Two

Marianne Magruder arranged her photographs on the dining room table, wishing she had more room to spread them out. She had moved into this town house when her father was elected to Congress last year. It was one of the most spacious town houses in all of Washington, but it was cramped compared to the dining room in their Baltimore mansion. Here, there was barely room for the mahogany table and sideboard. There was no natural light, but the room had electricity that provided a flood of brightness no matter the time of day, and her father wouldn’t be home until late.

This review of her photographs was a special weekly ritual. She picked the best of her work and laid them out for her father’s insight, because he understood the needs of Washington bureaucrats better than she did, and his advice was priceless. This week she selected photographs of the Washington Monument, the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, and children playing in the snow outside the Library of Congress.

“Why don’t you add the one of that man with Sam’s dog?” her mother asked. Vera had been alternately horrified and impressed by Marianne’s adventure on the ice, and the photograph of the soaked man holding Bandit in triumph was the best picture she’d taken all week. She had been dazzled as she watched the photograph develop in the dark room. The man she knew only as Luke must have been freezing, but it didn’t dim the exuberance in his laughing gaze as he stared straight at her with Bandit hugged against his bare chest. The photograph captured a raw, heroic man only seconds after emerging from the ice, his impulsive act the embodiment of masculine courage and strength.

“It’s not the sort of picture the government hired me to take,” she said as she set out more mundane photographs.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Luke, especially after the arrival of a dozen red roses. They had been waiting for her when she arrived at work the day after the incident. She wished he had signed his complete name to the card so she could send a note of thanks, but just like his quick arrival and departure at the ice, he seemed to dip into her life like a whirlwind and leave just as quickly.

“The picture of the man with the dog is better than these boring shots of buildings,” Vera said as she scanned the photographs. She let out a delicate yawn and fought to keep her eyes open.

“Why don’t you head up to bed?” Marianne asked.

Vera waved her question away with a perfumed handkerchief. “Nonsense. I want to be here when your father returns.”

That probably wouldn’t be for at least another hour. Clyde Magruder had spent most of his first year in Congress at meetings, business dinners, and in smoke-filled rooms. Tonight he was dining with the chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, which was Clyde’s only committee appointment, and he was eager to impress the young chairman.

Life in Congress had been a difficult adjustment for her father. He was used to helming one of the richest companies in America, but now he was a freshman congressman who answered to a man half his age. It was rare for him to return home before nine o’clock. And sometimes he didn’t return home at all.

As much as Marianne idolized her father, she wished he could be a better husband.

Still, she wouldn’t change this past year in Washington for anything in the world. She and Vera had grown extraordinarily close ever since moving here. Her mother had been nervous about leaving Baltimore, where she was the reigning queen of high society. Now she had to start over in a new city as a mere freshman congressman’s wife, and suddenly she had grown very dependent on Marianne. They did everything together. They shopped together, planned Vera’s tea parties together, and even gossiped together. For the first time in Marianne’s life, it felt like they had a normal mother-daughter relationship, and she savored every hour of it.

Vera wandered over to the sideboard where the week’s rejected photographs were in a stack. She pulled out the one of Luke and wiggled it suggestively. “This is the best of the lot. Go ahead and add it into the stack to show your father.”

Marianne considered the suggestion. Although the Department of the Interior primarily wanted photographs documenting specific government initiatives, they liked occasional artistic shots taken in the city.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marianne said. Yesterday she’d told Papa about the incident with the dog, but not about the photograph. Something about it seemed too personal. It was a shared moment of communion between herself and a complete stranger as they embarked on a daring venture together. It had been one of the most exciting moments of her life, and she wasn’t ready to share it yet. Normally she let her father witness her entire life through her photographs. She showed him everything. But she didn’t want him seeing that man with the dog. Something warned her against it.

It was almost ten o’clock before her father arrived home, and masculine voices outside the door indicated Clyde had brought company. Vera immediately fled upstairs in horror. Her mother had already taken her hair down and wore nothing but a casual lounging dress without the painfully tight corset. Appearances were everything to Vera, and she would never let herself be seen so casually attired.

Marianne had no such qualms and did nothing aside from straightening the collar of her blouse before heading to the entryway to greet her father, who was already hanging up his jacket. His guest was a redheaded man with an enormous walrus mustache. She suspected he was Congressman Roland Dern, because Clyde had told her how much he disapproved of that mustache. Congressman Dern was in his mid-thirties and the chairman of her father’s only committee assignment. That meant Congressman Dern was her father’s boss.

“Roland, I’d like to introduce my daughter, Marianne. She’s the one I brag incessantly about.”

Congressman Dern gave a polite nod. “I’ve come to see your photographs,” he said. “I didn’t realize when we began our dinner that you have a standing appointment with your father every Thursday night. I’m sorry to have delayed the ritual, so let’s not beat around the bush. Show me your pictures.”

