Gore Vidal - Empire

James Burden Day introduced Blaise to a recently elected Texas congressman. “John Nance Garner,” said James Burden Day. “Blaise Sanford.” Once again, Blaise felt somehow nude without the third all-defining name so valued by his countrymen. Garner was a cheerful young man with quick bright eyes.

“We were talking about Mr. Hearst,” said Frederika. “And Mr. Sullivan.”

“Sullivan’s a polecat,” observed Garner. “I’m for Hearst. We all are in my neck of the woods, now Bryan’s drifted off.”

Blaise looked at Jim, who seemed tired and distracted. The previous fall, he had failed to be elected to the Senate; and he was restive in the House. Kitty was a good political partner, but nothing more. Blaise suspected that Jim had another woman. But Blaise did not ask; and the prudent Jim did not volunteer. On the other hand, Jim had been delighted to go with Blaise to New York’s most elegant bordello, in Fifth Avenue. Here Jim had performed heroically, and surpassed in popularity Blaise, who was never more contented than when he could play sultan in his rented harem, with a friend like Jim. “I like our colleague,” said Jim, indicating Hearst’s back, “but those who don’t really don’t.”

“A third party?” Blaise repeated not only the phrase but imitated the Chief’s tone of voice.

“They don’t work, ever,” said Garner. “Look at the Populists. They’re going nowhere like a bat through hell.”

“So are we.” Jim was grim. “The country’s Republican now, and we can’t change it. TR’s pulled it off. He talks just like us and acts just the way the people who pay for him want him to act. Hard to beat.”

Mrs. Bingham drew Blaise into her orbit where Hearst now moved, larger than life. “He is my ideal!” she exclaimed.

“Mine, too.” Blaise winked at Hearst, who blinked, and smiled, and said, “I’m running for mayor of New York. This year.”

Mrs. Bingham emitted a tragic cry. “You’re not going to leave us? Not now. We need you. Here. You are excitement.”

“Oh, he’ll be back.” But Blaise wondered how anyone with the Chief’s curious personality could prevail in politics. Then he thought of those cheering delegates in St. Louis; and of the sizeable majorities Hearst obtained in his congressional district. “What about Tammany?” asked Blaise. The Democratic candidate for mayor was almost always a Tammany creature.

“I’m running on a third-party ticket.” The Chief looked suddenly mischievous, and happy. “Tammany’s going to run McClellan again. I’m going to beat him.”

Blaise was amused by the Chief’s confidence. George B. McClellan, Jr., son of the Civil War general, had been a New York City congressman; now he was the city’s mayor. Despite the support of “Silent” Charlie Murphy, the head of Tammany, McClellan was honest and civilized and, Blaise thought, impregnable. “But I’ll beat him. I’m putting together my own machine.”

“Like Professor Langley.” Mrs. Bingham could be tactless.

“This won’t crash.” Hearst was serene. “I’m coming out for the public ownership of all utilities.”

“Isn’t that socialism?” Mrs. Bingham’s eyes widened, and her lips narrowed.

“Oh, not really. Your cows are safe,” he added.

“ Mr . Bingham’s cows. I’ve never met them.”

“Have you done ‘research’ on McClellan?” Blaise was still intrigued by the Chief’s reference to what sounded like police dossiers on his enemies.

“ ‘Research’?” The Chief stared blankly. “Oh, yes. That. Maybe. I know a lot now. But I can’t say how, or what.”

As it turned out, two weeks later, Blaise knew what the Chief knew. The Tribune was now housed in a new building in Eleventh Street, just opposite the department store of Woodward and Lothrop. Blaise’s office was on the first floor, in one corner; Caroline was installed in the opposite corner; between them, Trimble; above them, the newsroom; below them, the printing presses.

In front of Blaise stood a well-dressed young Negro, who had been admitted, after considerable discussion, by Blaise’s disapproving stenographer. In Washington even well-dressed Negroes were not encouraged to pay calls on publishers. The fact that the young man was from New York City had, apparently, tipped the scale, and Mr. Willie Winfield was admitted. “I’m a friend of Mr. Fred Eldridge.” Winfield sat down without invitation; he gave Blaise a big smile; he wore canary-yellow spats over orange shoes.

“Who,” asked Blaise, perplexed, “is Mr. Fred Eldridge?”

“He said you might not remember him, but even so I was to come see you, anyways. He’s an editor at the New York American .”

Blaise recalled, vaguely, such a person. “What does Mr. Eldridge want?”

“Well, it’s not what he wants, it’s maybe, what you want.” The young man stared at a painting of the gardens of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc.

“So what do I-want?”

“Information about people, you know, bigwigs. Like senators and that stuff. You know John D. Archbold?”

“Standard Oil?”

“Yeah. The same. He looks after politicians for Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Well, my stepfather is his butler in the big house in Tarrytown, and Mr. Archbold, a very fine man, by the way, got me this job as office boy at Twenty-eight Broadway, where the Standard Oil is.”

Blaise tried not to look interested. “I’m afraid we’ve no openings here for an office boy,” he began.

“Oh, I’m out of that business now. Me and my partner, we’re opening up a saloon on a Hundred Thirty-fourth Street. Anyways, me and my partner, we went through Mr. Archbold’s files, where he has all these letters from the bigwigs in politics who he pays money to so they’ll help Standard Oil do different things. Anyways, I happened to come across Mr. Eldridge about that time, last December it was, and he asked me to bring the letters round to the American where he could photograph them, and then I could put them back in the files, so nobody’d know they was ever missing.”

Hearst had the letters. That was plain. But how would he use them? More to the point, how would-or could-Blaise make use of them? “I assume Mr. Eldridge told you that I might be a customer for the letters…”

“That’s about the size of it. Mr. Hearst paid us pretty good for the first batch. Then, a couple weeks ago, Mr. Archbold fired us, my partner and me. I guess we didn’t always put things back in the right order, or something.”

“Does he know which letters you photographed?”

Winfield shook his head. “How could he? He doesn’t even know that any of them was photographed. Because that was something only somebody like Mr. Eldridge could do, at a newspaper office-like this.”

There was a long silence, as Blaise stared at the window, which now framed a most convincing rainstorm. “What have you got to sell?” he asked.

“Well, when we was fired, I’d taken out this big letterbook for the first half of 1904. I’ve still got it…”

“Then you’ll go to jail when Mr. Archbold reports the theft…”

Winfield’s smile was huge. “He won’t report nothing. There’s letters in there from everybody . How much he paid this judge, how much he paid that senator, and other things, too. I offered to sell it to Mr. Eldridge, but he says the price is too high, and Mr. Hearst’s got enough already.”

“Did you bring the letterbook?”

“You think I’m crazy, Mr. Sanford? No. But I made out a list for you of some of the people who wrote Mr. Archbold thanking him for money paid, and so on.”

“Could I see that list?”

“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Sanford.” Two sheets of paper were produced; each filled with neatly typewritten names. Blaise put them on his desk. Where once railroads had bought and sold politicians, now the oil magnates did the same; and Mr. Archbold was Mr. Rockefeller’s principal disperser of bribes and corrupter-in-chief. The names, by and large, did not surprise Blaise. One could tell by the way certain members of Congress habitually voted who paid for them. But it was startling to see so many letters from Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio, the man most likely to be the Republican candidate for president in 1908. Blaise was relieved not to find Jim’s name on the first page. He picked up the second page. The first name at the head of the column was “Theodore Roosevelt.”