“Right.” Wayne was ecstatic.
“Then call Bristol-Myers and confirm that they had these people in their employ. Get some quotes on what kind of workers they were. Then call the Stanley cops and see if they’ve got anything new.”
Alone again, Walker returned to his work.
The saga began in the late 1960s, and was stoked by the heat of the protest era. The Lewises and the Sayers woman were students together at the University of California’s Berkeley campus.
Always active in the school’s underground political movements, they were members of Students for a Democratic Society, and later left school to join the revolutionary People’s Army.
The People’s Army has a history of violence going back at least to 1968, when members planted a bomb in a Boston telephone company rest room. The group later claimed responsibility for the destruction of a Southern Bell transmitting station near Greenville, S.C., and for the bombing of a Public Service Company power plant near Denver, Colo.
The Army attacked anything that smacked of “establishment” values. By 1969 the threat of bombs had forced added security around office buildings and field sites around the country.
The FBI, despite its fabled image, was totally frustrated in its early efforts to capture members of the group. In an era when criminals are more often caught by science than by manpower, the People’s Army continued to elude the federal net.
The Lewises and the Sayers woman were billed in FBI posters as true criminals now. They allegedly robbed a bank in Los Angeles in late 1969, along with two other Army members now dead. About $25,000 was taken in that noonday holdup, and four people were shot when a guard tried to stop them. The guard, Albert Hook, 57, was killed.
For a time, the Army members seemed to disappear. One FBI official theorized that a string of “safe houses” had been established, where they could hide without fear of detection.
Not one member of the group was arrested between the bank robbery in November 1969 and the looting of FBI files in Pennsylvania almost two years later. At first that seemed to be the work of one man, Robert Ordway, a file clerk in the Philadelphia field office.
Ordway, who had worked for the Bureau for seven years and had top secret clearances, took some files and the journal of an agent, apparently with the intention of leaking the documents to the press. The files, and especially the diary of the agent, who had recently died, were described by FBI spokesmen as “very sensitive.”
But when Ordway was arrested two days later, only part of the file was recovered. The FBI refused to say whether the dead agent’s diary had been among the recovered items, and no hint was ever revealed as to what it might contain.
Ordway, then 32, suffered appendicitis while being held in a prison hospital ward. Complications developed in the operation that followed, and he died February 1, 1972, without ever going to trial.
That smells, Walker thought. And for once, he wasn’t thinking about his prose. The Ordway deal smelled from the first line.
Kanin came over, flushed with the glow of handling a big one. “How much more?”
“Another take, maybe two.”
“Hurry it up. We’re getting tight.”
“I know what the deadlines are.”
From across the room, Jerry Wayne called, “Hey, Walker, I got Roland Simon on the line, madder than hell.”
“Switch him over.” As he strapped on his headset, he said to Kanin, “I may have some adds to chase in.”
“Make it fast,” Kanin said.
Roland Simon came on the line.
“Goddammit, Walker…”
“Careful, Mr. Simon, I’m quoting you. It’s been a long time.”
“Not nearly long enough,” Simon said.
“Look, I’m on deadline. Are you going to talk to me or not?”
“I’m asking you, man to man, to hold that story till we catch the Sayers girl.”
“No way, Simon. Not a chance.”
“Walker…”
“You’re wasting your breath and my time, and time’s one thing I’ve got no more of right now. Are you going to confirm some facts for me or not?”
“I’m not confirming anything.”
“Then we’ve got nothing to talk about. Lucky I don’t need you, Simon. The clips here at the
Tribune
have everything I need.”
“Listen, I’ll say this one time and goddammit you’d better listen. There’s nothing I can do to keep you from publishing that story. But if you do, things are going to get unpleasant as hell.” He tried to temper the threat. “For all of us.”
“That’s a gorgeous quote, Simon. You always were good for a line or two to liven things up.”
“Your profession may not have any restrictions on it, but you sure profess to have some ethics. Now you tell me, Walker, what are the ethics of jeopardizing an investigation before the suspect is arrested?”
