The Sun King Page 2

  The photographer sat down on the stone wall and announced that he wasn’t moving until we found our man. I gazed up the slope toward the crowd of partygoers, searching for a face I didn’t recognize. There was a stirring up near the house, laughter, arms extended to shake hands.

  I knew him instantly. He was tall and broad-shouldered, standing nearly a head above most of his guests. He was wearing a summer suit that was draped on his frame in the comfortable, elegant way that movie stars from the 1940s wore their clothes. He was talking with the deputy secretary of the Treasury, and the odd thing was that the deputy secretary was leaning toward Galvin, straining to hear what he had to say. As Galvin made his point, the deputy secretary nodded in that grave Washington way, prompting the host to do something most unusual. He smiled—the broadest smile I had seen in months—as if to say, What a night, what a place, what a pleasure! And the deputy secretary smiled back nearly as broadly, with the self-satisfied look of a fellow conspirator. And I understood, in that moment, the essential fact about Galvin: He knew how to make people happy.

  He had seen me staring at him, and he began making his way toward me, still smiling. A woman caught his arm and he turned to her and whispered something that made her laugh. Then he pointed down the hill to me and made an apology. She watched him walk away and called out something that I couldn’t hear but didn’t have to. She wanted him for herself. They all did.

  “You must be the magazine man,” said Galvin, extending his hand. It was a soft handshake: polite, nothing to prove, establishing distance and intimacy at the same time. My camera-laden friend had dismounted the stone wall and was beginning to shoot. Galvin retreated a step. “And this must be the photographer, although I don’t remember anything about photographs. But never mind. What have you got to say for yourself, Mr. Editor? Something revelatory, I hope.”

  “Nice house,” I said dumbly. He had taken me off guard. I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this prince among his newfound courtiers. “I apologize for bringing along the photographer, but the truth is, we need a photograph, and I thought it was in the spirit of my request. I just need to ask you a few questions and then I’ll leave. Gratefully. I promise.” I had taken a notebook from my pocket and was poised, ready to write.

  He was frowning. I had disappointed him in some way. I studied his face so I would be able to describe it, in case he threw me out. He was surprisingly dark, close up, with a deep tan and jet-black hair that was cut short and sculpted to his face. It was a face that was as smooth and sharp as an arrowhead. The face, combined with that lovely draped suit, gave him the appearance of a man who had fallen out of time, from the Stork Club long ago, directly to here and now.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said, taking me by the elbow and leaving the photographer behind. “That way, people will assume that I know you, and that you’re not just some party crasher from a society magazine.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s take a walk.” We were about the same height, but I felt pencil thin standing next to him. I realized that I was wasting time, being sociable. We had to close the issue that night. I needed information. “Why did you buy two houses?” I asked greedily. That was the peg for my story; I had to nail that one.

  “On the record?” he queried, arching his eyebrows.

  I nodded.

  “The answer is that I couldn’t make up my mind. One friend told me I absolutely had to live in Georgetown. Another said I had to live in McLean. I found two beautiful houses and decided to buy them both.”

  “That’s mush,” I said. “And it makes you sound indecisive. What about off the record?” I put down my pen.

  “Off the record, they were great investments. I’m going to flip the one in Georgetown and make a killing. And your article is going to help.” He winked. He had just done it to me, too. We were coconspirators.

  “Use me!” I said. “I have to respect someone who’s completely unprincipled. Not a problem with me. Now, let’s go back on the record. Are you planning to sell your Georgetown house after my article appears and make a killing?”

  “No comment.” A sweet smile, nonchalant. It was obvious now. The man was a jewel thief.

  “Let’s try the basics,” I said, pen poised above my pad again. “Where are you from?”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “My butler will give you a biography. It has all the details, or at least all the ones I’m prepared to share with the readers of Reveal. Where are you from?”

  “Chicago. North Side. After that, I went to Harvard. But that was a long time ago. Now, like everyone else in this city, I’m not really from anywhere.”

  “Pity. I’m from someplace very particular. But we do have one thing in common. I went to Harvard, just like you. But I dropped out. Best thing I ever did.” He gave me that smile again. Unforced, natural, as spontaneous as a puff of wind. When he smiled, it was as if a little spotlight had been turned onto his face, highlighting the smooth tan cheeks and the white teeth and the sparkling eyes.

  “Why was dropping out such a smart move?” I asked.

  “Because it gave me all this.” He gestured with a broad sweep of his hand toward the lawn, the house, the guests. “It taught me to take risks, and not to listen to what other people think.”

  “But how did you get so rich?” I was writing down everything he said, but it was crap. I still didn’t know anything. I needed some juice.

  “It’s in the bio,” Galvin said. By now, I noticed, he had walked me around to the side door, away from the guests. My photographer was trotting along behind, humming the tune to “Hootchie Kootchie Man.” Galvin shook my hand, thanked me for coming, apologized for not having more time. I threw out a few of those junk questions that pass for color in magazine profiles—“What’s your favorite TV show?” “What’s the last book you read?” “If you could be any movie star, who would you be?”—but he wasn’t playing. It was all in the bio, he said.

