He watched the Buick drive down Dundalk Avenue, and then he went inside the fence and walked to the goddamned Transient Officers Quarters to wait for the goddamned Chevrolet station wagon with goddamned civilian plates driven by a goddamned fellow alumnus of goddamned Holabird High.
[ SEVEN ]
The Hay-Adams Hotel
800 Sixteenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1345 26 October 1945
Jimmy saw his mother and father standing with Cletus Marcus Howell and Colonel Mattingly the moment he walked into the hotel lobby.
His mother was wearing an ankle-length Persian lamb coat. His father had on a Stetson and western boots, and between them a Brooks Brothers suit, button-down collar shirt, and a rep-striped necktie. Both parents fit—as did their son—the description “lanky and tanned Texan.” But only his father had been born in Texas. His mother was from Strasbourg, a “war bride” from the First World War.
His mother went to him quickly and wrapped him in an embrace.
“My baby,” she said. “My poor, poor baby.”
She seemed to be on the edge of tears, and, he realized a moment later, had spoken in German, which he’d learned from his mother.
Jimmy then wondered what the hell that was all about, but asked the question that was foremost in his mind.
“Mama, wo ist der Squirt?”
His mother started to sob.
He partially freed himself from her embrace.
“Mama, was ist los?”
A visibly upset Cletus Marcus Howell walked up to them, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Marjie’s gone, Jimmy,” he said. “Some drunken sonofabitch in a goddamned sixteen-wheeler hit her Buick head-on on U.S. 1 just inside the District and she’s gone.”
[ EIGHT ]
The Marquis de Lafayette Suite
The Hay-Adams Hotel
1505 26 October 1945
When the President of the United States came into the sitting room of the suite, Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr. was sitting on a couch, holding a glass dark with whisky. To his left was Mrs. Martha Howell, and to his right, Mrs. Virginia Cronley, his mother. Cletus Marcus Howell and James D. Cronley Sr. were sitting on a matching couch across a coffee table from them.
The coffee table held a silver coffee service, a bottle of Collier and McKeel Handcrafted Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey, a bottle of Haig & Haig Pinch scotch, and a silver bowl of ice.
Leaning against the wall, and wearing a starched white jacket, was Thomas Jefferson “Tom” Porter, a silver-haired black man in his late sixties. He had been Cletus Marcus Howell’s butler/chauffeur/confidant and close and loving friend for as long as anyone could remember.
In an armchair pulled up to the end of the coffee table was an elegantly dressed Irishman in his early sixties. His name was William Joseph Donovan. Until it had been disbanded by Presidential Order about three weeks before—on October 1, 1945—he had been director of the Office of Strategic Services. Pulled up in another armchair at the other end of the coffee table was Colonel Robert Mattingly.
The First Lady followed the President into the room. She was followed by Rear Admiral Sidney William Souers.
All the men stood.
“The admiral tells me he thought it would be all right if Bess and I came to express our sympathy,” President Truman said.
“Very kind of you both, Harry,” Cletus Marcus Howell said. “Tom, fix the President a little taste of the Collier and McKeel while I make the introductions.”