(1980) The Second Lady (2 page)

‘You got yourself admitted to the centre as a drug addict?’

‘Cocaine addict. And it worked. Quite an eyeful. Then I wrote the story first-person, patient’s point of view. Well, I won’t say it was a sensation - after all, it appeared in that small weekly throwaway cluttered with real estate and food market ads — but still, it brought me a little attention and some praise. Especially from my family. My father just loved it. In fact, he was so impressed that he mailed a clip of it to a friend of his who was an executive at the Los Angeles Times. The executive liked it, also the fact that it had been done by Clarence Lane’s daughter - my father was quite well-known in those days for his inventions — and the executive sent it over to editorial. The managing editor called me

in for an interview and decided to give me a try-out as a staff writer.’

‘How did you do?’

Billie Bradford had laughed. ‘My first assignment was a fiasco. I would have been hired and fired within forty-eight hours, if it hadn’t been for George Kilday. He was a copy-editor. He saved my neck.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, I don’t want to go into it. Just ask George Kilday. He’ll tell you the whole thing. He’s here in Washington now, the head of the L05 Angeles Times bureau. In fact, you should see him anyway. He’ll fill you in on a lot of things about my journalism fling that I don’t remember. He has a real reporter’s eye. Ask him.’

‘I intend to, Mrs Bradford. But I want to ask you first. What happened on your opening assignment?’

So she had told him, told him what she could remember of that first time out.

Anyway, that had been some months ago, and that had been Parker’s initial knowledge of Kilday’s small role in Billie Bradford’s life, and he had meant to meet with Kilday, and finally had recently tried, and now at last in his third effort Parker was sitting across from Kilday in The Madison cafe.

Parker immediately voiced his appreciation for the senior newspaperman’s cooperation.

‘Not at all,’ said Kilday. The waitress returned for their orders, and as Kilday scanned the menu once more, settling for chicken noodle soup and a cheese and lettuce sandwich on wheat bread, Parker studied the bureau chief. He had shaggy white eyebrows, a prominent nose, a lot of jaw with two shaving cuts, all set on a short neck and stocky body encased in a crumpled greyish suit.

After Parker had also ordered, he indicated his tape machine on the plastic table between them. ‘Do you mind?’ Parker asked.

‘Go ahead,’ said Kilday. ‘Myself, I don’t use them. Find them a waste of time. Too much work transcribing, and most of it non-essential. But no, I don’t mind talking to one.’

Parker depressed the record button and started the machine.

‘How long have you been in Washington?’ he asked.

‘Transferred here the year before Billie Bradford moved into the White House.’

‘About three-and-a-half years ago.’

‘About. I’m mighty proud of her. She’s giving the old House a new look. She’s elegant as Jacqueline Kennedy. Smart and honest as Betty Ford. More creative than either. More political savvy than either. Certainly as much as Rosalynn Carter. Great instincts. To my eye, the best looker we’ve ever had there.’

i agree,’ said Parker. ‘It’s a joy working with her. Have you seen much of Mrs Bradford since she became First Lady?’

‘Not much. I don’t have much to do with the East Wing. I’m on the West Wing side. Presidential politics entirely. Still, she’s been kind enough to have me to three or four state dinners.’

‘I didn’t know you had anything to do with her life. One day, not long ago, she mentioned you.’

‘Did she? What did she mention?’

‘How you saved her neck after her first assignment on the Los Angeles Times.’

‘She told you that?’

‘Yes. She said she owed a lot to you.’

‘It was something anyone would have done. Hell, for a writer she was just a green kid out of college and a couple of publicity jobs.’ He paused. ‘What did she tell you?’

‘Just the bare facts. She thought you might elaborate on them. It’s colourful stuff for the book.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Her first assignment for the newspaper,’ said Parker, it was very important to her, and the managing director - I don’t have his name —’

‘Dave Nugent.’

‘Thank you. Anyway, he gave her an assignment to interview somebody important -‘

‘Dr Jonas Salk. The polio vaccine man. Up from La Jolla to give a speech in Los Angeles.’

