Charlie had campaigned, unenthusiastically, for Nixon. But when he lived in DC, before he and Margaret started their family, he had enjoyed having then Senator Kennedy and, more important, his wife, Jackie, as neighbors. And he respected Robert Kennedy’s brute force of intellect and ambition, even if he didn’t trust him; they had spent some time together due to Charlie’s work on a House Armed Services Oversight subcommittee as well as socially. He told Margaret he thought Robert the sharpest of the Kennedys, and she’d pointedly asked how he could be so sure without having met any of the Kennedy sisters. Touché—he’d admitted, and not for the first time in their nearly seventeen-year marriage, that she was right.

Margaret had been eagerly anticipating Dwight starting kindergarten so she could return to her work in clinical research as a postdoc in zoology at Brooklyn College, specifically studying equine behavior. She’d always found animals easier to understand than humans; they were so refreshingly straightforward and real. Lately, reading Runaway Bunny or watching animated shorts featuring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig or arranging the stuffed bears on her children’s beds, she felt she was going out of her mind.

The car pulled over on the east side of Fifth Avenue in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Charlie and his Justice Department sentries removed their hats as they walked through the massive, intricately carved bronze doors and into the sanctuary. Charlie heard the choir rehearsing for Christmas and winced.

Wahr Mensch und wahrer Gott,

hilft uns aus allem Leide,

rettet von Sünd und Tod

The last time he’d heard German, he’d been in France, listening to defeated prisoners of war. He could understand the lyrics: “True man and true God / It helps us from all trouble / Saves us from sin and death.”

Sin and death. Charlie’s already foul mood darkened. He needed that drink.

Addington White guided Charlie past men, women, and children in winter coats lighting candles. In the distance, lit brightly, was the main sanctuary, which contained the crypts of past archbishops. An organ of nine thousand pipes filled the chamber with the kind of music that always unsettled Charlie, calling to mind Lon Chaney unmasked in Phantom of the Opera. He followed his escorts down the main aisle, passing dozens of empty darkened wooden pews and a white marble baptistery, a place of purification where worshippers were absolved of their sins.

White patted Charlie’s shoulder, less a friendly gesture than a way to guide him down a pew, at the end of which, next to a white marble column, was a familiar silhouette: a nest of hair, a beaky nose, and an overbite. The man’s elbows rested on his knees, his head hung low, and his unruly bangs flopped forward; it was hard to tell if he was deep in prayer or lost in thought.