Joe Steele (7 page)

Joe Steele nodded to himself, as if that didn't surprise him one bit. “And I had a better life,” he said. “I managed to study law, and to start my own practice. I said what I thought needed saying about how things were in my home town. Some people there thought the things I was saying deserved to be said. They talked me into running for the city council, and then for Congress, and Fresno sent me—me, a son of immigrants!—to Washington.”

More applause. Some Representatives and Senators were self-made men, but there as anywhere old family and old money didn't hurt.

“When I look at the country now, I see it is not the way it was when I grew up,” Steele said. “We are in trouble. We do not have a better life than we did before. Things are bad now, and they are getting worse day by day, month by month, year by year. When I saw that, and when I was sure I saw it, that is when I decided to run for President. The way it looked to me was, I could not do anything else. Someone has to set things right, here in the United States. The people who were in power were not doing it. I decided I had to be the one who did.”

He wasn't a great speaker. He didn't make Mike want to charge out and do whatever he said. Hitler had basically talked his way to power in Germany a couple of months earlier. But Joe Steele did show a confidence not so very different from the German dictator's.

And, like Hitler, he was taking charge in a country that had just got
knocked through the ropes. People would give him the benefit of the doubt for a while because of that.

“So we will have jobs in my administration,” Joe Steele said. “Labor is a matter of honor, a matter of fame, a matter of valor and heroism. Without jobs, all else fails. People of America, I tell you—
we will have jobs!
”

Surely not all the people in the bleachers who cheered themselves hoarse had no job right now. Just as surely, a lot of them were out of work. Again, the stands full of government functionaries cheered more slowly and less enthusiastically than ones full of ordinary folks.

“I can be rough. I can be harsh. But I am only rough and harsh toward those who harm the people of this great country,” Joe Steele said. “What is my duty? To do my job and to fight for the people. Quitting is not in my character. Whatever I have to do, I will do it.”

How did Franklin D. Roosevelt feel about that? He knew Joe Steele wasn't kidding, anyhow. And a whole fat lot of good knowing did him. Mike shivered, though the day wasn't cold.

“We will do whatever we have to do to get the United States on its feet again. You cannot set things to rights while you have silk gloves on.” The President held up his hairy hands. He wasn't wearing gloves of any kind. He went on, “The ones who wear silk gloves, they use them to take from ordinary people without leaving any fingerprints. When banks fail, they steal the people's money. Have you ever seen a hungry banker? Has anyone in the history of the world ever seen a hungry banker? If I have to choose between the people and the bankers, I will choose the people. We will nationalize the banks and save the people's money.”

This time, the applause nearly blasted him off the podium. Ever since the big stock crash, banks had failed by the hundreds—no, by the thousands. And every time a bank went under, the depositors who'd put money into it and couldn't pull the cash out fast enough went down the drain with it. Everybody who was listening to him had either lost money that way him- or herself or knew someone else who had. Bankers were some of the most hated people in the whole country these days.

Mike looked over to the stands full of officials. Herbert Hoover was
shaking his head, and he wasn't the only one. He didn't understand the nerve Joe Steele had struck. That he didn't understand was one big reason he hadn't won his second term.

President Hoover had tried to ignore the building whirlwind—and it had swept him away. President Steele would try to ride it. He'd have trouble doing worse. Mike feared he'd also have trouble doing better.

Charlie Sullivan and a couple of other reporters watched Senator Carter Glass walk into the White House to confer with Joe Steele. Joe Steele had summoned Congress to a special session. Winning the kind of majority he had in the House made getting what he wanted easier.

President Steele didn't have that kind of majority in the Senate. And a lot of Southern Democrats were more conservative than Republicans from the rest of the country. Carter Glass, a Virginian, was a case in point. He'd been born before the Civil War started, and apparently hadn't changed his views a great deal since. He loudly opposed nationalizing the banking system. Since he'd been Secretary of the Treasury in the Wilson administration, his views counted.

One of the other newsmen, a skinny cub with the impressive handle of Virginius Dabney, was from the
Richmond Times
. “I've got a dollar that says Joe Steele won't make him change his mind,” he said, lighting a Camel.

“You're on,” Charlie said at once. They shook hands to make things official.

The kid from Virginia was in a gloating mood. “I'm gonna buy myself a nice dinner with your dollar,” he said. “You've got no idea what a pigheaded old coot Carter Glass has turned into. Neither does the President, or he would've picked somebody else to try to get around the logjam in the Senate.”

“Well, you could be right,” Charlie said.

“Damn right, I'm right,” Dabney broke in.

“Hang on. I wasn't done yet.” Charlie held up his right hand, palm out, like a cop stopping traffic. “You could be right, but don't get too sure yet. Carter Glass never had to deal with anybody like Joe Steele before, either.”

Virginius Dabney blew out a stream of smoke. “It won't matter. Glass'll just keep saying no. He'll get as loud as he reckons he needs to. He'll go on about Trotsky and the Reds, and maybe about Hitler and the Nazis, too. Then he'll say no some more. He doesn't reckon the Federal government's got the right to do this.”

