by Jake Tapper
She held a folder aloft like a trophy she’d just won. “Do you remember that scrap of paper you told me to look into, Congressman? It’s taken me a few weeks, but I have some possible leads.”
Charlie motioned her to a seat and silently mourned the loss of the productive early morning he’d planned. He would have been inclined to forget about those cryptic scribbles: U Chicago, 2,4-D 2,4,5-T cereal grains broadleaf crops.
She provided her update. After he’d handed her the weird note while they were getting off the Senate subway, she’d cold-called the University of Chicago’s Department of Botany, and the department librarian had said she’d look into it.
“She was so helpful when we first spoke, and she even said she had a good idea about where to look for more information. But since then—” Bernstein paused dramatically and Charlie stifled a small sigh of impatience while he glanced at his watch. “I’ve been calling and calling and she has not taken my call. For almost a month now!”
“Odd,” said Charlie, though he couldn’t help wondering if a departmental librarian had more pressing duties to attend to than chasing down a stranger’s out-of-left-field requests.
“I know!” Bernstein enthused, her excitement suddenly bubbling over. “But then I had another idea. My brother goes to Northwestern, so I asked him to stop by the department and see what he could find out.” She paused again. “He’s pretty handsome, and the librarian was very friendly to him until he revealed why he was there. He said she got really cold, really fast. Said the study he was asking about was subject to wartime secrecy laws and that there was nothing that could be shared with the public in any way. And she had campus security escort him out.”
Charlie sat up a little straighter now. Maybe this wild-goose chase wasn’t so wild after all. “Were you able to get any information about the study? The name of the professors?”
“Yes,” Bernstein said, leafing through her steno pad. “Kraus. And Mitchell.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, writing down their names. “I guess the next step would be for me to ask about it at the Pentagon. Or to get someone on the Armed Services Committee to do so.”
“What about Strongfellow?”
“Perfect.”
Leopold poked her head into the office. “Sheryl Ann, you need to finish up that typing I gave you. And Congressman, you have just enough time to stop in and see Senator Kefauver before the morning vote if you leave right now.”
Charlie didn’t feel like taking the monorail to get to the Senate Office Building—the SOB, as everyone on the Hill called it—he wanted to stretch his legs. After making his way up to the second floor of the U.S. Capitol, he spotted Congressman Isaiah Street standing in National Statuary Hall, a semicircular room right off the House Chamber featuring statues of notable Americans. Each of the forty-eight states had contributed two of the immense likenesses, with thirty-six standing in the room like soldiers in formation, curving along the wall of the Statuary Hall chamber. Dozens of others were scattered throughout nearby rooms and halls.
Charlie had seen Street every poker night but seldom ran into him anywhere else. They had developed an easy rapport during the weekly games. Street stood glowering at one of the statues contributed by Georgia, the figure of former governor Alexander Stephens.
“Charlie,” he said, a smile stretching across his face. “I have good news. Congressman Powell is going to vote however you want today, depending on whether the Goodstone provision has been removed.” Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Democrat of New York, was a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Street had offered to lobby Powell on Charlie’s behalf to get his support on Goodstone.
“Thank you, but I’m not sure I need it. I’m told it’s gone.”
Street looked confused. “Really? I thought I just read that General Kinetics was making a play to buy Goodstone. Blacklisting them will be bad for both companies. And for the deal.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Charlie said, stunned by the news. Learning that General Kinetics was attempting to purchase Goodstone was like finding out the Chinese were sending troops in to defend North Korea.
Charlie pointed to a statue of Supreme Court chief justice Morrison “Mott” Waite, the image of regality, leaning on a cane. “See how his forefingers are crossed on the handle of the cane? That’s a sign he was a member of the Yale secret society Skull and Bones.”
Street shook his head. “Folks at home…voters would be amazed if they ever found out how many decisions are actually made by these secret societies and clubs.”
“Who else is there besides Skull and Bones?” Charlie asked. “The Masons? The Illuminati?”
“The Klan,” Street said. He motioned back toward the statue of Governor Stephens. “Quote: ‘Our new government’s cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man,’” he recited, “‘that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.’ Unquote.”
