by Jake Tapper
The train gave a bit of a jump, causing both Smith and Charlie to lurch forward. Smith spilled some of her ginger ale on the floor.
“Oh dear,” she said.
“You okay?”
“Fine, dear boy. Fine.” She looked around the car, seeming to make sure nobody was listening to their conversation. “Do you know about the members-only collection at the Library of Congress?”
“I heard about it from, um, the late Congressman MacLachlan,” he said. “Should I pay it a visit?”
“Oh, I think you’d find it of great interest.” She gave Charlie a look that he found hard to read. “A collection of papers and books only accessible to members of the House and Senate. It’s in a special room in the Adams Building of the library. You should check it out, see if there’s more on Franklin there. I myself would love a sequel to your book, as I suspect would many of your fans.” She patted his arm—encouragingly or condescendingly? Charlie again couldn’t quite tell.
“The Hellfire Club,” she remarked, almost to herself. “Seems like a secret society like that one, replicated in modern times, could be very influential. Theoretically.”
Charlie looked at her, but trying to read her face was like trying to read Esperanto.
“I’m sure you’re more than aware that there are any number of secret societies throughout Washington,” she added. “Skull and Bones, Sons of Liberty, the Patriotic Order, the Elks, the Klan. One hears whispers about them, but of course nothing concrete. Washington makes much more sense once you realize that there are factions that people like you and me know nothing about.”
“People like you and me?”
“Moral people,” she said. “Good people. And people who are outsiders, to a degree.”
“Well, I don’t know that I belong in your esteemed company,” Charlie said. “That was a brave thing you did, coming out against McCarthy back in—when was it, 1950? And it’s been pretty dispiriting to see so many of our fellow Republicans sit back and let this…indecency…continue.”
She blushed. “Why, thank you, Charlie.”
“No, I mean it,” he said. “I don’t think I understood until recently how tough it is to stand up for what’s right in politics. It all looks so easy from the outside. But inside, the imperatives, the forces, the motivations almost always push one toward complicity or silence. If not worse. The system seems designed to grind away our better natures.”
Smith took a second, apparently to contemplate what Charlie was saying and decide how to properly respond. “It has been incredibly disappointing, yes, to see otherwise good and decent men think they can straddle the worlds of decent and indecent,” she finally said. “Senator Taft thought he could do that. He could not. One cannot. One must make a choice. Taft thought he could avoid having to condemn that which he knew was wrong. And then he died. And his cowardice is now regrettably part of his legacy. McCarthy isn’t just a demagogue and a serial prevaricator—he’s a phony. He won his first election, against La Follette, by winking toward the Communists of Wisconsin, saying nice things about Stalin. None of it means anything to him; it’s all just about power and ego. I mean, it often is, that’s not unique to Senator McCarthy. But he’s a fraud. I feel bad for those whom he is so sadistically fooling.”
Charlie’s eyes flickered with a memory. “Kefauver told me something about McCarthy siding with Nazis once? Against U.S. interrogators?”
“Oh, yes,” said Smith. “This was before he took up the cause of demonizing the State Department; he was still, I believe, looking for an issue to make him famous. He took over a committee hearing he wasn’t even a member of, vilifying the U.S. interrogators as anti-German. Didn’t get much press here, but in occupied Germany it was huge. I think McCarthy was even getting information for his smears from Communists in Germany at the time. He left an envelope from a Red behind in committee, once, as I recall. Just unbelievable. And none of it was true. Ray Baldwin was the chairman of the committee and McCarthy attacked him too, accused him of trying to whitewash U.S. war crimes. Baldwin resigned, he was so exhausted and demoralized. He was a good man. Served in the navy in World War One. A judge. Good Republican. But our leaders just sat back and watched it all happen.”
“Good Lord,” Charlie said.
