Night of Camp David Page 15

  But he couldn’t forget. After Sunday dinner and a cigarette, Slim sat in a rocker on his porch and looked out at the baking land. Fragile clouds, as small and as delicate as bits of lace, hung motionless in the pale-blue sky, and the earth seemed to flinch under the hammer of the sun. Far to the south loomed the peaks of the Davis Mountains, wrapped in a wavering haze. These Sunday afternoons were hours of contentment for Slim. Even the steady heat, which settled in the shade of the porch like the bed of a furnace, did not bother him.

  But today he could not put the letter out of his mind. Those bastard politicians, he thought, they’re all the same, Republican or Democrat. A man worked until his back ached, paid his taxes through the nose, obeyed the law, and hoped those rattlebrains in Washington would someday learn the value of a dollar. A man tried to act responsibly, even suggesting that he cut his own profits for the sake of conserving a resource for the whole country. And what did he get for his pains? A thumb at the nose by the President of the United States, a man who even had the gall to suggest that a farmer in West Texas was too ignorant to know any better. It was a lousy, stinking deal.

  Slim batted angrily at a fly which streaked to safety on the crown of his straw sombrero. One thing was sure. This year they ought to clean out that insolent gang in Washington—from top to bottom.

  9.

  Secret Service

  Chief Arnold Brothers, slumped in a chair in his office in the old Treasury Building, didn’t like the taste and the smell of the whole business. It was one thing to track down the nuts who wrote anonymous letters, jumbled and obscene for the most part, which threatened the President of the United States. They were harmless usually, and it was no great problem for the U.S. Secret Service to persuade local mental health officers to take over the surveillance or to aid in quiet commitments to mental institutions. But something else again were these not infrequent incidents involving apparently normal, even influential, persons. People grew emotional about politics and the issues, particularly in a campaign year, and they made alarming remarks about the President that they didn’t really mean. Still, the Service had to investigate. It couldn’t afford to take a chance on anyone.

  Chief Brothers was a chunky, methodical man with curly brown hair and a bland face which masked his own nest of anxieties. Foremost among them was retirement. He could quit the Service on full pension next year, and that he intended to do. The life of an agent was all right, despite the irregular hours and the endless, tense waiting for the unexpected when one was a member of the White House detail. But this administrative job, crammed with budget disputes and laced by the intricate cross-webbing of politics, was for the birds, in Brothers’ opinion. The required obeisance to minor politicians grated on his pride. The errand boy role in which the White House frequently cast his men was galling. Despite the public glamour attached to his job, in the inner world of Washington everyone knew the Secret Service chief just did not have the stature, the prestige or the funds of the FBI director. And yet, if anything went wrong, it was his neck nevertheless.

  And now had arisen this curious, prickly situation involving the junior senator from Iowa, just when the chief’s head felt like a stuffed cabbage from a bad spring cold. Brothers sneezed, yanked at his pocket handkerchief, and dabbed mournfully at his red-rimmed nostrils. He frowned as he thought of how the MacVeagh business had started. An auto repairman in the little town of La Belle, Florida, a man named Amos Palmer, had called Washington headquarters to report that a suspicious young man was nosing around town asking personal questions about President Hollenbach. Palmer said he hadn’t liked the fellow’s attitude. The agent on duty gave the matter little thought, assuming the questioner was merely a newspaperman or magazine writer, but he dispatched a teletype to the Miami office, requesting a routine check.

  Miami ran the check, tracing a rental car through a license number which appeared on the motel registration card in La Belle. The Miami office found that the car had been rented in Tampa to a Roger Carlson of Washington, D.C., although that was not the name which appeared in the La Belle motel’s registration file. Carlson had a rental car credit card, and another routine check with the national office of the company revealed the card had been issued to a Roger Carlson, administrative assistant to Senator James F. MacVeagh of Iowa.

