Part 64 (1/2)

At the law firm, the infamous boxes are kept in a vault. Because the material has not been acknowledged or otherwise publicly recorded, they're vigilant about keeping it under lock and key. Each day we work, the enormous vault is opened and the vault minder takes the boxes off a shelf-puts them and our work computer and a.s.sorted printouts on a metal cart, which I push to my office along with a locked rolling file cabinet.

Ching Lan sits in my office and reads the rough drafts out loud. I mark them while she is reading. Her p.r.o.nunciation is awkward, but that prompts me to listen carefully, to edit judiciously. She transcribes my corrections and prints the pages, and we go around again. I enjoy the sound of her voice; it makes me work hard to find the meaning in the story. Ching Lan has enrolled in a copyediting course, which she enjoys. ”The marks are almost like writing in Chinese-almost.” We have thirteen stories and twenty-eight fragments of varying lengths, from three hundred fifty words to an eighteen-thousand-word ramble that I find brilliant but quasi-psychotic, or certainly under the influence of something. The subjects range from the pastoral (sniffing of the b.u.t.t of a melon to tell if it's ripe, and almost romantically lush descriptions of lightning storms sweeping across fields on summer nights) to elaborations on the value of a man's having a life of his own, apart from whatever life he has with his family, a private life that no one knows anything about, ”a place he can be himself without concern of disappointment or rejection.”

Every day, Ching Lan eats lunch with her parents in the deli. All morning they wait for her to come and restock the shelves beyond reach-she is the ladder. Not wanting to intrude, I stop going to the deli and start getting lunch from a place two blocks away, but I feel like a traitor and go back to the deli.

”We are good, clean place, we have letter 'A' from Board of Health,” Ching Lan's mother says. ”You get parasite if you eat somewhere else.”

”I didn't want to intrude on your family time.”

”You are part of our family,” she says, ushering me behind the counter to sit where the family sits, on their pickle barrels, eating food brought from home in colorful Tupperware containers. ”Pok ball?” she asks, lifting up a small round meatball with chopsticks.

”My sister works at dumpling house, she brings home leftovers,” Ching Lan says.

I eat the pok ball, translating only after swallowing: pork ball.

”Good boy. You eat turtle?” the mother asks.

”No,” I say.

”Not yet you don't. It is very good, like strong chicken. What about congee?”

”I never had it.”

”You would love-rice gruel like cream of wheat.”

I nod.

”Prawn?” she asks.

”Yes,” of course.

”Bok choy?”

”Frequently,” I say, if only to make conversation.

”My sister owns a restaurant in Los Angeles and my cousin has one in Westchester County-we are what you call foodies,” she says, putting more rice in my bowl.

After lunch, the mother slips me another Hershey bar-it has quickly become our tradition. ”Chocolate is keeping your spirits up,” she says.

On the way back to the firm, I stop at a Super Store for office supplies. I go up and down the rows, admiring the plenty. I find tape flags in fluorescent colors that I can use to notate Nixon's use of language and theme so that it remains consistent but not overly repet.i.tious or redundant.

Clutching my bag of goodies, like adult penny candy, I enter the elevator and push ”16.”

”Working hard?” a guy behind me asks. He's standing behind my left shoulder; I can't see him without turning around.

”You bet,” I say, trying to turn in his direction. I see only the brim of a baseball cap, a blue windbreaker, dark pants and shoes, and what I a.s.sume to be a nondescript man between fifty and seventy, white, unremarkable.

”I'll keep it brief,” he says, speaking without changing his tone. No one else in the elevator seems to be hearing him or is the least concerned.

