A President In Peril

Chapter Fourteen C₃ O₁ G₂ E₁ N₁ T₁ (adj) convincing or believable by virtue of forcible, clear, or incisive presentation

As we neared Election Day, all of the local papers steadily increased their political coverage. It had been general knowledge that both Truman and Dewey would make swings through Chicago sometime during the final days of the campaign, but the surprise came one morning in late October when both the Trib and Sun-Times ran wire stories reporting that the candidates would be here on successive days in the final week — and following virtually the same schedule.

Truman would roll in by train on Monday, eight days before the election; check into a downtown hotel; have dinner there with big-bucks backers; and lead a motorcade west on Madison Street to the Chicago Stadium, where he would deliver a speech. The next day, Tom Dewey would duplicate the same general plan: come in by rail; settle into a hotel; sup with some of his strongest (read richest) supporters; parade out Madison Street; and give a speech at the Stadium.

“Occurs to me that crime in this city is bound to be on the upswing for those two days,” Packy Farmer observed between drags on one of his misshapen little hand-rolled smokes. “Hellfire, you can bet that every damn cop on the force is going to be assigned to help protect our noble candidates from harm.”

“Are you suggesting, sir, that the city’s miscreants will take advantage of this unique situation?” Dirk O’Farrell inquired, puffing on his own cigarette, which was of the store-bought variety.

“You’re damn right I am!” Packy roared. “Shit, if I were of a law-breaking nature, I’d be up to all manner of mischief while the police department had the entire force protecting Harry and Tom.”

“Mr. Farmer has a cogent point,” Anson Masters ventured. “One indeed worthy of pursuing. Might I suggest, Snap, that on your visit this morning to Chief Fahey, you press him on any concerns he may have regarding the deployment of his troops as well as those of the uniformed force.”

“It may surprise you, Anson, to learn that the first portion of your suggestion already was in my plans, although I doubt very much that the good chief will venture an opinion where the uniforms are concerned. As you are well aware, that is not within his province. I also suspect Fahey will be circumspect about how he will deploy his own men when the candidates come to town. Why give away your plans if somebody out there is ready to take advantage of the information? A good general doesn’t tell the enemy what his strategy will be.”

“Good point, Snap,” O’Farrell said. “But ask him anyway, okay? You never know what you might get.”

“So good of you to advise me, Dirk. Perhaps you’d like to come along to make sure I pose the right questions. I would welcome your company.”

“Uh, thanks anyway, but I’ve got my own beat to cover,” he muttered. Dirk, like the others in the press room, preferred to let me deal with Fergus Fahey. For one thing, they all seemed to think Fahey was a tough nut. For another, none of them wanted any responsibility whatever for dealing with the Detective Bureau, the biggest beat in the building. From their collective point of view, it entailed too much work — work they were more than happy to let me do, especially since I would be sharing with them any information I came up with.

I breezed into Fahey’s anteroom to find Elsie brewing a pot of coffee. “Oho, what’s this?” I asked, slapping a hand to my forehead. “A second pot and it’s only nine-twenty-five? I know this is great coffee, but what’s he doing in there, chugging the stuff?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “Plus he’s been here since around seven.”

“My Lord, has the poor fellow been asking for me?”

“To be brutally honest... no. But I for, one, am glad to see you, big guy.”

“That more than makes up for it. Shall I knock?”

“No, let me announce you. He’s been on the phone a lot, and he asked not to be disturbed.”

She buzzed him on the intercom, pronounced my name, and received a grunt. “I’m not sure what his words were, but go on in and find out,” she said with a toothy grin.

Fergus Fahey was leaning back in his chair with palms pressed to his eyes. “Are you here to harass me?” he growled.

“Probably. After all, that’s what I do best. Care for a cigarette?” I tossed a half-full pack of Luckies onto his desk blotter. “Bad day?”

“They’re all bad. But now that we know that...”

“That Truman and Dewey are giving you the old one-two punch?”

“Yeah,” he said dismally, lighting up. “We knew they would be passing though here — every presidential candidate does at least once — and we are going to get them both, just a day apart. Now we know for sure they’ll each be giving a speech out at the Stadium. Two nights in a row! And each one of them with a damn two-mile-plus motorcade. Talk about courting disaster.”