  That’s when Chief Brothers decided to send Luther Smith down to La Belle to case the situation. Not that Brothers thought there was anything suspicious. He’d assumed that Carlson was simply on some private political mission—one of these wheels-within-wheels affairs he encountered all the time in Washington. Still, he’d taken the precaution of sending Smith into the field because President Hollenbach was not the sort who’d appreciate someone padding about, making secret inquiries into his early life. Brothers knew intuitively that if Hollenbach ever learned of the La Belle case he’d demand an immediate report. So Brothers wanted to be in the clear, ready with the full and undiluted word. This presidential flunky aspect of his job especially annoyed Chief Brothers. He and his agents were supposed to safeguard and protect the person of the President, and ever since the assassination of President Kennedy—Brothers had been an agent in Dallas that day—the task weighed on them all like a shroud. But the SS men were distracted from their job by these auxiliary chores every president thrust upon them. They were required to run errands, carry speeches, function as a valet at times, act as a president’s private detective and, sometimes, even as baby-sitter or wife-comforter.

  Brothers sighed wearily and patted at his oozing nose with his handkerchief. He resented Smith’s detailed report on his trip to La Belle and his interview with Senator MacVeagh because it spelled unneeded grief. Suddenly the chief found himself pitched into one of those swampy messes from which he instinctively recoiled. MacVeagh, apparently, had lied to Smith. His explanation of Carlson’s poking about La Belle, asking strange questions about the President, had been a limp one. It was one of those flimsy cover stories that any agent would suspect. So Brothers felt compelled to order an investigation of MacVeagh, and he didn’t like it one bit. A senator, if harassed or offended, could make life miserable for a bureau chief. And that, Brothers well knew, was all he was. The public might invest his job with mystery and thrills, but Brothers knew he was just another government employee with his neck out—for anybody to take a swipe at.

  He only hoped that Smith had proceeded with discretion, so that Senator MacVeagh wouldn’t get word of the checkout. Chief Brothers looked at his wrist watch and flipped a switch on his squawk box.

  “Is Smith there yet?”

  “He’s just coming in now, chief,” was the metallic response. “I’ll send him right in.”

  Agent Luther Smith swarmed into the room, alive with energy, flashing his pearly smile. Brothers eyed him apprehensively and then sneezed, a small explosion that rocked his padded frame. Smith took an armchair near Brothers’ desk and opened a loose-leaf notebook.

  “This thing is getting gutsy, chief,” he said. His voice had the buoyancy of the investigator who has just discovered a corpse on the patio.

  “What have you got?” Brothers asked it like a man who’d rather not hear.

  “I’ve questioned five…no six…pretty good friends of MacVeagh, all on a security basis.”

  “You sure they won’t talk?” asked Brothers moodily. “I don’t trust anybody in this town.”

  “Positive,” said Smith cheerfully. “I told them all this was a routine check, and we didn’t want to embarrass anybody. They all promised to keep mum. Anyway, I’ll make out a full report for you, but there isn’t a great deal in it except for Paul Griscom, the lawyer.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Plenty, but he didn’t want to at first. He said because of his special relationship to the President and MacVeagh, he’d rather not mention any discussions with the senator. But I kept pressing and he finally agreed to talk. He says MacVeagh came to see him last week,
with an odd story about a man high in government who, MacVeagh claimed, was having some kind of severe mental trouble. MacVeagh described the symptoms which Griscom says added up to paranoia—a persecution complex, all sorts of people out to get him, coupled with some screwy scheme to save the world, a delusion of grandeur. MacVeagh, says Griscom, was highly agitated and refused to name the person. Said he wanted advice from Griscom on what to do. Griscom says it was so obvious what should be done—either get Hollenbach to give the guy the bounce or take the fellow to a psychiatrist—that he began to wonder about MacVeagh. The more the senator talked, says Griscom, the more he became convinced that MacVeagh was describing his own condition. In a word, that MacVeagh was the guy who was off his rocker.”

  “Oh, no.” Brothers groaned. “We need that like a hole in the head. Did Griscom give you any idea what he thought MacVeagh’s trouble was?”

  “Yeah,” said Smith, with more relish than Brothers thought seemly at the moment. “Griscom lives on O Street, and he says he has seen a guy who he swears is MacVeagh coming out of an apartment that belongs to a real sex cart. Her name is Rita Krasicki and she works for Joe Donovan at Democratic headquarters.”