“That won’t work either, Simon. The press has no interest either way in your investigation. The
Tribune
has no stake in whether you catch the Sayers woman or not. We just report what’s happening. But I’ll have to argue ethics with you some other time. I will say this, Simon. If you think the Sayers woman doesn’t already know what happened in Stanley tonight, you’re crazy. She hasn’t eluded you all these years by being stupid.”
Simon was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was calm, flat. “Here’s my statement, Walker. You ready?”
“Shoot.”
“The FBI attempted to capture Joanne Sayers, suspected bank robber and murder suspect, by drawing a curtain of secrecy around the Lewis killings for forty-eight hours. It was hoped that…scratch that. All news media agreed to cooperate with the forty-eight-hour embargo, and to allow the FBI to release the facts at a Monday news briefing. Only the
Tribune
refused to go along.”
Walker looked up at the clock. “Is that it?”
“One more line,” Simon said. “You can quote me on this, and Walker, I’ll expect to see this just as I give it to you. In my opinion, the
Tribune,
and particularly its reporter, Dalton Walker, bears the responsibility for whatever happens to the Sayers girl, in the event we do not take her quietly.”
“Good shot, Simon. Let me ask you a few things.”
But Simon had hung up.
Kanin came over, foaming at the mouth. Walker put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and banged out what Simon had told him. “This should go in as an add. Fairly high up.”
Kanin frowned when he read it.
“Come on, Joe, show some guts. The goddamn guy’s bluffing,” Walker said.
“It’s a pretty good bluff. This’ll have to go up to the old man.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, here…” Walker put another sheet in his machine and typed out a few more sentences.
Simon’s statement failed to acknowledge that the
Tribune
initially tipped off the FBI on the fugitives’ whereabouts. A
Tribune
reporter had been working on the circus tent fire for more than two months, and it was this reporter who passed along photographs of the suspects to the FBI early last week.
Donovan wouldn’t like that. Walker paused for a moment, then went on.
Also contradicting the agent’s statement was the behavior of Simon and other agents at the death scene. The FBI didn’t ask for the cooperation of the press. The agents didn’t share anything with the press, and it was only when Simon learned that the
Tribune
had the story anyway that he claimed otherwise.
Kanin read it over Walker’s shoulder. “You’re a mean prick, Walker,” he said, smiling.
“It gets us off the hook.”
“Yeah, it does that.” Kanin looked up at the clock. They were right on deadline. “How much more?”
“As much as I can get in. Five, ten graphs.”
“Make it fast. What doesn’t make Saturday we’ll run back Sunday.”
Again Walker wrote.
For a time after Ordway’s death, the secret documents dropped from sight. Then, in September 1972, more than seven months after Ordway’s death, the
New York Times
published excerpts from the files, revealing how former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had used his influence to stop probes of organized crime figures. Some of the backstage struggles between Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy, former attorney general, were brought out in detail.Both Hoover and Kennedy were dead by then, and the revelations, though sensational, came about almost in a vacuum. All the alleged abuses had happened in the past, and while the
Times
reports triggered outcries in Washington for FBI reform, no new information came out of the closed hearings between members of Congress and the new Bureau hierarchy.In January 1973, the Washington
Post
published a story, compiled from the files and from interviews with two People’s Army members. Excerpts from the dead agent’s diary were published, and a picture showing the closed journal was used with the story. Again, the report detailed alleged FBI dirty tricks, but the reporter wasn’t allowed to see the last part of the diary, which the People’s Army “general” said would be released later.That later never came. Less than a month after the
Post
story, FBI agents found a central Army hideout, a remote cabin in upstate New York. There…
His telephone rang.
“Walker? Roland Simon here.”
“Yes, Mr. Simon?”
“I want to retract what I said earlier. Publish what you want. The FBI will have no comment.”
“The FBI has already had a comment.”
“Well, I’m taking that comment back. It was made in the heat of the moment.”
“I thought they taught you guys not to make comments in the heat of the moment.”
