The Witch of Watergate (7 page)

"So far," Fiona pouted.

"I'll grant you..." Evans paused, throwing a smug
glance at Fiona, "...that anything is possible. Downey's note to his son,
for example." Again she paused. No question, she had their attention.
"That letter to his son could have been a confession."

"What letter?" the Eggplant asked.

"Downey's letter to his son," Evans said.
"His personal suicide note. Along with the other. The ones the feds
confiscated." She looked pointedly at Fiona.

"You let them take it?" the Eggplant said,
directing the question to Fiona.

"They invoked national security," Fiona muttered.

"You didn't read it?" the Eggplant asked.

"No, I didn't," Fiona answered. "I'm not
certain we could do that." There was, of course, the legal issue of
privacy. But that was a cop-out. The fact is that they should have beat the
feds to the confiscation.

"I'm sure the feds had no such compunction,"
Evans said, troweling the blame onto Fiona.

"We can still confront the younger Downey," Fiona
said defensively, feeling herself nakedly vulnerable on that point. "On
the question of murder, he would also be a suspect. Along with everyone else
she had wronged." She thought suddenly of Chappy and his threat. Undoubtedly,
there were many more who had the same violent wish.

"I'd say that the term 'wronged' is inaccurate,"
Evans said. "It implies the people she wrote about were innocent.
'Exposed' might be more apt."

"That's because you've never been on the receiving
end," Fiona snapped, remembering how her father was excoriated by the
press when he made his antiwar stand. She glanced at the Eggplant. "The
fact is, we're all on the receiving end now. Like it or not."

The Eggplant nodded, but he did not pick up the cudgels to
dispute Evans. At the moment he wasn't happy with the media, especially the
Post
.
But when they made him a hero, publicized his exploits, he was the first to
embrace them.

Evans was like most people not in the power loop. They
loved to see someone, particularly a person from the so-called power elite,
impaled in the press. It was a favorite Washington sport, like watching a
bullfight. Many were quick, eager, to pass a guilty judgement, especially if
the person impaled was a "have" as opposed to a "have not."
Seeing these mighty "haves" fall was to many, especially to a woman
with an obvious chip on her shoulder like Charleen Evans, an exhilarating
experience. Clearly, the root of her hostility was putting Fiona in the
category of the "haves," then bashing her.

Although Evans never spoke the words, Fiona imagined that
she could hear them loud and clear: "The apple never falls far from the
tree." Be on guard, Fiona cautioned herself. This woman wants to cut your
heart out.

"However defined," Fiona began, tackling the
issue of "wronged" versus "exposed." Avoiding any show of
weakness, she had to repress any sign of animosity. "A media attack,
deserved or undeserved, provides grounds for a motive. On that basis alone, the
woman had legions of enemies."

"No question about that," the Eggplant agreed,
determined not to take sides between them. It was obvious that he wanted them
to stay partnered. He rubbed his chin and took a deep drag on his panatela.
"Good thinking on getting that computer material. Might be something in
it."

"I can't take any of the credit on that one, Chief.
We're lucky to have someone as computer literate as Officer Evans." Fiona
looked toward the recipient of her compliment, hoping that her patronizing tone
was rankling. Evans' expression remained neutral, showing neither pleasure nor
pain.

The phone rang on the Eggplant's desk and he picked it up
routinely.

"Greene here."

After a brief pause, he straightened in his chair, a
gesture that signaled that someone very important was on the phone. Despite the
macho pose to his underlings, he could appear groveling when it suited his
purpose, a performance that assuaged any guilt in her use of the term
"Eggplant."

"We're not a hundred percent certain, Mr.
Barker," the Eggplant said after listening for a few moments. They could
hear the muffled voice on the other end. "An autopsy might tell us
something." There was more talk at the other end. "Yes, we do have
our hands full. But we're on this one. You can be sure about that." More
talk at the other end. The Eggplant lifted his eyes and looked at them, first
one then the other. "Yes. We do appreciate that, Mr. Barker." The
Eggplant looked at his watch. "We can be there in less than a half hour.
I'm sure it would be helpful. Yes. See you then."

The Eggplant hung up the phone and bashed out his panatela.
He was smiling, his change of attitude abrupt, showing them he was merely
playacting.

"The man himself," he said. "This Dearborn
thing's got him rattled." The Eggplant rubbed his chin in contemplation,
then he stood up and paced his office, lost in thought. "Offered carte
blanche to the investigation. That's exactly his words. Carte blanche. Who
could blame him? They start knocking off his reporters for writing their shit,
who knows where it ends?" He shook his head and stomped his foot in a kind
of dance of joy. "Harry Barker himself. Shit. He wants in. Needs
us
now."