‘Good. So she went out on the interview, got it. Salk was friendly. Gave her wonderful material. She went to her typewriter, wrote her story, handed it in to you to pass on to the managing director. You found the story appallingly bad, sophomoric, wrong lead, so on. Without telling her, you held it back. You knew if the editor saw it, he’d fire her. So you quietly turned it over to a close friend of yours who was on rewrite, a veteran named Steve Woodson —’

‘Steve Woods,’ Kilday corrected him.

‘Yes, thanks. Woods. He rewrote it completely and handed it back to you at your request. You handed the rewritten story in to the managing editor. He liked it, and he gave her a permanent job. When she read the story in print, she was amazed at what had happened to it. She asked you, and you levelled with her. You told her that her interview had been awful. You told her exactly what she had done wrong. You told her you had given it to Woods to rewrite. You pointed out how he had changed the story to make it acceptable. She was a quick learner. The next time, and in all the times after, she got it right. That’s Mrs Bradford’s version. Is it substantially correct?’

Kilday had finished the last of his sandwich. ‘Umm, 1 suppose so, substantially,’ he said. He cupped a hand in front of his mouth, and behind it used a toothpick to clean the spaces between his teeth. ‘Only one thing wrong with it. That’s because I never told her the truth. There was no Steve Woods to rewrite it. He didn’t exist. If he had, I wouldn’t have showed it to him, wouldn’t have wanted him or anyone else to know how poorly she’d done with her first assignment. Didn’t want word getting out to the boss. No. The truth is I took her story home and rewrote it myself and handed it in. Never told her I did it. Didn’t want her owing me. Just wanted to be her friend. So she never knew I did it. Didn’t know then. Doesn’t know to this day. So that part’s no use to you. Can’t put that part in your book. Just telling you as one writer to another. Now forget it.’

Curious fellow, Parker thought, drinking the last of his coffee. There weren’t too many of these don’t-want-no-credit people around any more.

‘I appreciate that,’ said Parker. ‘So, after the Salk story, she was on the staff. She did about three years of big-name interviews.’

‘Right. And one of the last was with a California senator named Andrew Bradford. That’s when it began for her.’

‘Yes, of course. I’d like to hear about some of the other celebrities she interviewed before she got to Bradford.’

‘If you like,’ said Kilday.

That moment, the cafe cashier came to their table. ‘Pardon,’ she said. ‘Is either one of you Mr Guy Parker?’

Parker looked up, surprised. ‘I am.’

‘Call for you from the White House. Phone’s next to the register.’

Puzzled, Parker put down his napkin, excused himself and crossed the room to the telephone.

The voice on the other end was Nora Judson’s.

‘I had trouble finding you,’ she was saying. ‘Then I remembered you were going to have lunch at The Madison.’

‘With George Kilday. On the book.’

‘Can you cut it short? Billie would like to see you as soon as possible.’

‘But I’ll be seeing her in an hour anyway for our —’

‘No, that’s cancelled. Her schedule is too heavy. I mean, she’s leaving for Moscow tomorrow afternoon. There’s no time to work with you on the book today. But there’s something else she wants to talk to you about. If you can get right over — well, in fifteen minutes or so —’

‘Okay, I’ll try. It’s just that it’s been so hard to get together with Kilday -‘

‘See him another time. Please hurry, before everything piles up.’

With that she hung up. Parker replaced the receiver on the phone and wondered what he could tell George Kilday. But, as it turned out, he did not have to tell him anything. When

he returned to the table, Kilday was already standing, gathering up his cigarettes, matches, key ring.

‘I know,’ he said with mock exasperation. ‘The White House. Something important’s come up. It always does.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Parker, as he glanced at the bill and laid down some notes. ‘I’m glad you understand. You were being very helpful. Can we finish this another time?’

‘Whenever you’re ready, just call.’

They went out together and stood in front of the hotel. The street was an oven. Nevertheless, Parker decided to leave his car and walk to the White House. He could make it in fifteen minutes. He wanted the interval to be alone in his head. As Kilday ordered his car, Parker thanked him once more and was on his way.

Despite the heat, he walked rapidly in long strides. Across the street, two reporters emerging from the Washington Post building, hailed him. He saluted back but kept going. Several times, he caught his moving reflection in shop windows. What he saw of himself always surprised him. He looked so neat, so sure of himself, from the outside. This was deceptive. Inside he carried a tangle of anxieties and uncertainties.

