The Hellfire Club

by Jake Tapper

  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.

  “Come with me,” Charlie said, not breaking stride.

  Over the past few months, he and Bernstein had developed an easy friendship and even an affection, and while he wanted to encourage her scholarship, he also felt the need to establish some firmer boundaries so as to avoid any misunderstandings. Bernstein, looking a bit wounded by his brusque greeting, scurried after him as he proceeded up the stairway to the east end of the Great Hall’s north alcove, to the office of the Librarian of Congress.

  “So?” she said.

  “So.”

  “So…what are we up to here?”

  “Oh, right,” said Charlie, reminded that other people existed. “Why are we here. Both Mac and Senator Smith told me about this members-only section of the library.”

  “Right. And?”

  “And Smith suggested that there might be more information about the Hellfire Club. Do you remember from my book?”

  “Of course! Ben Franklin and his lecherous adventures in England. I’d read a whole book on that subject alone.”

  “The problem was I couldn’t find any more about the Hellfire Club when I was working on my book. I tried. Maybe this special collection will have more. In any case, I thought you’d be interested in joining me to see what they have.”

  Charlie didn’t say it aloud, but beyond his curiosity, part of him was contemplating a return to academia—and a potential project of note might ease the path back to the Upper West Side.

  But for now his path was to the office of the Librarian of Congress. The previous holder of that position had left to work for the UN, and President Eisenhower had not yet nominated a replacement, so the task of escorting the congressman and his comely young aide to the members-only section of the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room in the Adams Building of the library fell to Stuart Sneed, an earnest and deferential junior librarian who soon appeared at the office of the librarian and apologized for being thirty seconds late. He walked Charlie and Bernstein down to the basement, along a long hall, and then, once they were in the Adams Building, up two flights of stairs. He unlocked a heavy oak door and escorted them into the expansive Special Collections Reading Room, where a half a dozen scholarly types sat in silence in armchairs or at well-lit desks studying various books and documents. Sneed offered Charlie and Bernstein a cursory tour of items on display behind glass cases: the library’s Gutenberg Bible, published sometime around 1454; German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 Introduction to Cosmography, where it was first suggested that the New World be named America; two pairs of spectacles, a pocketknife, a five-dollar bill, and other items President Lincoln had had on his person that fateful night at Ford’s Theater.

  “Spooky,” Bernstein said with a slight shudder.

  “But other than that, how was the library, Miss Bernstein?” joked Charlie.

  With a deferential tilt of his head, Sneed indicated that they should follow him. At another door at the far end of the room, he extracted an enormous key ring, shuffled through all the possibilities, and finally arrived at one that had been marked with red nail polish. He grinned triumphantly and inserted the key with a flourish. Opening the door created a sound of suction; the members-only collection was obviously tightly controlled for both climate and security.

  “When was the last time anyone visited this collection?” Bernstein whispered.

  “A couple months ago, I believe,” said Sneed. “It’s seldom used. Not too many members of Congress take the time to see the antiquities. If they want something from us, it usually concerns information about what’s going on today, and we have a page bring whatever is needed right over.”

  The room inside was cozy, with an ornate Oriental rug, a large sofa, two plush armchairs, and wall-to-wall bookshelves and wooden file cabinets. Sneed pinballed around the room, turning on lamps, explaining how the various papers and letters in the collection were categorized, offering white cotton gloves and tweezers to Charlie and Bernstein for the handling of any document sealed in plastic. He also provided them with a binder detailing all of the various collections in the room and where they might be found.

  “Library closes at ten,” he said, after which he disappeared and left them to begin exploring the caverns of ancient letters, in search of information about Benjamin Franklin and the Hellfire Club. They quickly found five folders of deeds, proclamations, books, drafts, newspapers, speeches, and correspondence to and from Franklin, and they divided them into two piles.

  Two hours into the documents, Charlie threw his hands up in frustration.

  “Still nothing?” Bernstein asked.

  “No. A few mentions of his trips to England, but zero about the Hellfire Club, or the Medmenham Monks, as they called themselves. I guess I should have known better than to expect something to just be sitting here, waiting to be discovered.”

  Bernstein sighed sympathetically. He’d asked her to look in the section on England in the 1700s for mentions of Sir Francis Dashwood, the founder of the hedonistic society. So far, all she’d found was information having to do with his duties as postmaster general in England.

  Charlie stood and stretched and looked at his watch; time to get home to Margaret. “Let’s call it a night. Tomorrow, we’ll brainstorm about what to do next. Maybe there’s something in that binder detailing all the collections that we can study in the meantime. Can you ask Sneed to make a photocopy? Pretty sure the library has a Copyflo.”

  “A what?”

  “A prototype photographic copy machine. You know, xerography.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Congressman.”

