by Jake Tapper
“It’s wrong,” Charlie had said.
Off in the distance they could hear another car. LaMontagne let go of Charlie, bent down, scooped up the young woman, and carried her to the Studebaker on his own. He wedged her into the driver’s seat.
“Come over here and help me set the Studebaker on fire, Charlie.”
“No,” Charlie said.
“Help me set the fucking Studebaker on fire!”
“Go to hell, Davis.”
“You fucking idiot,” LaMontagne said. He unscrewed the gas cap, took some papers from his pocket, and ignited the ends with a lighter. Then he delicately inserted the roll into the gas-tank opening and ran up the bank to Charlie on the road. “Get in the car!” he ordered, and this time Charlie obeyed. LaMontagne turned the key of his Dodge Firearrow and floored the pedal and they sped off.
Charlie replayed this as he stood in the shower, groaning and rubbing his face. He slowly toweled himself off and dressed, every movement requiring extra effort. Adjusting his thin blue Brooks Brothers tie, Charlie made his way downstairs, preparing an answer for the questions Margaret would surely have about his late night.
The kitchen was empty.
“Margaret?” No response. He moved through the house, looping in his cuff links, and peered into the living room—also empty. Had she had something to do this morning that she’d told him about and he’d forgotten? He looked on the kitchen table for a note and found none. The seed of a new anxiety began to take root in his stomach.
Looking outside, wondering where his wife was, he saw dark clouds gathering, and as he made a mental note to bring an umbrella, he realized he wasn’t sure where his car was. The last place he remembered seeing it was with the valet at the Mayflower Hotel. One more loose end, but a trifle, comparatively.
Charlie called for a taxi, then sat down heavily at the kitchen table, head in hands. Outside, a growl of thunder sounded ominously close. Inside, the house felt unnaturally quiet without Margaret there. He still could not believe his memories of the night before.
Initially, he thought the flashes of heat he felt had something to do with the approaching thunderstorm. Beads of sweat began collecting on Charlie’s forehead, the nape of his neck, the small of his back. He shivered, then stood and raced to the sink, where his abdominal muscles and diaphragm contracted, emptying everything out of his stomach, splashing the coffee cup Margaret had used at breakfast. Hyperventilating, he steeled himself for a second spasm and retched again. He fell to his knees, continuing to hold the rim of the sink. He hung there for a minute, two minutes, three minutes, as he slowed his breathing.
Okay. Focus.
He stared at the yellow linoleum and tried to steady himself.
Sheets of rain began hitting the street outside, sounding like an enthusiastic round of applause. Individual drops plinked hard on the windowpanes like snipers’ bullets.
Charlie stood up slowly and reached for the kitchen telephone on the wall. He asked the operator to connect him to Winston Marder on Seventy-Second Street in Manhattan and gave her the number.
“Connecting.”
A minute or so later, Charlie heard Winston’s booming baritone, loud enough to make him wince a bit and pull the receiver away from his ear.
“Charles, how are you, my son?”
“Not…not well, Dad.”
“Is Margaret all right? The baby?”
“They’re both fine. It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“Are you alone?” Charlie asked.
“I am—as far as I know,” Winston said drily. “One can never be certain.”
Charlie was tempted to tell his father this was no time for philosophical cutesiness but he stopped when he recalled that in a recent letter, his father had speculated that J. Edgar Hoover was tapping phones all over Manhattan and Washington without bothering with the nuisance of lawfully obtained warrants.
“I was just reading a fascinating story about J. Edgar Hoover and the magnificent job the FBI is doing these days to root out the Communist menace,” his father said, confirming Charlie’s suspicions. “I would love to talk to you about it, and your mother would love to see you and Margaret this weekend. And if not this weekend, then sometime soon. Congress is breaking for recess next week, isn’t it?”
“I’ll talk about it with her,” Charlie said. “It would be great to see you and catch up.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Winston replied.
