The Last Thing He Wanted (10 page)

Elena never got up at all.

Elena stayed seated, idly picking apart a table decoration to remove the miniature Oscar at its center, oblivious to winners and losers alike, oblivious even to the busboys changing the tablecloth in front of her. Only when I sat down across the table did she even look up.

“I promised Catherine,” she said about the miniature Oscar.

What she said next that Academy Award night was something I interpreted at the time to mean only that she was tired of the event’s structural festivity, that she had been dressed up in rhinestones in broad daylight since four in the afternoon and sitting at this table since five and now she wanted to go home.

I was wrong about what she said next.

As I would be wrong later to wonder how she could so readily assimilate the logic of walking into a life not her own and living it.

What she said next that Academy Award night was this: “I can’t fake this anymore.”

Suggesting that she had assimilated that logic a long time before.

5

“S
omebody’s going to let you know the move they want you to make,” Barry Sedlow had said the last time he called her in San José.

“When,” she had said.

“By the way. I saw your dad. He says hi. I’m keeping him in the picture.”

Saying “hi” was not in her father’s vocabulary but she let this go. “I asked when.”

“Just stay put.”

In the six days since her arrival in San José she had left the room at the Colonial only twice, once to buy a toothbrush and a tin of aspirin, the second time to buy a T-shirt and cotton pants so that she could wash the black silk shift. She had given the maid American dollars to bring back sandwiches, coffee, once in a while a Big Mac from the McDonald’s across from the bus station.

“That’s what you told me the night I got here. I’ve
been
staying put. I need to know when.”

“Hard to say. Maybe tonight.” There had been a silence. “They may want you to take payment in another venue. Who knows.”

“Where.”

“They’ll let you know where.”

An hour later the envelope containing the passport and plane ticket had begun to appear, emerging at such barely perceptible speed that she was finally forced to breathe, under the locked door of her room at the Colonial.

She did not know why she had happened to look at the door at the very moment the envelope began to appear.

There had been no giveaway sound, no rustle of paper on carpet, no fumbling in the corridor.

The envelope had been clear of the door and lying motionless inside the room for a full five minutes before, still frozen, she moved to approach it. The ticket bearing the name Elise Meyer had been written by American Airlines in Miami on June 30 1984. The passport bearing the name Elise Meyer had been issued on June 30 1984 at the United States Passport Agency in Miami.

In the photograph affixed to this passport she was smiling.

In the photograph affixed to her own passport she was not.

She could not compare the two because her own passport was downstairs in the hotel safe, but she was quite certain that the photographs were otherwise similar.

She studied the photograph on the passport for some time before she sorted out how it could happen to be otherwise similar to the photograph on her own passport. It could happen to be otherwise similar to the photograph on her own passport because it had been taken at the same time, not long after she got to
Washington, in a passport-photo place across from the paper. She had asked for extra Polaroids to use for visas. At some point recently on this campaign (whenever it was that the Secret Service had come on and started demanding photos for new credentials) she had stuck the five or six remaining prints in a pocket of her computer bag.

Why wouldn’t she have.

Of course she did.

Of course her computer bag was in a closet at the house in Sweetwater.

By the way. I saw your dad. He says hi. I’m keeping him in the picture.

6

O
f course Dick McMahon was by then dead. Of course he had died under circumstances that would not appear in the least out of order: the notification to the nursing agency at noon on June 27 that Mr. McMahon’s night shift would no longer be required; the predictable midnight emergency twelve hours later; the fortuitous and virtually simultaneous arrival at the house in Sweetwater of the very attentive young doctor; the transfer in the early morning hours of June 28 to the two-bed room at the Clearview Convalescent Lodge in South Kendall; the flurry of visits over the next thirty-six hours from the very attentive young doctor and then the certification of the death.

It would not be unusual at this facility to see a degree of agitation in a new admission.

Nor would it be unusual, given the extreme agitation of this new admission, if a decision were made to increase sedation.

Nor would it be unusual, given the continuing attempts of this extremely agitated new admission to initiate contact with the patient in the other bed, to effect the temporary transfer of the patient in the other bed
to a more comfortable gurney in the staff smoking lounge.

Nor would it be unusual if such an extremely agitated and increasingly ill new admission were, the best efforts of his very attentive young doctor notwithstanding, to just go. “Just going” was how dying was characterized at the Clearview Convalescent Lodge, by both patients and staff. He’s just going. He just went.

Nor would there be need for an autopsy, because whatever happened would be certified as having happened in a licensed care facility under the care of a licensed physician.

There would be nothing out of order about the certification.

Without question Dick McMahon would be gone by the time he was certified dead.

Which was, according to the records of the Clearview Convalescent Lodge in South Kendall, at 1:23 a.m. on the morning of June 30. Since certification occurred after midnight the bill submitted for reimbursement under Medicare A was for three full nights, June 28, 29 and 30.
Policyholder deceased 171.4
was the notation placed on the Medicare A billing in the space provided for Full Description of Condition at Discharge Including Diagnostic Code.

McMAHON, Richard Allen: age 74, died under care of physician June 30
,
1984, at Clearview Convalescent Lodge, South Kendall. No services are scheduled.

So read the agate-type notice appearing in the vital statistics column, which was compiled daily to include those deaths and births and marriages entered into the
previous day’s public record, of the July 2 1984 edition of the Miami
Herald.

It could have been established, by anyone who cared to check the nursing agency’s file on Mr. McMahon, that the June 27 call ordering the cancellation of Mr. McMahon’s night shift had been placed by a woman identifying herself as Mr. McMahon’s daughter.

