The Hellfire Club(87)
Charlie looked at her expectantly. “Yes?” he asked.
“She said ‘under William.’”
“Right. What are you getting at?”
“‘Under Jenifer,’” Margaret said. “Isn’t that what MacLachlan said to you? ‘Under Jenifer’?”
Charlie and Bernstein registered what Margaret was suggesting, and then they sprang into action. Bernstein again opened the collection binder, found the listing for Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, and pointed Charlie toward a vintage wooden file cabinet in the corner. Charlie opened the first drawer and began rifling through the papers.
“There’s one here under Daniel, but it’s just a deed for some land,” Charlie said, his voice sinking in disappointment. He checked in the drawer again, more thoroughly. “Nothing else.”
“Look under Jenifer,” Margaret suggested. “‘Under Jenifer.’ Isn’t this collection in alphabetical order?”
“This file cabinet appears to be,” Charlie said. In the second drawer he looked, he found James Madison; James Wilson; Jay, John; Jefferson, Thomas. “Weird filing system,” he muttered.
And then he saw it, right after Jefferson, a crisp manila folder, unlike the mahogany-colored binders that held the rest of the collection. “Hold on,” he said. He removed a thick new folder from the drawer with MacLachlan’s name written on it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Wednesday, April 21, 1954—Morning
Washington, DC / New York City
Charcoal thunderclouds darkened the skies above Washington, DC, as Margaret pulled up to Union Station to drop off her husband. The MacLachlan dossier they’d discovered the previous night was tightly bound and tucked inside Charlie’s briefcase, which he gripped as if it contained the nuclear codes.
After the discovery of the folder, Charlie convinced Sneed to once more let them use the brand-new Haloid Company photocopy prototype machine, the Copyflo, reserved for Library of Congress staff, and they made two photocopies of the ninety-eight-page dossier, a process that took two hours. Margaret took one photocopy to hide in the house, and Sheryl Ann Bernstein had the other one, along with instructions to get it to Congressman Street first thing that morning.
Charlie and Margaret had only the beginnings of a plan. They had information but no idea how to use it to extricate themselves from the tentacles of the Hellfire Club. They now knew that the errands Charlie ran for the Hellfire Club were trifling; however, what MacLachlan had discovered and diligently documented was shocking and consequential. They had come up with an idea to signal to the Hellfire Club that they were not willing to be pawns moved around on the chessboard any longer, and they surmised from Van Waganan’s example that Charlie needed to be at least somewhat public about it so as to cast a protective spotlight on himself. And more important than their own welfare, of course, was to begin to warn the world about what MacLachlan had discovered, which imperiled hundreds of thousands of innocent people if not more. Before Charlie headed north to participate in the comic-book hearings—inauspicious timing, but just the latest example of nothing being in their control—they had decided that Margaret would drive in Charlie’s car to Susquehannock Island, where Gwinnett’s team had relocated from Nanticoke. She would be busy there, and safe, with no one in the political world interested enough in her research to have any idea where she conducted it.
Margaret kissed Charlie good-bye and wished him luck. The seven-thirty Morning Congressional would get him into Manhattan with just enough time to make the noon hearing. “I want you to destroy comic books. I want you to be like Lex Luthor with a ray gun, just disintegrating superheroes.”
Charlie grimaced. “You laugh while I head to my doom. At least Sheryl Ann did some decent research; I have a good line of questioning that should get us where we want to go.”
“The world will be watching.”
“Please, don’t remind me.” Charlie leaned across the seat to kiss Margaret good-bye one more time. “Say hi to the ponies.”
After Charlie got out of the car, Margaret lightly honked the horn and exited onto Massachusetts Avenue, veering left toward Maryland to make her last research trip before their baby was born.
Catherine Leopold had arranged for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings to be held at the Foley Square Courthouse, but Charlie wasn’t aware until he walked through the door just how poorly suited the building was for the task. The courtroom was the largest one in the building, but it was a closet compared to most Senate hearing rooms; desks had been jammed in at odd angles in order to accommodate everyone. Scattered throughout the room stood bulky television cameras; their multiple power cords, thick as theater rope, converged like tentacles near the door before snaking down the hall. Charlie spotted his place card on a side table alongside the subcommittee’s counsel, staff director, and the court reporter recording the proceedings.
At the center of the main table sat Senator Kefauver. He looked in his element; happy to be in the mix again three years after his successful crime hearings and two years after Democratic bosses stole the presidential nomination from him in a back room of the International Amphitheater in Chicago. On one side of him sat a fellow Democrat, Senator Tom Hennings of Missouri, and on the other side the subcommittee chairman, New Jersey Republican senator Bob Hendrickson. Hennings whispered something to Kefauver, who smiled and patted his arm collegially as the clock struck twelve. A TV producer signaled to the senators as if he were a third-base coach; a light atop the primary TV camera blinked on, and Hendrickson gaveled the proceedings to a start.