(1964) The Man (90 page)

Abrahams had listened, hand massaging his chest as if to keep the heavy beat inside from his wife’s ears.

“You seem pretty sure Emmich will have his way,” Abrahams said.

Gorden Oliver’s smile was frosty. “I am
positive
Emmich will have his way.”

The whole thing was clear to Abrahams now. It would have been clear to a child. The powerful head of one of America’s largest corporations had pitted himself against a weak head of state. The president of Eagles had more allies in the Senate than the President of the United States possessed. The president of Eagles could dispense more patronage than the President of the United States. The president of Eagles had secret weapons and the President of the United States had none. For Nat Abrahams there was one mystery: how was it done? What masks did bribery wear? Was the disguise a future campaign contribution? A gift of bonds and stocks to a grandson? The annuity of an apartment building investment? A year of prepaid call girls? A silent partnership in an oil lease? A lifetime membership in an exclusive golf club? A high-paying, permanent job for a brother-in-law? Or simply the gentlemanly request for a favor in return for an IOU to be cashed in on some distant, needier day?

Still, Abrahams told himself, if he did not know how it was done, here was one more clear implication that it was being done. The largess of the lobbyists was there, no question now. Were there takers in the Senate? Of this Abrahams was less positive. When you counted one hundred men, you could expect that most of them were decent men, else the penitentiaries of the land would have standing room only. Abrahams was satisfied with his textbook view of history. No Senate could be bought. Only some senators. And Oliver was wrong. Emmich was big and Eagles was big, but neither was bigger than the Presidency and the United States itself. Still, the armies of Eagles were on the move, and Dilman was the object of their assault, and now Oliver’s dismay was understandable. Abrahams had pledged his allegiance to the armies of Eagles, and yet had dared request a leave of absence to help build the defenses of their enemy. But then, in fairness to himself, he had not realized until this moment the extent to which Eagles was dedicated to liquidating Dilman. Now he knew.

“I didn’t know,” he heard himself say to Oliver, “how set you were on opposing Dilman.”

“Now you know,” said Oliver flatly. “Now you can understand how flabbergasted I was that you even considered siding with that man.” Oliver softened slightly. “Look, Nat, I don’t want to be impossible, to go against the grain. We’re not asking you to join in our active opposition to Dilman during the trial. What the devil, you’re a friend of his. All we’re asking is that you don’t oppose us, take our money with one hand and expect us to let you punch us in the nose with the other. We just want you neutral in this matter.”

“There is no neutral, Gorden. Either I help the President or I don’t. If I do, yes, I’ll be in opposition to you with every ounce of my strength. If I don’t, I’ll be depriving the President of the counsel he needs to help save him, and in that way aiding you, actively aiding you.”

“Nat, my God, he can obtain a hundred other counselors, black or white. They’ll welcome the chance for the headlines. Look, I’m not saying you’re not better than the others available. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be hiring you. I’m saying in a special trial like that, he can get all the help he wants.”

“True enough, except for one thing,” said Abrahams. “He wants me.” He considered that a moment, and then added, “I don’t think it’s because he believes I’m more skilled than the others. I think it’s because I’m one of the few human beings on earth he trusts completely.”

Oliver’s brow had contracted ominously, and he said, “You mean, after what I’ve said, you’re still seriously considering going over to that man?”

“I’m considering it.”

Oliver rose, started to speak, then agitatedly circled the room. He came to a halt beside Sue.

“All right, Nat, consider it,” he said. “But then I think I’ve got to tell you—I hate telling you this, but I’m speaking for the company now and not myself, I’ve got to level with you—if you go to the mat for Dilman, you can consider yourself out of Emmich’s camp, for now and forever. If you agree to defend the President, I will be able to see no other course than to withdraw our offer to you.” He waited. “Does that help you make up your mind?”

“I’ll make up my mind when I’m ready to do so, Gorden, and not a minute before.”

“Okay,” said Oliver, “you give me no choice but to pick up my marbles and go home, and wait to see if you’re ready to play the game by the rules.”

He went to the coffee table, retrieved the copies of the contract and the pen, then slipped the contracts back into the manila envelope. He looked at Sue. “Under the circumstances, I don’t imagine any of us has too much of an appetite. Maybe we’ll have cause to—to hold our celebration tomorrow.”

