The Hellfire Club Read online

  “I guess Irishmen can be pretty tribal,” Margaret observed. She watched the Kennedy brothers, a blur of hair and teeth, as they greeted well-wishers. She leaned closer to her husband and lowered her voice when she said, “Speaking of rumors, I heard quite a few about Jack from the nurses.”

  “Such as?”

  “All the stuff you’d expect. That the Boston crowd rounds up girls to join them in private parties. Coeds from GW and Catholic U.”

  “From Catholic?” Charlie said. “Not with all those nuns around. Even Jack would be scared.”

  “Charlie,” Margaret said incredulously, “you think our courageous Lieutenant Kennedy, who survived the Japs taking out his PT boat, braved sharks and riptides, and beat back dengue fever and cannibals, will be deterred by a couple of bearded nuns?”

  “I don’t recall that story having cannibals before.” Charlie smiled. “Ambassador Kennedy ought to put you on the payroll along with the rest of the press corps; that’s a nice touch.”

  Margaret grinned, then swallowed half the smile. “It’s disappointing to hear,” she said. “About Jack. I thought he was presidential timber.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t be surprised, Margaret. If he’s really presidential material, one expects a certain sangfroid.”

  Margaret looked askance at her husband. “You’re actually making the argument that presidential timber requires a willingness to commit adultery? As if it’s an asset?”

  “Not an asset per se.” Charlie smiled, lighting a cigarette. “How would Aristotle put it? All men who cheat are bastards. All presidents need to be able to be bastards. Therefore, all presidents should cheat!”

  “That’s not what I meant by presidential timber, Charlie,” Margaret said. She laughed and took a drag from his cigarette before returning it to him.

  “There’s Carlin.” Charlie gave a friendly wave to a tall and wiry man with slicked-back gray hair: Congressman Franklin Harris Carlin, the GOP chairman of the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, which disbursed almost fifty billion dollars each year. The Republicans had recaptured control of the House in 1952 in the Eisenhower landslide. With discretion over the distribution of such largesse, Carlin was one of the most popular men in town. Even in a city built on the swampy foundation of transaction, Carlin was notorious for always seeking out ways he could gain even more advantage.

  Carlin saw Charlie’s wave and responded with a cold look of disdain before he turned his head.

  “Goodness!” Margaret gave a short laugh of surprise. “Did you kill his puppy or something, Charlie?”

  Although reeling a bit from the snub, Charlie had a feeling he knew its source. “My first Appropriations Committee meeting was today,” Charlie said. “I said one thing. One thing! There was a company I didn’t think deserved taxpayer dollars.”

  “What company?”

  “Goodstone,” Charlie said. “They made the gas masks. The ones that didn’t work.”

  “Oh dear,” said Margaret.

  As an army captain in Europe during World War II, Charlie had led a platoon in battle for almost a year. In France there had been a tragedy caused by defective gas masks; Margaret knew little about the catastrophe other than the fact that Charlie remained haunted by it. Only twice in the nine years since the war had ended had Charlie tried to describe any of the horrors he’d witnessed, and both times he’d become so shaken by emotion, he had to leave the room. This was the first time she’d heard the masks were made by the famous Goodstone Rubber and Tire Company.

  A waiter with a tray of martinis was passing. Charlie snagged two glasses and handed one to his wife. He gulped down his as if it were water from a canteen.

  “One of the Democrats on the committee said, ‘That was a decade ago.’” Charlie shook his head. “I reminded him that Truman as a senator raked a bunch of companies over the coals for profiteering and shoddy workmanship.”

  “That’s right,” Margaret said. “Carnegie sent steel that caused the hull of that ship to crack.”

  “Right,” said Charlie, “and there were cruddy plane engines, dud grenades. Those companies were punished. Of course, Democrats don’t much like talking about Truman these days.”

  “How come I never read anything about Goodstone?” Margaret asked, sipping her drink.

  “I guess journalists don’t know about it. And I don’t know if there were any other incidents. I tried to get information after the war but I hit a wall. Maybe I should try again; maybe the calls of a congressman will get returned.”

