by Jake Tapper
Charlie and Margaret had only the beginnings of a plan. They had information but no idea how to use it to extricate themselves from the tentacles of the Hellfire Club. They now knew that the errands Charlie ran for the Hellfire Club were trifling; however, what MacLachlan had discovered and diligently documented was shocking and consequential. They had come up with an idea to signal to the Hellfire Club that they were not willing to be pawns moved around on the chessboard any longer, and they surmised from Van Waganan’s example that Charlie needed to be at least somewhat public about it so as to cast a protective spotlight on himself. And more important than their own welfare, of course, was to begin to warn the world about what MacLachlan had discovered, which imperiled hundreds of thousands of innocent people if not more. Before Charlie headed north to participate in the comic-book hearings—inauspicious timing, but just the latest example of nothing being in their control—they had decided that Margaret would drive in Charlie’s car to Susquehannock Island, where Gwinnett’s team had relocated from Nanticoke. She would be busy there, and safe, with no one in the political world interested enough in her research to have any idea where she conducted it.
Margaret kissed Charlie good-bye and wished him luck. The seven-thirty Morning Congressional would get him into Manhattan with just enough time to make the noon hearing. “I want you to destroy comic books. I want you to be like Lex Luthor with a ray gun, just disintegrating superheroes.”
Charlie grimaced. “You laugh while I head to my doom. At least Sheryl Ann did some decent research; I have a good line of questioning that should get us where we want to go.”
“The world will be watching.”
“Please, don’t remind me.” Charlie leaned across the seat to kiss Margaret good-bye one more time. “Say hi to the ponies.”
After Charlie got out of the car, Margaret lightly honked the horn and exited onto Massachusetts Avenue, veering left toward Maryland to make her last research trip before their baby was born.
Catherine Leopold had arranged for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings to be held at the Foley Square Courthouse, but Charlie wasn’t aware until he walked through the door just how poorly suited the building was for the task. The courtroom was the largest one in the building, but it was a closet compared to most Senate hearing rooms; desks had been jammed in at odd angles in order to accommodate everyone. Scattered throughout the room stood bulky television cameras; their multiple power cords, thick as theater rope, converged like tentacles near the door before snaking down the hall. Charlie spotted his place card on a side table alongside the subcommittee’s counsel, staff director, and the court reporter recording the proceedings.
At the center of the main table sat Senator Kefauver. He looked in his element; happy to be in the mix again three years after his successful crime hearings and two years after Democratic bosses stole the presidential nomination from him in a back room of the International Amphitheater in Chicago. On one side of him sat a fellow Democrat, Senator Tom Hennings of Missouri, and on the other side the subcommittee chairman, New Jersey Republican senator Bob Hendrickson. Hennings whispered something to Kefauver, who smiled and patted his arm collegially as the clock struck twelve. A TV producer signaled to the senators as if he were a third-base coach; a light atop the primary TV camera blinked on, and Hendrickson gaveled the proceedings to a start.
“This meeting will now be in order,” Hendrickson harrumphed. “The United States Senate Subcommittee Investigating Juvenile Delinquency, of which I am the chairman, is going to consider the problem of horror and crime comic books. By comic books, we mean pamphlets illustrating stories depicting crimes or dealing with horror and sadism. We shall not be talking about the comic strips that appear daily in most of our newspapers.”
Charlie hated congressional-speak; it reeked of pomposity and self-importance and was utterly disconnected from how actual citizens talked. He’d observed its powers of intoxication: the longer a senator spoke, the more sure of himself he seemed to become. Hendrickson proceeded with long-winded bluster, assailing “horror and crime comic books peddled to young people of impressionable age” while making certain to underline that the subcommittee fully understood the importance of freedom of the press.
He was followed by the subcommittee’s counsel, who took ample time to praise the chairman for his remarks before citing statistics that to Charlie proved nothing so much as a problem in search of someone to blame. Dr. Wertham was soon called to the witness table, where he made his earnest and angry presentation about the damage being done to his patients in Harlem and, indeed, all over New York City—no doubt throughout the United States of America. He was followed by other witnesses, all of them, it seemed to Charlie, associates of Wertham’s or blue-haired types dead-set on the need to eliminate any reading more fun than the cleaner parts of the New Testament. As in Wonderland, with the Queen of Hearts’ demand of “Sentence first, verdict afterward,” the initial part of the hearing was devoted to establishing as fact its premise. After the late and eventful night before, Charlie felt his eyelids weighing heavy; he made repeated efforts, some successful, to stifle yawns.
After an hour, Hendrickson called for a ten-minute break, and Charlie stood, stretched, and headed for the restroom, where he ran into Kefauver.
“You have some questions for our witnesses, Charlie?”
“I do, sir,” Charlie said. “My staff and I have been preparing. We think Danny Gaines would be a good witness for me to question, if that’s okay with you.”
“Wonderful,” Kefauver said, zipping up. “Be ready for me to call on you.”
