The Henderson Equation (22 page)

Nick opened the late morning edition of the
Chronicle
he had taken from the pile in Myra's foyer and turned to the editorial section,
rereading Bonville's editorial to assure himself that his remembered dream had
not, somehow, breached reality.

Arriving at the
Chronicle
's offices, he walked
through the half-empty city room, looking for Gunderstein, who apparently
hadn't yet arrived. Then he proceeded toward his glass cage.

Miss Baumgartner followed him in, balancing a cup of
steaming coffee. Sitting down at his desk, he felt the weight of his body
falling, a hint of his fatigue. Through the glass he watched Madison's beefy
back slowly turn as the man's clairvoyance responded to Nick's glance.

"Martha Gates wants to see you," Miss Baumgartner
said.

"Not again," he said, remembering yesterday's
episode with irritation.

"I think you'd better," Miss Baumgartner said,
investing the matter with rare importance. He nodded and began thumbing through
the
New York Times,
reading the headlines and making mental notes of
stories of mutual interest that needed follow-up. The
Times
gave only
two paragraphs, buried in obscurity, to Henderson's speech. Such comparison was
unworthy of the
Chronicle,
or so he had lectured his staff. After all,
it was expected that the
Chronicle
had always had the beat on the
Times,
especially in terms of Washington news.

Surely some editor, like himself, had had to make the
decision to treat the Henderson speech routinely. At the
Times,
too,
decisions had to be made on assignments, layout, pictures, relationships of
stories to one another, the myriad of daily details. He could almost sense the
exact pitch of Sulzberger's temper by the way in which the stories were
treated. Objectivity! He snickered at the word, recalling old Mr. Parker's
obsession.

Looking up, he saw Henry Landau wave, then squinted to
observe the time on the large clock in the city room. The editorial conference
would soon convene. He dreaded facing Bonville and his pouting bitterness,
surely primed by a night of brooding. When he turned, Martha Gates was already
seated, her long blonde hair unruly and lustreless. Her eyes were puffy and she
sucked nervously on a cigarette.

"What's with you?" he asked impatiently,
deliberately indifferent, keeping her at a distance.

He watched her hands shake as she handed him some copy. It
was badly typed, he noted. He read it quickly.

"Christ," Nick exclaimed, "her husband has
blown his brains out." He had not heard the story, which he might have
picked up on the radio while he was shaving if he had followed his normal
habits that morning.

"Look, Mr. Gold," Martha Gates said, her voice
cracking, holding back hysteria. "I followed careful procedures. I made
the inquiries. I spoke to Mrs. Ryan. She was very indignant. I could see the
trail of denial. I spoke to Mr. Kee and his girl friend. I spoke to the hotel
in Puerto Rico. I spoke to the White House Chief of Staff." He watched her
thin throat constrict.

"Take it easy, Martha," Nick urged. He handed her
his coffee which she held in her shaking hands. She lifted it to her lips,
spilling a few drops on her dress.

"I even talked to Mr. Ryan. He sounded very calm. As
you can see he's an associate professor of history at American University. He
sounded calm, very pleasant actually. He said he had reimbursed Mr. Kee for the
tickets and the hotel bill for himself and his wife. He told me it had never
meant to be paid for them, that it was merely an easy way to handle the
bookkeeping. He said there was absolutely no conflict of interest and, after
all, his wife was only a personal assistant to the First Lady, not a career
person, and wouldn't we please not use the story since it was all a
misunderstanding." She paused, emptied the coffee cup, and relit her
cigarette, her fingers shaking, barely able to find the cylinder's tip.
"Then I got a call from a psychiatrist, a Dr. Petersen, who said that
Professor Ryan could simply not take the kind of pressure he was being
submitted to and would I please not run the story. I told him that wasn't my
decision; I was merely tracking down a lead. He asked me where I got the lead
and I told him I couldn't tell him. Then I asked the doctor what Professor Ryan
was suffering from and he wouldn't tell me. Before he hung up he said to me
that I would have to face the responsibility for the consequences if the story
ran." Her shoulders began to shake. "I feel responsible, Mr. Gold. I
feel it was my hand on the trigger."