She looked to Clyde for permission. Normally the weekly ritual was an event she and her parents enjoyed together. Clyde seemed uneasy as he gave a stiff nod of consent. How awkward it must be for her father to be beholden to a man young enough to be his son, but Marianne pretended not to notice the tension as she led the way into the dining room, where the best of her photographs were on display.

The scent of cigar smoke lingered on both men as they circled the table. Her father paused before the photograph she’d taken of children playing in the snow outside the Library of Congress. The picture captured the spirit of unabashed joy as the children romped and played.

“This belongs in a museum,” Clyde said, chuckling at the snow-encrusted children. “The lighting, the expressions, the composition . . . all of it is sheer poetry captured on celluloid. It makes me want to pick those boys up and take them home with me.”

She smiled but didn’t miss the hint of regret in his voice. Clyde had always wanted lots of children, but her mother’s fragile health precluded more.

“The government pays you to take photographs like this?” Congressman Dern asked, disapproval plain in his voice.

Her father heard it and jumped to her defense. “They need as many photographs as possible in preparation for the McMillan Plan.”

The McMillan Plan was an optimistic vision to tear down old government buildings and clear the way for a huge national park around which new cultural and administrative buildings would be erected. Everyone she knew, including most of the people at the Department of the Interior, thought the McMillan Plan was an extravagant waste of money. That was why she’d been assigned to photograph the existing architecture and how people used the public spaces.

“The entire McMillan Plan is a misuse of taxpayer funds,” Congressman Dern said. “It’s all so that Washington can compete with the great capital cities of Europe. I say the business of our country is business. Not lavish green spaces.”

“I agree,” Clyde said as he wandered over to her collection of images of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. “This one is okay,” he said after a pause.

It was faint praise. Her father was no artist, but he had keen instincts, and she trusted his judgment.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

He continued frowning at the picture as he studied it. “Do you have any others of the train station?”

“I haven’t enlarged them, but I’ve got a dozen or so other shots.”

“I’d like to see them.”

The other pictures were only three-by-five inches in size, the standard format of the Brownie camera. After she developed the film, she selected only the best photographs to enlarge. The eight-by-ten-inch pictures would be added to the government repositories that would document the city for future generations. Even without the McMillan Plan, Washington was undergoing a state of regeneration as the red brick buildings of the colonial era were torn down and replaced by monumental buildings in the neoclassical style. She’d been hired to document the process as old buildings were torn down, the land graded and levelled, and the skeletal frameworks of new buildings were erected.

She brought over the other pictures of the Baltimore and Potomac and handed them to her father, who flipped through them quickly, identifying three and setting them on the dining table.

“These might make your case better,” he said.

“Why?” she asked. The three close-up photographs seemed boring and didn’t capture the gothic beauty of the station. The B&P was only thirty years old and a masterful example of Victorian gothic architecture. It was made of red brick and featured three towers with slate roofs and ornamental ironwork. Its beauty made it one of the most popular images on the postcards bought by tourists. It was only three blocks from the Capitol and was the primary railroad station used by everyone serving in Congress.

“If the McMillan Plan passes, the B&P is slated for demolition,” Clyde said. “Congressmen see it every day, but your close-ups highlight the expense that went into creating the hand-carved entablatures and the ornamental ironwork. There’s value in that. Roland? What do you think?”

The younger man nodded. “If the government tears down a perfectly good railroad station for the benefit of a public park, I think the nation should know what we stand to lose.”

Clyde walked over to the sideboard to return the smaller pictures, then paused. “What’s this?”

She stiffened. Her father held Luke’s photograph in his hands, and his face was a mask of disapproval. True, Luke wore no shirt in the picture, but it wasn’t a lewd photograph. A coat was draped over his shoulders, and Bandit covered most of his torso.

“That’s the man who got Bandit out of the ice,” she said. “I couldn’t resist taking a picture.”

“This is the man who rescued Bandit?” he asked in a surprised tone.

“Yes. He was very heroic.” She was about to say that he had even sent her roses afterward, but the grim look on Clyde’s face made her reconsider.

After a moment he set the picture back on the stack. “It’s probably best you don’t see that man again,” he said stiffly.

He gestured for Congressman Dern to follow him into his private office, leaving Marianne to stare after him in bewildered confusion.

Luke’s jaunt beneath the ice turned out to be more troublesome than expected. He didn’t catch pneumonia or anything drastic like Gray had feared. It simply sapped his strength beyond all reason. He spent the next few days buried underneath a mound of blankets in his bedroom, as it seemed each time he emerged from beneath the covers, he got the shivers again.

What an irony. For fifteen months he’d been locked up in a Cuban jail cell, sweltering in the relentless heat and tormented by fantasies of a tall, ice-cold glass of water. God must have a strange sense of humor, for now Luke never wanted to experience ice water again.