Danny Gaines was called as the first witness, and from the very beginning he seemed a hostile one. After swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he identified himself as the CEO of IC Comics, which published gory tales of true crime and macabre stories of horror. He then offered the committee a host of snorts, derisive sighs, and exaggerated, disapproving shakes of his head while Hendrickson, with the help of enlarged copies of faded comic-book pages, spent twenty minutes educating the room about how inappropriate IC Comics’s material was for the children who consumed it. Among the featured stories from the IC oeuvre: an adorable little girl kills her strict father and frames her mother, who is then sent to the electric chair; a priest uses candy to tempt children into a haunted house, where he murders them, after which their ghosts seek revenge in the most gruesome way; a man rapes and then chokes a woman to death on a rowboat, only to trip and drown after several vengeful frogs seek justice.
Outraged stemwinder concluded, Hendrickson turned to his witness with an arched eyebrow. “Is there anything you can say, sir, to help us understand why your company believes this material is suitable for children?”
“You could ask the Brothers Grimm the same question,” Gaines said. “Or Aesop. Or Walt Disney! The hag in Snow White is absolutely terrifying. Bambi’s mom gets blown to bits. Dumbo is one of the most abjectly bigoted films I’ve ever seen. When are you hauling Mr. Disney before this august committee?”
“Surely, Mr. Gaines,” Kefauver said, “you cannot be comparing Snow White with this comic book.” Kefauver held up Gruesome True Crime SuspenStories, issue number 22, whose cover featured a woman’s severed head held by its hair by a man wielding a machete. “Do you think this is in good taste?”
Gaines tilted his head at an angle, regarding the image. “For the cover of a horror comic book, it’s in fine taste,” he said. “If we were aiming for bad taste, perhaps the murderer would be holding her head a touch higher so that blood would be dripping more dramatically from her neck. Or maybe we could see more of her body, to see the bloody neck—”
“There is blood, though, Mr. Gaines. Coming out of her mouth,” interrupted Kefauver, outraged.
“A little,” Gaines said, to a smattering of titters in the crowd.
“I apologize for interjecting, Mr. Chairman,” Kefauver said, turning to Hendrickson.
“That�
�s quite all right, I yield to you, sir.”
But before Kefauver could proceed, Gaines asked for a moment of time. “Senator Kefauver, I would like to correct the record on something Dr. Wertham said about one of our comics earlier today. He cited one of our comics as extolling bigotry. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“When was this, Mr. Gaines?” asked Kefauver.
“Earlier he testified that we had a comic using ethnic slurs for Mexicans, as if we were promoting prejudice. We were not. The story in question, which ran in Criminal Comics issue number one hundred and seventy-three in August 1951, was making the point that bigotry was evil and stupid. The racist boss is the clear bad guy, while the braceros who rise up against him are the heroes.”
“I see,” said Kefauver.
“Mr. Chairman,” said Charlie, “may I ask a question or two of the witness?”
“If the senator from Tennessee is willing to yield,” said Hendrickson.
“With delight,” said Kefauver.
“Mr. Gaines, I’m Charlie Marder, the congressman from this district.”
“I recognize the name. You were recently appointed to the seat. Your dad helped get it for you.”
Charlie could hear some quiet gasps from the audience and some rude guffaws, but he smiled indulgently.
“That’s me!” Charlie said, prompting some appreciative laughter. “Perhaps you can help me understand something.”
“Perhaps,” said Gaines.
“You say that children who read your comics won’t be swayed by the demonstrations of evil and gore since they know it’s just a story.”
“Correct.”
“No impact on them at all, these lessons of how to kill your father and frame your mother because they won’t buy you the doll you want.”
“None whatsoever.”
“And yet you say definitively that the lessons you preach against prejudice in those very same comics are absorbed by children.”
“We believe so, yes. These are basic lessons of morality.”
“So help me understand: Why would the good lessons be heeded and the bad lessons ignored?” Charlie asked.
More murmurs erupted from the audience. The television cameraman pushed his lens closer to Gaines’s face to catch the dramatic moment as he realized that he had just acknowledged that his comics had an influence on the behavior of children.
“Very clever, Mr. Marder,” he finally said. “But none of this hides the fact that this whole hearing is a sham.”
“It is?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, it is!” Gaines said, growing agitated. “It’s a sham because children are being raised in poverty and squalor, and instead of focusing on the very real issues of prejudice and the historical legacy of slavery, you’re looking at comic books.”
“We are looking at comic books, you’re right about that,” Charlie said. “And while I don’t disagree that juvenile delinquency is a multifaceted problem, some of it, maybe even most of it, rooted in the conditions you just named, let us focus on the issue at hand. If one of the court clerks can please deliver this to Mr. Gaines.”
Gaines briefly examined the paper a clerk handed him, then raised an eyebrow.
“And?” Gaines said, irritated.
“This is a page from your True Tales comic book from January 1953, issue number two hundred and thirty-seven, correct?”
“I don’t have the title page in front of me,” Gaines said.
“Oh, I’m sorry about that,” said Charlie. “Here’s a copy of the comic book itself. Let’s pass this over to Mr. Gaines. I have an extra.”
“Thank you,” Gaines said, in a tone that was anything but grateful.
“The first story in the comic is a nine-page tale of a boy using common household products to hurt an intruder.”
