The Last Debate (37 page)

I called his office at the
News
every morning and afternoon for five straight days. I played no games. Each time I identified myself and reminded the message taker to remind Howley that he and I had talked before and what I was doing for
The New American Tatler.

I was never put through to Howley and he never called me back.

I escalated the approach. On day six I told the person who answered his phone—it was a woman—that I needed to confirm “the origin of some videotapes.” No response. The next day I added the phrase “of someone giving someone else a folder of women’s statements.” Nothing. Day eight brought the additional line: “There is also some sound on the tapes.” Still nothing.

I called Jerry Rhome. At first I thought he was going to brush me off, too. But eventually—on the fourth call—he came on the line.

“Hey, Chapman, what I know is what I told you,” he said. “I ain’t got nothing more to say.”

I told him it was imperative that I talk to Howley and explained my problem in getting his world-famous employee to even return a phone call. “He’s a free man in a free press in a free country,” said Rhome. “If he doesn’t want to talk to you, he doesn’t want to talk to you. So be it. Besides that, he’s on some Greek island right now.”

“What Greek island?”

“None of your business.”

I waited an hour and then had Jennifer Gates call the
News
and ask for Howley. I told her afterward that she definitely could have made it as an actress. She clearly convinced the person at the
News
that she really was Mike Howley’s neighbor, and water was running out from under his front door. “Obviously there has been a break in his water pipes. What should I do? Who should I call? The firemen are here. They want to speak to the owner. I didn’t know where he was. I don’t know what to do.…”

The island was called Santorini. He was staying in a rented house.

Something heavier than a phone call was called for. I drafted a letter and then sent it Federal Express—three-day delivery guaranteed.

It read:

And I waited for the phone to ring.

Inauguration day turned out to be as important a day in my professional life as it did in Paul L. Greene’s.

For him, there was still a Christmas-morning surprise element to it. The people of the United States of America had had seventy-nine days, from November 4 to January 21, to get used to the idea that Paul L. Greene of Nebraska was in fact going to be their next president. But, according to the polls and the anecdotes, there was still an aura of fairyland disbelief to the whole thing. Here was a guy who had been so far behind, so counted out, that to read the flood of stories about “President-elect Greene” and his family and cabinet and all the rest had a fictional or dream quality to it. Someone said it was as if Michael Dukakis had defeated George Bush, Barry Goldwater had come from nowhere to suddenly cream Lyndon Johnson, and George McGovern had done the same to Richard Nixon in 1972.

There he was, this man Greene, this man they were now calling “a quiet, steady man with Lincolnesque possibilities,” standing in the bitter cold on the stage in front of the west side of the Capitol taking the oath of office.

Joan Naylor, alone behind a glass-enclosed and heated booth a hundred yards away, was anchoring CNS’s coverage of the inauguration. She looked and sounded terrific, as she had every Monday-through-Friday evening since she replaced Don Beard on the nightly news broadcast. Since she took over,
The CNS Evening News
had risen from its customary third place in the weekly Nielsen ratings to tie ABS News four times for second place. She told me the network brass were so excited the first time it happened that they sent cases of champagne and strawberries and
chocolates to both the New York and Washington newsrooms. “We’re hoping they’ll give us all Rolls-Royces if we ever win second place outright,” she said.

Henry Ramirez and Barbara Manning, now the famous Hank and Barb, were part of their network’s coverage. They were broadcasting from a huge suite at the Willard Hotel, around the corner from the White House, where they were to make comments and interview celebrities while the inaugural parade passed by and under them on Pennsylvania Avenue. They had become huge celebrities themselves, of course, and much of it had to do with their “America’s favorite love story” image as partners on the screen and in bed.

It was after they cut their first AIDS public-service commercial for safe sex that urged the use of condoms that I decided once and for all to determine what was really going on. In the commercial, they stood there together, grinning first at each other and then at the camera. Henry held up a condom and said: “There is only one way, and this is it. Right, Barb?”

“Right, Hank,” said Barbara.

I felt there was an issue of credibility and honesty involved here that had nothing to do with any prurient interest in sex.

The breakthrough came from a pharmacist at a drugstore near Henry’s apartment in Arlington, the close-in Virginia suburb. With some words and other inducements I got the man to tell me that Henry, a man he recognized from the debate, had purchased a package of condoms. “He even gave me a smile and wink and said, ‘Watch my smoke, amigo’—something like that,” said the pharmacist. I matched the date of the purchase with those given to me by waiters and doormen and determined—circumstantially, at least—what I wanted to know. Henry bought the condoms during the early evening of the same day that he first took Barbara back to her place and spent the night. But there were only three condoms in the package and, according to the pharmacist, Henry did not replenish. “He came in the store many times after that, but he never bought them again,” said the pharmacist. Henry also went back to Barbara’s place many times after three times, most particularly after they became Hank and Barb. She also accompanied him to his apartment several times. It is possible, of course, that he had another supplier of condoms or that they had decided to truly one-up Jack and Jill by having a
“love child.” I doubted—doubt—that. But in their new world anything was—is—possible.

