A President In Peril (A Snap Malek Mystery) Read online

  We have no children of our own, although I've got a son, Peter, from my marriage to Norma. He gets his good looks from his mother, I freely concede, and he tells me he has a serious girlfriend down in Champaign, where he's in his junior year in the architecture program at the University of Illinois. Her name is Amanda, and he wants me to meet her when I go down to see a football game with him in a couple of weeks.

  In the summer between his freshman and sophomore years, Peter had the singular experience of toiling up at Taliesin, in Wisconsin, for Frank Lloyd Wright, who freely confesses to being the greatest architect in the world. Peter claims that stint will help guarantee him a job with a Chicago firm after graduation. I hope he's right.

  So there in capsule form are my private and professional lives–other than to mention that I have a tendency as a reporter to pursue some stories more aggressively than both my wife and the police would prefer. On one occasion, I came close to catching a fatal bullet; on a second, I would have been strangled but for an alert and athletic University of Chicago student; and on a third, I found myself trading punches on a Southwest Side street with a burly construction worker while several of his bar buddies looked on–hardly a neutral audience.

  For the last dozen years or so, my job at Police Headquarters has been to cover the Detective Bureau, which is the most wide-ranging beat in the building. I was nominated for this by my fellow reporters, who pointed out that the biggest job at Headquarters should go to the guy at the biggest paper, and which also has the biggest news hole to fill.

  But that's only part of the story. Because we all share our news with one another, making a mockery of the term 'competitive journalism,' everything each of us gets from our respective beats goes to all the others so nobody gets 'scooped' and then gets chewed out by his city editor. Although I've already confessed my laziness, I am in fact the least lazy of this press room foursome, not counting whoever is working for the City News Bureau. So I usually get the juiciest news in the building–and immediately have to share it with my so-called 'competitors.'

  So it was that, on this morning like all others, I trundled down one flight of worn marble stairs to the office of Fergus Sean Fahey, Chicago's longtime chief of detectives and, without question, the best department head on the entire force. I was greeted in the small anteroom by Fahey's secretary, Elsie Dugo Cascio.

  "Nice to see you as usual, intrepid reporter," she said, looking up from the Smith-Corona typewriter with her ever-present toothy smile and bright brown eyes.

  "The feeling is mutual," I replied with a bow. "Is himself on the premises this fine autumn morning?"

  "He is indeed." She announced me over the intercom and got a squawk that I translated as "Send him in."

  "Nice to see you, Fergus," I said, tossing a half-full pack of Lucky Strikes onto his desk blotter.

  "I'd rather be fishing," he muttered, looking up from a stack of paperwork and pulling a cigarette out of the pack. "I s'pose you want some coffee?"

  "Good guess," I said as he reached for the intercom to signal Elsie. But she was already coming through the doorway with a steaming cup of java.

  "You pamper me," I told her with a grin. "Please don't ever stop."

  "You say the sweetest things to a girl," Elsie purred, turning on her heel and leaving, closing the door behind her.

  "One in a million," I observed. "The other gal you had here taking her place seemed okay, and she made decent enough coffee. But you've got to be glad to have Elsie back again."

  "Yeah, I am, but call me a traditionalist, Snap. A mother really ought to be home with her little one," Fahey said with a sigh. "Her sister over on

  Ashland Boulevard is watching the little guy during the day now." "Is the money tight at home?"

  Fahey took a drag on his Lucky and shrugged. "Seems her husband does okay working in the purchasing department at that railroad, the Rock Island Line. But they're saving up to buy a house in the suburbs. There's a neighborhood called Crescent Park they like out in Elmhurst, I think it is. They need Elsie's extra income for a down payment, so I figure she'll be here another year or so."

  "At least the kid's in good hands with an aunt," I observed. "It's not like Elsie's leaving him with some stranger."

  "True enough," the chief replied without enthusiasm. "How's things on the home front for you?"

