The Multiple Man

She took a deliberate slow breath, like an athlete preparing herself for a supreme effort.

“Yes,” Laura said. “I know about what happened last night. And in Denver.”

“And?”

“And I know Jim has asked you to keep the entire matter hushed up.”

“We talked about it this morning, he and Wyatt and I.”

“Yes.” She looked up at me, searching my face. It was all I could do to keep my hands at my sides. “Meric… I’ve got to know where you stand on this. You might… well, it occurred to me that you might not want to keep the story quiet.”

I guess I blinked at her. “Why?”

She suddenly looked annoyed. “It’s a story that could ruin Jim. And you… the two of us before I met him…”

“Hold it,” I said. “You’re afraid that I’ll blow the story open to hurt him? Or you?”

“I know it’s wrong for me even to suggest it…”

“It sure as hell is!” I snapped. “Okay, so I’m still zonked-out over you. But what kind of a son of a bitch do you think I am? I work for The Man. I work for him.”

“I know, I know… it was stupid of me to ask. But I couldn’t help wondering… I had to hear it from you…”

“You never did understand me,” I grumbled. “You want me to swear a loyalty oath? You want to go down to a bookstore and find a stack of Bibles?”

“Don’t, Meric. That’s not fair.”

“The hell it isn’t! You had to hear it from me in person. Crap! Sounds like something His Holiness would do —him and his suspicious goddamned mind.”

Her expression changed. “I did speak with Robert about you…” She let her voice trail off.

“He put you up to this?”

She looked away from me. “I wouldn’t say it that way. But… well, I did begin to wonder about you… about how you’d react… after he spoke to me.”

“That gritty old bastard,” I fumed.

She put her hand on my arm and started making soothing sounds and offered me a ride back downtown in her chopper. I went along with her, probably wagging my tail like a puppy dog that’d just gotten a pat on its head from its mistress.

It wasn’t until I was safely back in my apartment, and the city outside had gone dark with night, that I realized Wyatt couldn’t possibly have talked with her before she called me. He and I had been together in the West Wing staff dining room when she had called.

FIVE

St. Louis is a dull town. The people are dull.

The atmosphere is humid and oppressive. Old Man River is wide and sluggish and closed in on both banks by factories that keep the water rank and brown, despite a whole generation’s steady work at cleaning up the pollution. The factory owners buy off the city fathers, who not only pocket the graft, but get extra money from Washington for pollution control, since they can show that their pollution problems are still serious. It was something that Halliday had his personal hounds sniffing at; the smell was easy to detect, but tracking it back to its source—with courtroom -tight proof—was another matter.

The hotel where I stayed was dull, too. The staff was downright sullen, as if they resented the idea of cash customers who asked them to rouse themselves and put out a little work. I got the feeling that the chambermaids would be perfectly happy to let me make my own bed. The bartender down in the lobby was no better. Even the lifeguard at the fenced-in pool acted as if his duty were to prevent anybody from disturbing the water. The pool was nearly deserted.

The National Association of News Media Managers held their meeting in the hotel’s main ballroom, which was beautifully decorated in Gay Nineties gilt and rococo: cherubs on the ceiling, bunches of gilded grapes adorning the window frames, heavy velvet drapes. I half-expected to see Mark Twain give the first evening’s keynote address, instead of me. He would have done a lot better.

They applauded my speech, all fifteen hundred of the NANMM representatives, especially the trigger words Vickie and my staff had put in:freedom of information, open access to the newsmakers, making the Constitution work, andthe healthy adversary relationship between the Government and the news media. Especially that last one; they loved that one.

These overweight desk jockeys, these owners of newspapers and television stations, these white-haired tight-fisted executives who had never been on the firing line trying to dig the truth out of a reluctant politician, who had suppressed more stories about their friends than they ever published about their enemies—these money handlers loved to think they were Hildy Johnson, Ed Murrow, Walter Lippmann, and Horace Greeley, all rolled into one. They pictured themselves as Citizen Kane, and maybe in that, at least, they were close to the mark.

So I gave them what they wanted to hear, and they applauded enthusiastically. Up until the previous week, I would have believed what I was telling them. The Halliday Administration was open, honest, and anxious to play fair with the media—not these stuffed penguins and their bejeweled ladies, but the real, working media.

But while I was speaking those glowing platitudes to them, I knew that I was sitting on the biggest story of them all, and I wasn’t going to tell anyone about it.

I made polite conversation through the reception after my speech, and got back to my suite upstairs as fast as I could. I felt drained, exhausted. And—as there had been for the past week—somewhere deep inside of me there was a fear gnawing away, like that last instant of a nightmare just before you awake, falling, falling, falling into something dark and terrible.

It was after midnight. My hotel suite was plush: bed big enough for half a dozen people, automated bar, comfortable sitting room for entertaining business guests. I plopped on the bed and called Vickie’s home number. The phone buzzed four times. I was about to click off when her voice answered, throaty and sleepy. The screen stayed a flickering gray. Then I realized it was after 1:00 A.M. in Washington.

“I woke you up,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Meric?” Her voice brightened. “Hi. I must’ve just dozed off. I was sort of expecting you to call. Wait half a minute…”

The screen cleared and showed her, yellow hair tousled and eyes a little bleary. She had a green robe pulled up around her throat.

“How’d the speech go?” she asked.

“Good enough.”

“Count the applause?”

“No, let the computer analyze it when the tapes get to the office tomorrow.”

“You’re down.”

“It’s a down city,” I said.

But she was looking at me from the phone screen very intently. “No, you’ve been down for the past week or more. Whatever it is, it’s really got you bugged.”

“Never mind. I’ll live through it.”

“It started when she called you, didn’t it?”

“She?”

“The First Lady.” Somehow Vickie put an accent on the word “lady” that wasn’t entirely wholesome.

“Laura’s got nothing to do with it,” I said.

Vickie just shook her head. She wasn’t buying a word of it.

We just sat there for a silent moment or two, neither of us wanting to say anything, neither of us wanting to break the connection. I was totally alone except for this flickering electronic image of her.

“The convention’s not much fun?” Vickie asked at last.