(1964) The Man (56 page)

During this demand, Dilman’s mind had gone to the consequences of invoking the control act. It would place a terrible onus on his race. Worse, and here his cooler legal brain was at work, it would strike a blow against civil liberties, setting a precedent that could soon be misused. Still, there was the law, and there was the crime against this law—Kemmler was right about that—and justice must be observed, and national security (his prime concern) must be preserved. But there must be no mistake, no margin of error, no matter how small or narrow. Lombardi had a reputation for being ruthlessly if not sadistically anti-Communist on the United States domestic front, not wrong in itself, but often he had been too eager to interpret every coloration of opinion and action as Red, and consequently had had his arrests reversed by more unbiased minds. Was he too eager now? Was he being honestly patriotic, or subconsciously using this as a grand opportunity to make headlines and raise himself even higher on his pedestal as the public’s foremost law enforcement officer and superpatriot?

As for Clay Kemmler, he, too, was eager and ambitious, yet Dilman could find no reason to fault him for bad judgment or overriding vanity. Kemmler had been a district attorney, a Federal judge, T. C.’s Cabinet member, a person of spotless reputation. Still, he had shown himself to be impatient, which Dilman regarded as injudicious, and to be motivated less by considerations of political advancement, probably, than by some kind of absolute view of what was just and unjust. He was a man to be listened to, but not one to be overwhelmed by, not without deliberating upon every word he spoke first.

Dilman deliberated, teetering on his dilemma, not wanting to jump or be pushed, yet not wishing to fall.

“I believe you have a sound case,” Dilman said at last. “I’m not concerned about Hurley as an individual. He committed the crime of kidnaping, clearly. Did he commit premeditated homicide or homicide in self-defense? That will be for the Federal courts to determine. So you see, I, too, am concerned only with the larger issue. Was this so-called crime of subversion an organization crime or an individual one? There is still no airtight—”

“Please, Mr. President, don’t start that again,” interrupted Kemmler. For the first time, his rigid face was clotted with anger. He tried to control himself, with little success. “Mr.—Mr. President—how can you have second thoughts about cracking down on an overt and outrageous crime like this? Over in Justice, we have a file on every one of Hurley’s public utterances as head of the Turnerites. Even if his motives were the best, to give your people equality overnight, to be their black Moses, it’s not enough to offset what he’s done. Time and again, in public, he promised violence if the Negroes could not have their way. Then a crime of violence was performed, kidnaping and confessed murder, and who did it? Hurley and his gang. He practiced what he preached for the Turnerites. Are you going to go before the American people and say you doubt that?”

Dilman weakened under his Attorney General’s righteous wrath. Desperately, Dilman tried to fortify himself with Blackstone and the Constitution. “I’m not doubting anything, when there is factual evidence to support it. Yes, I’m inclined to believe this is a Turnerite crime, an organized and planned crime, and I’m inclined to punish the group responsible. But, Mr. Attorney General, when I do something unprecedented, that is necessary to protect us now, in spite of attendant harmful aftereffects, I must be positive I am right, 100 per cent positive, not 99 per cent positive. Did the Turnerite Group meet and plan this crime and vote for it, and then did Hurley and several others, representing the Group, carry it out? If that is the case, it is subversion, and to be punished instantly. Or—and here is my one per cent legal doubt—did the Turnerite Group vote against this as being impractical and inflammatory, and did their leader, hardly a reasonable man at any time, go off on his own, with one or two accomplices, and did they perform the heinous deed as individuals? I must know that the last did not happen. I must learn which it was from Hurley himself, or from his accomplices, when and if you catch them, or from any other reliable Turnerite members you question, or from Turnerite records that you find.” He held up his hands. “That’s my view of it, gentlemen.”

Kemmler glared at him. He said coldly, “What if we can’t find any more evidence?”

“I’ll see then. I’ll study Mr. Lombardi’s findings, the interrogation of Hurley, and make up my mind. I suppose I’ll let you invoke the control act. But until I do, I suggest you not make any rash moves or statements.” He made an effort to gain their friendship, to mollify their anger. “Look, gentlemen, you have Hurley. Go ahead with that. Announce it. As to banning his organization, give me a day or two, overnight at least—”

“Good night, Mr. President,” said Kemmler curtly. “Come on, Bob.”