Charlie hung up. With his father wary of speaking on the phone and Margaret AWOL, he had no one to talk to, no way to unburden himself. Not that he was sure he’d be able to divulge every detail about the previous night to his wife or father either.
Washing his face at the kitchen sink, he heard the honk of a car horn. The cab. He ran through the rain and had the driver take him to the Mayflower.
After Margaret left her town house that morning, she visited the Birder Emporium, a shop tucked into Waters Alley off the very busy Wisconsin Avenue. A large tabby cat curled up near a heating vent meowed, then returned to its nap. The store sold anything a bird-watcher would ever need: bookshelves of field guides organized by state, country, and continent; warm clothing and hiking shoes; insect repellent, chairs, blankets, thermoses, pocketknives, camping equipment, backpacks, and lanterns. The walls were lined with photographs of a couple on various excursions through the decades, interspersed with posters of John James Audubon’s paintings of rare birds: Attwater’s greater prairie chicken, Kirtland’s warbler, the San Clemente loggerhead shrike.
The owners, Sidney and Bernice Greenstein, emerged from the back of the store to welcome Margaret as warmly as if she were a guest they’d been expecting for lunch. They’d aged considerably since the last photograph had been taken, Margaret could see, but they were lively and cheerful. She told them the purpose of her visit and about her upcoming trip to research the ponies, her need for a new pair of binoculars to replace the ones she’d dropped into the marsh on Nanticoke Island.
Sidney Greenstein led Margaret to a file cabinet in the corner of the store and, with painstaking precision, showed her the many options available. Margaret early on decided that a pair of Ross binoculars would suffice, but the old man seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to show off his expertise, so she patiently sat through the entire presentation. After its merciful conclusion, Bernice Greenstein reminded her husband that there was one box in the bottom drawer he hadn’t brought out. “Why don’t you show her that one as well, Sidney?” And so it was that Margaret emerged from the store with not only a new pair of Ross binoculars but also a short-lived product from RCA, night-vision binoculars, built using guided-missile technology but discontinued after consumers found them too expensive and too heavy. Eager to unload them, the Greensteins had offered Margaret a substantial discount, and Margaret was excited to show off the new toy to Gwinnett and the other researchers.
Under darkening, cloud-heavy skies, she made her way home through the rain, happily burdened by her new acquisitions, less happily by thoughts of Charlie; she knew he would not be pleased about this sudden trip. She would tell him as soon as possible, either in person, if he was still at the house nursing his hangover, or on the phone. As she walked, she prepared some rational counterarguments to any objections he might make.
But Charlie wasn’t home. Margaret phoned and found he was not yet at work. So she dashed off a quick note, collected her suitcase and coat, and called her ride to tell him that she was ready. As she waited, she fretted about Charlie. She didn’t know what was motivating him anymore. At first he’d seemed focused on stopping Goodstone, but now he seemed entirely preoccupied with other goals, ones he didn’t seem eager to share with her—likely because he knew she would disapprove. Who knew what backroom deals he was now part of?
The human soul isn’t sold once but rather slowly and methodically and piece by piece, she thought. They hadn’t even been in Washington for three months; how had things changed so quickly?
Margaret looked sternly at herself in the hallway mirror. She could almost hear her mother’s voice admonishing her to stiffen her spine and get on with things. Well, then, that’s what she was going to do. She heard the honking of a car horn, and she left the house, locking the door behind her.
Battling his raging hangover and the pouring rain, Charlie retrieved his car from the Mayflower and drove to Capitol Hill. Staring grimly out at the wet gray city, he fought the impulse to think about last night while also being unable to think of anything else. He’d felt remorse after Rodriguez was killed in France, but there were too many other villains—the Krauts, the Vichy French, Goodstone—for him to hold himself responsible in any real way. There were no alternative bad guys in the tale of his having killed a girl while driving in a drunken stupor. He chased away the remorse as best he could, focusing on all the unknowns and his inability to remember any of it, as if an alcoholic blackout provided some sort of cloak, a protection from sin.
