by Joan Didion
I had thought to learn Treat Morrison’s version of why she did it from the transcript of his taped statement. I had imagined that she would have told him what she would not or did not tell either the FBI or the DIA agents who spoke to her. I had imagined that Treat Morrison would have in due time set down his conclusions about whatever it was she told him.
No hint of that in those four hundred and seventy-six pages.
Instead I learned that what he referred to as “a certain incident that occurred in 1984 in connection with one of our Caribbean embassies” should not, in his opinion, have occurred.
Should not have occurred and could not have been predicted.
By what he called “any quantitative measurement.”
However, he added. One caveat. In situ this certain incident could have been predicted.
Which went to the question, he said, of whether policy should be based on what was said or believed or wished for by people sitting in climate-controlled rooms in Washington or New York or whether policy should be based on what was seen and reported by the people who were actually on the ground. He was constrained by classification from discussing the details of this incident and mentioned it only, he said, as a relevant illustration of the desirability of listening to the people who were actually on the ground.
No comment, as the people who were actually on the ground were trained to say if asked what they were doing or where they were staying or if they wanted a drink or even what time it was.
No comment.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Elena McMahon had not been trained to say this, but was on the ground nonetheless.
I recently sat at dinner in Washington next to a reporter who covered the ground in question during the period in question. After a few glasses of wine he turned to me, lowered his voice, and said about this experience that nothing that had happened to him since, including the birth of his children and assignment to several more overt wars in several more overt parts of the world, had made him feel so alive as waking up on that particular ground any day in that particular period.
Until Elena McMahon woke up on that particular ground, she did not count her life as one in which anything had happened.
No comment. Thank you. Goodbye.
13
The first time she met Barry Sedlow was the day her father left the hospital. You’ll be pleased to know you’ll be leaving here tomorrow, the resident had said to her father, and she had followed him out to the nurses’ station. “He’s not ready to go home,” she had said to the resident’s back.
“Not to go home, no.” The resident had not looked up from the chart he was studying. “Which is why you should be making whatever arrangements you prefer with the discharge coordinator.”
“But you just agreed with me. He’s not ready to be discharged. The arrangement I prefer is that he stay in the hospital.”
“He can’t stay in the hospital,” the resident said, implacable. “So he will be discharged. And he’s not going to be able to take care of himself.”
“Exactly. That was my point.” She tried for a reasonable tone. “As you say, he’s not going to be able to take care of himself. Which is why I think he should stay in the hospital.”
“You have the option of making an acceptable arrangement for home care with the discharge coordinator.”
“Acceptable to who?”
“To the discharge coordinator.”
“So it’s up to the discharge coordinator whether or not he stays here?”
“No, it’s up to Dr. Mertz.”
“I’ve never met Dr. Mertz.”
“Dr. Mertz is the admitting physician of record. On my recommendation, Dr. Mertz has authorized discharge.”
“Then I should talk to Dr. Mertz?”
“Dr. Mertz is not on call this week.”
She had tried another tack. “Look. If this has something to do with insurance, I signed papers saying I would be responsible. I’ll pay for whatever his insurance won’t cover.”
“You will, yes. But he still won’t stay here.”
“Why won’t he?”
“Because unless you’ve made an acceptable alternate arrangement,” the resident said, unscrewing the top from his fountain pen and wiping the nib with a tissue, “he’ll be discharged in the morning to a convalescent facility.”
“You can’t do that. I won’t take him there.”
“You won’t have to. The facility sends its van.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant you can’t just send someone to a nursing home.”
“Yes. We can. We do it all the time. Unless of course the family has made an acceptable alternate arrangement with the discharge coordinator.”
There had been a silence. “How do I reach the discharge coordinator,” she said then.
“I could ask her to come by the patient’s room,” The resident had refitted the top of his pen and placed it in the breast pocket of his polo shirt. He seemed not to know what to do with the tissue. “When she has a moment.”
“Somebody took my goddamn shoes,” her father had said when she walked back into the room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed buckling his belt and trying to free his arm from the hospital gown. “I can’t get out of here without my goddamn shoes.” She had no way of knowing whether he intended to walk out or had merely misunderstood the resident, but she had found his shoes and his shirt and arranged his jacket over his thin shoulders, then walked him out past the nurses’ station into the elevator.
“You’ll need a nurse,” she had said tentatively when the elevator doors closed.
Her father had nodded, apparently resigned to strategic compromise.
“I’ll tell the agency we need someone right away,” she had said, trying to consolidate her gain. “Today.”
Once more her father had nodded.
Lulled by the ease of the end run around the hospital apparat, Elena was still basking in this new tractability when, a few hours later, securely back at the house in Sweetwater, the nurse installed in front of the television set and the bed freshly made and a glass of bourbon-spiked Ensure at the ready (another strategic compromise, this one with the nurse), Dick McMahon announced that he needed his car keys and he needed them now.
“I told you,” he said when she asked why. “I’ve got somebody to see. Somebody’s waiting for me.”
