Irving Wallace - The Man

“I’ll get it,” Gertrude was saying. “Probably Mae Schearer to gloat about-”

She was gone. He started to eat his bowl of yogurt, when he saw her return.

“Otto, it’s Chief Gaynor calling from the White House.”

He jumped to his feet, suddenly beaming, his temples throbbing. “I knew it, I knew it. Tell him I’ll be right on. I’ll take it upstairs.”

He wanted this triumph alone. He rushed out of the dining room and bounded up the creaking stairs two at a time. Breathless, he snatched up the telephone on the desk.

“Hello… I’ve got it, Gertrude… hello.”

He heard her click off, and heard a remote secretary tell him to hold on, and then he heard Gaynor’s gruff voice, so welcome this morning.

“Beggs? Chief Gaynor here.”

“Good morning, Chief. I was just leaving for duty. Glad you caught me. I’m sure sorry about Sonenberg and McCune.”

“It happens, it happens,” said Gaynor impatiently. “We just wish they could have done something to save the President. Well, that’s behind us. We’ve got a job to do, and today it’s harder than ever. Beggs, I’m calling to tell you we’re forced into some changes around here-”

His heart swelled. “Yes, sure.”

“-and we’ve upped the guard detail, and have to do some switching around on the three shifts. I know you’re on the morning-to-afternoon shift. But for the time being we’re putting you on from afternoon to evening. You don’t have to come in now. Rest up. You check in at four o’clock and stay until one in the morning.”

His heart thumped faster. “You-you mentioned changes, Chief. Is that all? I mean, just the time?”

“Matter of fact, no, glad you mentioned it. One second, I think there’s another call-no, it’s okay. Yes, you’ll be undertaking a new job. Lou Agajanian tells me you get along well with Negroes.”

“That’s right, Chief,” he said hastily. “Been living right here off Connecticut among them for years. Some of my finest friends-”

“Excellent,” Gaynor interrupted. “We’re assigning you to being one of the twelve special agents who will personally be guarding President Dilman. How’s that?”

Confused, he waited for Chief Gaynor to tell him the rest, but realized there was no more. “I-I don’t understand, Chief. You want me to guard the President? Is that my new job?”

“I knew you’d be pleased. Agajanian told me it was a duty you’d always wanted.”

Beggs felt sinking and frantic. “Chief, it’s what I wanted four or five years ago. But there’s a lot of water under the bridge now. I-I’ve got seniority, now that McCune is gone. I know that Sonenberg left a supervisory vacancy. I figured it was regular procedure-I mean, I thought that the Assistant to Lou, that opening, would-”

“It’s already filled, Beggs.” Chief Gaynor was brisk and businesslike. “An hour ago I submitted Special Agent Roscoe Prentiss’ name to the Secretary of the Treasury and he okayed it.”

“Prentiss?” Beggs could barely restrain himself from shouting at his Chief. “He came into the Service four years after I did. He’s way down the list. I’m supposed to get-”

“Wait a minute, Beggs, easy there. You’re creating a seniority system that doesn’t exist. Going by length of time in the Service is not in the regulations. It’s a factor, of course-always has been when we consider promotions. But just as often we try to angle the right man for the right job at the right time.”

Beggs felt himself shaking with righteous indignation. “Who’s Prentiss? What has he got that I haven’t got?” Then it came to him, and he knew. “Don’t tell me. I get it. He’s colored. He’s being upped to supervisor because he’s a Negro.”

There were empty silent seconds on the telephone, and then Chief Gaynor came on less gruffly. “I’m not in a position to say that was the decisive factor, Beggs. I-” His tone of voice lowered, offering confidence, man-to-man equality. “I just want to put it to you as one reasonable human being to another-what would you do in my boots? Overnight we’ve got an unusual situation, we’ve got a Negro President. Don’t you think it’s only fair that one of the six Secret Service executives should be of his people? If I didn’t do this, he might feel we were being discriminatory, and feel unkindly toward the Service.”

“Did President Dilman ask for this?”

“No-no, he doesn’t even know about it yet. It’s just something we felt would be fair at this time.”

“Dammit, Chief, it’s not fair, say whatever you want. It’s discrimination against me because I’m white. It’s not giving me what I deserve. I don’t like it.”

“Beggs, this is a time to be reasonable. I appreciate your disappointment. The fact is, we’re giving you something better, something you always wanted, an assignment right next to the President of the United States. In fact, and Lou’ll go into this with you, there’ll be a-a token raise. As for the future, we’ll keep you in mind. We take care of our own, Beggs. Now, you take it easy, and check in with Lou at four. Be seeing you.”

Listlessly, Otto Beggs returned the telephone to the desk. Life had spat in his eye again. He knew when he was licked. His glance went to the door, but he had no stomach for facing Gertrude.

He lumbered to the bedroom window and glared down into the busy street. There were people down there, and most of them were black. Until now his attitude toward them had been boxed between resentment and toleration. Now he was bitter toward all of them. Because his Chief wanted to apple-polish a new President, who was Negro, who did not deserve to be President, Otto Beggs had been elbowed aside to make room for a callow colleague whose only qualification was his black skin. And the worst of it, they were throwing him a few pennies more and telling him to risk his life to protect the life of a colored politician.

The injustice of it gagged him. He, a war hero, who almost gave up his life for his country, almost got killed trying to protect those watermelon eaters in the safe rear lines doing soft KP and shooting craps and knocking up Korean girls. He, who had received the Medal of Honor from Eisenhower, having to be at the beck and call of a black President, whose war record consisted of keeping records in the Pentagon. Chrissakes, what in the hell was the world coming to?

He was ready for Gertrude at last.

He strode out of the room and down the stairs. She was waiting below, unblinking, as her fingers picked at the fringe of her housecoat, watching his descent. He felt that his cheeks were livid, and knew that she knew, and did not give a damn.

He looked fixedly at her. She did not utter a word.

He said, “My shift’s been changed. I’m not going to work until four. I’ve got time on my hands. I want to use it. Where in the hell are those real estate textbooks?”

She swallowed, quickly nodding her head. “I-I’ll find them for you, Otto. I’ll get them right away.”

She raised the long skirt of her housecoat, to make movement and speed easier, and hastily she climbed the stairs. For once, he was satisfied with her. For once, she’d had sufficient respect for him to say nothing more.

Late in the afternoon, still behind her desk in her office next to the President’s Oval Office, Edna Foster sat with hands clasped tightly, observing George Murdock as he read the short letter she had moments before pulled out of her gray electric typewriter.

Her gaze did not leave her fiancé. He was running his fingers through his sparse blond hair, and then scratching at his acne-pocked pale cheeks, and then scratching at his beaky nose and receding chin, about which she felt so possessive.

His small, translucent eyes were smaller as they came up from the page to meet her own. “No, Edna, don’t show it to him, not yet.”