Nick felt his stomach knot as he looked at the emotionally
decimated girl. Quickly walking around his desk, he lifted her to her feet,
leading her unsteady body into the inner conference room, shielding her from
the city room eyes. He could see Miss Baumgartner watching them. In the
conference room, Martha collapsed in uncontrolled tears. Miss Baumgartner
knocked lightly and brought in a box of Kleenex. Looking up at the harlequined
face, the girl smiled briefly through her tears and reached into the tissue
box. Nick hated watching women cry. It seemed such a biological contradiction
to those who pushed the myth of sexual equality. Because he did not cry, he
always felt stronger, superior, in the presence of hysteria. After a while the
girl tried to speak, but convulsive sobs clogged her windpipe.

"Calm down," he said firmly. The Ryan suicide was
hardly uncommon, easy to fathom. Fear of exposure, the cracked façade, the
unmasked guilt. You could never tell where the mud would splatter, where the
bullets would ricochet. Like a doctor to whom death was commonplace, he had
long ago steeled himself against such pain. He had helped many a young reporter
pass this Rubicon.

"How was I to know he was a sick man?" she said
finally, her convulsions ebbing.

"Would it have mattered if you had known?" Nick
asked gently.

She looked momentarily confused, her eyes darting about the
room. Finally they settled on Nick again. "I guess not," she said.

"Are you responsible for the man's illness?"

"No."

"Is it not a clear-cut violation of the code of ethics
at the White House to accept gifts from anyone who has a political
motive?"

"Of course."

"And is it not true that if Mr. Kee had ingratiated
himself in the White House circle it would have meant some political profit for
him, however subtle?"

"That was the premise of the story."

"All you were asking for was confirmation. If you
hadn't found it, do you think we would have run the story?"

"I feel certain that you wouldn't have."

"That is an absolute discipline of this
newspaper," Nick said. He sensed his own pomposity. "We do not go
about destroying people for the joy of it." He thought of Henderson, saw a
brief flicker in his blue eyes, felt an errant pang of guilt. Would she see
through his self-righteousness? "You did not destroy this man. You are not
responsible. When people accept public roles, they become public property. They
no longer belong to themselves. They are our employees. Who do you think pays
their salaries?" He did not wait for her to answer, his impatience
accelerating. "Do we pay them to receive gifts from foreign lobbyists with
special interests? The ball is in their court, not ours. There should never be
anything personal in it."

"Maybe I'm not hard enough," she said.
"Maybe this isn't the job for a woman after all. Yesterday I felt so
confident." She blew her nose, its tip reddened, then she wiped away the
moisture under her eyes. "The man had a record of depression," she
said. "I called the psychiatrist again when I heard the news. He really
laced into me. Said we were all callous, unfeeling rats. He really knew how to
stimulate my guilt."

"Psychiatry's a lot like the newspaper business. An art,
not a science."

He watched her repair her makeup. She was under control now
as she peeked into the mirror of her compact. "Now you go back and rewrite
the story."

"It's pretty botched up, isn't it?"

"Yes it is."

She looked up from the mirror. "You would have run it,
wouldn't you, Mr. Gold?" she asked.

"If it was confirmed."

"And now?"

"Now the story of the suicide makes the confirmation
moot. It would seem to me that the premise of the story is the newspaper
investigation triggering the suicide. Only be careful that you don't go
overboard on the original accusation. Let the dead man have his denial."

"But the wrongdoing is there by implication."

"Yes, it is. And if the poor devil hadn't pulled the
trigger, it would hardly have made a really important story. Now it has page
one possibilities." She stood up and held out her hand. He took it,
feeling a squeeze of gratefulness.

"Thanks, Mr. Gold." Her narrow cold hands felt
fragile. Before she left the room she turned, "I'm afraid I still feel
like a shit," she said. "Hell, I wouldn't like to have someone poking
around with my secrets."

"Come now, Martha. Surely a pretty girl like you has
no dark secrets," he said stupidly.

She looked puzzled. "Everybody has secrets," she
said as she left the room.