By Monday he was ready to take possession of the new office. The faster he could get the Washington bureau for Modern Century magazine established, the quicker he could launch his bid to knock a handful of congressmen out of office. The November elections seemed a long way off, but researching these men’s weaknesses and beginning the subtle campaign to take them down would need careful planning.

His desk, the meeting table, and the shelving had already been delivered to the new office, but the books, typewriter, telephone, and office equipment all needed to be lugged in. The most difficult item to navigate up the twisting stairwell was the six-foot bulletin board. Luke banged his shin three times on the journey to the third floor.

“Where do you want it?” Gray asked when they finally got the bulletin board inside the office.

“On the wall behind the desk.”

It was a large room with two windows overlooking a working-class part of town. The desk was on one side of the office, the table in the middle, and the hip-high bookshelves lined the walls beneath the windows. There was a separate table for a telephone and typewriter. For now Luke was the only reporter, but if the Washington bureau proved fruitful, there might someday be more.

The board was soon hung, and the first thing Luke tacked onto it was a list of five congressmen’s names. Beside it he pinned a postcard of the Philadelphia skyline.

Gray cocked a brow as he studied the list of congressmen. “I already know why you want Clyde Magruder out of office, but what’s wrong with the guy from Michigan?”

“He’s in Clyde’s back pocket,” Luke replied. “All these men are following Magruder’s lead in blocking reform of the food and drug industry. If any congressman looks the other way while manufacturers dump chemicals into the nation’s food supply, I’m going to ensure he loses the next election.” He gave an angelic smile and placed a hand over his heart. “My civic duty.”

Gray stared at the postcard of Philadelphia, his face suddenly sad. “Luke . . . I think you need to ease up. What happened to those people in Philadelphia wasn’t your fault.”

Philadelphia would forever represent Luke’s greatest shame. Five years ago, their family had briefly tried to forge a truce with Clyde Magruder. Luke had been chosen to lead the charge because there was too much bad blood among the other members of their family. The Delacroixs and the Magruders would never be friends, but the hope was to ease the tension with a modest joint venture. The plan would combine the Delacroix reputation for quality with the Magruders’ ability to mass produce food. Clyde Magruder proposed a line of pricey coffee, using the Magruder packaging facilities but branded with the Delacroix name. Both companies stood to gain.

Luke held his nose and worked with Clyde on a distribution plan. Gray imported the finest coffee beans from Kenya, and the Magruders did everything else. They rolled out the new line of coffee in Philadelphia, a city famous for its fine coffeehouses.

Luke should have known better than to trust Clyde Magruder, who adulterated their top-notch coffee with cheap ground chicory and artificial flavorings to mask the chicory aftertaste. The resulting coffee tasted fine, with a smooth flavor and enticing aroma, but the cannisters bore no indication that there was anything but coffee inside. The chemical combination proved fatal to three people within a week of the coffee going on sale. While most people could easily digest the cheap concoction cooked up in the Magruder factory, some people had sensitivities to chicory root that proved fatal.

Three people died because of that coffee. All of them had family, friends, and children. The devastation left in the wake of the tainted coffee would ripple through those people’s lives for decades, and no, Luke couldn’t blithely forget about it.

“Could you help me with this box of books?” Luke asked. He didn’t really need help with it, but he’d do anything to divert the conversation from Philadelphia.

Gray moved the box over to the bookshelves. “You’ve been taking risks and pressing your luck ever since Philadelphia. You practically killed yourself in Cuba. When are you going to move past it?”

“Maybe when those five congressmen have been booted out of office. Maybe when there are finally laws to stop the Magruders from polluting their food with fillers and adulterants. That would be a start.”

“Luke, what happened in Philadelphia wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known. You tried your best.”

“And my best resulted in three dead people.” He wandered to the window, staring out over the bleak view of wet concrete and melting slush. “Whenever I start to laugh, I think about them,” he whispered. “When I hear beautiful music, I am reminded that they can’t hear it too. They are three ghosts who sit on my shoulder wherever I go.”

“And are they good ghosts or bad ghosts?” Gray asked.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, they’re ghosts, Gray! The kind who wake you up at night and steal your joy and make you pray to God for forgiveness. That kind of ghost.”

Slow footsteps indicated Gray was coming up behind him, but Luke kept staring out the window, even when his brother laid a hand on his shoulder. “Then you’re going to have to defeat them. Or turn them into something that inspires you to be a better man.”

Luke pushed away from the window and began unpacking the books. For years Gray had been trying to nudge him toward a life of safe, law-abiding good sense. Obey the rules, stay within the lines, don’t rock the boat. It wasn’t in his nature.

“I really hate the Magruders,” Luke said. “They never paid a dime to those people in Philadelphia.”

“But we did,” Gray said. “Those families were all compensated and signed off on the legal settlements.”

