The Rake (19 page)
Authors: William F. Buckley
Washington, October 1991
The house on M Street was full, and of course Priscilla had been right; the evening had to be organized by caterers. “There's no way Nellie and I can take care of fifty, sixty peopleâ”
“Twenty or thirty people.”
“âeven if we gave them nothin' but popcorn. Reuben, think of just the
drinks
!”
“I thought we could get Dover to serve the drinks. He's done that for us before.”
“So he does drinks. You got in mind offering
any
thing
any
body wants? Like mint juleps? Reuben, you should have had
60 Minutes
provide for this party. They're responsible, aren't they?”
He was now exasperated. “Look, Priscilla, they're going to feature
me
Sunday night, and they're going to say that
I'm
running for president and that
I'm
going to declare my candidacy the next day. But it's
my
candidacy that makes the news, not the fact that
they
are featuring it on
60 Minutes
.”
“Well, you go and tell that to the people comin' here to see the
60 Minutes
showâwhy doesn' that make it a
60 Minutes
night?”
“Never mind.” He shuddered at the thought of such logical
quagmires every week, once the campaign got under way, forâ¦OctoberâDecember 1991, eleven weeks; JanuaryâNovember 1992, forty-three weeks.
Fifty-four weeks. Shee-yit.
Meanwhile there was Sunday night to worry about. Hell. Okay. Let the caterersâafter all, there were four of themâfigure out a way of handling all that. Keeping two dozen people well hosed for a couple of hoursâ¦not an impossible assignment for skilled Georgetown caterers.
Reuben was pleased by the reaction he got on Sunday afternoon from Susan Oakeshott and Bill Rode. He had brought them together, most confidentially, to give them a preview of what he proposed to say at eleven
A.M.
the next day at his press conference.
He tried the script out on them in a pretty dramatic way. He stoodâdoors lockedâat one end of Room 220 of the Senate Office Building, which was where he would be making the announcement tomorrow. The room, frequently used for important political events, was permanently wired for television cameras. There was provision for five cameras, and for as many print reporters as turned up. Some of the guests who would be coming to the house to watch
60 Minutes
tonight would also be there tomorrow. But they would not have heard this preview of his announcement. Just Susan and Bill.
His tryout was designed as a dress rehearsal. No interruptions. Bill read out the exact text of the introduction that would be given tomorrow by North Dakota's senior senator. Then Reuben spoke, and they clocked him at twenty-one minutes.
Not bad
, he smiled. Not bad, considering that he had given advice on domestic policy
and
foreign policy, especially Iraq. He would inform the assembly that he planned to visit Israel the following week: “I think that any American official who plans to have a voice in foreign-policy decisions owes it to himselfâand to the United States, and to the whole civilized worldâto visit personally the Holy Land and try to understand what the people of Israel have done to preserve their ancient homeland.”
In a copy of the text, Susan marked the passages at which Reuben could expect applause. There were eight such. Susan suggested a minor change in the formulation of Reuben's criticism of President Bush on the Iraq question. Reuben digested it, made the change, and then gave the corrected speech to Bill, who would have copies ready for distribution to the press at ten-thirty tomorrow, the big day.
There were twenty-six people at the modest house in Georgetown. They had begun arriving at six, and their mood was exuberant.
“This is a historic moment,” Linda Bridgehouse said. “And a fine scoop for Mike Wallace.” She smiled weightily.
Everyone had a chair and a drink by the time the famous tick-tick began. Then, to the universal dismay of the company, the screen went back to an unfinished football game. The screen indicated the time left to play in the fourth quarter: 2:12. “Oh, God!” Priscilla said. “They still have two hours and twelve minutes left to play.”
“No,” Reuben snapped at her. “It's two
minutes
twelve
sec
onds
.” He was visibly embarrassed by Priscilla's ignorance and then by his own impatience. “But with time-outs added to the minutes of play that could mean a delay of ten or fifteen minutes,” he acknowledged. “So,” he looked around, “everybody! Have another drink!”
