Joe Steele

XXVIII

For a little while, things went on without Joe Steele very much as they had while he was President. His widow moved back to Fresno. No one had paid much attention to Betty Steele while she was the First Lady. No one paid any attention to her once she went into retirement.

At the White House, John Nance Garner made a less demanding boss than the man he succeeded. Charlie had trouble conceiving of a more demanding boss than Joe Steele. The new President carried out the policies he found in place when he took over. He was in his mid-eighties. How many changes could he try to make, even if he wanted to?

Kagan went to Paraguay. Mikoian went to Afghanistan. “I’m sure I’ll get as many thanks there as I ever did in Washington,” he quipped to reporters before boarding the airliner that would start him on his long, long journey.

Scriabin didn’t go to Outer Mongolia, at least not right away. Like someone waking from a drugged, heavy sleep, Congress needed a while to realize Joe Steele’s heavy hand no longer held it down. Members didn’t automatically have to do whatever the President said or else lose the next election or face one of those late-night knocks on the door. John Nance Garner didn’t carry that kind of big stick.

And the Hammer still had clout of his own in the Senate. It was a pale shadow of Joe Steele’s clout, but it was enough to keep him out of Ulan Bator. It wasn’t friendship. Except perhaps for Joe Steele, Scriabin had never had any friends Charlie knew of. Charlie didn’t know what it was. Blackmail didn’t seem the worst of guesses.

John Nance Garner had accepted the resignations of all his Cabinet members except the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War. Dean Acheson was a reasonably able diplomat, while George Marshall had kept himself respectable despite serving Joe Steele for many years.

Acheson was due to speak at an international conference on the Middle East in San Francisco. The DC-6 he was riding in crashed as it went into its landing approach. Forty-seven people died. He was one of them. It was tragic. Despite all the progress in aviation over the past twenty years, things like that happened more often than they should.

Charlie didn’t think it was anything more-or less-than tragic till a week later, when Marshall got up to make an after-the-dinner speech during a cannon-manufacturers’ convention. He strode to the lectern with his usual stern, erect military bearing. All the newspaper reports that came out of the convention said he stood there for a moment, looking surprised. Then he turned blue-“as blue as the carpeting in the dining room,” one reporter wrote-and keeled over.

Several doctors were in the audience. One gave him artificial respiration while another injected him with adrenaline. Nothing helped. Both medicos who tried to save him said they thought he was dead before he hit the floor.

But Charlie found out most of that later. The morning after it happened, John Nance Garner summoned him to the oval study Joe Steele had used for so long. The old President’s desk was still there. So was the pipe-tobacco smell that everyone who knew Joe Steele associated with him.

“Some no-good, low-down, goddamn son of a bitch is gunning for me, Sullivan,” Garner growled when Charlie came in.

“Sir?” Charlie said. He wanted another cup of coffee.

“Gunning for me,” Garner repeated, as if to an idiot. “I’m President. Ain’t no Vice President. Presidential Succession Act of 1886 says, if the President dies when there’s no Vice President, Secretary of State takes over, then the other Cabinet fellas. Ain’t no Cabinet now, either. Senate ain’t confirmed anybody. If I drop dead this afternoon, who runs the show? God only knows, ’cause the law sure don’t. In the Succession Act of 1792, it was the President pro tem of the Senate and then the Speaker of the House, but the 1886 rules threw that out. So like I say, God knows.”

Two vital Cabinet deaths inside a week swept Charlie’s thoughts back more than twenty years. “I bet Scriabin set it up,” he blurted.

“Oh, yeah?” Garner leaned forward. “Sonny, you better tell me why you think so.” So Charlie did, starting with what he’d heard before the Executive Mansion fire cooked Roosevelt’s goose, and Roosevelt with it, in 1932. When he finished, the President asked him, “How come you never said anything about this before?”

“Because I could never prove it. Hell, I still can’t. And when my brother did kick up a stink, what happened to him? He wound up in an encampment, and then in a punishment brigade. But when two more die like that-”

“-and when Joe Steele ain’t around any more,” Garner broke in.

