Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“I should have thought of that.”

“No, you did what you’re paid to do; you got the story. I’m paid to look for problems and solve them. So we’ve both earned our salaries today.”

Pace pushed the chair back. “I’m on it,” he said.

“What are you calling me here for, for chrissake?”

“Why shouldn’t I call you at your office, George? It’s where you work. You sound like a man who feels guilty about something. You been makin’ anonymous phone calls about silver T-Birds again?”

“Funny,” Ridley said. “You’re real funny. So what is it?”

“I’m looking for Chappy. Have you seen him around today?” Pace tried to sound nonchalant. He suspected he didn’t fool Ridley.

“You know he isn’t in today,” the Senate aide replied.

“I thought as much. You know where I could find him?”

“You also know that.”

“No, I don’t, George.”

“I heard the Montgomery County Jail. But that’s hearsay.”

“Now whatever would he be doing there?”

“Time.”

Pace made the rest of his phone calls.

The FBI, as usual, had no comment on anything. A reporter in the Chronicle’s Montgomery county bureau was able to confirm, by looking at the police blotter, that a man named Chapman Davis was in custody. No charges were specified, and the police would say only that charges were pending. Pace was fairly certain the “charges pending” status wouldn’t last long. The police would have to charge Davis or let him go.

He was surprised when Marty Lanier took his call. But he wasn’t surprised that he came away from the encounter with no information. “I appreciate the job you’re doing, but I couldn’t discuss this with you if I wanted to,” Lanier said. “Travis would be upside me like a horny hound on a leg.”

It would have been funny if it weren’t so believable. “I know how Travis can be,” Pace said. “I had a run-in with him myself. He thinks I’m tapping his grand jury.”

“Are you?”

“No comment.”

“Right.” Lanier chuckled. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

As soon as Pace hung up, the intercom on his phone buzzed. “Come on in here,” Schaeffer said. “Let’s talk about this story.”

Paul Wister was in Schaeffer’s office when Pace arrived.

“Paul filled me in on the Davis situation,” said the editor. “You have more to add?”

“Montgomery county police acknowledge they’re holding Davis, but they say charges are pending and won’t go into any details. George Ridley confirmed Davis didn’t show up for work.”

“Where is Marshall now?” Schaeffer asked.

“On the Hill, I guess.”

“Find him. See if you can get him to comment on this, including the fact that he once sent Davis to make Converse’s case with the NTSB. Then write the hell out of it.”

“And if he won’t comment?”

“Write the hell out of it anyway. We’re obligated to give him the opportunity. We’re not obligated to hold the story if he declines to take it.”

Pace got up to leave, but Schaeffer called him back. “I want you to hit the Marshall angles of this story high and hard,” he said. “He’s the big fish, and I want to land him.”

Harold Marshall sat alone in his bedroom, propped up by pillows in his expansive bed, the morning papers spread before him. He dreaded the idea that the phone would ring within minutes and that George Greenwood would be on the other end, undoubtedly with a sheaf of fax paper in his hand, the latest-breaking news from the Washington Chronicle. Greenwood calls were coming in at an average of three a day. Most of the time he railed at what he called “leaks, lies, and innuendo.” He seemed to think Marshall could snap his fingers and make them go away.

But the strong current of events had gone beyond the point where a single senator, and one under considerable stress and suspicion, could do anything to redirect attention.

Marshall reread the latest in the Chronicle and shook his head angrily. His staff had told him the day before of Chappy Davis’s detention; apparently someone recognized his car and reported it to the police. That flashy damned car. Why on earth had Davis used it to pick up Parkhall? Of all the stupid, damned decisions. Marshall hoped Chappy would hold together. He didn’t need his aide cutting any deals.

Pace had tried during the previous afternoon and evening to reach the senator, calling his office, his home, and even Evelyn Bracken’s home. Marshall refused to take or return the calls. Thus the story ran without his comment, and he knew that made him look worse, but at this point, there wasn’t anything he could have said to make things better. He could have denied everything, which would have been a lie, and everyone would have recognized it for what it was. Marshall rolled his head against his pillow. He didn’t have the answers. He wasn’t even certain he knew all the questions. But he knew the newspaper scared him half to death.

He had reached the point where he greeted each new morning with apprehension. He took the first of his three daily doses of blood-pressure medication even before he picked up the papers at his front door. Generally, he found he was justified in doing so. Barely a day passed without another assault on him. God, if they ever got the whole story… he banished the thought as he felt perspiration seep from the pores of his forehead.

He finished with the Chronicle and laid it aside. Now he fingered the front page of The New York Times. His name was nowhere on page one because the Times, if it knew of Chappy’s arrest, did not know enough to attach any significance to it. But Marshall knew he’d be on the front page of the Youngstown Vindicator and countless other Ohio rags, if not today, then tomorrow, for his hometown and home-state newspapers surely would pick up whatever The Associated Press carried of the Chronicle stories. The Vindicator’s political writer had been trying to reach Marshall all week, but he was dodging those calls, too.

Evelyn had come over to fix his dinner the night before and spent most of the evening pressuring him to file some sort of lawsuit to stop the Chronicle’s reports. It proved useless to try to convince her there was nothing to be done. The United States Supreme Court years earlier struck down the concept of prior restraint when the U.S. government tried to stop The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. That decision provided newspapers ample protection against prepublication suppression. He couldn’t sue for libel. He was too much a public figure, and there was no apparent malice in the Chronicle’s reporting. He couldn’t argue reckless disregard of the truth because, unfortunately for him, everything the paper printed was accurate.

Evelyn understood none of it. She kept keening, “Well, think of something?”

He contemplated going to the Senate Ethics Committee and telling everything, but he was honest enough with himself to recognize he wouldn’t be willing to tell every last little bit of the story, and withholding anything would finish him. He knew the committee had his stock records. He knew questions would be asked about the money: where he got it, what he did with it. He’d never thought he’d have to face those questions, and he knew he wasn’t prepared to answer them. No amount of pressure would make him answer. When the committee called him, he would go, and he would answer truthfully every question asked except questions about his money.

God, he’d made mistakes in his life, major, major mistakes. But how had it come to this? He didn’t believe he was an immoral man, but he most certainly had sold his soul for Converse. Over the years—and over the last few weeks—he’d done things he once would have considered unthinkable. Now there were demands that he pay the price. He wouldn’t let the Senate ship him off in disgrace. He would go, if it came to that, fighting to the end and with his head high. But there would be no capitulation. He firmly believed what he’d done was for a higher good. It was a conviction that no amount of public pressure would vitiate. No, he wouldn’t tell them about the money. Never. That would enrage his colleagues, but he didn’t care. Maybe, just maybe, he could weather the storm.