Joe Steele (13 page)

And the four typewritten pages were the missing arson inspector's report on the fire that gutted the Executive Mansion and killed Franklin D. Roosevelt in the summer of 1932. So Mike could make a pretty good guess about who'd sent it to him. But it would only be a guess—he couldn't prove a thing. That had to be just the way the clerk in the Albany Fire Department wanted it.

Mike dove into the report headfirst. When he came up again on the other side, he was blowing like a whale. No wonder the arson report had vanished from the file! It didn't quite say the fire
had
been set. It mentioned the possibility of liquor bottles or rubbing alcohol helping the flames spread so fast. But it sure implied that the conflagration and the way it engulfed the old building weren't accidental.

Whistling tunelessly between his teeth, Mike picked up the report and took it into Stan's office. He dropped it on the editor's desk. Stan was on the phone. He glanced down at the report. Then he took a longer look and stiffened. “Al?” he said. “Listen, lemme call you back in a little while.” He hung up. Glaring at Mike, he asked, “Where the hell'd you get
this
?”

“A little bird dropped it in the mailbox,” Mike said.

“Some little bird. Jesus!” Stan went through the report faster than Mike had. When he looked up again, he said, “What do you want to do with it?” Then he took a pint of Old Crow out of his own desk drawer, swigged, and offered Mike the bourbon. Mike drank, too. He needed it.

“I want to get it out there,” he said when he could breathe again—straight bourbon on an empty stomach in midmorning wasn't something he did every day. “People have the right to know how Roosevelt died. When you add in what my brother heard the morning before—”

Stan held up a hand like a traffic cop. “You can't write that, on account you can't prove it connects. Your brother didn't hear what's-his-face go, ‘Okay, cook Roosevelt tonight.' He just heard him say, ‘Take care of it'—whatever
it
is.” He slammed the report with his fist. “Not even all the way sure it was arson. Probably, the guy says, but not for sure.”

“Even probably is dynamite.” The Old Crow seemed to make Mike's wits work double-quick. “How about this? I write about the report, and I make sure I leave the probably in. Then I write about how Franklin Roosevelt and Joe Steele were locking horns for the nomination summer before last, how Roosevelt was edging ahead and might've won if he didn't burn to a crisp. I won't say that I think Joe Steele and his merry men had anything to do with the fire, but you'll be able to read between the lines if you want to.”

Stan studied him. Then the editor took another knock from the bottle, a bigger one this time. “No matter how careful you write it, you're gonna be in deep shit as soon as it comes out. So will I.”

“I won't make any accusations. If you think I do, you'll take 'em out,” Mike said.

“Even so,” Stan said. “Joe Steele and his boys, they've got a memory like an elephant for anybody who does 'em dirt. And you're already on their list from before, don't forget.”

“So?” Mike shrugged. “If we let 'em scare us out of doing our job, they've already won, right?”

Stan cast a longing look at the flat-sided bottle of Old Crow, but didn't drink again. “Easy to talk brave when you aren't really putting anything on
the line,” he remarked, not quite apropos of nothing. He eyed the bourbon one more time, then sighed and shook his head. “Go write the goddamn story. Maybe I'll run it, or maybe I'll can it. Right now, I've got no idea. Go on—get the hell outa here.”

As Mike left, he saw the editor pick up the telephone.
Getting back to his bookie or whoever that was,
he thought. He ran a sheet of paper into the Underwood upright and pounded away. Words flowed out of him. This wasn't hard labor, the way the brokerage story had been. If Someone put him on earth, it was to do something like this.

He laid the story on Stan's desk after stashing a carbon where it wouldn't be easy to find. An hour later, the managing editor walked by his desk. He nodded and raised his right thumb. “Now the fun starts,” he said.

“About time,” Mike answered. He wondered if he meant it. Well, he'd get the chance to find out.

When Lazar Kagan called Charlie to the White House, it might be anything. When Stas Mikoian wanted to meet with him, what came from that was more likely than not to be interesting. And when Vince Scriabin told him to get his tail down to the President's residence, chances were Joe Steele was steamed at him.