He found his coat and hat, as Sue ran to the door to see him out. At the open door he offered Sue a courtly bow. “Thank you, Sue. Do your lobbying best.” He considered Abrahams. “We’ll wait for you to call us, Nat. I hope you think straight. At this stage in your life, you owe nothing to anyone on earth except yourself and your family.” He held up the manila envelope. “This would be an awful lot of boodle to throw away—like throwing away ten years of life. Good night.”

Abrahams did not move from the sofa. He watched his wife shut the door, then saw her sag and lean against it, her cheek pressed to the panel.

When she came away toward him, her face was drawn and pale, and he knew that she was fighting tears.

He averted his eyes as she came nearer and stood over him, but he could avoid her no longer. “All right, Sue, you’ve heard Oliver and you’ve heard me. What do you say?”

“What do I say? Do you care for one second what I say?” she said, voice rising. “Gorden Oliver said everything for me.”

“Even after hearing that rotten stuff about Emmich and Eagles?”

“You wouldn’t have to be mixed up in that. He promised you. I heard him.”

“You want me to sit by, up there in the Senate gallery, as an employee of Eagles, watching my fellow hatchet men go to work on the body, and tell myself I’m not their accomplice, I’m only an innocent bystander? That’s not like you, Sue.”

“What is like me? Do you know? Do you bother to try to understand? You’ve spent your life, and your health, in musty back halls and dirty courtrooms giving everything you have for people who’ve had nothing to give you—or us. You’ve spent years putting every underdog who whined for help ahead of Roger and David and Deborah and me—yes, me. I didn’t complain. I didn’t obstruct you. In fact, I encouraged you, because I was proud of your love for others and because I loved you for that and for yourself. But I was glad when this Eagles offer came up. I never forced it on you, but I was glad, because I felt at last you were getting what you deserved, and you’d have your health, and we’d have a better life together for years ahead, and live it normally like other people. And now, suddenly, when we’ve got it, you turn your back—you want to think—now, suddenly, Eagles is dirty—what isn’t dirty as well as clean, what business, what profession?—and now, suddenly, Doug Dilman is lost without you, and you’ll throw over everything, your future, your wife, your sons and daughter, to help him—to help a lost cause—when you know and I know that he hasn’t the chance of a snowball in hell, and if he has, as Gorden said, there are dozens of attorneys who can defend him as well as you. You want to know how I feel? That’s how I feel!”

He waited for her hysteria to subside, and then he said, “Sue, while I often take a dim view of myself, I know my virtues and my capabilities. I feel I can do more for Doug than any other attorney on earth. Maybe you’re right, and no one can save him, but if anyone can, I have a feeling I might. He is my friend—”

“And I’m your wife, and I’m the mother of your children! What about us? Do we have to put on blackface to get your help?”

“Sue!”

“Oh, dammit to hell for everything coming apart.” She covered her eyes with her hand.

“Nothing’s come apart,” he said sternly. “I truly haven’t made up my mind yet. I’m just nagged by the lousy feeling that the meaning of our whole lives is being put up on the block for inspection at last—that everything that came before, our paper liberalism, our talk liberalism, our real fiber as two decent people—is being challenged for real, for the very first time. Now it’s not contributions to Crispus or CORE. Now it’s not having a Negro friend to dinner, knowing he’ll go home afterward. Now it’s as—as if a Negro family has moved into the neighborhood, really moved in, and every penny we have in the house, in the world, is being threatened—and—how do we act? Turn our backs, move on?”

“It’s not the same at all!” Sue exclaimed indignantly. “Don’t twist things up with your lawyer sophistries. Nat, how can you? What are you trying to make me out, a heel? You know me, you know I love Doug as much as you do, but I don’t love him or anyone as much as you and the children.” She was pleading now. “Can’t you see that? Won’t you think of us first? Doug will survive or sink without you. But we can’t survive, not without you.”

Abrahams shook his head. “Darling, it’s not all this or that, one thing or another. If I gave up Emmich for Dilman, the world wouldn’t come to an end. Remember that—”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“I’m only trying to—”

“To hell with you, then. Do whatever you damn well want to do. I’ve said all I’ve got to say to you!”