“There’s a lesson there, of course,” Smith said. “When a rat pokes his head up from the sewer, he needs to be hit on the head with a shovel immediately. You cannot just sit back and think, Well, it’s just one rat or That’s somebody else’s problem. Because it’s never just one rat, and it eventually becomes your problem.” And with that, she patted Charlie on the arm again. “Well, I’ll go back to my seat now. Lovely to run into you, Charlie.”
With a wave of her hand, the senator nodded good-bye to Charlie and he watched as she slowly, steadily made her way to the rear of the train.
A train delay in Wilmington, Delaware, and a midtown Manhattan traffic jam prevented Charlie from ringing his parents’ doorbell until just after ten p.m. Standing at the top of the front stoop, he could hear his father stumbling down the brownstone stairs before the door swung open to reveal the man himself. He met his son with a scowl and a powerful aromatic punch of scotch.
“Your mother’s asleep,” he snarled by way of greeting. Charlie knew well this side of his father—three sheets to the wind, obviously had a bad day at work but wouldn’t want to talk about it, tired, surly. “You could have called first.”
Winston Marder’s paternal instincts were strong enough for him to reach for Charlie’s briefcase and carry it up to the living room on the second floor, where a television set provided the only illumination. “Murrow’s going after McCarthy,” his father said. Charlie sat on the couch, and together the two watched as Murrow, in his calm and careful way, eviscerated the Wisconsin Republican, destroying his lies one by one, from the relatively inconsequential ones to a blatantly misleading claim McCarthy had made about Adlai Stevenson toward the end of the 1952 presidential campaign.
“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve,” Murrow intoned at the end of the broadcast. “The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’”
Murrow ended the broadcast with his signature “Good night and good luck.”
Winston Marder emitted a sound that was something between a snore and a scoff. Charlie looked at him, surprised, having been impressed by Murrow’s monologue, though he did wonder what had taken the journalist so long. Plenty of his peers had been going after McCarthy for years. Muckraking columnist Drew Pearson had been such a persistent critic, rumor had it, that McCarthy had once punched him so hard he’d flown into the air. Journalist Jack Anderson had written a scathing investigative biography of McCarthy in 1952, and one year later cartoonist Walt Kelly started mocking the Wisconsin senator in his popular Pogo comic strip, depicting him as a menacing, shotgun-toting bobcat with disdain for social mores and the U.S. Constitution. Still, Charlie knew Murrow’s taking such a stand was significant. These words were coming from a dignified journalist on the giant platform he enjoyed, the cautious, highly rated CBS. Everyone has his own timeline for heroism, Charlie supposed.
“So?” Charlie asked.
“McCarthy’s a drunk but he’s not wrong about everything,” said Winston. “Alger Hiss was a spy. The Rosenbergs were spies. There are Soviet spies throughout the government. In the schools, in universities. Yeah, McCarthy’s a blowhard and a liar, but isn’t the Communist menace a bigger deal than whatever nonsense he says at rallies? I guess I just don’t see why everyone is giving McCarthy much attention. Just ignore him.”
“He’s impossible to ignore. He’s become this…planet…blocking the sun. And wha
tever points he makes that have validity are blotted out by his indecency and his lies and his predilection to smear. On the Hill, he’s all they talk about. Kefauver, Margaret Chase Smith.”
“Of course, he’s embarrassing. But even when Smith gave her big fancy speech attacking McCarthy, she noted the Truman administration had been sitting on their asses and doing nothing while Commies began swarming the U.S. like locusts.” He paused and looked more carefully at Charlie. “Did you not even pack a bag? Just the briefcase?”
“Yeah, this trip is a little spur-of-the-moment.” He didn’t mention Margaret’s current whereabouts, since he knew his folks wouldn’t approve.
Winston lifted himself out of his chair with a groan and began shuffling toward his study. His earlier irritation at Charlie’s surprise late arrival had apparently subsided.
“Come on in for a nightcap if you want.”
