Democracy: A Novel Part 9

"Fruit salad," Dwight Christian said.

"That's hindsight," Ruthie Christian said.

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" Dwight Christian had stopped drinking martinis and lapsed into a profound irritability. "Of course it's hindsight. Jesus Christ. 'Hindsight.' "

"Janet loves you, Inez," d.i.c.k Ziegler said. "Don't ever forget that. Janet loves you."

8.

DURING the time I spent talking to Inez Victor in Kuala Lumpur she returned again and again to that first day in Honolulu. This account was not sequential. For example she told me initially, perhaps because I had told her what Billy Dillon said about the crackers, about talking to Dwight and Ruthie Christian and to d.i.c.k Ziegler, but it had been late in the day when she talked to Dwight and Ruthie Christian and to d.i.c.k Ziegler.

First there had been the hospital.

She and Billy Dillon had gone directly from the airport to the hospital but Janet was being prepared for an emergency procedure to drain fluid from her brain and Inez had been able to see her only through the gla.s.s window of the intensive care unit.

They had gone then to the jail.

"I suppose Dwight'll be breaking out the champagne tonight," Paul Christian had said in the lawyers' room at the jail.

Inez had looked at Billy Dillon. "Why," she said finally.

"You know." Paul Christian smiled. He seemed relaxed, even buoyant, tilting back his wooden chair and propping his bare heels on the Formica table in the lawyers' room. His pants were rolled above his tanned ankles. His blue prison s.h.i.+rt was knotted jauntily at the waist. "You'll be there. I'm here. You can celebrate. Why not."

"Don't."

"Don't what? Actually I'm glad you're here." Paul Christian was still smiling. "I've been wondering what happened to Leilani Thayer's koa settee."

Inez considered this. "I have it in Amagansett," she said finally. "About Janet-"

"Strange, I didn't notice it when I visited you."

"You visited me in New York. The settee is in Amagansett. Daddy-"

"Not that I saw much of your apartment. The way I was rushed off to that so-called party."

Inez closed her eyes. Paul Christian had stopped in New York without notice in 1972, on his way back to Honolulu with someone he had met on Sardinia, an actor who introduced himself only as "Mark." I can't fathom what you were thinking, Paul Christian had written later to Inez, when I brought a good friend to visit you and instead of welcoming the opportunity to know him better you dragged me off (altogether ignoring Mark's offer to do a paella, by the way, which believe me did not go unremarked upon) to what was undoubtedly the worst party I've ever been to where n.o.body made the slightest effort to communicate whatsoever ...

"Actually that wasn't a party," Inez heard herself saying.

"Inez," Billy Dillon said. "Wrong train."

"Not by any standard of mine," Paul Christian said. "No. It was certainly not a party."

"It wasn't meant to be. It was a fundraiser. You remember, Harry spoke."

"I do remember. I listened. Mr.-is it Diller? Dillman?"

"Dillon," Billy Dillon said. "On Track Two."

"Mr. Dillman here will testify to the fact that I listened. When your husband spoke. I also remember that not a soul I spoke to had any opinion whatsoever about what your husband said."

"You were talking to the Secret Service."

"Whoever. They all wore brown shoes. I'm surprised you have Leilani's settee. Since you never really knew her."

Billy Dillon looked at Inez. "Pa.s.s."

"Everyone called her 'Kanaka' when we were at Cal," Paul Christian said. "Kanaka Thayer."

Inez said nothing.

"She was a Pi Phi."

Inez said nothing.

"Leilani and I were like brother and sister. Parties night and day. Leilani singing scat. I was meant to marry her. Not your mother." He hummed a few bars of "The Darktown Strutters' Ball," then broke off. "I was considered something of a catch, believe it or not. Ironic, isn't it?"

Inez unfastened her watch and examined the face.

"My life might have been very different. If I'd married Leilani Thayer."

Inez corrected her watch from New York to Honolulu time.

"That settee always reminded me."

"I want you to have it," Inez said carefully.

"That's very generous of you, but no. No, thank you."

"I could have it s.h.i.+pped down."

"Of course you 'could.' I know you 'could.' That's hardly the point, you 'could,' is it?"

Inez waited.

"I'm through with all that," Paul Christian said.

Billy Dillon opened his briefcase. "You mean because you're here."

