Joe Steele Read online

  Feldman jabbed a finger at Mike’s piece. “I’m not gonna run this,” he said. “Get me some real evidence and maybe I will. But nothing is just—nothing.”

  “It’s not just nothing,” Mike said. “It’s nothing where there ought to be something. That’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s not enough, either,” the editor answered. “Show me something and I may change my mind. Something real, not This ought to be here and it isn’t, so they’re all a bunch of crooks.”

  “But—” Mike spread his hands. “If I can see it, Stan, other people will be able to see it, too.”

  “I can see it. Seeing it’s not good enough, not for something like this,” Feldman said. “You have to nail it down tight, so there’s no possible doubt. If you don’t, we’ll have more libel suits than Hart Schaffner and Marx has of the kind with two pairs of pants.”

  “Funny. Ha, ha. See how hard I’m laughing?”

  Feldman lit another nasty cheroot. “I ain’t laughing, either, Mike. We can’t run it like it is, and that’s flat. Besides, we’re a Democratic paper, remember? This kind of stuff, it sounds like Father Coughlin. Ever hear of giving somebody the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Sure, where there’s a doubt to give the benefit of. Is there, with Joe Steele? Some of the things I’ve heard from Washington—” He stopped there. He’d heard those from his brother. Charlie’d got them off the record, and passed them along even further off the record. They weren’t for other people’s ears.

  “He’s better than Hoover. So he’s not as slick as Roosevelt woulda been. So what?” Feldman said. “He’s getting stuff done. He’s putting people to work, and he’s putting the rich bastards in their place. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

  “‘They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,’” Mike said. Ben Franklin always sounded better than some dumb cliché.

  Ben Franklin sounded enough better than the cliché to make Stan Feldman turn red. “I’m not giving up essential anything, except a story that doesn’t prove what it needs to. Show me the proof and we’ll go on from there. In the meantime, haven’t you got something to write about besides Joe Steele?”

  “Nothing as important.”

  “So go write about something that ain’t important. Go on. Beat it. I’ve wasted too much time on you already.”

  Muttering, Mike left. Go write about something that ain’t important. Now there was a battle cry to send a reporter rushing to his typewriter! Yeah, the cub who covered a Long Island flower show knew his deathless prose would never make the history books. He still wrote better if he wrote as though those roses and peonies were as important as Mussolini and Picasso.

  “You okay, Mike?” another reporter asked. “You look like you could use some Bromo-Seltzer or something.”

  “Got anything in your desk that’ll cure me of humanity, Hank?” Mike said.

  Instead of Benjamin Franklin, Hank quoted Dorothy Parker: “‘Guns aren’t lawful;/ Nooses give;/ Gas smells awful;/ You might as well live.’”

  “Heh,” Mike said. But then he chuckled in genuine appreciation. “Okay, that’s pretty good. Thanks.”

  “Any time, man. Seriously, though, what’s eating you? Is it anything I can help you with?”

  “Not unless you want to charge in there and convince Stan to run a story I just wrote. He doesn’t think I did enough to tie the can to Joe Steele’s tail.”

  Hank whistled, soft and low. “You don’t think small, do you?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yeah, you. You better watch yourself, is all I’ve got to say.”

  “Everybody keeps telling me that.” Mike knew it was good advice, too. The safe, sane, calculating part of him did, anyhow. But how safe, sane, and calculating should you be when you were sure the President knocked off his main rival for the nomination when it looked as if he was going to lose? Was anybody who did something like that fit to lead the land of the free and the home of the brave?

  The problem was, most people didn’t want to believe it. Easier to think Roosevelt died in some sad accident. Then you wouldn’t have to wonder about yourself when you voted to toss Herbert Hoover on the rubbish heap of the past. And people had voted that way. Joe Steele got one of the biggest wins in the history of the USA, the kind of win that would change politics for years to come.