“Walker, do you always have to be difficult?”
Kanin was standing over his shoulder, reading the last take and motioning with his hands that they were out of time.
“Sorry, Simon, I’ve got to go.”
“Walker…”
But now it was his turn to hang up.
“Listen,” he said to Kanin, “I’ve got a graph or two to finish, then one more add from Simon.”
“We’ll have to cut it off there.”
Walker wrote.
…agents fought a fierce battle with Army members inside.
Five men and one woman were killed in the gunfire. Joanne Sayers wasn’t in the house. Neither were George or Barbara Lewis.
“That’s it!” Kanin shouted. “We’re out of time.”
A copy boy plucked the last take out of Walker’s hands. Walker rolled a new sheet into the typewriter, slugged it “insert two death” and wrote:
Simon later called and retracted his statement. “Publish what you want,” he said. “The FBI will have no comment.”
He said his earlier statement was made “in the heat of the moment,” and should be disregarded.
Walker ripped the page out of his typewriter and hurried over to Kanin. “Let’s chase this in, right below the Simon insert.”
Kanin read it and marked it for the backshop. “You really are a prick, Walker. I guess that’s what makes you so good, your ability to make people look like assholes. Helluva piece.”
Walker was reading Kanin’s dupes. “Not too well written.”
“Who gives a damn? It’s in and that’s what counts. You’ve got six hours before the Sunday city, so you can sit here and fiddle with it all you want. Write me a masterpiece for Sunday, Walker.”
“Things like this: ‘Joanne Sayers wasn’t in the house. Neither were George or Barbara Lewis.’”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s obvious that they weren’t in
that
house. They were just killed last night.”
“Don’t you think it’s important to remind the reader?”
“There are better ways of doing it.”
“Then be my guest. Write me something stunning for Sunday.”
“Joe?”
Kanin looked up at him.
“Go to hell,” Walker said.
Walker did fiddle with it, taking all six hours to work up an entirely new piece for Sunday. He wrote a story half again as long, using some of Jerry Wayne’s notes to give the kid’s signer some legitimacy. And the Sunday piece read well, but the more he looked at his rush job, the better it looked to him. The writing wasn’t anything special, but Kanin was right: he had gotten the facts in, and had them straight. It had been a long time since he had to write under pressure like that. He felt good. He felt like part of the paper, and it had been a while since Dalton Walker had felt like part of anything. He remembered something an editor had once told him. A really good reporter can write hard news almost as well under deadline as he can with all the time in the world.
Maybe there was some hope for him yet. More likely, he was just riding the crest of a big one, and would come down hard in the morning. He gathered in Jerry Wayne, who was rereading the piece for the tenth time, took him to a bar up the street and got him soused on three bottles of beer.
The day was going fast by the time he got home. His story was everywhere, screaming at people from every news box on every corner. The telephone was ringing as he came in. That figured.
But no, it was Diana Yoder of the Rockettes. “Congratulations. Is that what they call a good story?”
“It’ll do for now. How’d you see it already? I didn’t know the
Tribune
got over to New York.”
“They’ve got it on TV. They’re attributing everything to your paper, so I figured that must be your story. Happy?”
“Delirious. How can I make up for running out on you last night?”
“No apologies necessary. I can see for myself how important it was.”
The illusion of importance. Even she could see it. Only Walker knew that the story had no real importance. The screaming headline, the coal-black type: none of it mattered, except to four people, two of whom were dead.
He was starting down already. “Let’s go somewhere,” he said.
“I’ll come to your place,” she said. “I’ll bring some food we can eat there.”
“I don’t know. My place is pretty grim.”
“I think I’ll survive. Tell me how I find it.”
He told her, and afterward he settled back and savored the day. She had saved it for him, lifted him just by being there. He savored her coming, and the prospect of an evening in. At last he knew that he could move on to something else. The death of an unnamed little girl would haunt him no more. Melinda Baker, Joanne Sayers, whatever the hell her name was, was the FBI’s problem. He had it in print, and now he could forget about it.