“And another hot dog,” Priscilla said. This brought on a round of applause, because little hot dogs indeed had been served, the buns nicely warmed, the mustard Dijon, the coleslaw fresh and spicy.
A quarter of an hour later, the evening's
60 Minutes
line-up was announced. There would be a segment on Joe Montana, who might be the greatest football player ever. Then an exposé on the drug company that produced Lipitor. Then the segment on Reuben Castle.
The third segment, when its turn finally came, was heralded by a head-on shot of the senator. There was august silence in the room. The screen showed Senator Castle in a half dozen situationsâspeaking, presiding over a committee meeting, substituting for General Westmoreland, at home in Georgetownâtwo-second spots.
“Tomorrow,
60 Minutes
has learned”âMike Wallace's assured voice was even, but he managed a hint of dramaâ“Senator Reuben Castle will announce his candidacy for president of the United States. But there are certain things in his past which he won't be talking about.”
On-screen, without identification, was a still picture of a young man looking down at a recent newspaper shot of Senator Castle. The camera turned then to a photo of a second young man. Mike Wallace said, “This was Reuben Castle when he was twenty years old.”
Reuben froze in his chair.
There was no way to stop the irreversible footage, the irreversible story.
At the end of the segment there was silence. Bill Rode reached to turn the television off.
The guests filed silently, most of them, out the door. Some attempted a word or two with a cheerful edge. Reuben stood by with Priscilla, shaking hands. But after a minute or two he slid back from the doorway, leaving it to Priscilla to say good night, and good-bye.
In the kitchen, Reuben stretched to the telephone box and disconnected the two lines.
Susan arrived just after ten, by taxi. She kept her finger on the doorbell.
Priscilla finally peered through the venetian blind, and opened the door.
“Where is he?”
Priscilla pointed upstairs.
Reuben was seated in his study, watching the television news.
He turned the sound down. “What are you here to tell me, Susan?”
“What I guess you expected. We should call off the announcement tomorrow.”
He nodded. “You heard from Kaltenbach?”
“Yeah. Nice twenty seconds on the phone. He said, âTell Reuben don't call me, I'll call him.'”
“You want a drink?”
“No.”
Neither of them spoke. The sound was off, but pictures were being screened of Senator Reuben Castle and of the young man. Susan could discern that there were cameras outside an apartment house; the caption said it was in Boulder, Colorado, “the home of the first Mrs. Castle.”
They both looked at the screen, and imagined the words being spoken.
“Okay, Susan. Call the announcement off.”
She rose. “Good night, Senator.”
He nodded. “Good night.”
Manhattan/Devil's Lake, North Dakota, October 1991
Justin went from the studio to the Barclay Hotel, where CBS had gotten him a room. He had in hand an open plane ticket. In his room, after gulping down a steak dinner brought to him by room service, he opened it and stared down. “F
ROM
: NYC.” On the next line, “T
O
: _________.”
“You go ahead, fill in the destination you want,” Mr. Wilson had told him, when Justin was ready to leave the studio. “Feel like going to Hawaii?”
Justin said nothing. He smiled, pocketing the ticket and the accompanying envelope. Written on it, in pencil, was “J. Durban. Reimbursed expenses, 60 Minutes, 10/13/91.”
He turned the television set to channel 2 and fretted on seeing that the football game would probably bump into the sacred seven
P.M.
slot for
60 Minutes
. It did. It was fifteen minutes past the hour when the
60 Minutes
signal came on.
The broadcasters announced a segment on the great quarterback, a second segment on a drug sensation. And thenâhe stared at his father's face on the television screen. The segment he cared so much about was third in line. He looked at his watch. That meant it would come on just before eight o'clock. Well, he would be there.
He felt a renewal of the pounding heartbeat he had felt that afternoon when he was being interviewed and filmed. But finally it came on, at about five minutes to eight. When Mike Wallace closed, almost twenty minutes later, Justin turned the television off and sat for two minutes catching his breath. Abruptly he rose, descended the sixteen floors, and left the hotel, turning right toward Park Avenue. He continued walking west toward Broadway and thought foolishly to himself that he would surely be stopped on the street.
