Fellow Travelers (31 page)

“Well,” said Fuller, looking up at the turret while he shook Hildebrand’s hand, “this one is pretty baronial for the Bottom.”

“A regular Taj Mahal. I’m not sure what we’re going to do with it.” Hildebrand pointed in the direction of his nearby small brewery, visible from this corner, though dwarfed by the much larger Heurich’s plant beside it. “We still own two or three of these little dumps,” he explained, pointing to the row of houses running up Twenty-fifth. “Heurich used to have most of them. They got built in the nineties, mostly for the Germans and the Irish, who all took off once the streetcar came in. No reason to actually
live
here when for a couple of pennies a day they could get in and out to make their living making beer. The colored have been in the houses ever since. This one’s so far gone it’s been abandoned for a year. Our accountant only realized the other day that the pittance of rent had stopped coming in. We’re here trying to decide whether to fix it up or knock it down.” He paused to take a look at some missing cornices. “I’m a little taken aback. I didn’t realize I was a slumlord.”

Fuller watched one of the other men pulling at some branches to see whether the window behind them was whole or broken.

“It’s a haunted house inside,” Hildebrand continued. “Cobwebs. A couple of old couches, some busted cupboards with jelly-jar glasses. Christ, a colored woman who passed by five minutes ago told me there were still privies in the alley during the war. Mrs. Roosevelt came poking around one day, shaking her head. How’s Mary?”

He seemed to hope the fast elision would keep Fuller from realizing he’d mentioned her name.

“Not herself, I’d say,” Fuller answered. “This afternoon she lacked the energy to stay on my back about something annoying I’d said.”

Hildebrand tested a piece of wrought-iron fence that looked as if it might give way in his hand. “I wish she’d get out of there. Find something that made her happier. How’s married life?” he asked, hoping for a cordial, dishonest answer. He knew more than enough of Fuller’s story from Mary.

“The berries. In fact, today’s my anniversary.”

“Already?”

“There’s a baby coming in May.”

“Congratulations.” Hildebrand smiled and extended his hand.

“And yourself?” asked Fuller. He couldn’t remember the name of the girl the brewer had married.

“Things are fine. I wish business were a little better. No heir yet.”

“Well,” said Fuller, laughing gently, “I’ve been truant long enough. I’d best be getting back to the office.”

Hildebrand shook his hand for a third time and prepared to resume inspecting the house.

“So what do you think you’ll decide?” asked Fuller. “About this place.”

“I think we’ll probably knock it down. But not until summertime at the earliest. In this town it takes more permits to demolish something than it does to build.”

“So you’ll just leave her locked up until then?”

Hildebrand laughed at the place’s worthlessness. “What lock?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

January 22, 1957

Tim thought Woodforde’s foot must have crunched another peanut flashbulb—there were loads of them amidst the detritus of yesterday’s inaugural parade—but a backward glance through the fog on F Street left him uncertain.

“A Nixon poster,” Tim’s companion at last explained.

The winds were picking up, sharpening the contrast between this morning’s weather and the sunny calm of yesterday afternoon, when Tim had watched the parade from the corner of Thirteenth and Pennsylvania. His vantage point, the pedestal of Pulaski’s statue, had been so good he was able to pick out even the types of flowers in the Nixon girls’ corsages.

Now, less than twenty-four hours later, as he and Woodforde plodded eastward, it was hard to concentrate on anything but the thick gray mist.

“Think of all those poor private planes,” said the writer, in mock horror. “Unable to get back to Greenwich or River Oaks before dinner.”

“I thought you’d converted,” said Tim. “At least sort of.”

“I am a man without an ideology. Which in our century is worse than being a man without a country.” Woodforde had sat out the inaugural parade at a one-o’clock showing of
The Girl Can’t Help It
.

“You need a church,” said Tim.

“You need an exorcism.”

In the aftermath of the Hungarian catastrophe, the two young men had conducted a prolific and forgiving correspondence. A peculiar understanding and sexless affection had grown up between them all through November and December as their airmail envelopes traveled back and forth over the Atlantic. Before Christmas came, Woodforde was suggesting that Tim, once he got back stateside, move into a portion of the big, shabby commercial loft where the writer and his girlfriend were residing.

He’d been living there for two weeks. His drywalled-off room took up only a small fraction of what felt like a spacious version of the 7,965th’s barracks. Five other painters besides Gloria Rostwald had their own pieces of the vast premises one block from Woodward & Lothrop’s. Not only was his landlord living in sin, Tim had written Francy; he himself and all the rest were residing illegally, against the District’s zoning regulations.

Each of the artists, Gloria had explained, worked with acrylic paints on canvases that hadn’t been primed. They were trying to constitute an innovative “color school,” acting as if Washington were a creative destination on the order of New York or Paris (as that city had
once
been, Tim was careful to remember). The group’s paintings were pretty, but also gauzy and faint, he thought. Whenever he looked at them, he wished they’d come into clearer focus, the way he wished the city now would, as he and Woodforde continued marching east.

