(1964) The Man (79 page)

Eaton rose and sat on the corner of the coffee table. “When you—you feel ready to speak of this, Sally, I’d like to hear what—”

“I’m ready now.”

“Whenever you say.”

“I was trying to figure out how to help you,” she said excitedly, “and then I got the chance, because he invited me to his bedroom again—”

“Who? Dilman?”

“Not Calvin Coolidge, you bet. Of course, Dilman.”

“What do you mean—he invited you
again?
”

“Jesus, Arthur, I can’t always bring myself to tell you everything. He’s had a lech for me, and at least three times before he’s invited me to his bedroom in the evening, to go over social affairs, so he says—ha, social affairs. I always got out of it. But tonight, when he whispered it again, to meet him about some plans after the guests had gone, I saw a chance to help you, and I agreed. I went to his bedroom a little early, and the transcript of the meeting he had with Scott today was lying open, so I just read it, you know. Made those exact notes on the cards. You’re lucky to have it—”

He found her hands. “Sally, darling, I am grateful, but I’m worried—”

She withdrew her hands, and brushed the hair from her eyes. “Well, about ten he came in—everyone had gone—and I could see he was plastered, drunk as a lord. I wanted to leave, but he insisted on business talk, and hell, you can’t insult the President, I mean—how? He kept insisting I drink with him. What could I do? He must’ve poured me a triple, and himself, too, because I got real tipsy, and him, you should have seen him.”

She kept shaking her head angrily, and Eaton said, “What does that mean, Sally?”

“I can’t give you the details, it’s too embarrassing, considering his position. But I guess those politicians are only human, like Harding and Nan Britton in the White House closet, but who’d expect this from a weaseling, hymn-singing black nigger who’s lucky he’s alive, let alone President? Sure, he came after me, and I fought him, weak as I was, and he even got me on the bed, desecrated that bed, tried to rip off my dress—look at it—but I got away—oh, we had a scene, what a scene—”

“Sally—Sally—wait a minute. Are you saying Dilman got you drunk and then—”

“You’re damn right that’s what I’m saying.”

“But—Sally—there was a dinner party there tonight. Surely you had something to drink on your own first?”

She was silent for a moment, staring at him warily. “Suppose I did? Who doesn’t have one or two before dinner?”

“Did you have any more after dinner?”

“What do you mean, Arthur?” she said. “I told you—with him—he forced me—”

“Yes, of course. I meant, after you got away from him. If you saw him at ten—and let’s say you left him an hour later—that still leaves almost an hour unaccounted for and I was wondering—”

She had become rigid. “I went to my office for my coat. If there’d been a gun there, I’d have shot him. I went downstairs. I was too agitated to drive my car. I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue. Then I decided to call you to pick me up. I went into the first place I came to, a bar. I was too upset even to call. So I decided to have a drink or two to steady my nerves, until I could get hold of myself. Then I took a cab—” Abruptly, she stopped, mouth compressed. “I don’t like your expression. You think I’m lying. What are you, a prosecutor or something—?”

“Please, Sally. I’m simply questioning you because this is serious, and—”

“You’re telling me I’m lying. I don’t have to take that from you—you, of all people—the hell with that.” She jumped to her feet, almost pitched forward, caught the coffee table, and straightened. “If you’re not going to stand beside me, I know some people in the next room who will!”

Head held high, the rest of her tottering, she groped her way to the library door.

“Sally, come back here, don’t be foolish—”

Without turning, only tossing her shoulders, she pulled the door open and left him.

Eaton was on his feet now, but he did not follow her. Her tawdry adventure was so bizarre—and improbable—that he needed a few minutes of solitude to turn it over in his mind.

He lit a cigarette, then paced the room thoughtfully. What weighed against the story was Sally herself, for he knew her character thoroughly. She drank. She drugged herself. She was unstable, given to exaggeration and flights of fancy. She had drawn a picture of Dilman that bore no resemblance to the stodgy, frightened Negro politician that he and everyone else knew. Yet, to balance the scale in his quest for the truth, what possible motivation could Sally have for making up in its entirety such a farfetched story? He could think of none, not one advantage to her in this, unless there was some semblance of truth in it and she wanted Dilman punished. Moreover, she was sexually attractive to men, as he well knew, and Dilman was alone, and just a few minutes earlier Miller had spoken of some evidence about Dilman’s secret drinking.