Winston’s study was where he kept his most important documents, as well as a giant floor globe and his collection of nineteenth-century books, most of them focused on the presidency and assassination of Abraham Lincoln and on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. As his dad occupied himself at the side table where decanters held his scotch and bourbon, Charlie took in the comforting scent of the room: cigar smoke and ancient texts and his dad’s musky cologne. When he was a boy, this room had seemed to hold all the secrets of adulthood: serious men in serious trouble and whispered agreements and handshakes like vise grips and the lingering menace of debts owed.
“Estes tells me you seem to be getting along better now,” Winston Marder said, handing Charlie a tumbler containing two fingers of bourbon and one ice cube. He sank into his chair, a walnut Victorian parlor armchair with intricately carved designs resembling tassels. The nineteenth-century antique creaked beneath his weight, which was increasing around his middle as he approached sixty.
“I suppose,” said Charlie, “that depends on how one defines getting along better. Doing things other people want me to that I’m not particularly proud of—yes, I’m doing more of that. Passing on files to the McCarthy Committee and participating in the great comic-book hearing.”
Winston Marder chuckled and Charlie suppressed a sigh of irritation. “Yes, I suppose that’s how I would define it at this stage of your nascent political career. You’re not getting anything for yourself?”
“I asked Chairman Carlin if he would block a permit for a chemical plant in Harlem. Negro friend of mine asked me to help him with that.”
Winston’s eyes lit up. “That was you? I heard about that. Adam Powell is furious. General Kinetics too. No matter. Now Harley Staggers and Bob Mollohan are fighting over which pocket of Appalachia the plant should move to.” Staggers and Mollohan were West Virginia Democrats, aggressive seekers of the federal dole and anything else that might improve the plight of their impoverished constituents. Charlie would have liked to bask in his father’s approval, but he could only stare grimly into the glass in his hands.
“What’s eating you?”
Charlie paused before admitting, “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that whatever ill effects come from this chemical plant will now be inflicted on other people.”
Winston’s smile was part amusement, part acknowledgment of the injustice of the world. “Yep. That’s how it works, Charlie.” He yawned, looking like a lion growling. Charlie wished he could be comforted by his father’s benevolent world-weariness; instead, he found himself fighting a mounting sense of frustrated indignation. He needed direction, not aphorisms.
“Chairman Carlin wants me to co-sponsor the farm bill with him. He’s trying to use me to co-opt the other veterans and any other skeptical Yankees.”
“That’s good. Nothing wrong with having a record farmers can like. Costs you nothing and could pay off later. How about Estes’s latest project, these Nuremberg Trials for Bugs Bunny? You set that up for him?”
“Yep, next month at the Foley Square Courthouse.”
“Ever the good soldier.”
“Yes, sir.”
Winston stood and stretched his arms as high as they could go and then spread them out, as if he were on a crucifix. “Pooped,” he said. “Let’s have lunch tomorrow at the club. Noon?”
He patted Charlie’s shoulder as he left the room, leaving his son sitting in the dim glow of the lamp that stood next to the wooden file cabinet where the most sensitive files were kept. It was the only cabinet that his father took the time to lock.
Atop the cabinet was a small clay sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback from the Rough Riders era. A gifted artist, Charlie’s mother had made it for Winston years before, and the best parts of the intricate rendering were the detachable pieces fashioned from other media—the aluminum canteen that hung from a strap slung over his shoulder, the wooden replica of a Krag-Jørgensen M1896 carbine, and the cloth wide-brimmed slouch hat.
Charlie carefully lifted the hat; the key still sat tucked inside the liner where he had discovered it years earlier. He plucked it out and unlocked the wooden cabinet.
Winston Marder was a man for whom the need for order and the demands upon him were constantly at war, and the messy but alphabetized files bore witness to this struggle. Charlie soon found the NBC section with the red folder containing the This Is Your Life investigation into Strongfellow. He took what he needed, locked the cabinet, returned the key to Teddy’s hat, and left his father’s study, his heart pounding.
