(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  He took another drink, and protested, “None of them hold a candle to you, Ruby. You look like a movie star, no kidding.”

  She lowered herself to the sofa, crossing one leg over the other in a new pose, this one of languor, and watched him. He placed her drink before her and looked down at her, at the ebony flesh running from the hollow of her throat to the exposed cleft between her breasts. She raised her hands behind her head, and he was hypnotized by the shifting and spreading of the mounds of her bosom, no longer covered by the brassière, hardly concealed by the transparent negligee.

  She patted the soft sofa beside her. “Come on, Otter, ain’t you gonna show this woman no friendshipness?”

  Stiffly, almost asthmatically wheezing, he moved between the sofa and table, drinking again. Then, daringly, he sank down beside her, one arm high on the sofa behind her, his free hand holding the drink. Without trying to look, he could see the reddish bikini panties she was wearing, and the flesh of one broad dark thigh as it lay over the other. He tried to lift his eyes to her face, but he could not help holding his gaze on her protruding breasts.

  “Thirty-eight,” she said.

  His head came up quickly. “What?”

  She cupped her hands beneath her breasts. “Size thirty-eight,” she said. “Figger you’d wanna know exactly.”

  He brought the trembling glass to his flushed face. “You should be an actress, Ruby, something like that.” He drank to reinforce his giddy hopes.

  “Naw, like I told you before, I been there bein’ leered at by the whiteboys. I don’t like paradin’ myself before any ol’ body. You—you is somethin’ special, Otter—”

  She reached out, gently but firmly removed the glass from his clutch, set it on the table, and squirmed closer to him, head against his shoulder, fingers playfully opening his shirt, and then her hand slipping underneath his shirt and caressing his hairy chest.

  He dropped his arm from the sofa down around her shoulders, loosely, listening to the throaty sounds of her, like a cat’s motor-purrings. He was not positive what he should do next, take the plunge at once, grab her, start it, or tell her first what he wanted, or be more subtle and find out if what he thought was being led up to was really understood by both of them. If he came right out and made the move, or the demand, and she was just teasing around, it would be embarrassing and ruin everything. He had to be positive. Also, there were some women, even among the paid ones, who liked to go slow, and maybe she was one of these. If she was, he didn’t want to spoil his chances. There was time, plenty of time.

  “Why do you think I’m so special, Ruby?” he asked, feeling foolish. “I like hearing it, believe me, but you must’ve known plenty of young men.”

  “Not so many, Otter, an’ no somebody like you—you is handsome and strong—Jee-sus—you feels all muscle—an’ a hero with them medals, botherin’ ’bout lil pickaninny me—nobody me, sep I admit to bein’ thirty-eight where it counts—” She enjoyed this, and giggled. “You knows what, Otter, I was thinkin’ last night. You is too impo’tant to be wastin’ time even guardin’ the Pres of the U.S.A.—you knows that? You too impo’tant in you own right to be wastin’ time on a finky culludman Pres who ain’t half the man you is. Thass what I think of you, Otter. You is better than him. Mothah an’ Lordy, you sure is.”

  “Thank you for the compliments, Ruby, but he is President of the United States, and nobody’s more important.”

  “Ummm. You smell jes good . . . you is more impo’tant. That black man in the White House ain’t fit to shine you shoes.”

  A little more, he thought, a little more of this aimless chatter, and he’d be sure, and take the plunge. “Last time we talked, you had no feelings one way or the other about President Dilman. What’s happened since, Ruby? You don’t have to answer—who gives a damn about him—except I’d think you’d be happy about a Negro in—”

  Suddenly she removed her hand from his chest and turned on her side, her silky, cooing voice turning resolute and strident. “I ain’t happy ’bout him no more. Lots been happenin’ to him and us. Dilman ain’t good enuff to be colored man or whiteboy, either. He ain’t good enuff to be any ol’ thing. He a turd, nothin’ better. Lookit him bannin’ the Turners, not liftin’ a finger for poor ol’ Jeff Hurley. Lookit him even takin’ away the crummy minority law money from my kinfolk. Otter, that man you guardin’ with you life no good for nobody—he spellin’ only evil—”