Still, dammit, Eaton found the whole thing inconceivable. Whatever idiotic rumors of infidelity and adultery and lechery, fanned by political partisanship and the instinctive desire of all common people to bring the high-ups down low to their own level, whatever rumors surrounded the Presidency—and hardly any President in decades had escaped such malice—there was not one clear-cut shred of evidence that a single Chief Executive, while in office, had ever behaved as Sally had just accused President Dilman of behaving. No matter what the former habits of its chief tenant, the White House was simply not a seraglio, never had been, never would be, because it had glass walls. Or, perhaps, because its grandeur seemed to convert its chief resident from mere mortal into abstract symbol. This was true not only of the President, but of his Cabinet members and—and then, suddenly, with astonishment, Eaton realized that the wall of invincible virtue he was building around the Chief Executive and his Cabinet members was made of cards, and had collapsed.

What about himself? He was the Secretary of State of the United States, mentor of America’s international destiny, next in line to the Presidency—and still, in the camouflage of night, he was mere mortal. How many times had he lain naked beside this beautiful young girl, who had been naked, too, and was not his wife?

Anything
was
possible.

There were no symbols for men, no matter how august and exposed their offices. There were only the men themselves.

He peered down at his wristwatch. Nearly ten minutes had gone by since Sally’s angry departure from the library. He had best join her, and the others—Good Lord, the others!—and hear out the rest of her adventure, and do what he could to sift proven fact from alcoholic and neurotic invention.

He left the library, and when he entered his living room, a not unexpected tableau presented itself to him.

Sally, her back to him, sat lurched forward on the nearest couch, with Senator Hankins beside her on the same couch, and Wayne Talley perched on a chair he had drawn up alongside, intently listening, and Zeke Miller squatting upon a footstool directly in front of her, his countenance redly twisted with outrage.

Moving into the room, Eaton could hear Sally saying, “And then, and then I pushed and punched at him, and started to scream, until he backed up, and then I got away—no, first—I remember—before going I told him what I thought of him—”

“Pardon me, Miss Watson, if I may interrupt,” said Zeke Miller, “but I want to get this clear—I want to get this crystal-clear—because I have never been so roused and angered—never heard such degradation—but do I understand you to be saying—this Nigra buck, this Dilman, he made—forgive my language, you being a lady well brought up, the daughter of an esteemed colleague—but are you saying that this Dilman made improper advances to you tonight, improper advances against your express will and desire?”

“Improper advances?” she cried out. “That animal tried to rape me—practically—I can prove it. You want me to prove it?” She became aware of Eaton, standing behind Talley, and she shouted, “You can see for yourself, Arthur. Now you’ll know I’m not prevaricating one word.”

Suddenly she reached down, grasped the hem of her skirt, and yanked the dress up over her knees, and then higher, until both her full thighs, and part of her garter belt, and the lace fringe of her panties were revealed. She half fell on her side, to show her right thigh and buttocks more fully, and drew her finger along her flesh. “Look at this. I’m not ashamed. Look for yourselves, see what he did.”

Eaton wanted to shut his eyes, but he did not. He could see the deep nail scratches, ugly crimson, several blood-encrusted, across Sally’s perfect white flesh. He could see Miller’s gray eyes widen, fastened to the sight, and Hankins’ old eyes narrowing.

“You’ve seen enough?” Sally said, straightening, and throwing her skirt down over her knees. “I’ll show you more. Look.”

She held up the torn shoulder strap of her gown, dropped it, pushed down one side of her bodice until the protruding webbed brassière cup was entirely unveiled. Eaton wanted to halt her, to tell her no more exhibits were necessary, but before he should speak out, she had loosened one brassière strap. Quickly, she pulled the freed cup down the smooth mound of her round breast, baring it to an inch from the point. She did not have to draw attention to what could be seen by all of them. The nail marks were even more stark here, and the bluish welts, too.

Eaton could contain himself no longer. “That’s enough, Sally.”

She glared up at him, covered her breast, and then pulled her bodice over the brassière, and said to Miller, “That’s from my resisting, and don’t think anybody could have done it but that nigger. I was alone with him tonight, in his room, and Governor Talley is holding the proof of it in those cards, some things I copied from Dilman’s papers in his room.”

A rumbling came from deep in Senator Hankins’ throat. “Young lady, in all my years in public service, I never heard of a more dastardly indignity perpetrated on helpless young womanhood. I pledge you—” He slapped his hip. “I pledge my last resources to drive the culprit responsible for this from our capital city.”

