The Hellfire Club(40)



“Could you turn that off, please?” Margaret asked the cabbie, who complied.

They sat in silence for fifteen blocks.

Finally, Margaret said, “I was talking with my sister on the phone when all of a sudden there was someone at the door. It was Jackie Kennedy; she’d heard what happened and ran over to make sure I knew. So I turned on the radio.”

Her bottom lip was quivering; having been tested at such a young age by her father’s death, Margaret was not one for whom tears came quickly. She looked out the window as Charlie reached to hold her hand. She took it, intertwined her fingers with his.

“The reporter on the radio knew nothing. Shooting in the House, at least half a dozen members rushed to area emergency rooms, blah-blah-blah. He seemed far more interested in the assailants than the victims. Puerto Rican extremists, one a woman. A note in her purse said something about her blood, the independence of Puerto Rico, the subjugation of her people…The reporter read every word of the note, as if it explained this, as if it justified it. I turned off the radio. It was making me sick.”

Charlie noticed her absentmindedly place her left hand over her abdomen, underlining why this had shaken her so badly.

“I tried to call your office, the Speaker’s office, House leadership, the cloakroom, all those numbers you gave me, but all the lines were busy,” she went on. “Couldn’t get through to police, couldn’t get through to any emergency rooms.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Sheryl Ann Bernstein called me and told me where you were. While I was waiting for the cab, Miss Leopold called to tell me too. They said they’d been trying to call but the switchboard was jammed.”

He gripped her hand more tightly. “I’m so sorry, Margaret. I had blood on me, so they whisked me away. There was no phone for me to call you from; the hospital said they had to keep their lines open. It was total chaos.”

But she was looking out the window again, distracted and still angry. “Sheryl Ann told me what you did. To draw fire. You didn’t have to be a goddamn hero. Good headlines aren’t going to be of any use to a baby without a father. My father got plenty of headlines after the crash. Worthless.”

She let go of his hand and continued staring out the window as evening fell upon Washington. He looked out his.

It was almost disconcerting, after the violent chaos of the day, to find their tree-lined street and stately town house quiet and unaltered under the street lamps. Life had changed forever a few miles away; here, it was just the same. They got out of the cab and walked silently up the stairs and inside, both too numb to speak more than necessary.

While he took a shower, she made soup, and he came down and ate it hungrily. Before long he had passed out on the living-room sofa in front of the gray haze of the television, immune to the comedic charms of Sid Caesar. Margaret woke him and gently guided him up the two flights to their bedroom. Hours later, though it felt like seconds, he was jolted awake by Margaret’s hand on his shoulder. He had been dreaming of Private Rodriguez. “Charlie, Congressman Street is at the door.”

Charlie sat up and rubbed his eyes. His muscles ached. “What time is it?”

“It’s morning.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to bring you to the hospital. Mac is out of surgery and it doesn’t look good.”

Charlie dressed quickly and headed downstairs to find Street and Margaret at the kitchen table drinking coffee, their faces somber. Street’s eyes met Charlie’s and he gave a small shake of his head, then he stood up and reached for his fedora.



The Capitol Police officer standing guard outside MacLachlan’s room at Casualty Hospital balked when he saw Street. Other than orderlies and the custodial staff, few nonwhites were seen here. Most of the city’s black population went to Freedmen’s Hospital for medical treatment.

“He’s a member of Congress, as am I, and we’re here to see our friend,” Charlie said, and he walked past the guard. Street looked at the police officer, who nodded sullenly in acknowledgment.

Inside the dimly lit room, MacLachlan lay still, an oxygen mask over his face, his chest slowly rising and falling with each struggling breath. MacLachlan’s wife sat by his side, her eyes puffy from hours of weeping. She wore pearls and a pink suit—more Beltway than Terre Haute; she looked as if she’d been at a Daughters of the American Revolution luncheon when she got word of the shooting the day before.

Jesus, thought Charlie, was that only just yesterday? It felt like a month had passed; this was a whole new Washington, DC, reality to which he hadn’t yet adjusted, one where death wasn’t something that happened just to our boys in Korea.

The tiny room was crowded: House Speaker Joe Martin was standing off to the side talking to majority leader Charles Halleck from MacLachlan’s home state of Indiana and Democratic leader Sam Rayburn of Texas. Near them stood the vice president, Richard Nixon, with a complexion almost as wan as the patient’s.

Charlie and Street introduced themselves to MacLachlan’s wife, Henrietta, who struggled to maintain her composure. She raised her hands helplessly. “The idea that he could survive the Nazis in France but not the Puerto Ricans in Washington…” Her eyes darted toward Street, presumably to see if he might have taken offense. But Street’s face revealed only sympathy.

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