Charlie nodded. “That, too. I figured you’d better know.”

“Well, I thank you for it,” John Nance Garner said. “I expect Vince Scriabin ain’t the only one who can arrange for people to have a little accident.”

“That’s good, Mr. President,” Charlie said. “But if we’re gonna start playing the game by banana-republic rules, there’s something else you’d better think about.”

“What’s that?”

“All your guards here belong to the GBI. How far do you trust J. Edgar Hoover?”

Garner’s eyes narrowed as he considered the question. “You and me, we go back to the days when they’d’ve strung up anybody who even talked about them labor encampments, never mind set ’em up. Himmler killed himself when the limeys caught him. How long you reckon Yagoda’ll last once they finally stuff Trotsky and stick him next to Lenin in Red Square?”

“Twenty minutes,” Charlie said. “Half an hour, tops.”

“That’s how it looks to me, too-unless he’s quicker on the trigger than all the bastards gunning for him.” Garner scowled. “But what am I supposed to do about J. Edgar? Who do I get to watch this place except for the Jeebies?”

“Soldiers?” Charlie suggested. “You think the Army can’t add two and two? They’ll have a pretty good notion of what happened to Marshall, and why.”

“Maybe.” But John Nance Garner didn’t sound happy about it. “That would really take us down to South America, wouldn’t it?”

“Which would you rather have, sir? The Army protecting the President or a putsch from the head of the secret police?”

The telephone on the desk that had been Joe Steele’s for so long rang. Garner picked it up. “Yeah?” he barked, and then, “What?” His face darkened with rage. “All right, goddammit, you’ve let me know. I’ll deal with it. How? Shit, I don’t know how. I’ll work something out. Jesus God!” He slammed the handset back into place.

“What was that, sir? Do I want to know?” Charlie asked.

“Those fucking pissants in the House.” Garner had been one of that number for many years, but he didn’t care now. And he had good reason not to: “They’ve introduced a motion to impeach me, the stinking dingleberries! Says I’m ‘complicit in the many high crimes and misdemeanors of the Joe Steele administration.’” He quoted the lawyerese with sour relish, even pride. “I bet Scriabin put ’em up to it, the cocksuckers.”

Charlie knew perfectly well that Joe Steele’s administration had committed high crimes and misdemeanors past counting. He also knew perfectly well that John Nance Garner wasn’t complicit in any of them. Joe Steele hadn’t let him get close enough for complicity. But the House and Senate wouldn’t care. They couldn’t put a bell on Joe Steele; he’d been too strong, and now he was too dead. Garner, both weaker and still breathing, made an easier target.

Something else occurred to Charlie. “If they throw you out of office, who comes in to take over for you?”

“Beats me.” Now Garner sounded almost cheerful. “The law we’ve got now doesn’t say, not in the spot we’re in here. Constitution says Congress can make a law picking who comes after the President and Vice President, but a law is something the President signs. How can you have a new law if you ain’t got no President?”

“I have no idea, sir.” Charlie’s head started to ache.

Mike turned on the television. He’d bought it secondhand. The screen was small and the picture none too good, but some inspired haggling had brought the guy who was getting rid of it down to forty bucks. Now he could watch Lucille Ball and Sid Caesar and baseball games with everybody else-or so it seemed.

And he could watch the news. Washington kept boiling like a kettle of crabs. Nobody seemed to remember how to play politics the old-fashioned way, the way people had done things before Joe Steele was President. The new game, when seen from close to two thousand miles away, seemed a lot bloodier. They were playing for keeps-for keeps all kinds of ways.

As it went in the United States, so it also went in the wider world. The East Germans rioted against their Russian overlords. Trotsky preached world revolution, but not revolution against him. The news showed smuggled film of Red Army tanks blasting buildings and machine-gunning people in the streets of East Berlin.

