The Henderson Equation (10 page)

"They all squat to shit," Charlie said. He lit a
cigarette, the light blazing briefly across his square, handsome face, the jet
black full hair curled naturally over the edges of his high forehead. The flame
caught glints in his myopic eyes, alert and perhaps fearful. Or was that just
the effect of the flickering light?

"Doesn't it scare the hell out of you, Charlie?"
Nick asked. He knew even then that it was an echo of something he might have
said through half-frozen lips, crawling in the mud along a French hedgerow.
Images of the war were locked into his perception. Charlie caught the
reference, as Nick had known he would. The ambience of friendship had not
deteriorated during their separation.

"Not if you whistle loud enough," Charlie said,
slowly puffing on his cigarette.

"The old man's passing the relay stick, Charlie,"
Nick said. He wondered then if there wasn't an element of envy in it.

"Yeah," Charlie said, "I like the dotty old
bird." He inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke from his nose. "Do you
think I'm a goddamned phony, Nick?" Nick felt Charlie's eyes bore into him
through the shadows.

"You've got a lot of faults, my friend. But phoniness
isn't one of them."

"It's just that I feel that I'm hiding my flaws
deliberately, knowing what he has in mind for me."

"It's a temptation not to be sneezed at."

"You think I'm selling myself out?"

"How the hell can I answer that one?" Nick knew
that he was evading the answer. "The real question is: Do you love Myra?"

"Yes," Charlie said. "I suppose that is the
real question." They were silent for a long time. Strains of the music
floated in the air. "I wonder what the hell they see in me?"

"I've wondered about that myself," Nick said,
remembering the first time he had seen him, the gangling, sloppy soldier
tossing his C ration into a puddle, defiant in the face of his own hunger.
"Let them eat shit," he had hissed. Nick hadn't even stopped to
consider, but had tossed his own ration into the same puddle, the act stupid in
itself but validating the powerful chemistry of Charlie's personality and its
irrevocable effect on Nick. Perhaps Mr. Parker and Myra had felt the same
compulsion.

"But you can't tell by me, baby. I'm a fan," Nick
added.

"I knew better than to ask a dumb bastard like you.
Boy, have they bought themselves a peck of trouble," Charlie said. Perhaps
he was remembering his trip around the globe in the lobby of the
News
,
the pain of the aftermath. Or perhaps it was a burst of clairvoyance as he
looked into his own future and the madness that he must have felt lay in his
tissue waiting to mature.

"If I could only be certain I'd be making the right
move. There are a lot of problems with it."

"Like what?"

"I'm not sure," he said mysteriously. "Ah,
what the hell," he sputtered, flicking the lighted butt onto the trimmed
lawn. Nick watched its glow fade into the darkness. "Maybe the die is
cast," Charlie said. "Besides, I like the idea of taking these
bastards on."

"Now there's objectivity for you," Nick said.

"The old man's right about them, Nick. This place is a
pit of self-delusion. Somebody has got to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Can't you just smell it around here?"

Nick breathed deeply, sniffing only the perfumed air.
"Yeah," he said.

"Oh, there you are," Myra's voice, high-pitched,
faintly irritated, called from behind them. "Dad wants you to meet some
people." She put her arm through Charlie's.

"I was just talking to old Nick here, Myra. We were reminiscing about bachelor days in New York."

"I'll bet they were quite racy," she said.

"Obscene." Nick watched him resist her pull.

"Come on, Charlie," she said, "give father a
break. He's doing it for us, you know."

"Go on, Charlie," Nick said, "I'll be
fine."

Charlie remained silent for a moment, stubbornly rooted.
She pulled at him again, almost throwing him off balance.

"Don't be so inflexible," Myra said petulantly,
as Charlie yielded and followed obediently on her arm, like Alice proceeding
through the looking glass.

