March 28, 1960

Lucy Arnold walked quietly into Senator Evard Anders’s office. The senator was talking on the telephone, half twisted toward the large window behind his desk, which overlooked the Capitol building. He was speaking with General Skip Richardson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Senator Anders was on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, as well as the Judiciary Committee, and several other of the most powerful committees in the Senate. His eighteen years in. the Senate, as well as his dominant position as leader of the Southern Democratic bloc, gave him influence and power beyond that of the ordinary senator. The members of President Eisenhower’s staff were his errand boys; the President wanted it that way. The senior senator from North Carolina was able, if he so desired, to deliver votes that were crucial to the Republican President’s legislative program. And the President wanted Senator Anders to deliver those votes. Despite rumors that Senator Anders had aspirations toward the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, President Eisenhower still accorded the senator great deference and respect. He needed Anders more than he resented the senator’s longing to joust with Eisenhower’s hand-picked successor, Richard Nixon.

The senator twisted back to his desk. He noticed Lucy gazing over his head, out the window. It might be a terrific view of the Capitol, he thought, but what the heck business does my secretary have lollygagging out the window? The senator motioned to Lucy to speak. She mouthed her message silently. The senator couldn’t understand her and listen to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the same time. He motioned her to wait a moment.

“Okay, General, if you say all those tanks are still essential, even in the Atomic Age, I’ll have to go along with you. But you’re going to have to appear in front of the committee and explain why.” He listened for a moment. “Of course I’m going to be with you. Christ, General, you know I’m a Keep-America-Strong man. I want you to have all the weaponry you need. But hell, I’m just one member of the committee. There are a bunch of New York liberals you’ll have to convince.” He paused again. “Well, sure, I’ll try and convince them too. Do all I can. It’s always good to hear from you, too. Right. Thanks for calling.” The senator hung up the phone and looked to Lucy.

“It’s J.T. Wright, for his three o’clock appointment,” she said.

“Who?”

“The young lawyer that joined the counsel staff for your Judiciary Committee. Big Jim Wright’s son.”

“Oh, right, right. Put down on my list that I want to give Big Jim a call and chew some fat with him when I get a minute. What’s the young man want?”

“I don’t know, Senator. He called and asked for an appointment with the chairman of his committee. I told you about it, and you said to give him an appointment.”

“I did? When was that?”

Lucy lifted a notebook she had been holding at her side, and thumbed through the pages. She always marked down the precise time and date of each instruction. The senator could never remember the instructions he gave, and sometimes denied giving them when they conflicted with something else he wanted to do.

“It was three-thirty on Thursday, March twenty-first. You were sitting at your desk. You had just dictated a letter to Congressman Kruger.”

“All right, all right. You know,” Anders said, smiling, “I hate that damn note-taking habit of yours. You always make me look bad.”

The senator and Lucy had been together as employer and employee for a long time. They had also been together for other, more intimate reasons. But that had been a long time ago. Somehow their dalliance had been able to survive that well-known dictum in the political and business worlds, don’t fool around with the people who work in your office. The senator’s former personal relationship with Lucy never interfered with their working relationship. And now it was so many years ago that they each occasionally wondered if it had ever really happened.

“Shall I show him in, Senator?”

“I guess so. What else do I have on the schedule?”

“Just a massage at the athletic club.”

“Just a massage! At my age, that’s the closest I get to having a party.” He laughed, mostly because Lucy knew that despite all his protestations of age and seniority, which sat well with his constituents, there was still plenty of the devil in him—particularly in regard to the wife of a certain representative on the Judiciary Committee. The representative didn’t know, or didn’t let on that he knew, that the reason he was so favored by the chairman with key assignments was that it gave the chairman more access to the representative’s wife.

Lucy walked out of the large paneled office and returned with J.T. Wright.

The senator studied J.T. He knew J.T. was on staff. In fact, after Big Jim had called, the senator had personally directed J.T.’s appointment to the staff. Although he had seen J.T. in passing occasionally, the senator had never really taken a good look at the boy before. Must look like the mother, the senator thought to himself. Doesn’t look a damn thing like Big Jim. J.T. was wearing a gray herringbone suit with black unshined penny loafers. He looked small, unmuscular.