  Silently Beggs cursed himself for inciting her with a conversation that he had meant to use only as a bridge to the ultimate seduction. Now, judging from the indignation in her eyes, he saw that her mood was anything but sensual. Desperately, he tried to sidetrack her. “Ruby, just as you said before, he isn’t important enough to get riled up about. I don’t like him much either, I can admit it to you since we’re so close, and not because he’s a Negro or for what he’s doing to Negroes—I don’t know much about that, except the whites are plenty sore at him too for vetoing that bill, throwing his weight around—I don’t like him because he’s a weakling. That’s the main thing. That banning, somebody else did that for him, that’s how weak he is. And the veto, hell, that showed no guts, only he got scared of the banning and tried to make up for it—”

  Ruby shook her head. “You too charitable, Otter—my friends and relatives, they don’t think that Dilman weak—they think him evil all day long, ’cause he resents his color, thass what.”

  There was imagining and there was performing, and Otto Beggs had had enough of the imagining and was ready for the performing. He lowered his arm further, and encircled her tighter, feeling the spongy give of her breast beneath the lingerie.

  “Aw, forget him, Ruby. He’s not worth you and your friends getting so sore about. Believe me, and you know how well I know him, take my word for it from the inside, he’s scared of his shadow, and that’s why he acts the way he does.”

  She seemed hardly aware of Beggs’s arm or hand or increasing ardor. She sat up a little. “What is you meanin’—thass why he acts way he does? Don’t tell me he ain’t ’shamed of his own people an’ actin’ against us.” Her tone had become concerned. “You knows somethin’ different, bein’ with him? I won’t believe anythin’, sep if you—”

  Ruby, listen.” He was determined to end this conversation fast, and get going with her. “Like I said, I hold no brief for the guy, and I don’t like being put in the position of defending him. At the same time, I think enough of you not to want to see you all worked up and angry, for no reason. So let me tell you the truth of it, between us, strictly you and me—”

  “For sure, I promise, Otter.”

  “—and let’s get you relaxed and at ease again, and have ourselves a ball. Few people have had as close a look at the President as I have. You agree to that?”

  “Sure enuff, Otter, but don’t you think he—?”

  “He’s no more against Negroes than you are or your friends are or I am. He’s just on the spot being President, being a colored President, and he knows it and feels it. He knows whatever which-way he turns, a whole bunch of people will think he’s wrong, simply because he’s a minority person. Whenever I get sore at him and at myself for having to spend my good time guarding him, guarding a man who is contributing nothing to improve us, I remember a couple things I’ve seen and heard, and then, instead of being sore, well, I pity him. That’s true, Ruby, I’m not puffing myself up, but me, I pity him.” He paused. “You know why? Because even though he’s sitting where F. D. R. and Harry and Ike and J. F. K. and Lyndon and The Judge and T. C. sat, he still feels he’s sitting in the back of the bus, because that’s where a lot of people around him make him think he belongs. I don’t know politics, but I’ve got eyes and ears. Certain people are trying to run him, and to make it easier they’re pressuring him, letting him know he doesn’t belong, and he feels it and suffers like a dog, and that’s the only thing he’s got from me, my sympathy.”

  Ruby seemed curiously chastened and troubled. “What you mean w
ith that there talkin’, Otter? What you mean?”

  Beggs was becoming increasingly furious at the time this was taking. “Okay, I’ll give it to you quickly, and then you promise, no more politics or Dilman?”

  “ ’Course, Otter, I promise. But what you mean by—?”

  “Remember that big speech he delivered the other night, vetoing the minorities bill everyone wanted? I was outside his open door, the door to his office, during it and afterwards. I could see and hear everything. You should have seen him after that speech, almost sick with nervousness and worry. Then there were a lot of phone calls, apparently from big shots in government and all over, and most of them must have been awful, calling him names, giving him hell. Anyway, later, I heard him on the phone with somebody who’s a friend of his, a lawyer from Chicago, and I heard Dilman saying—these aren’t the exact words, but something like this—‘Don’t kid me, Nat, they want to crucify me. There’s a whole race of people around here like them, not white or black, but selfish, thinking of themselves and no one else and not the country. I could’ve been popular, a little popular, by playing along the way I have all my life, but I figured just once I’d like to be myself and do what I think is right. I thought everyone would see I have nothing to gain by doing wrong. I don’t have to play politics, because I don’t have to worry about getting re-elected. I have only a short time to go, so I can afford to be honest. I figured everyone would see that, and kind of think twice about the veto, and sit down and talk out a real bill and not a bribe. I didn’t think they’d come down on me like this. I can’t repeat what I’ve been called tonight. How do you reach people like that? How do you reach anyone at all?’ And he went on, Ruby, not in those exact words, but like that. Well, Christ, I never felt sorrier for him than I did then, until the next—”