"That whole life," Paul Christian said. "The mission f.u.c.king children and their pathetic little sticks of bad furniture. Those mean little screens they squabble over. That precious settee you're so proud of. That's all bulls.h.i.+t, really. Third-rate. Pathetic. If you want to know the truth."

Billy Dillon took a legal pad from his briefcase. "I wonder if we could run through a few specifics here. Just a few details that might help establish-"

"And if you don't know what this did to me, Inez, making me beg for that settee-"

"-Establish a chronology-"

"-Humiliating me when I'm down-"

"-Times, movements-"

"-Then I'm sorry, Inez, I don't care to discuss it."

During the next half hour Billy Dillon had managed to elicit the following information. Some time between 6:45 and 7:10 the previous morning, from a position midway between the koi pool and the exterior door on Janet's lanai, Paul Christian had fired five rounds from the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum he was carrying in his beach roll. He had then replaced the Magnum in the beach roll and made one call, not identifying himself, giving the police emergency operator Janet's address.

He had been aware that Wendell Omura was on the floor, yes.

He had also been aware that Janet was on the floor.

Yes.

It would be quite impossible for either Inez or Mr. Dillman to understand how he felt about it.

When he left Janet's house he went not to the borrowed house in which he had been living but directly downtown to the YMCA. He had swum fifty laps in the YMCA pool, thirty backstroke and twenty Australian crawl.

"Be sure you put down 'crawl,' " he said. "I believe they call it 'freestyle' now but I'm sorry, I don't."

" 'Crawl,' " Billy Dillon said. "Yes."

After swimming Paul Christian had breakfasted on tea and yoghurt in the YMCA cafeteria. There had been "a little incident" with the cas.h.i.+er.

"What kind of incident," Billy Dillon said.

"Somebody says 'have a nice day' to me, I always say 'sorry, I've made other plans,' that usually puts them in their place, but not this fellow. 'You're quite a comedian,' this fellow says. Well, I just looked at him."

"That was the incident," Billy Dillon said.

"Someone speaks impertinently, you're better off not answering."

"I see," Billy Dillon said.

Paul Christian had gone then to his room, and spent the rest of the day packing the few belongings he kept there. He attached to each box a list of its contents. He made a master list indicating the disposition of each box. He wrote several letters, including one to Janet in which he explained that he "stood by his actions," and, early that evening, just before calling the police and identifying himself, left these letters and instructions for their delivery with the night clerk downstairs. There had been "a little incident" with the night clerk.

"He spoke impertinently," Billy Dillon said.

"Completely out of line. As were the police."

"The police were out of line."

"They treated me like a common criminal."

"Which you're not."

"Which I most a.s.suredly am not. I told them. Just what I told Janet. I told them I stood by my actions."

"You told the police you stood by your actions."

"Absolutely."

"Just as you told Janet."

"Exactly." Paul Christian looked at Inez. "You're being very quiet."

Inez said nothing.

"Am I to interpret your silence as disapproval?"

Inez said nothing.

"Now that I'm jailed like a common criminal you're going to administer the coup de grace? Step on me?" Paul Christian turned back to Billy Dillon. "Janet and I have always been close. Not this one."

There was a silence.

"You're going to miss Janet," Billy Dillon said.

Paul Christian looked at Inez again. "I should have known you'd be down for the celebration," he said.

After Paul Christian was taken from the room Inez lit a cigarette and put it out before either she or Billy Dillon spoke. Billy Dillon was making notes on his legal pad and did not look up. "How about it," he said finally.

"Quite frankly I don't like crazy people. They don't interest me."

"That's definitely one approach, Inez." Billy Dillon put the legal pad into his briefcase and closed it. "Forthright. Hard-edge. No fuzzy stuff. But I think the note we want to hit today is a little further toward the more-in-sorrow end of the scale. Your father is 'a sick man.' He has 'an illness like any other.' He 'needs treatment.' "

"He needs to be put away."

"That's what we're calling 'treatment,' Inez. We're calling it 'treatment' when we talk to the homicide guys and we're calling it 'treatment' when we talk to the shrinks and we're calling it 'treatment' when we talk to Frank Tawagata."

"I don't even know Frank Tawagata."

"You don't know the homicide guys, either, Inez. Just pretend we're spending the rest of the day on patrol. I'm on point." Billy Dillon looked at Inez. "You all right?"

"Yes."

"Then trot out the smile and move easily through the cabin, babe, OK?"

9.