Empire (37 page)

“I have never known such a bunch of hypocrites in my life.” He lit his cigar; puffed smoke at the Chief, who coughed, unnoticed by his guest. “The worst is Roosevelt, because he knows the game. He
plays
the game …”

“He takes money?” Blaise regretted his question, as two sets of pitying eyes were turned, briefly, on him.

Neither man bothered to answer so naive a question. “He acts, every day, as if he’s just discovered sin when his family and every other grand family in this city is supported by us, by the city, by the way we get around the laws he and his sort make, so a man can do business here, and do well here. Who is Platt?” The deep voice rumbled stagily. The gray eyes turned on Blaise, who was wise enough to attempt no answer. “Platt’s Croker and Croker’s Platt, with a brogue and no education. But we do business the same way. We get out the vote of the quick and the
dead and the immigrants, including the ones who think they’re living in Australia. Heaven help us! Well, I’ve no heart to tear the scales from their eyes, you can be sure.” Croker continued, comfortably, in this vein until the Chief signalled for him to stop.

“You know, Mr. Croker, whenever I want to know what the Republicans are up to, I ask you, and when I want to know about the Democrats, I ask Platt.”

Croker nodded; and nearly smiled. “You’ll get something close to the truth, going round the back way, you might say.”

The Chief nodded; and put his feet up on the back of the sphinx, a creature plainly puzzling to Croker. “What’s Platt doing about Roosevelt?”

“He wants him out of the state fast. We all do. It’s not that he
does
anything. Don’t get me wrong. But he talks so much. He gets the rich folks all riled up on account of us, not that they don’t know better.”

“He’s a demagogue.” Blaise made his vital contribution.

Croker nodded. “You could call him that. Poor old Platt’s gone and broken a lot of ribs. He’s in plaster of paris up to here.” Croker indicated the place where his own neck was, assuming that he had such a feature, hidden back of gray beard, gray tweed. “He’s poorly, today. With a fever. But he’s made up his mind he won’t let Teddy run again for governor.”

“How does he stop him?” asked Blaise.

“Throw us the election is one way. Teddy didn’t do all that well first time around. It’s not like Platt and me haven’t arranged an election together before. But Platt’s got other plans this year. He wants McKinley to take Teddy on as vice-president.”

Hearst scratched his stomach, idly; gazed into the middle distance at a cow-headed Egyptian goddess, who stared back. “Dewey’s done for,” he told the goddess.

Croker laughed, an unpleasant sound. “That interview in the
World
did the trick.”

“I could have managed him.” Hearst shut his eyes. “I could’ve elected him president.”

“But you couldn’t have managed Mrs. Dewey, and that’s the truth.”

Like everyone else, Blaise had read, with wonder, the Admiral’s interview. After a bit of thought, the Admiral had declared his readiness to be president, an easy sort of job, he declared, where you simply did what Congress told you to do. Mrs. Dewey was given full credit for the resulting farce.

“No one,” said the Chief, opening one eye and keeping it firmly on Croker, “wants Teddy.”

“Since when does that matter? Platt wants him out of New York. The only way is to make him vice-president. Boss Quay in Pennsylvania—”

“Got thrown out of the Senate.”

“A bag-,” said Croker, enjoying each syllable, “a-telle. Who needs the Senate? But everyone needs Pennsylvania, and Matt Quay’s got that. New York and Pennsylvania will make Teddy vice-president.”

“Bosses.” Hearst’s tone was neutral; he had now widened both eyes in imitation of the cow-goddess.

“So what’s Mark Hanna? He’s boss of the whole Republican Party.”

“No.” Hearst was unexpected. “McKinley runs the show, and lets Hanna collect the loot, and take the blame. Teddy was in Washington last week, begging for the job, and Hanna said, no, never, and McKinley said, may the best man win. McKinley wants Allison.”

Blaise had yet to learn the entire roster of American statesmen. Vaguely, he was aware of an elderly Iowa senator named Allison, who, with serene fidelity, represented not Iowans but corporations in the Senate. “McKinley won’t get Allison,” said Croker. “Which means he don’t really want him.”

“Maybe that’s why he
says
he wants him.” The Chief, each day, sounded more like a politician than an editor. Blaise doubted the wisdom of this metamorphosis. Bright butterflies ought not to change into drab caterpillars. “Dolliver’s the man the White House boys like. Dawes wants him.”

