Early May 1940
Washington D.C.
SPRING CAME, THE cherry trees blossomed all over the city, and suddenly the phoney war in Europe became real – on 9 April, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark. Nessheim told himself he wasn’t surprised by the sudden onslaught, but deep down he was. He had been lulled as much by the easy life he had been living in Washington as by the deceptive peace 4,000 miles away.
He had returned to Belvedere as requested by Annie that weekend. He, Dubinsky, and Plympton had gone with Annie and her son Jeff on a long walk in Rock Creek Park, which was refreshingly uncrowded on the Sunday morning. Nessheim was made to feel welcome – Dubinsky and Plympton seemed to view his residence in the House of Youth as an admission card to their set. If no match intellectually with these high-powered Frankfurter acolytes, Nessheim was nonetheless an object of interest, for his work suggested both action and intrigue. Dubinsky especially seemed interested, even asking to see Nessheim’s gun.
Plympton was more detached, but Nessheim couldn’t help liking him. More relaxed than Dubinsky, and projecting the self-confidence of someone who has done well at an early age, he didn’t talk a lot about himself. It took Dubinsky to fill in Plympton’s background for Nessheim: he had graduated summa cum laude from Stanford, where he had also been the number one player on the varsity tennis team – he would have played doubles at Wimbledon one summer had he not twisted an ankle. Then on to Harvard Law School, where Plympton had made Law Review and caught the eye of Frankfurter. Through his recommendation (it was said the then-Professor had been consulted on almost a thousand important appointments in the Roosevelt administration), Plympton had stepped into a job as aide to Harry Hopkins, one of the architects of the New Deal and head of its most inspired creation, the WPA, which had given work to millions of unemployed Americans.
Yet while Dubinsky’s gee-whiz adulatory account threatened to put Plympton on a pedestal anyone would want to knock down, the man himself had enough foibles to make resentment impossible: drinking so much rye and ginger ale in a bar on G Street that on the way home he puked out the back window of Nessheim’s borrowed pool car; confessing that what scared him most about his upcoming wedding was the prospect of the groom’s speech.
Soon Nessheim was a regular at Sally Cummings’s evenings, and on weekend walks with Annie and the others – Jeff always ran out to greet him, ever since Nessheim had carried the little boy one day on his shoulders. The walks became a ritual he looked forward to, especially for the conversations it allowed with Annie. As newcomers to Washington, they shared an outsider status, and they talked to each other more about their lives growing up in small towns than their lives in the capital. Because she was a good listener, Nessheim told Annie more about himself than he ever had before. He realised he trusted her, which seemed strange since she was attached to another man.
Annie made no pretence of liking the city, or of being impressed by her aunt’s network of powerful friends; what wearied her most about the Friday soirées, she liked to say, was the effort required to remember who was the junior and who was the senior senator from Nebraska. She did not seem especially close to her aunt, and there was more than a hint of mistress and maid to their relationship, since in add-ition to working part-time for Frankfurter, Annie had formal duties at Belvedere, functioning as an unofficial secretary. Once Nessheim had heard Sally call for Annie from upstairs. ‘Annie, Annie now,’ she commanded. The tone was not the charming one she deployed at her parties.
When he next saw Guttman he had to admit that for all the time he spent at Belvedere, he had learned nothing of consequence about Sally Cummings, who despite a surface cordiality didn’t really give him the time of day. Their one substantial encounter had been about Annie, and was more admonitory than friendly. She’d cornered him one evening.
‘How nice to see you again, Jimmy. I’m glad you’ve become a regular. You’re very good with little Jeff.’
‘He’s a nice boy.’
‘Yes, and it will do him good to be part of a family. Hopefully Frank won’t be travelling so much in future. Even Mr Hopkins agrees he does too much.’
Nessheim nodded, but she wasn’t finished. ‘It’s been good of you to keep Annie company too.’
‘A pleasure,’ he said, but he could see she wasn’t listening.
‘Annie’s very fond of you.’
‘Likewise,’ he said, stiffening.
‘The thing is, I’d hate for you to grow too fond of her.’ She gave a smile that could have melted ice. ‘Since she’s spoken for.’
‘Of course,’ he said, but he was blushing like a schoolgirl. Sally patted him once on the shoulder and moved away.
The next weekend Dubinsky had work to do at the court, and Plympton was away, so Nessheim went alone with Annie to walk with Jeff. When they got back to Belvedere the boy stayed in the kitchen to eat the sandwich left for him by the cook, and Annie suggested they go upstairs to her ‘office’, which turned out to be a small converted bedroom along the hallway. It was a cosy space with cerise-coloured curtains held back by scarlet ties, and a soft fuzzy carpet the colour of a light grey cat. There was an antique desk in one corner, with a Windsor chair next to it, positioned at an angle to give a view of the stables out back. A small sofa with plump cushions sat against the near wall, with book-lined shelves above it, full of American classics (Hawthorne, Longfellow) and French novels sumptuously bound, many of which looked as if they’d actually been read.
‘What a beautiful room,’ Nessheim said politely.
‘Thank Aunt Sally for the effortless good taste,’ she said. ‘She tells me I’m learning but still have some way to go.’
Annie perched in the Windsor chair while they talked, and sitting on the sofa Nessheim soon lost all track of time, until he heard a car pull up behind the house.