He sat for a moment, looking down at the yellow pad on
which he had been doodling. He had been making penmanship swirls, in the
prescribed way of the schools of the thirties. Perhaps he was secretly yearning
to go back in time again to childhood. That would be one way to escape the
present. Professor Ryan had chosen another.

Before he could stand up, Henry Landau came in followed by
Bonville, Peterson, and Milton Palmer, the editorial cartoonist. They took
their accustomed places around the table, all except Bonville, in whose place
Nick had inadvertently sat during his meeting with Martha Gates. He refused to
move, conscious of having set up some further imbalance. It was odd the way
people staked out territory. Bonville sat on the unaccustomed chair at the
other side of the table, looking different from that angle, as if he were
experiencing some metabolic change.

"Hear about the Ryan thing?" Landau asked.

"Hear about it? I was just bathed in it," Nick
answered.

"Terrible thing," Peterson said. "A real
tragedy."

"Might be an idea for an editorial in there
somewhere."

"It would sound self-serving. I don't think we have to
beat our chests," Bonville said. In his present position at the table, he
looked even more hunched, the paleness taking on a yellow cast.

"You're right, Bonville," Nick said. He was
conscious of smiling broadly, an attempt at placation. He could see that
Bonville was still fuming over the emasculation of this morning's editorial.

"I've been reading the Henderson speech,"
Bonville said suddenly. Both Peterson and Landau reacted swiftly, their eyes
turning toward Nick's, then downward to their yellow pads.

"Oh, shit," Nick said. He drew long X marks over
his penmanship swirls.

With his usual insensitivity, Bonville continued.
"He's come up with a lot of interesting statistics. I think it deserves
another push. The program could be lost unless we give it massive
backing."

"We just gave it a big push," Landau said flatly,
obviously taking sides with Nick. So Henry's in line again, Nick thought,
grateful.

"Yes, but you see, the timing is essential. There are
attempts on the Hill to keep it pigeonholed, prevent it from reaching the
floor, making it a political football," Bonville argued.

"Henderson's identification with it makes it implicit.
He's wrapped himself in it like an American flag," Landau pressed.

"True. But it must be taken out of the political
context. We need the kind of universal medical plan that the bill provides. The
costs of medical care are going beyond the pale, actually beyond the reach of most
people. I know it could have great political benefit to Henderson. But that's
not for us to judge. The bill stands by itself as a monumental piece of
legislation and deserves our strongest support."

Nick felt trapped by Bonville's logic. His palms began to
sweat again. He wondered if Bonville had been approached by Henderson or his
people in the last twenty-four hours. "It's too close on the heels of the
last editorial," Nick said lamely.

"It gives me a hell of an idea for a cartoon,"
Milt Palmer said. Since his heart attack, his ears perked up at the subject of
health and medicine. He started sketching on his pad.

"But," Bonville continued, "it's a subject
that we're apparently all agreed on."

"I think we should hold fire for a while," Nick
said softly, his voice losing timbre. He could feel the precariousness of his
position, not wanting to appear arbitrary. Where was his strength today?
"I want to keep the
Chronicle
politically neutral on the question
of Henderson's political future," Nick said.

"Why do that?" Palmer said, still sketching.
"He's a hell of a guy."

"That's beside the point."

"That
is
the point, Nick," Palmer said,
ripping the cartoon off his pad. It showed Henderson in traction on a hospital
bed. Beside him stood a doctor with his pockets filled with dollars. The
caption read: "And for Another Thousand We'll Take You Out of
Traction."

Peterson chuckled. "Not bad, Milt."

"Not bad? It's great. You guys and your fucking
understatements."

"Let's move it up for next week," Nick said.

"I'd rather see it run now," Bonville said.
"It would have more impact, more logic, coming on the heels of Henderson's
speech."

"No," Nick said, "next week."

"Why, Nick?" Palmer asked, his moon face benign
and innocent, his good nature infectious.

"Gunderstein's tracking down a story that could be
damaging to Henderson." He was trying to be casual, almost indifferent. He
wondered if they could sense his agitation.