“Dolliver.” Croker allowed the name to remain in that perpetual limbo from which those who might have been figures of the highest degree in the great republic fail to rise even to the surface, like iridescent scum, wrote Blaise in his head. He was beginning to get the knack of newspaper writing. Whatever phrase came first and most shamefully to the mind of someone who read only newspapers was the one to be deployed in all its imprecise familiarity.

“Lodge supports Long. New England supports Long.” Hearst plucked at a single string of his banjo, and even the hardened Croker winced at the sound.

“Lodge works day and night—for Teddy.” Croker stared at the banjo as if it were a city judge whose price had doubled. “He has to be for Long. That’s the cover. The New England candidate, like Dolliver—not Allison—is the real Midwesterner. Now Root …”

“Yes, Root …” Hearst frowned. Blaise could follow only so far into the maze when politicians lapsed into their own curious vernacular, so similar to that of Paris thieves. Plainly, Root impressed each man. Plainly, Root was a non-starter.

“Who do
we
want, Mr. Hearst?” Croker was, finally, direct.

“Anyone but Teddy.” Hearst was as direct.

“That’s you, of course. Me, I’m like Platt. I want him out of New York. He’s tiresome to do business with.”

Hearst turned to Blaise. “I’ve fixed it. He says you’re the only gentleman we’ve got around here. So you can go down with him, in his car. Make all the notes you can every day and telephone them in and we’ll write it up.”

“By ‘he’ you mean Colonel Roosevelt?”

Hearst stared at a splendid school-of-Tintoretto painting, the work, to Blaise’s eyes, of a student destined not to matriculate. Anyone could sell the Chief anything if it was Art. “You’re booked into the Walton Hotel, same floor as Teddy. You leave Friday. Pennsylvania Station. Noon. All your badges and so on are at the office. The convention don’t start till Tuesday, so Teddy’s getting a headstart. He’s going to be rushing around telling everyone how he’s
not
a candidate, too young to be put on the shelf, too poor for the job. You don’t have to take any of that nonsense down. Mr. Brisbane can write the usual Teddy interview in his sleep—in
their
sleep.” The Chief had finally made something close to a joke. The thin voice was asthmatic with uncontrollable laughter.

“As good as Weber and Fields,” beamed Croker, suddenly turning before their eyes into a dear wee leprechaun, straight from the Emerald Isle.

Blaise was less indulgent. “Where’s Hanna in all this?”

“He’s staying with rich friends in Haverford. He’ll be at the Walton by Saturday. But Charlie Dawes is the man to keep your eye on. He’s the one who’ll be talking on the telephone to McKinley in the White House. If Teddy starts to bore you, head for Dawes.” Blaise had a vague memory of a reddish-haired young man, said to be one of the President’s few intimates. “He’ll be with the Illinois delegation.” Hearst gave a few more instructions; then Blaise said farewell to Chief and Boss.

As Blaise left the room, he heard, once again, the sly sing-song voice of the leprechaun. “And then we’ll be needing a governor all our own, once Teddy’s gone to Washington, a fine famous sort of man, Mr. Hearst, with whom we can do business.”

“I’m for reform, Croker.”

“Who isn’t? As autumn leaves fall and the first Tuesday in November, that precious gift of our brave forebears who fell at Bunker Hill, comes round, and we elect a new governor of this state—a reforming governor—why not William Randolph Hearst?”

Unfortunately, George shut the door before Blaise could hear the Chief’s reply to the siren’s song.

T
HEODORE ROOSEVELT
welcomed Blaise heartily into his railroad car, a somewhat shabby affair for the governor of so great a state, with dirty antimacassars on dirty green armchairs; and filled, for the most part, with aides, journalist friends, and the upright remains of Senator Platt, who seemed to have been dead for some time. The face was pale blue, in nice contrast with the white whiskers, while the upper torso beneath the frock-coat was encased in plaster, giving the effect not only of death but of advanced rigor mortis as well.

“Delighted you could come!” For once Roosevelt did not make three or even two words of “delighted.” He seemed uncharacteristically subdued, even nervous. With a sudden shake, the train started. Blaise and Roosevelt fell together against Senator Platt’s chair. From the chair came a soft cry. Blaise looked down and saw two accusing eyes set in a livid face, glaring up at them.

“Senator. Forgive me—us. The train …” Roosevelt stuttered apologies.

“My pills.” The voice was of a man dying. The pills were brought by a porter. The Senator took them, and sleep—opium, not death—claimed the Republican boss.