“President Garner has issued an executive order eliminating the restricted zone for people released from labor encampments,” the handsome man reading the stories announced. “GBI Director J. Edgar Hoover publicly deplored the move, stating that it endangers the nation’s safety. And leaders of the impeachment drive in the House say the order will have no effect on their insistence that Garner be removed. More after this important message.”

Music swelled as the commercial started. Over it, Midori said, “I understand that right? He says wreckers can now live anywhere in the country?”

“That’s what he said.” Mike thought about going back to New York City. Hell, he didn’t even know if the Post was still in business. He’d been away more than fifteen years. Picking up the city’s frantic pace after so long wouldn’t be easy.

“You want to go somewhere else?” she asked.

“I was just thinking about that. I don’t know,” Mike said. Midori might like the Big Apple. If any place in America could remind her of her crowded homeland, New York City would be it. “How do you feel about it?”

“Where you go, I will go,” she said. She wasn’t a Christian; she’d never heard of Whither thou goest, I will go. If you had that thought, though, the words would follow directly.

Before Mike could reply, the newsman came back. Next to him was a photo of a familiar face. “Vincent Scriabin, Joe Steele’s longtime chief assistant, died last night at the age of sixty-three. He was struck and killed by an automobile while crossing the street after eating dinner at an Italian restaurant in Washington. Because Scriabin was not in a crosswalk, the driver, who police said showed no signs of intoxication, was not held.”

“Oh, my,” Mike said softly as the fellow went on to the next story.

“Nan desu-ka?” Midori asked.

How could you explain the Hammer to somebody who hadn’t been here while Joe Steele was President? Charlie might have been able to. Why not? Charlie’d worked side by side with him for years. Mike reminded himself he needed to let his brother know Midori would be having a baby. He’d had that thought before, had it without doing anything about it.

How accidental was Scriabin’s death? As accidental as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s? Probably just about. Scriabin hadn’t gone off into exile without any trouble, the way Kagan and Mikoian had. He’d stayed in Washington and kicked up a fuss. John Dennison guessed he was behind the House’s stab at impeaching Garner. It wouldn’t have surprised Mike. Like the man he’d served for all those years, the Hammer went in for revenge.

Mike realized he hadn’t answered his wife’s question. “He was one of Joe Steele’s ministers,” he said, which put it in terms she’d get. “The new President didn’t want to keep him. He didn’t like that. Now he’s dead. He walked in front of a car-or the guy in the car was hunting him.”

Midori’s eyes widened. “I did not think American politics go that way?”

“They didn’t used to,” Mike said. “Now? Who knows now? Everything is all different from the way it used to be.” He’d been away from politics since early in Joe Steele’s second term. In political terms, that was a lifetime, if not two.

“People would kill politicians on the other side all the time in Japan,” Midori said. “It made politics too dangerous for most people to try. The ones who did always had bodyguards with them.”

“It may wind up like that here, too,” Mike said. “English has a word for killing people in politics. When you do that, you assassinate somebody.”

“Assassinate,” Midori echoed. “I will remember. Assassinate. If English has this word, it needs it, neh?”

“Hai,” he said. Neh? meant something like Isn’t that right? Japanese used it all the time. He wished English had such a short, handy word for the same phrase. It would have been useful.

As far as Mike knew, Charlie was still at the White House, working for John Nance Garner. The new President hadn’t canned him, the way he’d canned Joe Steele’s California cronies. To Mike, that said something good about his brother, anyhow. Working for Joe Steele hadn’t made all of Charlie’s soul dry up, turn to dust, and blow away. Hard to believe, but it could be true.

“You say-you have said-you lived in New York City.” Whither thou goest or not, Midori came back to it. “You do not want to go back to New York City, now that law says you may?”

“No, I don’t think so, not unless Casper drives you crazy,” he said.

She shrugged. “It is a strange place, but to me any place in America is strange. It starts to seem not so strange. If you want to stay here, we can stay here.”

“We’ll do that, then,” Mike said. Fighting for work against guys half his age didn’t appeal to him. Joe Louis had stayed in the ring too long, and got badly beaten up several times on account of it. And, after being away from New York City for so long, going back might make his head explode. He nodded. “Yeah, we’ll do that.” He got up, went into the kitchen, pulled two bottles of beer from the icebox, opened them with the blunt end of the church key, and brought them back to the TV.

