The Hellfire Club(71)

“What’s the downside?” Winston asked his son. “You make a friend in Chairman Carlin, you get some fund-raising from the heartland, you help farmers, you help defeat the Red Menace abroad.”

“You’re asking me, an army captain who lost a soldier to nerve gas, what can go wrong with chemicals? This is why I pushed to block permitting on the General Kinetics plant in Harlem.”

“Things can go wrong with any factory. Out in Queens today, a forklift operator will drop a box of Slinkys on his co-worker’s head. In Iowa, a farmhand will trip and drown in a feed silo. At a Texas slaughterhouse, a meat cleaver will land in the wrong place. They’re all the casualties of progress.”

“Was Private Rodriguez a casualty of progress?”

Winston waved his hand at his son’s question as if he were swatting away a gnat. A waiter deftly placed a filet mignon in front of him while a cocktail waitress replaced his martini. Winston took up his fork and steak knife and tucked into his meal.

“Charlie,” he said while chewing, “did you ever hear of Martin Couney?”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said, looking around for his soup and sandwich.

“He died a few years ago. Considered the father of neonatology.”

“Okay.”

“You were born a few weeks premature, I think you know that.”

Charlie nodded; his parents had never been comfortable talking about his birth, and he knew few details.

“You were tiny and sickly and your mother was worried about you. The doctors assured us you’d be fine, but a nurse told me about Couney. He had set up an incubator ward out in Brooklyn. Dozens of premature babies being cared for and watched round the clock. The newest state-of-the-art incubators imported from Europe.”

“Why from Europe?”

The waiter placed Charlie’s soup and sandwich before him. He started with the chicken noodle.

“Europe was decades ahead of the U.S. on premature babies. Believe it or not, here in this country, premature babies were regarded as weaklings, deficient—like miscarriages, an act of God.”

“Darwinism.”

“Exactly. Survival of the fittest. But Couney didn’t see it that way. Not only that, he wanted to help babies of all colors and races and religions and stations in life. Poor babies, rich babies. At no charge. I was truly amazed when I went out to see him on Coney Island.”

“Coney Island?”

“Twenty-five cents a head, step right up to see the teeny-tiny babies in the incubators! A big sign outside said ‘All the World Loves a Baby.’ In the summer, crowds would line up to gawk at the baby-incubator show.”

Charlie blinked. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Right next to the bearded lady and Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy. About twenty or so premature babies, fighting for their lives. Shrunken. Shriveled. Pink. Tragic.”

“I’m not sure of the point of the story,” Charlie said. “I guess it’s ‘Thanks for not leaving me at the freak show’?”

Winston chewed a bite of his steak, then washed it down with a gulp of martini. “Actually, we did. Leave you there.”

Charlie was shocked. “Excuse me?”

“You stayed there for nine days,” Winston said, slicing off another bite of filet, “after which Couney and the staff thought you were fine to go home.”

“Jesus, Dad, you left me at a freak show?”

“Charlie. I would have volunteered to stay at the freak show myself, swallowing swords or covering my body with tattoos, if I’d thought it would keep you alive. Shame doesn’t enter the picture when your baby’s life is at stake!”

“No, I just mean—”

“Good Christ, you are still in a goddamn incubator. You don’t see the world as it is, Charlie. So safely ensconced—”

“You think when I was slogging—”

“Oh, spare me your war stories,” his dad said, stunning him into silence. “I know you were a goddamn patriot, but for some reason you failed to connect the evil you saw there and what the Allies had to do to stamp it out with the same imperatives here. Let me tell you something. When I was working on that trial of that goddamn cannibal? Fish? I saw the kind of evil that exists out there. And what you might not get is that the threat from the Communists is just as evil and just as real, and those fighting them need ammunition—and you keep standing in the goddamn way!” He banged on the table, prompting nearby club members to shoot Charlie concerned looks.

Charlie looked down at his briefcase, where he’d stowed the stolen NBC Strongfellow investigation. He was doing what he had to do, even to his own father’s detriment; he was no longer standing in the way. But he knew he could hardly present this line he’d crossed as proof of his understanding.

“Ever since you got back from France, you’ve been in a goddamn academic ivory tower thinking lofty thoughts,” Winston said, “writing about our Founding Fathers—who certainly knew what protecting this nation actually meant. But you’ve missed the point of all of it!”

Yes, by all means, lecture me about elitism in the private dining room of the Harvard Club, Charlie thought. He took a bite of his chicken salad sandwich. “Boy,” he said, chewing, “that Fish trial sounds disturbing. Seriously psychologically disturbing.”