His response was to bite into an Oreo. Seeing the chunk of cookie disappear into that prissily mustached mouth was amusing, but I kept a straight face.
“I spoke to Lee Mortimer the other night,” I said.
“Mortimer.” He shook his head disgustedly, chewing his cookie. “What a pathetic little creature.”
“Lee claims he’s been shut out of the Crime Committee’s inside circle. Apparently he deluded himself into thinking they’d take him, a reporter, on as a paid, government investigator…just because he was the guy who inspired Kefauver to look into—”
But I never finished that thought, because Pearson lurched forward, and anger glistened in his close-set eyes. “Mortimer is a self-aggrandizing liar. I am the one who got Estes interested in organized crime—how many exposes have I written over the years, anyway? Louisiana, New York, Chicago…. Damn it, Nathan—you contributed your investigative prowess to a number of them.”
“I guess I hadn’t made that connection.”
He made a sweeping gesture. “Isn’t it enough that Mortimer and his fat friend Lait plagiarized my approach in their trashy
I knew Pearson was a booster of Kefauver’s, and the columnist had even been talking up the Tennessee senator as a possible presidential candidate. But I didn’t realize Pearson was—or anyway thought he was—a prime mover behind the mob inquiry.
Pearson was saying, “Hell, I was delighted when Estes introduced his resolution to investigate the rackets on a national scale. But then it got stalled in the Senate for lack of support—until
“Who was trying to block it?”
“McCarran, for one—though technically McCarran is Kefauver’s boss, you know.”
Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, home of Las Vegas, was—no shock here—in the mob’s pocket. McCarran was a Democrat who voted like a conservative Republican, one of the rabid anti-Commie crowd.
I was confused. “How in hell can McCarran be Kefauver’s boss, particularly when he tried to stop the investigation before it even started?”
Pearson shrugged, smiled his insider’s smile. “Kefauver’s committee ultimately reports to the Judiciary Committee, of which McCarran is chairman.”
“Christ.”
Pearson shifted in his seat. “And of course without the support of the Senate majority leader—Lucas, of your home state—Estes could never have launched his probe, in the first place. And initially Lucas was dead set against it.”
Pearson was referring to Scott Lucas, currently campaigning against Everett Dirksen.
“So I simply spoke to my good friend Scott,” Pearson continued, “and reminded him of certain rumors that he’d received big campaign contributions from Chicago gamblers. Pointed out that it would look very bad, if he continued to block the Kefauver investigation…and he graciously granted his support—Mortimer my ass! He’s a hack, a conniving hack.”
“What about these accusations he’s making about Halley?”
“Jack’s investigated Halley thoroughly…” Pearson meant Jack Anderson. “…and the man is a straight arrow. A partner in Halley’s law firm did indeed represent the railroad in question, the Hudson & Manhattan line, the one with the supposed gangster investors—a relationship that ended some time ago. Halley had no contact himself, and he’s been a dogged investigator, a relentless inquisitor in the hearings thus far.”
“What about his so-called Hollywood connections?”
“Nothing of substance there, either. His firm represents a distillery whose publicist has a few Hollywood clients. Typical Mortimer and Lait yellow journalism.”
Drew Pearson complaining about yellow journalism was like an infected mosquito bitching about yellow fever.
“Drew, do you have influence with Estes?”
Tiny shrug, twitch of the mustache. “Certainly.”
I nodded toward a certain photo on the wall. “Can you ask your friend from Tennessee to steer clear of our mutual friend Frankie?”
His eyes narrowed. “That might be difficult. An inquiry has to go wherever the truth leads.”
“Bullshit. Drew, this investigation has all sorts of political strings, and you damn well know it. Look at the emphasis on gambling—I don’t see the mob’s influence on big-city machine politics coming under the microscope.”
A more elaborate shrug. “…I can try.”
I leaned forward. “Certainly you can understand it would be devastating to Frank’s career right now, if he were called in front of TV cameras to testify about gangsters he met on his summer vacation.”
Nodding slowly, Pearson said, “Yes. I can understand that…. I can but try.”
“Thank you. I’ll let him know—he’s under a hell of a lot of pressure. You see, Frank’s also got a problem with another Senate inquiry…courtesy of a certain old pal of ours.”
Pearson knew at once who I was talking about. “I can well imagine. Frank has a good heart—and he believes in the right causes. That’s enough to make him a ‘pinko’ in some circles. I can well imagine that ‘Tailgunner Joe’ might relish lining the Voice up in his capricious sights.”
“No imagining necessary. Really, that’s my main reason for coming to Washington…to try to reason with Joe