“I told you,” he said when she asked who. “I told you the whole deal.”
“You have to listen to me,” she had said finally. “You’re not in any condition to do anything. You’re weak. You’re still not thinking clearly. You’ll make a mistake. You’ll get hurt.”
Her father had at first said nothing, his pale eyes watery and fixed on hers.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said then. His voice was helpless, bewildered. “Goddamn, what’s going to happen now.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said then, as if defeated, his head falling to one side. “I needed this deal.”
She had taken his hand.
“What’s going to happen now,” he had repeated.
“I’ll take care of it,” she had said.
Which was how Elena McMahon happened, an hour later, to be standing on the dock where the Kitty Rex was berthed. Looks like you’re waiting for somebody, Barry Sedlow said. I think you, Elena McMahon said.
The second time she was to meet Barry Sedlow he had instructed her to be in the lobby of the Omni Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard at what he called thirteen sharp. She was to sit near the entrance to the restaurant as if she were waiting to meet someone for lunch.
There would be lunch traffic in and out of the restaurant, she would not stand out.
If he happened not to show up by the time the lunch traffic thinned out she was to leave, because at that point she would stand out.
“Why might you happen not to show up,” she had asked.
Barry Sedlow had written
an 800 number on the back of a card reading KROME GUN CLUB and given it to her before he answered. “Could happen I won’t like the look of it,” he had said then.
She had arrived at one. It had been raining hard all morning and there was water everywhere, water sluicing down the black tile wall behind the lobby pool, water roiling and bubbling over the underwater spots in the pool, water standing on flat roofs and puddling around vents and driving against the six-story canted window. In the chill of the air-conditioning her clothes were damp and clammy against her skin and after a while she stood up and walked around the lobby, trying to get warm. Even the music from the merry-go-round in the mall downstairs was muted, distorted, as if she were hearing it underwater. She was standing at the railing looking down at the merry-go-round when the woman spoke to her.
The woman was holding an unfolded map.
The woman did not want to bother Elena but wondered if she knew the best way to get on I-95.
Elena told her the best way to get on I-95.
At three o’clock the restaurant had emptied out and Barry Sedlow had not appeared. From a pay phone in the lobby she dialed the 800 number Barry Sedlow had given her and found that it was a beeper. She punched in the number of the pay phone in the Omni lobby but at four o’clock, when the phone had not rung, she left.
At midnight the phone rang in the house in Sweetwater.
Elena hesitated, then picked it up.
“You stood out,” Barry Sedlow said. “You let yourself be noticed.”
“Noticed by who?”
He did not respond directly. “Here’s what you’re going to want to do.”
What she was going to want to do, he said, was walk into the Pan Am Clipper Club at the Miami airport the next day at noon sharp. What she was going to want to do was go to the desk and ask for Michelle. She was going to want to tell Michelle that she was meeting Gary Barnett.
“Who exactly is Gary Barnett,” she said.
“Michelle’s the blonde, not the spic. Make sure it’s Michelle you talk to. The spic is Adele, Adele doesn’t know me.”
“Gary Barnett is you?”
“Just do it my way for a change.”
She had done it his way.
Gary wants you to make yourself comfortable, Michelle had said.
If I could please see your Clipper Club card, Adele had said.
Michelle had rolled her eyes. I saw her card, Michelle had said.
Elena sat down. On a corner sofa a portly man in a silk suit was talking on the telephone, his voice rising and falling, an unbroken flow of English and Spanish, now imploring, now threatening, oblivious to the announcements of flights for Guayaquil and Panama and Guatemala, oblivious to Elena, oblivious even to the woman at his side, who was thin and gray-haired and wore a cashmere cardigan and expensive walking shoes.
Mr. Lee, the man kept saying.
Then, finally: Let me ask you one question, Mr. Lee. Do we have the sugar or don’t we. All right then. You tell me we have it. Then explain to me this one thing. How do we prove we have it. Because believe me, Mr. Lee, we are losing credibility with the buyer. All right. Listen. Here is the situation. We have ninety-two million dollars tied up since Thursday. This is Tuesday. Believe me, ninety-two million dollars is not small change. Is not chicken shit, Mr. Lee. The telex was supposed to be sent on Friday. I come up from San Salvador this morning to close the deal, the Sun Bank in Miami is supposed to have the telex, the Sun Bank in Miami does not have the telex. Now I ask you, Mr. Lee. Please. What am I supposed to do?
The man slammed down the phone.
The gray-haired woman took a San Salvador newspaper from her Vuitton tote and began reading it.
The man stared balefully at Elena.
Elena shifted her gaze, a hedge against the possibility that eye contact could be construed as standing out. Across the room a steward was watching General Hospital on the television set above the bar.
She heard the man again punching numbers into the telephone but did not look at him.
Mr. Lee, the man said.
A silence.
Elena allowed her eyes to wander. The headline on the paper the woman was reading was GOBIERNO VENDE 85% LECHE DONADA.