“You paid them. The Magruders got off scot-free. They’ll do anything for money, so I intend to strike where it will hurt. First I’ll knock Clyde out of Congress, then I’ll go after their company. I’ll burn it down and force them to start over.”

“Absolutely not!” Gray lashed out.

Luke let out a snort of laughter. “Don’t be so literal,” he teased. “Of course I won’t actually burn down their factory. I bet it’s fully insured, so where’s the advantage in that? I’ll expose the Magruders for who they really are, ruin their business, and change the laws so that they can never exploit those loopholes again.”

Across the room, Gray still looked at him with that mournful, somber expression. While Luke used to tease Gray about his overly protective ways, Gray had been a hero over the past year. Luke wouldn’t have survived the crucible of imprisonment in Cuba if Gray hadn’t made repeated visits to keep his flagging spirits alive. They were complete opposites, but over the past year Luke had learned to love and admire his older brother.

“Gray, I’m sorry,” he said. “When I was in Cuba, I thought I was going to die. My biggest regret was that I was going to leave this world without making so much as a scratch on it. That wasn’t how I wanted to leave. I told myself that if I made it out of there, I would do something to make the world a better place. I had fifteen months with nothing to do but read the Bible and pray to God. In the end, the only sense I could make of what happened in Philadelphia was that it was a clarion wake-up call. A blast from a trumpet shaking me out of complacency and setting me on a course to do something important. And getting Congress cleaned up will be a good starting point.”

Gray sighed. “Luke, you’ve already accomplished great things. You single-handedly broke up a spy ring in Cuba and stamped out corruption in the War Department. The articles you write for Modern Century go out all over the nation to sway opinion. I spend my time figuring out a better way to sell pepper or paprika, but your stories move the world. I’m proud of you. Dad never said it, but I will.”

Luke paused. Gray was twelve years older than he was, so he’d always been more like a father than a brother, and his opinion meant the world to Luke.

“Thanks for that,” he said, a little embarrassed at the emotion in his voice.

Gray turned away and lifted a thick package wrapped in butcher’s paper from the box he was unpacking. “What’s this?”

The breath in Luke’s lungs froze. “Nothing! Let me have it.” He crossed the office in two steps and snatched the package, then shoved it into the bottom drawer of his desk. He was tempted to lock the drawer except it would be a dead giveaway that these papers were precious to him.

“Good heavens,” Gray said. “Love letters? International intrigue? I can’t imagine what’s got your protective hackles so raised.”

Luke scratched behind his ear and looked out the window. “Like I said, it’s nothing.”

“When you were a little kid, do you know how I could always tell when you were lying?”

Luke quit scratching behind his ear. It was an old tell he’d forgotten about. He folded his hands across his chest and grinned. “Fine, it’s something,” he admitted. “I’m not ready to tell anyone about it yet.”

“Whatever it is, it’s making you blush.”

He was blushing because he was nervous and embarrassed. He wasn’t ready to peel back the layers of his soul and expose this wildly romantic, overblown experiment to his fusty older brother.

“Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to show it to the world, but for now?” He leaned over and locked the drawer. “For now, I’m keeping it to myself.”

Once Luke’s office was operational, he set about tracking down the lovely Marianne. He knew almost nothing about her except that she was pretty and valiant and that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her in the two weeks since they met on the ice.

The Department of the Interior was housed in a massive building on F Street with two marble wings built atop a granite foundation. The department was a hodgepodge of government agencies that didn’t neatly fit anywhere else. It oversaw the US Geological Survey, the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark Office, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Pensions, and a dozen smaller agencies.

Luke had an old friend who worked in the department’s accounting office. Oscar might have access to payroll records that could lead to Marianne’s identity.

Luke got straight to the point after entering Oscar’s crowded office. “I know the department has a team of photographers documenting the state of the city,” he said. “Do you know one named Marianne?”

Sadly, Oscar had no access to employee records. Over six hundred people worked for the Department of the Interior, and Oscar didn’t know of anyone named Marianne, but he managed payments for the department’s external vendors.

“I pay a weekly bill for our photographers to use a darkroom on Twelfth Street every Friday morning,” Oscar said. “You could probably track her down there. Better hurry, though. There’s a rumor that the government photographers will be getting the axe soon.”

“What do you mean?”

Oscar rolled his eyes. “Penny pinchers are always looking for ways to trim the budget. They’re saying that the government has plenty of blueprints to document all our buildings and bridges, so they don’t think the photographs add anything.”

Luke frowned. It was hard for a woman to make her way in this city, and he didn’t like the thought of Marianne losing her job because of tightfisted government bureaucrats.

“Thanks,” he said to Oscar, casually strolling from the office.

Where did this clawing sense of urgency to protect Marianne come from? He didn’t even know her, but he felt an instinctive need to look after her. He had connections throughout the city, and if Marianne needed help, he would be there to provide it.