“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.