“I haven’t even discussed it with my wife yet.”
Cohn reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew his checkbook and a pen. “Allow me to make the first contribution, assuming you do run,” he said. He opened the checkbook, scribbled something, and then handed Charlie a check for five hundred dollars made out to him personally.
“Shouldn’t this be for the Vote for Charlie Marder Committee or something?”
“You can always transfer it to that committee after I have it set up for you. If you’d like me to take that step?”
Head down, Charlie thought. He nodded glumly then caught himself, smiled, and raised a glass to his new campaign treasurer as he felt his body sinking slowly into an imagined pit of ooze.
“The makers of Camel Cigarettes bring the world’s news events right into your own living room,” proclaimed the announcer before a black-and-white film montage of a prize fight, a battleship, the U.S. Capitol Building, and a bathing-beauty contest. “Sit back, light up a Camel, and be an eyewitness to the happenings that made history in the last twenty-four hours.”
Renee Street never missed an episode of NBC’s Camel News Caravan. She looked forward to her nightly reward after a long day spent tending to the twins, whose lives were interrupted five times a week by the sound of John Cameron Swayze’s opening line—“Let’s go hopscotching around the world for headlines”—a Pavlovian trigger for them to remain silent and out of trouble. With a flower in his lapel and a folksy, direct gaze, Swayze conveyed an air of charming authority.
Renee Street was such a fan, in fact, that she had been one of the first in line at the Woodward and Lothrop department store to purchase Swayze, a news-trivia board game from Milton Bradley. She might have been the wife of a congressman, but she never felt closer to the news and matters of importance than when she was playing Swayze. Which was how Charlie, Margaret, Isaiah, and Renee came to be sitting around a table at the Streets’ house two Thursdays after Street picked up Charlie and Margaret from Polly’s Lodging, rolling the dice and debating whether the answers to the news quiz were correct.
Isaiah was the first to raise an objection. Margaret had asked, “‘To which country did the U.S. send aid and manpower in the 1950s to help support democracy?’”
“I know the card is going to want me to say Korea,” Street said. “But there are really any number of countries that applies to—Albania, the Philippines, Germany.”
“Guatemala,” said Charlie.
“Iran,” Street added.
“British Guiana,” said Charlie. “Vietnam!”
“But he means troops,” protested Renee defensively, as if John Cameron Swayze had written the questions personally. “That’s why it says manpower.”
“CIA are men,” said her husband. “And they’re in Saigon. And all over.”
“Poorly worded, Swayze,” Charlie teased.
Renee shot him a look of mock offense.
“The card does say Korea,” Margaret said. “So go again.”
Since returning from New York City and Nanticoke Island two weeks before, Charlie had done everything he could to keep his head down. He’d dutifully, if unhappily, handed the This Is Your Life investigation to Cohn, agreed to co-sponsor the farm bill with Carlin, and prepared for the comic-book hearing on behalf of Kefauver. All of it filled him with regret but there was some consolation in Margaret now knowing and understanding that this was what he had to do until they figured out some escape plan.
At work, he seldom left his congressional office except for a hearing or a vote; Leopold kept close tabs on him and seemed pleased with his new attitude, as it made for fewer complications in her professional life. After discovering nothing particularly noteworthy about Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Bernstein retreated to her more secretarial tasks; their banter continued but it was less charged, more benign. He wished he could explain to her the strategy, such as it was: Charlie had retreated from DC socializing and was spending any and all free time with Margaret, dining or seeing movies, and, twice now, staying in with the Streets.
“‘In what town did Senator Joseph McCarthy first reveal the presence of two hundred and five members of the Communist Party in the United States State Department?’” Margaret read.
The Streets conferred. Isaiah thought it was Charleston, West Virginia; Renee was certain it was Wheeling.
Charlie took the card from his wife’s hand and read it silently. “I would note,” he said, “that the card suggests that McCarthy’s ever-changing number of Reds at State is a factual accusation. When it says he revealed the presence.”
“What should it say instead?” Renee asked.
“I dunno. Claimed? Invented?”
“You yourself have said there are Communists in the government, Charlie,” said Isaiah.
“Of course,” Charlie said. “But we all know by now that McCarthy and Cohn were making up these numbers. I don’t think they’ve actually nailed down one Red in the State Department. They just concocted a story.”
“Don’t reporters do that too?” asked Margaret.
“Do they?” asked Charlie.
“I don’t think John Cameron Swayze makes anything up,” said Renee.
“I read articles about the Puerto Rican guerrillas that got everything wrong,” said her husband. “There are a few solid reporters here and there, but it seems like too much of what’s in the news media is spoon-fed to journalists by various government factions with agendas. Anti-Communist, pro-GOP, pro-Stevenson, pro-McCarthy, whatever. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Not these cards,” said Charlie. He lit a cigarette.
The next morning, as he walked through National Statuary Hall, Charlie noticed a small floor tile honoring James Polk, the eleventh president of the United States and the only former Speaker of the House to have made it to the top job. The tile marked where Polk’s desk had been from 1835 until 1839, when he was Speaker and the House Chamber was located where Statuary Hall now stood. Charlie had walked past or even on this tile countless times without giving it much thought; now he paused to examine it. Polk was an incredibly consequential president most Americans knew nothing about, he thought. Politics was a cruel gig.
Charlie’s early days in DC had been exciting (probably too exciting, he knew), but as the novelty wore off and the realities of political life became more oppressive, he found himself missing the less flashy, more substantial work he’d left behind at Columbia. He’d loved the quiet thrills of research and discovery, and if he was being completely honest, he missed the acclaim that came with his bestselling book.
He returned to his office, greeting Leopold with an absentminded nod as he sank into the chair behind his desk. Before him sat a collection of letters and documents as well as two books that had been sent to him: early proofs of Hermann Hagedorn’s The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill and the latest from his friend Paul Horgan, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History. He sighed. What was he doing? He recalled Mac and then Margaret Chase Smith suggesting he check out the special members-only collection at the Library of Congress; Smith had specifically urged him to look into Ben Franklin and the Hellfire Club he had briefly mentioned in Sons of Liberty. Beyond the welcome distraction and the possibility that another book might provide him with a clearer path forward, Charlie felt excited at the prospect of research and access to rare documents. He called Margaret to tell her he’d be late getting home.
“Five thirty. Right on time,” Bernstein said, looking at her watch. She’d been waiting for him in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Above her, in the semicircle over an arched window, hovered a painting of Johannes Gutenberg with two assistants at his printing press. Nearby were other painted tributes to the evolution of scholarship: a cairn, hieroglyphics, a cave painter, a monastery scriptorium.