“One of the guys who doesn't reckon Washington has the right to shake it after a leak, huh?” Charlie said with a sour chuckle.

“That's him,” Dabney said, not without pride. “States' rights all the way.” By the way he answered, he was a states' rights man himself. He was a white Southerner. Not all of them filled that bill, but most of them did.

You couldn't argue with them. Oh, you could, but you'd only waste your time. Charlie didn't waste any of his. Instead, he said, “Let me scrounge one of your cigarettes, okay?”

“Sure.” Dabney handed him the pack and even gave him a match. Camels were stronger than Charlie's usual Chesterfields, but he didn't complain. He'd gone to France in 1918, though too late to see combat. With what they smoked over there, he was amazed that German poison gas had bothered them.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes, Carter Glass came out of the White House. He always looked kind of weathered. He was in his mid-seventies; he'd come by it honestly. Now . . . Now Charlie wasn't sure what he was seeing. Unless he was imagining things, Glass looked as if he'd just walked into a haymaker from Primo Carnera. The giant Italian wasn't heavyweight champ just yet, but he had a fight with Jack Sharkey set for the end of June.

“Senator Glass!” Charlie called. “Did the President bring you around to his way of thinking, Senator?”

Glass flinched at the question, as if he were afraid Primo Carnera
would belt him again. He took a deep breath, like a man coming off the canvas and trying to stay upright. “After some discussion with President Steele, I have decided that the nationalization bill is, ah, a worthy piece of legislation. I intend to vote for it, and I will work with the President to persuade my colleagues to support it as well. Right now, that's all I have to say. Excuse me.”

He scuttled away. Up till that moment, Charlie had always thought T. S. Eliot stretched language past the breaking point when he compared a man to a pair of ragged claws. If ever a man walked like a dejected crab, it was Carter Glass.

Charlie held out his hand. “Pay up.”

Virginius Dabney was still gaping after the Senator from his home state. “Dog my cats,” he said softly, more to himself than to Charlie. He took out his billfold, fumbled, and pulled out an engraved portrait of George Washington. “Here y'are. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. The President, he's got some big mojo working.”

After pocketing the dollar, Charlie said, “Some big what?”

“Mojo,” Dabney repeated. “It's nigger slang. Means something like magic power. I can't think of anything else that would make Carter Glass turn on a dime like that.”

“Mojo, huh? Have to remember that,” Charlie said. “But didn't I tell you Joe Steele had a way of getting what he wanted?”

“You told me. I didn't believe you. Nobody who knows anything about Glass would've believed you.”

A couple of other recalcitrant Senators went to confer with the President. When they came out of the White House, they were all for nationalization, too. Charlie didn't see them emerge, so he didn't know whether they looked as steamrollered as Carter Glass had. He figured it was likely, though. Joe Steele could be mighty persuasive. Look how well he'd persuaded Franklin Roosevelt, after all.

The Senators remained among the living. Like Carter Glass, though, they had their change of heart. With their loud new support, the nationalization bill passed the Senate by almost as big a margin as it had in the House.

Joe Steele went on the radio to talk to the American people. “We are heading in the right direction at last,” he said. “Some folks make money when others are miserable. A few want to wreck all the progress the rest support. We almost had that kind of trouble over this bill. But I talked sense to a few men who didn't see things quite the right way at first. Most of them took another look and decided going along would be a better idea. I'm glad they did. We need to get behind the country and push so we can start it going. If some push at the wrong end, that won't work so well. We're all together on this one, though. We are now.”

Since he was speaking from the White House, no one on the program tried to tell him he was wrong. Hardly anyone anywhere tried to tell Joe Steele he was wrong at first. He was doing something, or trying to do something, about the mess. Herbert Hoover had treated the Depression the way the Victorians treated sex—he didn't look at it, and he hoped it would just go away.

That hadn't worked for the Victorians, and it hadn't worked for him, either. They were mostly dead, and he'd lost the election. For a politician, that was the fate worse than death.

*   *   *

E
ven a reporter who came into Washington only every so often knew where the people who worked in the White House ate and drank. Charlie went to half a dozen of those places. He talked to more than half a dozen people who typed things and filed things and answered wires and telephone calls. And they all told him they didn't know how Joe Steele got Carter Glass and the other Senators who'd opposed the bill that nationalized the banks to turn around and vote for it.

He plied them with liquor. Even more to the point, he plied them with money. It was the Associated Press' money, so he didn't have to be chintzy with it. It didn't help. They went right on telling him they didn't know. Frustrated, he yelped, “Well, who the hell does, then?”

Most of them didn't even know who knew. Charlie knew what that meant: Joe Steele wasn't just good at holding his cards close to his chest. He was terrific at it. One or two people suggested that Charlie might talk to Kagan or to Mikoian or to Scriabin.

He could have figured that out for himself when the wells he drilled at lower levels came up dry. He pretty much had figured it out, in fact. Vince Scriabin still scared the crap out of him. Lazar Kagan's moon of a face was as near unreadable as made no difference. That left Stas Mikoian. Of the President's longtime henchmen, he seemed the most approachable.

