The Hellfire Club

The self-satisfaction was almost like a physical presence in the theater lobby, a distinct mélange of aromas exclusive to the halls of power—high-priced perfume and expensive hors d’oeuvres, top-shelf liquor and freshly minted cash. It all billowed into a rich toxic cloud that made Charlie Marder’s throat constrict.

Charlie generally prided himself on his ease in social settings, but tonight he was on edge, feeling oddly exposed while he waited for Margaret to return from the powder room. As a professor at Columbia, he’d given countless lectures, attended dozens of professional functions, and even made a few TV appearances when Sons of Liberty, his book on the Founding Fathers, hit the bestseller list four years before. Tall and broad-shouldered with piercing blue eyes, Charlie had found it easy to navigate the worlds of academia and literary celebrity. But he felt out of his element here, surrounded by political and press powerhouses drinking and smoking and chortling among themselves.

He rubbed the back of his neck, scanning the room for any sign of Margaret. The crowd, of course, couldn’t have cared less about his anxiety, busy as they were with their own competing agendas. He ambled around the auditorium to pass the time; bits of conversations flew by his ears:

Miserably self-conscious, Charlie gulped his martini, swallowed wrong, and coughed loudly just as Senator Jack Kennedy made his entrance. Heads turned as the handsome senator glided past Charlie, glamorous new wife in tow. Charlie caught a strong whiff of bandages and ointment. He wondered which of them had recently sustained an injury. From his earliest days, Charlie had possessed an abnormally keen sense of smell. He did not consider it a gift.

He gave his empty glass to a passing waiter and watched the celebrity couple as they made their way across the plush maroon carpet to join the senator’s brother Robert. The younger Kennedy was deep in conversation with Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Republican from Wisconsin currently about to start the fifth consecutive year of a reckless smear campaign designed to drive the threat of Communism, real and imagined, from every corner of American society. Charlie knew that Robert Kennedy and McCarthy worked together on the committee McCarthy chaired, and from all appearances, they were pals as well.

Charlie’s pondering of their seemingly odd friendship ended when Margaret reappeared. Even after nine years of marriage, Charlie still felt his heart jump when he saw her. Her blond hair was swept off her forehead; a simply cut emerald-green dress made the most of her athletic frame, its color highlighting her kelly-green eyes. Eyes that betrayed no sign of the frayed nerves Charlie felt, he noticed, although she was just as new to this scene as he was; they had arrived in Washington, DC, only three weeks earlier, after Charlie was appointed to fill a congressional seat that had suddenly become vacant.

“This with-child business is murder,” Margaret said, rubbing her still-flat stomach. “It feels like our little one has rented a one-bedroom on top of my bladder.” She was roughly six weeks pregnant, they’d learned a few days ago. “Has Senator Kefauver shown up yet?”

“Nope,” said Charlie. “But the Kennedy boys have. My mom would melt like a Popsicle.”

Charlie’s mother somewhat secretly worshipped the Kennedy brood. His father, Winston, a powerful Republican lawyer in Manhattan, had a more skeptical view of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and, through the transitive property, his scions. He faulted the Kennedy patriarch for wanting to appease Hitler. For fun, he’d also bad-mouth him for having made his fortune in bootlegging during Prohibition.

Margaret glanced sideways, where a very old Herbert Hoover was hobbling through the crowd. She grimaced sympathetically as the former president gripped the golden banister and, with an expression of great pain, made his way slowly up the red-carpeted stairs.

“Mothballs,” Charlie said of Hoover after he was out of earshot.

“Poor Charlie,” Margaret said. “That nose of yours.”

“The world is not primarily peppermint.” Charlie turned his attention to the colorful lobby poster for the show preview they were about to see, The Pajama Game, which was set to debut on Broadway in the spring. “What’s it about, anyway? I mean, besides being about ninety minutes too long.” Charlie was not a fan of musicals.

“It’s about strikes,” said Margaret.

“Baseball? Bowling?” He enjoyed playing clueless sidekick to Margaret’s straight man.

“Unions, dear.”

“Of course,” said Charlie. “Who wouldn’t look at sweaty longshoremen in Hoboken, New Jersey, and think, You know what? I’d love to see them sing and dance!”

“This isn’t On the Waterfront, sweetheart, this strike is at a pajama factory.” Margaret straightened his tie. “Remember that book I read last summer? Seven and a Half Cents?”

“Honey, I can’t keep track,” Charlie said. “You go through more bestsellers than a McCarthy bonfire.”

Margaret tsked and rolled her eyes. “Anyway, this is based on the book I read. The head of the grievance committee, a lady, falls in love with the supervisor who’s rejecting her pleas for a seven-and-a-half-cent wage increase.”

“In bed with the opposition,” Charlie said. “This crowd will love it.”

Margaret gestured toward the Kennedys. “That’s right, I’d read that McCarthy and the Kennedys were very close. And isn’t ‘Tail Gunner Joe’ godfather to one of Bobby’s kids?”

“Dad says no one who knows him calls him Bobby—it’s Bob,” Charlie said. “I think the godfather thing is just a rumor. It’s odd, though, these Democratic princes befriending my party’s fire-breathing dragon. We’re going to need a flowchart to keep track of all the alliances.”

“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.”