John Nance Garner sounded disgusted. “You know what the trouble is?”

Sure I do, Charlie thought. The House is gonna impeach you, and then the Senate is gonna convict you and throw you out on your ass. After that, you can spend all your time at the tavern around the corner again. But that wasn’t what Garner needed to hear. “What is it, Mr. President?” Charlie said dutifully. “Is it anything you can fix?”

“I only wish I could,” the President said. “But I don’t hardly know anybody in the House any more. That’s what’s wrong. None of the boys I was in there with is still around, or damn few, anyways. Some lost. Some got old and died. Some went into the encampments. And some of the ones who’re still there, them bastards never did cotton to me.”

“Hoover could clean them out,” Charlie remarked. Had Joe Steele ever found himself in this predicament, the Jeebies would have cleaned out the House. But Joe Steele had intimidated Congress too much for it to rise against him. The new President didn’t.

“Nah.” John Nance Garner shook his head. “I ain’t gonna do that. If I did that, Hoover’d be running the show, not me. Fuck him, Sullivan. I may go down, but by Jesus I’ll go down swinging.”

“Okay.” Charlie was more glad than angry. He thought a deal with J. Edgar Hoover was a deal with the Devil, too. But he and Garner had made deals like that before. The one who hadn’t made a deal was Mike. And how did virtue get rewarded? He’d gone through years of hell in the encampments, years of worse hell in the Army, and now he was living in Casper goddamn Wyoming married to a Jap. All things considered, the wages of sin seemed better. Charlie asked, “Can you give them anything to get them off your back?”

“Christ, I already gave ’em Mikoian and Kagan and Scriabin. Wasn’t enough. They say, ‘You’re as bad as they were. You gotta go, too.’”

“Shame about Scriabin,” Charlie remarked.

“Ain’t it?” Garner chuckled, coughed, hawked phlegm, and chuckled again. “I wonder if anybody came to his funeral.”

“Don’t know. I wasn’t there.” Charlie thought he would have gone had Mikoian died before heading for Kabul. He might have gone for Lazar Kagan. But Scriabin? It would have been too much like attending the memorial service for somebody’s pet rattlesnake.

“But I mean, how’re they gonna impeach me and convict me? How can they do that?” Garner dragged his mind away from pleasure and back to the business at hand. “If they do, they shoot the whole executive branch right behind the ear. I’m all there is of it, for Chrissake. They can’t make laws by their lonesome, not if there’s nobody to approve ’em. Not even the chickenshit Supreme Court Joe Steele left us’d let ’em get away with that.”

“Mr. President, every single word you just said is true.” Having told John Nance Garner what he wanted to hear, Charlie also told him once more what he needed to hear: “But you know what else? I don’t think Congress gives a damn. They’ve got the atom bomb, and they’re gonna drop it.”

“I only wish I could tell you you were full of crap. That’s how it looks to me, too, though,” Garner said gloomily. “What happens if they throw me out and twenty minutes later, Trotsky, he starts somethin’ in South Japan or West Germany? Who’s gonna give our soldiers orders then? If somebody does, why should the soldiers do what he says?”

“I have no idea.” Charlie figured Trotsky had to be laughing in his beer, or more likely his vodka. He’d outlived his American rival, and now the USA was in a hell of a mess. The only thing that might hold him back was the fear of reuniting America-against him. That was a thin, weak reed to lean on.

“Me, neither.” John Nance Garner reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He didn’t bother with ice, or even a glass. He just swigged. Then he slid the bottle across the stone desktop to Charlie. Charlie had a belt, too. He needed one. Garner went on, “But I don’t know what I can do to make ’em see it. I don’t know what I can do to make ’em show any common sense. They look at me, and all they see is, they’re givin’ Joe Steele one in the eye. Biting the hand that fed ’em, half the time. Hell, more’n half.”

