The Last Thing He Wanted

by Joan Didion

  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

  Of 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

  At 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 a
nd 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.

  The figure that was part of what she believed to be a delusion, the figure that had been the bel canto of her childhood, the figure that was now a memory, an echo, a dream, a romance, an old man’s fairy tale.

  The million-dollar score, the million-dollar pop, the million-dollar payday.

  The pop that was already half owed to other people, the payday that was already garnisheed.

  The score that was not even a score anymore.

  I’m in for a unit, my father’s doing two, Wynn Janklow would say to indicate investments of one and two hundred million dollars.

  Million-dollar score, million-dollar payday.

  She had gone her own way.

  She had made her own life.

  She had married a man who did not count money in millions but in units.

  She had turned a deaf ear, she had turned her back.

  It might be you’d just called from wherever.

  In the creased snapshot she had taken from her mother’s bedroom her father was holding a bottle of beer and her mother was wearing a barbecue apron printed with pitchforks and the words OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE.

  Or it might be that you hadn’t.

  She remembered the day the snapshot was taken.

  Fourth of July, she was nine or ten, a friend of her father’s had brought fireworks up from the border, fat little sizzler rockets she had not liked and sparklers that made fireflies in the hot desert twilight.

  Half a margarita and I’m already flying, her mother had kept saying.

  This is all right, her father had kept saying. Who needs the goombahs, we got our own show right here.

  We had a life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t.

  What’s going to happen now, her father had said on the day she brought him home to the house in Sweetwater. Goddamn. Ellie. What’s going to happen now.

  I’ll take care of it, she had said.

  By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she had already checked out of the Hotel Colonial and was in the taxi on her way to the San José airport. By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she did not yet know that her father’s obituary had appeared in that morning’s Miami Herald, but she did know something else.

  This was the third thing she already knew.

  She had asked for her passport when she checked out.

  Her own passport.

  The passport she had left at the desk the night she arrived.

  For the authorities, for safekeeping.

  The clerk was quite certain that it had been returned to her.

  Por cierto, he had repeated. Certísimo.

  The airport taxi had been waiting outside.

  If you would look again, she had said. An American passport. McMahon. Elena McMahon.

  The clerk had opened the safe, removed several passports, fanned them on the desk, and shrugged.

  None of the passports were American.

  In the mailboxes behind the clerk she could see room keys, a few messages.

  The box for her room was empty.

  She considered this.

  The clerk raised an index finger, tapped his temple, and smiled. Tengo la solución, he said. Since the passport had certainly been returned to her, the passport would doubtless be found in her room. Perhaps she would be so kind as to leave an address.

  I don’t think so, she had said, and walked to the open door.

  Buen viaje, Señora Meyer, the clerk had called as she was getting into the airport taxi.

  8

  When she landed on the island at one-thirty on the afternoon of July 2 the sky was dark with clouds and the runway already swamped with the rain that would fall intermittently for the next week. The Costa Rican pilot had mentioned this possibility. “A few bands of showers that will never dampen the spirit of any vacationer,” was how the pilot had put it in his English-language update from the front cabin. It had occurred to Elena as she sheltered the unfamiliar passport under her T-shirt and made a run for the terminal that these bands of showers would not in fact dampen the spirit of any vacationer, since there did not seem to be any vacationer in sight.

  No golf bag, no tennis racket, no sunburned child in tow.

  No anxious traveler with four overstuffed tote bags and one boarding pass for the six-seater hop to the more desirable island.

  There did not even seem to be any airport employee in sight.

  Only the half-dozen young men, wearing the short-sleeved uniforms of what seemed to be some kind of local military police, lounging just inside the closed glass doors to the terminal.

  She had stopped, rain streaming down her face, waiting for the doors to slide open automatically.

  When the doors did not open she had knocked on the glass.

  After what seemed a considerable length of time, once she had been joined outside the glass door by the crew from her flight, one of the men inside had detached himself from the others and inserted a key to open the door.

  Thank you, she had said.

  Move on, he had said.

  She had moved on.

  Gate after gate was unlit. The moving sidewalks were not moving, the baggage carousels were silent. Metal grilles had been lowered over the doors to the coffee bars and concessions, even the shop that promised OPEN 24 HOURS DUTY-FREE. She had steeled herself on the plane to make direct eye contact when she went through immigration but the lone immigration official had examined the passport without interest, stamped it, and handed it back to her, never meeting her eyes.

  “Where you stay,” he had said, pen pois
ed to complete whatever form required this information.

  She had tried to think of a plausible answer.

  “You mean while I’m here,” she had said, stalling. “You mean what hotel.”

  “Correct, correct, what hotel.” He was bored, impatient. “Ramada, Royal Caribe, Intercon, what.”

  “Ramada,” she had said.

  She had gotten a taxi for the Ramada and then, once the doors were closed, told the driver that she had changed her mind and wanted to go to the Intercon. She had registered at the Intercon as Elise Meyer. As soon as she got upstairs she called Barry Sedlow’s beeper and left the number of the hotel.

  Twenty minutes later the telephone had rung.

  She had picked it up but said nothing.

  So far so good, Barry Sedlow said. You’re where you should be.

  She thought about this.

  She had left the number of the hotel on his beeper but she had not left the number of her room.

  To get through to the room he had to know how she was registered.

  Had to know that the passport was in the name Elise Meyer.

  She said nothing.

  Just sit tight, he said. Someone’s going to be in touch.

  Still she said nothing.

  Losing radio contact, he said. Hel-lo-oh.

  There had been a silence.

  Okay I get it, he had said finally. You don’t want to talk, don’t talk. But do yourself a favor? Relax. Go down to the pool, tip the boy to set up a chaise, get some sun, order one of those drinks with the cherries and the pineapple and the little umbrellas, you’re there as a tourist, try acting like one, just tell the operator to switch your calls, don’t worry about their finding you, they’re going to find you all right.

  She had done this. She had not spoken to Barry Sedlow but she had done what he said to do.

  I do not know why (another instance of what “changed” her, what “motivated” her, what made her do it) but she had put down the telephone and waited for a break in the rain and then done exactly what Barry Sedlow said to do.