The Last Debate (45 page)

Joan said: “Henry’s right. If it turned out to be untrue, if those women had been figments of somebody’s imagination … well, I don’t even want to think about what might have happened to us. I still have nightmares sometimes thinking about how we didn’t make one call to check out anything. We just took them and walked out there and used them. It’s amazing, really. But it turned out all right. It was all straight stuff. The women existed. They stood by their stories. It was a close call, but no harm was done.”

Barbara said: “In those immortal words—I’ll say amen to that. We got away with it.”

“Nobody ever needs to know how close a call it was,” Henry said.

“Good point,” Joan said.

“A really good point, ‘Hank,’ ” Barbara said.

Henry, according to Joan, gave Barbara a look that would have fried a bean in his mother’s restaurant. “Thank you, ‘Barb dear,’ ” he said.

No wonder they don’t want to talk romance, thought Joan. There ain’t nothing to talk about.

Joan had something to talk about—again. The nightmare. She said: “The one thing nobody will ever understand is how we took those statements
the way we did, checked out nothing, and just went out there and used them. My own husband doesn’t even understand it.”

Barbara said: “You just said that, Joan.”

“I know. And I am saying it again. I think back on that and I shiver and shake and sweat. We walked right out there and read those things on television.…”

“Our fear of Meredith made us do it like that,” Barbara said.

“And our trust in the great Mr. Howley here,” Henry said.

“I still can’t believe we did it,” Joan said. “Not a one of us made even one call—”

“Right, right, but look, the only point now is that it worked and the hour is late,” said Henry. “I need to hit the road to the hay.”

“Not quite yet, Henry—or do you prefer ‘Hank’?” Howley said.

Joan had also begun to think Jeff and the twins would be sending the cops out before long. But then she knew nobody was going to be going anywhere anytime soon. She saw a look of pure hostility on Howley’s face. She hoped it was the Italian wine, of which he had had much, and the scotch. Whatever, Mike Howley was going to be heard.

“Henry,” said Henry. “And I am out of here, OK?”

“You are not out of here, OK?” Howley said. “I have a couple more things on my agenda—”

Henry, on his feet, held up his right hand as if to direct traffic to stop. “Alto, amigo. I ain’t hearing no more from you, OK, hombre?” Henry took a step toward the door.

“Sit down and listen to me, goddamn it!” Mike Howley screamed.

Joan leapt to her feet and put her hands on Henry’s shoulders. “Hear him out, Henry. We owe him that.”

“I don’t owe him one tiny little piece of a corn-husk wrapper from a mildewed tamale.”

Barbara, still in her chair, said: “Forget it, Hank boy. If it hadn’t been for Mike, we’d both still be nothing.”

“
I
was never nothing, Barb girl.”

According to Joan, Henry’s stare at Barbara matched for hate and loathing anything Howley had managed up till then. The match made in television heaven was clearly a product of hell. The hell of a network contract that made them household names and multimillionaires.

Howley said to Henry: “Hey, I’m sorry. I should not have yelled at you like that. That was out of line.”

Henry waved him on and sat back down. Henry was seriously afraid if he hadn’t, Howley might have gotten out of hand. He, like Joan, didn’t know if it was the drink or what, but this was a man in a state of serious agitation. So, all right, all right, late or not, he would hear him out.

Howley asked if everyone wanted another round.

Everyone but Joan said yes. She wanted coffee. Then Barbara changed her order to coffee. Henry stuck with beer. Howley stuck with scotch.

And after all those drinks were on the table in front of them, Howley continued.

“I want a new covenant of silence,” he said to Joan, Barbara, and Henry. “And this time I want you three to keep it.”

“Chapman’s already finished with his interviewing,” Joan said.

“Right, right,” Barbara said. “He doesn’t have anything else to ask us.…”

“He told me he was through except for some quote-checking stuff,” Henry said.

Mike Howley’s light blue eyes got small. He said: “No more talking to Chapman about anything, OK?”

