we scribbling stories about problems at the sewage farm when we could be picking on rich and famous assholes and selling a lot more papers?”
“Lighten up. And quit feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I’m maudlin, I know.” Yocke stretched and grinned. “But self-pity soothes a tortured soul, Ott. You ought to try it sometime.”
“I gave it up when I quit smoking.”
“What windmill are you tilting at today?”
“I don’t see my columns quite that way, Sancho. My literary efforts, short and sweet as they are, are really the beating heart of this newspaper that you so irreverently called a rag, the newspaper that pays your generous and unearned salary, by the way.”
Ott hoisted his cheeks off the desk. He tossed the paper he was holding in Yocke’s lap and walked away. Yocke unfolded it. On the sheet was Ott Mergenthaler’s column for tomorrow’s paper, printed in three columns.
Unnamed sources in the Justice Department were quoted as saying that the evidence against Chano Aldana was weak. An acquittal was a definite possibility. Ott chided, gently and eruditely, as was his style, the prosecutors and Justice Department officials who had induced a grand jury to indict on weak, hearsay evidence. He also carved off a polite piece of the administration officials who had moved heaven and earth to extradite a man from Colombia that they probably couldn’t convict.
Yocke refolded the paper and tossed it on top of one of his piles.
Mergenthaler’s column in the Post the following morning should have caused a two-kiloton explosion in William C. Dorfman’s office, but amazingly, no one on the White House staff saw it that morning. No staffer had time to read anything in the newspaper until early afternoon, because at seven a.m. a thunderbolt arrived from Havana: another Cuban revolution was in full swing.
The evening before in Havana army troops had fired upon a mass rally of over forty thousand people protesting the government’s food rationing policies. Some reports said over a hundred people had been killed and several hundred wounded: the casualty figures varied wildly from source to source. This morning half the army was locked in combat with troops loyal to Castro. A group of students had seized Radio Havana and were proclaiming a democracy.
The Washington Post staff, with better sources than the White House or the State Department, knew about the revolution at six-thirty a.m., only an hour after the students went on Radio Havana chanting, “Comunismo está muerto.” Communism is dead.
Jack Yocke heard the news at eight-oh-five at police headquarters. He charged out of the building and headed for the Post.
Breaking into a conference of editors in the newsroom, he blurted, “I speak Spanish.” None of the editors discussing how to cover the Cuba story seemed to hear him. He danced from foot to foot. This was his break, the one he had been waiting for. He knew!
He scurried off to find Ottmar Mergenthaler. The columnist was not at his desk. There he was, coming out of Bradlee’s office. Yocke intercepted him.
“Ott, I got to talk to you. You gotta help me. I gotta go to Cuba.”
“Sure, Jack. Sure.”
“I speak Spanish. I’ve been taking a class. You’re not listening, Ott! I write good blood-and-guts. Great blood-and-guts. I’ve paid my dues covering cops. I deserve a shot. Ott, you ancient idiot, I speak Spanish!”
“I’m listening, Jack. But I just write columns around here.”
“Be a pal. Go in and see Bradlee. Hell, call Donnie Graham if you have to. But get me to fucking Cuba!”
Mergenthaler stopped, took a deep breath, and rolled his eyes. Then he turned around and walked back toward Bradlee’s office. “Wait here, goddammit!” he growled when Yocke tagged along immediately behind him, threatening to step on his heels.
Ooooh boy, what a break this would be, Jack Yocke told himself as he waited. His big assets were that he was young, single, low salaried, and spoke Spanish … sort of. Callie Grafton would probably give him a C for his first semester. No reason to burden Ott or Bradlee with those trivial details, of course. As far as they were concerned he had no nervous family to bug the editors if he went and might even speak a little Spanish, like he claimed.
Every writer needs a war, at least one good one, to get famous in a hurry. You mix the blood and shit and booze together and anoint yourself and then, by God, you’re Ernest Hemingway.
There are just so damn few good wars anymore! A revolution in Cuba wouldn’t be a zinger like Korea or Vietnam, but Castro wouldn’t go quietly, without a fight. Whatever happened, it would be better than covering cops. Jack Yocke assured himself of that. He had the talent to make it something big if he got the chance.
Two minutes later Ott returned.
“Okay, Ben is going to talk to foreign. Better get your passport in case they decide to request a visa for you. But you’d be helping out the regulars. Remember that, Junior.”
Yocke grabbed the older man by his ears, pulled his head down and kissed him soundly on his tan, bald pate.
“Thanks, Ott,” Yocke called as he trotted away. “I owe you.”
That day Jack Yocke took the problems as they came. He encountered the first one when he got back to his apartment to throw some clothes in a bag.
What do you take to a revolution? Some underwear, sure. A suit and tie? Well, maybe. Why not? Tennis shoes would be good, some slacks and pullover shirts. Cuba’s in the tropics, right? But it might get chilly at night this time of year. Maybe a sweater or sweatshirt. Socks. He wadded all this stuff into a soft, fake-leather vinyl bag and tossed in a razor and toothbrush and toothpaste.
Cuba. In Latin America. Cuba’s bacteria have undoubtedly been recycled through fifty generations of immune natives and have probably grown virulent enough to disembowel a gringo, like the bacteria the Mexicans are so proud of. Yocke added all the antidiarrhea medicine in his bathroom to the bag.