Irving Wallace - The Man

A car honked behind him. Nat Abrahams realized that the red light had turned green. He shifted his shoe from the brake to the gas pedal, and continued up Sixteenth Street. He remembered his upset yesterday, in midafternoon, when he had been half dozing over an out-of-print history of the early days of Congress, and Sue had awakened him with the flash bulletin she had just heard on the radio. After that, neither the radio nor television in their Mayflower suite had been still. With his intimate knowledge of Dilman, the personal charges made by Zeke Miller yesterday had been preposterous. Yet there had been enough validity in each, just enough, to force Sue and himself to discuss them compulsively all afternoon, through dinner, and into the night.

As he drove now, gradually guiding his car into the right-hand lane, watching for his turnoff, Abrahams’ mind centered particularly on the sections that related Doug Dilman to Wanda Gibson. It was difficult for Abrahams to conjure up a sharply defined image of Wanda Gibson. He and Sue had met her once, about a year and a half or two years ago, and Doug had mentioned her a number of times in letters he had written. Nat could recollect only that she had been a rather mature and striking woman, well educated and well mannered, and with a lovely tan complexion that appeared lighter when contrasted with Dilman’s own color. She was, Nat remembered, a mulatto.

He recalled, too, the frank discussion he had had with Dilman, the first night Dilman had moved into the White House. His friend had not concealed the fact that he was close to Wanda, in love with her, hoping to marry her one day if he possessed the courage. But there had been no indication of anything more. Trying to match what he knew of his friend and of Wanda to Zeke Miller’s lurid picture of them was impossible. Doug Dilman, that sedentary, bemused, middle-aged, frightened Negro, suddenly a Casanova with a mistress? Miller’s accusation would be hilarious if it were not so serious. Doug Dilman, a reeling drunk in a love nest spilling Presidential secrets to a mulatto Mata Hari who was employed by Soviet Russia? Dilman seduced into performing treason? An insane fantasy.

Yet Nat Abrahams’ legal mind permitted the House charges in its resolution for impeachment to revolve in his brain, as he examined their many sides. In three decades he had not seen Doug drink more than Bordeaux wine, perhaps an occasional highball or sherry nightcap-still, still, there might have been more. Since he had not known much of Dilman’s family life, he had been dumbfounded by Miller’s revelation that both Dilman and Aldora had once spent time in a Springfield sanitarium for alcoholics. If that was true, if Miller and his cohorts could prove it, there might also be proof, or some circumstantial evidence, that Dilman had been conducting a love affair with Wanda and had unwittingly betrayed a government secret. But Abrahams had his strong doubts, derived not merely from loyalty to his friend, but from knowledge of his accusers. Their charge of treason, based on intemperate habits, partly disguised their true reason for impeachment: they would no longer countenance a colored man sitting as their leader. They refused to forgive him not only his blackness, but the effrontery of his veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program. No Nigra-wasn’t that what Miller called Doug?-was going to be permitted to chastise the majority white legislative branch. It was time for an object lesson to all Nigras who were getting out of hand. This would put them in their places, send them back to carrying hats for their genetic superiors.

Driving more slowly, Nat Abrahams caught the street sign that read “Van Buren N.W.” He flipped his turn indicator up, and wheeled into the residential thoroughfare.

Nearing his destination, he remembered that he had awakened early this morning filled with righteous indignation and legal curiosity. He had telephoned one of Attorney General Kemmler’s assistants about Wanda, and then he had telephoned and personally visited with Robert Lombardi at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the forbidding Justice Department building. After that, he had returned to the hotel and telephoned Wanda Gibson herself. She had responded with recognition to his name, and had been formal, but his persistence in addressing her as Wanda and not Miss Gibson had finally forced down her defenses to accepting him as Nat-and as friend. At first she had not wanted to see him, vaguely speaking of other appointments. She had sounded more shy than troubled. When Nat had invoked Doug Dilman, Doug’s desire that Nat as attorney if not friend look into her predicament, the vague appointments had evaporated, and she had capitulated entirely. Abrahams had told her that he would visit her after lunch, around one-thirty or so.

Cruising slowly along Van Buren Street, keenly conscious of the upper-class Negro women on the sidewalks with their shopping bags, Nat Abrahams sought the residence. Midway up the block, his gaze rested on the two-story brownstone row house, and he knew it immediately. He slid the Ford up to the curb, parked, and pocketed the keys.

Before his reunion with Wanda Gibson, he decided to review the evidence supporting the resolution for impeachment one more time. He unfolded the newspaper, propping it against the steering wheel, and absently packed tobacco into the crusted bowl of his straight-stemmed pipe and lighted it. The lead story reported Zeke Miller’s dramatic introduction of the impeachment resolution, then went on to say that although it had been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, almost all necessary evidence against Dilman had been gathered from witnesses and documents, and therefore Miller promised that the committee, after meeting through the night, would present its recommendation to the House of Representatives at noon today. Majority Leader Harvey Wickland was quoted as stating that he expected the committee to recommend impeachment unanimously, and that he expected the full contents of the charges embodied in the resolution for impeachment to be read and put to limited debate by early afternoon.

Nat Abrahams’ attention was drawn from this story to the impressive black-bordered box in the upper center of the front page reproducing four Articles of Impeachment in boldface type superimposed over a faint photograph of Doug Dilman’s portrait, a not too flattering portrait at that.

Beneath the photograph there ran a lengthy caption. Abrahams studied it:

“The Articles of Impeachment reproduced above-this newspaper has been informed by a reliable Congressional source-may be the form the House of Representatives charges will take when presented to the Senate, presuming the House does indict the President of high crimes and misdemeanors. These charges, in less stately language, are a part of the resolution of impeachment that will be debated today in the House of Representatives. If a majority of House members vote to impeach the President, the charges will be turned over to a special appointed committee, drawn from the House Judiciary Committee, which will formalize them as Articles of Impeachment, and return them to the House for routine approval, before sending them on to the Senate for final judgment. But the raging question today is-will the House of Representatives vote yes or no on the grave matter of converting its resolution for impeachment into actual Articles of Impeachment upon which the Chief Executive would have to stand trial?”

Scowling, Abrahams began to read the evidence that had been prepared against Doug Dilman. He skimmed the contents of the first three articles, more notable for their questionable sensationalism than their proof of high crimes and misdemeanors (although the first charge of treason, if substantiated, might be grave), until he reached the last article. The fact of this one, of course, could not be disputed. Nat reread it carefully: