“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 minutes 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.
“Hello there, Charlie,” Kefauver said warmly.
“Why, it’s Winston Marder’s boy!” Johnson said. “You cozying up to the Kennedys back there? Poor Jack hobbles around like an old nun with rickets.”
“Now, Lyndon,” Kefauver tut-tutted.
“It’s different from what the cameras catch, isn’t it?” Johnson said to Charlie, wrapping his arm around his shoulders as they reached the end of the tunnel. “You gotta play to the cameras, but don’t you believe what they show you.”
“Speaking of cameras,” Charlie said, turning to Kefauver as they walked up the stairs to the first floor, “I’ve secured the Foley Square Courthouse for the hearing, Senator. I’m told there will be ample space and power for them to be televised.”
“Good work,” Kefauver said. “Appreciate it.” He patted Charlie’s arm.
“And one more thing,” Charlie said, looking around to make sure no one could overhear what he was about to tell Kefauver and Johnson. “You didn’t get this from me, but you might want to have your folks look into who is funding Sutton’s race against you. He told me about a helicopter some businessman was lending him, and there was a fishy reference to Chicago cash.”
“Oh, really?” said Kefauver, beaming as if this were the best possible news. “That sounds quite interesting, Charlie. Thank you!”
“You got yourself a regular Casino Royale secret agent!” Johnson remarked to Kefauver. “Sign me up for your services as well, young man!”
The senators bade Charlie farewell and then rushed off, leaving him standing there, his task accomplished. He felt sullied; he needed to talk to Margaret. The list of his failures was only growing. He had been rolled on his crusade to stop Goodstone; he had failed to protect his friend from the Puerto Rican terrorists, and now he was an errand boy for the devil. And the worst of it, of course, chilled his soul throughout the day, whenever he contemplated that he had killed a girl in a drunken car accident and conspired to cover it up. Nothing was right and he didn’t know what to do or to whom he could turn.
Chapter Sixteen
Saturday, March 6, 1954
Capitol Hill / Nanticoke Island, Maryland
Charlie sat on Isaiah Street’s living-room sofa staring at a painting of a voodoo priest, his brown face smeared with reds and blues, spitting fire into a jubilant crowd.
The picture hung above a fireplace. Congressman Street handed Charlie a brandy and sat down on a chair next to him. Renee Street’s family hailed from deep in a Louisiana bayou, and before that from Haiti, and the art in the Streets’ modest Capitol Hill apartment displayed her roots. Isaiah Street had been quick to correct Charlie when he’d praised the painting of the “witch doctor”; the correct term was houngan, and this one was Renee’s great-uncle, and Charlie wasn’t to use the other term anywhere near her unless he had an hour to listen to a lecture about Yankee arrogance and American imperialism.