Joan said that no one responded. Not her, not Henry, not Barbara.

“Mike, please,” Joan said. “I already told you that I have told Chapman everything I have to say.”

Barbara and Henry said—again—that was true for them as well.

Howley said: “When I left that room that night in Williamsburg, I thought I had an agreement with three people I could trust to keep their word. I find that they did not keep their word. They spilled their guts like little kids at the first interview. They got so carried away with being stars, with people out there kissing their asses and giving them money, they couldn’t even resist the offers of a sleaze jockey from some shit-pot magazine—”

Henry was back on his feet. He said: “Whatever happened to make me, whether you approve or not, I am Hank. Hank don’t have to take this shit-pot stuff from you, Howley. Whatever, whatever. Hank and Henry both say, Good night. And adios—for tonight and forever. OK, amigo?”

Howley stood. So did Joan and Barbara. Joan motioned for Henry to hold on a minute and said to Howley: “What exactly do you want from us?”

“I want each of you to look me straight in the eye—”

Henry interrupted. “What in the hell is really going on, Howley? What are you trying to hide? What are you really trying to protect? Your own ass? A little more truth than you can—”

Barbara said: “Shut up, Henry!”

“Orders from you I do not take either, Barb.”

“Everybody now, cool it,” Joan said. “And I mean it. You, Henry, you, Barbara—you, Mike. Hush, all of you.” Then back to Howley she said: “You want us to raise our right hands—”

“Like Boy Scouts, yeah,” Henry said. “Well, it’ll snow in Laredo before that happens.”

Joan stared him quiet.

Howley said: “I want each of you showboats … Sorry. Each of you—”

To Joan, Henry said: “No more. If he wants to see me, he can see me every Sunday morning at nine, Eastern Standard Time, along with the rest of the millions.”

To Henry, Barbara said: “I cannot believe what you have become.”

“There are two of us, remember. You and me, me and you.”

Joan said to Howley: “I hereby look you straight in the eye and give you my word.” Then to Barbara she said: “Say it and let’s get out of here.”

To Howley, Barbara said: “I don’t know …”

“Henry?” Joan said.

“Maybe. Maybe anything to get out of here. Here we are, the four most famous journalists in America, swearing to keep things from the American people. It stinks.”

“I need no lectures from you on journalism, ‘Hank,’ ” said Joan.

“Easy, lady,” Barbara said.

Easy, lady, indeed, thought Joan. Easy, everybody.

Barbara said to Howley: “We can break a glass, cut ourselves, suck a sip of each other’s blood, Mr. Howley, and promise to die before we ever say another word about anything having to do with us and what we did. And it will not matter. Not one drop of that blood, will it matter. It will
eventually get out. Everything will eventually get out. If Chapman doesn’t get it, somebody else will. Somebody else always does. You know that, Mr. Howley. You know that probably better than any of the rest of us just because you have been doing what we do longer than the rest of us. So, I swear, you swear, everybody swears, and it don’t mean shit. Now can we go?”

Henry admitted to me that he was not proud of what happened next. He said he must have had too much beer and wine. He was now as pissed at Howley as Howley was at him and the others. So why not make some mischief?

He said: “Wait just a minute. We are reporters, let’s not forget. Muy Bueno Son knows better than this. We have to tell the full story to Chapman and anybody else who asks. We can’t sit on our own story. Reporters don’t sit on stories. Reporters don’t participate in cover-ups. They uncover cover-ups. Cover-up! Did I really use that word? Yes, I did. Cover-up. The great Mike Howley is asking us to be a party to a cover-up.”

“It’s not the same thing as a cover-up, goddamn it,” Howley said, “and you know it.”

Henry said: “Doesn’t that Jerry Rhome you work for have all kinds of rules of journalism? Wasn’t one of them—the sixth or seventh—something like ‘Never Do Anything You Can’t Defend’?”