The writer was on his way to the Hill, and Tim would accompany him as far at Fifth Street, where he’d veer off to St. Mary of God, the Hungarian church. He’d been working there on behalf of the refugees now streaming into town, taking his meals in the rectory basement and coming home with pin money for his efforts. He paid his rent to Woodforde and Gloria with what he’d saved from his army pay, which was most of it.

“Those poor Hungarian souls,” said Woodforde, looking down Fifth Street toward Tim’s destination.

“You wouldn’t believe what some of them have been through.”

“Exactly. Ten days of Kate Smith records and apple pie at Camp Kilmer. Makes you shudder.”

“See you later,” said Tim, clapping Woodforde’s shoulder and dashing off into the fog, his heart almost light with purpose.

Since arriving back in the U.S., he had still not seen his family. Francy and Tom were threatening to come down from Staten Island if he didn’t get up to them soon, but the lack so far of any reunion didn’t seem strange—not when he hadn’t seen Hawkins, either.

Why, he’d asked himself a hundred times, had he ever sent the telegram? Had he succumbed to a simple moment of weakness while he was angry at God over Hungary? Had a loss of faith in Him prompted a return to that other object of worship, Hawk?

The letter of reply from Alexandria had arrived when he was packing up his things inside the barracks. He had not responded to it in turn, since, strictly speaking, he didn’t have to.
I’m passing the buck,
Hawk had admitted, allowing any suggestion of a job to remain nonspecific. Even so, Tim could now feel Hawk’s presence across town, like the golden chalice behind the tabernacle’s curtain.

He had told himself—was telling himself even now—that he could not go through all that again, not after having made himself right with God, who was allowing him to feel useful in a small way with the refugees. The country had already turned its attention away from the exiles, but there had been no slackening of zeal inside the rectory at St. Mary, Mother of God, where a few minutes after leaving Woodforde Tim was busy with money orders, cans of cling peaches, and pediatrican referrals.

It was the middle of the afternoon before Father Molnar’s secretary came to tell him he had a visitor.

In a wrinkled suit and stained tie, Tommy McIntyre looked as if he’d barely managed to pull himself together for someone’s funeral. Tim wondered for a moment how he kept himself from being fired, but of course there was no mystery to that: Tommy could still, at any time, use his knowledge of Potter’s son against the senator. With the approach of next year’s election, the boy’s existence would be an even more potent fact than it had been in ’53. Michael Larchwood’s being in jail was a bonus cartridge in Tommy’s ammunition belt.

“Sir,” said Tim.

“Sir,” replied Tommy, with the comic courtliness each had sometimes displayed toward the other in better days.

Tim abruptly stumbled into sympathy: “I heard that Mrs. Larchwood died. I should have written you.”

“Ah, yes,” said Tommy. “I suppose you heard all about it from the left-wing scribe. He doesn’t come by much anymore.”

Tommy looked around at all the sorting and packing, seeming to admire its efficiency, before he added: “I suppose he told you about the scion.”

“He mentioned that he stole a car and went to jail.”

“Yes,” said Tommy, affecting a sentimental sigh. “Impetuous youth. I had a visit from the lad shortly before his little scrape.”

“Woodforde didn’t tell me.”

“Woodforde didn’t know. Master Larchwood’s a somewhat rougher character than the one we saw in ’53. A faintly
threatening
presence this time ’round. It seems he labors under the delusion that those of us in the employ of America’s lawmakers are rather wealthier than we are. I disappointed him with the news that I had no more cash to give him than I did three years ago, back at that excellent Schine-family hotel.”

Tim knew that Tommy would any minute be bringing up Hawk, seeking the peculiar pleasure of watching Timothy Laughlin squirm at the suggestion that he and Tommy McIntyre had hopeless love in common. To forestall this, he made a nervous joke: “Have you come to offer a donation?”

“No,” said Tommy, straight-faced. “I’ve come on a mission of mercy.”

He asked Tim to accompany him to the house of an old friend on the Hill—a worse drunk than himself, he swore. “I’ve been encouraging the fellow to quit. Friendly advice from the pot to the kettle.” He paused for a second or two while Tim scrutinized his face. “I did go myself, a couple of times, to the father confessor you recommended at St. Pete’s, but it didn’t quite take. So I’m wondering if
you’d
give the pitch to my pal. My own skepticism would be a little too evident, I’m afraid, but he might be susceptible to an angel of charity like yourself.” Tommy gestured toward the wooden crate that Tim was packing with boxes of powdered milk and Nestlé’s Quik. “Or at least to a more sober voice than my own,” the Irishman added.

Tim guessed that Tommy had found him through Miss Cook. He’d called the old office last week in connection with paperwork that his reserve unit required about his last salaried civilian employment. Wary of both Tommy and the clock, he now looked up and saw that it was only three, too soon to leave.

“They’re hardly in a position to dock you,” Tommy argued. “Why don’t you take a stroll with me? The weather’s improved considerably.”

Out on the street, walking toward the Hill, Tim felt his thoughts turning to the possibility of reconciliation. Was what he’d accomplished with Woodforde unthinkable with Tommy? Or even Hawk? Of course he and Hawk had never really quarreled, but maybe there was some subtle formula, like Father LeTour’s in New Orleans, that would bring them back into a sort of relationship, some platonic fealty he could practice without violating the worship of God. Perhaps he could exist as a neutral state, like India, between two great powers.