  "No complaints. Catherine's still working at the Oak Park Library, which she loves. And Peter's going to graduate a year from next spring down in Champaign. Lives with his mother and her husband over on Lake Shore Drive, but I figure he'll get himself a place in the city after graduation–as well as a job with an architectural firm. His grades put him near the top of his class. But enough on family life. What's percolating in your world, Fergus?"

  He snorted. "Big worry all over the department right now is Truman's visit to town in three weeks, which probably means some sort of a damned parade. The details haven't been released yet, but if I were to hazard a guess, he'll probably have a motorcade from downtown to either the Amphitheatre down at the Stockyards or the Stadium out on West Madison. It's never fun being in this business when a President comes to town."

  "Are you expecting trouble?"

  Fahey grimaced and ground out his cigarette. "Presidents, especially when they're right out in the open in a convertible, make me nervous. There's a lot of nut cases around. Remember Roosevelt down in Miami back in '33?"

  "Lot of folks think Cermak really was the target, not FDR," I said, referring to Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was shot dead by an assassin while sitting on a dais in Miami next to the President-elect. There had always been suspicion that Cermak's killing was a Chicago mob hit.

  "Maybe. I'm gonna vote for Truman, of course–that's off the record, mind you–but I'd still rather he stayed out of town. To make matters even worse for us, there's been talk–so far that's all it is–that Dewey may be coming through at about the same time, probably also with some damn motorcade and a speech at one of the big halls. Just more opportunity for trouble."

  "Well, Fergus, we're coming into the home stretch of a tough campaign. Our president and his challenger are not about to pass up a chance to show their smiling mugs and spout platitudes and press the flesh in the second-largest metropolis in this great and glorious land. There's votes to be had, and 'Give 'em Hell Harry' in particular wants, and needs, those votes."

  "But he doesn't need those votes right here," Fahey growled, torching another Lucky. "Christ, he figures to win Illinois by a lot anyway. Why not have him stump in some of the states where he's running behind in the damned polls?"

  "Beats me, Fergus. I'm no political columnist, but I still think you're worrying over nothing. Very few people within the Chicago city limits care two hoots about Dewey, except of course the Tribune, which runs a story every day showing that he's ahead in this poll or that poll from around the country. As for Truman, nobody's going to take a potshot at him. Not with all the security both the Feds and your own fine force are going to be providing."

  "Oh, I suppose you're right," the chief of detectives answered, but his voice lacked conviction.

  Chapter Two

  I1 N1 C3 O1 M3 P3 E1 T1 E1 N1 C3 E1

  (n) the quality or condition of being incompetent; lack of ability

  I have no interest whatever in covering politics. A few years back, I was offered the chance of becoming an assistant to the paper's political editor, but I opted to stay right where I remain to this day–Police Headquarters.

  "Snap, it's a great opportunity for you to move up," the city editor told me at the time. "You'll get a chance to travel with candidates on their trains and buses, stay in nice hotels, maybe even go to the political conventions. I did a little bit of it myself a few years back. That's pretty exciting stuff, I can tell you. You'll get a lot of bylines. And have a lot of fun, too."

  Thanks but no thanks. Over the years, I've been exposed to enough elected officials at various levels to know that the majority of them are insincere, incomp
etent, just plain crooked, or some combination of the above. I know that sounds like the ranting of a cynical old reporter, and maybe it is.

  Even if you subtract my dim view of the moral fiber of local and national officeholders in both parties, there's another factor in my aversion to political reporting: The Tribune's own position.

  I do vote, and I've cast ballots over the years for both Republicans and Democrats, mostly the latter. I'm essentially apolitical, with a tilt to the left, doubtless ingrained in me by my streetcar motorman father and his labor union background. My employer, however, is without question the most resolutely right-wing newspaper in all of America. All you have to do is peruse its news pages most days, to say nothing of the editorial cartoon that's right there on the front page.

