(1964) The Man (109 page)

“What were the President’s feelings about the Turnerites?”

“He thought they were all wrong. He detested them. He hated every extremist and pro-violence organization, black or white, left or right. So we would argue. But now I can see my father was correct.”

“Julian Dilman, one thing puzzles me. Allow me to pose the puzzle in the form of several questions. You were a member, yet you never told your father about it. Why did you not tell him? Why did you lie about this one thing? You informed Mr. Manager Miller you were afraid of revealing the truth to the President. What were you afraid of?”

“Well—”

“Were you afraid of breaking your pledge of secrecy to Hurley?”

“Only a little. That was the least part of it.”

“What was the major part of it, then? Were you afraid of your father’s disapproval?”

“I—I knew how much he was against those extremists. I knew how much he hoped for me and expected of me. I knew that if I told him, he—he would be horrified, and disappointed by the way I’d turned out, and think less of me. I knew he loved me and—I didn’t want to lose his love.”

“I see.”

It was a fine moment to dismiss the witness, but Abrahams knew that one more question needed to be asked. “Is that why you finally confessed your secret? It was your secret, and you might have kept it forever. Yet, last week, you made it known to the press and the world. What compelled you to do so? Why did you—when it was no longer necessary—jeopardize your character, make your veracity questionable, and give ammunition to the smallest and weakest part of the House managers’ indictment?”

“Why?” Julian paused. “Because—I guess because I was so proud of my father’s integrity—and—and ashamed of my own lack of it—and my own ambition was to grow up to be a man like he was, and is—and I decided the way to start was to be honest like him.”

“Thank you, Mr. Witness.”

After Julian had left the witness box, Abrahams returned to his table. He could not calculate, from the reaction of his associates or that of the senators, how effective his cross-examination had been. He decided that if it had accomplished nothing else, it had shown the legislators that the President’s son was sincere and trustworthy, and that although Julian had lied once, it was not likely that he was lying under oath today. If this image had been created, Abrahams decided, it was something, little enough, but something, a small victory. And perhaps the scale of justice (or injustice) so heavily weighted against his client had been lightened, and was better balanced, if only a trifle.

Suddenly Abrahams realized that Miss Wanda Gibson had been summoned, and was already standing before the Secretary of the Senate, right hand raised.

The Secretary of the Senate droned forth, “You, Wanda Gibson, do affirm that the evidence you shall give in the case now depending between the United States and Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: so help you God.”

“I do, so help me God.”

“The witness will kindly be seated.”

It pleased Abrahams to see her there, so composed, so attractive in her blue jersey dress and matching jacket. Wanda’s luminous eyes, shining out of her solemn tan face, fleetingly caught Abrahams’ gaze, and they flickered as if to reassure him, and he was grateful for her piquant maturity. He hoped that Doug Dilman was watching on television. Perhaps he would be less worried about the ordeal to which he had subjected her.

But then, as Zeke Miller materialized, Abrahams’ confidence in her buckled slightly. She would have to be as resilient on the inside as she appeared to be poised on the outside, if she were to survive without serious hurt.

“Miss Wanda Gibson, I have it,” said Miller, slurring the syllables of her name. “According to Articles I and III of the impeachment, according to the testimony already received, you are the great and good friend of the President of the United States. How long have you known him?”

“Five years.”

“How long have you lived under his roof?”

“I have rented a room from the Reverend Paul Spinger and Mrs. Spinger, the upstairs tenants, for six years. The President purchased the building, occupied the lower half of the duplex, and became the Spingers’ landlord, and, in turn, mine, five years ago.”

“Do you pay rent for your room?”

“Of course I pay rent for my room.”

“Have you always paid rent? Did you pay rent when the President lived in the same building with you?”

“If you are trying to say, Mr. Congressman, that I accepted special favors from my landlord in return for special favors—the answer is no, I did not.” There was a wide tittering across the gallery, and Wanda looked up with surprise, and then down at Miller. She said, “I have never missed payment of a single month’s rent.”

