Part 11 (2/2)

Inez Victor dancing on the St. Regis Roof.

Nonetheless.

I could still do Inez Victor's four remaining days in Honolulu step by step, could proceed from the living room of the house on Manoa Road into the dining room and tell you exactly what happened that first night in Honolulu when Inez and Billy Dillon and d.i.c.k Ziegler and Dwight and Ruthie Christian finally sat down to dinner.

I could give you Jack Lovett walking unannounced into the dining room, through the French doors that opened onto the swimming pool.

I could give you Inez looking up and seeing him there.

”G.o.dd.a.m.n photographers camped on the front lawn,” Dwight Christian would say. ”Jack. You know Inez. You know Janet's husband. d.i.c.k. You know Billy here?”

”We were both in Jakarta a few years back.” Jack Lovett would be speaking to Dwight Christian but looking at Inez. ”Inez was there. Inez was in Jakarta with Janet.”

”Inez was also in Jakarta with her husband.” Billy Dillon's voice would be pleasant. ”And her two children.”

”The reason the vultures are on the lawn is this,” Dwight Christian would say. ”Janet's not cutting it.”

”Don't talk about Janet 'not cutting it,' ” d.i.c.k Ziegler would say. ”Don't sit there eating chicken pot pie and talk about Janet 'not cutting it.' ”

”A change of subject,” Dwight Christian would say. ”For d.i.c.k. While I finish my chicken pot pie. Jack. What would you say if I told you Chriscorp was bidding a complete overhaul at Cam Ranh Bay?”

”I'd say Chriscorp must be bidding it for Ho Chi Minh.” Jack Lovett would still look only at Inez. ”How are you.”

Inez would say nothing, her eyes on Jack Lovett.

”Do you want to go somewhere,” Jack Lovett would say, his voice low and perfectly level.

A silence would fall over the table.

Inez would pick up her fork and immediately lay it down.

”Millie has dessert,” Ruthie Christian would say, faintly.

”Inez,” Billy Dillon would say.

Jack Lovett would look away from Inez and at Billy Dillon. ”Here it is,” he would say in the same low level voice. ”I don't have time to play it out.”

Well, there you are.

I could definitely do that.

I know the conventions and how to observe them, how to fill in the canvas I have already stretched; know how to tell you what he said and she said and know above all, since the heart of narrative is a certain calculated ellipsis, a tacit contract between writer and reader to surprise and be surprised, how not to tell you what you do not yet want to know. I appreciate the role played by specificity in this kind of narrative: not just the chicken pot pie and not just the weather either (I happen to like weather, but weather is easy), not just the way the clouds ma.s.sed on the Koolau Range the next morning and not just the clatter of the palms in the afternoon trades behind Janet's house (anyone can do palms in the afternoon trades) when Inez went to get the dress in which Janet was buried.

I mean more than weather.

I mean specificity of character, of milieu, of the apparently insignificant detail.

The fact that when Harry and Adlai Victor arrived in Honolulu on the morning of March 28, Good Friday morning, the morning Janet's body was delivered to the coroner for autopsy, they were traveling on the Warner Communications G-2. The frequent occasions over the long Easter weekend before Janet's funeral on which Adlai found opportunity to mention the Warner Communications G-2. The delicacy of reasoning behind the decision that Harry and Adlai, but not Inez, should call on Wendell Omura's widow. The bickering over the arrangements for Janet's funeral (d.i.c.k Ziegler did after all want the Lord as Janet's shepherd, if only because Dwight Christian did not), and the way in which Ruthie Christian treated the interval between Janet's death and Janet's funeral as a particularly bracing exercise in quarter-mastering. The little flare-up when Inez advised d.i.c.k Ziegler that he could not delegate to Ruthie the task of calling Chris and Timmy at school to tell them their mother was dead.

”Frankly, Inez, when it comes to handling kids, I don't consider you the last word,” d.i.c.k Ziegler said. ”Considering Jessie.”

”Never mind Jessie,” Inez said. ”Make the call.”

The little difficulty Sat.u.r.day morning when Chris and Timmy flew in from school and the airport dogs picked up marijuana in one of their duffels. The exact text of the letter Paul Christian drafted to the Advertiser about the ”outrage” of not being allowed to attend Janet's funeral. The exact location of the arcade in Waianae where Jack Lovett took Inez to meet the radar specialist who was said to have seen Jessie.

Jessie.

Jessie is the crazy eight in this narrative.

I plan to address Jessie presently, but I wanted to issue this warning first: like Jack Lovett and (as it turned out) Inez Victor, I no longer have time for the playing out.

Call that a travel advisory.

A narrative alert.

12.

THE first electroencephalogram to show the entirely flat line indicating that Janet had lost all measurable brain activity was completed shortly before six o'clock on Wednesday evening, March 26, not long after Inez and Billy Dillon arrived at the house on Manoa Road. This electroencephalogram was read by the chief neurologist on Janet's case at roughly the time Inez and Billy Dillon and d.i.c.k Ziegler and Dwight and Ruthie Christian sat down to the chicken pot pie. The neurologist notified the homicide detectives that the first flat reading had been obtained, called the house on Manoa Road in an effort to reach d.i.c.k Ziegler, got a busy signal, and left the hospital, leaving an order with the resident on duty in the unit to keep trying d.i.c.k Ziegler. Ten minutes later a felony knifing came up from emergency and the resident overlooked the order to call d.i.c.k Ziegler.

This poses one of those questions that have to do only with perceived motive: would it have significantly affected what happened had the call come from the hospital before Inez got up from the dinner table and walked through the living room and out the front door with Jack Lovett? I think not, but a call from the hospital could at least have been construed as the ”reason” Inez left the table.

A reason other than Jack Lovett.

A reason they could all pretend to accept.

As it was they could pretend only that Inez was overwrought. Ruthie Christian was the first to locate this note. ”She's just overwrought,” Ruthie Christian said, and Billy Dillon picked it up: ”Overwrought,” he repeated. ”Absolutely. Naturally. She's overwrought.”

As it was Inez just left.

”You could probably take off the lei,” Jack Lovett said when they were sitting in his car outside the house on Manoa Road. Most of the reporters on the lawn seemed to have gone. There had been a single cameraman left on the steps when Inez and Jack Lovett came out of the house and he had perfunctorily run some film and then retreated. Jack Lovett had twice turned the ignition on and twice turned it off.

Inez took the crushed lei from around her neck and dropped it on the seat between them.

”I don't know where I thought we'd go,” Jack Lovett said. ”Frankly.”

Inez looked at Jack Lovett and then she began to laugh.

”h.e.l.l, Inez. How was I to know you'd come?”

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