(1964) The Man (89 page)

Dilman stepped forward, reached out and accepted the summons. “Thank you, Mr. Greene, for going to this trouble. I suppose I shouldn’t send you back to Washington empty-handed.”

The Sergeant at Arms appeared as puzzled as The Judge, who stood beside him.

“You can take this message back with you,” said Dilman. While he faced the Sergeant at Arms, his gaze had shifted to The Judge. “Tell the Senate of the United States that the President of the United States looks forward—looks forward to seeing them in court!”

The second that the Sergeant at Arms had gone, The Judge let out a whoop. Beaming from ear to ear, he descended upon Dilman and gave him a wrestling hug. “Mr. President, spoken like a man!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “I knew you wouldn’t quit, knew you’d fight, felt it in my bones.”

Smiling, Dilman pocketed the summons. “I guess I came here, Judge, knowing that too. Only I needed somebody wiser and tougher than I am to give me a kick in the pants, so I’d get mad enough to remember I was right, and do some kicking myself.”

The Judge pounded Dilman’s back affectionately, then held him off. “Mr. President, no matter what comes of this, when you come to be my age, you’ll look back and won’t regret it, never for a minute.”

Dilman nodded gravely. “I hope so,” he said softly, “because I’m going to take an awful licking.”

“No matter what,” said The Judge. “Ever hear of an ancient Roman philosopher by name of Seneca? Ever read what he wrote about a company of Romans trapped and decimated in an ambush? He wrote, ‘The three hundred Fabiae were not defeated, they were only killed.’ Remember that when it gets real bad. It’s enough to make it worth while. Now go, and God bless you.”

Dilman returned The Judge’s powerful handshake, and then he was surprised to find the Missus, holding his coat and hat on her pudgy arm, waiting at the door. Dilman allowed her to assist him with his overcoat. When he took his hat, and began to thank her, he could see that her eyes were brimming. Impulsively she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Be brave, Douglass,” she said. “There’s lots of us who need you.”

Too choked by emotion to reply, Dilman fumbled for the door-knob. As he opened the door, he heard the immediate chorus of shouts from the photographers beyond the porch, but louder than the rest was The Judge’s admonition behind him.

“Braveness is good,” The Judge had called out, “but a smart lawyer is better. Get one, and get one fast, the best there is, Mr. President!”

From over his shoulder, Dilman forced himself to smile at The Judge. “I’ll try,” he said. “I know the best attorney there is—but he wants to be a farmer like yourself, so it’s hard to say if he’ll be able to take time off from his harvesting. I’ll try, you bet. That’s all a man can do.”

Behind the closed doors of their bedroom on the sixth floor of the Mayflower Hotel, Nat Abrahams finally hung up the telephone receiver and remained standing over the instrument, lost in thought.

At last, mechanical as an automaton, he wandered past the double bed to the window. He stared down into darkened Connecticut Avenue, his mind still on the call he had taken, hardly aware of the early evening foot and vehicular dinner traffic in the street below.

The glow from a neon light across the way caught the glaze of the window, and its angled illumination intensified the reflection of himself in the glass. He realized then that he was attired in his best suit, dressed for a festive night out, and with a start he remembered that Gorden Oliver and Sue were still waiting for him in the living room of the suite. His activity in the ten or fifteen minutes before the telephone had interrupted him was instantly revived.

Gorden Oliver, professionally hale and hearty, his ruddy New England features aglow, his brandy cane in one hand, an impressive manila envelope in the other, had arrived precisely on time. With the air of one Caesar conferring a laurel wreath upon another Caesar, he had handed the long-delayed final draft of the Eagles Industries employment contract to Abrahams. While Sue, bubbling and pretty in her rose sheath dress, had mixed the high-balls, Abrahams had sunk into a corner of the sofa to review one last time the legal language of a contract he had almost committed to memory during these past months.

As he read on, Nat Abrahams had tried to shut his ears to the cheery conversation between Sue and Oliver, to the lobbyist’s political gossip and anecdotes and Sue’s merry, appreciative responses. Only once, when he had covered the paragraphs announcing his astronomical salary, bonuses, deferments, stock options, had he been forced to look up. Oliver had been patting his narrow-shouldered, tight-fitting, tailor-made suit coat importantly, and telling Sue that nothing was too good for the spouse of Eagles Industries’ soon-to-be-number-one barrister, and therefore it was only befitting to cap the occasion with a regal dinner at Billy Martin’s Carriage House in Georgetown, the swank restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue so renowned for its cuisine. Sue Abrahams had squealed with delight, and Nat had enjoyed seeing her so happy, and then returned to the contract.

