The Redhunter (7 page)

“Judge Werner is only sixty-six years old; that hardly makes him a … rotting old-timer, does it, Joe?”

Joe smiled. “Correction, Jim. That’s seventy-two years old, not sixty-six.”

Kelly was startled. It had all been a part of local legend for a generation. Edgar Werner had decided to run for district
attorney when only thirty-six years old. In order to deflect criticism of his youth, he had given out his birthdate as 1866,
when in fact it was 1872. That was a very long time ago, and Judge Werner was now a local institution. At banquets commemorating
his years of service he was often teased about his youthful imposture—adding six years to his actual date of birth. But no
one took seriously the misstatement of 1916—the mis-statement of twenty-two years ago.

“Come on, Joe. You know he’s only sixty-six.”

Joe reached over to Mike. “Can I have the Martindale, Mike?”

His partner handed him the black-bound volume.

“This, Jim, is the Martindale-Hubbell directory. As you know, it is the official register giving the names and dates of birth
of all U.S. lawyers. If you look there, Jim, under ‘Werner,’ you will read, ‘Born, 1866.’ This being 1938, that makes him
seventy-two years old.”

Jim Kelly was astonished. “Joe, you gotta
know
that’s a mistake—”

“If it’s a mistake, why is it printed in the current volume of Martindale-Hubbell?”

Jim Kelly made a note on his pad. His eyes ran down the McCarthy-for Judge circular everyone had been handed at the door.
He pressed his investigation. “It says here in your official circular that Judge Werner has been paid a total of between one
hundred seventy and two hundred thousand dollars—”

“That’s right. And that’s a lot of money, Jim. I was making just fifteen cents an hour back when Judge Werner was making that
kind of money as a judge.”

“But what you
don’t say
in your circular is that he’s been a judge for
twenty years!
If you divide twenty into two hundred—” Jim Kelly looked up, eyes closed for a moment as he did the arithmetic—“that comes
to ten thousand dollars a year—less than that. A judge’s salary is eight thousand. That’s a lot of money, I agree, but it’s
about what the average lawyer makes in Wisconsin. You make it sound like grand larceny.”

McCarthy looked grieved. “I certainly didn’t want to give that impression. I just wanted it on record that any man who has
taken from the taxpayers over two hundred thousand dollars should be ready to retire and spend whatever is left of his life—four,
five years, maybe—I hope Judge Werner lives forever—doing something other than living on the people’s money.”

Jim Kelly scratched on his pad. He asked no further questions.

Joe looked around the room with the heavy maroon curtains. The noon sun highlighted the dust on the lace.

Did anyone else have any other questions?

Silence.

“Well, let me tell you something,” Joe said, “there is no substitute for hard work. I’ve worked very hard all my life, since
I was a boy. And
I’m going to work hard to give everybody in these counties, in Outagamie, in Shawano, and in Langlade, a chance to get someone
who is young and vigorous. And to let an old-timer get the rest he deserves. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

Joe McCarthy moved forward and shook the hand of Jim Kelly, and then the hands of everyone else in the room, giving his mother
a furtive hug. One hundred thousand handshakes later, he won the election.

“Nothing to it,” Mike Eberlein commented to a booster at the victory party. “All it took was ten thousand handwritten postcards,
fifty thousand miles of travel, two hundred speeches—and borrowing money from every human being in three counties!”

What was it like to lose to Joe McCarthy? Many years later, Judge Werner’s son would fume that Joe McCarthy had “driven my
father to his grave.” Joe was sad everybody didn’t come to his celebration, but he guessed maybe Miss Hawthorne was right:
Some people are just plain on the other side.

But it was more than that. Some people didn’t like Joe McCarthy. More than just that. Some people seemed to hate Joe McCarthy.
He couldn’t understand that.

