Ruby was staring at her drink, not at Beggs. “What-what she mean by that there talk, Otter?”
“Miss Foster, her name is. She said she’d never forget his first day as President. She was alone with him the first time, planning to hand in her resignation, and when she’d come in his office, there was one door open. She started to shut it, so they could be in privacy, and he wouldn’t let her close the door, he didn’t want it shut. She couldn’t understand, and then he said that Eisenhower once had a Negro adviser who found that white girls always left a door open when they came in to see him, sort of as protection, as if he was a lower animal or habitual rapist. And so Dilman took to the habit of being sure one door was left open whenever a white girl came in and-” To Beggs’s astonishment, Ruby had jumped up from the sofa and gone to the center of the room, her back turned to him. “Anyway,” he concluded lamely, “Miss Foster said she wanted to cry for him, and she shut that door and did not resign. So whatever your friends think about Dilman being evil-”
He halted, and listened.
It was incredible. Ruby’s shoulders were shaking, and her face was in her hands, and she was sobbing.
Utterly confounded, Otto Beggs left the sofa and hurried to her side. “Ruby, what the hell-” He grabbed her arms, and pulled her around, and then drew her hands from her eyes. She was crying, mascara running, and tears streaking her face. “Otter-Otter-Otter,” she kept repeating.
He shook her a little. “Ruby, what’s got into you?”
She swallowed, trying to control herself. “Otter, the devil’s in me an’ I’ll burn in front of Jesus if I don’t tell you-Otter, from what you told me, you swear it-”
“What I told you? I only told you the truth about-”
“Jesus in Heaven, I done did an awful an’ wicked act, I think I did, I think, I don’t know, but I’m worryin’, Jesus, I’m worryin’-’cause I don’t wan’ Pres Dilman hurt if he’s like you say.”
Beggs felt the blood coursing to his head. “What-what do you mean-?” A chill of apprehension, intensified by guilt and fear, crept across his chest and forearms, leaving goose pimples. “How-how could anything you do hurt him-the President?”
“Otter-listen-I didn’t know a thing, sep some certain cullud folk were wantin’ me to meet you long time ago from right after Dilman become Pres, ’cause they not likin’ his weaslin’ ’bout the Turners, so they bein’ my folk, I agrees. But meetin’ you, I fo’gits ’bout them, ’cause I gotta admits y’all been excitin’ to me-then when those there certain cullud folk, they see Pres Dilman killin’ off the Turners an’ Hurley, they gits to fussin’ an’ fumin’-an’ they remembers me-an’ come askin’ if I is still friendly-like with Otter Beggs, an’ I says I is, sorta, an’ they says for me to git you up here in my ’partment today, git you off the job today, ’cause they didn’t want you round when they see the Pres-I-Otter-I don’t pay no mind to who tell me this, don’t remember who told me-Otter-don’t look like that, Otter-only there’s some who hate the Pres like you don’t know, like I was tellin’-hate him from the start, hate him with real hate now-an’ wanna have a showdown with him-an’ figgerin’ it was hard to git to him exactly private-like, with you always there, a hero man like you readyin’ to shoot everybody-so they say for me to keep you busy till they can see the Pres when he finishes with his office workin’ today an’ goes up to-”
Beggs was violent with rage. “Goddammit, you little whore!” he shouted, wrenching her arms. “If you’re lying to me or not telling everything-!”
“Otter, Otter, don’t! You hurtin’ me-Otter, it’s true, every word I’m tellin’. Why should I tell, sep I sinned-I know I sinned-”
He could not release her arms. “Damn you, who are your friends-what are they planning-?”
“I don’t know-don’t know-swear to Jesus-”
He flung her arms down fiercely. “I ought to kill you-boy, I ought to kill you for making me such a sucker-”
“But I was likin’ you, Otter-truth, I swears it-”
He was no longer listening.
He looked at his watch. It showed sixteen minutes after five o’clock. Almost every afternoon President Dilman quit his office at five-thirty. Ruby’s friends wanted to see the President when Beggs was not around, when someone less experienced and able than Beggs was there, when someone new was there. It could mean but one thing, one horrifying, life-shattering thing. There were only fourteen minutes for him to intercept Dilman or alert Agajanian.
He looked up and saw that Ruby Thomas had retreated to her bedroom door, frightened, watching him wide-eyed.
“I ought to beat you to a pulp and drag you to the FBI!” he hollered. “My duty’s more important than you, you little whore-”
He spun around, snatching up his coat and holster, and strode to the door.
She cried out, “Otter, I did tell you aforehand-you ain’ sayin’ I didn’t tell you-don’t let them hurt him, please, Otter-!”
He slammed the door on her, hastily buckling on the holster, then yanking on his coat as he went down the stairs two at a time. As he rushed outside, his first instinct was to locate a telephone booth, call Gaynor or Agajanian or Prentiss, any of the Detail, and warn them to keep the President in his office, and throw up a double-a triple-guard, and search for Ruby’s hophead friends. Then, suddenly, he realized it was impossible for him to make such a call. They’d ask him who and what-and how had he got his tip? What could he say? He had a hunch? He’d overheard something? He’d got a crank note with a lead? He possessed no instant evidence-except the truth-Ruby-and if he dared mention her, and she was hauled in, and they found out that he had not been sick, had been trying to have an affair with her, a colored girl, he’d be cooked, through, his present a scandal, his future no more. He’d lose the Secret Service, and Gertrude and the kids. No, the call was out. He’d have to do it himself.
He had been moving fast, now half running, all the while he had been thinking. He arrived at the alley behind the Walk Inn, with its parking slots, leaped into the Nash Rambler, started it, backed up, shifted, and wheeled out of the alley into the street. He gunned the car, running a yellow light, and twisted the vehicle toward the White House.
He drove fast, fast as he could over the route that he had traveled so many days of his life, jumping lights, beating the changing signals, weaving in and out of traffic, knowing he must be there before the President left his Oval Office. If a policeman flagged him down, he’d have to flash his Secret Service badge and bellow emergency. He drove on the brink of recklessness, ignoring the angry horns and curses that chased him briefly and then died away.
There were intervals of lucidity. He had sobered, he knew, but his breath still reeked of gin. If he came into the West Wing lobby like a madman, like some fugitive from a cops-and-robbers television show, and there was nothing there, and Ruby Thomas’ story was a cock-and-bull story, he would not only be the laughingstock of the Service but in real trouble for being drunk in public. Anticipating this, determined to prevent it, he dug into his pocket for the peppermints that he always carried and sucked on after having a beer or two, and was grateful that there was still a half roll. His nail loosened and freed three of them, and he popped them into his mouth.
With difficulty, as he neared his goal, he tried to organize his thoughts. Had that black bitch lied to him, fed him that whopper of a tale? It was possible, if she was some kind of psychopathic nut, a schizo, a fruitcake. Another possibility: maybe-and he hated this, hated the comment on his manliness-maybe she had led him on, for the kicks of it, and then, when the chips were down, had backed off, not wanting to go the distance with him, wanting to go so far for kicks and no farther, wanting to be rid of the whiteboy. There were women like that-teasers. And so she had pulled this wild story out of left field to get rid of him. Maybe. But, unhappily, that made little sense. After all, Beggs remembered, he had got her onto the subject of Dilman, challenged her opinion, changed her, touched the emotional part of her femininity and Negro feeling, and then she had done the about-face, the confessional. More than that, it was unlikely that she would invent so dramatic and serious a lie, knowing as she did that he could cause her so much trouble with the authorities.