Barbara said: “Where’s the check? Let’s go.…”

“This is on me,” Howley said.

“God knows, we can all afford it now,” Barbara said.

Henry wasn’t through. He said: “Here we are, the Williamsburg Four, semi-heroes and rich for having already violated the most important journalism rule of all about crossing over the line. Now our leader here is asking us to engage in an even larger conspiracy? Suppressing our own story? A conspiracy of silence. I say, let’s vote and then be bound by the majority vote. It’s the only way to decide it.”

Barbara said: “Sure, fine. Let’s vote.”

Joan said the term “cover-up” was stuck in her throat now. She wondered how the vote would have gone if Nixon had asked for a show of hands from Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, and the rest. What about it, guys? Do we cover up?

She wondered if the Reagan administration decision to sit on the Iran-Contra story was made like this. Would everyone in favor of Ollie North’s lying to Congress please raise your right hand and keep it there until we have had time to count them? That’s how they did it in school. What about on cover-ups?

Barbara reminded herself that she was only twenty-nine years old. She wondered if there could ever be any life for her after what she had been through. Already, she had participated in the most monumental, precedent-shattering seizure of power in the history of American journalism. Now she was also participating in a possible decision to cover up, to not talk anymore about that monumental happening in her and their and the country’s lives.

Henry, still full of the joke that the others were clearly taking very seriously, said: “Let’s do it. Mr. Howley, as the moderator, do you want to preside over the vote?”

Joan said Howley’s demeanor and body language were no longer shouting anger. The message now was one of droop, sag, drop, fall. He was as over as this evening. In a voice that was empty and weak and pointless, he said: “Everyone in favor raise your right hand.”

Henry could not leave the silliness of it alone. He had to make it even worse. “Secret ballot!” he said. “Democracies do their voting by secret ballot.”

He pulled a piece of paper from his inside suit-coat pocket. He turned the paper over to its blank side and carefully folded and tore it into four equal pieces.

“Write a big Y for yes—yes, we cover up; a big N for no—no, we don’t,” he said to the others. “Fold it over and put it in the middle of the table.”

They all did as they were told. Joan said it was one of the most uncomfortable moments of her life. What is this charade? What kind of fools are we? Why are we playing like this?

“You mix them up,” Henry said to Barbara. “And you, Joan, open them and read them out loud. Hank and Barb, as in
the
Hank and Barb, working with Joan,
the
Joan, the first solo woman network anchor, working together in a democracy.”

Barbara was in a state of confused, sad misery. But she mixed them.

Joan read: “Yes…

“Yes…

“No…

“No.”

Howley and Joan cast the two yes votes, Henry and Barbara the no’s.

Henry said: “The vote being two yes, two no, we must now figure out a way to break the tie.”

“Where’s AI Gore when we need him?” said Joan, a reference to the Clinton vice president, who cast a record forty-two tie-breaking votes in his capacity as presiding officer of the U.S. Senate.

“I say forget it,” Howley said, his voice bulging with resignation and loathing.

Not one more word was said by anyone.

In a matter of seconds they left the soundproof room together. There was no hugging or handshaking or vowing to get together again at least once every few months or years for as long as they all should live.

Then they were outside on Pennsylvania Avenue waiting in silent awkwardness for the valets to bring their cars around from a lot behind the restaurant.

Henry and Barbara, Hank and Barb, were brought theirs first and drove away, Barbara in a new midnight blue Mercedes-Benz convertible, Henry in his new mahogany brown Porsche.

Joan expected Mike Howley to say something to her now that it was just the two of them, now that the two kids were gone. She tried desperately to think of something she wanted or needed to say herself. Nothing came to mind.

She was so grateful when she heard their cars coming down the alley.

“What have we done, Mike?” Joan then asked.

Her new white BMW four-door arrived. Howley’s five-year-old dark green Saab convertible was right behind it. Their arrival got them both off the hook. He didn’t have to answer. She didn’t have to consider what she meant by the question in the first place.