The years that had made them older had given each of them, in different ways, national identity. Abrahams’ name had become known for his successful intervention in cases involving legal oppressions of minorities. Dilman’s name had become even more widely known for his four terms in the House of Representatives, his appointment to a vacancy in the United States Senate, his election to the Senate, and finally his widely heralded election as President pro tempore of the Senate in the Vice-President’s absence. And now, overnight, this improbable upheaval in Dilman’s life, and the life and history of the United States.
Abrahams had been jounced out of memory by the dining car waiter staring at him, and he realized that he was shaking his head over the turn of events and the waiter was worried that he was shaking his head over the breakfast that lay before him.
“Is everything all right, sir?” the waiter was asking.
“Perfectly fine, looks excellent, thanks.”
He ate his cereal hastily, so that the French toast would not be cold. Eating, he realized that he must remove the problem of Doug Dilman from his mind. His immediate concern must be the personal business that was bringing him to Washington, D.C. In forty minutes they would be arriving at the Union Station, and not long after they would be in a taxi entering Massachusetts Avenue and heading for the Mayflower Hotel. Sue would be calling the children and her mother, and unpacking, while he would be making arrangements to meet with Oliver, the veteran lobbyist empowered by Avery Emmich, chairman of Eagles Industries Corporation, to negotiate with him. What would result from these meetings could be crucial to the future years of his life—and conscience.
Putting down knife and fork, Abrahams snapped open his attaché case and extracted the most recent proposals submitted by Emmich’s legal advisers. As he sipped his tea, reviewing the already familiar proposals, Abrahams was amused at how the formal legal language had bent to Emmich’s imperious personality. One could almost visualize the cowering corporation lawyers listening to Emmich’s flat commands on the Dictabelt, and then trying to couch them ever so little more in corporate phraseology. Every paragraph gave evidence of being pure Emmich. Straight declarations, bombastic imperatives, the highly limited and inflexible linguistics of millionaire patrons, the power elite, who had almost forgotten the sounds of reply that used words like possibly and compromise and suggest. In their lofty towers, protected by the magic weapons of money that brought all opposition to its knees, the Emmichs had made the word no, spoken to them, virtually obsolete.
He had met Avery Emmich but once, less than a year ago, and their conversation, or rather Emmich’s monologue, had been short and pointed. Emmich had been in Chicago to conclude the acquisition of several chemical plants. The millionaire had summoned Nat Abrahams to his suite, and Abrahams, surprised that he was even known to Emmich, had gone out of wonder and curiosity.
Avery Emmich, the son of a German immigrant, had proved to be a dyspeptic, glaring, squat man in his late sixties. In their twenty minutes together he had been as humorless and efficient as an imported calculating machine.
“I wanted to see what you look like,” Emmich had said at once. “You don’t look like a bleeding heart.”
“I’m an attorney,” Abrahams had said, “a hard-working one.”
“Yes. Recently some of your trial cases were brought to my attention. I was impressed.”
“Impressed?”
“You appear surprised,” Emmich had said.
“I guess I am,” Abrahams had said. “From what I’ve heard about you, and read, I wouldn’t have imagined you’d be impressed by someone who has defended Mexicans, Negroes, small unions.”
“Young man, I don’t give a hoot in hell whom you defend. I’m impressed because you took on tough cases and won them. I’m impressed by skill and toughness. What do you make a year?”
Abrahams had told him. Emmich had grunted with self-satisfaction, and revealed a slip of paper on which he had surmised what Abrahams’ income would be. Without further interrogation, Emmich had told Abrahams what he was after. He was, he had stated, after Nat Abrahams himself. He wanted Nat Abrahams in Washington, D.C. He made it clear that Eagles Industries and its multiple interests—cotton production, textile factories, chemical plants, brass and copper mills, insurance companies, shipping lines—had a vast network of legal representation, even in the nation’s capital. He made it clear that he was never satisfied with what he had, that he always demanded the best help, and that he was ready to pay for it. He made it clear that Washington, D.C., was a sore spot for him. Even under a sensible President like T. C., the government was putting its nose more and more into private enterprise. Emmich wanted the best there, the best minds, voices, legal lookouts.
