The Hellfire Club(66)
“Malaya? Ha. No, not really,” Charlie confessed, struggling to act normally, as if they were just two members of Congress chitchatting about world affairs, no subtext, scandals, or corpses. He willed himself back into the conversation. Malaya. Yes, Malaya. “I know after the Japs pulled out of the peninsula after the war, the economy tanked and the Commies jumped,” he said.
“It’s the same old story,” Carlin said with a casual shrug. He seemed in a friendlier mood than usual. “Communists prey upon the peasants, feed them a load of crap about worker exploitation. Next thing you know, the workers are killing their bosses.”
Carlin looked at Charlie, seeming to size him up.
“Malaya’s a big source of rubber, you know,” Carlin said, his eyes locking briefly with Charlie’s, purposefully reminding him of Goodstone. Charlie said nothing. He was trying to determine what Carlin knew. Likely everything. Last time Charlie saw him, he was with LaMontagne. But maybe LaMontagne wanted to wield this power on his own. And it wasn’t as if LaMontagne weren’t complicit as well.
Carlin gave his shoulder a hearty pat before withdrawing his arm. “Come sit with me, Charlie,” he said.
Charlie, not eager for more of Carlin’s companionship but not seeing an easy exit, dutifully followed him to seats at the far end of the front row. He felt light-headed.
“One of my friends on the Agriculture Committee came up with a good idea for our farm bill,” Carlin said. “We always have a hard time getting Yankees to support it. But what if you become an original co-sponsor of our bill?”
Charlie knew better than to fall for Carlin’s casual come-on. The farm bill was a notorious gift of subsidies from Washington politicians to heartland voters. FDR had started the program in 1933 as part of the New Deal, paying farmers not to grow anything on portions of their land to prevent any surpluses; the government wanted to keep prices artificially high. It didn’t really work. Charlie and other urban congressmen thought the program corrupt and essentially graft.
“Now, why would I do that?” Charlie tried to soften his response with what he hoped was a winning smile. “Aside from your asking so nicely, of course. I mean, how would I explain to the good people of Manhattan why they have to live according to the capitalist system but their cousins in Alabama get paid by the government not to grow things?”
“Well,” Carlin said, his voice smooth and confident, “I just thought you and I could maybe start over here and try to get onto more solid footing. Our mutual friend Davis LaMontagne has been trying to convince me that I have you all wrong, that you want to be doing good here, that you just need some…guidance on how this town operates.”
His mouth spread into an expression that almost resembled a smile but was more akin, Charlie thought, to the look of a fox that had picked up a scent. “Working together, compromises; that’s how things get done here.” He landed two patronizing taps on Charlie’s knee.
Abner Lance, Carlin’s aide, appeared at his boss’s side and handed him a manila folder bulging with the farm bill. Carlin took it without looking at his assistant and gave it to Charlie. “Read it over when you can.” Again he offered something that might have been his version of a smile. “Now. Is there anything I can help you with?”
Charlie decided to treat this as a sincere question, though he had his doubts. Seeing Street across the House Chamber, he had an idea.
“I could use your help on something, yes,” Charlie said. “There’s a chemical plant for which General Kinetics is trying to get a permit in Harlem. A lot of local civil rights activists are after me to block it. Total headache. If you could kill it and handle Congressman Powell, that would be extremely helpful. I could try, but it would be nasty for me to get involved in any way, since Powell supports it.”
“Why don’t you want it?” Carlin asked. “Actually, never mind, that’s your business. Let me see what I can do.” Carlin lifted himself up off the chair, nodded to Charlie, and walked away.
The Pennsylvania Railroad’s Afternoon Congressional train departed DC’s Union Station at 4:30 p.m. sharp each weekday and made the 227-mile journey north to New York City’s Penn Station in three hours and thirty-five minutes.
Following the vote to provide military aid to the UK for its crackdown against Malayan guerrillas, Charlie walked the mile from the Capitol to Union Station and bought a ticket, and he still had time for a shoeshine before he boarded the train to Manhattan.
He had no overnight bag, hadn’t told his office where he was going, and had no way to leave a note for Margaret in case she came home and wondered where he was. In fact, he thought grimly as he sat waiting for his shoeshine, there was part of him that hoped that would happen, that wanted her to worry about him and even mildly panic. Why should I be the only one uneasy? he thought, disgusted with his marching orders from McCarthy and even more sickened by the fact that he was going to carry them out.
He felt ill. His stomach churned, and the anxiety and loneliness he’d been trying to keep at bay began falling upon him like a dark cloak. Get it together, he said to himself. Take control. He stood and walked to his gate, showed his ticket, boarded, walked through the stainless-steel cars—coach, dining, observation car. He found a seat in the parlor car just as the locomotive jerked forward and the train began slowly chugging north on its journey, through the ghettos of Northeast Washington, past the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb on the right and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Catholic University on the left.