“Joe Steele’s dead,” Charlie said roughly.

“I thought so, too, when we planted him,” Garner said. “But right after Antony talks about burying Caesar, not praising him, he goes, ‘The evil that men do lives after them,/ The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Boy, did old Will hit that nail square on the head. We’ll still be untangling ourselves from Joe Steele when your kids get as old as I am now.”

That had the unpleasant ring of truth. “Do we need a Constitutional crisis straight off the bat, though?” Charlie asked.

“Need one? Shit, no, sonny. It’s the last goddamn thing we need. But we’ve sure got one.” Garner stood up, leaned across the desk, and retrieved the whiskey bottle. He took another stiff knock. “This here, this is what I need.”

Drunk and sober, he politicked as long and as hard as he could against the impeachment charges. Charlie wrote speech after speech, trying to sway public opinion against the proceedings in the House. None of that did any good. Charlie hadn’t really expected it would.

The House Interior Committee reported out three articles of impeachment, passing them by votes of 37-1, 33-5, and 31-7. The whole House passed them by almost equally lopsided margins. For the first time in eighty-five years, a President was impeached. The case went to the Senate for trial.

Chief Justice Prescott Bush presided with the look of a man who acutely wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else. An Associate Justice who was a real lawyer sat at Bush’s elbow to guide him through whatever legal thickets might crop up. The President’s attorneys tried to make the thickets as impenetrable as they could. The Chief Justice ruled in their favor whenever he could without making himself look completely ridiculous.

It didn’t matter. The three Congressmen who managed the push for conviction dealt with legal thickets by driving over them with a Pershing tank and crushing them flat. Joe Steele had committed all kinds of impeachable offenses. Everybody knew it. Nobody’d done, nobody’d been able to do, a thing about it while he was alive to commit them. Now that he was dead, John Nance Garner made a handy scapegoat.

When the Senate voted on whether to convict, the tallies on the three articles were 84–12, 81–15, and 73–23, all well over the two-thirds required. Watching from the visitors’ gallery, Charlie saw Prescott Bush lick his lips before stating the obvious: “President Garner has been convicted of the three articles for which he was impeached. Accordingly, he is removed from office and disqualified from holding and enjoying any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. He remains liable to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law.” He banged his gavel. “These proceedings are concluded.”

“Who runs things now?” someone yelled from the gallery. Two cops grabbed him and hustled him away. Nobody answered the question.

Charlie got back to the White House just in time to hear a young reporter ask John Nance Garner, “What do you think of your conviction and removal, sir?”

“Fuck ’em all,” Garner said.

The kid turned red. Whatever he put in his story, that wouldn’t be it. Gamely, he tried again: “What will you do now?”

“Go on home to Uvalde and eat worms,” Garner answered. “You reckon the country was goin’ to hell with me, just watch how it goes to hell without me.” And that was the end of the press conference.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Charlie told him.

“Me, too, Sullivan.” John Nance Garner shrugged. “What can you do, though? Let’s see how those damn fools run this damn country, that’s all. Like I told that little punk, fuck ’em all. If it wasn’t for the assholes who done this to me, I’d be glad for the excuse to leave.”

“Good luck,” Charlie said. They shook hands. Charlie hoped nobody would throw Garner in jail for however much time he had left. He’d been in Joe Steele’s administration, but not of it. The policies weren’t his fault. Of course, he also hadn’t done anything to stop them.

Well, neither did I, Charlie thought uncomfortably. If they were still on the prowl after scapegoats, he was around.

After finishing his good-byes with John Nance Garner, he went home. “What are you doing here at this time of day?” Esther asked in surprise.

“Honey, I’m a presidential speechwriter in a country without a President,” he said. “What’s the point to sticking around?”

“Will they pay you if you don’t show up?” Yes, she was the practical one.

“I dunno. To tell you the truth, I didn’t worry about it. As long as they don’t arrest me, I figure I’m ahead of the game.”

“Arrest you? They can’t do that!” Esther made a face. “Or I guess they can if they want to. That’s what you get for working for that man for so long.”