“Well, you’ll have the Secret Service here to help.”

He scowled. “How many men is that? Not nearly enough, and you know it. Sure, those guys are good, but, particularly with the motorcades, we’ll need a bloody army. And of course both Truman and Dewey are going to be in those goddamn convertibles, the better for their adoring crowds to see them.”

“Those adoring crowds aren’t the only ones who’ll be better able to see them,” I remarked.

“Tell me about it,” Fahey grumped.

“The boys up in the press room want to know who’s going to be left to protect the rest of the city with everybody on the force focusing on Give ’em Hell Harry and the Moustache Man.”

“None of their goddamn business. Or yours either.”

“You are in a mood today,” I told him as Elsie clicked in with steaming mugs of her wonderful coffee for both of us.

“The FBI’s been around, too,” Fahey said after Elsie left and closed the door behind her. “Off the record, we filled them in yesterday on what we know, thanks to you, about this wacky New Reich group. You can expect to be hearing from them today.”

“Oh, shit, just what I need.”

“That’s my sentiment about a lot of things these days. The agent who talked to me is named Willman. Doesn’t seem like such a bad sort. He’s new in the Chicago office.”

“Did he have any thoughts about the organization?”

“Not that he shared with me. He’s an asker, not an answerer.”

“Well, isn’t that great, then, because I’m an asker, too. We’ll get along just peachy.”

“Just watch yourself and that mouth of yours, Snap. This is the FBI we’re talking about, not some broken down old Chief of Detectives who puts up with your guff.”

“Now Fergus, you’re not broken down, at least as far as I know, and you’re not old, I mean not really that old.”

“Get outta here. I got work to do,” he said, picking up a sheet of paper from the top of the stack on his desk. “Oh, and tell your colleagues or competitors or whatever you call those guys upstairs that, quote: The Chicago Police Department has adequate resources to protect the presidential candidates while at the same time providing its usual high level of service to all the citizens of Chicago. Unquote. Got that?”

“I got the gist of it.”

“Here, take the sheet,” Fahey said, handing it over. “It’s from Commissioner Prendergast. Feel free to use any or all of it.”

“My goodness, the boys will be excited to get this,” I told him, walking out of his office and closing the door gently behind me. I smirked at Elsie and got a wink in return.

Sure enough, just after I got back to my desk in the press room, my phone rang, and I correctly guessed the identity of the caller.

“Hello, Mr. Malek. I am Special Agent Floyd Willman of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I wonder if you would be able to stop by our office on Dearborn Street in the Loop for a little discussion?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Willman, but the pressure of my work here makes it impossible for me to leave for any extended period. The constant crush of deadlines, you know,” I said. “Sorry about that.” There was a pause at the other end before Willman spoke again.

“This needn’t take all that long, Mr. Malek.”

“Good, good. Then I’d like to suggest an alternative, sir. We have interview rooms here at Police Headquarters, places where we can talk privately. I’m sure I will be able to reserve one and we can have our conversation there. Or else we can do this by phone.”

“No, not by phone,” Willman said, obviously peeved. “I was already at your building yesterday, talking to some other people.”

“Excellent, then you know the way. Tell me what time is good for you, and I’ll see if I can manage to work it into my schedule.”

Another pause, this one longer. “Eleven o’clock,” came the clipped response.

“Eleven? Let’s see...” I paused for effect. “That seems fine. Yes, just fine. I’ll reserve a room and tell them down at the reception desk to expect you and direct you to where I’ll be. How long do you think this will take?”

“That’s hard to say, Mr. Malek...”

“Well, give me some idea, Mr. Willman. Ten minutes? Twenty?”

A third pause. “I’ll try to take as little of your time as possible,” he replied stiffly. I thanked him for his consideration and cradled the phone, smiling.

It was no surprise that Mr. Floyd Willman of the FBI arrived promptly. I had just gotten myself settled at a bare wooden table in a spare, windowless interview room on the third floor when Willman appeared in the doorway, looking precisely like an FBI agent is supposed to look: about thirty-five years old; brown, slicked-down hair with a straight part; square jaw; gray suit with razor-sharp creases in his pants; white shirt, also pressed; light blue tie with dark blue diagonal stripes. He held a snap-brim hat in one hand.

