by Joan Didion
Inez smoothed another strand of tinsel and laid it in the box. The walls of the office were covered with charts showing the flow of refugees through the camp (or rather the flow of refugees into the camp, since many came but few left) and through an open door I could see an Indian doctor in the next room preparing to examine one of several small children. All of the children had bright rashes on their cheeks, and the little boy on the examining table, a child about four wearing an oversized sweatshirt printed OHIO WESLEYAN, intermittently cried and coughed, a harsh tubercular hack that cut through the sound of Inez’s voice.
The Alliance qua Alliance.
Add to that the predictable difficulties of mobilizing broad-based support in the absence of the war.
Add further the usual IRS attempts to reverse the Alliance’s tax-exempt status.
Add finally a definite perception that the idea of Harry Victor as once and future candidate had lost a certain momentum. Momentum was all in the perception of momentum. Any perception of momentum would naturally have suffered because of everything that happened.
I recall seizing on “everything that happened,” thinking to guide Inez away from the Alliance for Democratic Institutions, but Inez could not, that first afternoon, be deflected. When the momentum goes, she said, by then plucking the last broken bits of tinsel from the artificial needles, the money goes with it.
The child on the examining table let out a piercing wail.
The Indian doctor spoke sharply in French and withdrew a hypodermic syringe.
Inez never looked up, and it struck me that I had been watching a virtually impenetrable performance. It was possible to construe this performance as not quite attached, but it was equally possible to construe it as deliberate, a studied attempt to deflect any idea I might have that Inez Victor would ever talk about how she left Honolulu with Jack Lovett.
4
I AM resisting narrative here.
Two documents that apply.
I was given a copy of the first by Billy Dillon in August of 1975, not in Honolulu but in New York, during the several days I spent there and on Martha’s Vineyard talking to him and to Harry Victor.
UNIT ARRIVED AT LOCATION 7:32 AM 25 MARCH 1975. AT LOCATION BUT EXTERIOR TO RESIDENCE, OFFICERS NOTED AUTOMATIC GATE IN “OPEN” POSITION, AUTOMATIC SPRINKLERS IN OPERATION, AUTOMATIC POOL CLEANER IN OPERATION. OFFICERS NOTED TWO VEHICLES IN DRIVEWAY: ONE 1975 FORD LTD SEDAN (COLOR BLACK) BEARING HDMV PLATE “OYL-644” WITH US GOVERNMENT STICKER AND ONE 1974 MERCEDES 230-SL (COLOR LT. TAN) BEARING HDMV PLATE “JANET.”
OFFICERS ENTERED RESIDENCE VIA OPEN DOOR, NOTED NO EVIDENCE OF DISARRAY OR STRUGGLE, AND PROCEEDED ONTO LANAI, THEREBY LOCATING FEMALE VICTIM LATER IDENTIFIED AS JANET CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER LYING FACE-DOWN ON CARPET. FEMALE VICTIM WAS POSITIONED ON CARPET NEAR LAVA-ROCK WALL LEADING TO SHALLOW POOL IN WHICH OFFICERS OBSERVED ASSORTED PLANTINGS AND KOI-TYPE FISH. FEMALE VICTIM WAS CLOTHED IN LT. TAN SLACKS, WHITE BLOUSE, LT. TAN WIND-BREAKER TYPE JACKET, NO STOCKINGS AND LOAFER STYLE SHOES. A LEATHER SHOULDER STYLE PURSE POSITIONED ON LEDGE OF LAVA-ROCK POOL CONTAINED FEMALE VICTIM’S IDENTIFICATION, ASSORTED CREDIT CARDS, ASSORTED PERSONAL ITEMS, AND $94 CASH AND WAS APPARENTLY UNDISTURBED.
OFFICERS NOTED MALE VICTIM LATER IDENTIFIED AS WENDELL JUSTICE OMURA LYING ON BACK NEAR SOFA WITH APPARENT GUNSHOT WOUND UPPER ABDOMEN. MALE VICTIM WAS CLOTHED IN LT. TAN SLACKS, ALOHA TYPE SHIRT, COTTON SPORTS JACKET, WHITE SOCKS AND SNEAKER STYLE SHOES.
MALE VICTIM EXHIBITED NO PULSE RATE OR RESPIRATORY ACTIVITY.
FEMALE VICTIM EXHIBITED LOW PULSE RATE AND UNEVEN RESPIRATORY ACTIVITY.
AMBULANCE UNIT AND FIRE DEPARTMENT INHALATOR SQUAD ARRIVED CONCURRENTLY AT 7:56 AM, ALSO CONCURRENT WITH ARRIVAL OF MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA, 1173 21ST AVENUE, WHO IDENTIFIED SELF AS REGULAR PARTTIME HOUSEKEEPER AND STATED SHE LAST SAW FEMALE VICTIM PRECEDING DAY AT 1 PM WHEN FEMALE VICTIM APPEARED IN GOOD HEALTH AND SPIRITS. MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA STATED THAT SHE WAS FAMILIAR WITH MALE VICTIM ONLY AS SPEAKER AT RECENT NISEI DAY BANQUET HONORING ALL-OAHU HIGH-SCHOOL ATHLETES OF JAPANESE DESCENT INCLUDING INFORMANT’S SON DANIEL M. HAYAKAWA, SAME ADDRESS (NOT PRESENT AT LOCATION).
