who's skeptical of what I'm saying rather than another pansy-assed yes-man. You'd be the first hurdle to any idea. If it doesn't get past you, it doesn't go anywhere. You also understand the news media, and that's exactly what I need. I have to know from inside the White House how these things are going to play inside the press.'
I started to believe him myself, started to think that, yes, I could help the president, that I was precisely what he needed, that I could turn his window of opportunity into a reality of success. He was good.
I'll give him that. That's probably why he was the president, seemingly destined to win a full term.
Then this voice popped into my mind for roughly the millionth time in the last week-that crystal-clear voice of an aging man who was warning me that this assassination attempt wasn't what it seemed.
Well, we were trying to figure out what it was, Havlicek and me. We were getting up early. We were staying up late. We were burning the phone lines, climbing on airplanes, helplessly waiting for calls from my anonymous voice, hopeful that the next little piece would make the entire puzzle clear. Some of the pieces were starting to come together. I had names to go on now, names like Paul Stemple and Curtis Black. They had a common bond- an armored car robbery some twenty years ago. We just had to figure out how the past related to the present.
'Mr. President, before I go on with my decision, I need to ask you something. Why did you pardon Paul Stemple?'
I could hear the tick of the grandfather clock behind me, the rhythmic breathing of Hutchins sitting across from me, the soft, absent tap of his glasses against the wooden tabletop. I looked at him and he looked at me, his forehead scrunched into an expression that may have been concern, but may just as well have been anger.
The moment stretched on, the rift of silence widening into a veritable canyon.
'Jack,' he finally said, his voice straightforward, betraying neither anger nor surprise, 'I don't really know. My best recollection is that Mr. Stemple was going to be pardoned by President Cole. I believe he was on his list after I was sworn in, so I went ahead and issued the pardon. I believe that's the case, though I'd have to double- check.'
He had me with that answer. How was I supposed to check with Cole, or get one of his aides to dig up such minutiae in the throes of the last weekend of an election campaign?
As I sat in silence, Hutchins continued, his voice taking on more of an edge. 'But here's what I do know. I'm the best goddamned president who'll ever seek your help. That's all you really need to know right now. As far as why I was shot, I'm hoping like hell to find that out as soon as I can. I really don't want to be shot again. I think you'll join me in agreement that it's not a fun thing.'
Well, that all seemed like an effective evasion, leaving me little in the way of follow-up questions. Also, I really didn't have a good enough handle yet on what I was talking about to pursue the line any further. I was fishing, and going back and forth in my mind on whether I should throw out the name Curtis Black. I decided it was premature.
I gave it one more try, saying, 'There's something terribly odd about that assassination attempt.'
Okay, so now he seemed exasperated. 'We have an army of FBI agents working on this issue right now. The only odd thing is that they haven't nailed down an exact motive yet. They will, Jack. In the meantime, you and this guy Havlicek are obsessing over a point that I'm sure will very quickly become clear. The FBI is doing their best work.
They're not trying to screw this thing up. They're not trying to cover anything up. Sometimes these investigations just aren't easy, and sometimes they don't work out in the neatly set schedules that you press people demand.'
I said, 'Maybe you're right,' though not for half a second did I think he was.
Then I breathed a long sigh and said to Hutchins, 'Sir, I've thought your offer over hard. I really have. I'm honored by it. I was tempted by it. But I can't accept it. I'm a newspaper reporter.
Sometimes I don't even think I have any say in the matter. It's just what I do, and what I'll continue to do, and what I sometimes suspect and fear I'll always do.'
He stared at me again, silent. My mind flashed to the adoring, applauding crowd in the ballroom from a few minutes before, to all the noise and the festivity, and now to this room, to the sullen silence, to the juxtaposition that was often the president's life. He was the leader of the free world who had once told me he felt anything but free. Forget all his power. Here he was stewing that he couldn't persuade some reporter from South Boston to come work on his staff.
'You're making an enormous mistake, young man,' he said, sternly, looking me in the eye. He pushed his chair out and lifted himself up to show me to the door. 'We're all done here,' he said. 'I have some business to do.'
I got up and slowly walked over to the door, and when I got within a few feet of him, I stuck my hand out to shake his. He ignored me and said, 'This is a decision you'll regret for a long time to come.'
seventeen
It used to be you'd land at an airport in some far-flung city, someone would be there to meet you, thrilled that you had arrived. In fact, that was the reason you had flown in the first place-to actually see the people at the other end. Then age sets in, and with age comes responsibility, and with responsibility come the endless business flights to faraway places where no one particularly cares whether you've arrived in town or not. The only welcoming face is usually that of a reception clerk at the hotel, who asks for your credit card and sullenly punches your name into a computer before assigning you to one of the several hundred identical rooms upstairs. For me, it has gotten to the point that even when I arrive back in Washington from a long trip, there usually isn't even anyone who knows I'm coming home. It may not be a cruel world, but it can be a cold one.
I bring this up because as I stepped off the American Airlines flight from O'Hare to National at 8:30 P.m. Saturday and headed outside for a cab, a familiar female voice said from behind me, 'Come here often?'
I turned slowly, not wanting to make a general jackass out of myself in case, as I suspected, the woman was actually talking to someone else.
There, walking two paces in back of me, was Samantha Stevens, special agent with the FBI.
'Only when I travel,' I said. She flashed me a plastic smile and I asked, 'You pulling into town or heading out?'
'Neither. I came to give you a lift.' I must have looked a bit startled because she said soothingly, 'I'm going to buy you dinner, whether you want it or not.'
In fact, I did, even if she may have been the last person I expected to see, making the last offer I expected to receive. It seemed like a good idea. My mind was about to explode, there was so much going on in it. I needed to give it a rest before I briefed Havlicek and Martin the following morning. On the flight back to D.c.' I had made a series of calls to lawyer contacts and some police detectives I knew from my days on the Boston crime beat. I didn't learn nearly enough, but what I did learn was interesting. Black, in the words of one veteran investigator, was a Tom Sawyer type, a gang leader who could convince the others to whitewash the fence while he sat back and watched. He had a college education and was widely known on the streets for his brains and his gregariousness-his ability to get along with crooks and to talk his way out of trouble with cops. He was believed to be without a gun on the occasion of the heist, which would perhaps explain why the feds granted him immunity, certain that he couldn't have been the triggerman. His lack of practice might also explain why he was such an awful shot at the golf course that day, assuming that it was him. And yes, he had brown eyes, just like the dead shooter at Congressional Country Club.
What I hadn't learned was where Black had gone and who he had become, and it didn't seem like I was about to. No one even acknowledged that he had disappeared.
That left me with one remaining option: find Paul Stemple. He was the link in this whole equation that I didn't yet understand-not that I understood any of it all that well. The problem was, it wasn't even remotely clear where I was going to find him, or even how I was going to find him. All of this is a longer than necessary way of
