Preserve and Protect Page 30

  “And his old pal went off with his wife,” Cullee said harshly. ’Gage gave him an odd look, somewhere between sadness and smirk.

  “I didn’t make that little Sue-Dan come to me,” he said. “She just got bored with you, Cullee baby. You just weren’t man enough for her. That little gal needs lots of man, sure enough.”

  “Well, she knows by now she doesn’t have it in you,” Cullee snapped, and again for a second he thought his old friend-enemy might swarm across the desk. But after an angry glare for a moment he sank back and looked both tired and sardonic.

  “I know you won’t understand it,” he said, “but she really believes in what we’re doing in our campaign. She doesn’t like me as much as she likes the idea. She knew she wasn’t ever going to get anything but empty talk from you, so she went where the action is. We’ve got it, baby, in case you don’t know it.”

  “Yes, I know it,” Cullee said grimly, “and a hell of a fine action it is, tearing up your own country and ruining America—”

  “Is that your hang up?” ’Gage demanded with an elaborate surprise. “Is that what’s got you crying, poor old Congressman Hamilton Our Black White Hope? Well, well. Well, well.”

  “What are you getting out of it?” Cullee asked, and he really wanted to know. “You hoping to be the Black Commissar for the United States or something?”

  ’Gage uttered a contemptuous snort and turned again to stare out at the beautiful lawns, the peaceful trees.

  “That’s typical,” he said. “That’s so damned typical. We’re going to break this country down, and you and your whitey friends go around mouthing phony slogans like ‘black commissars’! My God! Don’t you know what’s going on in your own country, Cullee? Don’t you know what’s happening in your own race?”

  For several moments the Congressman simply stared at him, chin on hand, expressionless. Finally he shrugged.

  “I know fools like you have been talking like that for quite a few years now,” he said, “and you’ve done a lot of damage and misled a lot of innocent people who haven’t known any better. But I’m damned if I see what you’ve done for the Negro race except stir up a lot of white hatred and make things even tougher. But I guess that’s what you want, isn’t it? To make ’em so tough that when the big reaction comes it will all go smash and everything will be ruined for everybody. Then maybe you can crawl out and be king of the ruins.” He sighed and concluded with a puzzled shake of the head and a genuine bafflement that couldn’t possibly have infuriated LeGage more: “Poor, sick fool.”

  “Oh I am, am I?” LeGage shouted, leaping to his feet and beginning to pace up and down before the window, so angry he could hardly see. “So I’m a poor, sick fool, am I? And what are you, Mr. Pompous-Self-Satisfied-Know-It-All stooge for Whitey? If you aren’t the saddest son of a bitch that ever pretended to be a black man—”

  “At least I’m not a murderer,” Cullee snapped, getting on his feet, too, and planting himself solidly beside his chair. “At least I’m not a bloody betrayer of my own country who goes around beating up pregnant women and trying to burn down everything for everybody. Now, you listen to me, Mr. High-and-Mighty-Pompous-Self-Satisfied-Know-It-All, yourself! You haven’t got a patient man in the White House any more, or one who’s scared of you or of anybody’s ‘opinion.’ You’ve got a hard-nosed old son of a bitch who’s every bit as tough as you are, and when Orrin Knox succeeds him you’ll find he’s the same. They’ve got your number, and they’re fed up and they mean business. And I’m here to tell you, you’d damned well better cool it, and fast. Take that back to your crazy boyfriends and see how they like it!”

  “So that’s it,” LeGage said, pausing abruptly at the edge of the desk. “So that’s the damned game! You’re supposed to pass the word and scare us off. Good Christ! You have no more idea what’s being planned for this country—”

  “I suppose Ted has told you just what to do!” Cullee said with a deliberate innocence and instantly an expression of scowling contempt came over LeGage’s face.

