53

Thirty-six hours later I was arriving at the Illinois Central Railroad Station at the south edge of Grant Park. And an hour after that I was standing in Clyde’s office and I was holding the postcard of Luisa and me and the two dead Mexican snipers and I was stuck on her all over again, just like I was when Bunky snapped me from behind, and Clyde had just lit his cigar and I was feeling hotter standing here ten stories above Michigan Avenue than I had at any time in the past few weeks in the tierra caliente of Mexico.

And he had just said, “So what became of your señorita, do you suppose?”

And I had just answered, “Did I get drunk and send a telegram I don’t remember?”

And he had just responded to that, “Nah. Call it a newsman’s intuition.”

And I had just shrugged and looked away from him.

And now one of Griswold’s endless supply of young stenographers, a redhead in a white shirtwaist and a long black skirt, showed up in Clyde’s door and said, “They’re ready, Mr. Fetter.” She was clearly a little fluttery, as if Clyde and I were very special characters, and since we were not, in her eyes — she’d sassed us both a couple of times each in the last few months — since this fluster was about whoever she’d just left, I was very curious indeed about the meeting.

So we followed her down the hall and into the electric elevator, whose metal doors she yanked open and shut behind us and whose power handle she operated herself, as if she already had the vote and was moving on to any job she’d like to do. We ascended. We followed her again, down the heavily carpeted hall, and she passed a door in the left-hand wall and abruptly stopped and turned and faced us. She nodded us in. We stepped through, into the publisher’s conference room.

At the far end of the table, backdropped by the horizon line of Lake Michigan, sat Paul Maccabee Griswold and a tall, thin man in a bespoke, black, three-piece suit with a gray pinstripe.

Clyde and I didn’t know where to go. Since they were at the end of the table, perhaps we were to sit here, at this end, far away, and face them. But the man in the black suit motioned for us to come down to them. He pointed us to the closest chairs, which were at a right angle to theirs, directing me with a “Mr. Cobb” to the one on the long side of the table, closest to him.

I sat, and Clyde sat beside me. Though the air in this room was smotheringly hot and palpable with barely hidden moisture, the man in the black suit did not appear to have a single drop of sweat on him. He pushed back a bit, angled his chair to face me. Griswold moved himself only minimally, only so he could hold his face on us without getting a crick in the neck. I got the feeling he’d rather have us at the other end of the room and was not happy with the stranger seeming to run the show.

A silence followed. The man held his eyes unwaveringly upon me, large, black eyes that had something wrong in their stare — like the eyes of a prostitute — though that impression may have been an aftereffect of my recent evening in Storyville — and that was wrong, actually, for these eyes, though they were certainly impenetrable, were not like the eyes of anyone who was submitting to anything. He had a bit of Richard Harding Davis about him, a brick of a chin, like a prizefighter who could take a punch, and him making me think of Davis made me consequently think that this was a newspaperman, that Griswold had hired some star editor away from Pulitzer or Hearst and wanted his new man to massage my story.

And Griswold was saying, “You’ve written a surpassingly good story here, Cobb. Three surpassingly good stories.”

The guy in the black suit and I were still looking at each other. He had some of the face lines of a prizefighter, too, of a younger man looking prematurely older because his face was a focal point for aggressive attention. But just a hint of that, really. And his hair was as black as his eyes and Brilliantined into absolute obedience on each side of a right-hand part. He had no mustache, no beard, and the nakedness of his face should have made him seem more open, in a way, but it only emphasized his opacity. And yet, opaque though he was, he was clearly conveying a keen interest in me. I was not sure exactly how. His implacable attention was part of it, certainly. But there was something else.

“In fact,” Griswold said, “your stories are so surpassingly good that much larger issues become involved.”

I looked now at the long-jowled, wide-girthed Griswold, who seemed to be working on expanding his vocabulary with a word-for-the-week. This week: surpassingly. He paused to let the possibility of those larger issues sink in and he pushed his lower lip up and drew the sides of his mouth down, thus putting on his characteristic seriously-silent mask.

I was aware of the prickly mood that was coming over me.

Then he said, “This is the man to speak to those larger issues. Gentlemen, meet James P. Trask, special assistant to the Secretary of State of the United States.”

Trask rose from his chair. “I will stand to shake your hand, Mr. Cobb. To offer all due respect.”

I stood as well, trying to flip the throw bar in my head and switch tracks in this new direction. The Federal Government was why I’d been called back to Chicago. The Federales.

We shook hands, firmly.

“Please,” he then said, pointing to my chair.

I sat. He did too.

He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit coat. He handed it to me.

“This is first,” he said.

I opened the envelope, which was sealed in red wax with the American eagle spreading its wings in bas-relief. I unfolded the letter and found the eagle again, in a familiar form: the letterhead of the President of the United States. It was dated two days ago. Written as I was somewhere between Lake Charles and Baton Rouge.

