Democracy (11 page)

“I got the idea from this guy I know who works for Boeing, he hangs out at the Castle, you don’t know him.”

Inez had said in as neutral a voice as she could manage that she did not think Vietnam a good place to look for a job.

Jessie had shrugged.

“How’s the junkie,” Adlai had said when Inez walked back into the apartment on Central Park West a few days after Christmas.

“That’s unnecessary,” Harry had said.

Inez had not mentioned the jobs in Vietnam to either Harry or Adlai.

“Dick calls, he’s still on Guam,” Billy Dillon said. He had found a chicken leg in the refrigerator and was eating it. “He says he ‘thinks’ he can get a flight up to Honolulu tonight. I say what’s to ‘think’ about, he says Air Micronesia’s on strike and Pan Am and TW are booked but he’s ‘working on’ a reservation. He’s ‘working on’ a fucking reservation. A major operator, your brother-in-law. I said Dick, get your ass over to Anderson, the last I heard the Strategic Air Command still had a route to Honolulu. ‘What do I say,’ Dick says. ‘Tell them your father-in-law offed a congressman.’ ‘Wait a minute, fella,’ Dick says. ‘Not so speedy.’ He says, get this, direct quote, ‘there’s considerable feeling we can contain this to an accident.’ ”

Inez said nothing.

“It’s Snow White and the Seven Loons down there. ‘Contain this to an accident.’ ‘Considerable feeling.’ Where’s this ‘considerable feeling’ he’s talking about? On Guam? I try to tell him, ‘Dick, no go,’ and Dick says ‘why.’ ‘Why,’ he says. A member of the Congress has been killed, Dick’s own wife has been shot, his father-in-law’s been fingered, his father-in-law who is also lest we forget the father-in-law of somebody who ran for president, and Dick’s talking ‘containment.’ ‘Dick,’ I said, ‘take it on faith, this one’s a hang-out.’ ”

Inez said nothing. She had located a telephone number chalked on the blackboard above the telephone and begun to dial it.

“We’re on the midnight Pan Am out of Kennedy. There’s an hour on the ground at LAX which puts us down around dawn in Honolulu. I told Dick we wouldn’t—”

Billy Dillon broke off. He was watching Inez dial.

“Inez,” he said finally. “I can’t help noticing you’re dialing Seattle. I sincerely hope you’re not calling Jessie. Just yet.”

“Of course I am. I want to tell her.”

“You don’t think we’ve got enough loose balls on the table already? You don’t think Jessie could wait until we line up at least one shot?”

“She’ll read about it.”

“Not unless it makes
Tiger Beat.
”

“Don’t say that.
Hello?
” Inez’s voice was suddenly bright. “This is Inez Victor. Jessica Victor’s mother. Jessie’s mom, yes. I’m calling from New York. Amagansett, actually—”

“Oh good,” Billy Dillon said. “Doing fine. Amagansett to King Crab.”

“Jessie? Darling? Can you hear me? No, it’s a little gray. Raining, actually. Listen. I—”

Inez suddenly thrust the receiver toward Billy Dillon.

“Never open with the weather,” Billy Dillon said as he took the receiver. “Jessie? Jessie honey? Uncle William here. Your mother and I are flying down to Honolulu tonight, we wanted to put you in the picture, you got a minute? Well just tell the crab cups to stand easy, Jess, OK?”

“Oh shit,” Billy Dillon said on the telephone in the Pan American lounge at the Los Angeles airport, when Dick Ziegler told him that Paul Christian had called the police from the Honolulu YMCA and demanded that they come get him. “Oh Jesus fucking Christ shit, I better let Harry know.” By that time Harry Victor had already spoken to the Teamsters in Bal Harbour and was on his way to a breakfast meeting in Houston. Billy Dillon had hung up on Dick Ziegler and tried three numbers in Florida and five in Texas but Harry was somewhere in between and there was no time to wait because the flight was re-boarding. “Oh shit,” Billy Dillon kept saying all the way down the Pacific, laying out hand after hand of solitaire in the empty lounge upstairs. Inez lay on the curved banquette and watched him. Inez had watched Billy Dillon playing solitaire on a lot of planes. “Why not trot out the smile and move easily through the cabin,” he would say at some point in each flight, and the next day Inez would appear that way in the clips, the candidate’s wife, “moving easily through the cabin,” “deflecting questions with a smile.”

“I have to admit I wasn’t factoring in your father,” Billy Dillon said now. “I knew he was a nutty, but I thought he was a nutty strictly on his own case. In fact I thought he was still looking for himself in Tangier. Or Sardinia. Or wherever the fuck he was when he used to fire off the letters to
Time
demanding Harry’s impeachment.”