  “Ted! That pathetic egomaniac! Ted has no more idea—” Then his expression changed again, the crafty curtain came down. He shrugged. “Ted is quite a boy, all right. But you!” he said, beginning to generate steam again. “We’re talking about you, you—”

  “Listen,” Cullee interrupted, and he put into the word such a weight of anger and dislike that ’Gage stopped in mid-sentence. “I’m saying one thing to you, smart boy, and that is that whatever your pretense of helping your own race, and however much you can sell the pretense to the white fools you want to destroy, what you’re really out to do is bring down America. And it isn’t going to work, because this society wants to survive and it isn’t going to let a minority throw it down the drain. It may take a while for it to really resist, but, brother, watch out when it finally does. You’ll be consumed.”

  “Maybe,” LeGage said softly. “But I plan to do a little consuming, first.”

  “I was asked to warn you,” Cullee said with equal softness, “and I have. What you do now is your own problem.”

  “Just watch me,” LeGage said with the same almost singing softness. “Just you watch.”

  After that, the ringing of the telephone came as something of an anticlimax; and even Orrin’s message, which Cullee could not resist passing along triumphantly to ’Gage, did little to change it. LeGage was set on some collision course from which nothing would deflect him, and his reaction was much like Lady Maudulayne’s. With one last stagey, but nonetheless ominous, warning that Cullee “had better not walk alone through Capitol Plaza after dark,” he swung angrily out of the office and went away. Cullee called the White House, conveyed his congratulations to the President, who seemed pleased to have them, and reported the discouraging outcome of the visit.

  “One interesting thing, though,” he said. “Whatever is in the wind, Ted apparently doesn’t know about it.”

  “He thinks he does,” the President observed.

  “That’s a tribute to his ego, not his sense. He doesn’t.”

  “Should we try to warn him again?” the President asked in an idle tone that indicated how little he thought of the idea. Congressman Hamilton made an equally skeptical sound.

  “He’s been warned enough. I’m through having anything to do with him.”

  “Suits me,” the President said. “See you at the Committee meeting tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there. Is everything ready?”

  “I think we’re in pretty good shape,” the President said, “or will be, after my announcement at the opening.” Then he added, in a reflective tone born of many and many a hectic battle in the House, “But of course, you know, you can never be sure of anything in this world.”

  Which was just as well; for it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, and by nightfall, on certain days in Washington, quite a lot can happen.

  Certainly it was happening for Bob Leffingwell, who even then was nearing his destination on T Street, Northwest. He was not alone, for he had prudently stopped at a precinct house and picked up a policeman, and now as the patrol car moved cautiously along through the hurrying traffic, the boy was talking earnestly about the situation in the country. Bob was gratified to find that he was not a follower of DEFY, nor a hater of the whites, nor a worshiper of false gods foreign or domestic. Instead he was a quiet, determined and worried youth who took his life in his hands every time he stepped out the precinct door, but who went ahead and did his duty because he had some concept of America and his responsibility toward it which told him he should. It was enough to make a man cry, Bob told himself, to see the gap between the gallantry and decency that could exist below, and the cupidity, ambition, reckless hatred and greed for power that flourished in the upper levels he had just come from. In fifteen minutes he had moved out of one city into the other; except, of course, that the two cities were always and eternally one.

  Unconsciously he sighed, and at once the boy broke off in mid-sentence and said
politely, “Sir?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bob Leffingwell said. “I’m afraid I was momentarily distracted by my own thoughts.” He smiled. “I’m afraid that wasn’t very considerate.”

  “It’s easy to do,” the boy said with an answering smile. “I find I do it a lot. There’s so much to think about nowadays.”

  “Yes, there is. What were you saying when I drifted away from you, officer?”

  “I was saying that I don’t really see where people like LeGage Shelby and some of these other radicals get away with saying the things they do about America,” he said, his smile fading and a troubled expression coming into the large dark eyes. “I just don’t understand how they think.”

  “I don’t either,” Bob Leffingwell confessed. “But, then, I’m white.”

  “Well, I’m not,” the boy said belligerently, and then smiled again at his own vehemence. “As I guess you can see. And I don’t understand them. Mind you, I don’t say things are perfect, who’d be such a fool? But they’re—well, they’re bad and they’re not bad. I mean, there’s some hope, a lot of things have improved in recent years. We can make it if we just have the guts to stay with it.”