  It would unless people decided Joe Steele was a murderer, anyway. Would they impeach him and throw him out of office? Or would they just not reelect him? But that would bring back the Republicans. Wasn’t the cure worse than the disease? Wouldn’t most people think it was?

  So they went by on the other side of the road. They turned their eyes away from the burnt bodies in the ditch. Pharisees, the lot of ’em. I’ll show them what Joe Steele did, Mike thought. I’ll show them whether they want to see it or not.

  V

  During the special session, Joe Steele fed bills to the leaders of the House and Senate one after another. After the brief pause at nationalizing the banks, those bills went through, lickety-split—the advantage of winning an election by a landslide, and the advantage of putting the fear of God (or at least of embarrassment) into Representatives and Senators. More new laws regulated Wall Street. They tried to make sure financiers’ foibles didn’t send the economy crashing down in ruins again. Bills regulating banks did their best to keep the bankers from lending money they didn’t have.

  Charlie Sullivan got calluses on the tips of his index fingers banging out stories about the start of the President’s Four Year Plan. He had plenty to write about. Every day, Joe Steele seemed to sign a bill that would have been a good year’s work in ordinary times. On a lively day, he’d sign two or three bills like that.

  The country’s never going to be the same seemed to be the theme of the special session. Bills regulated what management could do to labor. More bills set out how labor could and couldn’t dicker with management. There were massive public-works programs. Roads, canals, tunnels, airstrips . . . Joe Steele had swarms of hungry men—and not a few hungry women—eager to dig in with a shovel or swing a pick in exchange for three square meals, a place to sleep, and a little cash in their pockets now and then.

  Foreclosures and dust storms meant big stretches of farmland in the Midwest lay idle. Joe Steele’s bill set up community farms on abandoned land. People lived on the land together, worked it all together, and shared whatever they got from the crops they raised. The Republicans asked how that was any different from what was going on in Russia.

  Joe Steele went on the radio to answer them. “Some people would rather keep the country hungry and farmers out of work,” he said. “If you want to see food on the table and men proud of what they do, let your Senators and Representatives know about it.” The people who listened to him must have done that, because the farm bill passed with all the others.

  After it did, Charlie took a few days off so he could go back up to New York and marry Esther Polgar. Mike was his best man. At the reception, Mike asked him, “Do you really like that SOB so much? I swear to God, he murdered Roosevelt to get the nomination.”

  “If you can prove it, I’ll worry about it then,” Charlie answered. “In the meantime, he’s doing the country good. People have hope again. When Hoover was sitting there twiddling his thumbs, everybody just wanted to lay down and die.”

  “Lie down,” Mike said automatically.

  Charlie thumbed his nose at him. “You didn’t put on that monkey suit to be my copy editor.”

  Mike laughed, but not for long. “One of the reasons nobody can prove anything is that a lot of the paperwork’s gone and disappeared. That tells you something right there, or it does if you’re not a cheerleader for the bum in the White House.”

  “I’m no cheerleader, dammit.” Charlie wasn’t kidding around any more, either. “I watc
hed Mikoian on the convention floor when news came of the fire in Albany. He almost dropped dead. Nobody’s that good an actor.”

  “And you heard Scriabin order it, too.”

  “I heard Scriabin on the phone talking about something. I don’t know what any more than you do. They deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

  Mike took a deep breath, blew it out, and then took another one. “Okay. It’s your wedding. I don’t want to fight with you on your big day. But it sure seems you’re banging Joe Steele’s drum for him with those stories you keep cranking out.”

  “The bills are important. They’ll help clean up the mess we’re in. I don’t care if the Devil wrote them. They’re still good bills.”

  “Who says the Devil didn’t?” Mike said. Charlie threw up his hands and went over to the bar for another bourbon. He didn’t want to fight with his brother, either, not on a day like this.

  Esther had a fresh drink in her hand, too. “What were you and Mike going on about?” she asked.

  “Nothing that has anything to do with you, babe,” he said, and kissed her. “Just dumb old politics.”

  “He really can’t stand the President, can he? That’s so funny—it’s not like he’s a Republican or anything.”