“You don’t begrudge a child in a work of fiction defending himself, do you, Congressman Marder? Surely you wouldn’t prefer a comic where the intruder savages an innocent child?”
Charlie chuckled. “I wasn’t aware those were the only two options, Mr. Gaines.” The audience laughed. Charlie stole a quick peek at Kefauver, who was grinning like a proud papa.
“For those of you in the pews here,” Charlie continued, prompting more chuckles, “or those of you at home,” he added, pointing with his pen to the camera lens, “let me share some details about this comic—but unlike Mr. Gaines, I shall be judicious about what I share, since children might be watching. In one panel the child combines two drain cleaners to burn the eyes of the intruder. With another common cleaning item, a polish that’s very flammable, he sets the intruder on fire. These are barely disguised household products you likely have in your closets or underneath your kitchen sinks. I believe my wife and I have these in our home. In light of the irresponsibility of publishers such as Mr. Gaines and IC Comics, I would recommend that all the moms and dads out there either lock up household cleansers or put them on high shelves where children cannot reach them.”
The crowd was hanging on Charlie’s every word. Gaines appeared confused, as if he were trying to figure out how to respond.
“My wife is pregnant, Mr. Gaines, and God willing, we will have more children after this one, and God willing we will be able to figure out ways to prevent them from falling victim to your recklessness.”
There was silence, followed by a smattering of applause, but Gaines interrupted it.
“High and mighty,” Gaines said. “High. And. Mighty. You want to talk about chemicals that are dangerous to children, Congressman Marder?” Gaines shifted in his seat and paused dramatically. “Let’s talk about chemicals dangerous to children. What about the General Kinetics plant being built in Harlem? Are those chemicals harmful to children?”
Hendrickson banged the gavel. “Mr. Gaines, Congressman Marder is not a witness here!”
“Am I the only one under oath?” Gaines shouted back. “Why are our elected officials not required to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but?”
“It’s okay, Senator, I can answer the question,” Charlie said, secretly delighted that Gaines had taken the bait. Knowing of Gaines’s membership in the local NAACP and his outspokenness against the proposed General Kinetics plant, Charlie had had a feeling the comic-book publisher would bring a conversation about chemicals right to this very place.
“You don’t need to, Charlie,” said Kefauver.
“It’s fine, Senators. Mr. Gaines: Many of us have been working hard to prevent construction of the General Kinetics plant proposed for Harlem, precisely because of the concerns you just raised.”
Gaines was clearly unprepared for his bombshell to be defused so swiftly. He said nothing.
“In fact,” said Charlie, “as long as we’re holding this hearing to protect the well-being of the American people, I should note that I recently came into possession of a dossier that once belonged to a friend of mine, the late Congressman Chris MacLachlan.” He reached into his briefcase as the senators at the main table conferred with one another, powerless to stop Charlie given the presence of the television cameras providing live coverage. “The dossier details a number of pesticide-producing chemical plants from Maine to Utah, from California to Florida, that are either controlled or owned by General Kinetics and around which local populaces over the previous twenty years have experienced unusually high rates of cancer, nerve damage, and other severely debilitating illnesses.”
The three rows of reporters covering the hearing were fiercely taking notes while citizen observers began buzzing among themselves. Kefauver rubbed his forehead; Hendrickson’s face turned a shade of purple.
“MacLachlan was investigating this matter until he was tragically killed on March first, and on his deathbed he entrusted this information to me. This file contains memos and research proving that the pesticides being produced around the country to help this great nation grow its amber waves of grain—supported by taxpayer dollars via the farm bill I just co-sponsored—are poisoning Americans. Which expl
ains everything from tumors in Mossville, Louisiana, to the thousands of dead sheep in Skull Valley, Utah.”
Kefauver grabbed the microphone. “Congressman Marder, I’m sure there is a more appropriate time and place for this disclosure.”
“No, sir,” said Charlie. “This is a good time, in front of these cameras, to provide the American people with the unfiltered truth.”
Hendrickson banged his gavel loudly.
“We’re going to take a break now; this hearing has veered wildly off course,” he announced. “Ten minutes. And when we return”—here he glared pointedly at Charlie—“we will address the issue for which this hearing was called.”
The audience groaned. “How is this not the people’s business?” shouted a reporter from the back bench. Hendrickson didn’t respond and stood to leave.
Charlie grabbed his papers and rushed through the crowd and out the door. Pale journalists sporting fedoras and loud ties hounded Charlie down the hall and out the courthouse door like dogs pursuing a fox, seemingly oblivious to the pouring rain, shouting after him for copies of the documents he had wielded, for more information about General Kinetics, for a second of his time for an interview. He ignored them all and hopped into a black sedan idling in front of the courthouse steps. The driver, his father’s chauffeur, smoothly and swiftly swerved away from the curb before the reporters could begin rapping on the windows.
Charlie took a moment. The first blow had been struck. Now he needed to figure out how best to release all the damning information MacLachlan had dug up about the chemical plants—and find a path to escape the retaliation that would inevitably be coming his way.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wednesday, April 21, 1954—Afternoon