Irving Wallace - The Man

“Let me finish,” Miller interrupted.

“Wait, you allow me to finish,” Eaton said. “Suddenly, overnight, you are painting him as a secret drunkard, as a bad family man and a discredit to his race, as a Negro in public life who would permit his daughter-if there is a daughter-to pretend that she is white, condone her deception and disavowal of him and of her heritage, as a father who would let his son, utterly dependent economically on his favor, be a secret terrorist. Zeke, I-”

“You’re doggone right his son’s a terrorist,” said Miller indignantly. “Why else do you think Dilman thwarted the Attorney General, stalled on banning the Turnerites, until one of them murdered a good and decent helpless judge? Dilman’s more responsible for Judge Gage’s murder than that ape Hurley-and the public will say so, too, once the facts are out.”

“My God, these facts could change-” Talley had begun.

Eaton’s hand silenced Talley. Eaton fixed his gaze on Miller. “Facts,” he said. “Facts depend on sources. What are your sources, besides some unknown reporter who is used to contriving stories for his keep, and a foolish secretary full of liquor? You’ll have to do better than that, Zeke.”

“I can do better than that!” Miller said angrily. “Give me a chance and you won’t be questioning me no more. The source for all these facts is Douglass Dilman himself, in person, no other. Miss Foster monitors most of his calls, as she did with T. C. Once, or a couple of times, Dilman forgot to tell her not to monitor, and she listened in to him talking to his son. That’s how she found out about that daughter, Mindy, passing for white, and about his wife and him being in that Springfield sanitarium for drunks. Miss Foster’s no maker-upper. She’s even got it all set down in black and white in a diary, believe it or not. Drunk or sober, it’s there in writing for us to demand, if we need it.”

Eaton continued to frown. “And what about that Turnerite nonsense?”

Miller’s wiry frame danced again. His veiny nostrils quivered. “Okay, now the rest of it… Look, Arthur, I’m not ready to give credence to just any old defamation or garbage that comes my way. I want proof, good proof, too. When Reb Blaser brought this Murdock kid to me tonight, and said, ‘Congressman, this is the reporter fellow you wanted me to keep an eye on, and now he’s come up with a zinger of a story he wants to sell you,’ I heard Murdock out, and was about as downright skeptical as you and maybe the Governor are now. But when he finished the whole thing, and then backed it up for me, I was ready to buy. I said to Murdock, ‘Okay, kid, what’s your price?’ He said, ‘A permanent editorial job on your Washington paper, starting $200 a week, and going up, with a contract for five years.’ Know what, Arthur? I said, ‘Murdock, you’re too smart not to be in our camp. You’re hired. We sign and seal the deal on Monday.’ That’s what I think of his evidence.”

Senator Hankins had a fit of coughing, hacking and wheezing, and Miller quickly moved to help him with his drink. When Hankins recovered, he sputtered, “Thanks, boy, but damnations, tell them the whole of it.”

Eaton waited, sipping his cognac, trying to assess the possible accuracy of what he had already heard, and the value of these revelations to all of them if the evidence could be proved. He heard Miller blowing his nose, and he looked up. “Is there more?” he demanded.

“When this George Murdock got this information from Miss Foster, who got it from Dilman himself, he kept his head. That’s what impressed me about the lad. He didn’t come to me or anyone else half-cocked. If he had, we’d probably have thrown him out. No. Smart kid. He went out on his own, to verify what his girl friend told him. He went to New York last week and just came back today. Know what he did in New York? Listen. He’d remembered the two names Dilman’s daughter had-her real nigger name, and her phony white name. Her nigger name is Mindy Dilman, and her white name is Linda Dawson-how do you like that? Linda Dawson, ever hear anything whiter? So Murdock looked her up, and went calling on her, and right off rocked her back on her heels, greeting her with ‘Hi there, Mindy.’ That nigger-white girl sure let him in fast. I won’t go into details now, except Murdock said she was practically white, sure enough, and a looker, a good-looker, but sarcastic and mean, and twisting and squirming away from what he knew. But, tough as she was, she finally caved in and confessed it. Then she started fussing and weeping. If Murdock let it out, she kept saying, her life was ruined. Said she’d been white since being grown up. Said she had a white boy friend who was with a brokerage house in Wall Street, and they were almost engaged, and all her friends were white, and this was the end of everything. Said why did anyone pick on her, when she only wanted to be lost and did no harm to anyone, least not like her brother Julian, with his rotten Nigra friends and his Turnerite hoodlums. Well, now, Arthur, you bet our Mr. Murdock pricked up his ear high as a radar beacon.”

Eaton contemplated the cognac, warming in his palm, and the terrible scene provoked by that unsavory Murdock in a New York apartment, a scene he found unbearable and which Zeke Miller apparently relished. Eaton said, “You mean that girl informed on her brother?”

“You’re goldarn right she did,” said Miller, “because she hates him like she hates her father, our biggety Nigra President. Anyway, Murdock wanted to know if she could prove her brother was a Turnerite. She said sure she could, and she would, but only if she had to. She told Murdock if he wanted to know more, go and talk to Julian personally. So Murdock rode out to Trafford, cornered our President’s son, and accused him of the Turnerite membership. Julian got sullen, then downright nasty, and said it was a lie to hurt his father, and he was never a Turnerite in his life, and Murdock couldn’t prove it, and his sister couldn’t prove it, and besides she was a psychopathic liar, and so forth. So our kid reporter, Murdock, he hotfooted it back to New York and got to Mindy again, and said she was a liar, because Julian said so and had denied everything. Mindy was pretty keyed up that day, I mean on some kind of pills or something, and she got pretty hysterical against her brother. She went and dug out some letters, and held them while Murdock read them. They were from Julian, and the first one, with the oldest date, was full of resentment about being stuck in the Nigra school, and his father being too yellow to act for the Nigra race, and Mindy turning her back on her people, but he was going to be different, the one in the family who wasn’t yellow, because he was planning to join up secretly with a new outfit called the Turnerites who were going to give all Nigras equality. Well, there it was. In the other letters, written later, when he was involved with Hurley and learned his membership was supposed to be secret, I guess, he wrote his sister he’d been kidding, and denied ever joining, but he wasn’t kidding. There it was in writing. Is that proof, Arthur, or is it not?”

Eaton put down his empty cognac glass. “Can you get that first letter?” he asked.

Miller grinned. “I got it, my friend.”

“You have? How?”

“Mindy agreed to turn it over to Murdock for his written and signed pledge that he would never disclose her identity, that he would leave her alone, leave her keep passing, so’s she can give some poor white Christian young fellow her nigger blood in a coon baby. Murdock gave me the letter, and all his statements are to be made into affidavits tomorrow, on the condition that Mindy’s passing not be exposed and his fiancée, Miss Foster, and her diary with the facts, not be dragged into this in any way.” Miller paused, and added solemnly, “I gave the lad my word, and I gave him the job. And now we got the goods on our biggety Nigra President.”