At that same hour, a mile or so away, Mary Johnson was sitting down to a late supper with Jerry Baumeister at the Occidental. She’d already had an early one with Paul Hildebrand, whom she was now seeing happily enough almost every other night, but Jerry’s invitation had been urgent. His thin, ordinarily pleasant face seemed pallid. He had picked, she noted, the most brightly lit corner of the most respectable place imaginable, close by the Willard Hotel and White House. His girls were with his mother, who lived over in Arlington, not far from his own place. “She thinks I’ve been ‘laid off,’”
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