All the Presidents' Pets by Mo Rocca Read Free Book Online

congratulating a wheelchair-bound former press secretary James Brady on the naming of the room. (At first glance I thought it was Larry Flynt.)
    The room was so small, unimpressive, and uncomfortable. Nixon was smiling from his grave. This was his gift to the press corps.
    As luck would have it, I did know some of the crowd that started trickling in, including Fox News’s Jim Angle, who greeted me heartily.
    â€œIf you think it smells now, you should have been here yesterday. A dead muskrat was stuck behind one of the vending machines and, man, did it stink. I guess someone took care of it,” he said. “So what do you think?”
    As underwhelmed as I was by the surroundings, I couldn’t help but think of the history that had taken place here. “To think that Roosevelt used to swim here does hit you kind of hard. Can you imagine the stress he was under?”
    â€œYeah, well maybe if he’d spent a little less time swimming and a little bit more time studying up on his ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin, he wouldn’t have given away Eastern Europe for the next forty-five years,” he said.
    Jim wasn’t one of those conservatives still fighting the Cold War. He was busy battling the League of Nations. But he was also a nice guy and a big-time gambler. When I’d gone undercover as a blackjack dealer in Atlantic City I’d watched dumbstruck as he nearly cleaned out his buddy Bill Bennett. Afterward he’d taken me out drinking. I liked him.
    â€œGlad to have my wingman on board. Just don’t let the Clinton News Network people poison your mind,” he said. “Oops, hope no one heard me,” he added playfully.
    â€œPut a sock in it, Angle,” shot back CNN’s Candy Crowley, Jim’s sparring partner and one of the people I was looking forward to seeing most. “How’s my boy?” Candy asked, slapping me on the back. I instantly felt much more at home.
    Candy. She always played it sober and serious in interviews. In fact she had a biting, ribald wit and a heart of gold. She was an old-fashioned broad, the kind of woman Maureen Stapleton used to play, but saucier.
    I’d met her at the 2000 Republican convention. I’d been sent by the
Early Show
to file a report on how delegates were keeping in shape. That’s as close as they’d let me get to political coverage and I was very depressed. I met Candy at O’Flaherty’s, an old Irish bar, and the hangout for Philly’s political fixers. She was throwing back a sixth crème de menthe and she had the bartender in stitches, telling the story of how she’d run away from Bryn Mawr to follow a cowboy to Texas. It had been culture shock for a girl from a Main Line Philadelphia family who promptly disowned her, but she was in love. And yes, the ten-gallon hat she was wearing in the bar belonged to Chet.
    Chet had died, though, she explained to everyone listening. Before long she had the whole joint in tears. Not Candy, though. “Why all the long faces?” she said.
    That’s when she noticed me. “You got a nice sensitive quality to you, kid. Kind of like Sal Mineo.” We connected right away. Candy sympathized with my professional frustration. After a couple more drinks she pulled out her keys. “How about we go for a ride?”
    An hour later Candy and I were flooring it through Amish country, the red top down on her Cadillac Eldorado, blaring Waylon Jennings. Candy loved outlaw country and Southern rock. I felt so alive with her.
    She was an inspiration when I needed it—a true individual who’d risen through the ranks of a profession that often rewarded conformity. Eyebrows were raised when she took up with Pasquale, a young dishwasher she’d met at D.C.’s Florida Avenue Grill, but she didn’t care. “He’s the one,” she said, even though she knew damn well that this wouldn’t be the last in her long line of December-May