Charlie looked down at the statue’s foundation, where the engraving read: I am afraid of nothing on the earth, above the earth, beneath the earth, except to do wrong.
Street shrugged. “He said what I said too. Vice president of the Confederacy. That’s all you need to know.”
“To be fair, how many white men in Georgia opposed slavery in the 1860s?” Charlie said. In his teaching days, he had always asked his students to consider the context of the era they studied.
“The British outlawed slavery in 1833,” Street countered.
“George Washington had slaves. Do you want to change the name of this city?”
Street pointed to a majestic bronze caped figure from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis. “President of the Confederacy,” Street said. “Why is it that almost a hundred years later, society still hasn’t labeled these men traitors?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. He was done playing devil’s advocate on an issue where he actually did think of the clients as devils.
“The good guys won. So to speak. So why are there statues of the bad guys? It’s not as though the French have statues of their traitors from the war, the Vichy French.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Charlie said. “Marshal Pétain died just a few years ago and they have a bunch of streets named after him in France.”
“But that’s not because he collaborated with the Nazis, it’s despite the fact that he did,” Street said. “You know damn well it’s because he was a hero in the Great War.”
“I’m just saying, it’s all more complicated than you’re making it seem,” Charlie said. “De Gaulle led the Free French but he placed a wreath on Pétain’s tomb.”
Street shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the ceiling. He wasn’t concealing his disgust; he was making it clear that refraining from voicing it was a struggle.
“Forgive me,” Charlie said. “You know I’m an academic. Sometimes we get caught up in the abstract rather than the reality. These men contained multitudes. They did heinous, unforgivable things. Don’t misunderstand me. But they’re more than their misdeeds, right? FDR sent the Japanese to camps. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Twelve U.S. presidents were slave owners, including the one who’d been the top general of the Union Army!”
Street shook his head. “I don’t know, Charlie. John Adams knew better. John Quincy Adams knew better. Lincoln knew better. Right is right and wrong is wrong. You fought for your country, you married a good woman, you work hard to protect troops from future shitty gas masks. You’re not betraying your principles. You don’t contain multitudes.” He paused. “Do you, Charlie?”
“Charlie, how are you?” Senator Kefauver greeted him with his attention focused more on the Zenith television. Senator McCarthy was interrogating a witness.
“I’m fine, sir. I need some advice,” Charlie said. He had brought two things to the meeting: the Boschwitz dossier LaMontagne had given him and Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent. He set both on the coffee table and sat in the ch
air in front of the senator’s desk. “I’ve got—”
Kefauver held up a hand to hush Charlie and pointed toward the television console in the corner. Using a Lazy Bones remote control hooked up to the television by a wire, he turned up the volume.
“Look, mister, I am not going to waste all afternoon with you,” Senator Joseph McCarthy bellowed at a witness. “I have asked you a very simple question. You will answer it, unless you want to take the Fifth Amendment. If you think it will incriminate you, you can take the Fifth Amendment.”
“Restate the question,” said the witness.
The hearing’s reporter read back from her notes. “‘When you got this job working on Army ordnance, do you know whether or not the man who hired you knew that you had been accused of Communist activities prior to that time,’” she said. The witness and his lawyers huddled in consultation.
“I see you’re reading Seduction of the Innocent,” Kefauver noted. “It is amazing the twisted things children are learning about murder and rape and torture. This is going to be a big hearing, Charlie.”
On television, Senator McCarthy had now turned over the hearings to his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, who appeared to be eviscerating a new witness.
“While you were attending Cornell, did you know a man named Alfred Sarant?”
Cohn, a pit bull of a man, was clearly already in possession of the answer.
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment,” said the witness.
“Did Sarant recruit you into the Rosenberg spy ring?”
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.”
“Did you engage in a conspiracy to commit espionage with certain persons working for the Army Signal Corps?”
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.”
“Jesus,” said Kefauver, standing. “The Rosenbergs!”
“Did you ever visit Julius Rosenberg at the Emerson Electric Company and obtain from him material which you transmitted to a Soviet spy ring?”