All right, the man said. You are not Mr. Lee. My mistake. But if you are truly the son you are also Mr. Lee. So let me speak to your father, Mr. Lee. What is this, he cannot come to the phone? I am talking to him, he tells me to call back in ten minutes. I am calling back from a pay phone in the Miami airport and he cannot take the call? What is this? Mr. Lee. Please. I am getting from you both a bunch of lies. A bunch of misinformation. Disinformation. Lies. Mr. Lee. Listen to me. It costs me maybe a million dollars to put you and your father out of business, believe me, I will spend it.
Again the phone was slammed down.
GOBIERNO VENDE 85% LECHE DONADA. The government sells eighty-five percent of donated milk. It struck Elena that her Spanish must have failed, this was too broad to be an accurate translation.
Elena did not yet know how broad a story could get.
Again the man punched in numbers. Mr. Elman. Let me tell you the situation here. I am calling from a pay phone in the Miami airport. I fly up from San Salvador today. Because today the deal was to close. Today the Sun Bank in Miami would have the telex to approve the line of credit. Today the Sun Bank in Miami does not have the telex. Today I am sitting in the Miami airport and I don’t know what to do. That is the situation here. Okay, Mr. Elman. We have a little problem here, which I’m sure we can solve.
The calls continued. Mr. Lee. Mr. Elman. Mr. Gordon. Someone was in Toronto and someone else was in Los Angeles and many people were in Miami. At four o’clock Elena heard the door buzz. At the moment she allowed herself to look up she saw Barry Sedlow, without breaking stride as he walked toward her, lay an envelope on the table next to the telephone the Salvadoran was using.
“Here is my concern,” the Salvadoran was saying into the telephone as he fingered the envelope. “Mr. Elman. You and I, we have confianza.” The Salvadoran placed the envelope in an inner pocket of his silk jacket. “But what I am being fed from Mr. Lee is a bunch of disinformation.”
Later in Barry Sedlow’s car on the way to Hialeah she had asked who the Salvadoran was.
“What made you think he was Salvadoran,” Barry Sedlow said.
She told him.
“Lot of people say they came up from San Salvador this morning, lot of people read Salvadoran papers, that doesn’t make them Salvadoran.”
She asked what the man was if not Salvadoran.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t Salvadoran,” Barry Sedlow said. “Did I. You have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions.” In the silence that followed he slowed to a stop at an intersection, reached inside the Dolphins warm-up jacket he was wearing and took aim at the streetlight.
One thing she had learned growing up around her father: she recognized guns.
The gun Barry Sedlow had taken from inside his warm-up jacket was a 9mm Browning with sound suppressor.
The engine was idling and the sound of the silenced shot inaudible.
The light shattered and the intersection went dark.
“Transit passenger,” Barry Sedlow had said as he transferred his foot from brake to accelerator. “Already on the six-thirty back to San Sal. Not our deal.” When I say that Elena was not one of those who saw how every moment could connect I mean that it did not occur to her that a transit passenger need show no visa.
Cast your mind back.
Refresh your memory if necessary: go to Nexis, go to microfiche.
Try to locate the most interesting news stories of the period in question.
Scroll past any stories that led or even made the evening news.
Move down instead until you locate the kind of two-inch wire story that tended to appear just under the page-fourteen continuation of the page-one story on congressional response to the report of the Kissinger Commission, say, or opposite the page-nineteen continuat
ion of the page-one story about the federal court ruling upholding investigation of possible violations of the Neutrality Act.
The kind of two-inch wire story that had to do with chartered aircraft of uncertain ownership that did or did not leave one or another southern airport loaded with one or another kind of cargo.
Many manifests were eventually analyzed by those who followed such stories.
Many personnel records were eventually accessed.
Many charts were eventually drawn detailing the ways in which the spectral companies with the high-concept names (Amalgamated Commercial Enterprises Inc., Defex S.A., Energy Resources International) tended to interlock.
These two-inch aircraft stories were not always identical. In some stories the aircraft in question was reported not to have left one or another southern airport but to have crashed in Georgia or experienced mechanical difficulties in Texas or been seized in the Bahamas in relation to one or another narcotics investigation. Nor was the cargo in these stories always identical: inspection of the cargo revealed in some cases an unspecified number of reconditioned Soviet AK-47s, in other cases unspecified numbers of M67 fragmentation grenades, AR-15s, M-60s, RPG-7 rocket launchers, boxes of ammo, pallets of POMZ-2 fragmentation mines, British Aerospace L-9 antitank mines, Chinese Type 72A and Italian Valmara 69 antipersonnel mines.
69s.
Epperson had floated a figure of three dollars per for 69s and now he was claiming the market had dropped to two per.
I’m not sure I know what business Epperson is in.
Christ, what business are they all in.
Some people in Washington said that the flights described in these stories were not occurring, other people in Washington (more careful people in Washington, more specific people in Washington, people in Washington who did not intend to perjure themselves when the hearings rolled in) said that the flights could not be occurring, or could only be occurring, if indeed they were occurring, outside the range of possible knowledge.