“That's the young man who is the son of Senator Castle!”
Absurd, such self-consciousness, he reproached himself.
Ridiculous. He wandered up Broadway to Lindy's on 51st Street, sat at the bar, and ordered a beer. It helped him take his mind off his own affairs to wonder if he might be sitting on the very same stool the columnist Victor Riesel had occupied the night the vengeance-bent union thug sprayed acid in Riesel's face. Justin closed his eyes to visualize the scene he had read about in journalism class. That happenedâhe forced himself to do the subtractionâthirty-five years ago. He asked the menacing bartender if he knew where Riesel was sitting. No luck. The bartender's mind wasn't on Victor Riesel.
Justin's heart was still beating fast, and soon he put down the beer to look at his watch. He would appease his self-concern by making sure to be back in his hotel room to hear the eleven o'clock news. On CBS there would surely be something on the subject of Senator Castle and the exposure of hisâ¦bastard son. He might as well get used to people denominating him in that way, though in fact his father and mother
were
married when he was born, so he was not a bastard. But he would need to explain his surname, Durban.
There was indeed mention on the eleven o'clock news of the
60 Minutes
exposé. The life and expected presidential candidacy of Senator Reuben Castle were featured, and the revelation of his early secret marriage and the son who had been born unacknowledged. The segment closed by quoting the statement being given to anyone who had dialed the senator's Washington office in the last couple of hours. “
Senator Castle has no comment on the false allegations made on the CBS program
60 Minutes.” There was no mention of the press conference scheduled for the next day, at which the announcement of the candidacy had been expected.
Justin pulled the blank ticket from his pocket.
Good time to visit Hawaii!
He wished he had a girlfriend to talk to. Could he order up a girlfriend? he found himself wondering. He thumbed through the bills in Mr. Wilson's envelope. Twenty twenty-dollar bills. Not much of a girlfriend there, the cosmopolitan twenty-one-year-old reflected wryly.
He could of course write down Boulder, Colorado, as the destination on his ticket. But there must at this point be much turmoil at home. Or he could write South Bend. Orâ¦
He picked up the phone and dialed his own number at Notre Dame.
Allard answered. He told Justin excitedly that two reporters had come by wanting to know how to reach him. “I told them I didn't know where you were. They asked if I had seen
60 Minutes
. I pretended I hadn't. I wasn't about to tell them you had left a message for me to tune in. One of themâyoung guy, bien jeuneâleft his card. He wrote on it. Hang on.âHere. His name is Andrew Bjorn. B-j-o-r-n. He's from AP, gives an address in
Chicago. He wrote, âGive me a ring. Important. Tonight.' It's an 800 number.”
“What about the other guy?”
“The other guy was a she. A great big she, from the
South Bend Tribune
. I thought she was going to park down and sleep here till you got home. I got rid of her only ten minutes ago, told her you were probably headed to Boulder. Eh bien, Justin. Que faire?”
Justin waited a few moments. He was all but speechless with gratitude that Allard hadn't dived into questions about
60 Minutes
.
But then, everything about Allard was very special. Yes, he had been caught plagiarizing, and atoned for it by taking a month's probation andâhis private spiritual expiationâdenying himself golf for one month.
Justin now spoke to his friend in French. What would he say to a week in the woods in North Dakota, hunting and fishing?
“Chouette! Encore une semaine de vacances!” Of course Allard would take the week away. And yes, he would arrange for Duplessis to take Justin's French class for a week. They discussed arrangements.
Justin wore the semi-tailored hunting coat his mother had given him on his eighteenth birthday. She had several times demanded that he put it on when friends came by, so they could admire the cut and the dark red corduroy and the leather trim. He missed his own twenty-gauge shotgun, with which he had hunted many times over the years in Colorado, Paul alongside with his own shotgun. Up until age eighteen, he actually kept
count: twenty-two woodchucks, sixty-four squirrels, ninety-four quail, forty-four doves.