Sally seemed momentarily mesmerized by Hankins’ gallantry. “Thank you, Senator. I—I only want justice done.”

Zeke Miller was in a fury. “Justice is too good for that drunken lechering Nigra, Miss Sally,” he shouted. “Lynching is what he deserves. Your word is enough for us to—”

“It’s not me alone,” said Sally. “It’s not as if this were an isolated example of his immorality.”

“Meaning what?” Miller demanded. “Be free to tell us everything you know.”

Sally looked at the men around her. “You mean you don’t know about his mistress?”

Miller’s exhalation of amazement and pleasure became a whistle. “You know this for sure?” he bayed.

“Of course!” Sally exclaimed heatedly. “When I was leaving him tonight, I told him to his face I wasn’t going to become another Wanda Gibson—being kept by him in some back street—well, you should have seen him. It stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t know anyone but the Spingers knew about it, but I know, and I’m positive Edna Foster knows.”

Senator Hankins stirred erect, some confusion on his wrinkled face. “What was the lady’s name again?”

“Wanda Gibson,” said Sally. “She’s a young nigger woman. Dilman had her living upstairs in his brownstone when he was—before he became President. She’s still there, and he went over there the night after he moved into the White House. In fact, he tried to bring her into the White House, invited her to the State Dinner for Amboko—I know, because I sent the invitation—but I guess she was afraid to show up. Anyway, this Wanda Gibson, she’s the one who called him today—she works for the Vaduz Exporters in a highly confidential job—she called him today to say they’d been found out—meaning the FBI found out her boss and company were a Communist Russian Front, and to warn him—”

Eaton stepped forward. “No need going into that now, Sally.”

“Hey, now, Arthur, one minute, now. Goldarn, this sounds like something big,” said Miller. He touched Sally’s knee. “Are you saying that the President of the United States, Nigra or not, the President of America has been living clandestinely with a Nigra female who’s working for the Soviet Russians?”

“That’s right.”

Miller had become transformed into a quivering hunting dog. “Hey, now, if those are the facts—”

“They are the facts,” said Sally fervently. She pointed to Talley. “He’s holding some more of the evidence on those cards, copied directly from a meeting Dilman had this afternoon with Mr. Scott. It’s all there.”

Miller turned to Talley, eyes gleaming. “True, Governor?”

Talley fanned the cards nervously. “Well—uh—in so far as Vaduz Exporters being a Red Front—yes—it’s been uncovered that they’ve been shipping arms to—to Soviet countries, who dispose of them mainly in Africa. And the President evidently has a woman friend who has been working in that firm, Miss Gibson—yes—but, of course, I’d have no knowledge about their relationship.”

Miller held his palms apart and then smacked them together vigorously. “Open-and-shut!” he announced. “You want treason, bribery, and high crimes, Arthur? Okay, what’s this? The President of this country consorting regularly with a lady friend who works for the Communists, talking bedroom talk, letting out secrets on purpose or inadvertently, on purpose to help his fellow niggers in Africa or inadvertently because he’s trading secrets for sex. If that’s not treason, what is? The President delaying prosecution of nigger extremists like the Turnerites in return for them not squealing about his son being a member, and then a pure white judge getting killed as a result. If that’s not bribery by blackmail, what is? High crimes and misdemeanors? Meaning loose morals, maladministration, intemperate habits? If the President’s fornicating with a mistress, trying to seduce his helpless white social secretary, added on to his record for drunkenness, if that doesn’t qualify him, what does? Arthur, it’s open-and-shut. The Nigra goes out, and you come in.”

For Eaton, it was rolling too fast now. He wanted time to think. “We’ll see,” he said quietly, “we’ll have to see.”

Talley stood up. “I’m afraid Dilman won’t give us much time, Arthur.” He indicated the index cards in his hand. “Miss Watson recorded most of the private meeting with Scott. Dilman knows everything. He knows for certain we withheld the report from CIA on Baraza. He knows what was in that report, because Scott was able to tell him. Dilman was apparently angry as hell, and ordered more agents and funds to be allotted to investigate the situation in Baraza. He told Scott to bypass us from now on and come straight to him. He said from now on he’s running the government, not letting us do it for him.” Talley massaged his jowls worriedly. “I tell you, Arthur, we’re in for trouble from that man.”