Miller sniffed. “Miss Gibson, were you ever, in those five years, alone with the President, either in his downstairs flat or your own?”

“Never in his flat. Occasionally in the Spingers’ living room. Most often, we were alone on the outside, when we went to dinner or the theater, that is, when the President was a senator.”

“Miss Gibson, in this dwelling on Van Buren Street where you live, which the President owns, is there any means of private access one could use to go from the downstairs to the upstairs, or vice versa?”

“Do you mean, is there some kind of private stairway or hidden passage by which the President and I could have seen one another without being seen by others?”

“I will request you to refrain from rewording or defining my questions, Miss Gibson. I mean precisely what I asked. Did the President have any private means of getting to your quarters or you to his?”

“No. Unless he used a ladder—or the vine that grows on the back wall—but I doubt if the President is, or ever was, that athletic or romantically foolhardy.”

The spectators in the gallery roared with laughter, and some stamped and whistled.

Chief Justice Johnstone’s gavel slammed down hard. When peace was restored, the robed magistrate warned, “The Chief Justice will admonish strangers and citizens in the galleries of the necessity of observing perfect order and profound silence—at the penalty of being evicted.”

Zeke Miller was staring at the witness. “Miss Gibson, previous witnesses who were acquainted with both you and the President, when he was a senator, have agreed that you had a close relationship with him. How close was it?”

“For the most part, about as close as you and I are right here.”

“Previous testimony indicates otherwise.”

“What does previous testimony indicate, Congressman?”

“That you, Miss Gibson, and the man who is now President had a relationship which might be regarded, by some classes, as an illicit liaison.”

“Can you prove that scandalous allegation? What do you possess, beyond a desire to defame the President, to support it?”

“Miss Gibson, circumstantial evidence, strong circumstantial evidence, is enough. The records of your visits and dating together, your telephone conversations, they are enough. The affair is indicated plainly. That is enough.”

“Enough only for backstairs gossips and vindictive persecutors—”

“Watch your tongue, Miss Gibson. You are sworn—”

“Watch yours, Mr. Manager. You have no proof. You have hopes. You have hopes, and hearsay, and indications. And on that you are trying to build a straw Romeo and a straw Juliet. What you are building is a nonexistent affair, a fabrication, and I am the only one in this Chamber who knows the truth, and that is what I am telling you.”

“Miss Gibson, do not insult the intelligence of this court. Do you mean to tell me that you, a grown single woman, enjoyed a friendship with a mature widowed male for five years, and there was no intimacy between you, not once in five years?”

“Intimacy?”

“Come now, Miss Gibson, you know very well what I mean.”

“I suspect I do, and I am appalled. Congressman Miller, the friendship I had with the President was based on mutual respect, common intellectual interests, and the simple pleasure of being together. We had an abiding affection for one another. We held hands. We embraced. We kissed. But, sorry as I am to disappoint you, there was nothing more furtive or lurid that ever occurred.”

“I am not disputing your sincerity, Miss Gibson, but do you mean to tell me that a person like the President—his intemperate habits have already been introduced into—”

“What intemperate habits?”

“Drinking, excessive drinking, for one thing.”

“Drinking? The President? Surely you’re joking. All he ever drank in my presence was carbonated water, celery tonic, and occasionally wine at dinner. Two glasses of wine and he fell asleep. The sight of a bourbon advertisement made him take me home early. You’re joking.”

“And you, Madam Witness, are flippant, excessively so, to the detriment of the person you, understandably, are trying to protect.”

“If I am flippant, it is because your questions inspire only my contempt, and yet I do not think they deserve the honest emotion of contempt, not from a lady and not in a court.”

“I will leave it to the honorable members of the Senate to judge your performance. However, before entering into the serious matter of how your close relationship with the President, your kiss-and-tell Vaduz relationship—”

Abrahams was on his feet. “Objection, Your Honor!”