But he was excited as his first duck dropped and he was able to feel the extra charge and exult over the range given by the twelve-gauge, with its Number 6 shot load.
He and Allard felt such exhilaration the first day that they decided there and then to celebrate. They had brought down six birds and retrieved them with the help of Ansel Adams, the bird dog on loan from Eric's young law partner. They pulled off their heavy clothes and hung them up to dry alongside the kerosene stove. Avidly they welcomed the heat as the October post-dawn cold asserted itself.
Imitating the most florid French maître d'hôtel, Allard said, “And what would Monsieur le Chasseur desire as a first course?”
There had never been better food or choicer wines, they told each other as they ate their scrambled eggs and toast, and they didn't wake until mid-afternoon, in time for the three-mile walk to the river, and the frigid stillness of the two hours spent enticing trout, and then the walk back to the duck blind and a quick restocking of the kerosene in the heater.
They napped for one hour, then set about cleaning and cooking two ducks.
Allard said, “What have you heard from Commander Belcourt?”
“Nothing. Well, yes, something, via Mr. Monsanto, our host. I was with him for an hour before meeting you at the airport.”
“You didn't say anything, and that was the day before yesterday. So I thought I'd wait, see if you could bring down a duck. We can talk about ducks, if you like.”
Justin poured two glasses of Chianti.
“What he saidâwhat Mr. Monsanto saidâwas that a buddy in Winnipeg tipped him off that they were putting pressure on the arsonist, putting pressure on him for information they could use to track down the moneyman, the guy who put him up to it. Belcourt is threatening to charge the arsonist with felony murder, but hinting he might ease up on that a bit if he names the instigator of the fire. As of that morning, it hadn't worked. There is a problemâthat the arsonist has been in and out of provincial prisons most of the last twenty years. If the Mounted Police wanted to pack him away for good, it's as easy as charging him with parole violations. So they don't need the Saint Anne's fire for extra pressure. And they don't hang 'em any moreâright, Allard?”
“Right, Justin. That's a terrible pity, isn't it? Wish we could blame it on the pope, but Manitoba beat John Paul to the abolition of capital punishment by a dozen years.”
“Manitoba is
so
civilized, Allard. I guess I never told you.”
“Okay, okay. So, what is Commander Belcourt waiting for?”
“The arsonist to break down, tell him who hired him.”
“This guy says he didn't do it?”
“Right. And Belcourt's case is pretty circumstantial, though he's certain he's got the right guy. Meanwhile, Senator Castle issued his press releaseâ”
“I didn't know about that.”
“It was while you were flying here. He did a press release on one or two of the
60 Minutes
allegations. He said he had never even stepped foot in Saint Anne's Church in Letellier.”
“Well,” Allard said, “maybe that's right? There's no extant documentation on that marriage.”
Justin crawled up from where he was seated with his wine
and the skinned duck and groped his way to his backpack. He came back with an eight-by-ten print stapled to a negative, and handed it over. Allard studied it for a moment.
“Holy smoke! So this is what they burned and killed trying to suppress! Who's seen this?”
“Nobody. I was prepared to show it to the
60 Minutes
people, but only if I had to. Soânobody.”
“Not your mother?”
“No.”
“Not Eric Monsanto?”
“Allard, you probably never heard of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but I spent time on him in the Civil War course last year. He was a very colorful guy. When an aide asked him the same question again and still again, General Forrest saidâI'll write it out for you in English. It doesn't work in French.” Justin tore off the top of the shell box and wrote the graphic words: “âI tole you twicet, goddamit, no.'”
Justin continued: “Nobody but you has seen it. And you know, what I'm thinking isâ¦what good is it?
“Commander Belcourt is trying to find out who commissioned the fire. Who had a motive to commission that fire, Allard?”
“Your father?”
“That's right. Nobody else I can think of. So if I burn this, they can't use it in making a murder case againstâ¦my father. I kept him maybe from being president. Maybe I can now keep him out of jail.”
He put the print and the negative into the roaring kerosene flame. Allard raised his wine glass, and bowed his head. “Tu es bon, Justin. Très bon, mon ami.”