  Beggs found that Ruby was holding his arm, clutching it. “Otter, that really did happen? I can’t—it’s sorta—”

  “It happened, you bet it happened,” Beggs said. “It’s just more of the same. You read about the time he gave his first official dinner for the African President, and half the big guests never showed up? Can you beat that? It’s true. I was there.”

  “Oh, no—” said Ruby. She released Beggs’s arm, reached for her drink, and took a long swallow of it.

  Fascinated now by the way his words were upsetting her, feeling there was some strength and ascendancy to win over her in this way, Otto Beggs went on. “One more little thing I started to tell you. The next day, after the television speech, I happened to be alone with Dilman’s secretary, and she was kind of disturbed and unraveled from the way he was being beaten up on the phone and in the papers, and we got to talking about it. She’s a white girl, you know, from Wisconsin, and usually cool and steady, but she was kind of emotional, and when I said it was too bad the way the President was getting knocked around for his color, she said that I didn’t know the half of how he really felt.”

  Ruby was staring at her drink, not at Beggs. “What—what she mean by that there talk, Otter?”

  “Miss Foster, her name is. She said she’d never forget his first day as President. She was alone with him the first time, planning to hand in her resignation, and when she’d come in his office, there was one door open. She started to shut it, so they could be in privacy, and he wouldn’t let her close the door, he didn’t want it shut. She couldn’t understand, and then he said that Eisenhower once had a Negro adviser who found that white girls always left a door open when they came in to see him, sort of as protection, as if he was a lower animal or habitual rapist. And so Dilman took to the habit of being sure one door was left open whenever a white girl came in and—” To Beggs’s astonishment, Ruby had jumped up from the sofa and gone to the center of the room, her back turned to him. “Anyway,” he concluded lamely, “Miss Foster said she wanted to cry for him, and she shut that door and did not resign. So whatever your friends think about Dilman being evil—”

  He halted, and listened.

  It was incredible. Ruby’s shoulders were shaking, and her face was in her hands, and she was sobbing.

  Utterly confounded, Otto Beggs left the sofa and hurried to her side. “Ruby, what the hell—” He grabbed her arms, and pulled her around, and then drew her hands from her eyes. She was crying, mascara running, and tears streaking her face. “Otter—Otter—Otter,” she kept repeating.

  He shook her a little. “Ruby, what’s got into you?”

  She swallowed, trying to control herself. “Otter, the devil’s in me an’ I’ll burn in front of Jesus if I don’t tell you—Otter, from what you told me, you swear it—”

  “What I told you? I only told you the truth about—”

  “Jesus in Heaven, I done did an awful an’ wicked act, I think I did, I think, I don’t know, but I’m worryin’, Jesus, I’m worryin’—’cause I don’t wan’ Pres Dilman hurt if he’s like you say.”

  Beggs felt the blood coursing to his head. “What—what do you mean—?” A chill of apprehension, intensified by guilt and fear, crept across his chest and forearms, leaving goose pimples. “How—how could anything you do hurt him—the President?”

