would be less tempted to ignore my instructions and listen to the tape prematurely. And I knew a couple of good men overseas in London and Kyoto.
It wasn’t difficult to get to see Laura. The next morning, as soon as I got into the office, I went over the assignments involving her. She was addressing a special meeting of delegates from Working Office Women who were joining in the big Neo-Luddite rally at the Capitol Building to protest the loss of jobs to automation.
I called the kid who was assigned to handle the meeting’s press relations and told her that I was coming along. She got the impression that I had my eye on her, and there was a promotion in the air. I didn’t disillusion her.
The next thing I did was call Vickie in to set up my press conference for the following afternoon.
“You?” she asked, surprised. “A personal press conference?”
“That’s right. Make certain that all the wire services and the international reps get the word.”
“We’ll have to tell them the subject.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Just tell them it’s the most important story of their lives, and it’s too hot to even name the subject beforehand.”
She leaned back in her chair. “You’re going to tell them about the President.”
“Either that or get thrown out of town for canceling the conference at the last minute.”
“Or get killed,” Vickie said, very matter-of-factly. No histrionics.
“If that happens,” I said, trying to stay equally controlled, “the story will break right away. Last night I sent tapes of the whole thing to a few trusted newsmen, with instructions to do nothing unless I die or disappear.”
“And tomorrow’s press conference…”
“Either they nail the murderer by tomorrow afternoon, or I blow the whistle.”
“They’ll kill you,” Vickie said. “They’ll kill all of us.”
“No,” I said again. “They won’t touch you because I haven’t told you what I know. I’m keeping you in the clear. You’ll be safe.”
“You’re keeping me in the dark,” she said, her voice rising slightly.
“For your own protection.”
She slammed her hands down on the arms of the chair. “So you’re going to take the whole burden on yourself. You’re going to let them kill you, in the hopes that a few news people you once worked with will have the guts to publish the story and expose the President.”
“They will,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the first time that only a couple of newsmen have stood between the people and a national catastrophe.”
“Wonderful!” she said. “And in the meantime you’re dead in some back alley in Georgetown.”
“What do you want me to do?” I shouted back at her.
“Nothing.” She got to her feet. “It’s too late. You’ve done it all. They’ll give you a big funeral, I bet.”
“You just set up the press conference,” I told her. “Let me do the worrying.”
“Sure. Thanks for the advice. It was swell knowing you. You’re a credit to your profession.” And she stamped out of the room, furious.
But safe. Whoever was bugging my office now knew that Vickie was small potatoes, and didn’t know enough to be dangerous. I hoped so she was sore at me. Probably a good thing. We’d been getting too close. Not good for either of us. And I was going to see Laura in another couple of hours.
WOW had set up its meeting at the Van Trayer. Laura spoke to the delegates in the main ballroom. The ornate crystal and chrome room was only half filled with WOW delegates—secretaries, file clerks, office managers who were inexorably being replaced by electronic memory systems, voice-operated typewriters, picture-phones, and computers.
I stood in the back of the room, alone. The news people, mostly women, were off to one side of the podium up at the front of the ballroom, taping sound and pictures. I frankly didn’t recognize which of the women up there was the one who worked for me. They all looked pretty much alike.
But Laura was something else. She wore her hair tightly pulled back, in a no-nonsense way, straight and efficient, as if she had only a couple of minutes to take care ofit each day. Her suit was also an efficiency-image, neat and simple, bright enough to be attractive but absolutely without frills.
I came in toward the end of her speech. She was saying: “I’m a working woman, too, and have been all my adult life. As you all probably know, I was a dancer before I was married… and not such a very good one that I could afford the pampering of a star. I was just one of the ‘girls’—” She put a special emphasis on the word, and a few sympathetic hisses rose from the audience. “—who had to pay her rent and buy her groceries with a pretty tiny paycheck.”
She paused and smiled at them, a smile that said,
They applauded enthusiastically.
“And I can assure you,” she said, as the applause died down, “that you have a friend in the White House. More than one, in fact, because the President is vitally interested in the effect of automation on your jobs.” Then she added, in a different tone, so that it seemed like an ad lib, “And if he weren’t, he’d hear about it from me!”
More applause. Cheers. Laughter. She had them in her proverbial palm.
“As you know, the President has proposed legislation that will ease the economic burdens of job dislocations caused by automation. His motto is, ‘Don’t try to stop automation; try to use it.’ I think that each of us here, if we really worked at it and took advantage of the new programs that the President was proposed, could become managers of one-person offices. We should be
They rose and cheered. Maybe when they sifted through all that rhetoric and realized that only one woman out of five could possibly attain the managerial positions that Laura dangled before them, they would stop cheering. But for the moment they were solidly with her, and the President.
I made my way through the exiting crowd, getting some dirty stares from a few of the WOW delegates, and stood on the fringes of the impromptu press conference that had gathered around the First Lady. The news people ignored me; probably thought I was one of her Secret Service guards. These were mostly “Female Features” type of newspersons, not the usual White House corps, and my face meant nothing to them. The only one who seemed to recognize me was the kid from my office, whom I finally spotted after she smiled and nodded to me.
Laura fielded the newspersons’ questions expertly and stood through three “special” network interviews of five minutes each, in which each of the network interviewers asked exactly the same questions. But each of the chicks could go back to her station claiming an “exclusive” interview with the First Lady. That word “exclusive” had changed its meaning a lot in the television industry.
I spotted Hank Solomon among the fringe of security men and grinned at him. He gave no indication of even noticing me. Professional ethics, I guess, in front of his peers. They were all stony-faced types and trying to melt into the background.
Finally the news people snapped shut their cameras and tape recorders and filed out of the room. I made a few nice words to the woman from my office, told her she handled things very well. She went off beaming.
When I looked around, Laura was watching me, a curious smile on her face.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said. “When you came in, I nearly lost my place in the speech.”
“I want to talk with you. In private.”
She was sitting on the edge of the ballroom’s dais, long legs held out straight in front of her. She gestured
