A President In Peril

Chapter Nine D₂ I₁ S₁ S₁ E₁ M₃ B₃ L₁ E₁ (v) to give false or misleading appearance to; to conceal the real nature of

My first act in the Headquarters press room Monday morning was to call Mike Kennedy, the Trib’s Sunday Editor, and try to interest him in a feature about Tucker and his car.

“I don’t know, Snap,” he said after I’d made my pitch. “From what I read, it seems like he’s skating on pretty thin ice with that company of his right now.”

“All the more reason to do a profile of him, Mike. Here’s a lone man, a visionary, fighting against the combined might of all the big auto companies. And a senator from Michigan seems to be against him, too. There’s drama, there’s tension, there’s the emotional appeal of a little guy with a revolutionary idea up against giant Detroit corporations with all of their resources.”

“But big corporations like GM and Ford aren’t all that he’s up against,” Kennedy retorted. “Also from what I read — and hear — there are some questions, and I mean big questions, about the way he operates. There’s apparently been some funny business with the stock and the company has been selling accessories even before the cars are produced.”

“More compelling reasons why this will make a good story, Mike.”

I was met with silence on the other end of the line for some seconds. “All right, Snap,” Kennedy said in a world-weary tone. “Go ahead and set up a meeting with this Tucker and let’s see what you come up with. No guarantees that anything will ever run, though.”

I thanked him and headed down one flight for my daily visit with the chief of detectives.

“Hello, oh vision of loveliness,” I crooned to Elsie Dugo Cascio as I stepped into her broom-closet-sized anteroom.

“How nice of you to address me that way,” she cooed, “especially considering this.” She patted her tummy.

I almost asked if she was pregnant again, but for once something inside of me advised a prudent approach. “Meaning what?” I asked.

“Meaning that ever since Robby was born, I can’t seem to get rid of this little friend that I thought would go away after the pregnancy.” She ran a palm over her tummy again, making a face.

“I’ve never so much as noticed,” I said gallantly. “To these admiring eyes, you look every bit as attractive and appealing as the day I first met you, lo these several years ago.”

“You’ve just earned yourself a cup of coffee, big fella. I suppose you would like to see the man closeted in that office?”

“I would indeed. Can you announce me?”

“I will, but be warned that he’s not in the best of moods.”

“So what makes this different from any other day around here?”

She rolled her eyes and went through the usual motions with the crummy little intercom. I really believe only Elsie is able to decipher what sounds like static to me. But after listening to a few of these squawks, she motioned me to go in.

I did, and found Fergus Fahey leaning back in his chair in a contemplative pose, apparently studying the cracks in the ceiling.

“Hope I’m not interrupting a reverie,” I told him, dropping into one of his guest chairs and laying an opened pack of Luckies on his blotter, as usual.

“Heard anything this morning from your Nazi caller?” Fahey asked, coming forward in his chair and eyeing me from under bushy gray brows.

“As a matter of fact, no. Should I?” I responded as Elsie came in, setting a steaming mug of her wonderful coffee in front of me and tripping lightly and silently out.

“I expect you will, unless he’s given up on getting any coverage in the Tribune. There was a shooting this morning up in Rogers Park, a rabbi who was waiting to cross Morse Avenue a block or so west of the Elevated station. Somebody in a passing car plugged him at close range.”

“Dead?”

“Incredibly, no. Good thing you’re sitting down to hear this: The bullet went right where the shooter apparently wanted it to — the heart. But this rabbi was carrying a copy of the Book of Psalms in the breast pocket of his suit coat and—”

“Don’t tell me, Fergus. Let me guess. The good book deflected the bullet.”

“The good book deflected the bullet,” he echoed, “and it passed though his shoulder, then exited. He fell to the pavement, of course, which gave him a few scrapes and bruises and there was a little blood, of course, but other than a somewhat battered shoulder, we’re hearing that’s about the extent of his injuries.”

“My God! Shades of Teddy Roosevelt.”

“Huh?” If Fahey were a cartoon character, there would have been a question mark in a balloon above his head.

“We were just talking in the press room the other day about how Teddy got shot while giving a speech and the bullet was deflected either by eyeglasses or wadded-up papers in his breast pocket, which probably saved the old Rough Rider’s life.”

“I’ll be damned. Somewhere along the way, I must have missed that little piece of history. Well, anyway, the rabbi survived, I guess you could say by the grace of God.”

“The Lord looks after those who do His work — at least sometimes,” I observed. “Anybody able to identify the car?”

“Not that we’ve been able to learn so far. We’ve still got men out there. Of course, it’s just possible this has nothing to do with the other shootings.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“Do you?” Fahey snapped as he lit up a smoke and flipped the match into his ashtray.

“No, not for a minute. Chances are that I’ll hear something, and sooner rather than later. When did this happen?”

“About seven-fifteen or so. The rabbi was headed to a newsstand nearby to buy a morning paper, maybe yours.”

“If so, another piece of the good news is that we didn’t lose a reader,” I said as I took notes from the early police reports on the shooting to relay to the boys upstairs.

Sure enough, I wasn’t even back in the press room long enough to pass the details of the shooting along to my so-called competitors when I got a phone call. The nasal voice on the other end was becoming all too familiar.

“So, Mr. Malek, what have you learned this morning?”

“Nothing that immediately comes to mind. Why do you ask?”

“I believe that what occurred a short time ago up on the North Side will provide you with tomorrow’s front-page headline.”

“Which is?”