  Everything written in the Trib about Thomas E. Dewey is framed in glowing terms, while everything about Harry Truman makes him seem like something between an incompetent and a traitor. And each day, the news columns have stories about some straw poll showing that Dewey and the Republicans have the election all wrapped up. If you believed everything you read in the Tribune, the November voting would indeed seem to be something of a formality, as Packy Farmer had suggested.

  So how free would I be to cover some candidate–any candidate, no matter which party–with any degree of objectivity? I like to think that what I wrote would be objective, but heaven knows what it would be like once it went through the editing process and found its way onto the printed page.

  If this weren't enough to deter me from political reporting–and it is–I have the home front to consider. Catherine is far from apolitical, having been raised in a staunchly Democratic household heavily influenced by her own father, the late great police reporter 'Steel Trap' Bascomb, who toiled most of his career for the above-mentioned City News Bureau. 'Steel Trap' had been a Democrat since the days of Grover Cleveland, so Catherine told me, and he never saw any reason to change except for a vote for Teddy Roosevelt in 1904.

  Catherine does read the Tribune, partly in deference to me, but she will not always refer to it by name. Sample: "I see that your paper continues to insist that Dewey will win the election in a landslide," she said this very morning at the breakfast table.

  When she's upset with the Tribune, Catherine uses 'your paper' much as Republicans for years used 'that man in the White House' to refer to Franklin D. Roosevelt rather than deigning to let his name pass their lips. It should be noted that I don't disagree with her most of the time, because I'm frequently, but not always, of the same opinion.

  "Steve, as of right now, how do you really see the voting going?" Catherine asked as she poured me a second cup of coffee.

  "We were kicking that around yesterday at work. Masters thinks Harry's going to win, and I said I agreed, although both Farmer and O'Farrell think we're crazy. Right now, though, I have to say I'm just not sure."

  "Oh? And just what changed your mind since yesterday?"

  "Nothing specific, really. Maybe my own employer–your paper, as you like to call it–has me doubting myself. Every day, we've been running results of those polls from other newspapers in places like St. Louis and Pittsburgh and Boston and Salt Lake City, all of them showing that Dewey's winning in their circulation areas. Seems hard to argue with."

  She sniffed. "Well, knowing your paper, I have to wonder just how thorough those straw polls really are. Are the editors picking only those polls that have Dewey ahead? It strikes me that the Tribune–see, there now, I just called it by its name–is trying to use the old bandwagon approach to stampede undecided readers into voting for their man. After all, a lot of people like to back a winner, don't they?"

  I grinned at her as I finished off the rest of my scrambled eggs and bacon. "I won't argue the point. Besides, the Republicans and the Tribune haven't won a presidential election since way back in the late '20s, when Hoover beat Al Smith, the only Catholic who's ever run for president. The G.O.P. is hungry, desperate for victory, and they're licking their lips. They figure they've got old Harry on the run this time."

  "But do they, Steve? Do they really?"

  I shrugged and ran a hand through my thinning, dusty-colored hair. "If it were just Truman and Dewey running, I'd say the president would probably win this thing with ease. But you've got these other two: Henry Wallace with his Socialists or Progressives or whatever they're calling themselves; and this Thurmond guy from South Carolina with his segregationist Dixiecrats–the 'States Rights' party, to be formal. Both of 'em are going to pull votes away from Harry, that much is sure. They don't figure to hurt Dewey."

  "Three against one. That really doesn't seem fair," Catherine said, folding her arms and looking like she wanted to pick a fight with somebody.

  "Whoever said politics is fair, my love?" I responded, drinking the last of my coffee. "And to top it off, as you know from reading the papers, that crusty old head of the United Mine Workers John L. Lewis has called Truman 'totally unfit for his position.' Here's a labor leader, who figured to be in Truman's corner blasting away at him. Lewis is still sore because the president prosecuted some of his coal miners for striking."

  "And you think that will hurt?"