Charlie sighed. “Yeah, I guess that is what I get. What I’m liable to get, anyhow. But we both know I would have got it a lot sooner if I hadn’t gone to work for him.”

“It isn’t fair,” Esther said. “What can you do when all your choices are rotten?”

“The best you can. That’s all you can ever do.” After a moment, Charlie continued, “My senior year with the nuns, we did some Tacitus. You know-the Roman historian. God, that was tough Latin! But I remember he talked about how good men could serve bad Emperors. That crossed my mind a few times while I worked for Joe Steele. I tried to be a good man. I’m sure I wasn’t always, but I tried.”

Esther put her arms around him. “I think you’re a good man,” she said. “In spite of everything.” That she added the last four words explained why they worried someone might come after him.

More out of curiosity than for any other reason, he went to the White House the next morning. There was no THIS SPACE FOR RENT sign on the front gate. He supposed that was something, at any rate. He had no trouble getting in; it wasn’t as if the guards didn’t know who he was. But once he was in, he had nothing to do. He sat in his office and listened to the radio.

When it was getting on toward lunchtime, he casually walked down the corridors-the corridors of power, he thought, only not right now. The offices that had belonged to Scriabin and Kagan and Mikoian were all closed and locked. Like Joe Steele, Scriabin was beyond judgment now. Charlie wondered whether the other two would ever come back to the United States.

He went home early, but not so early as he had the day before. After dinner, he turned on the television. It was a good evening for letting the box entertain him. You could watch it and not think about anything else. Not thinking seemed wonderful right now.

At half past eight, though, they cut away in the middle of a commercial. An urgent-voiced announcer said, “We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you this special announcement from Washington, D.C.”

“What now?” Esther exclaimed.

“Don’t know,” Charlie said. “We’ll find out, though.”

And they did. In a studio presumably in Washington, a man sitting in front of an American flag stared at the camera. He was middle-aged and beefy, with beetling eyebrows and a big, strong jaw. Recognizing him, Charlie felt his heart sink down to his toes.

“Good evening, my fellow Americans,” he said. “I am J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Government Bureau of Investigation. I am speaking to you tonight because the rule of law and order in the United States has collapsed. We have no President, and no legitimate successor to occupy the White House. After removing John Nance Garner, the House and the Senate have sought to arrogate to themselves powers not granted to them by the Constitution. The rule of law, then-indeed, any sort of legal authority in the country-has entirely broken down.”

“Uh-oh.” Charlie had the bad feeling he knew what was coming next.

He did, too. J. Edgar Hoover went on, “This being so, it is necessary to create a new authority to preserve and protect the safety and security of our beloved nation. Until the present state of anarchy and emergency is resolved in a satisfactory manner, it becomes necessary for me to assume the temporary executive power in the United States.

“For the time being, to prevent subversion, assemblies of more than ten persons are prohibited. GBI and police personnel will enforce this measure by whatever means prove necessary. Congressional leaders responsible for the current disastrous state of affairs are being detained for interrogation and for their own protection. Obey the authorities in your local areas, proceed with your everyday affairs, and this necessary adjustment to government will have little effect on you. Red-inspired whining and revolt, however, will not be tolerated. You have been warned. Thank you, and God bless America.”

“That was our new Director, J. Edgar Hoover, speaking to you from the nation’s capital,” the announcer said suavely. “Here is the regularly scheduled program once again.”

Charlie’s right arm shot up and out. “Heil Hoover!” he said.

Esther nodded, but she also said, “Be careful!”

“I know, I know, I know. I’m not going down to the tavern where Garner would drink and do that to make the other barflies laugh.”

“Probably a good idea if you don’t,” his wife agreed. “But are you going to the White House tomorrow?”

After a moment’s thought, Charlie nodded. “Yes, I guess so, unless you’ve got a good reason for me not to. They know where I live, for crying out loud. If they want me, they can come get me here. They don’t have to wait till I show up at my office.”

Esther did some thinking of her own. “Okay. That makes sense,” she said. “I just hope everything goes all right, is all.”