“I’ll be in touch,” said Lombardi to Dilman. “Good night, sir.”

Regretfully Douglass Dilman watched them leave him. He had not merely disappointed them, he had infuriated them with his indecisiveness. Would they believe that he was motivated by a true concern for justice, or solely by a sympathy and partiality toward hounded men of his own color? He knew their answer. He was less sure of his own.

They had gone, but the door was still open, and now he noticed the bulky Otto Beggs waiting to speak to him.

“Mr. President,” Beggs said, “we’ve been holding a phone call for you. Miss Foster downstairs says she must talk to you. Do you want to take it in here?”

“Yes, please.”

Beggs closed the door, and Dilman walked tiredly to the indigo-colored French telephone that sat on the pier table.

He took up the receiver. Edna Foster was on the line, sounding as harried as he felt.

“Mr. President,” she was saying, “I have Leroy Poole on the other phone. It’s the sixth time he’s called tonight. He insists upon speaking to you personally. He sounded so frantic that—”

“No,” said Dilman irritably. “I have no time for him tonight.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Edna Foster apologized. “I wouldn’t have, except he said it was so important, something about Jefferson Hurley being arrested in Texas—I didn’t know what he was talking about—”

Ready to hang up, Dilman suddenly gripped the receiver hard. “Wait a minute, Miss Foster. You say Leroy wants to talk to me about Hurley’s arrest?”

“That’s right, Mr. President.”

Dilman’s brain aligned this information beside another piece of information. The two facts did not belong side by side. What had brought them there together? Apperception told him the answer to this might be the answer to what had made him so indecisive before Kemmler and Lombardi.

“I’ve changed my mind, Miss Foster. Put him on.”

For a few brief seconds the telephone was dumb, and then it had Leroy Poole’s squeaky, hysterical voice. “Mr. President, is that you—you—Mr. President?”

“Yes, Leroy, what is it?”

The words tumbled forth in a torrent. “Mr. President—have you heard?—geez, the FBI caught Jeff Hurley in Texas, and they’re indicting him for the murder of Judge Gage. Mr. President, you can’t let them frame him—it was justifiable homicide—it can be proved—even the kidnaping wasn’t exactly that—they were taking the judge to reason with him, show him new information—but then Gage became violent, got hold of a weapon, tried to kill Hurley, and Hurley did what any man on earth would do—what you and I would do. He defended himself, he acted in self-defense to save his life. That’s the truth of it, I swear, and it’s in your hands. If you haven’t heard, they got poor Hurley—”

“Leroy!” Dilman broke in, and his stern command checked Poole’s hysteria. “Leroy—I
have
heard—I know
all
that—but how do
you
know?”

“Me? How do I know?” Leroy Poole sounded confused. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“I’ll spell out what I mean. Minutes ago I heard of Judge Gage’s death and Hurley’s arrest in Texas from the FBI chief and the Attorney General. Except for the three of us here in the White House, and a handful of FBI agents in Texas, and a couple of Hurley’s friends who got away, nobody knows about this incident. It couldn’t have happened more than an hour ago. And the news just got to us. So how do
you
know?”

It was as if the phone at the other end had gone dead.

“Leroy, are you there?” Dilman said. “Listen to me. You’re calling, asking for help for Hurley. If you want my help, you’d better give me yours.”

Still the other end of the line was silent, but now Dilman could hear Poole’s labored breathing.

“Leroy, if you don’t want to get involved with the FBI yourself, and I mean that, you’d better level with me. You’ll find me easier to talk to than those agents.” He hesitated, then resumed harshly. “I think you’ve given me the picture already. Many times as you’ve denied it, you are in the Turnerite movement, aren’t you? Apparently a secret member, isn’t that right? Now a lot of things you’ve said recently make sense. Jeff Hurley’s your friend, at least your boss, isn’t he? And now someone has gotten to you—not Hurley, he’s incommunicado this minute—but the others, one of his accomplices in the killing, he or they, they’ve got in touch with you from wherever they are and told you what happened, and they’re desperate, and they know that you know me, and they asked you to appeal to me. Is that right, Leroy?”