  "Hell yes, it will hurt. Those men love Lewis and all he's done for them. A lot of them may end up voting for Wallace. You've got to remember that they might be enough to swing the balance someplace like West Virginia or Kentucky, where coal is such a big part of the economy. All you have to do is win a state by a few votes and you get every damned one of its electoral votes. But at least all of us do have our recourse–the ballot box."

  "You're darned right we do, Mr. Steven Malek. And to that end, I'm going door-to-door around this area of town today passing out fliers for Truman, Stevenson, and Douglas." She was referring to Adlai Stevenson and Paul Douglas, the Democratic candidates for Illinois governor and senator respectively.

  "Well, just be careful that some of our more conservative neighbors don't throw dishwater or tomatoes at you, my dear. Or even, God forbid, boiling oil from a second-story window. These wide and shady Oak Park streets and avenues, bucolic as they may seem, are not what I would term Truman country."

  "Actually, you'd be surprised. There are a lot of Democrats around here now, far more than used to be the case. Everything changes over time," Catherine answered with a raised eyebrow and a determined look. "And maybe, just maybe, I can help move that change along."

  "Maybe you can at that. After all, what do I know? I'm just a poor uneducated Bohemian kid from Pilsen who doesn't have any idea about the political terrain around here. Perhaps you can indeed make changes, but please don't hold your breath," I said as I seized her around the waist in my best Clark Gable imitation, bent her back and kissed her passionately before walking out the door on my way to the Lake Street Elevated's Ridgeland Avenue station and the trip Downtown.

  As I rode the creaking El train east, I put down my Tribune, looked out over the rooftops of Chicago's tree-shaded Austin neighborhood, and mused on the reactions Catherine would likely meet with as she went door to door stumping for the Democrats. Although I was a newcomer to Oak Park, I had assumed it to be solid Republican territory, filled with longtime residents who had never fully recovered from Herbert Hoover's crushing defeat by FDR in '32. And the Democrats had been in charge ever since–sixteen years.

  Truman was an accidental president, of course, moving into the job on Roosevelt's death in the spring of 1945. Most Americans outside of his home state probably had never even heard of the Missouri senator until he was nominated for the vice-presidency in '44 after FDR had dumped his former number two man, Henry Wallace, who now was running for president himself.

  It had been a rough three-plus years for citizen Harry Truman of Independence, Missouri, in the White House. According to Tribune reporters in Washington I later talked to, Roosevelt had met with his new vice-president only twice in the five months between the election and his death, and FDR had not discussed anything of significance with his running-mate. To
top it off, poor out-of-touch Truman didn't even know of the existence of the atomic bomb until he'd been president for almost two weeks. Enfeebled though he was in his last months, Roosevelt apparently thought he would live forever. In any event, he certainly–and unwisely–kept his vice-president in the dark on all matters of government. That's what's called arrogance.

  I had occasion to meet briefly Truman myself in the summer of '45. During my short stint as a Tribune foreign correspondent in the closing stages of the war, I covered the Potsdam Conference, which was held in a suburb of Berlin. It was there that Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met to decide how the battered countries of Central and Eastern Europe would get carved up in the aftermath of the war. Halfway through the meetings, Churchill got replaced by Clement Attlee, who had just defeated him in the British elections, to become prime minister.

  Those of us covering the conference–it was said there were 200 reporters, and I believe it–were barred from the Cecilienhof Palace where the formal sessions took place. But I did get to meet Truman one night at a reception for the American press. We were told in advance, however, that we were not to ask the president anything about the meetings; it was strictly a social gathering.

  He seemed tense to me when we were introduced by one of his aides. Why shouldn't he be tense? Just months into the job he was in a summit meeting deciding the fate of millions. Of course Attlee himself was just days into the job of running a country and he probably was pretty damned tense as well, although on him it didn't seem to show. Maybe it had to do with British reserve.

  "Chicago Tribune, eh?" Truman said as he shook my hand with a firm grip. "Have to be honest with you, Mr. Malek; it's not among my favorite newspapers."