Miller gave a disdainful gesture toward Abrahams. “Forget it. I’ll rephrase. . . . Miss Gibson, before entering into the series of questions designed to extract from you the full story of how you were able to acquire from the President privileged state information, and pass it on to your Communist employers, in support of Article I of the House indictment, I wonder if you would be kind enough to reply to one more question about your friendship with the President. Did the President find your companionship so rewarding, so fulfilling, for five years, that he did not think it necessary to ask your hand in marriage?”

“Congressman, I suspect the implication behind your question is an insult.”

“No offense intended—”

“You are implying, despite my sworn denial, that the President and I did have an affair, and that this satisfied him sufficiently to keep him from proposing marriage.”

“Miss Gibson, you said that, I didn’t.”

“Congressman, when a snake rattles, you know it’s just a rattle, not a bite, but you know the meaning of the sound, and what comes next.”

“Miss Gibson, I will not be diverted by a lecture in zoology. I want the facts of your relationship with the President set before this tribunal. Miss Gibson, after five years, why did the President and yourself not legalize your relationship?”

“Not legalize our relationship?”

“Not marry, Miss Gibson. Why did you not marry?”

“Because he never asked me. I think he meant to, but I think he was afraid.”

“The President—afraid?”

“Of people like you, Mr. Manager, who might think him too black for me, and me too white for him, and who might cry out that our union would be mongrelizing the Congress, where he was once a member, or the White House, where he is now the President. If you are through with the Madame du Barry part of my life, Mr. Manager, can we go on to the Mata Hari part? I’m eager to know how it all comes out.”

Ten minutes later, when Zeke Miller, mopping his wet bald pate, had finished the Mata Hari part and grimly gone back to his table, it was Nat Abrahams’ turn.

Abrahams rose. “Mr. Chief Justice, the President’s managers waive cross-examination. The witness may be dismissed without recall.”

He smiled at Wanda Gibson as she left the stand. Maybe the Senate had another view of it, but for Abrahams, the President’s lady needed no further defense this day or ever. Perhaps, Abrahams reasoned, her flippancy—how difficult the attitude must have been for her, considering her essential seriousness and concern, yet how unwaveringly she had maintained that pose, determined to ridicule the outrageous charges—may have offended some senators, coming, as it did, from a mulatto. Nevertheless, Abrahams believed she had more than adequately defended herself and the man she loved. She required no counsel’s assist. If most of the Senate appreciated her sparring with Miller, her ridiculing of Miller’s charges, then her triumph was not a small one.

Scanning the inscrutable public faces of the senators as they watched Wanda Gibson leave, Abrahams could detect nothing decisive, neither favorable nor unfavorable reactions.

Looking past the podium, Abrahams saw Zeke Miller’s manner change. He appeared to light up. Then Abrahams beheld the witness who was approaching, the witness whose deceptively innocent face was set firmly in cold determination.

Sally Watson, blond hair combed bell-like for the occasion, taupe wool sheath accentuating her feminine contours, mink stole on her arm, had gone up before the witness chair and the Secretary of the Senate.

Tuttle, beside Abrahams, leaned closer. “She looks as if she’s going to be hard on us,” he whispered.

“She will be,” Abrahams whispered in return.

Zeke Miller, rubbing his hands with apparent relish, dipping his head to the seated witness in a gallant welcome, addressed her with the deference he might have accorded Varina Howell Davis—Jefferson Davis’ Varina—flower of the Confederacy.

“Miss Watson, considering the nature of your familial ties, the fact that your brilliant and beloved parent is a member of this august body, considering the ordeal you have recently undergone, it is an act of uncommon bravery and patriotism for you to have volunteered to appear here in public this afternoon. All of us in the legislative branch are appreciative that you are ready to become a collaborator in our search for the truth, in our desire to purify and strengthen the executive branch of our noble government. For my part, I shall attempt to make your appearance as brief as possible.”

“Thank you, Representative Miller.”

“I understand that you have insisted upon coming here against your physician’s wishes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because you felt that no affidavit could adequately reveal what injury and humiliation you have suffered?”