At number 335 on C Street, a vaguely familiar young man, on his way out, opened the door. None of it added up. The house was not the least disordered inside, and a female voice, in quiet conversation with a man’s, could be heard coming from the second story.

“Heading back to the office,” the young man said to Tommy. “Go in and sit down.”

“I don’t understand,” Tim said.

Tommy showed him a seat in the living room as if this were his own house, and then nodded toward the staircase. A male figure was descending, each step making several more inches of him visible. A belly protruded, and the gait was less than steady. Finally, the emerging head above its shoulders proved to be covered with the mottled face of Joe McCarthy. The senator was combed and freshly shaven, but for all that, like Tommy, barely pasted together. The female upstairs, presumably Jeannie, could probably claim credit for whatever physical cohesion he managed to display.

McCarthy came forward to shake Tommy’s hand. “McIntyre.”

“Senator, let me introduce you to another son of Ireland.”

“We met in your office, early in ’54,” said Tim.

McCarthy responded with a cry of comic agony: “Fifty-four! Ohhhhh!”

Tommy and the senator warily entered into conversation about the new Congress, whose alignments Tommy was demonstrably better informed of than McCarthy. There was, Tim thought, an odd cordiality between the two men, each of whom, he had to remind himself, had something on the other and took him for an enemy. Together here they seemed comrades: each of them pained and defeated, both of them Irish and drunk.

McCarthy made a crack about Mrs. Luce’s final departure from the embassy in Rome: “Now the only ring she’ll have to kiss is Harry’s.”

“If not the one he’s bought for his girlfriend” came Tommy’s fast reply. Both men laughed and McCarthy got up to make drinks. Tim said he’d have a Coca-Cola.

“So Alcorn’s now heading up the National Committee,” observed Tommy.

“Fuck Massachusetts,” McCarthy replied. “Goddamned ‘Eisenhower Republicans.’”

Even Tim knew that Alcorn was from Connecticut, not Massachusetts.

“Right you are, sir,” said Tommy. “One day a man will come from out of the west and put an end to all this. Maybe Goldwater, maybe somebody we don’t even know yet.”

McCarthy nodded at his own sagacity and finished pouring drinks. Once they were distributed and he’d settled himself in a club chair, he let Tommy take the conversation to its next topic: “Looks like my man’s going to have a tough race next year. Against this fellow Hart.”

Unaware of Potter’s likely opponent, McCarthy asked: “Is he a Jew? ‘Hart’ and ‘Harris’ and ‘Cooper’ always are.”

Tommy left McCarthy uninformed that Hart was a Catholic and the lieutenant governor of Michigan, adding only: “At the very least he’s going to scare the hell out of Charlie.”

“Good!” shouted McCarthy. “But that doesn’t take much, does it?” He gulped his drink and warmed to the subject: “God, I’d love to see him get his legless ass kicked out of Congress. At least he’s off the committee.” He referred to the latter body as if it still belonged to him.

Tim could see where this was going: Tommy had decided it was at last time to bring down Senator Potter. His simmering rage over Annie Larchwood’s death had blazed up into something like his old fury toward McCarthy himself. This time he would reverse field and make McCarthy the instrument of Potter’s undoing. Tommy would alert the senator to the existence of the illegitimate son; then, rather than tip the press himself, he would keep his part anonymous by letting Joe spoon them the news. With a friendly wink he’d tell McCarthy it was best to make reporters believe the story had come from some loyal old gumshoe on the committee staff.

Tim also knew why Tommy wanted him here while McCarthy learned the secret. His presence would provide the senator with a kind of confirmation, since Timothy Laughlin’s face, never able to mask anything, would testify to the story’s truth. And of course his being here would also give Tommy the pleasure of seeing “young Timothy” harrowed yet again.

Tommy watched in silence as McCarthy took a further few sips of his drink. There was no danger the senator would ask why Tommy wanted his boss undone. There was always a reason in the world of who had what on whom, and it would be more convenient for McCarthy not to know, for him just to marinate and savor the suddenly fulfillable fantasy of seeing Potter get his comeuppance.

When Tommy spoke again, it was to tell McCarthy, casually, that with a little help this fellow Hart might pull things off. But before McCarthy could respond to the suggestion, the sharp cry of an infant came from the second floor. “My baby!” yelled the senator, grinning broadly before bounding upstairs to the child he and Jeannie had just adopted from the New York Foundling Hospital. Cardinal Spellman, who’d seen no need to ask too many questions about the acquisition, had helped things along.

Tim decided that this was the moment to escape the house. But McCarthy was almost immediately back in the living room, somehow managing to keep a firm, tender grip on the blanketed baby. “Jeannie says Princess Grace just had a girl of her own! The palace in Monte Carlo put it out over the radio. Ain’t that swell? Well,
that
little girl can’t be any prettier than
this
one!”

They might all be at some post-christening shindig inside McConnell’s beer hall on Ninth Avenue. Tim wouldn’t be surprised if he were asked to favor everyone with a song.