There were no unknowns about the professional side of their relationship.
Sunday Morning with Hank and Barb
, after only fourteen broadcasts, had gone up .4 in the ratings to within .1 point of second-place Schwarzkopf. There had already even been some blind quotes in the trades about the possibility of the Holy Grail—of overtaking Jack and Jill.
The Washington Post
’s television writer, Jack Carmody, quoted an anonymous network executive saying: “That sound we hear under our feet over here is that made by the noisy young on their way to vanquish Jack and Jill.” The next morning Carmody had a counterquote from an executive at another network. “Despite their skin colors, Hank and Barb are Jack and Jill ‘light,’ and that is what they will always be. One Sunday they will be gone, and nobody outside of their immediate families and the network will even notice,” said the unnamed executive.

I will always remember that inaugural day for reasons that have nothing to do with anything that happened on the west side of the Capitol, on Pennsylvania Avenue, or on Joan Naylor’s, Hank and Barb’s, or anybody else’s network television program.

That was the afternoon it happened to me. That was the afternoon a messenger in a motorcycle helmet and goggles brought an unsigned note to our
Tatler
office. It was addressed to “The Man from Mississippi University for Women.” The note, carefully typed in the center of a three-by-five index card, consisted only of the name of a restaurant, an address, and the words “Tonight, 8
P.M.
”

The excitement I felt driving through the heavy post-inaugural traffic north from downtown that night to my rendezvous was unlike any I had ever had before. It could be difficult—and maybe crazy or even scary—but I knew I was going to come back with the goods. I just knew it.

The restaurant was called Richard’s and it was in suburban Maryland on a busy four-lane road of neon, auto dealerships, and strip shopping centers called Rockville Pike.

Richard, of Richard’s, was just inside the door. Both he and his place were marvelously dark and musty. There were gaudy travel posters from
Alitalia and Air France on the walls, gaudy people behind the bar and waiting tables under the direction of Richard, the most gaudy of all. His hair was coal black, over his ears and down to his collar in back. He had rings on his fingers and a double-breasted dark gray pinstripe suit on his body, which appeared to be as lean and solid as Nelson’s.

“You must be Mr. Chapman,” he said before I said anything. “I recognize you, but I don’t, if you know what I mean.” I had no idea what he meant.

“ ‘Come with me to the Casbah,’ ” said Richard.

I followed him through the kitchen, which was inhabited by several black-haired men of all ages and by the powerful smells of gurgling tomato sauces and the sautéing parts of fish and veal.

The back room was nothing more than the wine cellar with a table and four chairs. The table was set for three people. Sid Nelson was sitting at one of the three places. He motioned for me to sit down at the one directly across. That left a place between us.

Who was coming? Matters, along with Richard’s sauces, were thickening.

I said something about the mysterious ways of Richard. I was looking for small talk. It was what popped out. I said: “Wonder what he did before he went into the restaurant business.”

“Would you really like to know?” Nelson said.

“Sure. But it doesn’t matter.… I’m just making noise. Idle curiosity.”

“He was a killer, an assassin. One of the best we ever had. I don’t have any exact figures, but I’d say he’s probably got fifty scalps on his belt. And that’s conservative.”

The best
we
ever had? Who in the hell is
we
? Jesus.

Nelson was still the same soft-spoken tough guy from the turbobike. But in this place, this back room, this Casbah, he seemed much more sinister.

I felt a slight breeze of fear. I really did. I thought it was perfectly possible that somebody, probably Richard, would come into the room, hold up a silencer-equipped pistol, and blow out the brains of Thomas Blaine Chapman of
The New American Tatler.
I thought it was also perfectly possible that after taking a bite of whatever I was about to eat, I
might feel a pain in the stomach, a tightening in my throat, and then keel over stone dead. I could see my head facedown in a plate of pasta with tomato sauce coming out of my nose like blood, like in the mob movies. I was scared. I was not only not coming away from here with the goods, I was not coming away with my life.

I looked desperately into Nelson’s face for a clue, a flicker of something—anything. There was no change. He was still the man on the turbo who had done nothing but make the smallest of small talk.

“Working on any interesting cases?” I said. I was frantic for some kind of sign of normal life.

“You journalists are the ones with the interesting cases,” Nelson said.

“How did you happen to get into law enforcement?” I asked. This was crazy, but I couldn’t help it.

“I can’t imagine your really being interested in my resume,” Nelson said.

I asked the question about what it was that caused him to leave the FBI. He said it was because the assistant attorney general wanted him to put a tap on the private phone of the British ambassador. Nelson could see no legitimate national-security reason for the tap and suspected some kind of personal reason. The tap was never placed.

“But the assistant AG had friends in higher places than I, so I left and went into the private security and investigation business,” he said. “If I had known how nice it is out here in the private world, I would have left one helluva lot sooner.”