much promise. He left a gray-haired man obsessed by a group of hostages he was unable to help until he couldn't even help himself. Reagan may be the only one who left with his heart intact, though even he was ridiculed in his parting days. Bush rode higher than anyone before him, the victorious conquester of the Gulf War, only to be brought down by economic forces he failed to understand. Clinton embodied a new generation of leadership, with all its hopes and with all its failings, and in the end, his entire life was torn asunder in a clash between the weakness of his own personality and the immense personal responsibilities of the office.
'Look, I'm unloading too much,' Hutchins said, interrupting my stroll through history. 'I'm tired from the campaign. Maybe I'm intimidated by the work ahead. And when a guy takes a shot at you out of nowhere, you start thinking about the fragile nature of life. Bottom line: I'm going to be fine.'
Hutchins slapped his two hands against his knees, in a sign that the conversation was over. I hesitated, then rose slowly from the couch, assuming this was my signal to leave. He stayed slumped down. 'Your wife, she died, right?' he asked, and the first thing I thought was, it would be a hell of a question to get wrong.
I said, 'She did, about a year ago.'
I was standing now. He was sitting, deep in the couch, showing no signs of getting up. He said, 'I'm sorry.' There was a silence. I started to turn around to leave. He added, 'I hope you find someone else. No matter who you are, no matter where you've been, no matter where you're going, life isn't meant to be lived alone, not for normal human beings, anyway.'
I nodded at him, 'I think you're right,' I said. I walked slowly out the door, leaving him slumped into the couch, looking painfully sad.
As I left, Sylvia Weinrich walked in carrying a silver tray holding a can of Diet Coke, a crystal bowl filled with ice, and a frosted glass.
She smiled as she passed me. I turned to see Hutchins walking slowly to his desk.
'Hey there, slugger.'
That was Havlicek, looking up from his computer, the headset to a microcassette recorder covering his ears as he transcribed a tape.
He asked, 'You hear about the FBI statement?'
'I've been out of touch for the last hour,' I said. 'What did they say?'
Peter Martin approached from his office and leaned on Havlicek's desk without saying anything.
'Very interesting,' Havlicek began. 'They issued a bullshit response that the original identification of Clawson was only tentative, and it only became public because it was released by a junior agent who was speaking without authorization. They also said they had realized in the past forty-eight hours that this initial identification-their words-was wrong, and they had reopened that facet of their investigation to learn the identity of the attempted assassin.'
I asked, 'So they still don't know who the guy is that they killed, this dead person in their morgue?'
'They won't say. They said that because of the initial, false release of the tentative ID, they will make certain that in the future no parts of their investigation are released to the news media until they are ready. They claim that today's story hindered their investigation, so they're going to button down even tighter.'
I laughed a sneering laugh. 'Those pricks. They screw up, then blame us for hindering them. What a bunch of jackasses.'
'Bingo. But at least they've essentially confirmed our story. This makes for good print tomorrow. On Wyoming, they have declined to comment, except to say they did have a security alert at the White House. They were adamant that they do not discuss anything to do with any federal informants.'
Martin spoke for the first time. 'This also means that every paper in the country, including the New York Times and Washington Post, have to mention us in tomorrow's stories, giving us full credit. The FBI made sure of that today by admitting this and blaming us at the same time.
This couldn't be better.'
'Well, yeah,' I said. 'It could be better if we could prove those bastards are lying, that they really didn't know they had the wrong ID, or that they did know, but they misled us on purpose.' For the first time, I brought up the Hutchins session. 'And they'll all have to follow us again tomorrow. I have exclusive quotes from the president.
I sat with him in the Oval Office this afternoon while he unloaded to me.'
I reviewed those quotes for them, and Martin made a move as if he might hug me, then apparently thought better of it. He clenched his fists together. 'This keeps getting better,' he said. 'We are on a colossal roll.'
The three of us fell quiet for a moment. It was nearing 4:00 P.m.' so we divvied up the workload. As I've said, Havlicek is the best, most dogged reporter I know, but he writes as if English is a second language. With that in mind, Martin delicately suggested that he type up what he had and ship it to me, and I would combine it with my White House reaction and meld it into one story.
But even the best-laid plans sometimes fall victim to circumstance. As I settled in at my desk, before I even checked my voice mail and computer messages, the telephone rang.
'Jesus Christ, you're tough to reach. I thought you quit.' It was the ever-personable Ron Hancock.
'Been in with the president all afternoon,' I said.
'Yeah, right.' He just kind of snickered. I was about to argue, but decided to save the energy.
'They're feeding you a line of crap from over here,' he said. 'It's bullshit. They were calling this victim Tony Clawson right up until six A.m.' when the news broke from your paper that they had the wrong ID.'
'Can you prove it?' I asked, starting to get excited but trying to keep myself in check. You don't want to show these guys too much, even if they're trying to help.
'I'm an FBI agent. Of course I can prove it. What's your fax number?'
I gave it to him, and he said, 'Go stand by your machine. I'm sending you something right now. You don't know where you got it from. If you go before a grand jury, you'll tell them nothing. If you get called by the fucking director, you'll tell him nothing. If they stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails and make you eat boiled horse dick for dinner, you'll tell them you love it.'
There are weeks, even months, in this strange business of newspaper reporting when absolutely nothing goes right-when the only guy who can prove a tip that you know is true has gone off hiking in the Himalayas and ends up freezing to death in his base camp, or when a blockbuster corruption story you've been working for a month ends up on the front page of the Los Angeles Times because you've decided to take an extra day of writing to smooth out the tone. There are, of course, those times when there just aren't any tips or good stories, and the whole world seems set in different shades of gray. It's times like this that your sisters call and say they haven't seen you in the paper much lately, is everything all right with your job?
I mention this because this obviously was not one of these times. In fact, on my way to the facsimile machine, unsure what I was about to receive, I kept quietly pumping my fist down at my side, as if I had just scored the winning basket for South Boston High in the Christmas tournament against Charlestown. This was better than sex, though truth be known, I was probably a bad judge of that, given the duration of time since I last had any.
By the time I got to the machine, it was already spitting out a plain sheet of white paper with the typewritten words: 'For Jack Flynn.
Personal and Confidential. For Jack Flynn's eyes only.'
What followed was a detailed FBI internal case summary dated the day before, stamped late in the afternoon by whoever received it, which discussed the identity of the killer as Tony Clawson. Hancock, the rascal, had whited out some key parts about the investigation. Even while he was trying to help me out, he still had some allegiance to the FBI and didn't want the case blown. I respected that. I notified Martin and Havlicek. There was much backslapping and hand-wringing, and in the end, the three of us pored over every word of the story that I began by writing.
'Nice clean hit,' Martin said when we shipped the story to the national desk. We were standing in his office. It was pitch-black outside.
The bureau was mostly empty. The soft light of his desk lamp cast a warm glow. 'I'll assume you're on an early flight to Boston tomorrow.'
Before I could answer, Havlicek appeared in the doorway, smiling. 'No I in the word team,' he said.
I furrowed my brow at him, expressing confusion.
