by Jake Tapper
Margaret looked at her husband with an expression that suggested both shock and revulsion, and then, without a word, she stood up from the bed, walked to the door, opened it, and took in great gulps of fresh air. The crickets’ refrain grew louder and seemed almost taunting to Charlie.
He sat, helpless, while she stood ramrod straight in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, her chin thrust out defiantly.
He feared he had lost her, that this had been a bridge too far. Had telling her been a selfish decision? Had he blown up his marriage in the name of saving it?
Charlie didn’t know what to say. His heart pounded with desperation.
“I know you’re disappointed,” he said. “I am too. I know I should have stopped him and called the police.”
Margaret stared up at the sliver of moon. She was silent.
“All I can say is that at the time, I was toxically drunk. And in some sort of shock. And when I finally understood what had happened, the thought of leaving you and the baby on your own seemed atrocious. That’s not an excuse and it makes me sound as if I think I’m some selfless hero, but you have to believe it’s not like that at all. I am disgusted with myself.”
“I’m actually bothered about something else more than that,” she said.
Uh-oh, thought Charlie. Jesus. I shouldn’t have told her.
“How did you drive the car?” Margaret asked.
Charlie was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
She turned around and faced him, standing in the doorway. “You were blackout drunk. Strongfellow told you later that you were knocked out.”
“Right.”
“Charlie, you don’t just shake off that sort of thing and go drive. That’s not you. You go full coma. You’re impossible to wake up from something like that. I can’t even get you to stop snoring. And that’s from mere martinis, forget absinthe.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t think you were driving the car. I don’t think you killed that young woman. And then LaMontagne just happens along? And now you’re indebted to him? I mean, really?”
Charlie looked at her eyes, as clear and green as emeralds, her expression as sincere as a child’s. She meant this. And in her certainty, he began to believe it might be true. It hadn’t even been a full week since the crash, but it felt like six months. He’d carried the guilt of that night with him as a constant companion; the thought that he might not have been responsible was something he barely allowed himself to consider, to hope for. He started to offer a protest, but Margaret, silhouetted in the doorway, silenced him with a stern shake of her head.
“There’s just no one who knows you like I do, Charlie, and I’m telling you that you weren’t responsible for that car crash. Not for any moral or ethical reason; I mean, just pure metabolism.”
She reentered the room and shut the motel door behind her.
“I think it was all a setup,” she said.
At nine that morning, Isaiah Street’s 1952 green Plymouth Cranbrook pulled up in front of their motel room, its brakes screeching and gravel spraying.
Charlie had called him a few hours earlier. He knew it was a big favor to ask, but he believed that Street had some idea of how high the floodwaters were rising around him, a sense confirmed when Street immediately agreed.
The Marders were waiting and ready when Street arrived, giving him no need to honk or even turn off the car as they climbed inside, Charlie up front, Margaret in back. Street nodded his appreciation: “No reason for someone like me to be in one place for too long in rural Maryland,” he said drily as he made a U-turn out of the parking lot and got back on Rural Route 32, keeping five miles an hour under the speed limit, as always.
“I’m guessing you went faster as a Tuskegee Airman,” Margaret joked.
“All I had to worry about up there was the Luftwaffe,” Street said.
Street turned the radio dial to news: the statehoods of Hawaii and Alaska were being put on a single Senate bill, against the wishes of the Eisenhower administration.
“Why does he want them separate?” asked Margaret.
“Hawaii’s a Republican state, Alaska’s Democratic,” Charlie said. “Ike is more keen on adding the Republican voters and senators to the rolls.”
More news from the Marshall Islands: The Atomic Energy Commission was about to acknowledge that more than two dozen Americans and hundreds of natives had been exposed to radiation during the recent testing of an atomic bomb. Next, stunningly, the army had issued a report charging that McCarthy and Cohn had threatened the military if it didn’t provide preferential treatment for one of their former investigators, Private David Schine. McCarthy and Cohn had wanted Schine to get an expedited promotion and be stationed at West Point with a cushy job. After those requests were denied, Cohn threatened to “wreck the Army,” sources said.
“What a little creep,” Margaret said. “Attack-attack-attack, threaten-threaten-threaten. How did Cohn make it to adulthood without learning how civilized people behave?”
“Civilized people such as whom?” asked Charlie. “Such as Joe McCarthy?”
“Him too,” Margaret said. “This is not normal.”
Street chortled.
“Speak up, Isaiah,” Charlie said. “You’re among friends.”
“I’m sorry, but the things commonly said about Negroes not only in polite company but on the floor of the House and Senate…you don’t know what being uncivilized is. Imagine a world full of Cohns and McCarthys accusing all people with your skin color of every crime imaginable, of being subhuman. Not for our ideology, not for being a Red—whether true or not—but for how we were born. Imagine statues of these accusers lining the halls of Congress. I mean, my people have been facing McCarthyism since before McCarthy! ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a Negro?’”
He shook his head and silence filled the car.
“It’s a fair point,” Margaret finally said.
“These are the things I typically don’t say in front of white folks.”