Captain Joe McCarthy, United States Marines, looked over the photographs for distinguishing features. The photos had been
taken on that morning’s bombing run of the Japanese installations at Kahili, off Bougainville in Indonesia. It was September
1943, and McCarthy had been at the Espiritu Santo Air Base two months. He was by normal standards buoyant but by his own standards
depressed by relative inactivity, day after day, receiving, developing, analyzing aerial photographs. He lived with eight
other officers in the tropical heat in a shelter constructed (“I guess maybe it must have taken them two hours,” he wrote
to his mother) by the Seabees to accommodate eight beds, with mere hints of partitions to permit the privacy officers were
theoretically entitled to when living on a base. The Marine Air Force installation VMSB-235 was designed to accommodate forty-six
SDB Delta dive bombers, twenty-four fighter planes, and forward repositories for the tanks and light arms—machine guns, bazookas,
rifles, ammunition—that General MacArthur had assembled. “I shall return,” the general’s most famous statement on leaving
Corregidor after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Well, Captain McCarthy observed in his letter to Charlie Curran,
who was on the western front, “if the general makes it back, it’ll be us paving the way for him.”

Joe was one of twenty-seven nonflying officers, charged with
maintenance, provisions, and record keeping. “There is only one objective,” he and fellow officer Lieutenant Joyce Andrews
had been told on arrival by Colonel Aspill. “It is to keep those airplanes flying, keep the bomb supply necessary to bring
off their missions, and be ready to move when General MacArthur tells us to. Come to think of it, be ready to do anything
General MacArthur tells us to, and that includes farting.”

Joe mingled easily with his fellow officers in the mess hall, the youngest fresh from Officers Candidate School, the elders
in their late twenties, with the exception of the senior cadre of four career officers. He tasted that first meal of Spam
and beans and coconut in the dining area, the mosquito nets keeping in the heat. He pronounced it awful, and ate it voluptuously.
The first few nights he wandered with Andrews about the swampy, insect-ridden half-hundred acres surrounding the airstrip,
smiling and gesturing to the native employees in their barracks and makeshift huts. One night, at the far end of the base
in close quarters with the dense mangrove forest, a moonbeam darted through the cloud cover, catching the smile of a little
girl. She waved at the two officers going by. Joe turned, bowed his head slightly to the mother, and scooped her up, his right
arm dislodging her calico skirt under the naked buttocks. “I’m Joe,” he said. “Joe.”

The girl giggled then turned her face.

“Oh, you have lost … twelve teeth! …” Joe’s appearance was of great shock.

“Looks like three missing teeth to me,” Joyce Andrews interrupted. “Come on, Joe.”

“What’s your name?”

Giggle.

To her mother: “You tell me, ma’am, what little girl called? Er,
nomme?
You know … like Chiang Kai-shek, or, er, Horseshit Tojo?”

The mother looked blank.

Joe sighed. “Guess the girl’s name doesn’t sound like either the big cheese Chinaboy or the little turd in Tokyo. Maybe tomorrow
we’ll come back with Cheeni.”

He was referring to the scrawny young native who looked after their quarters and served as rough translator. An older man
emerged from within the little compound hedged in by the jungle and barbed
wire. He wore a stringy beard. “Ah …” said Joe, “the fabled Hollywood detective Charlie Chan.” He had the general aspect of
an elderly wise man, the soft voice, quiet and authoritative manner.

“That girl is called Li-la,” he said in a singsong English. “She my son’s girl. You wish some
pluva?
”

Joe looked over at Joyce. But Joyce deferred: Decisions of this kind were always left to Joe.

“Well, that’s just fine, old man, yes, sure.”

The grandfather gave instructions, and a young woman materialized with a round tray, its amber surface so highly polished
it threw back the moonlight that shot through the clouds idling overhead. There were three miniature glasses. Still standing,
the grandfather beckoned his guests to take one. Joyce carefully sipped his. Joe chided him. “What’s the matter with you,
Lieutenant, you don’t take to Indonesian hospitality?” He threw his own drink down his throat and tried to suppress the expression
of pain that came to his face. He looked over at Joyce Andrews. His face was still set in the smile he had shone upon the
grandfather when he whispered to his junior officer,
“Come on, you son of a bitch. Drink it and pretend you enjoy it!”
Resigned, Andrews closed his eyes, gulped his drink down, and contrived a smile of satisfaction for the benefit of the grandfather.

