The Hellfire Club(15)

“What about you?” MacLachlan asked.

“Mine worked,” Charlie said, wincing slightly. He took a sip from his glass and looked down, as if there were answers in the ice cubes.

“And then?” Strongfellow asked after the pause grew uncomfortable.

Charlie exhaled dramatically, as if he were exhausted. “The platoon sergeant and the other guys ran outside, vomiting. Their masks were worthless. If they’d stayed to save Rodriguez and the family, they would have died. The mortars started moving north. Somehow I managed to push the beam enough to wedge Rodriguez out and get him outside in the fresh air. But he was in bad shape. Foaming at the mouth. Eyes crossed. Skin turning green.”

“What was it?” Strongfellow asked. “Mustard?”

“Don’t know,” Charlie said. “We left the barn at once. Rodriguez was messed up. We had a few of the guys take him to an aid station a couple miles back. Toward the beach. He died before he got there, we later were told. My other two men also got wounded in the process. Shot. They survived, but we never saw them again either. Haber, Scully. Shipped back home. Whole thing was FUBAR.”

There was a pause as Strongfellow and MacLachlan collected their thoughts.

“The French family?” MacLachlan finally asked. “The dad and his two kids?”

Charlie shook his head.

“So this is why you want to block Goodstone?” MacLachlan continued. “They made the gas masks?”

“They did, sir,” Charlie said.

“Did you report it?” MacLachlan asked.

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said. “To my CO. And then later, with paperwork related to Rodriguez’s death.”

“Did they ever own up to it?” asked MacLachlan. “Issue any sort of report explaining what happened and why it will never happen again? Compensate the Rodriguez family?”

“You know, I wondered that as well,” Charlie said. “After the markup, I had an aide look into it. Best I can tell, Goodstone did nothing. Though the army did tell me they notified the company.”

“Good Lord,” MacLachlan said, shaking his head. “Wish I could say I was surprised.”

“You going to keep pushing it?” Strongfellow asked. “Carlin seemed pretty PO’ed.”

Before they could continue the conversation, there was a knock at the door and a black man in his thirties wearing a gray flannel suit poked his head into the room.

“Is this the card game?” he asked.

There was an uncomfortable silence as the roomful of white veterans decided what to do. Washington, DC, like much of the nation, remained segregated in almost every way.

“You sure you’re in the right place?” one of the congressmen in the back of the room asked.

“This is the card game for veterans, unless I am mistaken,” the man said. He thrust a hand into his baggy trouser pocket, then slowly began to extricate it. He raised his hand; between his fingers dangled a blue-and-white-striped ribbon with one strip of red in the middle. Attached to the ribbon swung a small bronze replica of a propeller laid upon a cross pattée.

A Distinguished Flying Cross.

Charlie realized the man with the medal was Isaiah Street, a former Tuskegee Airman, one of the elite flying aces in segregated units of the U.S. Army Air Forces and a particularly decorated one at that. He and Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York were the only black men in Congress.

“I got a Purple Heart, too, in my other jacket,” Street said. “But all I did to earn that one was not die.”

“We need a fourth over here, Congressman,” Charlie said, glancing at Strongfellow and MacLachlan, who nodded to affirm the invitation. The rest of the room turned back to their card games.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Street said, taking off his jacket as the other three finished up their hand. MacLachlan won with a full house.

“My deal,” said Strongfellow. “Texas hold ’em okay?”

“Only if we stick with cash,” Charlie said. “I can’t call if Street throws down his Distinguished Flying Cross.”

Street laughed. “I like to get in the door on the first try,” he said.

Strongfellow dealt each man two cards and placed three other shared cards faceup on the table. The men fell into a brief silence, each contemplating his pair.

“Check,” said MacLachlan, and then he glanced at Charlie with one bushy eyebrow raised. “I hear you’ve been shanghaied by Kefauver to sign up for his latest publicity tour.”

“What’s he up to now?” asked Street. “Check.”

“Check,” said Charlie.

“Check,” said Strongfellow. He threw down a fourth shared card in the middle of the table.

“Nickel in,” said MacLachlan, throwing a coin into the pot. “Oh, he’s cooked up a bullshit hearing about comic books being the reason for urban crime waves,” MacLachlan said. “Kefauver’s latest attempt to cast himself as a white knight in preparation for ’56.”

After Street anted up, Charlie came to terms with the fact that he was holding a garbage hand.

“I’m out,” he said.

“Raise,” said Strongfellow, tossing a dime into the pot. He slid the fifth and final shared card faceup, prompting a harrumph from MacLachlan.