“Tunis,” Inez said. “He was in Tunis. He moved back to Honolulu last year. A mystic told him that Janet needed him. I told you. Listen. Do you remember before the Illinois primary when you and Harry and I were taken through the Cook County morgue?”

“Twenty-eight appearances in two days in Chicago and those clowns on advance commit us to a shake-hands with the coroner, very definitely I remember. Some metaphor. What about it.”

“There was a noise in the autopsy room like an electric saw.”

“Right.”

“What was it?”

“It was an electric saw.” Billy Dillon shuffled and cut the cards. “Don’t dwell on it.”

Inez said nothing.

“Don’t anticipate. This one isn’t going to improve, you try to look down the line. Think more like Jessie for once. I tell Jessie Janet’s been shot, Janet’s in a coma, we’re not too sure what’s going to happen, you know what Jessie says? Jessie says ‘I guess whatever happens it’s in her karma.’ ”

Inez said nothing.

“In … her … karma.” Billy Dillon laid out another hand of solitaire. “That’s the consensus from King Crab. Hey. Inez. Don’t cry. Get some sleep.”

“Watch the booze,” Billy Dillon said about three A.M., and, a little later, to the stewardess who came upstairs and sat down beside him, “I’m only going to say this once, sweetheart, we don’t want company.” When first light came and the plane started its descent Billy Dillon reached across the table and took Inez’s hand and held it. Inez had told Billy Dillon in Amagansett that there was no need for anyone to fly down with her but flying down with Inez was for Billy Dillon a reflex, part of managing a situation for Harry, and he held Inez’s hand all the way to touchdown, which occurred at 5:37 A.M. Hawaiian Standard Time, March 26, 1975, on a runway swept by soft warm rain.

6

I
WAS
trained to distrust other people’s versions, but we go with what we have.

We triangulate the coverage.

Handicap for bias.

Figure in leanings, predilections, the special circumstances which change the spectrum in which any given observer will see a situation.

Consider what filter is on the lens. So to speak. What follows is essentially through Billy Dillon’s filter.

“This is a bitch,” Billy Dillon remembered Dick Ziegler saying over and over. Dick Ziegler was still wearing the wrinkled cotton suit in which he had flown in from Guam and he was sitting on the floor in Dwight and Ruthie Christian’s living room spreading shrimp paste on a cracker, covering the entire surface, beveling the edges.

Billy Dillon remembered the cracker particularly.

Billy Dillon could not recall ever before seeing a cracker given this level of attention.

“A real bitch. This whole deal. She was perfectly fine when I left for Guam.”

“Why wouldn’t she have been,” Inez said.

Dick Ziegler did not look up. “She was going up to San Francisco Friday. To see the boys. Chris and Timmy were coming up from school, she had it all planned.”

“I mean it’s not a lingering illness,” Inez said. “Getting shot.”

“Inez,” Dwight Christian said. “See if this doesn’t beat any martini you get in New York.”

“You don’t exhibit symptoms,” Inez said.

“Inez,” Billy Dillon said.

“I add one drop of glycerine,” Dwight Christian said. “Old Oriental trick.”

“She’d already made a dinner reservation,” Dick Ziegler said. “For the three of them. At Trader’s.”

“You don’t lose your appetite either,” Inez said.

“Inez,” Billy Dillon repeated.

“I heard you the first time,” Inez said.

“What’s the trouble here,” Dick Ziegler said.

“About Wendell Omura,” Inez said.

“Ruthie’s on top of that.” Dwight Christian seemed to have slipped into an executive mode. “Flowers to the undertaker. Something to the house. Deepest condolences. Tragic accident, distinguished service. Et cetera. Ruthie?”

“Millie’s doing her crab thing.” Ruthie began spreading crackers with the shrimp paste. “To send to the house.”

“That’s not just what I meant,” Inez said.

“I hardly knew the guy, frankly,” Dick Ziegler said. “On a personal basis.”

“Somebody must have known him,” Inez said. “On a personal basis.”

Dwight Christian cleared his throat. “Adlai still a big Mets fan, Inez?”

Inez looked at Billy Dillon.

Billy Dillon stood up. “I think what Inez means—”

“Jessie still so horse crazy?” Ruthie Christian said.

“Horse crazy,” Billy Dillon repeated. “Yes. She is. You could say that. Now. If I read Inez correctly—amend this if I’m off base, Inez—Inez is still just a little unclear about—”

Billy Dillon trailed off.