When Nick arrived at the budget meeting they were all
sitting around the polished table, reviewing their papers. His eyes swept their
faces: Landau, Peterson, Prager, Madison, Phillips, Dover, and Margaret, with
her persistent upsweep hairdo that defied all style changes.

There was always tension at these meetings, with each
editor presenting his story ideas for final inspection, ready to defend his
judgments. It was, as he had lectured over the years, the moment of truth, the
final screen of the information and events that they had chosen to record of
that day in time, for all posterity to ponder. The daily meetings had taken on
a special rhythm, the agenda fixed by the priority of his own interests. The
consideration of the sports budget was always first, only because it was the
least likely to be amended since Prager, consistently bucolic, sensed his
advantage over the rest of them, both in knowledge and interest. To the rest of
them, sports held only marginal interest, although they enjoyed the spectacle.
To Prager it was a total world, as it was to many thousands of their readers, a
gospel to be absorbed, passionately gobbled up, a religious experience. Prager
dominated like a monarch, a man with monumental prejudices, favoring players,
owners, cities, countries, even types of sports. He hated tennis because it had
become the province of the new effete and doled out its coverage in niggardly
doses. He had been Charlie's choice, and a wise one. Despite Prager's
abrasiveness, he had kept the sports pages a gallop ahead of the rest of the
Chronicle
in accuracy, variety and interest. None of the others dared question his
authority over his domain, although any of them would have given a month's pay
to see his superiority dented. Instead, they took refuge in humor, salted by
Prager's total inability to understand them.

"Don't you think you're going a little ape on
football?" Nick mumbled, a deliberate barb.

Prager lifted his eyes to the ceiling, tapping a pencil.
"It's the season. You want me to feature the tiddledy-winks
tournament?"

Nick watched the tight smiles respond. Nobody would dare
chuckle.

It was a source of amusement to watch Prager at the
Redskins' games and observe his reluctant and disdainful greeting. He would
never ever set foot in the owner's box, dismissing Myra and her guests as
dissolute members of the ruling party, utterly contemptible.

Nick passed over the Sports budget with perfunctory
attention. To look it over with a lack of comment would have somehow been
interpreted as a deprivation. Next he passed on to Margaret's budget. His eye
caught the line, "Interview with Norman Mailer--Jennie." He had
actually rewritten the first five paragraphs of the piece in its entirety, much
to Jennie's chagrin. She was protesting more and more. Although this morning
her irritation had seemed to disappear.

"Might be a good idea to increase your coverage of the
Indian ambassador," Nick said to Margaret. "The action seems to be
shifting to that part of the world. Besides we've given the Iranians enough of
a play."

"They throw better parties," Margaret said.
"More people. Better picture stuff. Christ, Nick, the Indians are
insufferably self-righteous, besides being boring."

"Maybe if we covered them, they'd get the
message," Nick said.

"Nothing like a dose of exposure to motivate their
media sensitivity," Landau said.

"Check it out, Maggie," Nick said, looking up as
Margaret scribbled on a notepad. "And you should know I got a scream from
the advertising department on Carson's review. Delaney really roasted me."

"You get it only occasionally, Nick," Margaret
said. "I get it daily. You should see the stuff I pencil out. Whenever he
throws a bouquet to one of his pretty boy favorites, we go into psychodrama.
Probably increases his venom with the other gender."

"I like his stuff," Peterson said quietly.

"Screw the advertising department," Madison said, his voice booming, accentuating the perennial bone of contention.

"They pay the freight, people," Nick said. It was
the traditional answer. He looked at the clock and pored over the Metropolitan
budget.

"Watch the mix, Ben."

It was almost a daily complaint, inevitable in the coverage
of three jurisdictions: Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. And
as they expanded circulation, it was becoming increasingly difficult to expand
the county coverages. Even the split runs had not solved the problem.

"It's a bitch, Nick. I need more reporters. It's
becoming unmanageable. It's like covering three different countries."

"Compress the stories."

"We're trying, Nick. Then I get flack from my own
guys. There's just not enough space."

