(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  “And no one would know we were friends? How nice,” she said bitterly. “How shrewd of you, Doug. And courageous, too. What if someone found out I was also your girl friend?”

  Her caustic challenge disturbed him. “Don’t become angry, Wanda. It would only be temporary, a temporary arrangement, like my own job. Later, we—”

  “No, thanks,” she said flatly. “Until now our relationship, platonic as it is, has at least been honest. Even if it means not seeing you, I refuse to change that. I won’t let what there is between us become surreptitious and back-door.”

  “Wanda—”

  “Absolutely no, Doug. You’re having a rough time, and I hate to make it rougher. But I’m not moving into Harding’s closet. When you have the nerve to see me again, you’ll know where to find me, if it’s here or someplace else. Doug, I—”

  The soft knocking on the door stopped her, and brought Dilman to his feet. “Yes?” he called out.

  The door opened partially, and Reverend Spinger slipped in, and closed it behind him. He looked from one to the other. “Haven’t you been hearing it?”

  “What?” Dilman asked.

  “The noise out front—” He started for the covered side window.

  Dilman listened. What he had been too engrossed to hear above his conversation with Wanda, he heard now. There came through the walls the rumble of many voices. “What’s going on?” he asked apprehensively.

  “I couldn’t get a good look from our room,” said Reverend Spinger. “There seems to be a lot of people gathering in the street. I can get a better peek from here.”

  He flattened against the wall, and parted the shade from the window by several inches. At last he let go and shook his head. “Just from what I can see, there must be a couple hundred out there. There’s the press, for sure, ’cause I could see the television trucks, and I’d guess some more Secret Service, and of course, the neighborhood is all spilling out.”

  Dilman’s immediate reaction was one of annoyance. “How in the devil did my coming here get out?”

  Reverend Spinger scratched his cottony pate. “Doug, you abdicated privacy when you were sworn in to this job. No matter what you attempt, you won’t know privacy again for a year and five months. To restate in another form what Voltaire told us, the public is a heartless monster, and since you can’t do as he suggested—chain the monster or flee from it—you must be on guard against it every minute of every day.”

  The clergyman’s words reminded Dilman of his precarious situation. He saw Wanda standing, staring at him, and his annoyance melted into shameful trepidation. He detested himself for his cravenness, and for Wanda’s knowledge of it. Yet he could not be other than what he had always been.

  “Wanda, I’ve got to go. Will you—?”

  Tactfully Spinger drifted out into the corridor.

  Dilman moved closer to her, and at once, by a trick of lightning, or from the anxiety in his mind, her mulatto coloring was again more white than dusky. “You see what it’s like, my dear. There’s only one solution for the present. Please reconsider taking a job in—”

  “No, Doug. I’ll wait for you to phone.”

  He wanted to beseech her, but she had turned away from him. “All right,” he said at last. “Only, don’t give me up.”

  He joined Reverend Spinger in the corridor. As they started for the living room, Spinger said, as if to give support to the fiction, “You were conferring with me.”

  Dilman nodded absently. “Yes . . . encouraging the Crispus Society to cooperate with the government in playing a—a more aggressive role in furthering civil rights by legislation and legal means, and joining us in condemning vigilante action and violence on both sides.”

  They emerged into the living room, and Reverend Spinger said, “Yes, that would sum it up, Mr. President.”

  Dilman went to the door that Otto Beggs had opened. He halted before his bodyguard. “What’s all the racket downstairs?”

  “The press missed you, and I guess found out where you were, Mr. President. The minute they started charging after your scent, Chief Gaynor knew it might attract crowds. So he rushed over quite a few of the White House Detail. I’m sorry, but I had nothing—”

  “Forget it,” said Dilman.

  Dilman looked around to say good-bye to Rose Spinger, when suddenly Wanda Gibson burst into the living room.

  “Doug—!” Then she stopped, teetered in her tracks, and froze, horribly aware that they were not alone with the Spingers, that a stranger was also in the room.

  Dilman’s Adam’s apple jumped. He could see Beggs staring at Wanda. Dilman felt an onrush of panic. He tried to keep his voice even. “Is there anything that wasn’t clear, Miss Gibson?”

