“And surely our bosses would object to giving money to war profiteers who provided shoddy goods, risking and even costing the lives of our men,” Charlie said. “This is a fight I didn’t seek, sir, but to be frank, I’m stunned that any of my colleagues in Congress would challenge me on it.”
“Well, Charlie, I’m talking about the chairman of the committee and some others in leadership, and I’m quite certain they don’t think of you as a colleague. But of course you should fight for what you think is right. That’s an admirable trait, and too few of us possess it. Just know that this town isn’t built to reward it.”
“I’m starting to get that impression,” Charlie said.
Kefauver looked down at his glass. Charlie felt obliged to fill the slightly prickly silence.
“W. C. Fields,” Charlie said. “‘Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore always carry a small snake.’”
Kefauver smiled. “What else shall we drink to?”
“To a real leader at the top of your party’s ticket two years from now,” Charlie said. Clink, clink. Kefauver downed the entire glass in one easy gulp.
The door to the conference room opened without warning and an older man walked in. His jowls sagged like a mastiff’s. Behind him stood one of the senator’s aides, who apparently had been trying to politely prevent the man from bursting in unannounced. Kefauver waved the aide off.
“Why, hello, Doctor,” Kefauver said, standing and extending a hand. “Congressman Marder, may I present Dr. Fredric Wertham.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, sir,” Charlie said, following Kefauver’s lead and standing to shake the doctor’s hand.
“This is the young congressman I told you about, Fredric,” Kefauver said. “His father and I are old friends.” He motioned for both men to sit down. “Charlie, I assume you’re acquainted with the groundbreaking psychiatric work Dr. Wertham has done at Bellevue and his philanthropic work with the colored people of your home city. The Lafargue Clinic—did I pronounce the name correctly, Doctor?”
“We’re in Harlem,” Wertham said, ignoring the question. “I set up the clinic just after the war, a project with Richard Wright and some others. You know Wright, I assume?”
“The writer?” asked Charlie.
“Of course,” snapped Wertham, as if it had been glaringly obvious that the only Richard Wright he might know would be the author of the acclaimed Native Son.
“Well, it’s not an uncommon name,” Charlie couldn’t help observing. “Anyway, I don’t personally know him, but the book was haunting. Could have done without the stage adaptation.”
“On that we are in agreement.” Wertham softened a bit. “In any case, Richard and I established a mental-hygiene clinic for the good people of Harlem who are unable to afford psychiatric care, not only because of the unjust capitalist system that keeps them impoverished but also because most psychiatric institutions do not admit Negroes.”
Wertham’s face had turned pink and his voice was rising. “How are we to solve the problem of crime in New York City without addressing the psychiatric needs of the very underclass committing the crimes!” He was only about three feet away from Charlie, close enough for Charlie to identify the smell on the gust of bad breath he exhaled. Tuna fish.
There was an uncomfortable silence, one Charlie filled when he suddenly remembered the first time he’d heard Wertham’s name.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Charlie said, “but weren’t you part of the defense in Albert Fish’s trial?”
Albert Fish was a child molester, a murderer, and a cannibal. He had been executed in 1936, when Charlie was sixteen.
“Yes, I testified in that trial,” Wertham said to Charlie. “What a travesty. The jury did not care in the slightest that Mr. Fish had no control over himself. His illness was just as real as if he’d had a tumor rotting his brain. And yet they punished him for his disease. The twelve boors on that jury had bloodlust just as bad as Mr. Fish’s—but their taste for flesh was the kind that society deems socially acceptable.”
“My father was on the defense team,” Charlie said. “Winston Marder?” Wertham looked at him blankly. “Anyway, admirable work for the people of New York,” Charlie said. “How can I help? What can I do?”
“I’m glad you asked,” said Kefauver. “We’re holding hearings on juvenile delinquency this spring. Maybe April. Wertham is our key witness. The hearings will be in New York, in your congressional district, and we’d like you to help host and arrange a venue. We’d also like you to participate.” He glanced at Wertham.
“Estes here feels we need some youth on the panel,” Wertham said.
“I’m thirty-three,” said Charlie. “Hardly young.”
“For Congress, you’re an infant,” said Wertham. “This place is practically a museum exhibit of sarcophagi.”
“These are going to be big, Charlie,” said Kefauver. “We’re going to tear the lid off one of the most pernicious influences in our culture today. There will be a lot of press coverage; it will be a stellar opportunity to establish yourself. When folks hear you’re part of my next project, my guess is they’ll be more inclined to treat you with the respect you clearly feel you deserve.”
“And what are we going after?” Charlie asked, ignoring the gibe. “What exactly is the pernicious influence?”
Wertham smiled; it was the moment he’d been waiting for.
“Comic books,” he said.
Chapter Five
Monday, January 18, 1954
Maryland Rural Route 32/U.S. Capitol
“Comic books?” asked Margaret. “So did you laugh in his face?”
Margaret was using the desk phone at Polly’s Lodging, a motel about five miles from the Nanticoke Island campsite where she’d been conducting her research for the last two days. She’d volunteered to drive back to the mainland to buy some batteries and bread for the group, and she’d seized the opportunity to phone Charlie at work. She’d asked the long-distance operator to call back after their conversation was done and tell her the charges so she could give that amount to the motel owner, a dour older woman, presumably Polly.
“You should have seen their faces,” said Charlie. He was sitting behind the desk in his congressional office staring at a framed photograph of Margaret from their wedding day, one that captured her laughing uproariously, her head thrown back. He reached for a cigarette. “It was as if they were revealing that milk causes cancer. But it was about goddamn Batman.”
Charlie looked out his office window. Being the most junior member of the Eighty-Third Congress, he had a view of the air-conditioning unit of the second-most-junior member.
“Right after the meeting, Kefauver couriered over a package. Wertham has a book coming out in a few months…what’s it called—” He leafed through the manila folder. “Seduction of the Innocent.”
“Sounds very dangerous,” she said. “Innocent people shouldn’t be seduced!”
“This is no joke, Margaret!” Charlie protested in mock horror. “Kefauver sent me an issue of Ladies’ Home Journal from last November. On the front of the magazine: ‘What Parents Don’t Know About Comic Books.’” He paused to read dramatically: “‘Here is the startling truth about the ninety million comic books America’s children read each month.’ He argues that comic books are literally instruction manuals for children to become hardened criminals.”
“It sounds…kind of silly,” Margaret said.
“Yes, and Kefauver wants to hold goddamn hearings on this in Manhattan in April!”
Margaret paused and Charlie had a feeling he knew why. She probably didn’t care to hear him discuss doing something he didn’t want to do, something he thought was an idiotic distraction. Their lives until now had been refreshingly free of any need for compromise. They were academics, idealists who’d participated in fund-raisers to fight polio and to foster better education for poor children. For the first time, they were facing choices they didn’t like.
“More important,” she finally said, “how’s the Goodstone fight?”
“Nothing since we last spoke, really. Kefauver cautioned me to be careful; Miss Leopold is against my doing it. I’m going to a poker game for veterans in Congress tonight. I’ll see if I can get them on board.”