Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [45]
To many he seemed a pathetic figure, especially as he aged. Washington gossips would note that he walked humbly a pace or two behind Edgar, changing pace in order to stay in step.
Edgar called him ‘Junior’ in the early days, later just ‘Clyde.’ In public, even in the virtual privacy of the directorial limousine, one chauffeur noted, Clyde called Edgar ‘Mr Hoover.’ Former officials, even very senior ones, still cannot bring themselves to say plain ‘Hoover,’ two decades after his death. Occasionally, though, Clyde was heard to call the boss something no one else ever called him – ‘Eddie.’
It soon became clear, from their daily rituals, that Edgar and Clyde were more than colleagues. Every day, on the dot of noon, the limousine would bear them to lunch at the Mayflower Hotel. There they would consume hamburgers and vanilla ice cream or, when Edgar was watching his weight, chicken soup and salad. According to the hotel’s publicity, Edgar once noticed the FBI’s third Most Wanted man sitting two tables away, had him arrested, then resumed eating. Another less kind account said he looked straight through the criminal and failed to recognize him.
Five nights a week, for more than forty years, except for a break when Edgar quarreled with a new owner, the pair would appear at Harvey’s Restaurant, then on the 1100 block of Connecticut Avenue.
‘They would come in together and sit up on a little dais,’ recalled barman George Dunson, ‘a step up from other people. Mr Tolson would always face the door, and Mr Hoover sat with his back to the wall. Mr Tolson did it so he could watch who was coming in. If anyone tried to get Mr Hoover, they couldn’t come at him from behind.’ Once Edgar became really famous, the management put a barrier between him and unwelcome strangers, by blocking the aisle with a trolley.
Under an arrangement negotiated by Clyde, the pair consumed all they could eat – in one of the best restaurants in town – for $2.50 and the price of their drinks. For years, they did not even have to pay that. ‘The check was picked up by Hoover’s friend Harry Viner, who ran a big laundry business,’ said former Washington police inspector Joe Shimon. ‘His reward was that Hoover made one of his relatives an agent when World War II started. Later, when Harvey’s closed down for a while, Hoover sent agents to the restaurant opposite, to try and arrange a special rate. He was a chiseler.’
Edgar liked steak, medium rare, and, more exotically, green-turtle soup. He took part in the restaurant’s oystereating competitions, and usually won. At the end of the evening he would leave carrying a bag of ham and turkey, provided by the management, to take home to his dogs.
Once, when Edgar and Clyde arrived late to find their regular table was taken, they made a scene and stormed out. Harvey’s owner, Julius Lulley, was often the butt of Edgar’s peculiar brand of practical jokes. When Lulley’s wife complained that her husband would not give her a new fur coat, Edgar had agents photograph him with another woman, then used the pictures to change his mind.
Edgar, who was so stern with his agents about drink, enjoyed whiskey, and officials in distant field offices had to keep up with his changing taste in brands. Edgar never drank much in front of colleagues, and none of them ever saw him drunk. Away from the office, said Miami restaurateur Jesse Weiss, who met Edgar in the thirties, things were different. The mood at private parties could be ‘real friendly, loose, a lot of guys drinking booze, “Hooray for Hell, who’s afraid of fire?” – that kind of thing …’
The waiters at Harvey’s also remember heavy drinking. ‘Mr Hoover drank Grand-Dad,’ said Pooch Miller, who was maître d’ for thirty-six years. ‘I used to give him six miniatures when he arrived, with club sodas to go with them. And after he’d finished drinking we’d bring him his dinner, five days a week.’ ‘Today,’ said