The Hellfire Club(105)

“It’s even more stunning that he convinced Carlin that he was working for him,” Winston observed.

“That’s actually a good point,” Margaret said, turning to look at Street behind her. “How did you win the trust of…” She searched for the words.

“Of a bunch of old white bigots?” Street finished for her.

“It’s a smart question,” Winston said. “My daughter-in-law possesses much more intelligence than her husband.”

“I gave them just enough information to trust me,” Street said. “Intelligence comes from people of all colors; they might be bigots, but they know that much. Intel comes from Arabs, Africans, Jews, Chinese…”

“You realize, Charlie, Isaiah was working on trying to learn more about the club long before they set their sights on you,” Winston said.

“It was your dad’s idea originally,” Street said. “When I came here in January of ’fifty-three, I pretended to be a willing source for them. Given my background in the OSS, they were interested.”

“I brought it up to Dulles, who mentioned it to Hoover,” Winston said. “They wouldn’t have invited Isaiah over for supper, but they were happy to take his information. Or have him be a button man to kill you two.”

Kefauver sighed impatiently and turned on the radio. “Y’all talk too much,” he said to himself.

“…showdown between Senator McCarthy and the U.S. Army,” the announcer said. “McCarthy claims the army is behind a conspiracy to discredit him…”

“And he’s right!” Kefauver laughed. They fell silent, listening to the news. Kefauver left Rock Creek Parkway and worked his way to Dent Place in Georgetown, through tree-lined streets where young lawyers and secretaries briskly walked to bus stops.

“Here we are!” Winston said, clearly relieved to be pulling up to Charlie and Margaret’s town house.

Winston patted his son on the knee.

“Remember what Falstaff said, my son,” Winston said. “‘The better part of valor is discretion.’”

“But I still have a lot of questions,” Charlie said. “The other day we stumbled on these documents about the Hellfire Club in England in the eighteenth century. So Ben Franklin brought it to the U.S.?”

Street chuckled. “Charlie, we’re still trying to figure out everything going on in the club today; we don’t even know who all the members are now. We damn sure haven’t traced its genealogy.”

“Legend is that Franklin replicated the club once he returned to the colonies,” Winston said. “But we don’t really know. We’re only just now getting a handle on this, thanks to Ike.”

“Why thanks to Ike?” Charlie asked.

“You’ll see,” Winston said. “Now, please let us go so I can phone Dulles and we can clean this all up.”

Margaret opened the car door. “It was nice to see you again, Winston,” she said drily, as if they were coming from a mixer and not a fatal shoot-out. “And nice to see you again, Senator Kefauver. It has been way too long since you were kind enough to take us to see The Pajama Game—we need to repay the favor, have you over for dinner.” Kefauver laughed.

She stepped out of the car and straightened her blouse. A passerby would have no idea of the chaotic, bloody night she’d just survived. She leaned toward the passenger window.

“And Isaiah, you and Renee need to come over soon,” she continued, a caricature of a Georgetown hostess. “Tell her I’ll call her. Toodles!”

Street grinned. “Your wife is crazy,” he said to Charlie.

She stood on the sidewalk and looked expectantly at Charlie, who remained in the crowded backseat.

Charlie nodded at her but first turned to his father and said in a low voice so Margaret wouldn’t hear, “Are we safe?”

Winston hesitated. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know who wanted you gone other than Carlin. I assume Hoover and Dulles want this sorry chapter over. You will have to keep your mouth shut about General Kinetics. That’s not negotiable. You need to burn any copies of the Van Waganan dossier, the info on the chemical plants. You do that, and maybe we can put this all behind us. I’ll make some calls as soon as we get to Kefauver’s house.”

Street opened the back door and stepped out, followed by Charlie. They shook hands.

“We’ll talk soon,” Street said.

“I owe you,” said Charlie.

“I have a feeling I’m going to get a chance to collect,” Street said.

Charlie patted Street on the shoulder, then bent down and looked at his father and Kefauver. “Thank you,” he said.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Kefauver said. “All I did was give the son of an old friend a ride home from Capitol Hill.”

Charlie and Margaret walked up the stairs to their front door as Kefauver drove off. Down the street, they could see Senator Kennedy leaving his brownstone, with Jackie fixing the lapels on his sport jacket and kissing him on the cheek. The senator saw Charlie and Margaret, waved, and got into his car.



An hour before Charlie and Margaret returned home, LaMontagne was picking the lock of their town house, thinking about how much he didn’t like killing.

The act of ending a life was unpleasant. It was sometimes a physical chore requiring significant exertion and it was often messy, whether from blood or struggle or end-of-life bodily expulsions. It ticked him off that he’d had to kill the redheaded club cocktail waitress to set up Charlie. Why him? Hadn’t he paid his dues by now? Enough already. It made him even angrier when Carlin ordered him to murder Charlie after his stunt at the comic-book hearings. LaMontagne thought it beneath his station at this point in his career. Sure, he’d risen quickly in DC by being a Mr. Fix-It, but he expected to have graduated from this kind of task by now.