That had been his only distraction until he had finished his reading of the contract and raised his head to Gorden Oliver. “Okay,” he had said to the lobbyist, “this is it. Now you want my John Hancock?”

“Sure do!” exclaimed Oliver, uncapping his gold fountain pen. He had handed the pen to Abrahams. “Historic occasion. Sign all copies where they’re x’d and initial in margins where stamped.”

As Abrahams spread the numerous copies on the coffee table before him, and, with pen in hand, bent over the original, the second distraction of the evening had occurred.

The telephone had started to ring.

Sue had leaped to her feet. “I’ll take it,” she had said to her husband. “You go on and get that over with.”

Yet Abrahams had held the pen poised over the contract, not touching the point to the sheet, waiting to hear whom the call was from.

Sue had cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Nat,” she had said, “it’s the White House for you.”

Abrahams had placed the pen on the table and quickly stood up. “I’ll take it in the bedroom,” he had said.

And then, going into the bedroom, before shutting the door behind him he had heard Gorden Oliver cheerily call out, “Well, that’s the only other corporation I’ll give equal time to—even though Eagles is more solvent.”

The call had lasted no more than three or four minutes, and Abrahams had mostly listened in the quiet room, his festival mood gradually receding and being replaced by one of serious concern.

Now, as he stood at the hotel window, the call had become the dominant prodder of his judgment and conscience, and it was difficult to ignore it and resume the business awaiting him on the coffee table in the living room. Yet his wife was there, his new career partner was there, his future was there. With reluctance he left the solitude of the bedroom.

He could see Sue’s wondering eyes, their gravity contradicting the curved smile of her lips, following him to the sofa.

He sat on the sofa, fingers interlocked between his long legs, chewing the corner of a lip, looking past the pen and contracts.

“Well, Nat,” said Gorden Oliver with hearty cheerfulness, “let’s get the formalities over with—and let me have the honor of taking one of the richest attorneys in America out on the town!”

Abrahams hardly heard him. His gaze had gone to Sue and fixed upon her. He said, “That was the President on the phone.”

“Doug Dilman?” she said with surprise. “I thought he was still off in—?”

“He just flew back,” Abrahams said. “He’s decided to fight them. He’s decided to go on trial in the Senate and defend himself.”

“Oh, no,” said Sue with a groan. “After that terrible impeachment? He hasn’t a chance, Nat. I hope you didn’t encourage him. I can’t understand it. Why, the rumor around town was that he’d resign rather than—”

Abrahams’ eyes stayed fixed on his wife. “He’s not quitting, he’s fighting.” He hesitated, inhaled, and then he said, “Sue, he has asked me to take over his legal defense before the United States Senate.”

“You?” Her hand had gone to her mouth. The fun and frivolity had disappeared from her eyes. “But, Nat, how—? What did you tell him?”

“He wouldn’t let me give him a yes or no right off. You know Doug. You know how sensitive he is, how reluctant he is to make demands on anyone, or ask a favor, or impose on anyone. It took him all the way from Sioux City to here, and then a couple of hours more, to get up the nerve to—to lift the phone to tell me he would stand trial, and explain his problem. Even then he didn’t ask me right out. He said he desperately needed the best attorney in the country—preferably me, but if it couldn’t be me, then anyone I might suggest. I suspect he must have been awfully scared and—and lonely—after making his decision—to call me at all. . . . No, he wouldn’t let me give him an answer. He asked me to give it some thought, and call him soon as I could, and if my answer was no, he’d understand, because he knows how tied up I’m going to be. So I said I’d get back to him later this evening. That’s the gist of it, Sue. That’s it.”

Abrahams became conscious of the third person in the living room. The New England lobbyist’s expression had lost its bluff cheerfulness and had become intent.

Abrahams decided to bring Oliver into it. “Of course, Gorden, if I did this for the President, I’d need a short leave of absence to—”

“
If
you did this?” interrupted Oliver, his face a portrait of incredulity. “You’re kidding me, Nat, aren’t you?”