‘Golly,’ he said, looking at his watch and standing up. He had been invited by Dubinsky to a party given by one of the court clerks, and had arranged to meet him first at the House of Youth.
He looked out the window. There was a turnaround for deliveries to the kitchen door at the back of the house, and a long midnight blue Hudson sat in the middle of it. As a chauffeur in uniform held open the car’s back door, a woman got out.
‘It’s Mrs Rutherford,’ he exclaimed.
A look of alarm spread across Annie’s face.
‘Could you wait a minute before you go?’ she asked.
‘I guess so,’ he said.
He was surprised Lucy Rutherford was visiting when Sally was away. Odder still, Annie made no sign of going down to greet her. He sat down while Annie made a stab at continuing her story. He heard someone coming up the stairs, then the door to the adjacent room closed softly.
A minute later the noise of another car came from the turnaround out back. He resisted the temptation to look, but he couldn’t pretend he was listening to Annie any more; after a moment she gave up the pretence of conversation too. They sat there awkwardly, while someone moved around downstairs. Then some kind of machinery started up.
‘What’s that?’ he whispered to Annie.
‘The elevator,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.
It stopped with a jarring noise on their floor, and Nessheim heard its door open. Then there was the unmistakable sound of a wheelchair moving into the corridor. There was a tap on a door, the squeak of its hinges, and a click of its shutting again.
Annie motioned for him to get up and they walked quietly out into the corridor and down the main staircase, virtually on tiptoe. He felt like a teenager sneaking out of his girlfriend’s house.
When they reached the hall, out of earshot, the absurdity of the situation must have struck home, for the trace of a smile appeared at the corner of Annie’s mouth.
Nessheim said, ‘Is that who I think it is?’
She gave him a look, as if to say, Don’t ask, which merely confirmed his suspicion.
‘It’s hard to believe,’ he said wonderingly.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, but she saw his unpersuaded eyes. ‘I lost track of the time,’ she said plaintively. ‘You were meant to leave ages ago.’
‘Does Sally know what’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Of course. You think they’d use the house without her permission?’ She seemed about to smile again.
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘It started up again a few months ago.’
‘Again?’
‘Years ago, Lucy and the President were very close. According to Sally, it only stopped because Eleanor threatened to divorce him. His mother was going to cut him off if that happened, and his political career would have been destroyed.’
‘So much for true love,’ he said. ‘Tell me, how does it work? Does someone from the White House phone and say, “Is the room upstairs available this Thursday?”’
‘Don’t be stupid. Lucy’s one of Sally’s oldest friends. And it’s not as bad as it seems. I don’t think he and Eleanor have been man and wife for a long time.’
Nessheim felt a long way from Bremen, Wisconsin. It seemed incredible to be standing in one of the capital’s grandest houses, calmly discussing the extramarital shenanigans of the President of the United States as they took place upstairs.
‘How many people know about this?’ he asked.
‘Not many – we make sure the staff are gone when they meet. But there’s Sally, obviously. And of course the two principals in the case,’ she added tartly.
‘What about the chauffeurs?’
‘I don’t know how they can be sure of anything. His chauffeur helps him out of the car, but the President wheels himself in – he’s got the strongest arms. There’s a ramp that gets him into the back door. Lucy’s driver goes and parks on the street after he drops her off, then comes back and collects her. For all he knows, it could just be a social call on Sally.’
‘Does Frank know?’
She hesitated, which gave him his answer. ‘What about Dubinsky?’ he added.
‘He’d only know if Frank told him, and I swore Frank to secrecy. I hope I can trust you too. It would be disastrous if it got out.’
Disastrous for whom, Nessheim wondered? He didn’t believe any newspaper would print scuttlebutt about the President. Even Walter Winchell, who was perfectly happy to fish in the dirtiest sewer, wouldn’t dare suggest the President was an adulterer.
She saw the doubt in his face. ‘Please,’ she said.
‘I’m an FBI agent, Annie. We’re meant to protect the President, along with the Secret Service. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing every day at the White House.’ He pointed upstairs. ‘Ensuring that he’s safe.’
‘No one’s going to hurt him here, Jimmy. Because nobody knows he is here.’
She had a point, and he had to wonder in any case just whom he would tell. Mueller was out of the question. And what would Guttman do with this information? If he were to go up to the Fifth Floor with it, God only knew what Hoover would do with the news. Even Nessheim had heard about the Director’s personal files, full of the secrets of the mightiest men in the land.
‘You’re putting me in a difficult position, Annie.’
‘I’m not trying to.’ She looked upset. ‘It’s my fault – if I’d kept track of the time none of this would have happened.’
He wondered why he didn’t want to reassure her. Maybe because it was the first time he felt he’d mattered to her. He relented at last. ‘I’ll keep it to myself.’
She made a show of relief, exhaling theatrically with a great big whew. He laughed out loud at the gesture, and she leaned forward and put two fingers on his lips to keep him quiet. Without thinking, he kissed her fingers. Annie blushed, her cheeks turning as vivid as an apple polished for a teacher, and she pulled her hand away.
He was heartened, though, to see that her eyes stayed on his. Then she smiled, like a woman with a closetful of secrets who has just acquired another one.