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.”
“I mean, good Christ, Charlie.”
Kefauver exhaled loudly, sank his bulky frame back down into his chair, and grabbed a cigar stub from his desk that he commenced chewing. His dull blue eyes ping-ponged between Charlie and the television.
“So, speaking of McCarthy and the Army Signal Corps,” Charlie said, “an acquaintance of mine handed me a file on one of Zenith’s guys. Asked me to pass it on to Bob Kennedy or Cohn.”
Kefauver looked as though he had just detected an unpleasant odor.
“Yeah, that was my reaction, too,” said Charlie. “Making matters worse, he’s with a direct competitor of Zenith.”
“Oh, Lordy,” said Kefauver.
“But what happens if I don’t hand the information over and it’s real?”
“Or even if it’s not real but McCarthy leaks to his stooges in the press that you refused to inform the committee about a Commie,” Kefauver said. “You’ve got to worry about those things now. We all do. McCarthyism is a cancer. And it won’t just be an election you don’t win.” Kefauver warmed to his topic with alarming speed. “You’ll be ruined. Columbia won’t let you back; you’ll end up teaching at Barnyard High in East Turtle-Turd, Kentucky.”
Charlie suddenly realized that until just now, he had regarded his new life in Washington almost as if it were a summer camp in the Catskills or the home of a college buddy he was visiting for a long weekend—someplace he could parachute into and soon leave with no impact on his real life. But he knew Kefauver was right: Columbia would invoke the standard clause about bringing shame and embarrassment to the university community. His publishing house would stop returning his phone calls. Charlie had seen how even the liberal Manhattan elite dealt with publicly ostracized Communists in their midst, and it wasn’t pretty: sociology lecturer Bernhard Stern saw his name dragged through the mud not only by the McCarthy Committee but by the university; anthropology lecturer Gene Weltfish had been dismissed altogether. And these weren’t individuals accused of espionage; their transgressions had been in thought and belief. There was no escaping the stink of the Red Scare.
Kefauver eyed Charlie’s Seduction of the Innocent on the coffee table.
“With regards to the juvenile delinquency hearing,” he said, “have you lined up the courthouse for us?”
“Not yet. Working on it.”
“Dr. Wertham is a good man. I had lunch with him last week in New York.”
“Sir, have you read this book?”
“Read it?” asked Kefauver. “I helped pay for it. Steered federal funding so he could diagnose this scourge. My God, Charlie, when Hendrickson and I started the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency last year, we had Dr. Wertham in mind the whole time. Something has got to be done about this epidemic, even if we just shine a spotlight on it, like I did with organized crime.”
Charlie was silent. The muscle that kept him from expressing his thoughts and principles was getting quite a workout. Kefauver pointed at a framed magazine article hanging on the wall to Charlie’s right.
“Read that,” Kefauver ordered. “It’s from Life.”
Charlie obediently stood and examined it.
The week of March 12, 1951, will occupy a special place in history, the article read. The U.S. and the world had never experienced anything like it…Never before had the attention of the nation been so completely riveted on a single matter. The Senate investigation into interstate crime was almost the sole subject of national conversation.
“Impressive, sir,” Charlie said, “but—”
“Charlie, do you know how many people watched Frank Costello testify before my committee?” Kefauver asked. “Thirty million. That’s even more than watched your Yankees win the World Series.” He smiled, a big, goofy cornball grin, so wide and uninhibited that his molars were almost visible. “Now, you’re no Mickey Mantle, Charlie, but you might have a chance at becoming the next best thing!”
Chapter Ten
Saturday, February 27, 1954
Georgetown, Washington, DC
For the first time in weeks, Charlie found himself facing a Saturday and Sunday with no work plans—no receptions or cocktail parties, no hearing preparation or research—so he was determined to make the weekend enjoyable for him and Margaret. On Saturday morning he surprised her with breakfast in bed—toast, eggs, bacon, coffee—though her lingering morning sickness meant most of her bites and sips were in the name of love, not hunger. He settled next to her on the bed and opened up Friday’s Washington Star. “Should we see a movie?” In New York they saw films so often, it didn’t matter which one they picked on any given night since odds were they’d see another within the week. But since moving to Washington, they hadn’t been to the cinema once.