  I had one last item. It was boilerplate, but it yielded my first hint of the irregularities that were hidden inside this imposing package.

  “What does the S stand for?” I asked.

  “Sandburg,” he answered softly. “My full name is Carl Sandburg Galvin. People used to call me Sandy in college. I was named after the poet. Never quite lived up to it, but I’m trying.”

  IT TURNED OUT THERE was almost nothing in the bio. I read it as soon as I got back to my car, under the dim yellow light of the reading lamp. It said he had made his money in “overseas investments.” It didn’t say where he was born, or where he had lived before moving here. It said he had never graduated from college but didn’t mention Harvard. The only really useful piece of information was the explanation of why he had come to Washington: “Mr. Galvin is establishing a fund that will invest in a range of local and national businesses, including the media business.”

  HE INTERESTED ME. HE was dragging something invisible along behind him, which was giving off sparks. The general type was familiar enough to Reveal readers: They arrived every year in the capital from St. Louis or Phoenix, men who had just sold the family department-store chain or real estate business to set themselves up as problem solvers, party givers, candidates for ambassadorial posts in northern latitudes. They quickly discovered which schools, churches and synagogues would confer the most prestige; their wives found the right personal trainer, caterer and book club. Friends who’d arrived here in earlier expeditions of civic duty put them up for the right clubs. It wasn’t all that different from the way things worked back in St. Louis, really—just a bigger version.

  But Galvin was something else. He maintained the aloof confidence of an outsider; the city was paying him court. It wasn’t simply that he was so rich. He appeared to have a different sort of ambition—not to join the conversation, but to alter it. What would make a man so sure of himself? And what was he lacking, that had brought him here? He didn’t seem to want power, at least not in the usual sense of running for office or obtaining a Cabinet p
ost. He wanted something more raw and immediate—the ability to command attention, to make people listen. But I had no idea what he would say.

  THREE

  THE PRESIDENT’S TROUBLES CONTINUED TO WORSEN that summer, which added to the sense of oppression and entrapment that is part of Washington in July. It was as if an impermeable membrane had been placed over the top of the city, which prevented anything from escaping: air, heat, imagination, gossip—all trapped inside the bubble with the sweltering residents. The precise details of the scandal were difficult to ascertain back then; a grand jury was meeting in secret, supposedly, to hear evidence about the President’s criminal activities. Accounts of what those crimes might be varied from day to day, depending on which witnesses were before the grand jury and what news organizations were leading the chase. The general assessment of the President’s situation seemed to fluctuate with the level of the stock market. So long as it remained buoyant, the consensus was that he would survive.

  Not even the publication of a new issue of Reveal—and the wet kiss it bestowed upon Carl Sandburg Galvin—could relieve the gloomy July mood. The profile was a tidy piece of hackwork, if I do say so myself. I described the arrival of this mysterious outsider into our bubble; I sketched the scene at his garden party, the way he looked and talked and moved among his guests. We’d gotten a good photo of him too, standing on his lawn with the house and guests behind—the thinnest wisp of a smile on his face, but just enough to establish a bond with the reader and whisper: Look at me! Look at this!

  I made a point of noting the many questions Galvin had refused to answer about himself, and I included comments from several of the guests. One of them, a newsmagazine writer known for his laconic, preppy asides, said Galvin had come to town to rescue his old friend, the President. A Washington hostess said she’d heard he’d been some sort of spy. A local investment banker said that was poppycock; Galvin had made his money in the oil business. He was a buccaneer capitalist, this man claimed—one of the smartest and most ruthless in the world. It didn’t matter whether any of it was true, it added to the allure. All people were certain of about Galvin was that he was rich, charming and had already made large contributions to several of the capital’s most deserving and fashionable charities.

  Galvin himself telephoned the day after the July issue had been deposited on the doorsteps of all the right Zip Codes. Pamela took the call. I told her I didn’t want to talk to him just then and to say that I was out. She got half of it right. I listened through the thin wall as she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Galvin. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  I was too nervous to speak with him, frankly. People only call after an article is published to say that you’ve gotten something wrong, and I didn’t want to know yet what I had screwed up. It was a purely neurotic reaction—like getting a letter that you just don’t want to open and letting it gather dust on the table for a few days, until it’s safe. Clearly that had never happened to Pamela. She admonished me that it was wrong to lie, even on the phone, and that I should never have told her to do so. What she actually said was that I was a “total wacko,” but never mind. Pamela scared me. What worried me most was the possibility that she was the normal one.

  I didn’t return Galvin’s call the rest of that day. I thought I’d let it age a bit. And it was too hot to do any work anyway, especially something taxing like making a phone call. So I went to the movies and sat in the back near an air-conditioning vent.

  I was still thinking about Galvin the next morning when the owner summoned me. She suggested that we have lunch at the Jockey Club, which was a bad sign. The restaurant had been the hangout for a certain kind of long-in-the-tooth celebrity when the Republicans were in the White House; it was the place where Johnny Carson’s ex-wife lunched when she was in town, and Ed McMahon probably would have eaten there too, if he ever came to Washington. My poor owner liked to go there when she needed to feel substantial. The staff fawned over you, if you were a regular and tipped well. It was obvious the owner had something bad to tell me, because she was already drinking a glass of wine when I arrived.