It sometimes surprised him that he had become a writer. Although he was good at it, no question. People always told him that he looked like a writer, whatever that meant. He was almost tall, just under 6 feet. He was thin, lanky, sinewy. No fat whatsoever. His thick black hair parted at one side, his brown eyes set deep above the high cheek bones, his nose slightly Roman, sensuous lips (the women always said), a dimpled jut of a jaw.

Actually, there had never been a writer in his family. His father was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. His mother was a psychologist. Parker had gone to Northwestern University, had become involved in American history with the vague notion that he might teach one day. His avocation had been voraciously reading suspense and mystery novels. This had heightened his desire to lead a more active and exciting life. Early in the Vietnam conflict, someone had promised him a chance to get into

army intelligence if he enlisted. Although he thought the American role in Vietnam immoral, he wanted an opportunity to act out his fantasies. He enlisted, went to officers’ training school, and graduated to an intelligence desk in the Pentagon. For a while it was intellectually stimulating, but finally a sedentary bore. Also, more and more, some of the war information he had been privy to had begun to aggravate his sense of decency. Vietnam was an outrage, and he was becoming outraged.

He could not wait to leave the service, and-when he did he wanted to put distance between himself and the military automatons and what they were doing to thousands of yellow people a half a world away. With his meagre savings, Parker went to Europe, to be alone, to think, to find diversion. It was his first trip abroad, and he felt sheepish confining himself to the popular cities and sights - London, Paris, Rome. But then he realized that they were popular because they were among the most interesting places to visit in Europe, and he felt better about staying on the beaten path.

When he returned to the United States, the Vietnam war had worsened and the protest movement was at its height. Some long-dormant activist sense in him was nudged, and automatically he made his way to San Francisco and joined an organization of the peace movement. The organization was lacking writers, so Parker began to write for it, mostly broadsides and pamphlets condemning the American government.

By the time the war ended, Parker found himself in Chicago and in need of a job. A large private detective agency had placed an ad in a Chicago newspaper seeking young operatives. Parker applied, and because his army intelligence background looked good on paper, he got the job. At first he liked it. He rather fancied himself as a Dashiell Hammett in his Pinkerton phase. Indeed, there was a fair amount of legwork, shadowing, illegal entries, placement of electronic equipment, but mostly it was a lowdown, seedy business monotonously filled with mean divorce cases, locating runaway children, investigating small-time money swindles. To

make it more romantic, he had casually begun to write about it. He had written three factual articles, and sold all three.

Hearing of an opening in the New York bureau of the Associated Press, Parker dashed off a resume and submitted it along with photocopies of his three published articles. In a week he was summoned to New York for an interview. After a half-hour chat with a senior AP executive, he was hired on the spot and sent to Washington DC to write lightweight feature stories and weekend mailers that gave him by-lines instead of a living wage. But he was utterly fascinated by Washington, and it showed in his stories, and soon the by-lines paid off.

One day there was a long-distance call from a man named Wayne Gibbs. He had read any number of Parker’s feature pieces and had been favourably impressed. He was, he had said, an associate of Senator Andrew Bradford, who had just won the Democratic party nomination to run for President of the United States. Gibbs had a proposition for Parker. Could Parker fly into Los Angeles for the weekend, expenses paid? Parker could and did. The proposition was enticing. Supporters of Bradford wanted a book written and published about their candidate, a crisp, lively, easy-to-read biography of their nominee. A campaign biography to enhance their man’s image. They already had a publisher. Now they required a writer who could turn out the book fast. The money would be generous.

To Parker, the money sounded attractive, but there was something else that sounded even more attractive. This was mainstream stuff. Until then, Parker had gone through many convolutions in his attitude toward his country, toward American democracy. In the army he had gone along, finally been revolted by what he saw. He had run away from it, gone abroad. He had returned, become a dissenter, lashing out at his government’s politics and corruption, wanting to topple the government. Then, at AP, seeing the government up close and more objectively, remembering the political sickness he had observed in Europe, he had come to the conclusion that, bad as it was, the democratic system in the