Margaret nodded but patted her still-small belly and said, “I’m asserting my right to pregnancy-veto.”
Charlie rolled his eyes playfully and checked the listings.
“How to Marry a Millionaire,” Charlie read.
“That’s with”—Margaret paused and then whispered breathlessly—“Marilyn Monroe?” She put her finger on her lips, widened her eyes: Baby girl so confused!
“All right, all right,” Charlie said, smiling, well aware of Margaret’s aversion to Miss Cheesecake 1951—an aversion he didn’t share, but now was not the time to press the issue. He glanced at the next ad. “Hondo, starring John Wayne.”
“Ugh,” she said. Two years before, Wayne’s Big Jim McLain depicted him as a heroic agent of the House Un-American Activities Committee, with cameos by actual HUAC members; ever since, Margaret had considered him a propaganda puppet of the more jingoistic drum majors in the U.S. Congress.
“The Wild One with Brando, that’s a no,” he announced. Charlie found Brando, and indeed the whole belly-scratching, teeth-picking Method-acting school, mumbly and contrived. “What’s A
Lion Is in the Streets about? Cagney’s in it.”
“I think it’s about a crooked politician.”
“No politics, thank you,” Charlie said. “The Robe with Richard Burton?”
Margaret leaned closer to Charlie and looked at the ad. “Looks religious,” she said. “Let’s see something fun; we can do piety and suffering some other time.”
That left Roman Holiday, a romantic comedy with Gregory Peck and a newcomer named Audrey Hepburn.
Margaret was not only excited to get out of the house but touched by Charlie’s effort. Both on their best behavior, later that evening, after a lazy, comfy day at home, they walked hand in hand to the nearby cinema. They’d opted for the Calvert Theater, a classic movie house with luxurious and spacious seating. He put his arm around her as soon as the Paramount Pictures mountain logo appeared on the screen, and she accepted it, nestling into his chest.
He patted her tummy.
“I’m glad the rabbit died,” he whispered.
“That’s such a strange saying,” she whispered back. “The rabbit dies no matter what. They inject my urine into the bunny; a few days later they open the bunny to inspect her ovaries.”
“Bunny dies either way?”
“Bunny dies either way.”
They enjoyed the film, though they agreed that the what-might-have-been ending was unsatisfying. Charlie didn’t mention to Margaret that he’d grown a bit uncomfortable at the moral dilemma presented to the Gregory Peck character, who opts to do the noble thing; was Charlie choosing the same path? But he’d shaken off the discomfort and lost himself in the charm of the film. Afterward they retreated to Martin’s Tavern, a small Italian bistro on Wisconsin Avenue, where they ordered veal piccata and a carafe of Chianti.
They were trying to remind themselves of what they enjoyed about each other outside of the newly hectic tenor of their DC life. Ten days before, Charlie rushed home after the defense appropriations bill markup, excited to show his skeptical wife that his strategy had worked, that the money for Goodstone had been deleted in the latest draft. But even though he raced red lights and arrived home by six thirty, Margaret had already fallen into a deep sleep on the couch. The next morning, still eager to share his news, Charlie headed into the kitchen, only to find Margaret furious. The day before, she’d learned that Gwinnett’s research team had returned to Nanticoke and Susquehannock Islands without her. Her encounter with Teardrop the pony was the most noteworthy event in all their research. “But of course, my being a woman—and one with child, no less—all but erases that,” she fumed. “Can’t wait to see what gender pronouns are used to describe the researcher’s encounter with the pony in the final published work!” Charlie tried to be sympathetic, and he realized that this wouldn’t be the moment to share his own professional triumph. He left for work feeling vaguely disgruntled, and it wasn’t until a day later that she asked him about Goodstone. By then, he’d built up a head of righteous petulance and didn’t answer, even though he knew it was childish, and the simmering tensions between them continued.
