Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Marshall’s face grew red, and he hammered his fist through the air at each repetition of the word “lies.” He was out of breath. He slammed his microphone onto his desk and strode off the floor, forgetting to yield the balance of his time back to the chair. Senators were not above putting on floor shows in the Senate, but Marshall’s explosion was no show.

“I hope to heaven your paper is right,” the Utah reporter said to Hughes as he got up from his chair. “Because if you’re wrong—”

Hughes was furious. It was irritating enough to listen to Marshall take the Senate floor and vilify her newspaper, but it was one of the prices you paid to work for a high-profile publication in the nation’s capital. It was quite something else for a colleague to pile on. She knew what was at stake in the Chronicle’s reporting; more important, the editors of the paper knew, and they were confident of Steve Pace’s facts. But there were some in the press corps so jealous of others’ success they felt compelled to snipe at good stories they missed. Hughes thought their pretense of cynicism both phony and insulting. If they didn’t consider a public scandal worth their time, they should find something else to cover and keep their own counsel. Better yet, they should find another profession. At the very least, she thought, they should find a seat in the press gallery somewhere else than beside her.

Hughes clomped down three flights of Capitol steps, trying to pound down her irritation. She found herself standing outside the Capitol’s East Front, what most people thought of as the business side of the building because that’s where they came and went. Actually, it was the back, facing the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress over an expanse of lawn and trees. The ceremonial side was the West Front. From the steps there, one could look over the Mall, a vast green open space extending all the way across town to the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. It was a magnificent view, one too few visitors or residents ever saw. But today was not the day for seeing it. Hughes was freezing.

A late-spring bluster was passing through the area, bringing a surge of cold Canadian air and a chill wind highly unusual for Washington this late in the spring. The temperature had dipped into the high thirties in outlying suburban areas the night before, and forecasters said it wouldn’t get above the mid-sixties in the nation’s capital on this day. Hughes was certain it was still below sixty, and wind made the damp cold feel even more frigid. It cut to the bone.

She had made a tentative appointment to see Senator Garrison Helmutsen, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, after Marshall’s speech. Now she faced a long two-block walk in the biting wind to get to his office in the Hart Senate Office Building. She stuffed her notebook in her purse, shoved her hands into the pockets of her wool skirt, and set off at a brisk pace.

She was cursing the slow traffic signal at First and Constitution when her eyes fell on a blue van parked in the block of First Street between the Russell and Dirksen buildings. She could see only part of the back and the driver’s side, but she was certain there was a Ford insignia on the right rear door. She laughed at herself for thinking this could be the van of Steve Pace’s nightmares. Nonetheless, instead of cutting up Constitution to the Hart Building, she detoured down First, alongside the Dirksen Building. About fifty feet from the van, she stopped in her tracks, feeling a constriction in her throat. A man walking behind her, as briskly as she, bumped into her.

“There’s no stop sign on this sidewalk, lady,” he said sarcastically as he detoured around her without apology. “If you want to stand out in the wind, that’s your business, but get out of the way of those who don’t share your enthusiasm.”

Hughes nodded and stepped toward the curb. There was no one else on the block. The wind blew straight up the street from the north, and nobody else was enthusiastic about challenging it. She approached the van, her eyes glued to the sight that had stopped her short in the first place. Glenn told her the previous week that a van like this one could be pivotal in proving Steve Pace was telling the truth. Glenn said the right front was wrecked and mentioned that there might be some yellow paint scraped from a car with which the van collided.

It was there, just as Glenn described it. Hughes suddenly felt colder than the wind chill. She jotted down the license number. It was a Maryland plate. Then, on a whim, she pulled two tissues from a travel pack of Kleenex in her purse. Using a long fingernail, she carefully scraped a little of the yellow paint into one tissue. She tried three times before she got enough; the wind kept blowing the flakes away. She stashed the first folded tissue in her pocket, then looked for a place to take a sample of the blue paint. That was easier and quicker. Some large, loose flakes came off in her hand. She backed away from the vehicle. A woman walking past eyed her suspiciously.

“I had an accident,” Hughes explained. The other woman nodded, ducked her head deeper into her coat, and walked on.

Hughes hurried around to the back of the Dirksen Building and darted inside through the “Press and Visitors” entrance. She put her purse on the X-ray machine used for security and walked through the metal detector. She grabbed her purse and ducked around the corner, where the Capitol Police at the door couldn’t see her. She leaned up against a wall and shivered. It was a deep spasm that wouldn’t end. A young man, probably somebody’s legislative assistant, saw her distress and stopped.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

Hughes shook her head. “Just cold.”

“You shouldn’t be out today without a coat.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I didn’t think about it this morning.”

He nodded slowly. “Well, I hope you don’t get sick.”

“Me, too,” Hughes replied and shivered again. “I’ll get some coffee, and I’ll be fine.”

The man moved on. Hughes knew she hadn’t been shivering from the cold.

The chill she felt was fear.

“What the hell do you mean you don’t know? What happened to that little slut you keep on your payroll to report these things? She only get laid on weekends?” G. T. Greenwood was in high dudgeon, and Harold Marshall was the target.

People in Washington didn’t speak that way to Marshall; he went to great lengths to cultivate an image precluding it. But Greenwood was CEO of Converse, his best constituent and most lucrative fund-raiser, so he reined in his natural instinct for indignation.

When he arrived at his office this morning, Marshall found a message from Greenwood. He ignored it as he polished his tirade for the Senate floor. Greenwood called again, and Marshall told his secretary to say he wasn’t there. There were two more messages when Marshall returned from the floor. He wished in retrospect he’d gone right out for a long lunch somewhere. But he knew he’d have to face Greenwood sooner or later, so better it be sooner and get it over with. Once done with Greenwood, he could give serious consideration to going home.

Marshall felt dizzy and vaguely nauseous. He’d been experiencing the dizziness with some regularity of late, and it was particularly bad when he left the Senate floor. He walked to his office across the Capitol grounds rather than take the underground subway, hoping the cold, fresh air would clear his head. But the dizziness affected his balance, and once he thought he nearly fell. At the moment, he tried to focus on defending himself against the abuse from the Converse CEO.

“George, she’s not a slut, given all I know, and I don’t keep her on the payroll to spy on the Chronicle. I don’t know if she had any notice of this. I assume if she learned anything, she would have told me. She always has. I’m not going to order her to sleep with the photographer to get information for you. That would be unconscionable.”