“I understand what you are saying,” he said softly. “But I cannot discuss any issues involving someone who might be a patient—or might not be a patient. It would be a gross breach of ethics. So I must ask you again to leave, now.”

I gave him my card. He didn’t want to take it, so I left it on the chair.

As I drove back to the Pittsburgh airport I thought about the meeting with the doctor. It had aroused many feelings in me, but at that moment what I was really thinking about was a technical matter: Dr. Soderberg hadn’t confirmed the story, but he hadn’t denied it either, which was almost as useful.

13

13

Arthur Bowman sat me down in his office, in the chair below the portrait of Benjamin Disraeli and next to the marble bust of the Roman historian Suetonius. I’d heard that Bowman and Senator Abelard were friends, and I had gone to see him the morning after I returned from Pittsburgh. I thought maybe he could suggest someone close to the senator to whom I could talk, but Bowman said he probably knew Abelard as well as anyone, so I should start with him.

Bowman’s office was a collection of secret treasures. The walls displayed the trophies of a lifetime of reporting. Menus from the great restaurants of London and Paris, including one from Taillevent; framed invitations to the Royal Ascot Races and the Queen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace; photos of Bowman playing tennis at the Cap d’Antibes and golf at Kapalua Bay on Maui; press cards issued by Third World militias, from Lebanon to Mozambique. And interspersed with these mementos were photographs of Bowman with the men and women who had been his companions on this promenade through the second half of the twentieth century: presidents and prime ministers, kings and emirs, Supreme Court justices and Hollywood movie stars. There was even a picture of him with Senator James Abelard.

I told Bowman what I was working on. It felt strange, enumerating the clinical details, so I talked quickly. I said two sources had told me that Abelard had been hospitalized for depression in 1982. I said I had a copy of one of the senator’s prescriptions. The story felt solid, I told him, but I needed more evidence before I went with it. “Since you know him,” I said, “maybe you have some ideas.”

Bowman closed his eyes. They shut tight as a bank vault. His face was perfectly still, not a movement anywhere betraying any personal emotion.

“It’s true,” he said. “He was hospitalized, someplace outside Pittsburgh. It was very sad. I don’t know anything about medication. But I do know that he got better. That was a relief to his friends. He was a basket case before.”