  “He doesn’t trust him,” Charlie said, which was putting it mildly. To his relief, the band Esther’s folks had hired started going through its paces. He gulped his bourbon and led Esther out onto the dance floor. “C’mon, Mrs. Sullivan. Let’s cut a rug.” If he was dancing, he didn’t have to think about his brother or Joe Steele or anything else.

  “Mrs. Sullivan. I like that.” Esther smiled at him. She spread the fingers of her left hand so the tiny diamond in her wedding ring sparkled. “I’ve got to get used to it, but I like it.”

  “You better get used to it. You’ll be wearing it the next fifty or sixty years.” He leaned close to whisper in her ear: “And tonight you won’t be wearing anything else.” She squeaked and made as if to hit him, but they were grinning at each other.

  They honeymooned at Niagara Falls. It was not too far and not too expensive. Charlie didn’t much care where they went. He didn’t plan on seeing much besides the hotel room they’d rented any which way. He and Esther did finally go to the Falls the day before they were supposed to head back to New York City and Charlie to continue to Washington and to find a bigger apartment than the cramped place he’d had up till then.

  The Falls were impressive. Damned if he’d admit it, Charlie spoke to his new wife in a mock-gruff growl: “I wouldn’t even know what this place looks like if you hadn’t worn me out.”

  This time, Esther did hit him. No one around them paid any attention. A lot of the people gaping at the Falls were young couples too tired from honeymooning to do any more of it right that minute. One of these days before too long, Charlie figured, Mike and Stella would come here, too. He wondered how much of Niagara they’d see.

  * * *

  “Ladies and gentlemen, live from the White House in Washington, D.C., the President of the United States.” The radio announcer had the rich, slightly plummy tones of an actor who’d spent a lot of time in first-rate vaudeville and a few short stretches in Broadway flops.

  Charlie noticed the hamminess but didn’t fuss about it. At least half the leading radio announcers sounded like this guy. Besides, Charlie wasn’t inclined to fuss about anything then. He liked the new apartment. He could walk through the living room with a good chance of evading the shin-eating coffee table. More space did make a difference. He could grab Esther and go to bed with her whenever he felt like it, too. That also made a difference, one much more pleasant than that which came from a larger front room.

  “This is Joe Steele.” The President didn’t sound like a pretty good actor. He sounded like someone who should have been a tough guy but had somehow ended up with an education instead. His voice held a faint rasp. Some of that might have come from the pipe he smoked. The rest he would have had anyway. Anybody who didn’t hear the don’t-mess-with-me in his voice wasn’t listening hard enough. To Charlie, it was as unmistakable as the warning buzz of a rattlesnake’s tail.

  “I want to talk to you tonight about my bill for electrifying the Tennessee Valley,” Joe Steele said. “It’s an important bill. It will build dams up and down the river. The dams will give thousands of people jobs for years. They will stop the floods that have drowned the lowlands in those parts every so often since only Indians lived there. And the electricity the dams generate will bring millions of people into the twentieth century.”

  The President paused to cough. “Only when the farmer is surrounded by electrical wiring will he fully become an American citizen. The biggest hope and weapon for our country is industry, and making the farmer part of industry. It is impossible to base construction on two different foundations, on the foundation of large-scale and highly concentrated industry, and on the foundation of very fragmented and extremely backward agriculture. Systematically and persistently, we must place agriculture on a new technical basis, and raise it to the level of an industry.”

  He coughed again. He used that cough, Charlie realized, as a kind of punctuation mark to show when he was moving from one idea to another. “This is also the logic behind my new system of community farms. But in the Tennessee Valley, some men have grown rich by keeping most farmers poor and backward. They are trying to bottle up the bill authorizing the dams and the electrical industry so they can hold on to their control of them. I wanted to talk to you on the radio tonight to ask you to urge your Representative and Senator to support the Tennessee Valley electrification project. This is your government. Its leaders have to listen to your will. If they don’t, we will throw them on the ash-heap of history, where they belong. Thank you, and good night.”