  “We’re going broke,” she said morosely. I was relieved; I already knew that.

  Her slender hand was gripping the wineglass a bit too tightly. She was looking around the room to make sure that nobody important was present to witness her distress. She looked especially beautiful that day, I thought. She was a slight blond woman, with a fine-boned face. Her features had been highlighted and softened in all the right ways for so many years that she made you think she had been born with those eyebrows, that her hair had that soft sweep when she woke up in the morning. It is the highest calling of artifice to seem so natural. Her beauty was heightened by the edge of anxiety, by the distracted, doelike look in her eye.

  “This time it’s serious, my dear,” she said, taking a quick drink of wine and putting the glass back unsteadily on the table. “Finlandia has canceled the back-page vodka ad. Chanel is pulling its dress ads, starting in October. And the plastic surgeons have just sent me a group letter saying that unless we do a special issue on breast augmentation, they’re gone too. Which leaves us with the real estate ads and a few caterers and those swimming pool builders, and that’s it. Which isn’t enough to pay the bills.”

  I didn’t say anything in response, and there was a long, funereal pause as we both contemplated the prospect that The Social Bible of Washington might cease publication. I reached out and touched her hand. Sometimes, words just don’t suffice. She gave me a wan smile as if to say, So this is what it has come to . . . being comforted by you.

  “What should we do?” she asked at last.

  “We could change the name again,” I offered. “I’ve never been sure that Reveal is quite right. It’s a little cheap. It doesn’t fully convey the ambition of what we’re trying to do.”

  “What do you suggest?” she asked warily. We had been down this road before, a few years ago. “And please don’t say The Savant again. Because that’s out of the question.”

  “I was thinking of something more upmarket.” I paused, and not just for effect—I was trying to think of something. “How about Lush. That sounds rich, verdant, fructifying. Or Moist. Same thing, but more mysterious.”

  “You’re kidding, please. Lush sounds like a magazine for drunks. Moist sounds like an underarm deodorant. You’re losing it, David. Try again.”

  “Okay. I agree. Those aren’t very good. How about something that would speak to advertisers directly. Position the product differently. Something like Flaunt It! with an exclamation point. That’s elemental, right? Read this magazine, buy the stuff in it, and you can tell the world to go to hell. Or maybe Go for It! Same thing, but a little less intense. Or Indulge! Candlelight, soft focus. Or just call it Envy! I like that. It’s in your face, unembarrassed. And that’s the business we’re in. We exist to make you realize that someone else has a bigger house, a younger wife, a richer husband. We sell envy!”

  I paused a moment. I wasn’t sure whether I was serious or pulling her leg. That was the problem with this job. It was so completely ridiculous to begin with, it was hard to know what was serious and what was a joke. “The more I think about it,” I said, “the more I like Flaunt It! That says everything to me.”

  “Stop it!” she said. “This isn’t a game. It’s real. I’m going to close the magazine unless we can get some new money in a hurry. I take my journalistic responsibility very seriously. I know this community needs me. But I am not going to sell the house on Martha’s Vineyard just to meet the payroll. I won’t do it! And we can’t continue like this.”

  “You’re right,” I answered solemnly. “Something must be done. We can’t just let the magazine die.” I told her I would make a list of advertisers we could approach. Jewelers were a good bet. We already had a special wedding issue in June, but maybe we could add an engagement issue. And the people who sold linens—sheets and towels, bedspreads—we hadn’t even tried them. “September is bedding month!
” And orthodontists! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Reveal readers certainly cared about straight teeth. We should own that marketplace. I promised the owner I would make a list of the top orthodontists.

  BUT WHAT I WAS really thinking was that I needed an escape plan. It made no sense for me to remain on the deck of Reveal and go down nobly with the ship. No sense at all. And besides, disloyalty is an underrated virtue. It’s the very soul of our political and economic life. Clearly it was time to think about jumping ship, but the question was, Where to go?

  I had always thought it best to avoid making career plans. It seemed to me that ambition was dangerous. You set yourself a goal, fine—but what happens when you don’t achieve it? You feel miserable, and for good reason. You have failed. Your friends have watched with silent pleasure as you’ve tried to climb a notch above them and then slipped ignominiously backward. They’ve sent you notes offering heartfelt, insincere condolences. Whereas, if you never set a goal, you never risk failure. You are blown by the winds of unemployment until you land on fertile ground, take root and flower. Or wither and die, as the case may be, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody will see that you’ve screwed up.

  My chief career fantasy, in those moments when I allowed myself to imagine that Reveal would not be a lifetime job, had involved the television industry. Not to become one of those robot reporters who are always badgering people about what it feels like to have lost a child or an election or an Olympic medal. No, that sounded less attractive even than law school or a career in gastroenterology. My ambition, if you can call it that, lay in a different direction entirely.