  “N-no, Mr. President,” said Wanda, her voice flat and emotionless.

  “I’d like a copy of your shorthand notes,” said Dilman. He waved a good-bye, and then went across the landing and rapidly down the stairs, followed by Beggs.

  As he emerged into the night, it was not the impact of the reporters’ shouts and bellows that momentarily unnerved him, but the battery of lights from the television kliegs and the explosion of flashbulbs. Beyond the rim of lights, and cordon of Secret Service agents, he could see hundreds of black neighborhood faces and fluttering hands, and could hear shouts of encouragement.

  Fingers gripped his arm, and he was relieved to find that they belonged to Tim Flannery. The press secretary’s mouth was close to his ear. “Mr. President, don’t ever leave me flat-footed again. Somebody in Chief Gaynor’s office leaked it. Don’t let them interview you. Let me go to the microphones and tell them it’s too late tonight to answer questions, but that you’ll make a short statement.”

  “Very short, Tim.”

  He allowed Flannery to precede him down the stone steps to the three standing microphones. He could hear the shouted questions: “What were you doing here, Mr. President?. . . Did you see Spinger alone or with other Negro leaders? . . . What were you talking about? . . . Was it about the Turnerites, Mr. President?”

  Flannery held up his hand, then bent over the microphones. “Gentlemen, no questions. Save them for the press conference. The President will make a brief statement, and that’s it for tonight.”

  Flannery stepped aside, and Dilman made his way to the microphones. He felt wooden and insincere. He said, “Friends, because Reverend Spinger, head of the Crispus Society, was confined to his quarters with a cold, I decided to call upon him. Our meeting was partially social, partially devoted to discussion of immediate domestic problems in the civil rights area. We did not touch upon any specific Negro groups besides the Crispus Society and its role in working with the government in the civil rights legislative program.”

  “Did you talk about the Minorities Rehabilitation Program?” a reporter yelled.

  Dilman looked blankly at the semicircle of men and cameras in front of him. He said into the microphones, “We discussed the MRP Bill, among many other legislative acts. We are in accord in our belief that progress toward equality can be attained only by due process of the law, never through the actions of vigilante groups of any race who would take the law in their own hands.”

  There was a spattering of applause, and, from afar, a shrill cat-call and a solitary boo of disapproval.

  “Reverend Spinger and I spoke privately about these matters, and informally. In the near future I expect to hold more formal meetings with all national leaders, Negro and white, who are eager to cooperate with the government in maintaining peace, and finding an orderly solution to our mutual problems. That is it for tonight, my friends. . . . No, no questions, or I’ll collapse of starvation.”

  With Beggs and a wedge of other agents leading the way, Dilman hastened to the limousine and ducked inside. As he sank into the cushioned back seat, and Beggs squatted on the jump seat, the car began to pull away. Covertly, Dilman lowered his head but lifted his eyes to catch sight of the illuminated upstairs living room windows. He could make out both Spingers in
one. The other window frame was empty. For the heartless monster public there was no Wanda Gibson.

  Then, sitting back, Dilman caught Beggs looking at him oddly. And then, with a sinking sensation, he knew that you could guard and guard against the monster, and in the end there was no defense. Somehow, someway, there was always one, as Beggs might be one, to let the monster come through. He wondered what Beggs thought. He wondered if the monster would be loosed, and if it might strangle him.

  He shut his hot eyes and behind them cursed his foolhardiness—and his cowardice.

  At precisely nine o’clock, Nat Abrahams noted, they entered the Family Dining Room on the first floor of the White House.

  As a liveried butler opened the door from the Main Corridor, and Dilman went inside, Abrahams thought again what a strange experience this was for both of them. They had eaten together in so many mean and contrasting places, in crowded cafeterias of the Pentagon and officers’ messes of Army bases during the Second World War, in cheap bistros of France and hostile Bierstuben in Germany, in self-service restaurants and automats of Chicago and Detroit. Often, during their reunions in the Midwest, when Abrahams had been the host, he had made numerous preliminary calls to find a decent eatery where his Negro friend would be accepted and in no way embarrassed. Incredibly, and in short years, here they were once more, together, dining in the White House, Dilman’s first dinner in the nation’s first house as President of the United States, and Nat Abrahams his first guest.

