The Hellfire Club(62)
“Someone else?”
A noisy jalopy clanged by, distracting McCarthy. A street lamp revealed his face as he turned to the window to focus on the ruckus. By late morning, McCarthy had a five o’clock shadow, Charlie had noticed. Now, after midnight, he resembled Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man.
“Yes, someone else,” McCarthy said. “Clinton Brewer. Colored boy, killed a woman for refusing to marry him. She had two kids, the victim. Brewer was sentenced to life. In prison in New Jersey, he developed musical skills—he had real talent, if you like that jungle music. Some musical folks hear about him, get Wright involved, a bunch of liberals and Commies get together and petition for Brewer to get out. And they succeed. In 1941, he gets paroled. Nineteen years of a life sentence under his belt, Wright hooks him up with Count Basie.”
“That’s a nice story, I suppose,” Charlie said. “Redemption.”
“That’s not the whole story,” McCarthy said. “Three months later Clinton Brewer kills another woman for refusing to marry him. And that’s the case Richard Wright is phoning Wertham about. The kid is headed to the chair; Wright wants Wertham to testify that Brewer’s a psychopath, doesn’t know right from wrong, can’t be guilty of murder. Wertham agrees, he testifies, and that’s what happened. Brewer’s doing life. Again.”
“That’s awful,” Charlie said.
“Those are your allies, Charlie,” McCarthy said, furrowing his thick caterpillar eyebrows. “This is your Commie star witness in your idiotic comic-book hearing. Bad company in a dubious cause. Whereas there are others in this town, with other affiliations, who spend their time trying to defend this nation, rather than freeing murderers because they can carry a tune. We fight for America, Charlie. We don’t undermine it. We fight for it.”
He sat back in his seat and stared straight ahead. The street was silent.
“There’s something I need you to do for us, Charlie,” McCarthy finally said. “For us. For your team.”
“Sir?”
“Your father does work for NBC,” McCarthy said.
“My father?”
“Yes, Winston. You know he raised money for me for both Senate runs, right? Great American. I’ve been to your house, Charlie.”
“Right. I know.”
“So he does work for NBC.”
“If you say so.”
“People at NBC have told me that.”
“People?”
“I have a lot of friends.” McCarthy grinned. “Friends who share information with me. About Communists and all sorts of other indecent types.”
“Okay.”
The senator took a swig from his pint bottle and grimaced.
“You know the show This Is Your Life, I assume?” he asked.
“Of course. My friend Strongfellow is going to be on it.”
“Exactly. So the show does a lot of research on the folks they celebrate. In the course of their preparation for Strongfellow’s episode, they found some unsavory information. Your dad is in possession of this research.”
“Okay,” said Charlie, not liking where this was heading or the alarming extent of McCarthy’s insider knowledge.
“I need you to get it for me. For us. For our team. Give Cohn a call when you have it. Need this tout de suite.” He patted Charlie on the knee twice, then gave his thigh a little squeeze.
“Wait a sec, you’re asking me to steal something from my father? Your friend?”
“I didn’t say anything about anyone stealing anything,” McCarthy said. “I don’t care how you get it. You can ask for it, you can obtain it any way you see fit. I just need the file. We need the file, Charlie. We do. Your father won’t miss that folder; he was just asked to hold on to it by NBC so they could claim plausible deniability.”
“What is it? What’s in this file?”
“You can read it if you want,” McCarthy said.
And before Charlie knew what was happening, the driver had opened his car door, extricated him from the vehicle, returned to the driver’s seat, and zoomed off. Charlie was left standing in the pale light of the street lamp wondering if these demands on him would ever end.
Chapter Seventeen
Monday, March 8, 1954—Morning
Washington, DC
Charlie hadn’t left the house on Sunday, hoping that Margaret might call. She didn’t. He was in a pit and had no way to reach her.
Not long after dawn on Monday morning, Charlie frantically read both the Washington Times-Herald and the Washington Post and found nothing in either paper about the car crash. The accident had been before dawn Friday, so it would have been discovered that day and been in the papers as soon as that afternoon. But there hadn’t been anything all weekend. He couldn’t believe only three days had passed since he’d woken up in Rock Creek.
He then met Street for breakfast at a greasy spoon on Constitution Avenue, where they engaged in small talk over coffee and toast and more casually perused their newspapers: McCarthy was demanding equal television time to respond to a Saturday-night address by Adlai Stevenson in which the Democrat claimed that the GOP was becoming the party of deceit and demagoguery; Secretary of State Dulles was having a tough time rallying votes at the Inter-American Conference in Venezuela for the United States’ anti-Communist resolution; in a post-shooting crackdown, six Communists had been arrested in Puerto Rico with an estimated three hundred on the loose on the island.