Irving Wallace - The Man

He felt the sting of the needle and its extraction, but no pain; then he was diverted by Chief Gaynor’s voice behind him somewhere. “Mr. President-you all right, sir? Just wanted to tell you the assassin’s cold dead. Beggs got him with one shot straight through the chest. His wallet here-Burleigh L. Thomas, twenty-eight-truck driver’s license-the clippings-Turnerite stuff-that’s it, I’m sure… This, this is the regular map of the guided tour through the White House. You can see the line he drew in red ink. See? Followed the ground-floor tour upstairs, then into the State Dining Room, and when the others went on to the Red Room, he must have hung behind, slipped into the Family Dining Room-something we’ve always been afraid of-hid out then, apparently had the overalls inside his suit coat or jacket, changed, picked up two plants-Hawkins says he saw a colored man carrying plants downstairs around three-thirty-he must have kept himself busy but out of sight until the regular gardeners left-then kind of blended himself with the magnolia, puttered around, waiting for you… What? No, Mr. Flannery, not yet, give us a chance to cover the grounds. We’ll have something definite for the press in the morning. Just tell them the attempt was made, the President is fine, just fine, and the assailant was shot dead.”

Beggs heard Dilman’s voice, shaky but loud. “Tim, you see that Otto Beggs gets all the credit-you hear? All the credit. Admiral, I want him to receive every bit of care available to-”

Someone was shouting, “That’s spelled B-u-r-l-e-i-g-h, yeh, Burleigh, Burleigh Thomas.”

Miss Foster’s voice, he thought, distinct but so far off. “The ambulance is on its way, Admiral! How is poor Mr. Beggs? Will he-?”

He heard Oates’s distant voice. “He’s a brave man. Thank God for men like that.”

He felt soothed, no pain, too tired and sleepy to listen.

He thought: You hear that, Gertrude? You hear that, Otis, Ogden? Brave man.

He thought: You’re right, Ruby, your Otter here is impo’tant. Brave man.

He thought: Ruby Thomas, Burleigh Thomas. Fair enough, Ruby, all square.

He thought: Am I dying? To save a nigger? Dirty, lousy trick, goddam.

He thought: History books’ll say a President, he saved a President. Not bad, not bad, eh, Gertie girl?

He thought: Dear God, be merciful to me a sinner… dear Lord Jesus, see this, greater love hath no man than this… dear Saviour, cast me not into darkness… lemme live, please lemme live to fill the scrapbook, please, thank you, amen.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Office of the White House Press Secretary

THE WHITE HOUSE

ADMIRAL OATES, PERSONAL PHYSICIAN TO THE PRESIDENT, ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT, EXCEPT FOR SEVERAL HEAD BRUISES AND A GENERAL CONDITION OF FATIGUE, THE PRESIDENT IS IN EXCELLENT HEALTH, FOLLOWING YESTERDAY’S ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT. ALL OF THE PRESIDENT’S APPOINTMENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELED, AND HE HAS BEEN CONFINED TO HIS ROOMS FOR “A MUCH-NEEDED REST.” HE WILL ATTEND THE CHANTILLY CONFERENCE IN FRANCE AS SCHEDULED.

ADMIRAL OATES ALSO ANNOUNCED THAT OTTO BEGGS, WHITE HOUSE SECRET SERVICE AGENT WHOSE ACTION SAVED THE PRESIDENT’S LIFE, REMAINS ON THE “CRITICAL” LIST AT WALTER REED GENERAL HOSPITAL. DECISION WILL BE MADE IN NEXT FORTY-EIGHT HOURS WHETHER BEGGS’S INJURED LEG CAN BE SAVED OR WHETHER AMPUTATION WILL BE NECESSARY.

COMPLETE TEXT OF ADMIRAL OATES’S MEDICAL BULLETINS ONE AND TWO ARE ATTACHED.

EDNA FOSTER sat alone in a shadowy recess of the faintly lighted Promenade Lounge of the Mayflower Hotel. She was the small and elegant room’s single occupant in this pre-cocktail hour, lost in thought as she prepared to finish her third vodka Gibson.

She was to have met George Murdock here, their favorite secluded and somewhat-beyond-their-means meeting place when either of them needed a lift, at a quarter to six. Normally she would have finished her day’s work, and taken a taxi up Connecticut Avenue, and arrived here nearly on time, to find George waiting.

However, today had been anything but normal. Because the President had been indisposed, suffering acute hypertension (if the truth were known) induced by the horror of last night, and was confined to his quarters, Edna’s work load had diminished and her workday had been curtailed. Dilman’s usual engagements had been shunted off to the occupants of other offices, and her own duties had been distributed to other White House secretaries. By four-thirty in the afternoon her desk had been clean. She had telephoned the second floor, and the President had insisted that she close shop and go home early. She had found it too late to go to the apartment first, before meeting George, and too early to time her arrival at the lounge with his own. She had decided to go by foot, by some roundabout route, to the Mayflower, to use up the extra time. Once outside, she had found the air too nippy, the sky too bleak, for her thin skin and frayed nerves, and she had immediately altered her plan. She had known, then, what she wanted. Alone or not, she wanted to be drunk.

Now, forty-five minutes later, her little finger excessively crooked as she downed the last of her third Gibson, she was warm and resolute and nicely drunk.

A waiter in a red jacket, a servant gray and smooth as an old British family retainer, glided in from the adjacent Presidential Room, hovered a moment, then came forward and removed her long-stemmed cocktail glass.

“Another, ma’am?”

She was tempted, but then she might forget what she had so carefully rehearsed for George. “I think I’ll wait, if you don’t mind. I’m expecting a friend.”

After the waiter had gone, she took out her compact to prepare for her friend. She peered into the mirror with distaste. That’s what came of buying cheap compacts with cheap mirrors, she told herself. The cheap reflecting glass was always grainy, always gave you lines you did not deserve. But then, she was too inebriated for deceit. It was a good compact, the best she had ever owned, the gift of her generous aunt in Madison. The looking glass was flawless. The lines belonged to her, fact, no argument, and for those new creases engraved on her forehead, under her eyes, around her mouth, she blamed not time but her employer.

A person did not age that much in a couple of months, any scientist would tell you that, except if there was a reason, like the way you read of some person’s hair turning white overnight because of what they’d been through. She had her reason, and his initials were Douglass Dilman. If you were not inhuman, if you had half a heart, if you empathized with even a dumb animal, you had to suffer while being around that colored President eight to ten hours a day. It was like, as if, Dilman was William Tell’s son and she had to hold the wormy apple on his head, and all the Gesslers, or whatever their names, were shooting arrows to knock the apple off-we-ll, nobody was really aiming for the apple, everybody was aiming for him, President Tell, and lots of them missed and naturally hit her, because she was there holding the apple. Like perfect example last night. That Thomas brute-murderer with his surplus-sales gun. Bang. Bang. Bang. Missed Dilman. Hit Beggs. Hit her. Poor Dilman, vomiting afterwards. How must it feel always going around with an apple on your head? Poor Beggs, too. For that salary. She must remember to send over those foreign stamps to his boys. Most of all, poor Edna, she herself, personal secretary to a target, getting hit so often that the compact mirror finally showed it.

She wondered why three drinks had not made her drunk. She knew. They made profits serving domestic vodka, which was as potent as bottled water. At those prices, yet. What a gyp!

There was the cheap grainy mirror, still. She powdered her forehead, nose, chin, then combed her messy brown hair, then tried to give herself lips, then gave up, closed the compact and put it away.