“Do not dissemble with me, Mr. Malek; you know very well what I’m talking about by now. I could even write your headline, which would read ‘Beloved Rabbi Shot Dead by Unknown Assailant on City’s Far North Side’.”

“Interesting, but no report about anything like that has come through from the police. You must have received incorrect information.”

There was a long pause at the other end. I knew it was futile to try tracing the call, so I waited.

Finally my caller broke the silence. “I dislike liars, Mr. Malek.”

“And I dislike killers and bigots, Mr. ...”

The wire went dead When I looked up, four men had their gazes fixed on me — three from the Trib’s competing dailies and the other from the City News Bureau.

“Hey, Snap, come on, what gives?” Packy Farmer demanded.

“All right, get your pencils poised, boys,” I told them, proceeding to relate the details of the attempted murder of the rabbi.

“Okay, that’s good stuff,” Dirk O’Farrell conceded, “but what about the call you just got? All of us heard your end of the conversation, including the part about you disliking killers and bigots. Come on, open up, Snap.”

They had me. Because I had been given the okay by the managing editor, I decided to spill everything, and I did. It took about fifteen minutes, which included several interruptions from the crew who, like the veteran journalists they are, fired plenty of questions at me.

“There you have it, gentlemen,” I said. “A Jew-hating madman is apparently on a rampage in the city, or else he’s claiming the credit, if you want to call it that, for three shootings, two of them fatal. And he also claims he’s going to plug the president when he comes to town.”

“How much of this does Chief Fahey know?” Anson Masters rumbled.

“Everything I just told you, except of course that last call. Also, he has the notes I received with those sweet little swastikas drawn on them. Obviously he’s got all sorts of people working on it, as well as filling in the FBI and the Secret Service.”

“A question,” Dirk O’Farrell said. “If this guy is such a Jew-hater, I can see him angry at Truman because of his getting the U.S. to recognize Israel. And I guess I can even see him shooting a rabbi. But what’s with killing the cop and the fireman? Neither one of them was Jewish.”

“For whatever reasons, he wants publicity, and he wants it badly, which is why he’s been bugging the hell out of me,” I answered. “He obviously hasn’t got all his marbles.”

“And just what’s your Trib going to do about all this?” Packy Farmer demanded.

“I shouldn’t be telling you our secrets, but... nothing, at least for now. The fear in the Tower is that if the anti-Semitic stuff gets out, it will encourage copy-cat groups, to say nothing of other would-be presidential assassins. As we all are only too damned aware, there are a lot of nuts out there.”

“For once, I agree with your editors, Mr. Malek,” Masters intoned. “I will of course fill my superiors in, but I suspect they will take the same position as the Tribune.”

“As much as I hate to agree with Antsy on anything, I figure the folks who call the shots at the Sun-Times will follow suit as well,” O’Farrell said. “What about you, Packy?”

Farmer took a long drag on his cigarette and screwed up his face. “Well, you know how the Hearst folks love a juicy story, and this one is really juicy. Would sell a lot of papers, you know. Think of the headlines that could be written. But having said that, I think in this situation they’ll probably take a pass, at least for the present.”

As it turned out, everyone did indeed take a pass on the story, a rare example of four intensively competitive dailies in America’s hottest newspaper town saying ‘no thank you’ to a sensational story — at least for the moment.

I phoned in my report of the rabbi’s shooting to a rewrite man on the city desk. Minutes later I got a call from Hal Murray, the day city editor. “Snap, Maloney wants to talk to you; hold the line.”

The next voice on the line was that of the managing editor. “Mr. Malek,” he said, “I just read your piece on the rabbi. May I assume the shooting was done by the same people who killed the police officer and the fireman?”

“So they claim, sir. I was going to call you. I just got another one of those anonymous phone calls taking credit.”

“All right,” he said after exhaling, “I think it’s time to tie the three shootings together — but without mentioning this so-called New Reich group. Get some sort of quote from the police.”

I told him I would, informed my press room colleagues of the managing editor’s decision, and went back down to Fergus Fahey’s office. He was far from overjoyed.

“Shit, Snap, I hope to hell you’re not going to call this the work of an anti-Semitic group in your story. That’s all we need — fanning the flames of ethnic hatred.”

“You didn’t let me finish, Fergus. When you interrupted me, I was about to say that Maloney specifically said I was not, repeat not to include anything in the piece about the notes or calls I’ve received from this hate group. Or the anti-Semitic nature of this slimy bunch.”

“But you still plan to link the three events, right?”

“Well, is there any doubt whatever in your mind now that they are linked?”

Fahey slouched in his chair, hands jammed into pants pockets. “And I suppose you want a quote from me?”

“Yep.”

He lit a Lucky Strike from the pack I had dropped on his desk earlier. “Okay, here it is: ‘We have reason to believe that there may be a connection among these three unfortunate occurrences, but we are using all the resources at our disposal to continue investigating each of them.’ That good enough?”

“Fergus, you are indeed a true grammarian,” I said.

“Eh? What’re you talking about?”

“Nine people in ten would have said ‘there is a connection between these three, etc.’ But you correctly said among, because there were more than two occurrences.”

He scowled. “Well, after all, I did go to school. Loyola Academy, to be exact. And those Jesuits pounded the grammar into you — almost literally. They really knew their stuff. By the way, I assume you realize that as a result of the story you’re doing, there almost surely will have to be a press conference.”

“Yeah, that occurred to me, too. Well, the commissioner needs to keep a high profile. It’ll do him good.”

Fahey’s answer was another scowl.