Part 12 (1/2)

”You've had twenty years. To think where we'd go.”

”Well sure. Stop laughing. I used to think I could always take you to Saigon. Drink citron presse and watch the tennis. Scratch that. You want to go to the hospital?”

”Pretend we did go to Saigon. Pretend we did it all. Imagine it. It's all in the mind anyway.”

”Not entirely,” Jack Lovett said.

Inez looked at him, then away. The cameraman on the steps lit a cigarette and immediately flicked it across the lawn. He picked up his minicam and started toward the car. Inez picked up the lei and dropped it again. ”Are we going to the hospital or not,” she said finally.

Which was how Inez Victor and Jack Lovett happened to walk together into the third-floor intensive care unit at Queen's Medical Center when, as the older of the two homicide detectives put it, Janet's clock was already running.

”But I don't quite understand this,” Inez kept saying to the resident and the two homicide detectives. The homicide detectives were at the hospital only to get a statement from one of the nurses and they wanted no part of Inez's interrogation of the resident. ”You got a flat reading at six o'clock. Isn't that what you said?”

”Correct.”

”And you need three. Eight hours apart. Isn't that what you told me? This afternoon? About technical death?”

”Also correct.” The resident's face was flushed with irritation. ”At least eight hours apart.”

”Then why are you telling me you scheduled the second electroencephalogram for nine tomorrow morning?”

”At least eight hours apart. At least.”

”Never mind 'at least.' You could do it at two this morning.”

”That wouldn't be normal procedure.”

Inez looked at the homicide detectives.

The homicide detectives looked away.

Inez looked at Jack Lovett.

Jack Lovett shrugged.

”Do it at two,” Inez said. ”Or she goes someplace where they will do it at two.”

”Move the patient, you could confuse the cause of death.” The resident looked at the detectives for corroboration. ”Cloud it. Legally.”

”I don't give a f.u.c.k about the cause of death,” Inez said.

There was a silence.

”I'd say do it at two,” the older of the two homicide detectives said.

”I notice you're still getting what you want,” Jack Lovett said to Inez.

They did it at two and again at ten in the morning and each time it was flat but the chief neurologist, after consultation with the homicide detectives and the hospital lawyers, said that a fourth flat reading would make everyone more comfortable. A fourth flat reading would guarantee that removal of support could not be argued as cause of death. A fourth flat reading would be something everyone could live with.

”Everybody except Janet,” Inez said, but she said it only to Jack Lovett.

Eight hours later they did it again and again it was flat and at 7:40 P.M. on Thursday, March 27, Janet Christian Ziegler was p.r.o.nounced dead. During most of the almost twenty-four hours preceding this p.r.o.nouncement Inez had waited on a large sofa in an empty surgical waiting room. During much of this time Jack Lovett was with her. Of whatever Jack Lovett said to Inez during those almost twenty-four hours she could distinctly remember later only a story he told her about a woman who cooked for him in Saigon in 1970. This woman had tried, over a period of some months, to poison selected dinner guests with oleander leaves. She had minced the leaves into certain soup bowls, very fine, a chiffonade of hemotoxins. Although none of these guests died at least two, a Reuters correspondent and an AID a.n.a.lyst, fell ill, but the cook was not suspected until her son-in-law, who believed himself cuckolded by the woman's daughter, came to Jack Lovett with the story.

”What was the point,” Inez said.

”Whose point?”

”The cook's.” Inez was drinking a bottle of beer that Jack Lovett had brought to the hospital. ”What was the cook's motive?”

”Her motive.” Jack Lovett seemed not interested in this part of the story. ”Turned out she was just deluded. A strictly personal deal. Disappointing, actually. At first I thought I was onto something.”

Inez had finished the beer and studied Jack Lovett's face. She considered asking him what he had thought he was onto but decided against it. After this little incident with the cook he had given up on housekeeping, he said. After this little incident with the cook he had gone back to staying at the Duc. Whenever he had to be in Saigon.

”You liked it there,” Inez said. The beer had relaxed her and she was beginning to fall asleep, holding Jack Lovett's hand. ”You loved it. Didn't you.”

”Some days were better than others, I guess.” Jack Lovett let go of Inez's hand and laid his jacket over her bare legs. ”Oh sure,” he said then. ”It was kind of the place to be.”

Occasionally during that night and day d.i.c.k Ziegler came to the hospital, but on the whole he seemed relieved to leave the details of the watch to Inez. ”Janet doesn't even know we're here,” d.i.c.k Ziegler said each time he came to the hospital.

”I'm not here for Janet,” Inez said finally, but d.i.c.k Ziegler ignored her.

”Doesn't even know we're here,” he repeated.

Quite often during that night and day Billy Dillon came to the hospital. ”Naturally you're overwrought,” Billy Dillon said each time he came to the hospital. ”Which is why I'm not taking this seriously. Ask me what I think about what Inez is doing, I'd say no comment. She's overwrought.”

”Listen,” Billy Dillon said the last time he came to the hospital. ”We're picking up incoming on the King Crab flank. Harry takes the Warner's plane to Seattle to pick up Jessie for the funeral, Jessie informs Harry she doesn't go to funerals.”

Inez had looked at Billy Dillon.

”Well?” Billy Dillon said.

”Well what?”

”What should I tell Harry?”

”Tell him he should have advanced it better,” Inez Victor said.

13.

I SHOULD tell you something about Jessie Victor that very few people understood. Harry Victor for example never understood it. Inez understood it only dimly. Here it is: Jessie never thought of herself as a problem. She never considered her use of heroin an act of rebellion, or a way of life, or even a bad habit of particular remark; she considered it a consumer decision. Jessie Victor used heroin simply because she preferred heroin to coffee, aspirin, and cigarettes, as well as to movies, records, cosmetics, clothes, and lunch. She had been subjected repeatedly to the usual tests, and each battery showed her to be anxious, highly motivated, more, intelligent than Adlai, and not given to falsification. Perhaps because she lacked the bent for falsification she did not have a notable sense of humor. What she did have was a certain incandescent inscrutability, a kind of luminous gravity, and it was always startling to hear her dismiss someone, in that grave low voice that thrilled Inez as sharply when Jessie was eighteen as it had when Jessie was two, as ”an a.s.shole.” ”You a.s.shole” was what Jessie called Adlai, the night he and Harry Victor arrived in Seattle to pick her up for Janet's funeral and Jessie declined to go. Jessie did agree to have dinner with them, while the Warner Communications G-2 was being refueled, but dinner had gone badly.

”The crux of it is finding a way to transfer anti-war sentiment to a multiple-issue program,” Adlai had said at dinner. He was telling Harry Victor about an article he proposed to write for the op-ed page of the New York Times. ”It's something we've been tossing back and forth in Cambridge.”