Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [37]
Bowen was a conservative Reagan Republican, no secret about that; he wore that credential on the sleeve of his double-breasted blue blazers. His was the arrogance of a fashion model in a group of senior citizens.
He was sixty-four years old. His silver hair flowed past his ears and hung with studied casualness over his shirt collars. He was corn-silk thin, and tall, and his reputation as a connoisseur of fine wines and haute cuisine was as familiar as his political views. Because he was powerful, he saw no need to disguise what was an abrasive and insensitive personality, nor did he make an attempt. Indeed, that abrasive personality and high-energy, loud voice seemed to give him credibility. Those who demonstrated friendship did so because it was prudent; the women in his life, four ex-wives, gave credence to the Kissinger thesis that power was a potent aphrodisiac. Had he not been George Alfred Bowen, he might have had trouble finding someone with whom to have dinner.
When Potamos joined the Post after six years with The Boston Globe, where he had made a name for himself covering that city’s often unfathomable political life, he was cautioned to stay clear of Bowen, and he did.
Until that night almost two years ago when staying away from him wasn’t possible.
Potamos had been covering Congress for the paper, and doing a good job of it. But when a reporter assigned to the Post’s State Department beat suffered a heart attack and was placed on disability leave, Potamos was asked to fill in for him. At the time, he’d been working on a story involving a Missouri congressman who was alleged to have accepted illegal campaign contributions from a Japanese businessman to sway opinion on the House International Relations Committee’s Asia and Pacific Subcommittee, which he chaired. Although Potamos now had a new news beat, he continued on his own time to delve into the congressman’s campaign-fund assertions.
George Alfred Bowen had been chasing down that story, too. If Potamos had known that, he might have been expected to back off and leave the scoop to the preeminent political columnist.
But backing off had never been Joe Potamos’s style. When he was told by his bosses that Bowen had what he considered to be a proprietary interest in the brewing scandal, Potamos just pushed harder and dug deeper until, through a friend in the House—a Greek-American representative from Boston—he nailed down the proof he needed and wrote the story.
Potamos was in his editor’s office discussing the story when Bowen entered the newsroom. He usually walked with studied nonchalance. This night, he moved with purposeful strides, his praying-mantis body bent forward, mouth set in a hard, straight line, muscles in his cheeks working, eyes narrowed. He went directly to the managing editor’s office, ignored Potamos, and threw down on the editor’s desk an advance copy of Potamos’s story, which was due to hit the street the next morning.
“What is this garbage?” he yelled.
The managing editor held up his hands. “Calm down, George. Joe came up with the goods, that’s all. It’s a hell of a good story.”
“It is trash,” Bowen said. “I have been working on this story for months, and you know it. I’m this close to breaking it.” He demonstrated by holding two talonlike fingers an inch apart.
“George…” the editor said, getting up and coming around the desk in an attempt to placate their star columnist. As he did, Potamos stood to leave. Bowen spun around and blocked the doorway. His face was red with anger, and he visibly shook. “You little greaseball bastard, you don’t