  “You know her?”

  “Yes, I’ve talked to her some. She’s an eyeful, chief.” Smith’s dark face reddened slightly. “In fact…well, I don’t blame MacVeagh.”

  “But what’s the girl got to do with the price of oats?” asked Brothers. “I couldn’t keep count of all the wheels in this city who have a little piece tucked away somewhere.”

  “I know, but Griscom thinks it may be different in MacVeagh’s case. MacVeagh has a swell wife and daughter, and Griscom thinks he’s the kind of man who can’t two-time his wife without brooding about it and rebuking himself and getting all messed up generally.”

  “You buy that?” Brothers’ blue eyes questioned sharply from his smooth, bland face.

  “No, I don’t, chief. I think MacVeagh is a pretty uncomplicated guy who wouldn’t think much about it. He’s not one of those worried introverts. At least that’s my hunch, and I’ve talked to him quite a bit.”

  “But he lied to you about this La Belle business.”

  “Yeah, I can’t understand that. He says he’s writing a biography of Hollenbach and he needs this early background stuff. But it seems funny that he’d be writing a book, with everything else he has to do.”

  “Especially when he’s obviously running for vice-president,” said Brothers. “And what’s more, I get the impression that he’s running with the President’s encouragement.”

  “Of course, maybe he is writing a book. But then why lie? And he did lie about that report from Carlson. He told me he had no written report from Carlson, but I’m sure I saw it on his desk yesterday afternoon, and then last night Carlson admitted to me that he’d made a written report.”

  “And why should this Roger Carlson go around the country under an assumed name?” Brothers spoke as though questioning himself.

  “Not only did he use an assumed name,” said Smith, “but he told people he was from Omaha. Of course, MacVeagh explained that readily enough. He said if Carlson went under his real identity, people would clam up and refuse to talk to him.”

  “Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not exactly. Who’d know Roger Carlson? And, of course, when I asked MacVeagh if it wasn’t unusual for a fellow to write a book about a man whose running mate he might be, he just laughed and said it was pretty unlikely the lightning would ever strike him. But if it did, he said, such a book would be unique. I agreed there, but then asked him the name of his publisher. He looked startled and said he didn’t have one yet, that he was just getting started.”

  “Has MacVeagh ever written a book?” asked Brothers.

  “No. We checked that out. Not even a magazine piece.”

  Brothers had the appearance of a man being pestered by sand flies. His face bunched in irritation. There had to be an easy answer, but it eluded him.

  “Maybe he’s doing a book and maybe he’s not,” he said, “but I wonder if there isn’t some political angle. It’s a cinch he’s investigating the President’s early life, but why? Well, suppose he’s afraid Hollenbach may not take him for vice-president. And suppose he manages to come up with some unsavory odds and ends about the President that Hollenbach would rather not have revealed. All right, then MacVeagh’s in a position to put the squeeze on Hollenbach.”

  Smith shook his head, pursing his lips in dissent. “Aw, MacVeagh’s not that kind of guy. I can’t see him mucking around like that. You’re talking blackmail. This guy’s a pretty straight shooter.”

  “Still,” said Brothers, “Hollenbach is a very proud man who’d hate to see his image tarnished, even by some old incident. And MacVeagh probably understands that about the President as well as we do.”

  “Forget it, chief,” said Smith emphatically. “Jim MacVeagh’s not the type. There’s no malice in the guy and he’s no conniver. And what’s more, I don’t buy that explanation of Griscom’s either. MacVeagh’s too stable a man to get upset and go into an emotional funk just because he happens to sleep now and then with some dame he isn’t married to.”

  “Well, then, what’s the answer?” Brothers eyed Smith accusingly, as though he’d let the Service down by becoming the courier of bad news.

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m as sure as I’m sitting here that we’ve nothing to worry about. Whatever MacVeagh’s reason, he’s no oddball. He’s not about to harm the President. And after all, chief, that’s our only concern, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite. I’ve got to be ready in case Hollenbach finds out about this. Somebody could always call him from La Belle.” Brothers sniffed. His eyes were watering. “I keep coming back to one thing. It keeps bugging me.”