Abrahams had heard all of this with detached fascination, but without interest. Even as he had listened, he could not conceive of himself abandoning the desperate and wretched people who needed him, for a more lucrative job with a mammoth combine. The Emmichs of the world, he had always known, advocated free enterprise for themselves and not a free economic society—less laudable. The Emmichs, he had always known, wanted competitors, consumers, workers, the government itself, controlled by their own definitions of freedom.
Abrahams had begun to shake his head, when Avery Emmich had announced Abrahams’ worth to the corporation in dollars and cents. Abrahams had been taken aback by the sum announced. The annual salary offered had been more than he had made in the last four years of exhausting work. After that, dazed, he had not shaken his head again. He had listened attentively, and with interest. It had amazed him the way Emmich had anticipated his unspoken reservations. He was being asked to represent the corporation as an attorney, no more, no less. He was being asked to speak for the corporation on legal matters and legislative matters, and to inform and advise the corporation on activities pertaining to its business. He was not being asked to compromise his ideals or attitudes. He was not being asked to perform contrary to his good conscience. He was not being asked to forfeit any part of his freedom as an individual. Eagles Industries would be his employer. Nat Abrahams would be its employee. He would not be lobotomized. He would be himself. Emmich wanted him.
And then it was that Abrahams had understood the sense of the offer. Every big company needed its basic liberal, to showcase, as every big company needed its basic Negro.
That visit in Emmich’s suite had been the beginning of it. Despite Sue’s squealing excitement over the offer, and his own headiness at what was suddenly made possible, Abrahams had clung to certain reservations about it, about the change itself. He had hated the thought of giving up a practice he loved, of dislocating himself and the family, for money. Yet it was only money that might guarantee him added years of life, and provide his wife and children with security. He had hated the thought of devoting himself to an impersonal financial combine, with headquarters in Atlanta, that had no motivation except profits and that regarded people as Social Security numbers. Yet it was a corporation that promised him unrestricted individual freedom.
While Eagles Industries bombarded him with telephone calls and memoranda, Nat Abrahams had remained indecisive. He had stalled his reply, and then he had made negotiations as difficult as possible, hoping that this would make decision unnecessary. He had refused to bind himself to Eagles Industries for seven years, and had insisted that three years were enough. Emmich had countered with five years. Abrahams had remained adamant. Emmich had agreed to three years. Abrahams had demanded more money, better side benefits, expense accounts, thorough definitions of his position, and to everything Emmich had acceded. Finally Sue had told him that he had been trying to create an encroaching monster, when the monster did not exist. And he had admitted that she was right.
There had been serious talks between Sue and himself. Both had circled the reality of his coronary warning, and both had finally faced it. They had also faced the fact that they lived on what he made, that aside from his life insurance policies, a still-mortgaged house, a piti
fully small reserve of government bonds and blue-chip stocks, their financial future was bleak. He would never get far enough ahead to ease up, to enjoy semiretirement, to buy the farm they both wanted.
On a warm Sunday morning, with Roger, David, and Deborah churning about the back seat of the four-year-old sedan, they had driven down near Wheaton, Illinois, to look at the farm once more. The beautiful cottage, the freshly painted red barns, the smell of the machinery and livestock and brown-green grass and wheat and corn fields had overwhelmed them again. Driving home, the children happily napping in the back, he and Sue had speculated upon what his life could be on such a farm. He could retain an interest in the firm, serve as a once-a-week consultant on vital cases. He could give time at last to writings about what he believed in, writings that might accomplish more than his private cases had. He could manage the farm. He could be outdoors, live more easily with himself, have more time for Sue, for the children. Above all, he could live. In three years he could have this if he wanted it.
The following morning Nat Abrahams had telephoned Avery Emmich to draft a contract. In a month, he had promised, he would be prepared to go to Washington, to sit with Gorden Oliver, and mold the contract into its final form. And then he had taken an option on the farm outside Wheaton.