For once, the alarming news on the radio served as a welcome distraction; more drama between the Eisenhower administration and McCarthy as the defense secretary called McCarthy’s charges that the U.S. Army was coddling Communists “just damn tommyrot.” But the administration had also just given McCarthy more ammunition; the latest tabulation of government employees who’d been fired or resigned after being deemed a “security risk” had just been updated, and the number now stood at 2,429, with 422 directly or indirectly tied to subversive activities. Moreover, in Caracas, Venezuela, Secretary of State Dulles warned his fellow foreign ministers that there wasn’t “a single country in this hemisphere which has not been penetrated by the apparatus of international communism acting under orders from Moscow.”
Charlie parked; an attendant with an umbrella walked him across the street. He felt outside of his own body, as if he were watching himself in a documentary about himself, he and the attendant in grainy black-and-white, filmed in secret from a third-floor window, the voice of Ed Murrow intoning, Watch the guilty man, fresh from his act of vehicular manslaughter, walking to work just hours later as if nothing had transpired at all…
Leopold was waiting for Charlie outside the door to his House office, an anxious look on her face and a to-do list in her hand.
“Miss Leopold, could you call Congressman Street? I’d like to get together—”
“Sir.” She cut him off firmly. “Mr. LaMontagne asked—”
“Davis called?” Charlie said, taking off his damp overcoat and handing it to Bernstein, who exchanged it for a cup of coffee, light and sweet; Miss Leopold had finally conceded that battle. He took the mug and walked into his personal office.
“No need for me to call,” said LaMontagne, who was draped comfortably on the couch, smoking a Chesterfield.
Charlie was distressed to see LaMontagne; his presence immediately destroyed whatever emotional wall Charlie had managed to build to protect himself.
“As always, Mr. LaMontagne made his way into your office without seeking permission first,” Leopold said.
“He’s like a cat burglar,” Bernstein said under her breath from the receptionist’s desk.
Charlie turned to Leopold. “Okay, thank you.” He shut the door.
“You look surprised to see me,” LaMontagne said.
“Not as surprised as I was earlier this morning,” Charlie said. He took a swig of his coffee and sat down behind his desk.
“You’re fortunate I was up so early. And driving by.”
“Am I going to consider myself fortunate that you’re here right now?” Charlie asked. His mouth was parched, his throat so dry it felt like cacti would sprout up. Images of the Rosenbergs heading to the electric chair sprang into his mind. He told himself he was being melodramatic, but he also knew LaMontagne held his future in his hands.
LaMontagne said nothing, just stretched out on the couch with a faint smile on his face. They looked at each other, the dead cocktail waitress an unspoken presence.
“It was the only option, Charlie,” LaMontagne finally said.
Charlie didn’t want to address it. He didn’t know if anyone was listening in and he didn’t want to think about her. He noticed a manila folder on his desk—a new copy of the Boschwitz file, Charlie presumed, to replace the version he’d lost during the House shootings.
“The latest version of the dossier,” LaMontagne said. “Just as well you lost the old one, since we now have some photos. So it’s all ready for you to turn over to Bob. Or Roy. Though it sounds like you and Roy didn’t exactly get along swimmingly last night.”
“No, we drowned,” Charlie agreed. He looked down at the Boschwitz dossier and opened it, finding inside various incriminating papers, photographs, and memos. He surprised himself by saying aloud what he was thinking: “What I still don’t get is why you haven’t just given this to them yourself. Why do you need me?”
LaMontagne’s grin conveyed annoyance more than humor. “There are so many responses I’m tempted to give,” he said. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table.
“Shoot.”
“The first and obvious one. What I don’t get is why you think after last night, you can respond with anything other than a mad dash to Bob Kennedy’s office, dossier in hand.”
Charlie nodded. “Fair,” he said. “What else you got?”
“You’re awfully flippant.”
“I don’t mean to be,” Charlie said, smiling. “Possibly still a little drunk.” He tried to ease into a steadier pose; his anxiety and terror were manifesting themselves as anger, and that wasn’t doing him any good. He thought of the mental exercises he’d performed back in France, willing himself to be the tough guy he felt nothing like.