  Following his host across the floral carpet, Abrahams had an opportunity to examine the Family Dining Room briefly. The walls were yellow, the ceiling white. To the right a gilt convex mirror, with a gold eagle perched upon it, hung over the marble fireplace. To the left stood a Philadelphia breakfront filled with blue-and-gold chinaware. Ahead were two windows looking out toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Abrahams was able to identify two oil paintings: one plainly President John Tyler, resembling somewhat Truman’s first Secretary of State James F. Byrnes; the other, reproduced in the guidebook that Sue had purchased, was of a brigadier general mounted on a black horse, John Hartwell Cocke of Virginia, he thought.

  They had reached the mahogany pedestal table, and Abrahams counted eight chairs of richly grained wood set off by white upholstery surrounding the table. The White House maître d’hôtel, a smiling South American in cutaway coat and striped trousers, held the President’s chair for him at the head of the table, and a white-coated colored waiter attended Abrahams’ chair next to the President’s. Dilman sat first, and then Abrahams took his seat.

  Abrahams could see that Dilman was ill at ease, brushing nervously at his rumpled business suit, blinking up at the chandelier, at the flower centerpiece, then at the ostentatious table setting, classic tulip-shaped glassware, elegant Limoges plates, sterling knives, forks, and spoons. While the tomato soup was ladled out from a silver-gilt tureen, Dilman glanced sheepishly at Abrahams in the manner of one who wonders which spoon to use first. Abrahams smiled, winked, unfolded his gold-crested napkin and dropped it over his lap. Dilman did the same.

  When the soup had been served, and the maître d’hôtel and waiter had backed away, Dilman said, “You’d never guess I told Mrs. Crail—she’s the official housekeeper—I wanted an informal dinner, no fuss, absolutely no fuss. Look at this. Anyway, Nat, I won the battle of the menu. She had in mind—let me think—oh, yes—boiled rolled flounder, roast turkey with something called jelly celestial, scalloped sweet potatoes, and God knows what not. She kept saying that was the kind of small menu T. C. liked for informal dining. But I put my foot down, so I’d get off on the right one. I said, ‘Mr. Abrahams is my oldest friend, and we’re going to eat what we always enjoyed most, the kind of food you can talk over.’ I don’t know how it’ll come out, but I think it’ll be a reasonable facsimile of old times.”

  Abrahams had been spooning his soup. “Brisket of beef?” he asked.

  Dilman grinned. “Exactly. The beef, and a green salad with oil and vinegar, a noodle-and-ham casserole, hot sliced carrots, and—hold your hat—potato pancakes with apple sauce.”

  “Latkes,” said Abrahams, giving them their Jewish name.

  “I don’t think they’ll come out quite the way Sue’s mother used to make them. Oh, yes, and I remembered red wine—they have the best years, Bordeaux, the kind that makes me sleepy. Just like those nights sitting in between the zinc bar and pinball machine in that joint off the Champs-Élysées.”

  A waiter appeared and poured water, followed by the maître d’hôtel, who placed the wine bottle on a side table. Dilman lapsed into silence, and sipped the tomato soup.

  Abrahams enjoyed the thick soup. Except for the constricting black bow tie that Sue had made him wear, as being appropriate for high places, he felt relaxed. When the Lincoln limousine had picked him up at the Mayflower Hotel, and was bringing him to the South Portico of the White House, he had suffered a mild attack of apprehension, wondering if some protocol would be imposed, worrying whether Dilman would be as he always had been. The apprehension had been dispelled at the moment of their impulsive bearish embrace of greeting.

  The months that separated them from their last meeting had visibly changed Dilman. Although he appeared more friendly, less withdrawn, than he had as a senator, his eyes were red-flecked, tireder, Abrahams had seen, and there were rigid lines of tension around his mouth. Also, he walked more ploddingly, like an elderly person recovering from major surgery. Yet the week as President had not inwardly transfigured him, had not weighted him with any more reserve or aloofness than he had normally possessed. Abrahams guessed that his friend was too new to the post to comprehend it fully. If anything, he seemed uncertain about his role, as if misplaced in some Dantesque purgatory between the Senate and the White House.