  “Otter—listen—I didn’t know a thing, sep some certain cullud folk were wantin’ me to meet you long time ago from right after Dilman become Pres, ’cause they not likin’ his weaslin’ ’bout the Turners, so they bein’ my folk, I agrees. But meetin’ you, I fo’gits ’bout them, ’cause I gotta admits y’all been excitin’ to me—then when those there certain cullud folk, they see Pres Dilman killin’ off the Turners an’ Hurley, they gits to fussin’ an’ fumin’—an’ they remembers me—an’ come askin’ if I is still friendly-like with Otter Beggs, an’ I says I is, sorta, an’ they says for me to git you up here in my ’partment today, git you off the job today, ’cause they didn’t want you round when they see the Pres—I—Otter—I don’t pay no mind to who tell me this, don’t remember who told me—Otter—don’t look like that, Otter—only there’s some who hate the Pres like you don’t know, like I was tellin’—hate him from the start, hate him with real hate now—an’ wanna have a showdown with him—an’ figgerin’ it was hard to git to him exactly private-like, with you always there, a hero man like you readyin’ to shoot everybody—so they say for me to keep you busy till they can see the Pres when he finishes with his office workin’ today an’ goes up to—”

  Beggs was violent with rage. “Goddammit, you little whore!” he shouted, wrenching her arms. “If you’re lying to me or not telling everything—!”

  “Otter, Otter, don’t! You hurtin’ me—Otter, it’s true, every word I’m tellin’. Why should I tell, sep I sinned—I know I sinned—”

  He could not release her arms. “Damn you, who are your friends—what are they planning—?”

  “I don’t know—don’t know—swear to Jesus—”

  He flung her arms down fiercely. “I ought to kill you—boy, I ought to kill you for making me such a sucker—”

  “But I was likin’ you, Otter—truth, I swears it—”

  He was no longer listening.

  He looked at his watch. It showed sixteen minutes after five o’clock. Almost every afternoon President Dilman quit his office at five-thirty. Ruby’s friends wanted to see the President when Beggs was not around, when someone less experienced and able than Beggs was there, when someone new was there. It could mean but one thing, one horrifying, life-shattering thing. There were only fourteen minutes for him to intercept Dilman or alert Agajanian.

  He looked up and saw that Ruby Thomas had retreated to her bedroom door, frightened, watching him wide-eyed.

  “I ought to beat you to a pulp and drag you to the FBI!” he hollered. “My duty’s more important than you, you little whore—”

  He spun around, snatching up his coat and holster, and strode to the door.

  She cried out, “Otter, I did tell you aforehand—you ain’ sayin’ I didn’t tell you—don’t let them hurt him, please, Otter—!”

  He slammed the door on her, has
tily buckling on the holster, then yanking on his coat as he went down the stairs two at a time. As he rushed outside, his first instinct was to locate a telephone booth, call Gaynor or Agajanian or Prentiss, any of the Detail, and warn them to keep the President in his office, and throw up a double—a triple—guard, and search for Ruby’s hophead friends. Then, suddenly, he realized it was impossible for him to make such a call. They’d ask him who and what—and how had he got his tip? What could he say? He had a hunch? He’d overheard something? He’d got a crank note with a lead? He possessed no instant evidence—except the truth—Ruby—and if he dared mention her, and she was hauled in, and they found out that he had not been sick, had been trying to have an affair with her, a colored girl, he’d be cooked, through, his present a scandal, his future no more. He’d lose the Secret Service, and Gertrude and the kids. No, the call was out. He’d have to do it himself.

  He had been moving fast, now half running, all the while he had been thinking. He arrived at the alley behind the Walk Inn, with its parking slots, leaped into the Nash Rambler, started it, backed up, shifted, and wheeled out of the alley into the street. He gunned the car, running a yellow light, and twisted the vehicle toward the White House.

  He drove fast, fast as he could over the route that he had traveled so many days of his life, jumping lights, beating the changing signals, weaving in and out of traffic, knowing he must be there before the President left his Oval Office. If a policeman flagged him down, he’d have to flash his Secret Service badge and bellow emergency. He drove on the brink of recklessness, ignoring the angry horns and curses that chased him briefly and then died away.

  There were intervals of lucidity. He had sobered, he knew, but his breath still reeked of gin. If he came into the West Wing lobby like a madman, like some fugitive from a cops-and-robbers television show, and there was nothing there, and Ruby Thomas’ story was a cock-and-bull story, he would not only be the laughingstock of the Service but in real trouble for being drunk in public. Anticipating this, determined to prevent it, he dug into his pocket for the peppermints that he always carried and sucked on after having a beer or two, and was grateful that there was still a half roll. His nail loosened and freed three of them, and he popped them into his mouth.