  Margaret peered into the crowd. “Isn’t that Joe Alsop?” She tilted her chin toward a dark-haired man in his forties gracelessly gesturing as he explained something to a small group. Alsop and his brother wrote an influential syndicated newspaper column.

  “Yep,” said Charlie. “Navy man. POW.”

  “Well, tell him about Goodstone!” she said. “Now’s your chance!”

  “Oh no, Margaret,” he said. “This isn’t the time or place.” He paused, thoughtful. “It was probably naive of me to think I could get my way so soon; I don’t have enough capital here yet to push anything. I just said I wasn’t going to vote to give Goodstone any money after their masks failed me and my men.”

  “What happened after you told them that?”

  “The discussion kind of just stopped, and they all started talking among themselves, pretty much ignoring me. Lots of murmuring. Then Chairman Carlin said we would reconvene at a later date. When I approached him after to try to smooth matters over, he gave me the brush-off.”

  “Hmm,” Margaret said. She sipped her drink and met Charlie’s gaze.

  “Actually, come to think of it, some of the other vets—Strongfellow and MacLachlan and a few others—were the most, um, murmury. Is that a word?”

  “It most certainly is not.”

  “Look over there,” said Charlie, discreetly pointing through the crowd to a plain-looking man with a wide smile who was leaning on metal crutches. “There’s Strongfellow by the bar.”

  “The war hero, right?”

  “Every veteran in politics claims to be a war hero,” Charlie said. “But Strongfellow really is one.”

  “Well, you’re all heroes as far as I’m concerned,” Margaret said. “Either way, you should convince him and all the other veterans in Congress to block this nonsense. We don’t need the next generation of American soldiers dying in Indochina or Hungary because of war profit—”

  Margaret was interrupted by a clamor at the door; Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Patricia, had arrived. A coterie of photographers and reporters began peppering the Second Couple with questions and requests for posed pictures. The Nixons obliged, after which the vice president made a beeline for the Kennedys. Jack shook Nixon’s hand while Bob Kennedy patted him on the back.

  Margaret placed her empty martini glass on the windowsill and pulled a cigarette from the pack in her purse; Charlie deftly lit it for her with an aluminum trench lighter he pulled from his pocket. It was a souvenir he’d taken from a dead German soldier in France, though he was the only one who knew its provenance.

  “It’s both reassuring and disconcerting to see them all friendly-like,” Margaret said, waving her cigarette toward the circle of the Kennedys, the Nixons, and McCarthy.

  The lobby lights flickered on and off, signaling the start of the show. The audience began filtering into the theater, clearing the lobby. Charlie grabbed one more martini from a passing waiter. Margaret raised an eyebrow. “Slow down, tiger, the night is young.”

  Charlie shrugged unapologetically. “We’re about to watch a musical. About a union strike. I need all the fortification I can get.” Margaret jutted out her lower lip, mocking a sulk. “And more important, I want to take this occasion to toast you!” Charlie quickly added. “To have you here with me, breathing on me—I count that something of a miracle,” he said, paraphrasing Henry Miller.

  He scanned the room again. “Where the devil is Kefauver, anyway?”


  “Isn’t that him?” Margaret nodded at a bookish, big-boned man with a broad smile and thick spectacles moving toward them at a rapid pace. He greeted Charlie with an enthusiastic handshake.

  “Charlie, what a great pleasure to meet you at last. I’m Estes Kefauver,” he said softly, emphasizing the first syllable of his last name: “Key-fawv-er.” “And you must be Margaret,” he said, enveloping her hand in his while he leaned closer with a genial wink. “You’d better be careful; you’re not allowed to be too beautiful in this town. You’re going to make a lot of enemies.”

  Margaret smiled insincerely. She didn’t mind compliments, or tried not to, but she had already been wary of moving south, where she feared she might be viewed as nothing more than a decoration for Charlie’s arm, even more so than she was in New York City. She had her own career—as a zoologist—and it was irritating to be admired for only her exterior.