  “Do many?” Bob Leffingwell asked, not sure just when he was going to dry up this flood of confidence with his questions, but thinking that he hadn’t started it, his companion obviously wanted, maybe had, to talk.

  The boy frowned.

  “Not as many as we need,” he said honestly. “Of course, it’s a big problem. You take people in some of the conditions we have here in this city, conditions like we have in Harlem and Detroit and Chicago and other places like that, and you can understand how they never get out of it and why something like DEFY appeals to them. They climb up a little, and just as they begin to make it they run into a wall of some kind. And they fall back. They don’t keep fighting. Or if they do, it’s just frustrated fighting, riots and snipers and mobs in the streets, and nothing but hate, hate, hate, all day long and all night, too.” He rubbed his forehead and squeezed his eyelids with a tired gesture. “I don’t know,” he said moodily. “Sometimes I think maybe I’m making a mistake to stick with society and law and order. Maybe I’d be better off out there on the other side of it, tearing down instead of trying to hold together and eventually build up. But then I think—I don’t really think that. It doesn’t add up to anything in the long run. Once the riot’s over, what have you got? A television set you looted from some store, maybe, and a lot more hatred from the whites. And just more frustration and more despair. And if Shelby has his way,” he concluded grimly, “just a new set of bosses. Black, maybe, but still pushing you around, just like before.”

  “It seems to me,” Bob said cautiously, as they turned into R Street and headed west, planning to double back at Fourth and go up to T, “that someone like—oh, say, Congressman Hamilton from California, for instance—does more for your people than someone like Shelby.”

  “Mr. Hamilton is a fine man,” the boy said promptly, “but he gets attacked too, all the time. I’ll bet you if you could see his mail and listen to his telephone calls, you’d find he takes a beating from Negroes nine-tenths of the time. A lot of people I know around the area here don’t think much of him; they think he’s too pro-white. But, Mr. Leffingwell, he only tries to be honest and do what he can to make things work. And things have got to work if any one of us is ever going to get anywhere. We’ve got the best country anybody ever handed a people, and we’ve got to preserve it and make it work, all of us together. We’ve got to.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Bob Leffingwell said, more moved than he cared to show—and yet, why not show it, wasn’t part of the trouble a timidity of communication, a fear of being honest? He held out his hand, and after a second’s surprise, the boy took it and they exchanged a solemn handshake. “I think you’re great,” he said simply. “Just great. Don’t ever change.”

  “Oh, I expect I won’t,” the boy said, grinning suddenly and speaking more lightly. “My mother always says when I get on something I stick with it. She says I’m the hardest-headed child she’s ever known.”

  “You stay hard-headed just the way you are,” Bob advised. “We all need you, just like that.”

  “I’m going to,” the boy said. “Can’t say it’s always easy to do, but—oh, oh!” he said sharply as they turned into T Street, and suddenly he wasn’t a boy any more, but an officer of the law with every sense alert. “What’s going on down there?”

  “It looks to me,” Bob Leffingwell said bleakly, for here was the world undone again, “like a fire.”

  And so it was, smoke pillaring straight upward into the still, steaming air, flames already leaping high over the simple one-story dwelling they were relentlessly consuming. People were running, the street was becoming choked with traffic. The officer touched his siren and they started slowly through as a fire truck began to push noisily into the block from the other end.

  “I think that’s the place we’re looking for,” Bob said, and the officer nodded and said quietly, “I believe it is.”

  “They got here first,” Bob said with a sort of bitter tiredness, and again the officer nodded.

  “I guess they did,” he agreed, and his eyes and voice were very sad.

  When they were as near as they could safely go, he stopped the car and they got out. Bob Leffingwell was aware of shouts, screams, voices, heard from a couple jostling past, “—fellow say he from DEFY, he say we all better watch out, that what happen to enemies of DEFY—” “—heard from someone else—” “—believe they an old lady with arthritis still in there—” and was aware suddenly that his companion was no longer at his side but was running blindly, instinctively, headlong toward the flames.