“I saw one of these recently,” I said.

“So I read in your surpassingly good story,” Trask said, smiling slightly. His back was to Griswold and I had no doubt he was asking me to quietly share our mutual assessment of the man. Trask was manufacturing a little bond between us. Instantly he made the smile vanish. “This one is real,” he said.

And so I found that the President of the United States had written this to me:

Dear Mr. Cobb,

I am a great admirer of your work. Not only do you keep the President and his cabinet informed on the status of battlefields around the world, you make a crucial contribution to our democratic society. The free press makes sure all ideas can be expressed, all institutions, all public officials, can be held accountable. It is the freedom upon which all our other freedoms rely.

Sometimes, however, a democratic society might humbly and carefully request a different sort of contribution, one that is rarely required but is, nonetheless, just as crucial.

I hereby introduce you to James P. Trask, who is acting as my personal representative and who will speak to you on my behalf. I hope you will give the matters he will discuss and the favors he will request serious consideration. Your country calls you to a high service, Mr. Cobb.

Sincerely,

Woodrow Wilson

And there was his sharp-edged, forward-slanting signature. It was vividly black from a broad-nibbed pen. I’d been traveling for more than three days and all the while had to keep myself from considering why the biggest scoop of my career, the biggest scoop for this newspaper in many years, hadn’t been rushed into print. They were going to kill the story. That much was clear to me now. But in spite of all this, I was looking at a personal appeal from the president of my country, and though I was bucking and snorting inside at the thought of my story being spiked, I had a powerful urge to put a fingertip on the signature, to touch this barely dried ink which he himself put there to endorse his regard for me. To ask something important of me. As critical as I sometimes was of Woodrow Wilson, he was still the man who tried to watch over us all, look after our needs, tried to lead us all. We empowered him to do that. I needed to yield to my good reporter instincts now. I needed to hear what the President would say through his Mr. Trask, hear it without my intervening and influencing or obscuring the words. I had to listen.

Trask turned his body around in his chair to face Griswold as much as possible. “You have the thanks, Mr. Griswold, not only of the Secretary of State but of the President himself. Would you be so kind as to affirm that what I will ask of Mr. Cobb has been endorsed by you?”

“Yes, of course,” Griswold said. “I take it that letter is from the President?”

Trask looked over his shoulder at me. “Would you mind?”

I leaned forward and extended the letter in Griswold’s direction. He was used to having someone on hire to reach for things on his personal behalf, but it was clear Trask wasn’t going to intervene, and so Griswold collected himself and made the effort. He even lifted his butt off his chair to reach out and take the letter from me.

He sat and put on his wire-rim reading spectacles. He opened the letter and gave it a careful look, pushing that lower lip up as far as it would go. When he finished, his mouth loosened, and he looked at me and nodded. Here was another goddam old man whose approval gave me a little goddam lift. Now that I was in this goddam mood, I even retrospectively basked a bit in his praise for my story.

I had to remember who I was. I had to get back into character.

Griswold was lifting his butt again — twice in two minutes — to return my presidential letter. This time Trask played go-between, taking the letter and passing it on to me while Griswold said, “Of course. The Post-Express and all of Griswold Enterprises are prepared to answer the call of our country.”

“Thank you,” Trask said. He waited for Griswold to settle back down in his chair, and then he said, “Now if you two gentlemen don’t mind, I need to discuss some things with Mr. Cobb in private.” He paused a moment, let Griswold thrash a bit at being dismissed from the room. Griswold was showing evidence of the thrashing in jowl and mouth and eye. Then Trask said, “Per the President’s specific request.”

Griswold rose from his chair, harrumphing and of-coursing. I looked at Clyde, who was a good soldier and stoic in his dismissal. Once on his feet, he gave me a little nod of sympathy and he headed for the door and waited there for Griswold, who grumbled at him to go on, go on. The Boss wanted to assert himself over some situation here, even if it was simply who would be the last one out the door, which he closed behind him.

Trask reached into his inside coat pocket once again. “Smoke?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

He withdrew a yellow pack with a veiled woman’s face in the center. Fatimas.

“You kept those next to the President’s letter,” I said.

Trask gave me that little conspiratorial smile again. “He’s fussy about not smoking.”

“So you’re saying ‘To hell with you’?”

“Now, would I say that to the President of the United States?” Again the little smile.

“Covertly.”

“Good word,” he said.

He wanted me to know we were private here. He wanted me to know he was operating in a world where he made the rules. This was an interesting man for the President to send.

He struck a safety match and lit his cigarette first and then mine.

“And your boss?” I asked. “He’s surely even fussier.”

He’s my boss,” Trask said, nodding at Wilson’s letter, which sat on the tabletop between us.

“I thought you worked for the Secretary of State.”

“Technically speaking. But in reality, the President doesn’t consult with Bryan on anything of importance. I work for the President.”

“You get a baseball card?” I asked, nodding at the pack, which he’d placed on the table before him.