  “You look so familiar,” Kefauver told Charlie. “And not just because you resemble your father.”

  People routinely greeted Charlie with a vague sense of recognition. His road to semi-notoriety had begun some years earlier when he’d purchased a heavy wooden trunk for his father’s birthday at a Brooklyn junk shop. He’d brought it home, picked the lock, and found it contained a dozen books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, among them the diaries of a former page at the Continental Congress. Nicholas Mezedes had recorded his intimate impressions of the Founding Fathers, some of whom were involved in rather scandalous behavior at the time. With Margaret’s organizational help and editing, Charlie had smoothed Mezedes’s prose into more colloquial dialogue and a compelling narrative. The resulting book—Sons of Liberty—had become a runaway bestseller. Charlie had thrived. Columbia University offered him a path to a full professorship. At the time, the public was infatuated with intellectual celebrities, and Charlie appeared on popular shows such as What’s My Line? and Art Linkletter’s House Party.

  “You may have seen me on television a few years ago when my book on the Founding Fathers came out,” Charlie said now.

  “Maybe that’s it,” Kefauver said. “I was on What’s My Line? too, you know!” He smiled.

  Ushers began circling the lobby with chimes, alerting the crowd that the show was just minutes from starting. “We’d better head in,” Kefauver said, leading them into the theater.

  “Maybe the senator can give you some advice on blocking the Goodstone funds,” Margaret said quietly to Charlie. “You need to rally folks.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Jack Kennedy might help too,” she said. “He would be a great ally.”

  “Great idea,” said Charlie. “And I’ll just join Ike on the links tomorrow and get him on board as well.”

  She smacked him playfully on the shoulder.

  The lights in the theater dimmed except for those closest to the stage. The crowd, well versed in protocol, applauded for the vice president and his wife, sitting in a prestigious box near stage left. The Nixons at first seemed uncertain the applause was for them, then stood hesitantly. The vice president offered a stiff bow and then a wide grin that couldn’t have looked less sincere.

  “Oh dear,” Margaret whispered.

  Kefauver nodded toward the vice president.

  “Earlier this month, I met a guy who knew Dick during the war. They were stationed at Bougainville Island.”

  “Where?” asked Charlie.

  “It’s in Papua New Guinea,” Margaret told her husband. “Forgive Charlie,” she said to Kefauver, “they didn’t get much news about the Pacific campaign in the foxholes of France.”

  “They don’t have newspapers in France?” Kefauver joked.

  “Charlie was too busy trying to keep his platoon alive while they breathed in poison gas because of junky American gas masks,” Margaret said tartly.

  “I didn’t get much news about anything when I was in Europe,” Charlie said, lightly squeezing Margaret’s hand. “It left some odd holes in my knowledge.”

  “Anyway, Dick basically ran a burger joint for pilots there,” Kefauver said. “Beer, coffee, toast. But the most interesting thing this gentleman told me was that Dick was a cardsharp. He cleaned up. ‘Best poker face you’ve ever seen,’ he said. He bluffed just enough to guarantee that everyone stayed in when he actually had the cards.”

  He leaned over as if confiding some great wisdom. “Watch out for the poker faces in this town,” Kefauver whispered.

  Margaret intertwined her fingers with Charlie’s as the lights went out and the opening number of the musical began.

  Charlie hated it.

  Chapter Three

  Friday, January 15, 1954—Morning

  Georgetown, Washington, DC

  Margaret paused to roll her eyes and suppress a smile while her husband, on his knees, gently kissed her stomach. She was standing at the bathroom mirror in her camisole, carefully applying her eyeliner, just recovered from another bout of morning sickness. So she wasn’t strictly in the mood to be touched, but she also didn’t want to push Charlie away.

  “Bye-bye, little Alger,” Charlie sang to the baby in her womb. He made it a daily habit to come up with the worst possible names to bestow upon their impending arrival. “Good-bye, sweet little Hirohito Marder.”