"There will never be enough of that commodity,"
Landau said. They went down the list of stories, discussed some, passed through
others quickly.

"We should editorialize more on the Metro
system," Ben suggested. "The jurisdictions are trying to turn off the
money tap. It's purely racial, in my opinion."

"What do you think, Pete?"

"We've got one in the works."

"And Maggie, you might search for a new angle for
Lifestyle."

"We've covered everything on it but the
commodes."

"That might be a hell of an angle," Nick said.
They could see he was serious. He watched Margaret nod her head.

"Maybe, Nick. Might find some innovations there."

"Computerized johns," Landau said. Prager
snickered. Nick could feel his impatience.

When he got to the budget from the national desk, his eye
flicked over the list and stopped suddenly, a red flag wildly waving in his
mind. He noted the neatly typed line, "Henderson health
bill--Grinnel." Grinnel was their senior Senate man.

"What's the Henderson piece?" he asked, trying
not to show the flash of anxiety. He looked at Madison, who averted his eyes.

"It's a Senate speech, supposedly major. It's Henderson's pet project. Universal health insurance," Arnold Dover said. He was a
quiet man, the least pre-possessing of those around the table.

Nick searched his mind. Hadn't they covered it recently?

"Anything new in it?" Nick asked.

"Not really," Dover said, his eyes darting toward
Landau. It was, after all, a pet project which the
Chronicle
supported
editorially.

"We just had an editorial on it last week, complete
with bouquets to Henderson," Nick said, remembering.

"That's right, Nick," Pete agreed.

"We'll overkill it with support," Nick said, his
tone argumentative. They must see he was making a stand.

"It seems appropriate," Henry Landau interjected.

"Christ, Henry, you're just off vacation." Nick
had meant the implication to be unmistakable.

"It's clearly in keeping with our policy of
support," Landau argued, his deep tan masking a flush.

"It's only a Senate speech, a contrived media
happening. If we resort to that kind of coverage, we'll blow our
integrity."

"Every time Henderson passes wind, we cover the
bastard," Madison said, his private view intruding.

"Was it contemplated as a front-page story?"

Landau swallowed deeply. "I saw it as front page, yes.
Lower left with a two-column head. Frankly, Nick, I think it's an important
story."

"Would you like to review it, Nick?" Dover asked, perhaps feeling that the passion expended seemed disproportionate to the
issue. But then Henderson had always been good copy.

"Yes, I would, Arnie," Nick said. He was groping
for control now. Was he having a slight attack of paranoia or was Myra's hand clearly visible?

"I don't understand all the fuss, Nick," Landau
said. His rest, so obviously refreshing, had them all at a disadvantage.
Perhaps Landau was simply an innocent victim of this uncommon tactic on Myra's part. But it was enough to raise Nick's antenna.

"Let me see the story," Nick said, determined at
least to keep it off the front page. He passed over the issue and continued
with the meeting, but the idea persisted in his mind. He'd need time to examine
this new wrinkle.

Surveying again the faces of the people who sat around the
polished table, he could envision a scenario of conspiracy. It seemed obvious,
circumstantially, at least, that Myra was making an attempt to force her will
on the
Chronicle
, which, in the final analysis, meant forcing her will
on him, the last screen through which the information must pass. In theory, it
was her right to do so since she held the controlling stock interest, the
corporate majority voice. It was, after all, a business which made no claims to
democratic processes. But even monarchs could be captives of their courts and,
following Charlie's lead, Nick had built layers of protection to cushion blows,
absorb shocks, even allow for occasional breaches. Both he and Charlie had
chosen their people carefully, although that did not insure perfection. People
had needs, yearnings, dreams, conflicting motives, levels of ambition, different
strategies. As a conscious puppeteer, Nick knew only that the voice of the
Chronicle
,
with all its tones and dialects and impressions, must be his own.