“Fatima only puts them in the tins.”

“Too bad.”

“I buy the tins at home.”

We looked at each other for a few moments in silence, each of us blowing smoke. Then Trask said, “These aren’t the questions I expected, now that we’re alone.”

He was right. But I was taking a few moments to let him know I operated in my own world as well. I said, “You expect me to ask ‘What’s happening?’”

He shrugged an “of course.”

I said, “I figure you’ll tell me.”

“But first a little ‘To hell with you’?”

I gave him the same shrug. “You’re going to kill my story. Already have, in fact, judging from that thinly veiled exchange you had with Griswold. I’m not in a good mood.”

Trask gave me that small smile. But this time there was a different point to it. “I like you, Cobb,” he said. “I like the curves and fadeaways you’re throwing at me.”

“Who do you root for?”

“The Giants.”

“Oh brother,” I said.

“We can get past that.”

“So what’s happening?” I asked.

“The President — not lightly, you understand; on the contrary, quite reluctantly and gravely — is asking that you not run this story.”

“And Griswold, who will run, for the Senate this fall, is fine with banking some favors.”

Trask nodded. “We’re glad you work for a rare newspaper Democrat.”

“Grover Cleveland wing. He’ll need all the party favors he can collect. Especially from a new-breed Democrat.”

Trask squared his shoulders to me. We’d postured enough, the two of us. He was right. “Look, Cobb,” he said. “This is a major story you’ve uncovered. And it was news to the White House as well. Now, needless to say, we all want to thwart an invasion of America by a bunch of Mexican bandits. And you’re right. Germany’s right. There’s a chance Villa could pull all the bandits of Mexico together behind this and the Federals too, all the men in arms in that country. And that is a very large number. They might indeed find a common cause in this, especially at the present moment, with us in Vera Cruz and nobody thanking us for it. Backed by German arms? This could get very nasty. And protracted.”

“Banner headlines could stop that,” I said.

“You’re right,” Trask said. “You’re right. It could. Villa’s first strike would have to be a surprise and the spotlight of the free press would take that away. And you’re going to make him look like a puppet of the Germans if he tries anything. Okay. Let’s say he backs off. But how does it play out from there? Europe is working up to a war. We think it could happen any time. And if it does, it will be Germany on one side and Britain and France on the other. We think it can get out of hand. If you look at all the collateral alliances, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Europe staying out of that war, on one side or the other.”

Trask stopped for a moment. He wanted me to think about a massive, comprehensive war in Europe. He had a reasonable next point to make and I could probably guess it, but I tried to break his hold. I looked away from him, out the window, as if concentrating on the next drag of my Fatima. From where I was sitting, Lake Michigan stretched to the farthest horizon and vanished there, as if the world were flat and it dropped off the edge. From this conference room table, the lake seemed as vast as any ocean. It wasn’t. Far from it.

Which seemed significant in the present discussion. But I sure as hell couldn’t figure out how. I was just a reporter. A news writer. I was merely toying with a metaphor. Put it in. Make it fit. Play to the balcony. But there was a real world out there. I still had Hernando’s stitches in my arm. Itching like crazy. I killed four men. Recently. Men were dying in Mexico even as I sat here fiddling around with a metaphor about how something could seem way bigger than it is.

Trask said, “Every country loves to find an external enemy. It helps you understand who you are. You are you, as opposed — violently opposed — to them. We love that as much as anyone else, us Americans. Fifty years ago, we tried to do us versus them inside our own house. Fifty years later, we are in deep need of a viable new them. Your man Hearst knows that. He tried to give us Spain. And from how much he succeeded with as stupid a setup as that was, you can understand how deep that need must be. The Germans are perfect. There’s so much to hate about their regimented tight asses. They are very much unlike us, very much unlike the spirit of this country. And if you trumpet this story of yours about the Germans trying to stir up a Mexican invasion of the U.S.A., you will work up such widespread, mouth-foaming anti-German feeling that at the first opportunity, everyone from the senators in the capital to the boys in the bar down the street will demand we march off to Europe to make war on Germany. No President is strong enough to resist that. You publish your story, Mr. Cobb, and you will force the President’s hand. You will send our country to war when there may be some other way for us. Even if you personally think we should go to any war, any time, just let us at it, do you really want to make that decision for us all in tomorrow morning’s newspaper?”

He stopped talking. I’d more or less watched him while he spoke, though at the moment I was looking back out at the lake. What did I want? What was my real desire, not just the conventional objective of the character I’d decided to play from the script I was improvising as I went? That this story be published because every truthful news story needed to be printed no matter what? Not exactly. That Friedrich von Mensinger and the German government should be prevented from provoking a Mexican invasion of the United States?

I looked at Trask. “So who’s going to stop the Germans in Mexico? Mensinger’s making his case to Villa right now.”

Trask smiled. Not the little one. A big one. He said, “You are.”

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