  Margaret laughed, then spat into the sink, wiped her mouth, and reached for her favorite pair of khakis. “I can’t believe these pants still fit,” she said, stepping into them. “I feel so bloated, like the boa digesting the elephant in The Little Prince.”

  “And yet you still look très belle,” Charlie said in the grunty French accent he and his troops would use mockingly to lighten the mood. He eyed her valise while he knotted his tie. “Excited about the trip?” he asked, trying his best to hide his concern and, yes, disapproval of Margaret’s participation in the zoological study of the mysterious ponies out on Nanticoke and Susquehannock Islands in Maryland. Prior to their move to Washington, DC, she had discussed writing a book about the ponies for a university publishing house, but the editors there—in addition to being dismissive of a woman zoologist—felt the book would need firsthand accounts from a full team in the field. Margaret had planned to spend her first year in Washington, DC, trying to secure funding and partnerships for such an excursion. Then, almost like magic, an older zoologist she knew—one who shared her minor obsession with the ponies—had called her in December and offered her a job as a researcher on his own trip to the very same islands. She could join his study and they could co-author a paper.

  Charlie had supported her desire to keep working in her field. In theory. In fact, the opportunity for her to join the Maryland study was partly how he’d convinced her to abandon their lives in New York City and move to the nation’s capital for his new job. But ever since the baby news the week before, he’d deeply regretted their agreement. He kept imagining Margaret in a field getting kicked in the abdomen by a wild pony.

  “So someone from the research team is picking you up?” he asked. “How long is the drive?”

  “Two and a half hours, I think,” she said. “Wait, let me show you.”

  She retrieved a map from her purse and showed him the route they’d be taking. They would drive from the city through rural Maryland and to the tip of an isthmus, then proceed by boat to the far island, Nanticoke. He followed her finger absently, picturing her out there in the middle of nowhere surrounded by wild animals and sleeping on the ground in a tent. He fretted but out loud said only, “Just don’t work too hard.”

  Margaret chuckled to herself; Charlie was as easy to read as the top line of an eye chart. Did he think she couldn’t take care of herself? “I’ll be back a week from tomorrow at the very latest,” she said, yielding at the sight of his worried face. “We’ll be fine, I promise.” She patted her belly and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

  The ponies had been a fascination of Margaret’s since she was a child, when her mother had taken her and her sister on a long camping vacation after thei
r father had been killed in an airship disaster. A few hundred wild ponies roamed the beaches and marshes of Susquehannock Island every spring and summer, then inexplicably crossed the bay every autumn to return to Nanticoke Island a few hundred yards south. No one knew where the ponies had originally come from or why they behaved the way they did or even how they made the trek. Margaret would be part of a small group of similarly fascinated zoologists, a loosely affiliated research team headed by Dr. Louis Gwinnett, whom she had met at an annual conference; they were going to try to figure out how and why the animals made the seasonal crossings.

  Charlie raised his hands in surrender. “Just find a way to call me if you can. Miss Leopold can always track me down. She’s like a bloodhound.”

  Catherine Leopold, a Southern former beauty queen in her forties with a helmet of thick brown hair and penetrating pale blue eyes, served as Charlie’s office manager. He’d inherited her from his predecessor, Congressman Martin Van Waganan, and in their three weeks together, he’d come to rely on her. Her ruthless efficiency was candy-coated, charming, and deft; Charlie depended on her wholly.

  Margaret buttoned her blouse. “I’m not sure how many phone booths we’ll find out there in the fields, but if I need to reach you, I promise I will. And I’ll try to find a way to call you at work on Monday. Just try to be in your office as much as possible so I don’t miss you; I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get away.”

  Charlie reached his arms around her and gently pulled her close. “I’ll miss you two,” he said.

  “Us too, darling,” she said. “While we’re gone, you stay focused. You enlist some fellow veterans and kill that Goodstone funding. And don’t drink too much! You were comatose last night after just a few martinis. I couldn’t wake you at all when you started your three a.m. snore-a-bration.”