  “What’s that, chief?”

  “Those knives you saw in MacVeagh’s den.”

  “You mean that old surgical collection?”

  “Yes. Now, that’s a mighty weird hobby, Luther, for a United States senator.”

  “Oh, it isn’t a hobby of MacVeagh’s. He says his father collected surgical instruments and the senator just keeps the tray around as a souvenir of the old man.”

  “I don’t like it.” Brothers sighed. “I don’t know what this is all about, but I don’t like the smell of it.”

  “It is strange,” admitted Smith.

  “We’ve only got one obligation in this mess,” said Brothers, “and that’s to protect the President. I don’t know what’s going on yet, but when a fellow who keeps little knives around the house begins asking suspicious questions about the President, I want to know why.”

  Brothers stood up and shook his head. A man only a year away from a full pension had enough troubles without this sour brew being thrown in his face.

  “Luther,” he said, “I don’t like to do it, but I want Senator MacVeagh kept under constant suveillance. And I want the interviewing continued. But be careful, for God’s sake. Maybe there isn’t anything wrong with MacVeagh, but if there is, you know something?”

  “What?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first crazy congressman in this cruddy town.”

  Chief Arnold Brothers shrugged sadly. Then his nose began to itch and he whipped his sodden handkerchief aloft just in time to meet another violent sneeze.

  10.

  Routine Field

  The MacVeagh-for-Vice-President drive gathered headway like a sailboat which swings off a close tack and begins running before the wind. Every day brought a new gust of support, just as planned by President Mark Hollenbach, the master planner.

  The Wisconsin Democratic state chairman announced that he would back Senator MacVeagh for vice-president. A salute to a great man from a great sister state of the Midwest, he said. A day later, the lone Democratic senator from Wisconsin and all Democrats in the state’s Congressional delega
tion added their support. Another MacVeagh write-in office opened in Green Bay, supplementing the original one in Milwaukee. Cards circulated throughout the state, instructing Democrats how to write in MacVeagh’s name on the ballot of the otherwise meaningless presidential primary.

  National Chairman Joe Donovan at first refused to talk to newsmen, but pressure mounted and he was forced to hold a press conference. He denied that he or anyone else at the national committee was lending covert support to MacVeagh. When newsmen countered with a statement from the Appleton city chairman, who said he’d been called by Donovan, soliciting support for MacVeagh, Donovan said the Appleton chairman completely misunderstood him. All he’d done, said Donovan, was to assure the Wisconsin people that any move for any candidate would not be frowned upon by the White House. While the President reserved to himself the right of final selection, he nevertheless welcomed evidence of support for any candidate around the country.

  As for Hollenbach’s own press conference, the vice-presidency monopolized the entire half hour in this second week since the announcement that Patrick O’Malley would not run for re-election because of the Kennedy sports arena scandal. Hollenbach sparred deftly, declining to single out MacVeagh for special praise and refusing to identify the seven persons reputedly on his list of possibilities. Obviously savoring the gathering suspense, Hollenbach stated his position as “of March, April and May.”

  “I have, as I said, narrowed my own preferences to seven persons,” he said, “but as a Democrat I will always take counsel with my party. Therefore, I intend to listen carefully in the weeks ahead. If the Democrats of this country have a choice for vice-president and make it evident, I won’t ignore the advice, but I do reserve the right to overrule it if circumstances so dictate. At this juncture, I am endorsing no one and opposing no one.”

  Press interpretation: A boost for MacVeagh.

  A constant target for reporters himself, MacVeagh never varied his stance in scores of interviews. He appreciated the support of the many friends he appeared to have in Wisconsin, but he was not an active candidate for the nomination. The choice was the President’s alone. The producer of NBC’s “Meet the Press” program begged him to appear on the popular political panel inquisition, but MacVeagh steadfastly refused. It would place him in the role of a candidate, he said, and a candidate he was not.