“Nat—”
His head came up at the sound of Sue’s voice, and he found her settling into the chair across from him.
“Where were you?” she was saying. “You were a million miles away.”
He smiled. “Not quite that far.” He thought: only the distance away you can reach in three years.
As she went at her grapefruit, he reminded the waiter of her coffee and melba toast, and then stuffed Emmich’s proposals into his attaché case.
“How are the waiters here taking Dilman?” she asked between mouthfuls.
“I gather they’re pleased. That is, if this had to happen, they’re pleased the next in line was one of their own.”
“They’re not all pleased,” said Sue. “I was just talking with our porter. He says most of his friends are glad a Negro will have a chance to show he can perform as well as anyone else. But our porter says he’s not as happy as his friends, because he says he’s a thinking man and they’re not. He says he’s thinking ahead, and he’s frightened. He doesn’t think this country is ready for any Negro to head it. He thinks this focuses the wrong kind of attention on the Negro, and is bound to cause worse resentment and antagonism. Nat, you should have seen his face when he was speaking. So—uneasy.”
For Abrahams it was too early in the day to concur, and to bare his own uneasiness. As he tried to determine what to say to Sue, he observed that her attention had been diverted by three persons taking seats at the table across the aisle. There was an elderly, obviously well-off couple, and opposite them a slick-haired, smooth-shaved, jowly, overweight, middle-aged young man in a tailor-made Oxford gray business suit.
The overweight middle-aged young man, wiping his spectacles with his napkin, was speaking, and not quietly. “Well, after that, the meeting broke up, and we hung around the television set,” he was saying. “I tell you honestly, we weren’t so worried about this Dilman’s competence, because that doesn’t matter these days. The government is run by committee rule, and T. C. had some good heads there. Our worry is in the area where a President can’t be controlled as well. You know, appointments, policy speeches and such. Those people—I mean, like Dilman—are leftist, no question. I can show you the facts. Now that one of them has power, he’s apt to coddle the Communists—don’t get me wrong, Harold, I’m not saying Dilman is a Red; I’m saying he’s apt to have a sympathy for them, rapport, let them slip in and take control here, and go soft on them abroad. Well, Harold, we’re not going to let that happen—no, sir.”
The speaker lowered his voice to address some confidences to his Companions, and Abrahams turned his head away. He found Sue looking at him, gray and helpless. Before he could placate her, there was the sound of a fork against a glass. The middle-aged young man kept up the noise, half turning for the waiter. A tall, skinny waiter came on the run.
“About time!” the middle-aged young man boomed with mock joviality. “What’s happening to the service? You all too busy running our government today?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the waiter said. “I was waitin’ for you to fill in your order.”
“Aw, give us a break, we poor folk can’t write,” the middle-aged young man said, winking. “Come on, Sam, one round of Sanka.”
The waiter stood a moment, unspeaking, and then slowly, with calm dignity, he turned away and walked toward the dining car kitchen.
The three across the way were laughing together now, and then huddled, whispering, and Abrahams did not want to overhear a word of it. He fumbled for his tea, head bent to avoid Sue’s eyes. He finished the tea, and, in no mood for his pipe, picked up the complimentary newspaper.
“Oh, Nat—”
Abrahams was forced to look up.
Sue was near tears. “I’m like our porter, Nat, I’m plain frightened. Doug needs friends so much.”
“He has friends,” Abrahams said curtly. “I’m sure no one in Washington is worried about that.”
She was staring at the back half of his folded newspaper. “Nat, if you’re right—I—I can read your paper upside down—why have they doubled the guard around him?”
“Honey, stop fretting. It’s routine. Whenever there’s a new President, they assign twice as many Secret Service men to him. Now, let’s hurry up and get out of here.” He tried to smile. “You concentrate on taking care of your husband, and let the Secret Service take care of Douglass Dilman.”
After securely buckling the strap that connected his revolver in its shoulder holster to his waist, Otto Beggs pulled on his dark, conservative, worn suit coat. Going to the bureau that he and Gertrude shared, he took down his open leather wallet, for good luck rubbed his thumb across the silver star of his Secret Service badge pinned inside, closed the wallet, and slipped it into his inner coat pocket.