  “Come back!” he shouted frantically. “Don’t go in there! Officer! Stop him, somebody! Stop him!”

  But all he got were blank, impassive looks.

  And a heavy voice saying, “You crazy, man? That fuzz.”

  And another heavy voice saying, “We don’t stop no fuzz, man.”

  And a heavy, subdued, almost sullen chuckling, all around.

  “There he is!” Helen-Anne cried as the taxi neared the trade entrance of the Hilton. “Driver, let me out! Quickly!”

  And she thrust a dollar bill into his hand, yanked open the door, scrambled out, slammed it shut behind her and started hurrying toward the hotel.

  As she did so the tall young Negro walking ahead of her suddenly lifted his arms convulsively, a bright pink flower bloomed in the air where his head had been, his body spun around once and fell to the sidewalk.

  Helen-Anne, still running forward, her gray hair askew, her short legs churning, began to scream. Then the screaming stopped in a strange, choked gargle. And then the street became filled with the clatter of many feet, the clamor of many voices, and the sound America was coming to know too well, the heavy, insistent pulse of sirens, moaning in the hot, still air.

  FAMED STAR COLUMNIST SHOT TO DEATH AT HILTON, the Star cried in an extra half an hour later. NEGRO BUS BOY ALSO SLAIN: BURNING OF HIS HOME MAY FURNISH CLUE IN MYSTERY KILLINGS; POLICEMAN DIES IN FUTILE ATTEMPT TO SAVE WOMAN IN HOUSE.

  And in a small page in a box accompanying the main story, it noted:

  “Police believe a laser gun was used to kill Helen-Anne Carrew, Star columnist, and a bus boy at the Washington Hilton Hotel this afternoon.

  “Control of these silent long-range weapons has been under study by Congress ever since they began to find their way into private hands six years ago. Despite numerous hearings on Capitol Hill, no legislation to keep them out of the hands of unauthorized persons has been forthcoming.…”

  Outside, somewhere faint and far off, he heard a sound of sirens and shivered a little, though the kind of world sirens represented always seemed very far away from the hushed, luxurious chambers of Mr. Thomas Buckmaster Davis. Now and again, usually prompted by some occurrence in the swarming Negro areas north of the Capitol, out toward R Street and
beyond, an ambulance would race down past the Supreme Court, or a police car would race up. Occasionally when things were as quiet as they were this afternoon in the beautiful building, they could be heard, just faintly, inside: intimations of the world’s pain, mortality, love or hate, that always made the wispy little Justice pause for a second and feel uncomfortable before returning to his books, his papers, and his incessant telephoning.

  The world was getting to be a horrible place, Mr. Justice Davis thought with a sigh, and there didn’t seem to be much the Court could do about it, except lessen the bonds of legal restraint more and more and hope that the innate goodness of human nature would re-establish those curbs upon man’s baser instincts which he and his colleagues simply could not uphold on any reasonable Constitutional grounds.

  Now he wondered idly what drama lay behind the siren (actually, it was all very conventional and had happened a thousand times: a liquor store had been held up in Q Street and the proprietor, who had foolishly attempted resistance, had been shot in the stomach with a .45) and then put it briskly from his mind. Not his worry: he had troubles enough. Right now, he was expecting a visitor, and it was most important to give him the courage and the determination that Tommy Davis knew he needed on the eve of the climactic battle of his political career.

  Tommy had no doubt that he was the man to provide the deciding element of spiritual comfort and encouragement required by the occasion, and that was why he had suggested the appointment.

  Rather ironically, though keeping his feelings to himself because he knew Tommy carried great weight with the Post, Frankly Unctuous, The Greatest Publication That Absolutely Ever Was, Walter Dobius, the New York Times, and all the rest whose powerful support he had and needed—and because there was going to be a use for Tommy—Governor Jason had accepted.