The Hellfire Club(69)



Winston lifted himself out of his chair with a groan and began shuffling toward his study. His earlier irritation at Charlie’s surprise late arrival had apparently subsided.

“Come on in for a nightcap if you want.”

Winston’s study was where he kept his most important documents, as well as a giant floor globe and his collection of nineteenth-century books, most of them focused on the presidency and assassination of Abraham Lincoln and on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. As his dad occupied himself at the side table where decanters held his scotch and bourbon, Charlie took in the comforting scent of the room: cigar smoke and ancient texts and his dad’s musky cologne. When he was a boy, this room had seemed to hold all the secrets of adulthood: serious men in serious trouble and whispered agreements and handshakes like vise grips and the lingering menace of debts owed.

“Estes tells me you seem to be getting along better now,” Winston Marder said, handing Charlie a tumbler containing two fingers of bourbon and one ice cube. He sank into his chair, a walnut Victorian parlor armchair with intricately carved designs resembling tassels. The nineteenth-century antique creaked beneath his weight, which was increasing around his middle as he approached sixty.

“I suppose,” said Charlie, “that depends on how one defines getting along better. Doing things other people want me to that I’m not particularly proud of—yes, I’m doing more of that. Passing on files to the McCarthy Committee and participating in the great comic-book hearing.”

Winston Marder chuckled and Charlie suppressed a sigh of irritation. “Yes, I suppose that’s how I would define it at this stage of your nascent political career. You’re not getting anything for yourself?”

“I asked Chairman Carlin if he would block a permit for a chemical plant in Harlem. Negro friend of mine asked me to help him with that.”

Winston’s eyes lit up. “That was you? I heard about that. Adam Powell is furious. General Kinetics too. No matter. Now Harley Staggers and Bob Mollohan are fighting over which pocket of Appalachia the plant should move to.” Staggers and Mollohan were West Virginia Democrats, aggressive seekers of the federal dole and anything else that might improve the plight of their impoverished constituents. Charlie would have liked to bask in his father’s approval, but he could only stare grimly into the glass in his hands.

“What’s eating you?”

Charlie paused before admitting, “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that whatever ill effects come from this chemical plant will now be inflicted on other people.”

Winston’s smile was part amusement, part acknowledgment of the injustice of the world. “Yep. That’s how it works, Charlie.” He yawned, looking like a lion growling. Charlie wished he could be comforted by his father’s benevolent world-weariness; instead, he found himself fighting a mounting sense of frustrated indignation. He needed direction, not aphorisms.

“Chairman Carlin wants me to co-sponsor the farm bill with him. He’s trying to use me to co-opt the other veterans and any other skeptical Yankees.”

“That’s good. Nothing wrong with having a record farmers can like. Costs you nothing and could pay off later. How about Estes’s latest project, these Nuremberg Trials for Bugs Bunny? You set that up for him?”

“Yep, next month at the Foley Square Courthouse.”

“Ever the good soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

Winston stood and stretched his arms as high as they could go and then spread them out, as if he were on a crucifix. “Pooped,” he said. “Let’s have lunch tomorrow at the club. Noon?”

He patted Charlie’s shoulder as he left the room, leaving his son sitting in the dim glow of the lamp that stood next to the wooden file cabinet where the most sensitive files were kept. It was the only cabinet that his father took the time to lock.

Atop the cabinet was a small clay sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback from the Rough Riders era. A gifted artist, Charlie’s mother had made it for Winston years before, and the best parts of the intricate rendering were the detachable pieces fashioned from other media—the aluminum canteen that hung from a strap slung over his shoulder, the wooden replica of a Krag-J?rgensen M1896 carbine, and the cloth wide-brimmed slouch hat.

Charlie carefully lifted the hat; the key still sat tucked inside the liner where he had discovered it years earlier. He plucked it out and unlocked the wooden cabinet.

Winston Marder was a man for whom the need for order and the demands upon him were constantly at war, and the messy but alphabetized files bore witness to this struggle. Charlie soon found the NBC section with the red folder containing the This Is Your Life investigation into Strongfellow. He took what he needed, locked the cabinet, returned the key to Teddy’s hat, and left his father’s study, his heart pounding.



In his dreams, he was being shaken, up and down, left and right, taken across bumps and troughs, reminiscent of his ride on a Higgins boat from his battleship through the chop to Normandy Beach. His mother came into his room shortly after eight a.m. carrying a tray with buttered wheat toast, scrambled eggs, and coffee. She set the tray on his nightstand and folded her arms with a pointed glance at her wristwatch. There was nothing like a night spent in one’s childhood bed to make one feel young again, and not necessarily in a good way. Charlie flung an arm across his eyes and peered out at her from beneath it.

Jake Tapper's Books