Not that Renee had heard Charlie’s gaffe; she’d been occupied with the twins, nursing and soothing. When one was being fed, the other was protesting, and vice versa.
In need of a friend, Charlie had called Street earlier that day. Street’s schedule was jam-packed with committee hearings and meetings with civil rights groups—the pending Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision had everyone nervous and preparing for all possible outcomes—so he suggested Charlie come over for dinner. Isaiah had hinted that Renee was not particularly happy to hear of her husband’s generous offer, given that she would obviously end up doing all the work, but she’d believed her husband when he told her Charlie had sounded a bit distraught, so she’d made her standby dish for new guests, jambalaya, and divided her time at dinner between tending to the meal and tending to the twins.
Charlie tried to act convivial, but the events of the past few days made it hard to think of anything beyond the morass into which he had fallen. Finally, after the twins had taken Renee away, the two men went into the living room, where Charlie had sunk into the couch with a sigh and then reached a bit too eagerly for the glass of brandy Isaiah had handed him. It took little more than Isaiah’s raised eyebrow for Charlie to begin unspooling his troubles.
Charlie told him everything. Street winced when he heard about Charlie handing the Boschwitz dossier to Robert Kennedy. He was unsurprised to hear that Chairman Carlin had lied to them all about funding Goodstone, but he didn’t understand why Carlin bothered telling Charlie about it.
“We were all drinking quite a bit,” Charlie explained. “Absinthe. It got wild. Everyone was clobbered. Truly out of control. In a bad way.”
Street gave Charlie an impatient look, as if to say, Go ahead, spill it. “How out of control?” he asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“I blacked out and woke up in Rock Creek. I’d crashed in the water.” Each sentence was a confession, and a struggle. “I don’t even know whose car it was.” He stared at a floral pattern on the carpet, avoiding Street’s face. “There was…there was a body. Someone who’d apparently been in the car I was driving.”
Street leaned back. “A dead body?”
Charlie nodded.
“Good Christ.”
Charlie nodded at that too. Then he added: “It was this girl who’d been at the party. A cocktail waitress.”
“Holy hell,” said Street.
“Yeah.”
“So did you go to the police?”
“No. LaMontagne was there. He’s the one who found the girl. He showed up after I woke up. He told me to help him carry her to the Studebaker.”
“Why?”
Charlie downed the rest of the brandy. “So he could put her in it and then set it all on fire. Destroy all evidence. As if it had never happened. LaMontagne was trying to help me. I know that what we did was wrong. God, what have I done?” He put his head in his hands then looked imploringly up at Street.
Street sat back in his chair. “Did it even occur to you to go to the police?”
Charlie slid a finger around his collar and shifted in his seat. The gravity of the situation and the choices he faced seemed to come into focus under the fierce beam of Street’s glare. “Yeah, maybe,” Charlie said. “But Davis seemed to know what he was doing…” His voice trailed off as he heard how weak and spineless he sounded. He was disgusted with himself.
“Did you help him carry her to the car?” Street’s voice was cold, calm. They’d both seen men do bad things; each had faced down evil in his own way, but that was in Europe, in the war, which felt almost like another planet.
“No,” Charlie said. “I didn’t do it.”
“You told him no?”
“Correct.”
“And then?”
“Then he got mad. Furious. But I wouldn’t move. He cursed but he wasn’t going to take the time to fight, I guess. He carried her to the car and wedged her into the driver’s seat.”
“And then?”
“Then he lit some papers on fire and put them in the gas tank, and we sped off before it blew.”
“Jesus Christ,” Street said.
Charlie’s time in Washington was teaching him that trusting anyone was a risky bet, but he’d decided he could trust Street. It wasn’t as if the history department at Columbia University had been Plato’s Republic, but Charlie had enjoyed friendships and alliances, and for the most part, everyone just tried to keep his head down and pursue scholarship. Washington, by contrast, seemed populated by pickpockets, grifters, and con artists. There were exceptions, however, and Street was one of them. Or so Charlie hoped.
He was, truth be told, grateful to have him as a friend. Yesterday, after he’d battled his hangover to survive the day, he had arrived home to find the house empty and a note from Margaret on the kitchen counter—he wasn’t sure if it had been there before and he’d missed it—explaining that she was heading back to Nanticoke Island to try to solve the mystery of the Maryland ponies’ island-hopping. Remember La Galga that night back in the stacks? she wrote. Now I need to solve the puzzle for once and for all. To Charlie it seemed a halfhearted attempt to make nice in the midst of an abrupt departure. Though to be fair to her, he realized that she knew nothing of his troubles, only that he had staggered into their bedroom drunk hours after she’d expected him.
Street, however, was proving almost as tough a customer as Margaret would have been.
“You realize, of course, that this was like the psychology test they give officers,” Street said. “You have a moral quandary, and you are picking the answer that ends up with you not getting a promotion.”
“A test on paper is different from one in real life,” Charlie protested. “I get you on the should-haves. Of course. No argument. But let us abandon your world of the theoretical for one second. First of all, instead of being primed and ready for your officer’s test with six cups of joe in your gullet, imagine you’ve swigged a bottle of absinthe. Then here’s your choice: One path means you throw career, marriage, and any future with your children into the trash. You get defined by your worst moment ever for the rest of your life.” He paused. “My obit would read ‘Charles Marder, Fifty, Single, Unemployed, Disowned, Life Ruined by Fatal Car Crash.’ Do you have any more brandy?”
Street stood and refilled his friend’s glass, concern radiating from his stern and silent face.
From the bedroom, one baby stopped crying and the other one started.
“Your babies,” Charlie said. “You would risk leaving them and Renee in the lurch for something you don’t remember doing, something almost no one else knows about?”
Street stared at him.
“I’m not talking about an answer on an officer’s test,” Charlie said. “This isn’t about the moral stance you can defend in Philosophy 101 at Morehouse. I mean right here, right now. In reality. You can walk away or you can risk it all. And not just your life—Renee’s and the twins’ and everyone who depends upon you. Anyone back in Chicago you want to help. Anyone in Mossville, Louisiana. Poof, gone. Forget your time as a Tuskegee Airman, forget your Distinguished Flying Cross. You’ll just be the sum total of your worst moment. You know how Washington works.”
“I see your point,” Street said after a long silence.
Charlie was surprised by the relief he felt at this grudging acknowledgment, as if Street had the power to absolve him.
“Thank you,” he said.
“So what now?” Street asked. “LaMontagne would seem to have you over a barrel.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Charlie said. “But you’re right; I’m under his thumb.”
Street looked up at the painting of the voodoo priest and rubbed his chin.
“Speaking of ‘under’, we still haven’t figured out who Jennifer is, much less what Mac was trying to say with ‘under Jennifer.’ All due respect to the dead, what the hell does that mean?”
Charlie dropped his head in his hands. “Jesus. Mac. What a narcissistic bastard I’ve become.” He gulped down more brandy. “I don’t even know when the funeral is. That feels like a hundred years ago.”
“We visited Mac in the hospital on Monday,” Street reminded him. “Five days ago.”