“That was Tail Gunner Joe, who just happens to have a lot of German-American constituents who might have been feeling a little guilty, postwar. McCarthy heard the charges that the interrogators had abused the Nazis, and he pushed and pushed and pushed. It all ended up before me and the Senate Armed Services Committee in ’49. I would note that it all took on a very anti-Semitic subtext, except there was nothing sub about it. All sorts of characters alleged that the U.S. interrogators were Jews out for vengeance. McCarthy was among them. And it was all fake. None of it was real. There was no systematic abuse of the Nazis. Just a smear campaign against Jews and against Americans trying to rebuild Germany postwar. Led by you-know-who.”
“So he was defending Nazis?” Charlie asked. “This great defender of our republic?”
“Holy smokes,” said Strongfellow. “You’d think Nazis would be one thing we can all agree on.”
“No one remembers anything,” said Kefauver. “And now he’s taking on the Pentagon. And they’re scared.”
“Charlie, before I forget, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Strongfellow said, “the Pentagon knows nothing about that University of Chicago study.”
“Really?”
“My Pentagon guy says they have no idea who—what were their names?”
“Mitchell and Kraus.”
“Right, no idea who Mitchell and Kraus are or what study you’re talking about,” Strongfellow said. He glanced toward a table where Carlin’s aide Abner Lance was shooting a cuff to look pointedly at his watch. “Anyway, see you on the floor. Last vote before Easter recess.”
Charlie stood on the floor of the House while his fellow members of Congress buzzed around him. Just a week before, the Puerto Rican terrorists had fired on them, killing MacLachlan and wounding five others. And here they all were, debating a military aid bill for the United Kingdom as if nothing had happened. In the real world, Charlie noted, people took time to grieve; institutions were shuttered for days in the wake of horrific events that involved friends, family, and colleagues. But in Washington, the cogs in the machines kept turning regardless of damage to other wheels. This wasn’t an oddity of the federal bureaucracy, he had come to realize; this was one of its purposes.
Charlie took it all in. He could still see bloodstains on the carpet where MacLachlan had fallen, not unlike the spots on the marble stairs MacLachlan had shown him just minutes before he was shot. Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman was yielding the floor to his Democratic counterpart to debate how much the United States should cooperate with UK efforts to suppress a guerrilla rebellion in a Southeast Asia British colony most Americans had never heard of, the Malayan Union.
Then again, Charlie thought to himself, was the House’s ability to move on any different than his own? He considered the accident, the dead young woman, the Studebaker that LaMontagne had set on fire. He was a mess inside but strong enough to fake it in front of hundreds of members of Congress, journalists, the public.
“Bet you didn’t think you’d be focused on the Malayan emergency when you first got the call from Governor Dewey to join us here,” said Carlin, wrapping an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. Charlie’s heart rate suddenly increased. He wondered what Carlin knew. LaMontagne had to have told him everything.
“Malaya? Ha. No, not really,” Charlie confessed, struggling to act normally, as if they were just two members of Congress chitchatting about world affairs, no subtext, scandals, or corpses. He willed himself back into the conversation. Malaya. Yes, Malaya. “I know after the Japs pulled out of the peninsula after the war, the economy tanked and the Commies jumped,” he said.
“It’s the same old story,” Carlin said with a casual shrug. He seemed in a friendlier mood than usual. “Communists prey upon the peasants, feed them a load of crap about worker exploitation. Next thing you know, the workers are killing their bosses.”
Carlin looked at Charlie, seeming to size him up.
“Malaya’s a big source of rubber, you know,” Carlin said, his eyes locking briefly with Charlie’s, purposefully reminding him of Goodstone. Charlie said nothing. He was trying to determine what Carlin knew. Likely everything. Last time Charlie saw him, he was with LaMontagne. But maybe LaMontagne wanted to wield this power on his own. And it wasn’t as if LaMontagne weren’t complicit as well.
Carlin gave his shoulder a hearty pat before withdrawing his arm. “Come sit with me, Charlie,” he said.
Charlie, not eager for more of Carlin’s companionship but not seeing an easy exit, dutifully followed him to seats at the far end of the front row. He felt light-headed.
“One of my friends on the Agriculture Committee came up with a good idea for our farm bill,” Carlin said. “We always have a hard time getting Yankees to support it. But what if you become an original co-sponsor of our bill?”
Charlie knew better than to fall for Carlin’s casual come-on. The farm bill was a notorious gift of subsidies from Washington politicians to heartland voters. FDR had started the program in 1933 as part of the New Deal, paying farmers not to grow anything on portions of their land to prevent any surpluses; the government wanted to keep prices artificially high. It didn’t really work. Charlie and other urban congressmen thought the program corrupt and essentially graft.
“Now, why would I do that?” Charlie tried to soften his response with what he hoped was a winning smile. “Aside from your asking so nicely, of course. I mean, how would I explain to the good people of Manhattan why they have to live according to the capitalist system but their cousins in Alabama get paid by the government not to grow things?”
“Well,” Carlin said, his voice smooth and confident, “I just thought you and I could maybe start over here and try to get onto more solid footing. Our mutual friend Davis LaMontagne has been trying to convince me that I have you all wrong, that you want to be doing good here, that you just need some…guidance on how this town operates.”
His mouth spread into an expression that almost resembled a smile but was more akin, Charlie thought, to the look of a fox that had picked up a scent. “Working together, compromises; that’s how things get done here.” He landed two patronizing taps on Charlie’s knee.
Abner Lance, Carlin’s aide, appeared at his boss’s side and handed him a manila folder bulging with the farm bill. Carlin took it without looking at his assistant and gave it to Charlie. “Read it over when you can.” Again he offered something that might have been his version of a smile. “Now. Is there anything I can help you with?”
Charlie decided to treat this as a sincere question, though he had his doubts. Seeing Street across the House Chamber, he had an idea.
“I could use your help on something, yes,” Charlie said. “There’s a chemical plant for which General Kinetics is trying to get a permit in Harlem. A lot of local civil rights activists are after me to block it. Total headache. If you could kill it and handle Congressman Powell, that would be extremely helpful. I could try, but it would be nasty for me to get involved in any way, since Powell supports it.”
“Why don’t you want it?” Carlin asked. “Actually, never mind, that’s your business. Let me see what I can do.” Carlin lifted himself up off the chair, nodded to Charlie, and walked away.
The Pennsylvania Railroad’s Afternoon Congressional train departed DC’s Union Station at 4:30 p.m. sharp each weekday and made the 227-mile journey north to New York City’s Penn Station in three hours and thirty-five minutes.
Following the vote to provide military aid to the UK for its crackdown against Malayan guerrillas, Charlie walked the mile from the Capitol to Union Station and bought a ticket, and he still had time for a shoeshine before he boarded the train to Manhattan.