As editor of the vaunted
Washington Post
, Harry
Barker was the single most powerful person in Washington. At the paper, his
word was law, absolute. He had the ear and the complete confidence of the
paper's owner, Mrs. Grayson, who, along with most
Post
employees,
worshipped him or appeared to do so. He was, as they say, a legend in his own
time and he enjoyed the role.

Except for that one time as a young reporter when he had
interviewed her father, Fiona had not seen much of him. He was rarely on the
social circuit and was apparently very reclusive outside the office. Who could
blame him? He had enemies. He had made the paper, in his thirty years as
editor, the voice of indignation. He had toppled Presidents and poseurs with
the power of the word. The trail of busted careers and ruined lives was
endless. Most, Fiona supposed grudgingly, were justified. Others were clearly
marginal. But one thing was certain. If anyone got entangled in the net of
Harry Barker's system of media justice, he was, if not doomed, damned to
banishment from the national control tower.

"Let's roll. We can strategize on the way," the
Eggplant said, starting for the door. He looked toward Evans.

"Better keep working on that computer search,"
the Eggplant said.

"Maybe that note will turn up yet," Fiona said,
smiling. Evans said nothing, but Fiona could detect the flash of hatred in her
eyes. "If it's there, Evans will find it."

"Be a damned shame, wouldn't it?" the Eggplant
said as he and Fiona dashed out of the office. Fiona cut a final look at Evans.
Unhappy hunting, she wanted to say. She hoped her eyes conveyed the thought.

HARRY BARKER'S OFFICE had a glass wall through which he
could see the vast expanse of the paper's city room. His legions of editors,
reporters, researchers, secretaries and copy persons could also see him, which
seemed the object of the configuration.

He sat on the flat side of a conference desk shaped like a
fat half moon. Around the rim of the rounded part of the desk were chairs for
six people. These people faced Harry Barker and the window, which looked out on
15th Street. Harry Barker faced his visitors and his city room.

"I really appreciate this," he said politely in
his gravelly voice, standing up to shake hands. There was a brisk courtliness
about him and a firm sense of command. His face was like old cracked leather,
his eyes watery blue, his hair a neat steel grey with a perfectly straight lefthand
part. He wore a light blue button-down shirt with a striped blue-and-red tie,
and when he stood Fiona noted that his waist-line was small, boyish. He
reminded her of some Hollywood image of an old sundried cowboy dressed in
strange clothes who had wandered into this place by accident.

Yet Harry Barker had presided over this city room for more
than thirty years and, from the look of him, he seemed determined to preside
here for another thirty.

He leaned back on a big leather chair and lifted his thick-soled
smooth-topped military-style shoes to the desk, his feet crossed at the ankles.
The introductions had been cordial and they had been given coffee in cups and
saucers of good china.

"Been a long time, FitzGerald," Barker said.
"Wouldn't have figured you'd wind up as a cop." He turned to the
Eggplant. "I interviewed her old man, the Senator. Helluva guy. What was
it, twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago? You were a kid. I remember the Senator
asked if it was okay for his daughter to sit in."

"And you said, 'Sure. She looks like she can keep a
secret.'" The recall had suddenly become vivid.

"What a memory. He was quite a guy, your old
man."

He watched her for a moment, made a clicking sound with his
teeth and focused his watery eyes on the Eggplant, who was waiting patiently
for the formalities and small talk to be over.

"Polly Dearborn was a stiff pain in the ass,"
Barker said. "But one helluva clever reporter. The 'Witch of Watergate,'
they called her. Tougher than hardtack." He shook his head and said "shit"
through clenched teeth. "I'll say this, if she did kill herself, which is
doubtful, that's the way she'd do it. Something bizarre like that for all to
see, hanging there in the breeze." He chuckled. "Maybe with a broom
between her legs."

"There wasn't any broom," Fiona said, surprised
by her retort. She was also surprised at Barker's attitude. For some reason she
had expected it to be different—if not grieving, at least respectful. Polly
Dearborn was, after all, his ace investigative reporter.

"We think she was murdered," the Eggplant said
flatly, then hedged: "Not that we're ruling out suicide, but it's become
more and more doubtful."

"I think you're right, Captain," Barker said.
"If you do rule out suicide then the ramifications for us are enormous.
Let's face it, the obvious conclusion is that she would have been killed
because of something she did on the job. Nothing like that has ever happened to
any of our reporters. Not in my memory. It has the stink of terrorism. I'm not
saying she was murdered by anyone she wrote about. But I'm sure you're not
going to rule that out. There's also a bigger picture here. Like she might have
been murdered to intimidate us, to serve as a kind of warning. What do you
think, Captain?"