“I’m not kidding you or anyone,” said Abrahams. “I’m thinking out loud. I said if I represented the President in this impeachement trial, I’d—”

“Nat, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute.” Gorden Oliver held the arms of his side chair and crouched forward. “You can’t be serious about giving Dilman’s request two seconds’ serious consideration?” He searched Abrahams’ face, then said, “Because—if you are—you’ll have to realize there’s only one answer you can give him, no matter who he is, no matter what your relationship with him has been. There’s only one answer, and that is no—no, you can’t do it, you wish you could for a friend, but first things first, and so sorry, old chap, no.”

Abrahams felt his back arch, but he controlled himself. “I think you’re a little out of line there, Gorden. I hadn’t said either that I would defend the President or that I would not. In fact, I haven’t made up my mind yet. But frankly, Gorden, I don’t feel anyone has the right to make up my mind for me.”

“Under the circumstances, maybe I can claim the right,” said Oliver. “Considering your situation—your obligations—I don’t think it’s proper for you even to entertain the idea of going before the Senate and the whole country on behalf of a politician whose behavior leaves much wanting and who is under criminal indictment. Chrissakes, Nat, of all things—I don’t want to quarrel with you—with anyone in Eagles—we’ve gotten along so perfectly up to now. Look, I can understand how this can be upsetting to you—the fact that he’s been your friend, throwing himself on your mercy, the fact that he’s an underdog, a Negro besides—but that’s all by the way. Life goes on. You’ve got to think of yourself first, and your first responsibility is to—to us—to Eagles.”

Abrahams knotted his fists more tightly in his lap. He measured his every word. “Maybe I don’t know all the facets of the position I’m to have with your corporation. Maybe there is more I should know, and right now. My responsibility to you in this matter—what is it, Gorden? You’d better—”

“Please, Nat,” Sue called out frantically, “don’t get so—”

“Come on, Gorden,” Abrahams persisted, “let’s have it. Lay it out on the table right beside those contracts. Tell me about the clauses that haven’t been written in.”

It fascinated Abrahams then to see Oliver’s face take on a look he had never seen there before. The winning charm, the howdy-hi geniality, had disappeared, and what remained was the granite rock bed beneath.

“We’re not keeping any secrets from you, Nat. By now, you should know all there is to know of what Avery Emmich expects of you. If you don’t, I’ll be only too glad to make it clearer.”

“Do just that,” said Abrahams. “Make it clearer why you won’t let me defend Doug Dilman, if I choose to do so.”

“All right, then, if you’re putting me on the spot, if you refuse to understand, if you want it the hard way, all right, there’s no time like the present.” Oliver glanced at Sue, with no smile, then pointed the unyielding face back to Abrahams. “Nat,” he said, “when I say I or we, I mean Emmich and Eagles, right? Okay. We contributed heavily to T. C.’s campaign and election, because we knew he was our friend. We paid for four years of his friendship, and we’ve received only two-thirds of our investment back. To put it crudely, we paid for a blue-chip stock, and then at the end it turned black, and, for our purposes, worthless. Dismayed as we were with the succession of Dilman to President, we were assured by Governor Talley that he was sensible and tractable and would stay in line. Then he double-crossed us. Talley said it would never happen, but it did. We wanted that Minorities Rehabilitation Bill passed into law. It was Emmich’s pet, important to all of us with Eagles. Instead, your Mr. Dilman wrecked it. We knew what we had on our hands then, someone we couldn’t trust or depend upon. Still, we figured that Congress would pass the bill a second time, over his veto, and we’d salvage something. We didn’t figure those labor unions would swing enough weight to force the bill back into committee for a rewrite, but they did, and there it’s bogged down, all because of Mr. Dilman. Well, look, Nat, I’ll tell you straight out, there’s nobody in the United States big enough, powerful enough, to cross Avery Emmich or work against the best interests of this country he loves. Emmich swore that if it was the last act he could perform as a patriotic citizen, he would get rid of Dilman and get the country back on the road to peace and prosperity. Well, I guess other equally patriotic citizens had the same feeling, because Emmich didn’t have to lift a finger. Our friends in Congress took matters into their own hands. The House impeached your bumbling friend, and the Senate will convict him. And we’ll be rid of him.”