  “New technology. Have you really not followed this? Haloid Company? Xerography? Photographic copies of documents? It will be huge. You should invest in it if you have any money.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Seriously, though,” Charlie said, collecting his belongings, “don’t you read the business pages?”

  “Not really,” Bernstein admitted. “I prefer to focus on the politicians, not the CEOs.”

  “And who do you think,” Charlie asked, walking toward the door, “is telling those politicians what to do?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tuesday, April 20, 1954

  Georgetown, Washington, DC

  Charlie exhaled one last satisfied breath to both begin the process of bringing down
his heart rate and signal his immense satisfaction.

  “Indeed,” Margaret said.

  Their clothes strewn about the living room, the couple lay naked on the couch. In the weeks since they returned from Maryland, they had been reconnecting—first as friends, now as husband and wife, her expanding abdomen no impediment.

  “Second trimester is a bit more fun,” he observed.

  “Hormones seem to be working for me, not against me, now.”

  He stood and looked around the room for his underwear.

  “On the lampshade, darling,” she said.

  “Only you could make that sound classy.”

  “Will you get me a cigarette while you’re up? They’re in my purse. By the closet.”

  They’d had an early dinner, during which they’d talked about the baby—Margaret’s appointment with the obstetrician earlier that day had gone well—and Charlie regaled her with tales of the more scandalous members of the House of Representatives: the sot whom the police had saved from drowning after he passed out in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool; the senator who fancied himself a Lothario and who had hands like an octopus and the breath of a warthog; the young man who’d essentially inherited his congressional seat from his father, though the boy was so dense he could barely write his name in the sand with a stick. They’d laughed together for the first time in months.

  Now he lit cigarettes for both of them and handed one to her as she sat naked on the sofa. She reached for a throw pillow to cover herself, but he plunked down next to her and gently stopped her from doing so. She looked at him. He leaned in for another kiss.

  “I’m going to ask you to do something for me,” she said.

  “What is it? Anything.”

  “I want you to get the hell out of here,” she said with a smile.

  He didn’t understand.

  “Charlie. Ever since that night on Nanticoke Island, you’ve been wonderful.” She grasped his shoulders with a gentle squeeze, lowered her forehead to meet his, then pulled away and said, “But I must tell you—right now I feel exhausted. And I feel guilty.”

  “Guilty?”

  “Because I know you loved those poker games and Renee told me there’s another one tonight, even though it’s Tuesday. I’m going to make some tea, read my book, and fall asleep almost certainly before you do. Why don’t you go have fun? It will make me feel so much better.”

  And so it was that Charlie returned to veterans’ poker night, only to learn that LaMontagne had become a regular attendee. He obviously wasn’t an elected official, but as a veteran who seemingly had connections with every member of Congress, he had wormed his way into the group.

  “Congressman!” LaMontagne greeted him with a Cheshire Cat grin, gleaming and pearly, everything else about him fading away. Charlie wondered if LaMontagne’s handshake, firm to the point of pain, was meant to send a message. He faked a convivial enthusiasm as best he could, then looked around to see if anyone else had noted LaMontagne’s phony hail-fellow-well-met routine. No one had. In Washington, Charlie thought, insincerity was the air they breathed. It made him occasionally feel like Holden Caulfield. Which, in turn, felt immature.

  LaMontagne leaned close to Charlie’s ear. “Listen, I spoke with Cohn and we may need you to do something with the Strongfellow dossier. Get it to the press. Do you know any national columnists?”

  Charlie shook his head, more in wonder at the man’s nerve than in response. In a roomful of Charlie’s fellow members of Congress, LaMontagne had just brought up one of the most sensitive subjects of his professional life and assigned him yet another unethical task. Moreover, he’d proceeded directly to the logistics of it all, bypassing whether or not Charlie was even willing. “I don’t know anyone, really. In the press.”

  “We’ll talk,” LaMontagne said confidently, patting Charlie on the shoulder. “I have some ideas.”

  Charlie grabbed LaMontagne’s wrist and pulled him closer. “You said ‘we’ need this favor. There’s something that none of you have ever explained to me: Who is ‘we’?”

  LaMontagne smiled. “In due time,” he said. “Senator Knowland!” he called jovially across the room. He winked at Charlie as he walked away. Charlie watched him and realized any escape he’d imagined for himself was just that: imaginary. He went to the bar cart and quickly downed a scotch.

  “Easy with those, soldier.” Street appeared at his side. “You don’t want your poker judgment impaired.”

  Strongfellow turned on his radio, and Perry Como’s voice came over the airwaves: A jury may find her guilty, but I’d forgive her if I could see…Two dozen veterans broke into small groups, and the room filled with the sounds of decanters clinking against the rims of tumblers and the fizzing of flat- and cone-top beer cans being cracked open.