Charlie knew why Joe Steele was steamed, too, though he figured he would do better to seem taken by surprise. So when the man they called the Hammer slammed his fist down on a copy of the
New York Post
from three days earlier and growled, “Have you seen this crap from your brother?”, Charlie just shook his head. Scriabin shoved the paper across his desk. “Well, look at it, then.”

It didn't come right out and accuse Joe Steele of roasting marshmallows in the flames while Franklin Roosevelt sizzled. Then again, you didn't need to be Lord Peter Wimsey to see what Mike was driving at.

“I don't know what you want me to do about it,” Charlie said when he got done. “Mike is Mike, and I'm me. I didn't have anything to do with this.” That was true, and then again it wasn't. If Charlie hadn't overheard Scriabin in that diner, and if he hadn't told Mike about it, his brother wouldn't have been able to invite the people who read his story to connect the dots.

Scriabin remained coldly furious. Like the man he worked for, he was
scarier for not making a show of losing his temper. “I know you didn't,” he said now. “You'd be sorry if you did.” Charlie gulped, and hoped it didn't show. Scriabin went on, “Your brother had better think twice before he libels the President of the United States.”

“There's no libel in this,” Charlie said.

“Saying things you know to be untrue, saying them with malice, is libel even when you say them about a public figure,” Scriabin insisted.

“There's no libel,” Charlie said once more. “He quotes the arson inspector's report. That says the fire might have been set or it might not. He says that Joe Steele was just about sure of the nomination after Roosevelt died. Both those things are true. But he doesn't say anywhere that Joe Steele had anything to do with starting the fire.”

Vince Scriabin stared at him, pudgy face hard as a stone. “I know he is your brother. I make allowances for that. I know your own stories have been more fair and balanced toward this administration. I also make allowances for that. But if your brother writes another piece that is so monumentally prejudiced against the President and everything he's working to accomplish, there will be no allowances left to make. Do you understand me?”

“I hear you,” Charlie answered.

“All right,” Scriabin said. “Make sure your brother understands me, too. Have you got that?”

“Oh, yes.” Charlie nodded. “You're coming in loud and clear.”

“Good.” Vince Scriabin spat the word out. “I do not want anyone to have any doubts whatsoever about how we view this . . . trash. Now get the hell out of here.”

Charlie made his exit. As if he were walking out of a police station, he was glad he
could
make his exit. The back of his shirt was wet with sweat, and it hadn't sprung from Washington humidity. He'd never had that narrow-escape feeling walking out of the White House before. He hoped to heaven he never did again.

The sun wasn't over the yardarm yet. Charlie didn't give a damn. He ducked into the nearest bar and ordered himself a double bourbon. If anything would smooth him out of his jitters, that ought to do it.

“There you go, sonny,” said the white-haired man two stools down
from him. “Two or three more of those and you'll be a man before your mother.”

By the way he talked and by the empty glasses on the bar in front of him, he'd already had at least two or three more.
What the hell business is it of yours?
Charlie started to ask. But then he recognized the other barfly. “Mr. Vice President!” he exclaimed.

John Nance Garner nodded. “You got me, sonny,” he said, the bourbon only thickening his Texas drawl. “And a hell of a git you got. I was Speaker of the House before Joe Steele tapped me. Remember? Speaker! That was a real job, by Jesus! Not like this one.” He nodded to the bartender. “Fill me up again, Roy.”

“Comin' up, Cactus Jack.” The colored man made him another tall bourbon. John L. Lewis had called Garner a poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man. Charlie didn't know about the other attributes, but drink whiskey Garner could.

“What's wrong with being Vice President?” Charlie asked. “You're a heartbeat away from the White House. That's what everybody says—a heartbeat away.”

“A heartbeat away, and further'n the moon,” Garner said. “Thing with being Vice President is, you don't
do
anything. You sit there an' grow moss, like I'm doin' here. Sure got nothin' better to do. I tell you, bein' Vice President ain't worth a bucket of warm piss.”