Now Ruthie Christian was arranging the spread crackers to resemble a chrysanthemum.

“This is a delicate area,” Billy Dillon said finally.

Inez put down her glass. “Inez is still just a little unclear about what Wendell Omura was doing on Janet and Dick’s lanai at seven in the morning,” she said. “Number one. Number two—”

“Tell Jessie we’ve got a new Arabian at the ranch,” Dwight Christian said. “Pereira blue mare, dynamite.”

“—Two, Inez is still just a little unclear about what Daddy was doing on Janet and Dick’s lanai with a Magnum.”

“Your father wasn’t seen on the lanai,” Dick Ziegler said. “He was seen leaving the house. Let’s keep our facts straight.”

“Dick,” Inez said. “He
said
he was on the lanai. He
said
he fired the Magnum. You know that.”

There was a silence.

“You should get Inez to show you the ranch, Billy.” Ruthie Christian did not look up. “Ask Millie to pack you a lunch, make a day of it.”

“Number three,” Inez said, “although less crucial, Inez is still just a little unclear about what Daddy was doing at the YMCA.”

“If you drove around by the windward side you could see Dick’s new project,” Ruthie Christian said. “Sea Ranch? Sea Mountain? Whatever he calls it.”

“He calls it Sea Meadow,” Dwight Christian said. “Which suggests its drawback.”

“Let’s not get started on that,” Dick Ziegler said.

“Goddamn swamp, as it stands.”

“So was downtown Honolulu, Dwight. As it stood.”

“Sea Meadow. I call that real truth-in-labeling. Good grazing for shrimp.”

“Prime acreage, Dwight. As you know.”

“Prime swamp. Excuse me.
Sacred
prime swamp. Turns out Dick’s bought himself an old kahuna burial ground. Strictly
kapu
to developers.”

“
Kapu
my ass.
Kapu
only after you started playing footsie with Wendell Omura.”

“Speaking of Wendell Omura,” Inez said.

“If you went around the windward side you could also stop at Lanikai.” Ruthie Christian seemed oblivious, intent on her cracker chrysanthemum. “Give Billy a taste of how we really live down here.”

“I think he’s getting one now,” Inez said.

Dwight Christian extracted the lemon peel from his martini and studied it.

Dick Ziegler gazed at the ceiling.

“Let’s start by stipulating that Daddy was on the lanai,” Inez said.

“Inez,” Dwight Christian said. “I have thirty-two lawyers on salary. In house. If I wanted to hear somebody talk like a lawyer, I could call one up, ask him over. Give him a drink. Speaking of which—”

Dwight Christian held out his glass.

“Dwight’s point as I see it is this,” Ruthie Christian said. She filled Dwight Christian’s glass from the shaker on the table, raised it to her lips and made a moue of distaste. “Why air family linen?”

“Exactly,” Dwight Christian said. “Why accentuate the goddamn negative?”

“
Kapu
my ass,” Dick Ziegler said.

Since Billy Dillon’s filter tends to the comic his memory may be broad. What he said some months later about this first evening in Honolulu was that it had given him a “new angle” on the crisis-management techniques of the American business class. “They do it with crackers,” he said. “Old Occidental trick. All the sharks know it.” In his original account of that evening and of the four days that followed Billy Dillon failed to mention Jack Lovett, which was his own trick.

7

I
ALSO
have Inez’s account.

Inez’s account does not exactly conflict with Billy Dillon’s account but neither does it exactly coincide. Inez’s version of that first evening in Honolulu has less to do with those members of her family who were present than with those who were notably not.

Less to do with Dick Ziegler, say, than with Janet.

Less to do with Dwight and Ruthie Christian than with Paul Christian, and even Carol.

In Inez’s version for example she at least got it straight about Paul Christian’s room at the YMCA.

The room at the YMCA should have been an early warning, even Dick Ziegler and Dwight Christian could agree on that.

Surely one of them had told Inez before about her father’s room at the YMCA.

His famous single room at the Y.

Paul Christian had taken this room when he came back from Tunis. He had never to anyone’s knowledge spent an actual night there but he frequently mentioned it. “Back to my single room at the Y,” he would say as he left the dinner table at Dwight and Ruthie’s or at Dick and Janet’s or at one or another house in Honolulu, and at least one or two of the other guests would rise, predictably, with urgent offers: a gate cottage here, a separate entrance there, the beach shack, the children’s wing, absurd to leave it empty. Open the place up, give it some use. Doing us the favor, really. By way of assent Paul Christian would shrug and turn up his palms. “I’m afraid everyone knows my position,” he would murmur, yielding.