  Charlie sat with Street, and Strongfellow joined them and began dealing a traditional game of straight five-card poker.

  “Weird not having Mac here,” Charlie noted.

  “Yep,” said Street.

  “Well, this is turning into a fun night,” remarked Strongfellow. The other two chuckled. “As long as we’re being all serious-like, I had the weirdest run-in last week with Abner Lance.”

  “Who?” asked Street.

  “The Carlin aide,” Charlie said.

  “That freaky Nosferatu-looking guy?” asked Street. “Where? Two cards.”

  Strongfellow replaced Street’s castoffs. “So there’s a small town in my district, Skull Valley. Five years ago, a pesticide plant opened up there and everything was fine. But maybe six months ago, thousands of sheep started dying. No reason anyone could see; ranchers just walked outside and found the entire herd was hooves-up.”

  “Jesus,” said Charlie.

  “One of my staffers wrote to the interior secretary, McKay, to try to get some money for the ranchers and make sure it was safe for, you know, actual people to live nearby.”

  “How many sheep total?” Street asked.

  “Six thousand,” Strongfellow said. “Literally six thousand dead sheep. We got a form letter back from Interior assuring us that we had no business inquiring any further. Saturday night I was in Georgetown at a restaurant, waiting for a table, and Abner Lance shows up out of nowhere and tells me to drop the matter.”

  “To drop it?” Charlie asked.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s madness,” said Charlie.

  “Think about what they’re manufacturing,” said Street, “a spray to kill millions of insects. A weapon. To commit genocide against a species. So sheep dying is not surprising. My wife’s family in Louisiana had to deal with something similar with local chemical plants. And we had dead people there, not sheep. But just colored folks, so who cares.”

  They sat silent until Charlie, to clear the air, took drink orders and headed for the bar cart, listening to the room’s buzz about the tensions of the world:

  All I’m saying is, if Eisenhower looks at Indochina and sees a row of dominoes, then what the hell is the USSR? A Mr. Potato Head? The metaphor is infantile.

  Oppenheimer could well be a Commie spy, but he built the bomb for us, so he might also be a pretty bad one.

  Before McCarthy loved MacArthur, he was smearing him. Before he endorsed Ike, he was smearing him.

  I’d give my left nut to have Palmer’s swing. He’s going to kill when he goes pro.

  If you’re going to bad-mouth Hank Aaron, keep it down so you-know-who can’t hear.

  But it wasn’t McCarthy who revoked Oppenheimer’s clearance! It was Ike! That’s my point!

  You really think the Democrats can take the House back? You’re drunk; we’re going to be in power for a generation.

  Charlie returned to the table to find LaMontagne in a fierce poker face-off with Street, Strongfellow having folded early. Street had learned the game Texas hold ’em from a fellow Tuskegee pilot from Dallas; he had made a second living playing cards during the war.

  “Trying to think of what you might have there to mak
e you confident about this garbage flop,” LaMontagne said, motioning generally to the three faceup cards in the middle of the table.

  Street, expressionless, looked at LaMontagne. He didn’t blink.

  LaMontagne smiled ear to ear. After a beat, he reached into his back pocket, withdrew his wallet, and removed a ten-dollar bill.

  “Okay, Street,” he said.

  Street matched the ten dollars in the pot, then drew the fourth card in the string of shared cards, the turn card. Two of clubs.

  “Trash,” said LaMontagne. “As shitty as the Warren Court.”

  Street’s eyes darted to LaMontagne’s at the mention of the Supreme Court chief justice who was expected to end segregation in public education any day now.

  “Oh, that’s how to get your attention!” said LaMontagne. “Noted.” He reached into his billfold again. “You might not make much of that two of clubs, but I’m a man who gets good cards. You can ask anyone in this town.” He threw down another ten.

  Charlie wondered what Street had as his hole cards. It wasn’t unimaginable that LaMontagne had, say, two queens or the king and ace of diamonds and would be gifted with a jack of diamonds when the final, or river, card was revealed—leaving him with a winning straight flush. If LaMontagne was dealing, Charlie would indeed bet on that happening, and if he’d managed to get his greasy paws on the deck before Street began shuffling, who knew if LaMontagne literally had an ace up his sleeve?

  Expressionless, Street met LaMontagne’s ten with ten one-dollar bills that he pulled from a roll in his inside jacket pocket.

  Street tossed the river card from the top of the deck. It was the king of diamonds.

  On the table, the flop: the ten, queen and king of diamonds, the two of clubs, and the three of hearts.

  LaMontagne smirked with satisfaction. He took out the wad of cash lining his billfold and counted it. “Hundred and twenty,” he said, placing it all in the pot.