The Hot Country

54

I was. By personal request of the President, no less. And who would that require me to be?

I waited to hear. Trask took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke toward Lake Michigan. I stubbed my cigarette out in the table ashtray, even though it had a couple more puffs in it. And this much I felt keenly: A great, two-ton, plushly upholstered, crimson stage curtain had just fallen. It would shortly rise again, and I was in the midst of an actor’s recurring dream: I was about to go on stage and I had no clue even what the play was, much less what my lines were.

I supposed Trask was waiting once more for me to ask what was going on. He was my dark, opposite twin. I controlled a conversation by asking questions. He controlled it by making you ask. I was not doing it and he said, “Why do you think I’ve come here to carefully explain the killing of a story that is already dead?”

Which was a rhetorical question that simply squeezed me harder to inquire. And why didn’t I? Control, I supposed. I asked, “What does the ‘P’ stand for?”

This stopped him for only the briefest of moments. His eyes did not even flicker. “Polk,” he said.

“James Polk Trask,” I said.

“My grandfather insisted. He knew a good president when he saw one.”

“Do you ever use all three names?”

“Never,” he said.

I didn’t think so. Okay. I asked, “So what can I do for you?”

“Go back to Villa.”

“I’m not exactly persona grata down there anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

“I coldcocked the German emissary just before I vanished.”

Trask lifted his eyebrows and stubbed his cigarette next to mine.

“The typewriter’s mightier than the sword,” I said.

“Who started that?”

“He did.”

None of this made it into the stories I filed.

“Why?” Trask asked.

“He knew I was a journalist. He knew somebody’d searched his bags.”

“That’s how you discovered the contents of the documents.”

That wasn’t in the story either.

“My sources,” I said, flexing my fingers in the air before me.

Trask smiled. Then, upon further reflection, he laughed. This somehow didn’t surprise me. He said, “Tell me. When you rode with the Villistas, and the colorados attacked. Did you just watch and take notes?”

“No.”

“Did you fight?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me steadily, and I had the distinct impression that something behind those dark, flat eyes had awakened. Was he going to ask the next question? I waited. He knew the answer, but I’d make him ask, if he wanted me to say it.

“I do like you, Cobb,” he said. “You are the man for us, no doubt. Not just for me and for the President. For the country.”

And I wondered if he could see something awaken now in my eyes, which, I suspected, were usually as opaque as his.

“Did you respect Mr. Vogel?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that he was serving his country?”

“Yes.”

“The thing the President would have you do will yield no public story. But it will do a great service to your country. Far more than a newspaper story would do.”

He paused again. But he was not expecting a question now. He was choosing his words. I felt in my own pocket for a cigarette. I didn’t have one. He saw what I was doing and pushed his pack of Fatimas across the table toward me. I took up the pack and removed a cigarette and put it in my mouth. I pushed the pack back toward him. He leaned across the table and lit the cigarette for me.

He said, “Vogel was a reporter of sorts too. All such men working for our country are reporters. But their reporting methods are more diverse — as yours have become — and their readers are very selective, very elite. Your Christopher Cobb story wasn’t killed. It had the most important life of all. It informed the President of the United States. We are already on the alert about the plot, so your work has not been in vain. Far from it. They can no longer surprise us. But it would be much better still to prevent even the attempt, discredit the Germans in Mexico and win over Pancho Villa to us.”

“You and the President think I can do that?”

He said, “We think you will be very good at this sort of work.” He gave me that little smile of his.

I understood.

And the curtain rose.