  “That was President Joe Steele, speaking from the White House,” the announcer said. “We’ll be right back after this important message.”

  The important message plugged a brand of coffee that, to Charlie, tasted like Mississippi mud. Lighting a Chesterfield, he asked Esther, “What did you think of the speech, sweetie?”

  “Let me have one of those, please,” she said. He tossed her the pack. After she lit up, she went on, “I noticed something interesting at the end.”

  “Like what?”

  “He said ‘your government.’ He said ‘the leaders will listen to your will.’ But then he said we would throw them out if they didn’t. Not you would—we would.”

  “Are you sure?” Charlie asked. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “I’m positive.” Esther nodded emphatically.

  “Okay,” Charlie said. His wife was nobody’s dope. He wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her—well, no, she was pretty enough that he might have wanted something to do with her, but he wouldn’t have wanted to marry her—if she had been. He did a little thinking himself. “Probably just political talk. He doesn’t want people going after Senators by themselves or anything. That’s too much like the Bonus Army.”

  “Maybe.” Esther’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked in smoke. She didn’t sound a hundred percent convinced, but she didn’t argue about it, either. She was easy to get along with. Charlie tried to be the same way, but he had more trouble with it than his wife seemed to.

  Whatever Joe Steele meant by switching between you and we, the speech did what he wanted it to do. It scared the living bejesus out of the people in Congress who were trying to block the bill.

  That amused Lazar Kagan. The President’s moonfaced aide and Charlie met for lunch at a little Italian restaurant a few blocks from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Charlie ordered spaghetti and meatballs; Kagan chose lasagna. As they started to eat, Joe Steele’s underling said, “I would have got the spaghetti, too, only I never have been able to twirl it worth a damn.”

  Charlie eyed him. He decided Kagan wasn’t kidding. “It’s not that important,” he said. “You could jus
t cut up the noodles and eat ’em with your fork. Plenty of people do—it’s easier. I sure wouldn’t care.”

  “You might not,” Kagan said, “but the waiter would laugh at me behind my back. So would the dago who runs this joint. If you can’t do it so it looks good, you should do something else instead.”

  That made Charlie eye him again. Kagan seemed perfectly serious. “Is that the kind of thing you tell the President?” Charlie asked, a hint of laughter in his voice so Kagan could laugh, too, and tell him he was full of baloney.

  But the Jew nodded. “Not that I need to tell him very often. He’s the one who taught me that. Take the Tennessee Valley bill. The President wanted people to let their Congressmen hear from them, right?”

  “Sure.” Charlie nodded, too. “So?”

  “So . . . You haven’t heard this from me, you know. This doesn’t go in your next story. This is background.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said again, not without some reluctance. Yes, you heard things off the record. That was part of the business. If you broke one source’s trust, you risked losing all your sources. If your source had the President’s ear, you risked more than that. Sometimes you had to take those risks. More often, you were a sponge. You soaked up what you heard. It might flavor what you wrote, but it wouldn’t show up there.

  Lazar Kagan ate lasagna as daintily as a cat might have. Dabbing at his full lips with a napkin, he said, “So we make sure the reactionaries hear from the people. The people don’t have good handwriting and they don’t spell very well, but they sure know what they want. They want dams and electricity in the Tennessee Valley, that’s what.”

  “Wait a minute.” Charlie stopped, a twirled forkful of spaghetti in tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese halfway to his mouth. “Are you telling me you cooked up some of those letters?”

  “I didn’t say that. You said that,” Kagan answered, which was what any sensible official would have said in place of yes.

  “Well, no wonder it’s background.” Charlie would have been more surprised had he been more shocked. Yes, it was a cheap trick. Yes, it was a sleazy trick. No, it wasn’t a new trick. The ancient Greeks had probably used it, scratching their messages on potsherds with nails. Charlie found the next question to ask: “So how’s it working?”