LaMontagne put another cigarette between his lips and flicked his lighter; it failed him once, then twice, then a third time. Charlie reached into his suit pocket, withdrew his aluminum trench lighter, and tossed it to LaMontagne, who caught it effortlessly with one hand and lit up another Chesterfield.
“I know I told you that the firm doesn’t want to be tied to this in any way, but the honest answer is that I don’t want any paper trail from this leading back to me. If there are any questions, Bob or Roy will say they got it from a New York lawmaker who got it from a constituent, and it ends there. But from a lobbyist who represents a Zenith competitor? Can’t have that.”
“Why would there be any sort of inquiry?”
LaMontagne took a deep drag, then shrugged. “Winds blow, daddy-o. Things seem good for McCarthy right now, but Ike is setting traps behind the scenes and I have no idea if or when Tail Gunner Joe will get strafed. He’s getting drunker by the day, and Cohn is blinded by…other matters.”
Charlie gamed it out in his head. “So if McCarthy crashes and the Democrats retake the Senate and start looking into everything that went wrong and how McCarthyism took hold, you want to make sure nothing leads back to you.”
“Decidedly so.”
“McCarthy’s thriving. Almost no Republicans and barely any Democrats are even willing to take him on in public.”
LaMontagne shrugged and blew two smoke rings, which connected midair. “A good soldier always has a plan B. Didn’t you learn that in the army?”
“What’s my plan B?” Charlie asked, only half joking.
LaMontagne rose and buttoned his suit jacket, preparing to leave. “After last night, you, my friend, aren’t in a position to be making any plans. You just carry them out.”
The underground subway between the Capitol Dome and the SOB had been built in 1909, so the technology sometimes failed. On his way to deliver the Boschwitz dossier, Charlie, already in a fervor of self-pity, suffered the further indignity of a subway breakdown; the lights dimmed and then returned at half strength, and the monorail, at capacity thanks to the torrential downpour outside, came to a shuddering halt.
“I’m not sure what’s happening, but it’s probably best if you all go from here on foot,” the conductor announced after a few minut
es of false starts.
The wicker coaches began to empty. Charlie, in the last cart, noticed a few VIPs, including Kefauver and minority leader Lyndon Johnson and, in front of them, Bob and Jack Kennedy, along with a coterie of the Massachusetts senator’s aides and wingmen.
Johnson and Kefauver quickly outpaced the Boston boys. Senator Kennedy, in apparent agony from back pain, crept along the path slowly and deliberately, with his brother and entourage shuffling along at his speed. Charlie quickly caught up with them and handed Robert Kennedy the Boschwitz dossier. Kennedy nodded as if he knew what it was, as if he’d been handed hundreds of packets like that before.
“You gentlemen doing all right?” Charlie said. Senator Kennedy shook his head as if to say, Don’t ask.
“Better than we look, Congressman,” said one member of Kennedy’s entourage, patting Charlie on the back as if he were joining them at the pub.
“I swear, Kenny, we need to look into whether we can get one of those offices just off the Senate floor,” Kennedy said, hobbling along. “This constant back-and-forth is murder. I might as well just sit at my desk in the Chamber and do my work there.”
An attractive college-age woman, likely an intern, walked by them on her way to the Capitol, prompting the senator to murmur something under his breath that Charlie couldn’t quite make out. One of the senator’s aides turned and followed the young woman as if he had been given an assignment.
Charlie felt oafish walking slowly to keep pace with the Kennedy gang, a clique to which he didn’t belong, so he sped up and soon found himself with Johnson and Kefauver. They were discussing a draft letter Southern members of the House and Senate were circulating—a Southern manifesto accusing the Supreme Court of abusing its judicial power if it ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Neither Johnson nor Kefauver wanted to sign any such letter, but neither did they want to be the only Southerners in Congress who didn’t sign it.