AMBULANCE CARRYING FEMALE VICTIM DISPATCHED TO QUEEN’S MEDICAL CENTER AT 8:04 AM.
APPARENT BLOODSTAINS REVEALED BY REMOVAL FEMALE VICTIM ALTERED SIGNIFICANTLY WHEN MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA ATTEMPTED TO APPLY COLD WATER TO CARPET. OFFICERS PERSUADED MRS. ROSE L. HAYAKAWA TO TERMINATE THIS ATTEMPT.
MALE VICTIM PRONOUNCED DEAD AT LOCATION AND RESUSCITATION ATTEMPT TERMINATED AFTER ARRIVAL DEPUTY MEDICAL EXAMINER FLOYD LIU, M.D., AT 8:25 AM. REMOVAL OF BODY PENDING ARRIVAL INVESTIGATING OFFICERS AND OTHER MEDICAL EXAMINERS AT APPROXIMATELY 9 AM.
COPY TO: CORONER
COPY TO: HOMICIDE.
I was shown the second document, a cable transmitted from Honolulu on October 2, 1975, by its recipient, Inez Victor, when I saw her that December in Kuala Lumpur.
VICTORY STOP THINKING OF YOU IN OUR HOUR OF TRIUMPH STOP (SIGNATURE) DWIGHT.
Despite the signature this cable had been sent, Inez said, not by Dwight Christian but by her father, Paul Christian, on the morning he was formally committed in Honolulu to a state facility for the care and treatment of the insane.
5
IT was Billy Dillon who told Inez.
In the kitchen of the house at Amagansett.
To which he had driven, two hours in the rain on the Long Island Expressway and another hour on the Montauk Highway, flooding in the tunnel first shot out of the barrel and then construction on the L.I.E., no picnic, no day at the races, directly after he took the call from Dick Ziegler.
Dick Ziegler had called the office and tried to reach Harry.
Dick Ziegler was not yet on the scene, Dick Ziegler had been on Guam for two days trying to run an environmental-impact report around the Agana-Mariana Planning Commission.
Janet was not dead.
It was important to remember that Janet was not dead. Janet had been gravely injured, yes, in fact Janet was on life support at Queen’s Medical Center, but Janet was not dead.
Wendell Omura was dead.
Inez must remember Wendell Omura, Inez would have met Wendell Omura in Washington, Wendell Omura was one of those Nisei who came out of the 442nd and went to law school on the G.I. Bill and spent the next twenty years cutting deals on a plane between Washington and his district. Silver Star. D.S.C. Real scrappy guy, had a triple bypass at Walter Reed a few years back, a week out of the hospital this spade tries to mug him, Omura decks the kid. The kind of guy who walks away from the Arno Line and a triple bypass, not to mention the spade, he probably didn’t anticipate buying the farm on Janet’s lanai.
Eating a danish.
Go for broke, see where it gets you.
The details were a little cloudy.
Don’t ask, number one, how Wendell Omura happens to be on Janet’s lanai.
Don’t ask, number two, how Paul Christian happens to be seen leaving Janet’s house with a .357 Magnum tucked in his beach roll.
The paper boy saw him.
The paper boy happened to recognize Paul Christian because Janet’s paper boy is also Paul Christian’s paper boy. Don’t ask how the paper boy happened to recognize the .357 Magnum, maybe the paper boy is also a merc. There we are. Paul Christian has definitely been placed on the scene, but nobody can locate Paul Christian.
Paul Christian was the cloudy part.
Paul Christian was a fucking typhoon, you ask Billy Dillon.
Inez remembered listening to all this without speaking.
“I left word in Florida for Harry to call as soon as he checks in,” Billy Dillon said. “Of course it’s on the wire, but Harry might not hear the radio.”
Inez lit a cigarette, and smoked it, leaning on the kitchen counter, looking out at the rain falling on the gray afternoon sea. Harry was on his way to Bal Harbour to speak at a Teamster meeting. Adlai was with Harry, earning credit for what the alternative college in Boston that had finally admitted him called an internship in
public affairs. Jessie, at this hour in Seattle, would be just punching in at King Crab’s Castle, punching in and putting on her apron and lining up the crab-cups-to-go, shredded lettuce, three fingers crab leg, King Crab’s Special Sauce and lemon wedge on the side. Inez knew Jessie’s exact routine at King Crab’s Castle because Inez had spent Christmas with Jessie in Seattle. Jessie had cut her hair, gained ten pounds, and seemed, on methadone, generally cheerful.
“I was kind of thinking about going somewhere and getting a job,” Jessie had said when Inez asked if she had given any thought to going back to school, possibly a class or two at NYU to start. “I understand there are some pretty cinchy jobs in Vietnam.”
Inez had stared at her.
Jessie’s information about the jobs in Vietnam was sketchy but she supposed that they involved “cooking for a construction crew, first aid, stuff like that.”
Inez had tried to think about how best to phrase an objection.
“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.