“Well, well,” the senator said jovially, “the linchpin of my committee’s legal staff.”

“Not quite, Senator,” J.T. said diffidently, although he was sure the description was accurate.

“Sit down, sit down. How’s your old daddy?”

“Really well, sir,” said J.T. in his most respectful tone.

“What can I do for you, young man?”

“Well, sir, I have an idea that would be both beneficial to the American people and at the same time very advantageous to you personally.”

“That sounds like one hell of an idea, son. What is it?” The senator winked at Lucy, who was standing back from the desk, silently taking notes.

“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of reading into the workings of past Senate committees …”

“That’s very commendable. Very.”

“Thank you, sir. Recently I’ve been studying the Committee on Un-American Activities. Those McCarthy hearings excited and engrossed the public at the time.”

“Yes?” The senator wanted to get to his massage.

“And they made an unknown senator from Wisconsin a very famous man.”

“You think I’m an unknown senator?”

“Not at all, sir. But I believe that the Judiciary Committee could conduct hearings that could have the same, or greater, impact on the public. And with network television coverage, which McCarthy didn’t have at the beginning, such hearings could make the star of new hearings—yourself, sir—a household name.”

“You’re thinking that might help me if I were interested in the presidential candidacy, is that it?” The senator’s eyes narrowed on J.T.

“I have no idea about the presidential candidacy, sir,” J.T. lied. He knew the senator was jockeying every day to enhance his presidential field position. “But it certainly couldn’t hurt your political reputation to be in everybody’s home on television every day.”

“Just what do you imagine will absorb the public’s interest in such fashion?” the senator asked, trying to let an appearance of calm serenity mask his curiosity.

“A subcommittee to investigate organized crime. Full hearings, with all stops pulled out. Charts with the names of the major criminals in the United States, the cities they blight, the whole works.”

The senator looked at Lucy, who in turn looked at J.T. Neither said anything. J.T. took this as his sign to continue.

“The committee has subpoena power. Big-name crime figures would be dragged into the light to be exposed. No one’s ever done it before. Everyone hears about the syndicate, the mob, the Mafia, but no one knows who or what it is. And no one has ever been able to bring it to light before. With these hearings, you, a man of integrity and courage, will be able to expose this diabolical organization to the American public.”

“Let’s say these criminals do respond to the subpoena. What makes you think the public will become involved in such hearings?” asked the senator.

“Humanity’s perverse fascination with the unknown, with evil and immorality.”

“The evil that men do lives after them, eh?”

“Exactly, sir. Why people have this perverse fascination, I don’t know—but it’s there. Another really important reason the public will be fascinated by the hearings is that these slimy characters will refuse to testify.”

“They’ll be awfully short hearings then, won’t they?” the senator injected.

“Not at all, sir. See, the committee has subpoena power, but not the power to grant immunity from prosecution. The criminals we subpoena will all hide behind the Fifth Amendment, just like in McCarthy’s hearings …”

“Where does that get you, if the witnesses refuse to answer questions?”

“Their refusals make this organized crime syndicate all the more sinister. The press will plaster them all over the front page and on the television screens. If a person knows his way around the newsmen—and, with all due modesty, sir, I made it my business to get to know the newspapermen in this town very personally—they’ll write their stories well larded with the right important names, the right slant.”

The senator looked at this young lawyer very keenly. “How’d you get to be so conniving, so young?”

“I learned from my daddy where the real power was,” J.T. said in a kind of down-home way.

“That figures.” The senator smiled.

“So, with the newspaper people ready to play ball with us, and with the right questions asked the right way, when some criminal refuses to answer, the American public will clearly see how dangerous these people really are.”

“Listen, I have an appointment a few blocks from here. Why don’t you walk with me and tell me more about this idea of yours?” the senator said, standing.

“My pleasure, sir.”

“Lucy …” The senator started toward the door. “J.T. and I are going to walk a bit. If anyone needs me, you know where we’ll be.”

“Yes, Senator.”