Irving Wallace - The Man

“Doug, don’t do it, don’t do it unless you are positive,” Spinger pleaded with passion. “You have no idea how this might affect the Negro community. It might give the impression that you’re in the hands of vindictive whites, that you’ve been whitewashed, so to speak. It would create a terrible reaction against you, your administration, and, worse, create automatic sympathy for Hurley and his Turnerites. Our people might look upon them as the persecuted underdogs, identify with them in a way they have not done up to now. Our people might begin to equate the Crispus Society with any repressive government action, and pull out on us, and-”

“Wait, Reverend, I haven’t said I’m ready to disband the Turnerites. I’ve only said it is under consideration, until I have the facts, all the facts. You have as great a stake in ferreting out the truth as I have. I want you to do something for me, if you can.”

“Anything, Mr. President. Whatever you say.”

Dilman measured his words carefully. “Reverend Spinger, I am appointing you my official representative, the President’s intermediary, to meet with Jefferson Hurley for a discussion of this whole affair.” As he spoke, Dilman’s eyes shifted from Kemmler’s reaction of disgust, to Talley’s expression of bewilderment, to Flannery’s show of approval. He drew the mouthpiece closer to his lips. “Reverend, I want you to locate Hurley, and converse with him by phone, if you can’t in person. I want you to find out, as best you can, whether the Turnerites are behind this crime or not. If he denies any part of the crime, as he has done already, I want you to tell him exactly what the Justice Department is considering doing. And I want you to tell him that if he wants to prove himself clean, and keep his organization intact, he must publicly condemn the Hattiesburg crime, and come forward to open his financial records for your eyes. If he will do this, I can promise him I will not enforce the Subversive Activities Control Act. If he refuses, I will promise nothing. Are you prepared to undertake the assignment, Reverend Spinger?”

“I am, Mr. President. When should I begin?”

“You begin this minute, and report your findings to me directly. Good luck, Reverend.”

After he had hung up, he remained still, knowing the others were gathering before his desk.

Dilman lifted his head. “That’s it for now, gentlemen.”

Kemmler was doing a poor job of containing his displeasure. “You’re making a mistake, Mr. President.”

“You might be right,” said Dilman. “I think it would be a greater mistake to act in haste.”

Talley had sidled up alongside Kemmler. “Mr. President, I’m still inclined to agree with the Attorney General. Reconsider, please. The appointment of Spinger only delays the inevitable. It may make the administration appear weak and vacillating and-and even encourage more lawbreaking and violence-I mean, giving the Hurleys encouragement to go on and commit more crimes because we’re reluctant to do anything but talk.”

“I’ll have to take the gamble, Governor.” He looked at Kemmler, who was still seething. “Give Spinger twenty-four hours,” Dilman said in a conciliatory voice.

“Then give me twenty-four hundred more FBI agents,” Kemmler snapped. “Okay, you do it your way, Mr. President. I’ll be in my office, sitting on my hands. The responsibility for whatever this leads to is in yours.”

Dilman suffered a sudden ache of abandonment and a sinking heart, as he watched the Attorney General stalk out of the Oval Office.

As he lowered himself into his swivel chair, he met Tim Flannery’s questioning eyes. Dilman’s fingers touched the loose-leaf folder. “I guess some revisions are in order for the press conference, Tim. What are they going to ask me now -and what am I supposed to say?”

After drawing up to the curb in his rented Ford, a block from the Capitol, Nat Abrahams kissed his wife, reminded her where to pick him up and when, and then relinquished the wheel of the car to her. He waited until she had safely driven off, then he walked to the stairs of the Capitol and slowly mounted them.

While he knew it troubled Sue that they had already been in Washington a month, and he missed the children as much as she did, he found that he was neither annoyed nor impatient over their protracted visit. More than ever, Washington was stimulating. The fact that he and Sue had enjoyed the opportunity to dine in the White House three times since his private reunion with Doug Dilman had made his stay doubly interesting. Of course, if his negotiations with Gorden Oliver continued at this snail’s pace, he had promised Sue that she could go back to Chicago and the children this week. He was positive he would not be much behind her.

The half-dozen meetings with Gorden Oliver had been profitable. What had caused the delay was the fact that Oliver did not possess final authority to approve of Abrahams’ demands and revisions. Whenever a contractual clause came under discussion, and Abrahams requested improvement of it, or clarification, Oliver would promise an immediate answer and then disappear for several days. It was clear to Abrahams that Oliver was consulting not only with the Eagles Industries Corporation crowd in Washington, but with Avery Emmich in Atlanta. Abrahams suspected that Oliver had even flown off to Eagles’ main headquarters to meet with Emmich once or twice. Then Abrahams had read that Emmich had been out of the country last week, and that had explained the most recent delay. Despite this, Abrahams felt that his last meeting with Oliver might have concluded the preliminary give and take. He expected that the next time he saw Oliver, there would be copies of the contract ready for his approval. Then he would be able to take Sue home and help her wind up their affairs, before moving the family to Washington. In fact, he had encouraged Sue to occupy herself by looking for a roomy brownstone to lease in the city.

It was not Oliver’s telephone call last night that had surprised him, but rather the fact that Oliver wanted to see him about a matter other than the contract.

“The contract is routine now, Nat,” Gorden Oliver had said. “It’s at the home office for final review and retyping. It should be here any day. You can assume you are now a representative of Eagles Industries. No, what I want to see you about, Nat, is not the contract-I’m as sick of it as you are, old boy-but something pertaining to your first duties here in Washington. I’ll go into it when I see you tomorrow. Why don’t you meet me in the private Speaker’s Lobby of the House at noon? I’ll leave your name with the Capitol police.” Abrahams had accepted the invitation.

Now he found himself, as he had so many times in the years past but for the first time on this trip, standing before the elevator beneath the Capitol. When it arrived, he followed a woman and two men into it. In seconds, he was upstairs. He went past the sign members only to the swinging doors leading into the Speaker’s Lobby, gave his name to the uniformed policeman, and was admitted. He reflected briefly on the power of a lobbyist like Oliver, who was able to get his friends and associates past that excluding sign so easily.

The long lobby, with its rich red carpet, contained only a few visitors studying the Department of Commerce weather map and the framed portraits on the walls of former Speakers of the House, the one of MacPherson still draped in black. None of the visitors was Gorden Oliver.

Puzzled, Abrahams turned left and entered the Members’ Reading Rooms that ran parallel with the lobby. He saw a group huddled beneath the globular light fixtures, once picturesque gas jets, near the teletype machine. Gorden Oliver was not among them. Abrahams inspected several members standing before the library stands of newspapers, reading the front pages. For a moment Abrahams was diverted. These newspaper stands fascinated him. There was an individual rack for each state of the fifty in the Union, and every day upon these racks were hung the newspapers from the leading cities in that state. Abrahams paused before the stand with the sign MISS. above it. Tilting his head, he cast his eyes down the file of dangling newspapers from Greenville, Columbus, Vicksburg, Meridian, Natchez, Hattiesburg, Biloxi. The majority of the headlines were several days old, and were devoted to Judge Gage’s sentencing of the Turnerite demonstrators, or to the debate of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill in the House, or to the announcement of Dilman’s first State Dinner to entertain a fellow black man from Africa. Before many days the rack would carry the dated headlines screaming of Judge Gage’s abduction by Negro terrorists, and segregationists’ vows of retaliation, which Washington newspapers had carried only an hour before.