He felt the constriction of hunger in his stomach, and yet he was not ready to join Gertrude and the boys for breakfast. He felt unnaturally elated this morning, and wanted to savor it minutes more, alone, before risking the loss of this rare well-being to his enemies downstairs.
Humming to himself, Otto Beggs strolled about the mussed and used bedroom, tidying it, then continued to his desk to straighten the three scrapbooks with his name imprinted in gold upon each. Considering his activities of the last twenty-four hours, it was strange that he should feel so fit.
He had worked not eight hours but eleven hours yesterday, after his boss, Lou Agajanian, Chief of the White House Detail, had awakened him to tell him to come in earlier and replace one of the night-shift agents who had become ill from a virus. Then there had been that pressure and strain, after the news that the President and Speaker had been killed, when the correspondents and half the government officials had overrun the West Wing. To make matters worse, not only Agajanian but Hugo Gaynor, the Chief of Secret Service, had been all over the place, on everyone’s tail, out of temper. It had been nerve-racking. And then, instead of giving him any rest at home, Gertrude had kept encouraging her relatives to come over, including her hotshot brother, Austin, and his wife and brats. It had been a nut house, and once, around midnight, he had tried to escape by saying that he was out of cigarettes. He had headed straight down the block for a couple of beers at the Walk Inn, but the joint was jammed with wild, drunken Negroes, and he had gone back to the house, embittered, to stay with television until three in the morning.
Before turning off the set he had heard one added interesting piece of news, and it had been confirmed, and it had kept him wide-awake and speculating about it until almost dawn. The interesting piece of news had been that the collapse of that ancient ceiling in the Alte Mainzer Palace had not only killed T. C. and MacPherson, but it had also crushed to death two Secret Service men. Beggs had known them bot
h well. One had been Agajanian’s aide, Assistant Chief of the White House Detail Gene Sonenberg, and the other had been mobile White House special agent Les McCune, the only one of fifty on the House Detail who held seniority over Beggs.
Lying in bed, stimulated by what tragedy had made possible for him, Otto Beggs had done some simple subtraction and addition. The subtraction had consisted of removing Sonenberg from his position as Agajanian’s aide, and removing McCune as the next in line to fill that position. They were gone. The addition had consisted of putting a plus sign before his name. He was next, the one next eligible to move up and replace Sonenberg as Assistant Chief of the White House Detail. This promotion would make other promotions more likely. Once you got off your feet, taking orders, and on your seat, giving orders, the world was yours. After that, he might one day became Chief of the White House Detail, and then Deputy Chief of Secret Service, and then Assistant Chief of Security, until at last he became Chief of Secret Service under the Secretary of the Treasury. With the first giant step accomplished, the rungs above would be easier to grasp. And he had time. He was only in his early forties. In recent months Gertrude had made that seem too old for him to achieve anything better, and he had begun to believe her, but now, in a flash, he was young again, and once more on the road that had seemed so straight and easy when he had entered onto it at Corvallis, Oregon, and continued up it outside Seoul, Korea.
Last night, twisting and turning on his bed, he had wondered when he had lost the road, and where, and how, or if he had lost it at all. He had tried to relive his short journey, so much with him in recent years that he could only relive it as an experience ever present and not of the past.
At Oregon State University he was invincible. He had come to the campus on an athletic scholarship. Except for his innocent, pugged, smiling baby face and small head, everything about him was formidable. He was powerful, husky, amazingly agile and fast for his 190-pound weight. Swiftly, at fullback, he became the mainstay of the football team, carrying it in his senior year to a victory in the Rose Bowl and himself achieving singular recognition by being voted to Associated Press’s All-American second team. He was popular. The girls competed for his favor. Gertrude was one of them, not beautiful but attractive and smart. She earned his gratitude by helping him with his homework, and she earned his respect by letting him kiss and pet her but not letting him go all the way. By the time he graduated, they were dating steadily.
(1964) The Man Page 18
