Finally, such an entry would have been starred, indicating that the subject had supplied no information, for Jack Lovett supplied information only when he saw the chance, however remote, of getting information in return. When he registered at a hotel he gave as his address one or another of those post-office boxes in Miami, Honolulu, Palo Alto. The apartment he kept in Honolulu, a one-bedroom rental near Ala Moana in a building inhabited mostly by call girls, was leased in the name “Mid-Pacific Development.” It was possible to see this tendency to obscure even the most inconsequential information as a professional reflex, but it was also possible to see it as something more basic, a temperamental secretiveness, a reticence that had not so much derived from Jack Lovett’s occupation as led him to it. I recall a story I heard in 1973 or 1974 from a UPI photographer who had run into Jack Lovett in a Hong Kong restaurant, an upstairs place in the Wanchai district where the customers kept their bottles in a cupboard above the cash register. Jack Lovett’s bottle was on his table, a quart of Johnnie Walker Black, but the name taped on the label, in his own handwriting, was “J. LOCKHART.” “You don’t want your name on too many bottles around town,” Jack Lovett reportedly said when the photographer mentioned the tape on the label. This was a man who for more than twenty years had maintained a grave attraction to a woman whose every move was photographed.
In this context I always see Inez Victor as she looked on a piece of WNBC film showing a party on the St. Regis Roof given by the governor of New York; some kind of afternoon party, a wedding or a christening or an anniversary, nominally private but heavily covered by the press. On this piece of film, which was made and first shown on March 18, 1975, one week exactly before Paul Christian fired the shots that set this series of events in motion, Inez Victor can be seen dancing with Harry Victor. She is wearing a navy-blue silk dress and a shiny dark straw hat with red cherries. “Marvelous,” she is heard to say repeatedly on the clip.
“Marvelous day.”
“You look marvelous.”
“Marvelous to be here.”
“Clear space for the senator,” a young man in a dark suit and a rep tie keeps saying. There are several such young men in the background, all carrying clipboards. This one seems only marginally aware of Inez Victor, and his clipboard collides a number of times with her quilted shoulder bag. “Senator Victor is here as the governor’s guest, give him some room please.”
“—Taking a more active role,” a young woman with a microphone repeats.
“—Senator here as the governor’s guest, please no interviews, that’s all, that’s it, hold it.”
The band segues into “Isn’t It Romantic.”
“Hold two elevators,” another of the young men says.
“I’m just a private citizen,” Harry Victor says.
“Marvelous,” Inez Victor says.
I first saw this clip not when it was first shown but some months later, at the time Jack Lovett was in the news, when, for the two or three days it took the story of their connection to develop and play out, Inez Victor could be seen dancing on the St. Regis Roof perhaps half a dozen times between five P.M. and midnight.
6
LET me establish Inez Victor.
Born, as you know, Inez Christian in the Territory of Hawaii on the first day of January, 1935.
Known locally as Dwight Christian’s niece.
Cissy Christian’s granddaughter.
Paul Christian’s daughter, of course, but Paul Christian was usually in Cuernavaca or Tangier or sailing a 12.9-meter Trintella-class ketch through the Marquesas and did not get mentioned as often as his mother and his brother. Carol Christian’s daughter as well, but Carol Christian had materialized from the mainland and vanished back to the mainland, a kind of famous story in that part of the world, a novel in her own right, but not the one I have in mind.
Harry Victor’s wife.
Oh shit, Inez, Jack Lovett said.
Harry Victor’s wife.
He said it on the late March evening in 1975 when he and Inez sat in an empty off-limits bar across the bridge from Schofield Barracks and watched the evacuation on television of one or another capital in Southeast Asia. Conflicting reports, the anchorman said. Rapidly deteriorating situation. Scenes of panic and confusion. Down the tubes, the bartender said. Bye-bye Da Nang. On the screen above the bar the helicopter lifted again and again off the roof of the American mission and Jack Lovett watched without speaking and after a while he asked the bartender to turn off the sound and plug in the jukebox. No dancing, the bartender said. I’m already off fucking limits. You’re not off limits from dancing, Jack Lovett said. You’re off from fencing Sansui amps to an undercover. The bartender turned down the sound and plugged in the jukebox. Jack Lovett said nothing to Inez, only looked at her for a long time and then stood up and took her hand.
The Mamas and the Papas sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
The helicopter lifted again off the roof of the American mission.
In this bar across the bridge from Schofield Barracks Inez did not say “marvelous” as she danced. She did not say “marvelous day” as she danced. She did not say “you look marvelous,” or “marvelous to be here.” She did not say anything at all as she danced, did not even dance as you or I or the agency that regulated dancing in bars might have defined dancing. She only stood with her back against the jukebox and her arms around Jack Lovett. Her hair was loose and tangled from the drive out to Schofield and the graying streak at her left temple, the streak she usually brushed under, was exposed. Her eyes were closed against the flicker from the television screen.
“Fucking Arvin finally shooting each other,” the bartender said.
“Oh shit, Inez,” Jack Lovett said. “Harry Victor’s wife.”
7
BY the spring of 1975 Inez Victor had in fact been Harry Victor’s wife for twenty years.
Through Harry Victor’s two years with the Justice Department, through the appearance in The New York Times Magazine of “Justice for Whom? — A Young Lawyer Wants Out,” by Harry Victor and R.W. Dillon.
Through the Neighborhood Legal Coalition that Harry Victor and Billy Dillon organized out of the storefront in East Harlem. Through the publication of The View from the Street: Root Causes, Radical Solutions and a Modest Proposal, by Harry Victor, Based on Studies Conducted by Harry Victor with R.W. Dillon.
Through the marches in Mississippi and in the San Joaquin Valley, through Harry Victor’s successful campaigns for Congress in 1964 and 1966 and 1968, through the sit-ins at Harvard and at the Pentagon and at Dow Chemical plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Through Harry Victor’s appointment in 1969 to fill out the last three years of a Senate term left vacant by the death of the incumbent.
Through Connie Willis and through Frances Landau (“Inez, I’m asking you nice, behave, girls like that come with the life,” Billy Dillon said to Inez about Connie Willis and Frances Landau), through the major fundraising in California (“Inez, I’m asking you nice, put on your tap shoes, it’s big green on the barrelhead,” Billy Dillon said to Inez about California), through the speaking tours and the ad hoc committees and the fact-finding missions to Jakarta and Santiago and Managua and Phnom Penh; through the failed bid for a presidential nomination in 1972 and through the mistimed angling for a good embassy (this was one occasion when Jakarta and Santiago and Managua and Phnom Penh did not spring to Harry Victor’s lips) that occurred in the wreckage of that campaign.