The Hellfire Club(103)

Chapter Twenty-Nine





Thursday, April 22, 1954—Morning


Capitol Hill



Three men in suits, Colt .38s in hand, walked into the storage room. They all looked alike: brown hair, mid-thirties, trim builds, dark suits. Secret Service, maybe, or FBI; their exact affiliation was unclear.

“Nice timing,” said Street, hands braced on his knees, dripping with sweat and breathing like Jesse Owens after a wind sprint.

“Is everyone okay?” one of the men asked.

“We’re fine,” said Charlie, holding Margaret, his hand on her pregnant belly. “Everyone’s good.” Margaret’s face was buried in his chest.

“You should vamoose,” the third man said to Street. “We’ll take care of it from here.”

Street nodded and motioned to Charlie and Margaret to follow him. They reached the hallway and paused.

“Who were they?” Charlie asked.

“The good guys,” said Street.

“Do you know the way out?” Margaret asked.

“Out of the basement? Or this situation?”

“Either,” she said.

“Basement, yes.”

“And the situation here? Three dead bodies and two sitting congressmen knocked out, all in the basement of the U.S. Capitol?”

Street shook his head. “That one’s a little trickier.”



Outside, a bright dawn was breaking as if the sun were proud to be seen after days hiding. Charlie heard mourning doves coo and could smell the earthy, loamy scent of spring. A bus drove up Constitution Avenue; the city was starting to stir.

A red Cadillac Coupe de Ville sat in the Capitol driveway, its engine running.

Charlie peered in and saw Senator Kefauver behind the wheel, a grim expression on his face. Winston Marder was in the backseat.

“Get in,” Winston said. “Margaret, honey, you sit up front.”

“Please hurry,” said Kefauver. “We need to git.”

“I love it when you pretend you’re a hillbilly,” gruffed Winston.

The three piled into the Cadillac, and Kefauver hit the gas and took a right out of the Capitol driveway onto Independence Avenue. The atmosphere inside the car was tense; they rode in silence for a few blocks, Kefauver and Charlie scanning the surroundings for a tail. Finally Margaret turned around from the front seat to face the men.

“That’s all going to be cleaned up?” Margaret asked Winston.

“Area will be secured and cleaned,” he said.

“We left behind maybe four dead bodies, including the House Appropriations Committee chairman,” Charlie said.

“However many you left behind, and whoever they are, it will be taken care of,” said Winston. He turned to Street: “Four dead bodies? Including Carlin?”

“Yeah, it got ugly,” said Street, who took a few minutes to explain everything that had happened since he last saw Winston a day before in Manhattan. Margaret filled in other blanks, describing Gwinnett’s menacing hunt for her and how Catherine Leopold killed him.

“Good Christ,” Winston finally said. “I’m so sorry, Margaret. I never wanted you to get caught up in any of this. I never wanted Charlie to get caught up in it.”

“Then why arrange for me to get the congressional seat?” Charlie asked, a note of irritation in his voice. “Or at the very least, why not tell me about everything that was going on so I could have a better way to protect Margaret and the baby?”

“We didn’t know, Charlie,” Street said.

“I can defend myself, Isaiah,” Winston said.

“I know,” Street said, “but Charlie, you need to understand, we’ve only been about a half step ahead of you. We didn’t even know about the car accident until you told me.”

“I had no idea you were going to be pulled into any of this when I got Dewey to give you the seat, and I certainly didn’t know you were going to pull that foolish stunt at the comic-book hearing,” Winston said. “That’s what escalated everything. Until then, the Hellfire Club thought they had you where they wanted you. And until then, Estes and Isaiah were keeping me abreast of everything. We all were doing everything we could to steer you away from the Hellfire Club.”

“Except for telling me about it, of course,” Charlie said.

“You were supposed to just do your job,” Winston said. “You weren’t supposed to take on the whole goddamn system or screw with Carlin. Or steal papers from my goddamn study.”

“You knew about that?” Charlie asked.

“After the fact,” Winston said. “Dulles told me. That poor miserable son of a bitch Strongfellow is going to be ruined. Not by me. By the club. Especially now, tied to this mess. Poor sap probably thinks he’s in the clear.”

“Wait—you’re going to let him loose after he tried to kill me?”

“That’s how this works, Charlie,” Winston said. “We don’t call the police on one another. We bribe the police to stay out of it. The FBI or Secret Service swoops in and cleans everything up. Our organizations don’t play by the normal rules.”

“‘We’? What organizations besides the Hellfire Club?” Margaret asked. “Who is ‘we’?”