Hartex ended up.”
McGuire’s eyes showed both defensiveness and anger. “Go on,” he challenged.
“Look, I worked on Hartex for a year. I talked to people who had lost their shirts. There wasn’t a week I didn’t have some ruined life haunting my office like Hamlet’s father. I told them we would help. Then I go on vacation for a week. I call in last Thursday and discover you’ve settled the case. While I’m gone, the Hartex people send down a Wall Street type, the one who used to be Deputy Secretary of State. He tells you how much he respects you, and how a lot of trouble can be saved. In return for no jail, he agrees to an injunction promising that his clients will never swindle anyone again. They don’t need to, because they’ve just waltzed into affluent retirement. And we issue a press release that makes this out as the biggest coup since Tricky Dick turned back into a pumpkin. I tell you, Joe, the way we play the game is really amazing.”
McGuire’s eyes were stupid with surprise. He slowly turned to look out at the Capitol, as if calling upon it for support. Apparently, he got it. He pivoted with an expression of righteous contempt. “Look, I don’t run this place just to please you. Every year I have to justify my budget to the commission and Congress-show them I close my cases. How do you think I’ve gotten here?” Now McGuire was shouting; each word thrust him out over the table toward me. Somehow I thought of an earthmover. “I can’t let you get tied up on a frigging crusade. Your job is to question witnesses and get me the facts, not make policy. So if I don’t have time to consult with you that’s tough shit.”
McGuire’s face was an attractive red. Feiner had the bleak satisfied look of a Jesuit who had rooted out a heresy. But disillusion pushed me on. “The Hartex people should have been indicted, prosecuted, and jailed. And we could have helped get some money back. Instead, our settlement shafted the stockholders. The only places it will ever look good are in our press releases and reports to Congress. Both of which are unadulterated bullshit.”
McGuire smashed his palm on the table like a murderer squashing a fly. Feiner winced as if he were the next fly. He was all caged tension with nowhere to go. McGuire stared at the dead invisible fly, then at me. “I don’t get this crap from the other guys.” Feiner nodded on behalf of the other guys.
I shrugged. “They’re not my problem, Joe.”
“So what makes you so courageous?” This was half inquiry, half sarcasm.
“Because I have to live with myself.”
This last echoed back to me with an unhappily pompous ring. Suddenly I was tired of McGuire, tired of the argument, and tired of myself. Most of all I was tired of feeling cynical, and wishing I didn’t.
McGuire was just tired of me. “Maybe people like you don’t have to pay your dues,” he said in a flat oblique voice. McGuire had never had money; he’d had a lifetime to consider his attitude toward people like me. It wasn’t hard to see how the former Deputy Secretary had cut his deal. He was a fine old WASP who treated McGuire with deference. The deference was McGuire’s reward; it made punishment negotiable.
The insight didn’t help me. I felt superior and disliked myself for it. The fight had taken on a whining undertone of buried resentments older than Hartex and bigger than the ECC. I tried to end it. “OK, I’ve said what I wanted to say.”
McGuire hesitated, as if distracted by his failure to have the last word. The thought got the best of him. “You think because you’re a hotshot, I have to put up with this. I don’t.”
“That’s true. You don’t.” One day, I thought, I would push it too far. But I had Feiner to remind me of what I didn’t want to be. His face was a frozen mask of attention, turned to McGuire. I figured he must spend his nights chiseling McGuire’s every word in marble.
McGuire was looking me over, as if sizing me for a firing. “You’d better get with it,” he finally said.
There was nothing more to say. I left, his sourness trailing after me.
I walked back to my office. I wasn’t happy. The Lasko case came complete with White House interest, a meddling Chairman, and a supercilious female lawyer. I was on a very short leash, and didn’t know who was holding the other end. So I decided to call Jim Robinson.
“Hello?” he answered.
“What’s Mary Carelli?”
“I don’t know, Chris. Maybe if you take penicillin it will go away.”
I laughed. “I’m especially interested in political connections, how she got her job-stuff like that.”
“You a lawyer or a reporter today?”
“I just want to know what I’m dealing with.”
He paused. “I’ll see.”
“Thanks. Catch you this afternoon.”
I depressed the receiver and called Lane Greenfeld at the Washington Post. After that I got the Lasko file. I riffled it for an hour or so. Then I checked my watch and left the building.
Three
Greenfeld and I had agreed to lunch near the Hill.
I beat him to the restaurant and secured a table which was jammed to the side of a darkish room. The decor was instant men’s club: brick walls, stained brown beams, and heavy furniture. I ordered a light rum and tonic and looked over the clientele. The faces moved through intense talk, explosive laughter, and professionally amiable smiles. In one corner a squat man with a lobbyist’s beefy confidence was jabbing a stubby finger at an obscure and worried-looking junior senator. I resolved out of boredom to watch whether the senator’s attention broke. He was still hanging on when Greenfeld cut off my line of sight.
He grinned. “Is this deja vu, malaise, or ennui?”
I considered my answer with mock gravity. “Fin de siecle,” I concluded. I inspected his Cardin suit. “Are you bucking for Paris correspondent?”
He sat down. “Just fashion editor.” Greenfeld was a taut testament to good metabolism. He had black hair, large, perceptive eyes, and a faintly amused look. The eyes suggested that he was amused because he understood more than the rest of us. “Now, you”-he stretched out the words-“look the very figure of entrenched capitalist privilege.”
I smiled. The banter was typical. Greenfeld’s reporting was spartanly self-edited; the excess found refuge in his speech. He liked wordplay, sonorous phrases, and verbal sparring. His conversation was a pleasure which sometimes required strict attention. I had the pleasure fairly often; we were what passed for close friends among people too busy to achieve intimacy. The knowledge reminded me unhappily of how little time I’d had since school.
Greenfeld ordered an old-fashioned. “How are things at the commission?”
“Kafka lives.” I tried to contain my problems with the place. “And the Post?”
He turned his palms upward in a little shrugging gesture. “They keep the pressure on.” He didn’t seem terribly impressed. It was one of the things I liked about him.
I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks and had to stretch for his roommate’s name. I retrieved it. “How’s Lynette?”
The boyish face became guarded and he stared at his cuffs. They seemed to interest him. Finally he spoke to his old-fashioned. “She hasn’t been around lately.” The words were uninflected, as if someone had unplugged his personality.
It seemed less awkward to finish than to switch subjects. I stumbled on. “What happened?”
He shifted slightly in his chair. “It wasn’t working.” Greenfeld was an observer, not a revealer; he discussed the personal only by indirection. I guessed that he had called it off. But his friendship required recognition of limits I probably understood better than most. I tried to slide out on a light note.
“You’re a hard man, Lane.”
Greenfeld gave me a wry, sour smile. “I guess it’s just part of ‘being cool in the seventies.’” He used the phrase to mock his own detachment. But he could already identify a time when he had liked himself better. I wondered if that were the problem.
Greenfeld snapped to the realization that his second persona was warring with his first. “I can give you a pretty good rundown on Lasko. He’s a splendid fellow.” Quickly Greenfeld was back on balance, his voice animated,