In his dreams, he was being shaken, up and down, left and right, taken across bumps and troughs, reminiscent of his ride on a Higgins boat from his battleship through the chop to Normandy Beach. His mother came into his room shortly after eight a.m. carrying a tray with buttered wheat toast, scrambled eggs, and coffee. She set the tray on his nightstand and folded her arms with a pointed glance at her wristwatch. There was nothing like a night spent in one’s childhood bed to make one feel young again, and not necessarily in a good way. Charlie flung an arm across his eyes and peered out at her from beneath it.
“Your father is expecting you at the club at noon,” she said. “He asked me to let you know he’s very interested in discussing the farm bill.”
“Okay, Mom, thanks.”
“He read the bill earlier. Took it from your briefcase.” Charlie couldn’t tell if she was irritated or proud. “I told him not to, I said that those papers belonged to a United States congressman and he couldn’t just open up your valise as if you were still a child, but he said you wanted to discuss it with him.” She shook her head in a gesture that was both familiar and familiarly inscrutable and then left, closing the door firmly behind her.
Charlie put his arm back down. His bedroom had remained untouched since he left for college in 1938, complete with 1927, 1929, 1932, 1936, 1937, and 1938 World Series Champions New York Yankees banners and a cache of photographs of Hollywood starlets in a folder buried in his bottom desk drawer. His mother would have frozen the room in amber—and Charlie with it—if she could have; she clearly preferred him as a boy, cuddly and curious. He felt a pang of nostalgia, not exactly for his youth but for a time when Babe Ruth’s salary demands were his most pressing concern. He swung his feet to the floor, reached beneath the mattress, and groped with mild panic for the This Is Your Life folder on Strongfellow before he found it, extracted it, and prepared to face his day.
The Harvard Club of New York was one of Winston Marder’s favorite places on earth and one of Charlie’s least favorite; the power broker made a point of visiting the club on West Forty-Fourth Street frequently so as to circulate among other powerful men on the squash court or at the bar or while sipping brandy from a snifter in front of a fireplace. He was frequently leaned on by fellow members for favors and deals; he had helped raise money for the recently added ladies’ annex and World War II memorial at the club and was currently lobbying for the New York Community Trust to recognize their building as an honorary landmark, though it had been around for only sixty years or so.
That Charlie hadn’t even applied t
o Harvard disappointed Winston, though he never admitted it to even his wife; if Charlie wanted to blaze his own path, that was fine, he said, but he knew that also might have meant that Charlie didn’t want to end up like him.
In the dark, mahogany-paneled room where a violinist walked table to table performing Vivaldi, Winston was two sips into his ice-cold martini and one bite into his shrimp cocktail when Charlie appeared and sat down. The waiters knew what Winston Marder expected to have prepared for him when he arrived, always exactly on time. Charlie sat and ordered coffee while he perused the menu. Winston looked up to see his son wearing a shirt and tie he’d taken from his father’s closet.
“Nice duds,” he said.
“You’re the one who picked a place with a dress code.”
His father chose to ignore this, and, dispensing with conversational niceties, he went straight to the point.
“I perused the farm bill in your briefcase and I thought I might help you decode some of the legislative-ese.”
“I think I can read a bill, Pop.”
“You missed the fine print when it came to the Goodstone earmark, did you not?” Winston asked, biting into a shrimp. He licked a dollop of cocktail sauce off his thumb. “Bottom line,” Winston continued, “amid the normal subsidies the federal government gives out, the price supports and whatnot, this bill also gives hundreds of millions of dollars to General Kinetics to build new pesticide plants all over the country, essentially however they see fit, with no government supervision.”
Charlie’s dad squeezed a lemon slice onto his three remaining shrimp, then wolfed down two of them in rapid succession. He gulped the rest of his martini and looked sternly over the tops of his glasses at Charlie. Charlie thought about his father’s crude eating habits, which he had always believed betrayed his outer-borough roots. In front of more refined company, he displayed more elegant manners, but if it was just family around—even at a restaurant—he returned to the practices of his youth in a modest tenement house, where, as the youngest of seven children, he had to grab food and scarf it down or he would go to bed hungry.
