Chapter One

Part One: September–December 1953

In the era of security clearances to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.
—DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN



Chapter One: September 28, 1953

Tim counted four big fans whirring atop their stanchions in the newsroom. Every window here on the seventh floor was open, and summer had officially departed six days ago, but that was Washington for you. When air-conditioning might come to the Star seemed to be a perennial matter of sad-sack speculation among the staff: “When hell freezes over,” went one answer Tim had heard in his three months here. “Because then we won’t need it.”

Miss McGrory, one of the paper’s book reviewers, arrived with a bottle of whiskey, which she set down next to the punch bowl and cake, whose single chocolate layer and frosted inscription, “Happy Trails, Sheriff,” would soon be cut into by the retirement party’s guest of honor, Mr. Yost, a pressman who’d been at the Star since 1912 and took his nickname from a weekend job he had as a constable over in Berwyn Heights.

More people drifted in. “We could use a piano,” opined Miss Eversman, the music critic. She’d covered Liberace’s concert two nights ago at Constitution Hall and was telling a police reporter that the pianist’s mother had been in the president’s box with one of Liberace’s brothers, Rudy, who’d served in Korea.

“So she’s got one boy who’s a soldier?” asked the reporter. “Maybe she’s got ho