“Mr. Willman? Nice to meet you,” I said, holding out a paw, which he gripped firmly. Unsmiling, he sat opposite me and flipped open a wallet containing his credentials. I waved it away.

“Mr. Malek, sorry you could not accept my invitation to meet at our offices,” he said tightly.

“But that’s what it was, right — an invitation?”

He shrugged my question away. “Mr. Hoover thinks very highly of your newspaper and your publisher, Colonel McCormick.”

“Does he? I’m glad to hear that.”

“Mr. Hoover likes newspaper people in general, and the way they have cooperated with us in our work. He feels the press is a bastion of our democracy.”

“We try. Now how can I help you, Mr. Willman?”

He shifted in his chair as if it didn’t quite suit him. “As you probably are aware, we are interested in learning more about a subversive organization here in Chicago that calls itself The New Reich. And we are aware that someone who claims to be in that organization has contacted you by telephone, mail, and hand-delivered note.”

“That is correct, Mr. Willman.”

“How is it that they chose you as a potential agent to publicize them and their... work?”

“As I have told both my editors and the police — and I know you have spoken to the police about this — the man who called me claims that my newspaper, as the largest in Chicago, also is the most effective vehicle to reach the greatest number of people. And he says his New Reich wants publicity.”

Willman grunted. “And you believe that?”

“Why wouldn’t I believe it? Although he’s not about to get ink from us at the Tribune — and probably not at any of the other papers either.”

“Are you sure the man who telephoned also sent you the notes that you passed along to the police?”

“I can only assume so. There’s no way I can be positive, of course.”

“Mr. Malek, have you ever been a member of... any organizations?”

“Such as?”

“Lodges. Fraternal groups. Secret societies. Perhaps an ethnic club of some sort.” He pronounced ‘ethnic’ as if it were a dirty word.

“I’m not sure that I follow you, Mr. Willman. I am not a joiner by nature. I was in the Boy Scouts for a short while as a kid, but it bored me.”

“The Scouts is a great organization,” he said.

“I’m sure it is, but it wasn’t for me.”

Willman shot me a disapproving look, and I realized he had probably been an Eagle Scout. “And you have never been part of any group that was, shall we say... exclusionary?”

“As in what? Anti-Catholic, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Negro?”

He shrugged again and turned his palms up as if to suggest I had something to tell him about my past. I liked this guy less with each passing minute.

“Well, I was part of a little gang back in the fifth grade in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood that made fun of a kid in our class named Cacciatore because of his name, so maybe I was anti-Italian back then without even realizing it. But then in high school, I was sweet on a girl named Rose Purcelli, which sort of cancelled out the Cacciatore business. So, gee, I don’t know what to say about this ethnic business, Mr. Willman. Of course... I guess I’m ethnic myself — Bohemian, or maybe you call it Czech. So that—”

“All right, Mr. Malek, I—”

“No, no, you’ve really got me thinking now. By God, I was in an ethnic organization after all back in school, a Bohemian group called Sokol. The word means falcon in Czech, and it’s sort of a physical fitness and gymnastics club, and it was mostly for Czech and Slovak youngsters, so I guess that makes it — what’s your word? — exclusionary. I didn’t stay in it long, though, because... well, I was too lazy for all that exercising and discipline.”

Willman took a deep breath. “That’s all very interesting, Mr. Malek, but not terribly helpful.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Well, is there anything else?”

All during our meeting, the agent had had his notebook open and his pen poised, but he had done very little writing. He looked at me with an expression that was somewhere between frustration and anger, but he simply pursed his lips before speaking.

“No, I believe that is sufficient for the time being, Mr. Malek,” he said, working to keep his tone flat and emotionless. “Are you planning to be where you can easily be reached in the near future?”

“Mr. Willman, I’m planning to be right here in this building and at my home not just in the near future but in the far future as well. At present, I have no travel plans whatever. I am not hard to find.”

Special Agent Willman rose but did not offer a hand in parting, which was fine by me. He turned smartly on his heel and strode out into the hall.

“Elevator’s half-way down the hall on the right,” I called after him but failed to get a thank-you in response.