The Eggplant rubbed his chin, took his time. He had
apparently decided how he wished to appear to this powerful editor. Fiona
watched him transform himself into the wise old darkie, the philosopher who had
seen it all. He was trotting out his garb of dignity.

"We rarely theorize about the obvious, Mr. Barker. Not
that everything you say might be correct. We've barely begun our investigation.
The victim also had a personal life, a life away from the business. That, too,
must be explored."

"Personal life?" Barker said. "Not Polly.
She was always working. I never knew her to have a boyfriend. She had
escorts." He looked toward Fiona. "You know what I mean. No love
interest. Not even a girlfriend. Aloof. That was Polly Dearborn. A loner. As
far as I know, few people were ever invited up to her pad in the Watergate.
'The witch's lair,' the wags called it. Not that she didn't go out. She went
out a lot. She could put it on. Be social, gregarious, sometimes funny. But she
never fooled me. Nor did she try to. Her kind of work required obsession, dedication."

The day's paper was on the desk near his elbow and he
slapped it with the palm of his hand. "She couldn't do what she did
without that kind of focus. You could see it from the beginning, the moment I
saw her. I hired her fifteen years ago. She had worked on a paper in South
Carolina, had this sweet drawl, innocent face." He shook a finger in the
air. "Didn't fool me. I knew a nutcutter when I saw one."

"I seemed to have formed the same impression from her
stories," Fiona said.

"They passed muster, though. Lawyers raked over her
stuff. I did, too. Not that we didn't have protests. Some of the people she hit
squealed like stuck pigs. We got hate mail, but we're used to that. Hell, every
day I get buckets of the shit, call me every name under the sun. Threaten my
life, my children, my grandchildren, my wife. Sometimes, whenever I get too
smug or cocky, I read a few. Sobers you up. Lots of crazies out there."

"And Polly Dearborn," Fiona asked, "did she
get hate mail?"

"Piles."

The Eggplant shot her a glance of rebuke. This was to be
his show and he made it perfectly clear that she was to keep her mouth shut
until prompted.

"You ever report these threats?" the Eggplant
asked.

"You've got to be kidding. You'd clog up the system.
In my experience, they're empty threats, sounding off by wackos. Why bother?
They want to knock you off, they knock you off. No need to advertise." He
looked up at them. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

The Eggplant shrugged acknowledgement then took his time
absorbing the information. It carried little surprise for each of them. Yes,
there were crazies out there. Yes, the media could trigger inflammatory
conduct. She watched the Eggplant struggle to keep his dignified image intact.

"Has Polly Dearborn ever been threatened by the people
she wrote about?" he asked.

"Horse of another color," Barker said. "Many
of them bitch like hell. They protest. They threaten legal action. Imply worse.
They come running to me or Mrs. Grayson and scream smear or distortion or
excoriate us for printing lies. Oh, they threaten dire consequences. Say things
like, 'I'm gonna getcha.' We're all used to that. We expect it. Hell, we expose
dark deeds, bring down the liars, the cheats, the scum. That's our mandate. We
cut through the bullshit. We've been wrong sometimes and we've paid the price.
But I'll say this, Polly Dearborn didn't make too many mistakes. Go through her
copy over the years, you can find lots of murder suspects. The point is, it
never really happens. They think it, wish it, hope it. But, in the end, it's
just talk."

"Until now," the Eggplant said.

Harry Barker nodded and lifted his feet off the desk. He
leaned over and rested his elbows where his feet had been.

"You really think that, don't you, Captain?"

Fiona could see now what was in the forefront of Harry
Barker's mind.

"I told you, Mr. Barker, it's difficult to theorize at
this stage."

"How do you connect the Downey thing?" Barker
asked suddenly. So there it was, Fiona thought.

"It's a suicide. No question. Man left a note more or
less apologizing for the mess." The Eggplant cut a glance at Fiona, who
nodded confirmation.

"That I got, Captain," Barker said. "What
about the other note, the one to the son?"

The Eggplant showed his cynical smile, complete with the
twitching nostrils of a genuine sneer.

"You've got your ear to the ground, Mr. Barker."

"One of the tricks of the trade," Barker said,
but it was not meant to amuse.

"Then you might know more than we do," the
Eggplant said. "We didn't read the note. The feds got it first."

"It was addressed to Robert Downey, the son,"
Fiona interjected. "I hope they've handed it over to him by now."

The Eggplant nodded his approval of her remark, then
blinked his eyes, signaling her to remain silent.

"National security," the Eggplant said.
"That's the ploy they use to preempt our jurisdiction. You can bet they've
read the contents."

Harry Barker moved his head closer to them and lowered his
voice with an air of extreme confidentiality.