“What would you do if you were President? How do you like the job Joe Steele is doing?” Charlie hadn't expected to run into Garner, but he'd take advantage of it now that he had.

The Vice President's eyes were narrow to begin with. They gimleted more now. “You won't get me to say anything bad about him, kiddo,” he replied. “I may be drunk, but I ain't that drunk—or that stupid. He's a man you don't want to get on the wrong side of.”

“Really? I never would have guessed,” Charlie said, deadpan.

For a second, Garner took that literally. Then he chuckled and coughed, shifting all the smoker's phlegm in his chest. “That's right. You're one of those reporter bastards. You know all about Joe Steele, or you reckon you do.” He chuckled and coughed some more. The horrible sound
made Charlie want to swear off cigarettes for life. “Yeah, you reckon you do—but you'll find out.”

*   *   *

T
he proceedings against the Supreme Court Four opened that autumn. They opened suddenly, in fact, before a military tribunal, only a few days after J. Edgar Hoover—that man again!—announced an arrest in the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby more than two years earlier. Charlie wondered if the timing of the two events was a coincidence. A cynical newspaperman? Him? Even he laughed at himself.

He wondered about the fellow J. Edgar Hoover arrested, too. Bruno Hauptmann was a German in the USA illegally. He had a criminal record back in the
Vaterland
. Considering how Joe Steele felt about Adolf Hitler, couldn't he be a sucker who got caught in a net way bigger than he was?

And, considering that the four justices were accused of plotting with the Nazis, couldn't arresting a German for the Lindbergh kidnapping be set up to show that you couldn't trust a kraut no matter what—and that you couldn't trust any Americans who had much to do with krauts? Again, Charlie didn't know about that. He couldn't prove it. But he did some more wondering.

He did that wondering very quietly, either by himself or with Esther. None of it got into the bull sessions that political reporters had among themselves or with the big wheels they covered. Not even liberal doses of bourbon made his tongue slip. He noticed he might not be the only one who wasn't saying everything he might have had on his mind. It was a careful time. Everybody seemed to do his best to walk on eggshells without breaking them.

Charlie also didn't do any wondering that Mike could hear or read. Mike, of course, could get ideas on his own, but Charlie didn't want to give him any. A small but noisy segment of the press hated Joe Steele and everything he did. To those folks, Mike was a hero, a man who'd uncovered secrets and pulled the blankets away from dark plots.

Joe Steele's backers tagged Mike for a hateful, lying skunk. Anyone would think they'd listened to Vince Scriabin, or something. And the vast majority of Americans paid no attention to the name of Mike Sullivan.
Times were still tough. They tried to get by from one day to the next, and didn't worry about anything much past Tuesday's supper or the month's rent.

The Attorney General was a tough-talking Polack prosecutor from Chicago named Andy Wyszynski. He wasn't leery of taking on spectacular cases. He'd been part of the legal team that tried to convict Belva Gaertner when she shot her lover. Belva not only walked, but one of the reporters wrote a hit play about her. Wyszynski's comment after the verdict was, “Juries are full of jerks.”

From everything Charlie had seen, Wyszynski wasn't wrong, even if the crack didn't endear him to the sob sisters. He wasn't the endearing sort. A big, fleshy man, he had a face like a clenched fist. Like Vince Scriabin and like Joe Steele himself, he wasn't a man you wanted mad at you.

He'd learned a thing or three from that Roaring Twenties trial. Then, the prosecution let the defense set the agenda. They thought they had an open-and-shut case. As a matter of fact, they did, but Belva's lawyer wouldn't let them shut it.

This time, Wyszynski rolled out the heavy artillery before the military judges were chosen. He showed off for the newspapers. He had all kinds of things to show off, too. Wires back and forth between Berlin and Washington. Letters in German on swastika stationery with generals' illegible signatures. Stacks of swastika-bedizened Reichsmarks, some still in bank wrappers with German writing in Gothic letters on them. Bank transactions showing Reichsmarks converted into dollars. All kinds of good stuff.