“That was just fine!” Joe said. “And tomorrow I will come back and bring a present for La-li.”

“Li-la,” Andrews corrected him.

“La-la,” McCarthy obliged.

He looked over at the little girl, now covered by the cloud’s shadow. “Good night, dear.” He leaned over and kissed her.

Stopping by the PX, he bought some cigarettes for the old man and a coloring book for the girl. “Tomorrow,” he said to Andrews.
“Remind me.”

There was never any question what to do after dinner, not for the officers in VMSB-235. It was poker, Captain McCarthy presiding.
They played in a jeep shelter. This meant pulling out the jeep to make room for the players. The jeep was parked right up
against the entrance to the shelter, to block light from the gas lamp escaping into the night and attracting the attention
of enemy aircraft. The jeep
closed in the light, but closed in also the heat. Within the hour the players, sometimes six officers—an absolute limit of
eight, Joe had decreed—were dressed only in undershorts and T-shirts. That heat was miserable and also distracting. After
a week of it Joe decided to act. The next day he conferred with Cheeni.

The quietest hours of the day at Espiritu Santo began one minute after the last of that day’s dive bombers had lumbered down
the strip and soared up into the sky. On Tuesday, after the twelfth plane had lifted off, Joe walked to the motor depot. Cheeni
was there waiting for him. Joe looked about the pool of trucks and jeeps and signaled Cheeni over to an unoccupied jeep, getting
into the driver’s seat. He waved at the superintending sergeant. “Mission for Major McClure,” he called out. The sergeant
waved him on. He didn’t much care what officer got what jeep, as long as there was always one in reserve for Colonel Aspill.

Joe followed Cheeni’s directions and drove down the narrow row hemmed in by the prehensile jungle. They drove east, away from
the main roadway, and six hot, jolting miles later reached the village. Cheeni directed him to one end of it, and, on instructions,
Joe drew up beside a very large barrack, as though built for an airplane. The thatched roof was battened down by twine, decoratively
applied. The dilapidated walls bore traces of large posters, advertising who or what, Joe could not tell and did not inquire.
Cheeni walked to the curtains of netted bamboo and drew them apart.

Joe was astonished by the cavernous sight. It looked like a loading station for an army division, and looked also like a junkyard.
Cheeni spoke to the slender shopkeeper. He bowed and walked off to the interior, quickly disappearing in the tangle of wheels,
tires, batteries, wheelbases, ammunition cases, and five-gallon cans. Soon he was back, an electric fan in hand.

Then it began. Cheeni would screech out his price, the shopkeeper would pound down his hand on the counter. More shouting.
Joe, deciding to get into the act, said imperiously, “Cheeni, let’s go back to the base. We really don’t need that old thing,
you know.” He parted the curtains and walked out, Cheeni following; the expostulations came from the shopkeeper, they reversed
their direction, resumed bargaining—and after a while, Joe had the fan, and the shopkeeper had Joe’s twelve dollars.

It was a big project to run an electrical line to McCarthy’s Casino, as it was now called. But that night after dinner, when
the players assembled, Joe, seated Indian-style on the ground, looked up as if addressing a native bearer. “Cheeni,” he said
theatrically, “it’s hot in here. Give us some air.” Cheeni rose and flipped the invisible switch behind the hidden fan. The
air rushed in. Major Stewart’s joy was unconfined. “I swear, McCarthy, you deserve a medal. If I’m ever in the line of command
and can get you one, by God, I will!” The other men lent their voices in a cheer to Joe McCarthy.

Eight months later, Captain McCarthy had complained one time too many to Colonel Aspill. It wasn’t that the camera equipment
was all that bad, Joe said, or that the altitude was too high for clear pictures. The trouble was technique. The actual
taking
of the pictures. This time Colonel Aspill turned on him. “All right, goddamnit, McCarthy. You go up tomorrow and show the
regular technicians what
you
can do.”