He was startled to see her spin away and dash into the bedroom, slamming the door. He considered following her, but then, instead, he went to the tray of drinks near the suite entrance. He poured himself a whisky-and-water, and was stirring it with a martini mixer, thinking, thinking, when he heard her noisily emerge from the bedroom.

He turned as she brushed past him. She had changed from the dinner sheath and pumps to a woolen blouse and skirt and flat-heeled shoes, and now was taking her heavy corduroy coat out of the closet.

“Sue—where in the devil do you think you’re going?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care. Maybe I’ll look for a truck to walk in front of. What difference does it make to you? I just want to be by myself, not that I haven’t been since Oliver left!”

She was gone, the door resounding behind her, and he was alone with his drink.

After that, he walked the carpet, pacing back and forth, weighing his neatly planned future on some unseen scale against his need to become involved with Doug Dilman and what Doug Dilman represented.

Crazily his mind careened backward to that time, late in the last century, when Father Damien, the Belgian who had worked among lepers on a lonely Pacific island, had been viciously attacked by a Reverend Hyde for having been “coarse, dirty, head-strong.” It had been Robert Louis Stevenson, risking all of his earthly possessions against a libel suit, who had defended Father Damien, counterattacking his traducer as one who was suffering conscience pangs for his own inertia. “But, sir,” Stevenson had written to the Reverend Hyde and the world, “when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into battle, under the eyes of God, and . . . dies upon the field of honour—the battle cannot be retrieved. . . . We are not all expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But—”

But.

Abrahams reflected, meditated, and finally saw that it must be settled tonight. Well, then, he would settle it. He would think a lot and drink a little, or better yet, drink a lot and think a little, and when it was clearer, when he was certain, he would telephone the White House.

And so he began to think a lot and drink a lot . . .

There was a pressure on his right shoulder, gentle, but it was there and real, and he opened his eyes.

To his growing surprise, as he oriented himself to his surroundings, he found that he was seated at the bedroom dressing table, his head nestled in his folded arms. The travel clock behind the telephone told him he had drowsed off and slept over two hours.

There was the pressure on his right shoulder again, and then he could see it was Sue’s hand, and Sue herself above him, and except for her eyes, red from weeping, and the tear stains on her cheeks, her expression was softer than he had ever remembered it.

“Nat, are you all right?”

He sat up, wagged his head like a shaggy dog, rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. “I guess I’m a one-drink man,” he said. “Tonight I had three.” Then, badly, it all came back to him, and he was fully awake. “Where have you been all this time, Sue?”

“Walking,” she said, “walking endlessly, prowling through Washington. It was nice and cold, and it—it did things for me. Know where I wound up? I went all around and back, and there I was on Pennsylvania Avenue, standing there like a goon, like I’d never been there before, in front of the black iron fence, looking at the White House in the nighttime. It looked so different tonight, Nat, like an abandoned fort on a lonely island, and I kept picturing him alone in there, alone in those empty rooms, lost, trapped, no one to turn to. And then a young couple came along, young marrieds, out-of-towners, the Midwest, I suppose, feeling good after dinner and walking it off, and she said she heard there was a White House tour every day and she wanted to take it, and he said sure thing but not this time, but next time, on the way back from wherever, because by then they’d have gotten rid of the tenant and fumigated the place and redecorated it right proper. And you know what, Nat, she laughed, she thought he was clever, so clever and right, and she was pleased with him, and they both laughed, and I was left there by myself staring through the iron fence and thinking about Doug in there, and you, and the children, and all of us. I couldn’t get back to you fast enough.”

He had taken her hands. “Sue—”

“Nat, forgive me for everything I said before. I don’t know what got into me. I wouldn’t want you with Eagles. I mean it. I couldn’t live off that kind of money, and raise the children on it. And if I were to know that you could have—have helped Doug—and didn’t—I couldn’t look at myself again, or you. I’m not worried about us, I’m really not. You have your practice. We can save. I’ll show you what I can do. And we’ll be together, that’s all that matters. And if we save, maybe one day we can get ourselves a farm, not that one, but another, even if it’s smaller.” He had tried to draw her to him, but she resisted. “Nat, call the White House and tell him.”