“You and me both!” Charlie said.

When he got to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue the next morning, he knew right away that the place was under new management. More guards than he’d ever seen stalked the grounds, and he recognized only a couple of them. Every single man carried a grease gun and looked ready to use it. Charlie gave his name at the gate. A guard checked it off. “Go on in, Mr. Sullivan,” he said. “The Director wants to see you, in fact.” As with the TV announcer the night before, you could hear the capital letter slam into place.

“J. Edgar Hoover is in there?” Charlie asked. Hoover hadn’t wasted much time. No time at all, in fact.

“That’s right.” The guard’s head bobbed up and down. “I’d step on it, if I were you. The Director’s a busy man with a lot on his plate.”

When Charlie went into the White House, a Jeebie he’d never set eyes on before frisked him. Persuaded he was harmless, the man sent him upstairs. Now J. Edgar Hoover sat behind the heavy redwood-and-granite desk. A few days before, that had been John Nance Garner’s spot (Charlie wondered if the bourbon bottle still sat in the drawer). For all the years before, it had been Joe Steele’s.

“Hello, Sullivan,” Hoover said.

“Mr., uh, Director.” Charlie swore at himself for stumbling over the title.

“We’ve known each other a long time. I like the work you do,” Hoover said. That could have led up to anything. But then he added, “Don’t get me wrong-I do,” and Charlie knew he was in trouble. The Director went on, “The sad fact is, though, that you’ve got too many links to the past that put us in the mess we’re in now.”

The mess that put you in the White House, Charlie thought. He didn’t say it. Why make a bad spot worse?

“So I’m going to have to let you go,” Hoover said briskly. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way the ball bounces. I’m sure a man with your talent won’t have any worries about finding something new. You don’t need to bother going back to your office. You can pick up your last check at the door as you head out. I’ve put in a three months’ bonus. Not much of a good-bye after such a long time here, I’m afraid, but I hope it’s better than nothing.”

“Thank you, sir,” Charlie mumbled, when he really wanted to echo John Nance Garner’s Fuck ’em all!

“Keep your nose clean, Sullivan,” the Director said, which was dismissal. Charlie nodded, turned, and walked out of the oval study.

Charlie knew he was a nuisance around the apartment. Except on weekends, he wasn’t supposed to be there during the daytime. Sometimes he went out to look for work. No one had the nerve to hire a man who’d been at the White House so long. A few people blamed him for everything that had gone wrong since 1932, the way Congress had blamed John Nance Garner.

Under a pseudonym, he tried his hand at writing fiction stories. It was different from speechwriting and reporting, but he could write. He sold the second one he turned out, and the fourth. He knew he’d never make anybody forget Steinbeck or Salinger. That didn’t bother him. He brought in a little money, and the writing gave him something focused to do.

Half an hour after J. Edgar Hoover left GBI headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, a bomb blew up inside and killed twenty-six people. The Director tightened the screws on the state of emergency. The man the Jeebies arrested for planting the bomb was first cousin to a Representative who’d voted against impeaching Garner. Hoover tightened the screws on Congress, too.

Day by day, Charlie told himself. Take it one day at a time. That’s how you get through the rough patches. By all the early signs, this might be a mighty rough patch. J. Edgar Hoover made Joe Steele seem downright friendly by comparison. Charlie wouldn’t have believed anyone could.

He got a postcard from Mike, letting him know he had a half-Japanese niece named Brenda. He started making notes for a novel about brothers whose lives went different ways. His working title was Two Roads Diverged. Nobody didn’t like Robert Frost.

He was drinking more again, but Esther didn’t nag him about it. She knew what was wrong. Hoover wasn’t even sixty yet-he was just a handful of years older than Charlie. He might be Director a long time yet, unless somebody like that funny-looking assistant attorney general from California brought him down while he wasn’t looking. Talking about things like that, Esther started drinking more herself.

No matter what, you never thought it could happen to you. When the knock came, it was actually closer to one in the morning than to midnight.