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

romances—and that’s the way she liked it.
    When I found out that Candy packed heat—a pearl-handled revolver she’d been given by Chet’s mother—I wasn’t surprised. Interestingly she also had one of the Washington area’s biggest collection of Hummel porcelain figurines. “I like delicate pretty things.” Indeed Candy had the most beautifully manicured hands I’d ever seen.

    She’d tried to quit her two-pack-a-day Benson & Hedges habit—alternating between the patch and Nicorette—but any weakness she still had only made you like her more. She was the anti–John King. (King was CNN’s other White House reporter, an ultra-fastidious squeaky-clean control freak. “That man’s favorite book is
The South Beach Diet,”
Candy once said.)
    I hadn’t seen Candy in ages, so I was thrilled when she sat down next to me in the middle of the room. “Good to see you’re alive, pal. Traficant as big a bruiser as I’ve heard?”
    Candy was off and running. As happy as I was to see her, I knew I’d get tired fast of her prison-rape jokes. “No, Candy,” I sighed, “Traficant never laid a hand on me. But I can’t say I’m sorry that the show’s over.”
    â€œIs that what he called it? A ‘show’? When I interviewed Rostenkowski in the pen he called it ‘initiation.’ Off the rec, of course. So,” Candy continued, “you’re finally covering
el Presidente.
”
    â€œUh, yeah.”
    â€œWhat’s ‘uh, yeah’? Already phoning it in on your first day, amigo?”
    â€œWell, Candy,” and I lowered my voice, “I’m actually covering Barney. The dog.”
    Candy turned serious. “Oh, boy, you’re gonna have a time of it getting access. Dhue’s up that dog’s ass like nobody’s business. You know, tonight’s the big party for her book. Fifty-two weeks on the best-seller list. Everyone is caught up in the hype.” I found that hard to believe. The public might be Barney-crazy but official Washington, and surely the press corps, weren’t going to be swept up so easily.
    And yet as I looked around, the briefing room looked less like the newsroom in
All the President’s Men
and more like the scene in my high school cafeteria.
    A hierarchy was brutally apparent. “Those are the popular kids,” said Candy, pointing to the first two rows, where reporters from the broadcast networks and the major dailies sat. NBC’s cool redheaded Norah O’Donnell gossiped with the
Washington Post
’s wickedly funny Dana Milbank. ABC’s blond and perky Kate Snow flirted with the tall, dark, and handsome correspondent from Agence France-Presse.
    Meanwhile varsity TV reporting studs David Gregory and Terry Moran jock-talked about the previous day’s Redskins game.
    â€œIf they like you enough, they might even invite you to join their spring-break house in Cancun,” Candy said about the clique.
    The third and fourth rows weren’t so bad—the
New York Daily News
and NPR were here—but the last two rows were glum. “Loser city,” said Candy, pointing to reporters from the
Akron Beacon Journal
and the
Milwaukee Sentinel,
both of them slumped in their chairs eating crumb cake. The reporter from the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
passed gas audibly. “Real nice,” said Terry Moran. The guy from the
Sacramento Bee
just scratched himself, then fell back asleep.
    John King trailed in seconds later. He’d been finishing his morning crunches in an empty cubicle down the hall.
    â€œSo I guess everyone will turn it loose when Scott McClellan gets here,” I said to Candy, pointing to the door that the press secretary used to enter the room.
    Candy laughed. “You are adorable, kid. Sorry to say, not a lot gets turned loose around here, except the old girl over there,” she said, turning her head