“He’s in great pain,” said Roosevelt, with some satisfaction. Then he frowned. “But so am I.” He tapped one of his huge teeth on which Blaise always expected to see engraved “RIP.” “Agony. No time to have it pulled either, with so many speeches to give. Wouldn’t do. Must suffer. I am simply a delegate-at-large, you know. I am not a candidate for vice-president. Why won’t people believe me?”

Blaise restrained himself from saying, “Because you’re lying.”

Roosevelt read his silence correctly. “No, I’m not being coy,” he said. “It’s a complicated business. There’s one thing being a true choice of all the people, and quite another being forced over a convention by,” from force of habit, he struck left hand with right fist, “the bosses.”

The boss of New York heard this; opened his drugged eyes; sneered slightly beneath his white moustache; and resumed his drugged sleep.

“Well, you’ve got Platt and Quay behind you,” Blaise began.

“What is a boss, finally, but someone led by the people?” This was a new variation. “They make judges and mayors and justices of the peace and—deals, yes. I know all that. But he,” Roosevelt lowered his voice and pointed to Platt, whose back was now to them, “didn’t want me for governor, and doesn’t want me for vice-president either, but the people push and push and so the bosses get out in front like … like?”

“Mirabeau.”

“Yes! The very man! When the mob was loose in the street, he said, I don’t know where they’re going but as their leader I must lead them, wherever it is, he said.”

“Or something like that,” Blaise murmured. But Roosevelt never heard what he did not want to hear. Blaise, however, forced him to explain why, if he was not a candidate, he should want to be in Philadelphia three days before the convention started; and Mark Hanna was out of town.

“Senator Lodge says I’m making a great mistake. He always says that, of course. No matter what anyone does.” Roosevelt swung a fat thigh over the arm of his chair. A waiter brought him tea. Blaise ordered coffee. Covertly, the other journalists watched Blaise, waiting for him to vacate the chair beside the Governor. But Roosevelt seemed to need the company of a gentleman at so delicate a moment in his history. Blaise got the impression that the Governor was not only nervous but undecided what to do. In effect, he was arriving at a convention controlled, in McKinley’s name, by his enemy Hanna. The Colonel was a national hero, but conventions were no respecters of popularity of the sort bestowed by a press so easily manipulated and its gullible readers.

Roosevelt acknowledged this. “I got the governorship on a hurrah, after Cuba. But how long can a hurrah last in politics?”

“With Admiral Dewey only a few months.”

“To have thrown all that away.” Roosevelt shook his head with wonder. “I captured one hill. He captured the world. Now they laugh at him, and that
permanent
victory arch of his is falling to pieces in Fifth Avenue. I just told the Mayor to tear it down. But he doesn’t—the Mayor—listen to me. Because I’m not a war hero any more. I’m just a hard-working governor, who’s taken on the trusts, the Whitneys, the insurance companies …” The Governor’s voice was now a high and, to Blaise, familiar drone. When there was a pause in the litany of brave
achievement, Blaise surrendered his chair to the
New York Sun
, the Roosevelt paper.

Toward journey’s end, Platt opened his drug-dimmed eyes; saw Blaise; motioned for him to draw near. “Mr. Sanford, of the Roman Catholic Sanfords.” A smile’s shadow made hideous the corpse-like face. “How is Mr. Hearst?”

“Expanding, Senator.”

“In circulation? Weight? Politically? As chairman of all those clubs?”

“Into other cities. More newspapers.”

“Well, he
knows
papers.” Platt sat up even straighter and grimaced with pain.

“I wonder, sir, what you think of Senator Hanna’s support for Cornelius Bliss, as vice-president.”

“I think it shows what a damn fool Hanna is, and always has been.” Two marks of red, like thumb-imprints, appeared at the center of each ashen cheek. “What is Hanna but a stupid tradesman—a grocer? No, don’t quote me. Let me say it in the Senate first—or last. All Hanna knows how to do is raise money for McKinley. But he don’t know nothing about politics. Bliss, damn his eyes, is mine!” Twice, the religious Platt had sworn in Blaise’s presence. The opiates had had an effect; he was also feverish.

“Yours, sir?”

“Bliss is from New York.
I
am New York. Hanna is Ohio. How can he work for someone from
my
state?” Platt shut his eyes; and appeared to have fainted. The scarlet thumbprints faded to ash.