”You really don't have a clue-you're like a love-struck kid. The whole thing goes deeper than you can imagine. For one, Chotiner had his fingers all over everything. And two, even if it was unconsummated, it was one h.e.l.l of a love affair between d.i.c.k and Rebozo. Three, it's common knowledge that Nixon was in Dallas the morning of the a.s.sa.s.sination, and so were Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. Isn't it a little too convenient that they were also the Watergate burglers-take a look at the hoboes, or Secret Service agents, on the gra.s.sy knoll. And Ferrie's d.a.m.ned library card was in Oswald's wallet!” He laughs, and one woman in the elevator turns to look. His voice lowers to a whisper. ”They were all in and out of Cuba, playing both sides-and the Mafia. Check out who was there and bingo-it's a triple play.” A pause. ”Did you know Jack Ruby worked for Nixon in 1947 under the name Jack Rubenstein? My point, buddy boy, is: you've got nothing, the big zippo.”

A sound involuntarily escapes me, a cross between extreme excitement and gagging.

”It's nothing to laugh at. Let me be perfectly clear,” he says, and his phrasing has a familiar ring. ”It wasn't one guy in particular, but a group of guys. No one's hands are clean. p.a.w.ns, we're all p.a.w.ns. There's no man that can't be bought and no man that can't be brought down. It was like a freak show.” He stops for a moment. ”Uncle Bebe bought your little Julie a house as a wedding gift. Do you think she registered for that at Tiffany's? I keep track of these things. I'm a history buff. The government used to be filled with guys like me, guys who think they know something, who are smart but not smart enough-sons of b.i.t.c.hes. Watergate was a domestic incident, 'a bizarre comedy of errors,' as Nixon called it, that got blown out of proportion when you look at the rest of it. As Nixon himself said, 'You open that scab and there's a h.e.l.l of a lot of things and we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.'” My man stops for a second, then starts again, this time doing the most uncanny imitation of Richard Nixon: ”'Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that ah, without going into the details...don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.'”

He stops, clears his throat. ”So how are you liking the stories?”

”I like them,” I say, forgetting for the moment that no one knows about the stories.

”Did you get to the one about the SOB?”

I nod.

”That one's all about me,” he says, winking. The elevator opens and he steps out. ”Double-check your homework, and good luck.”

I ride all the way up and then back down to the lobby and ask the guard at the front desk if he could show me the video loop from the elevator. I see the guy standing in the one blurry spot, as if he knew exactly where to be. All you can see is the brim of his baseball cap-you can't even tell that he's talking to me, except that I appear increasingly agitated and am looking around as if to see if anyone else is hearing what I'm hearing and what it means to them.

Is it some kind of test? I don't want to make anyone nervous, but, on the other hand, if it's a test from the inside, it would be smart to report it. I ask Wanda if she might come into my office. She comes as far as the doorway and then stands there while I explain about the man, the baseball cap, and so on.

”He stood behind you,” she says. ”Seemed to know exactly who you were, told you things you hadn't heard before.”

”Yes,” I say, excited we're on to something.

”Nothing on the surveillance video?”

”Just a blur,” I say.

Wanda nods. ”He's been here on and off over the years,” she says, unimpressed.

”Who is he? Like a crazy hanger-on?”

”Something like that,” she says. ”There used to be others, but there aren't too many left now-it's generational.”

I'm still concerned.

”The world is filled with people,” Wanda says.

I stand waiting to hear the rest-but Wanda says no more.

How many others? How much more is there to know? I get the sense that, once one begins to dig, the information stream is not only endless, but pa.s.sed under the table from administration to administration, as though there is some much larger playbook that only the President and his men are privy to. And clearly, once you take a look at that playbook, not only are you forever changed, but the twists and turns of party politics braid the cord of information and deal making so much that true change becomes impossible.

Who wrote the playbook? And when? Is anyone in charge? It is all such a gnarly web that at best one can only pick at the knots.

”Everything okay?” Ching Lan asks when I get back to my desk. ”You look discolored,” she says.

”Sorry?”

”Erased,” she says, ”very white, like paper.”

I nod. The man in the elevator was dropping a lot of little beads about things I didn't want to hear. The man he was talking about wasn't my Nixon, he wasn't Nixon as I wanted him to be. He wasn't the youthful RMN as a vice-presidential candidate, accused of using campaign funds for personal expenses, going on national television, and making sure the people knew that he was of modest means.