He heard Poole’s disjointed whine at last. “Mr.—Mr. Pres-President, I swear on my mom and everything that’s holy, one of the members called long distance, which one, who, I don’t know, no names on the telephone, and simply told me what happened to Jeff Hurley, the truth of it, and asked me to help him, see the truth gets known. That’s all I know, I swear to God in Heaven.”

“All right, I take your word for it, Leroy. But you still haven’t told me what I want to know. This abduction of Judge Gage, it was done by your gang, by the Turnerite Group, wasn’t it?”

“What if it was? Sure it was. You don’t think a man of Jeff Hurley’s moral character and standards would go out for some personal revenge, do you? He and whoever was with him, they agreed to lead the way, to be the first like John Brown, to set an example, not order others to do what they wouldn’t be willing to do themselves. So they did it for the Turnerites—not kidnaping, either—but merely taking that sonofabitching, persecuting magistrate to another climate where they could reason with him about his abortion of justice, make him rescind it or admit he was wrong, make him agree to be the instrument to let our poor guys free. This was no hoodlum act, Mr. President. It was a protest act by the only decent, uncorrupted protest society in America today, doing something, not just talk and compromise, but doing something to dramatize the plight of every beat-up and degraded colored man and woman and kid in the country. You—you of all people—should be the first to see that, Mr. President. And you can become the greatest President in history, a hero of our people, if you will shake off those white bastards around you and intercede for Jeff Hurley—”

Dilman felt ill with the knowledge of the truth, with the realization of what had happened and what he must do. His loathing of his truth, its consequences, filled every bone of his body with a creeping dullness.

“Leroy,” he said wearily, “Hurley is no longer the issue. The Turnerite Group is the issue, the whole society, you and every one of them, your membership, your financing, your program—that’s the issue. You may as well know. The Justice Department is going to take legal action against you, to disband and outlaw you, and arrest and fine those who resist.”

There was shock in Poole’s trembling voice. “You—you can’t let them do that.”

“I have no choice. I must.”

“No, listen, Senator—Mr. President—don’t, don’t let them. If you kill Hurley, disband what he’s fought for, you kill me and yourself. With one act, you hurl us back where we were before the Civil War. Freedom now becomes freedom never. Ban us, and the fiery crosses and police dogs win. Every activist group will have to close shop and get off the street when the white man passes. We’re niggers again, with no hope but those ass-dragging old Uncle Toms in the Crispus and NAACP. We’re niggers again, and when we want white men’s food, they’ll throw us our watermelon rind like the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill, so’s our mouths will be full and we’ll have to stay shut up. Mr. President, don’t do it, don’t go bowing and scraping after the ones who’re lording it over you, don’t sell us out, because if you do, you’ll not only kill us, like I said, but you’ll make every one of your people your enemy and the enemy of your Party for life.”

Annoyance at the offensive little writer’s presumption and disrespect momentarily overrode Dilman’s guilts and fears. “I’ve heard enough, Leroy. I have no more time to talk to you. I’ve got my job to attend to. I’m going to do what has to be done. Good-bye and—”

“Hold on, Mr. President,” Poole called out across the wire. “You’re sure, you’re absolutely positive,
nothing
can change your mind?”

Dilman hesitated, not because of what Poole said but because of how he had said it. Poole was no longer hysterical or wheedling, no longer begging. There had been a new undercurrent in his voice, of slyness, even cruelty. Perhaps, Dilman told himself, he was imagining too much.

He still held the receiver, and now he brought the mouthpiece closer. “No, Leroy, nothing can change my mind. I will instruct the Department of Justice to observe the law immediately. I have no more to say.”

“I have,” said Leroy Poole. “One last thing. Listen. You indict the Turnerites for criminal subversion, and you indict your own son, too. You hear me? You indict your own son. Maybe it is news to you, but Julian is one of us. Julian is one of our secret members assigned to the Crispus Society, to get at their private files of statistics on cases of white persecution, like the information that Hattiesburg was a hot place to begin our crusade. If you condemn us, you—”

Dilman’s hand clenched the telephone until his fingers were nearly bloodless. The nausea that welled high in his throat was not of fear but of disgust. He said, “You’re no better than Hurley—you’ll do anything—you’re a rotten, sick liar, dragging my boy into it.”