Like the rest of the Washington press corps, Charlie wrote stories about the goodies Wyszynski showed off. Among themselves, the reporters were more skeptical. “In a real trial, a lot of that shit wouldn't even get admitted,” said one who'd done a lot of crime stories. “In this military tribunal thing, though, who the hell knows?”

“How come it isn't a real trial?” another man asked. “On account of they're scared they'd lose it if it was one?”

“There's more to it than that,” Charlie said. “They tried treason cases with military tribunals during the Civil War, so they've got some precedent.”

The other reporter looked at him. “You'd know that stuff. You're the teacher's pet, right? It's your bad, bad brother who keeps getting paddled.”

“Hey, fuck you, Bill,” Charlie said. “You think I'm the teacher's pet, we can step outside and talk about it.”

Bill started to get up from his barstool. Another reporter put a hand on his arm. “Take it easy. Charlie's okay.”

“Nobody who has anything good to say about that lying so-and-so in the White House is okay, you ask me,” Bill said.

“Well, who asked you? Sit back down and have another drink. You sound like you could use one.”

Having another drink struck Charlie as a good idea, too. It often did. After he got half of it down, he said, “Even if it is a military tribunal, I think it'll be interesting. They'll have to let the press in. If they let the press in, they'll have to give the justices lawyers and let 'em speak their piece. And when they do that, all bets are off. Those guys were all lawyers themselves before they were judges. Probably fifty-fifty they can talk their way out of everything.”

“
You
say that?” Bill sounded as if he didn't trust his ears.

“Why wouldn't I?” Charlie returned.

“'Cause . . . Ah, shit. Maybe I had you wrong.”

“This round's on me, boys!” Charlie sang out. People whooped and pounded him on the back. He went on, “I'll do the same thing next time Bill admits he's wrong, too. That oughta be—oh, I dunno, about 1947. Or 1948.”

“Up yours, Sullivan,” Bill said. But he let Charlie buy him a drink.

*   *   *

Y
ou could hold a military tribunal anywhere. Military courts, by the nature of things, had to be portable. Andy Wyszynski—or perhaps Joe Steele—chose to hold this one in the lobby of the District Court Building on Indiana Avenue. The lobby gave reporters and photographers and newsreel cameramen plenty of room to work. Sure enough, this proceeding would get as much publicity as the government could give it.

In front of the District Court Building's somewhat beat-up classical façade stood a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Charlie pointed to it on the way
in. “Betcha that statue's another reason they're trying the justices here. Remember how Joe Steele went on and on about Lincoln and treason and
habeas corpus
—I mean, no
habeas corpus
—during the Civil War?”

“Sure do.” Louie Pappas nodded. “Betcha you're right.” The dead cigar in the photographer's mouth twitched every time he talked.

Up the broad flight of stairs they went. The walls of the lobby were of tan plaster. The floor was marble. The officers of the tribunal had already taken their places behind a table on a dais. The chairman was a Navy officer. A neat sign announced his name: C
APTAIN
S
PRUANCE
. The other three military judges belonged to the Army: Colonel Marshall, Major Bradley, and Major Eisenhower. Each man had a microphone in front of his place, no doubt for the benefit of the newsreels.

Attorney General Wyszynski sat at the prosecutors' table, drinking coffee and talking in a low voice with an aide. Two lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union muttered to each other at the defense table. One looked quite snappy; the other wore the loudest checked suit Charlie'd ever seen. Of the Supreme Court Four there was as yet no sign.

More reporters and photographers filed in to fill their assigned sections. “We will begin at ten o'clock sharp,” Captain Spruance said, his voice soft even with a mike. He looked more like a minister or a professor than a military man. Colonel Marshall had that professorial look, too. Spruance went on, “No one from the press will be admitted after that. And we must have silence from the observers. Anyone creating a disturbance will be ejected and will not be allowed to return for the duration of the proceeding.”