Chances were Charlie didn't get a phone call from Mikoian completely by coincidence. “I hear you've been trying to find out a few things,” the Armenian said after they got through the hellos and how-are-yous.

“Didn't know that was against the rules for a reporter,” Charlie said.

Mikoian laughed. Charlie judged Scriabin would have got mad. He couldn't guess about Kagan, or about what the Jew's reaction would have meant. Yeah, Stas was the most human of the three. “Why don't you have dinner with me tonight?” Mikoian said. “We can talk about it there.”

“Sounds great. Where do you want to go?” Charlie asked.

“There's a chop house called Rudy's, across Ninth from the Gayety,” Mikoian answered. “See you there about eight?”

“Okay.” Charlie eyed the phone in bemusement as he hung up. The Gayety was Washington's leading burlesque house. Was Stas only using it as a geographical reference point, or was he human all kinds of ways? Charlie, of course, had never ogled a stripper in his life. Of course.

Nothing wrong with Rudy's, though. It gave off an aura of quiet class. The air smelled of grilled meat and expensive cigars. A gray-haired colored waiter escorted Charlie to a booth. “Mr. Mikoian is expecting you, sir,” he murmured.

Stas stood up to shake hands. He had a dark drink in a tall glass. “Rum and Coke,” he said, seeing Charlie's eye fall on it. “They get the rum straight from Cuba.”

“Sounds great,” Charlie said, as he had on the telephone. The rum
was
smooth, and they didn't stint on it. He chose lamb chops from the menu; Mikoian ordered a medium-rare T-bone.

The Armenian steepled his fingers and looked across the table at Charlie. “I can tell you what you want to know,” he said.

“But there's a catch,” Charlie said. “There's always a catch.”

“Yes, there's always a catch,” Mikoian agreed. “Anyone more than six
years old knows that. You'd be surprised how many people in Washington don't.”

“Would I? Maybe not,” Charlie said. “Tell me what the catch is, and I'll tell you whether I want to go on. If I don't, we'll have a nice dinner and talk about what kind of chance the Senators have for the pennant.”

“Pretty decent chance this year, I think,” Mikoian said. “But all right—fair enough. The catch is, you can't write about any of what I tell you. The President doesn't mind if you know. He says you've always been fair to him—certainly fairer than your brother has. But politics is like sausage-making: you don't want to watch how it's done.”

“That's Bismarck.”

“Uh-huh. He knew what he was talking about, too. He mostly did.”

Charlie considered. “I could just lie to you, you know,” he remarked.

“Oh, sure. And you'd have a story. But the President would know you weren't someone he could trust. So is one story worth selling him out?”

You asked that kind of question whenever you made a dubious deal. Another question also surfaced in Charlie's mind.
Do I want to go on Joe Steele's black list for any reason under the sun?
He knew damn well he didn't. He sighed. “Tell me.”

Stas Mikoian didn't even smile. He also didn't talk right away, because the waiter brought their meals then. Charlie didn't think anything could go better with lamb than mint jelly. When he said so, Mikoian did grin. “I'd argue for garlic myself, but you're Irish and I'm Armenian. What it really comes down to is what you got used to when you were growing up.”

“That's about the size of it.” Charlie chewed, then nodded. “This is mighty good. How's your steak?”

“It's fine. Hard to go wrong with anything at Rudy's. They've been here a long time, and you can see why.” Stas Mikoian cut another bite and ate it. He sipped from his rum and Coke. “Shall I tell you about Senator Glass?”

“I wish you would.”

“He's a fine Virginian. Comes from a good family. Back when he was a boy, they owned slaves. Not after the Civil War, naturally, but they still had colored people working for them. Before he went off to college, they had
this pretty little maid called Emma, Emma . . . well, you don't need to know her last name. You won't be writing a story about this.”

“That's right.” Charlie got a little farther down his own drink. “Can I guess where this is going?”

“You probably can. Sometimes boys from families like that learn the facts of life from a maid or a cook. Carter Glass did. And nine months later he learned more about the facts of life than he thought he would when he gave her a tumble. Had himself what they call a high-yaller little boy.” He spoke the Southern phrase as if it came from a foreign language.

“Did he try to pretend the whole thing never happened?” Charlie asked.

“No. He was a gentleman. He—or his family—took care of Emma and the baby. It wasn't fancy, but it was quite a bit better than nothing. The boy got as good an education as a colored kid in Virginia could. He's a teacher there. He has children of his own. They're doing well for themselves—as well as colored people can in that part of the country. And one of the reasons they're doing well is that they never, ever let on that they're related to Carter Glass.”

“So it was a family secret, you're saying?”

“That's right. That's what I'm saying.” Mikoian raised a dark, bushy eyebrow. “Senator Glass was interested in keeping it a family secret, too. We were able to oblige him—and he was able to oblige us.”

“I guess he was.” Charlie lifted a forefinger. The waiter appeared as if by magic. “I'd like another rum and Coke, please.”

“So would I,” Stas said.

“Comin' right up, gentlemen.” The waiter went off to get them.

Charlie aimed that forefinger at Mikoian like the barrel of a pistol. “How did you—how did Joe Steele—discover the old family secret?”