Looking back now to that first moment of exposure to Mr.
Parker and Myra, he could understand the inevitability of Myra's challenge. It
came as no surprise, except for the manner in which she had marshaled her
forces. At least her objectives were clear. She would try capture first,
conquest without pain in the guise of shared power. If that didn't work, she
would attempt envelopment, containment, a choking off of authority. Barring
that would come the frontal assault, a battle in which she knew the Pyrrhic
victory would leave the foundations in ruin, a price perhaps too high, although
she might calculate that it was worth the gamble.

But if the strategies were clearly outlined, the question
of her motive was less clearly defined. Was it, after all, inevitable that
power once tasted increased the appetite, feeding upon itself? Was it, then, a
mistake for him to have conspired to go after the jugular of a President,
however deserving? Was he merely a willing tool of hers, or she of his? Had it
left them with the kind of power that was unmanageable? Was she now testing how
far the
Chronicle
could go? Was he, after all, defending a moral
principle or his own power over other men? Was Henderson, inside his cool blue
eyes, cringing in fear? Nick thought of Charlie's battle to stay free of Myra. But how much of that was the product of his madness, the warped focus of a deranged
mind? Was she, at long last, making her move? If that were so, then everyone
around the table was suspect, all possible agents.

After the meeting broke, Margaret followed him back to the
office, exercising, as she had rarely done, the prerogative of the ex-spouse.
He knew that his concentration had been deflected as the meeting had
progressed. They had, in a sense, worked around him, conscious of his darkened
mood. But only Margaret, with the benefit of their shared experience, could see
beyond the public face, closer to the pain.

"You've got a bug up your ass, Nick," she said,
when she had closed the office door behind her and perched stiffly on the
facing chair, inspecting him. He remembered being once titillated by her
profanity, so unique, almost charming in their generation.

"Change of life, I guess," he said. He could tell
by the way she was making up to hide the wrinkling on her thin skin, that
hormonal imbalance could be a credible excuse.

"Bullshit."

"Well then, the usual pressures. Maybe I can't take
them the way I used to."

"More than that, Nick," she said. Her gaze seemed
always magnified when she concentrated hard to see inside of him.

"I'll work it out," he blurted.

"Nothing I can do?"

"Nothing."

He searched her face for any trace of doubt. He had lost
the habit of confiding to her. He felt the sudden heat from an old ash.

"Really, Maggie, I'll work it out," he said
gently.

"Sorry for prying."

"Hear from Chums?" he asked, as if it were
necessary to validate their link.

"Not a word."

"How long has it been?"

"Three months now."

"My God."

The shared concern for Chums generated sadness, the living
symbol of their failed marriage. They had ceased recriminations years ago,
sharing blame at last, along with the newspaper business, the principal debaser
of their parenthood. Margaret got up from the couch, straightening her topheavy
body, once the source of his pride. Middle age, like retribution, had settled
the fat in her breasts. They had been her dominant physical charm and getting his
hands on them was once an obsession, he remembered.

He had observed her peripherally at first, slim-hipped and
large-breasted, as she moved in a graceful glide through the city room on the
way to her desk in the feature department, a glass-walled section housing the
columnists, the drama and movie critics, the society and financial editors.
With skin as white as alabaster and red, upswept hair shining in the bright
fluorescent lights, she was, amid the physical shabbiness of the motley band of
newspaper types, a fresh rose in a sea of weeds. Having spent the last two
years of the war as a copy "boy," a direct effect of the manpower
shortage, she had forgone college in an effort to break into the newspaper
business. The war had caused an imbalance in the sexual mix and she had seized
the opportunity to storm the male fortress. By the time the boys started
homeward from Europe and the Pacific, she had served her apprenticeship on the
copy bench and was already seeing her occasional by-line over reviews of the "B"
pictures.

It was not uncommon for busy eyes to rise as she passed
through and soon he was joining in the staring and fantasizing in the trail of
her body as she moved.