"If Polly Dearborn was not a suicide..." Barker
paused, watching the Eggplant's face. "You think Chester Downey could have
done it, Captain?"

"It did cross my mind," the Eggplant said.
"But we haven't found any evidence to that effect." He turned to
Fiona.

"Not yet," Fiona agreed, adding hastily,
"But nothing can be written off."

"It occurred to me that maybe the letter to his son
was a confession," Barker said. A deep frown wrinkled Harry Barker's brow.

"A confession?" the Eggplant asked.

"It bothers the shit out of me," Barker said. He
sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. "Fact is I cut out the
really bad stuff in her story. I tried like hell to reach her last night and
this morning to tell her that. It bugged me, nagged at me, and finally I cut it
out."

Fiona had seen it countless times. Someone out on the limb
of conscience, itching to let it out. Harry Barker, despite all his power, was
not immune to such an urge. There was only one way to handle it: wait, listen,
prod cautiously. Barker needed no prodding.

"Polly Dearborn and her computers," he sighed. It
sounded very much like a beginning. "She was plugged into all these data
banks. Indefatigable, that one. Never stopped. She picked up, from God knows
where, this testimony of a case nearly twenty years ago. It seems that the
Downey kid had got himself mixed up in a cult.

"One of the parents of a kid also in the cult
kidnapped his own child, but the deprogramming didn't work and the kid, with
the backing of the cult, sued his parents. Nice people. The point is that young
Downey was a witness for the kid. One of the cult's bonding techniques was to
have these kids confess to the group any abuses they had been subjected to at
the hands of their parents. Idea was to make the kids hate their families,
substitute the cult for the family.

"The Downey kid takes the stand and the parent's
lawyer presses him. He testifies that he was sexually abused by his father.
Didn't go much further than that. But Polly Dearborn picks it up on one of her
data banks. Damned FBI never had it in their report on Chester Downey. Don't ask
me how I know this.

"Okay, we've dumped on the guy for keeping his assets
hidden from his ex-wife, for favoring his kid's firm. Bad enough. But this? Oh
she had it wrapped up with every hedge in the book. I tell you I agonized over
it, then got up this morning and said "nada." It won't be in the
paper tomorrow."

He lowered his head and studied his hands. No question,
Fiona decided, he was genuinely contrite.

"Did Downey, the father, think it was going to
appear?"

"Polly wouldn't write it without confronting
him."

"But you wouldn't tell him you had cut it out?"
the Eggplant asked.

"No I wouldn't. But my deal with Polly was to let her
know when we were cutting her stuff."

"Would she have called Chester Downey?"

"I doubt it. She would have been too pissed."

"Publishing that kind of information could really cut
a man down. Innocent or guilty," the Eggplant said.

"Of course, he denied it," Barker continued.
"Which was also in the story. The lawyers cleared it and it was ready to
go. I just didn't feel comfortable with it. I didn't deny the truth of it. But
Christ, it's so ... so deeply personal and damning. Hell, it wasn't your
run-of-the-mill peccadillo. Frankly, I felt it was overkill."

Fiona was surprised at his vulnerability. He wasn't as
tough as he made himself out to be. The Eggplant, ever eager to exploit the
slightest sign of weakness, jumped into the silence.

"I'd be curious to know how you intend to carry that
story tomorrow."

"I'm on the horns of a dilemma, Captain," Harry
Barker said. "That's exactly the point of this exercise. Maybe we can help
each other."

"I'm sure we can," the Eggplant agreed. He was,
Fiona knew, loving this.

"There is a delicate balance here," Barker said.
"A tricky business. The wrong spin could give the wrong impression."

"I'm sure it would," the Eggplant said
cautiously. "Considering the power you wield."

"Sometimes we get more credit than we're due. Everyone
will be climbing on this story. We don't have a monopoly."

Fiona snickered to herself. Was he really expecting them to
buy that? The power of the
Post
was awesome. No single media enterprise
came close. To imply that a reporter could be killed for destroying a man's
career, whatever the truth of the allegations presented, was, from Barker's
perspective, a dangerous idea. Punishment was a judicial function. Trial by
journalism, while an old American tradition, was in danger of going out of
fashion, irritating people. Fiona could understand Barker's interest.

"You do have a considerable voice, Mr. Barker,"
the Eggplant said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his tone.

"What I want is to keep our lines open," Barker
said, disengaging from the subject. "I've been very forthcoming here. And
I want to report the facts as they are, without speculation. Others may
theorize, but, unless the theory is official..." He raised his head and
looked pointedly at the Eggplant, who, to his credit, did not turn his gaze.
"I will not allow it in print. Not in this paper."