research

 

[excerpt:  Night of Camp David.  Fletcher Knebel.  Harper & Row.  1965.]

        Jim MacVeagh was curved in a red leather easy chair on the base of his spine, his sneakered feet propped on a hassock, while he read a typewritten report from his brash young assistant, Flip Carlson.

        In his despair the Monday before, Jim recalled something Paul Griscom had said -- that he ought to look into the early life of the man whose mental stability he suspected.  Seeds of breakdowns often are sown in the formative years, he'd said....  

The more Jim thought of the advice the better he liked it.  What, indeed, had Mark Hollenbach's early life been like?  Nobody really knew much about it, only cursory mentions in highly favorable campaign biographies and a few broad sketches in the magazines.

        ...MacVeagh had wanted to swing around the country himself, interviewing those who knew Mark Hollenbach as a boy and young man, but realized he'd be recognized as a U.S. senator and that he would have no excuse for prowling about on such a bizarre mission.  So he had enlisted his administrative assistant, Flip Carlson, whose zest for politics was matched only by his craving for travel.  Jim told Carlson that he had decided to do a biography of Hollenbach....

Carlson, intrigued by the venture, left Washington the next day with a portable typewriter and a carton of notebooks.

...Now, as the hot sun flooded the room, Jim turned to Carlson's typewritten account of his interviews and began to read carefully from the first page:

        ...Tuesday.  Arrived Tampa in late morning, rented car and drove down to La Belle.  Right?  This town is on the Caloosahatchee River, halfway between Lake Okeechobee and the Gulf of Mexico and about the same distance between the 19th and 20th centuries.  

Sign on highway coming into town reads, "La Belle, Birthplace of Mark Hollenbach," but that's one of the few new public improvements since the war.  Went to Glades Motel, noisy air conditioner, ice machine, but no pool.  Got room for $5 single....

        AMOS PALMER.  Auto repairs.  Playmate and grammar school friend of Hollenbach.  Find Palmer at shop.  Wizened old face like a conch shell.  Cracker.  Real smart.  Cagey too.  Wipes hands on overalls.  Drinks Coke.  Doesn't offer me one.  Oh, one of them, he says.  Says been pestered by three, four writin' fellows.  Okay, though, he says, fire away.

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--------------------- [excerpt:  All the King's Men.  Robert Penn Warren.  Harcourt, Brace & Company.  1946.]

        The Boss quit studying Judge Irwin's face, which didn't show anything.  He let himself sink back in the chair, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted the glass up for a drink.  Then he said, "Suit yourself, Judge.  

But you know, there's another way to play it.  Maybe somebody might give Callahan a little shovelful on somebody else and Callahan might grow a conscience all of a sudden and repudiate his endorser.  You know, when this conscience business starts, ain't no telling where it'll stop, and when you start the digging--"

        "I'll thank you, sir--" Judge Irwin took a step toward the big chair... "I'll thank you, sir, to get out of that chair and get out of this house!"

        The Boss didn't lift his head off the leather.  He looked up at the Judge, sweet and trusting, and then cocked his eyes over to me.  "Jack," he said, "you were sure right.  The Judge don't scare easy."

        "Get out," the Judge said, not loud this time....

*          *          *

        We left the bay, and lost the salt, sad, sweet, fishy smell of the tidelands out of our nostrils.  We headed north again.  It was darker now.  The ground mist lay heavier on the fields, and in the dips of the road the mist frayed out over the slab and blunted the headlights....

        The Boss said, "Well, Jackie, it looks like you got a job cut out for you."

        And I said, "Callahan?"

        And he said, "Nope, Irwin."

        And I said, "I don't reckon you will find anything on Irwin."

        And he said, "You find it."...

        At about the end of that eighteen minutes and twenty miles, I said:  "But suppose I don't find anything before election day?"

        The Boss said, "To hell with election day.  I can deliver Masters prepaid, special handling.  But if it takes ten years, you find it."

        We clocked off five miles more, and I said, "But suppose there isn't anything to find."

        And the Boss said, "There is always something."

        And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge."

        And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud.  There is always something."

        Two miles more, and he said, "And make it stick."

------------------------- He knew I was thorough.  I was a very thorough and well-trained research student.  And truth was what I sought, without fear or favor.  And let the chips fly....

        When you are looking for the lost will in the old mansion, you tap, inch by inch, along the beautiful mahogany wainscoting, or along the massive stonework of the cellarage, and listen for the hollow sound.  

Then upon hearing it, you seek the secret button or insert the crowbar.  I had tapped and had heard something hollow.  Judge Irwin had been broke.  "But, oh, no," Anne Stanton had said, "there is no secret hiding place there, that's just where the dumb-waiter goes."

        But I tapped again.  Just to listen to that hollow sound, even if it were just the place where the dumb-waiter went.

        I asked myself:  If a man needs money, where does he get it?  And the answer is easy:  He borrows it.  And if he borrows it, he has to give security.  What would Judge Irwin have given as security?  Most likely his house in Burden's Landing or his plantation up the river.

        If it was big dough he needed, it would be the plantation.  So I got in my car and headed up the river for Mortonville, which is the county seat of La Salle County, a big chunk of which is the old Irwin plantation where the cotton grows white as whipped cream....

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