It would remain unestablished who had placed the midnight call to the very attentive young doctor.

Because no one asked.

Because the single person who might have asked had not yet had the opportunity to read the agate-type notice appearing in the vital statistics column of the July 2 1984 edition of the Miami
Herald.

Because the single person who might have asked did not yet know that her father was dead.

By the way. I wouldn’t call your dad. I’m keeping him in the picture about where you are and what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t call him.

Because it wouldn’t be smart.

7

A
t the time she left San José she did not yet know that her father was dead but there were certain things she did already know. Some of what she already knew at the time she left San José she had learned before she ever got to Costa Rica, had known in fact since the afternoon the sky went dark and the lightning forked on the horizon outside Dick McMahon’s room at Jackson Memorial and he began to tell her who it was he had to see and what it was he had to do. Some of what she already knew she had learned the day she brought him home from Jackson Memorial to the house in Sweetwater and managed to deflect his intention to drive down to where the
Kitty Rex
was berthed and Barry Sedlow was waiting for him. Some of what she already knew she believed to be true and some of what she already knew she believed to be delusion, but since this was a business in which truth and delusion appeared equally doubtful she was left to proceed as if even the most apparently straightforward piece of information could at any time explode.

Any piece of information was a potential fragmentation mine.

Fragmentation mines came immediately to mind because of one of the things she already knew.

This was one of the things she already knew: the shipment on the L-100 that left Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at one-thirty on the morning of June 26 was composed exclusively of fragmentation mines, three hundred and twenty-four pallets, each pallet loaded with twelve crates, each crate containing between ten and two hundred mines depending upon their type and size. Some of these mines were antitank and some antipersonnel. There were the forty-seven-inch L-9 antitanks made by British Aerospace and there were the thirteen-inch PT-MI-BA III antitanks made by the Czechs. There were the POMZ-2 antipersonnels and there were the Chinese Type 72A antipersonnels and there were the Italian Valmara 69 antipersonnels.

69s.

Epperson had floated a figure of three dollars per for 69s and now he was claiming the market had dropped to two per.

When the pallets of 69s had finally been unloaded on the runway that morning she had been handed a hammer by the man with the shaved head and cutoff jeans and told to open a crate so that he could verify the merchandise.

Open it yourself, she had said, offering him back the hammer.

It doesn’t work that way, he had said, not taking the hammer.

She had hesitated.

He had unknotted a T-shirt from his belt and pulled it over his bare chest. The T-shirt was printed with an American flag and the legend
THESE COLORS DON’T RUN.

I got nowhere particular to go, he had said, so it’s your call.

She had pried open the crate and indicated the contents.

He had extracted one of the small plastic devices, examined it, walked away and placed it on the ground halfway between Elena and the concrete structure. When he returned to Elena he was singing tunelessly, snatches of the theme from
Bonanza.

He had moved back, and motioned her to do the same.

Then he had aimed a remote at the plastic device and whistled.

When she saw the dog burst from the open door of the concrete structure she had closed her eyes. The explosion had occurred between
We got a right to pick a little fight
and
Bo-nan-za.
The silence that followed was broken only by the long diminishing shriek of the dog.

“Guaranteed sixty-foot-diameter kill zone,” the man who was on his way from Angola to Tulsa had said then.

Here was the second thing she already knew: this June 26 shipment was not the first such shipment her father had arranged. He had been arranging such shipments all through the spring and into the summer of 1984, a minimum of two and usually three or four a month, C-123s, Convair 440s, L-100s, whatever they sent up to be filled, rusty big bellies sitting on the back runways at Lauderdale-Hollywood and West
Palm and Opa-Locka and MIA waiting to be loaded with AK-47s, M-16s, MAC-10s, C-4, whatever was on the street, whatever was out there, whatever Dick McMahon could still promote on the strength of his connections, his contacts, his fifty years of doing a little business in Miami and in Houston and in Las Vegas and in Phoenix and in the piney woods of Alabama and Georgia.

These had not been easy shipments to assemble.

He had put these shipments together on credit, on goodwill, on a shared drink here and a promise there and a tale told at the Miami Springs Holiday Inn at two in the morning, on the shared yearning among what he called “these fellows I know for a long time” for one last score.

He had called in all his markers.

He had put himself on the line, spread paper all over the Southeast, thrown the dice just this one last time, one last bet on the million-dollar payday.

The million-dollar payday that was due to come with the delivery of the June 26 shipment.

The million-dollar payday that was scheduled to occur on the runway in Costa Rica where the June 26 shipment had just been unloaded.

One million American in Citibank traveler’s checks, good as gold.

Of course I have to turn around half to these fellows I know a long time who advanced me the stuff
.

Which complicates the position I’m in now
.

Elite. You see the position I’m in
.

Five, ten years ago I might never have gotten out on a limb this way, I paid up front and got paid up front, did it clean, that was my strict motto, do it clean, cash and carry, maybe I’m getting old, maybe I played this wrong, but hell, Ellie, think about it, when was I going to see another shot like this one
.

Don’t give me goddamn hindsight
.

Hindsight is for shoe clerks
.

Five, ten years ago, sure, I might have done it another way, but five, ten years ago we weren’t in the middle of the goddamnest hot market anybody ever saw. So what can you do. Strike while the iron is hot, so you run a little risk, so you get out on a limb for a change, it’s all you can do as I figure it
.

So anyway
.

So what
.

You can see I need this deal.

You can see I’m in a position where I need to go down there and make the collection.

It was the figure that broke her heart.

The evenness of the figure.

The size of the figure.