Another silence. Charlie looked toward the backseat, to Margaret, who smiled at him regretfully.
“I suppose there are no secrets among us anymore,” Charlie said.
“I would hope not,” said Street. He looked at Margaret in the rearview mirror. “Your husband told me all about the predicament in which he finds himself.”
“That’s right,” Charlie said. “You’re the only two who know everything.”
“Not everything,” Margaret noted. “Tell Isaiah about New York. About McCarthy’s request.” So Charlie told Isaiah about McCarthy’s menacing demand that Charlie obtain the Strongfellow file from his father’s study and that he’d complied.
Street drove them through the rural hills of Maryland, which, though they were only ninety minutes or so from Baltimore and two hours from Washington, DC, looked like they could have been in Alabama or Indiana. A small town would pop up around a turn—pharmacy, diner, doctor’s office, hardware store, gas station, school—then quickly vanish after two blocks, the landscape going back to forests or farms. They sped by immense empty fields where corn would soon grow, roadside produce markets advertising asparagus, tomatoes, and squash that did not yet exist. As they rode, they discussed the murky swamp in which Charlie had found himself wading.
“I think for now, you’ve got to go along to get along while we figure out what to do next,” Street said. “Maybe you can cease to be of any use to them? Get a new committee assignment? Instead of Appropriations, maybe try to get on Veterans’ Affairs. God knows it should be easy enough to get a seat—not exactly a meal-ticket committee assignment.”
Margaret lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. Wearing black sunglasses and a sheer scarf wrapped around her head, she looked like a movie star trying not to be recognized.
“Let’s just try to keep a low profile, though, Charlie,” she said. “You don’t need to be going out to cocktail parties or poker nights. Just go to work an
d come home.”
“I agree with that, except the poker-night part,” Street said.
“Me too,” Charlie said grimly.
Charlie sank in his seat. Street found a jazz station on the radio, and none of them spoke until the car crossed the brand-new Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which, at 4.3 miles, was the third-longest bridge in the world. The structure seemed endless to Charlie, and there was part of him that hoped they might never have to return to land.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tuesday, March 16, 1954
Washington, DC
When Charlie met Cohn at Filibuster’s on Constitution Avenue the following Tuesday, the lawyer stood and greeted him with a smile, then sank back into the leather club chair at the corner table and summoned another Manhattan with a word and a flick of his hand in the direction of the bar. Charlie placed the manila folder containing NBC’s dirt on Strongfellow in the center of the table.
“You take a peek?” asked Cohn.
“No.”
Cohn rolled his eyes while he lit a Lucky Strike. “Need a towel there, Pontius?” He opened the folder and inspected its contents.
They were sitting below framed faded photographs of once-powerful legislators whose names might prove elusive to anyone but the most devoted student of congressional arcana. While Cohn read the NBC memo about Strongfellow, Charlie glanced idly at the men on the wall. He thought of the Howard Chandler Christy painting of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, about how only three or so of the delegates might be recognizable even to members of Congress. Will anyone know about me? he wondered. His congressional career to date would hardly merit a spot on even a monument to obscurity.
The waitress brought Cohn’s Manhattan and took Charlie’s drink order.
“You have no interest in what I’m reading?” Cohn asked without looking up, his eyes keenly focused on whatever incriminating information lay before him.
“Of course I’m interested,” said Charlie. “That doesn’t mean I think it’s my business. And Strongfellow’s a friend.”
“Friend?” Cohn said. “You’re a sweetie pie.”
“Why do you need dirt on Strongfellow?” Charlie asked.
Cohn closed the folder. “We need to know what’s out there about him so we can protect him,” he said. “If NBC Entertainment knows damaging information about a congressman, then NBC News might report it. They probably won’t, but still. Strongfellow’s on the team; we need to be prepared to protect him.”
“Protect him? He was in the OSS and can barely stand because of the injuries he sustained at the hands of the Nazis. If there’s a tougher son of a bitch in Congress, I have yet to meet him.”
Cohn barked a short laugh. “For a professional historian, you’re pretty gullible. I wouldn’t believe everything This Is Your Life tells you.”
“You think I’m a gullible historian?” Charlie attempted a smile. “Maybe it’s a good thing I’ve changed careers.”
“Funny you’d say so.” Cohn looked at him sternly. “There are some Democrats planning to run against you, as you might expect. Your father and I spoke about setting up a campaign committee. With your permission, of course.”
“You spoke with my father?”
“Sure,” Cohn responded, as if there were nothing odd about that. “Carlin asked me to. You have no reelect set up.”
Head down, Charlie told himself. Act like this is all fine with you. “That’s a flattering offer and I appreciate it. I haven’t even officially decided if I’m running for reelection.”
Cohn raised an eyebrow as the cocktail waitress deposited a glass of Jack Daniel’s in front of Charlie.
“Why wouldn’t you run?” Cohn asked. “Granted, a certain group of us are well aware that you have no idea what you’re doing, but to the wide world out there, including most of the morons in this town, you’re a comer.”
“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.