The Hellfire Club(2)
LaMontagne pulled on his black leather gloves, took a folded handkerchief from his suit pocket, and leaned into the driver’s seat of the Studebaker. He wiped the steering wheel, the gearshift, the radio knobs, and the window roller; on his way out, he removed the keys from the ignition, then wiped the door handle. Sliding the keys into his pocket, he stood up straight and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
“Let’s burn rubber,” he said.
Charlie let himself be guided briskly up to the road and the Dodge, where he collapsed with relief in the passenger seat as LaMontagne shut the door firmly.
Halfway around the front of the car, the man suddenly stopped. Through the windshield, Charlie saw him looking down at the narrow shoulder of the road.
“Charlie,” LaMontagne said, a seriousness in his baritone Charlie had never heard before. “You need to see this.”
Charlie exited and joined LaMontagne, who was staring at what at first appeared to be a bundle of discarded clothes in a narrow drainage ditch but upon closer examination proved to be a young woman lying on her right side, facing away from the road, her left arm twisted awkwardly behind her. Blood had soaked through the back of her low-cut dress.
Charlie’s heart thudding into his lungs, he slowly knelt on the grass and gently rolled the woman toward him; she fell onto her back. She had red hair and couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. Charlie had vague memories of her from the night before. Is she a cocktail waitress, maybe?
He looked up at LaMontagne in disbelief, but the man’s gaze was elsewhere, back toward the spot where he’d found Charlie. “I didn’t think anything of it before, but the passenger door of that Studebaker is open. Jesus. Do you think she fell out of your car?”
Fighting his rising anxiety, Charlie gingerly placed two fingers on the side of the woman’s neck. She was porcelain pale and still. Her eyes were closed, sealed by thick fake lashes. Her body was cool to the touch. He could feel no pulse.
He looked at LaMontagne and shook his head slowly.
“Christ,” said LaMontagne. He squatted and put two fingers on the woman’s neck to see for himself. Then on her wrist. He hung his head briefly, then seemed to collect himself. He stood, moved behind the young woman’s lifeless body, bent down, and threaded his arms beneath her shoulders.
Charlie was numb, motionless.
LaMontagne looked at him with gravity and impatience.
“Congressman,” he said sharply. “Grab her feet.”
Chapter Two
Thursday, January 14, 1954
Arena Stage, Washington, DC
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:
Let’s just say my respect for the congressman knows bounds.
If the court rules to desegregate, it’s going to get ugly.
No, I don’t hate musicals. I just don’t understand them. Why would people break out in song? And even suspending disbelief, the songs are seldom any good.
No kids. She’s a work nun.
Has anyone actually gotten a look at the naval records of PT-109?
I’ll say it: If Ike was as weak against the Krauts as he is against McCarthy, we’d all be speaking German right now.
Did you see it? First issue came out last month. Naked Marilyn Monroe.
No, when I said they were bums, I meant the baseball team the Senators, not actual senators.
We still have troops in Korea, darling. We’ll have them there forever.
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.