  After Abrahams’ congratulations and Dilman’s inquiries about Sue and the children, they had gone from the elevator into the Main Hall of the first floor. There had been an empty stretch of seconds when Dilman did not know where to take Abrahams, or what to do next, but this impasse had been resolved by the dignified Negro valet, Beecher, who had seemed to materialize from nowhere.

  “I almost forgot, Nat, but I asked Beecher to take us on a quick tour of the first floor,” Dilman had said. “I could use a refresher myself. Besides, the walk will give us both appetites.”

  They had been led to the vast East Room, with its gold drapes and gilt benches and Steinway piano (Beecher: “Each of the three chandeliers weighs 850 pounds and has 50,000 pieces of crystal, and each requires two houseboys a week to clean it”). They had been led to the Green Room, with its Daniel Webster sofa and Martha Washington armchair and James Monroe clock (Beecher: “Please take note of the portrait of President Eisenhower over that door and President Kennedy over this door, and, of course, the portrait of The Judge”). They had been led to the Blue Room, with its velvet upholstery and gold Minerva timepiece and white bust of George Washington (Beecher: “The three windows looking down on the south lawn may be converted into doors by sliding them upward and opening the wall panels beneath”). They had been led into the Red Room, with its cerise silk-covered walls and Jacqueline Kennedy breakfast table and crimson Empire sofa (Beecher: “This portrait of President Wilson was painted in Paris in 1919 by an English artist, but as you can observe, it was left unfinished”).

  By the time they were in the immense and drafty State Dining Room, Nat Abrahams had become less attentive. Because Dilman appeared absorbed, as if soaking in and memorizing every fragment of data, Abrahams had not wished to spoil it by reminding his friend that he had been through these rooms not once but on two occasions before. The first time, Abrahams and a dozen other attorneys involved in civil rights causes had been brought to Washington by President Kennedy for a two-day conference, and they had toured the ground and first floors of this mansion. The second time, Abrahams and officers of the American Bar Association, then meeting in Washington, had attended a reception given by President Lyndon Johnson, and again Abrahams h
ad been part of this tour.

  During T. C.’s abbreviated term of office, Abrahams had not been invited to the White House. He had supported the minority opposing the Party’s nomination of T. C. and Porter, and even though, once T. C. had been nominated, Abrahams had backed him, he had not been forgiven. Abrahams suspected that it was T. C.’s aide, Governor Talley, notable for a mastodon memory (if little else), that separated the good ones from the bad ones, and who had listed Abrahams as lukewarm. Abrahams had, in fact, cast his ballot for T. C. only as the lesser of two evils, and because T. C. had been committed to the Party platform, which had extended lofty if generalized promises to the restless minorities.

  Abruptly, his recollection of the last half hour’s tour was brought to an end by the waiters removing the empty soup bowls.

  He looked at Dilman, and he said, “You know, Mr. President—”

  Dilman’s scowl was immediate. “Cut it out, Nat. You want me to call you Barrister Abrahams?”

  “I was merely testing you,” said Abrahams with a chuckle. “Okay, Doug, it’s an informal dinner.” He felt better, very good, indeed, about his friend, about tonight, and he scratched his hooked nose and jutting jaw, and said, “I was simply going to say how sorry I am that Sue is missing this, not only seeing you as President—she’s so thrilled about that—but being able to eat amid this splendor. She could keep her mother silenced and put the kids to bed with it for months.”

  “Well, I want Sue here as soon as possible,” Dilman said. “You said it’s only a mild cold.”

  “The hotel physician promises she’ll be up in a day or two.”

  “Then I want you both over for a rerun of this meal in a few days.” He took up the glass of Bordeaux and held it toward Abrahams. “To you and your new future, Nat.”

  Abrahams toasted him back. “Happy Presidency, Doug. You’ll make out.”