Nothing Lost (10 page)

CHAPTER SIX

Carlyle. No last name. Like Madonna. Named after the hotel.

“Not the one in Miami Beach. Deco is for scuzzes. The one in New York. I tell people it's where I popped my cherry is how I picked it.” This was in her
Rolling Stone
interview. “It wasn't. Shit, I lost it on the hood of Kile Purdy's Crown Vic when I was like thirteen. Not with Kile. He was puking in the back seat. With Waylon Madden. Who was wearing a dirty T-shirt that said NEVER TAKE A SIX-PACK TO A JOB INTERVIEW. Fun-nee. The only thing Waylon knew about a job was that he never had one. The hood burned my buns, it was so hot. My buns were the only thing that got hot, you want the truth. Waylon's was about the size of a toothpick. I thought they all looked like that. How was I to know? Him and Kile cracked up that Crown Vic two months later. Skidded into a Burlington Northern grain train at the Albion crossing. Toast. He was always racing trains, Kile. He thought he was Dale Fucking Earnhardt, and look at what happened to that fucker at the Daytona Five. There were twenty-two empty cans of Midlandia Lager in what was left of the Crown Vic. Eleven each. Except that asshole Kile was such a hog I bet he had a couple more than Waylon. I was so pissed. I was supposed to go with them, but I got my period, and Waylon said he didn't want someone riding the cotton pony tagging along. Fuck him, he's dead, I'm not. I just thought Carlyle sounded cool. I mean, I wasn't going to call myself fucking Marriott, was I? Days Inn?”

Her real name was Alice Faith Todt.

She had been on the cover of
Newsweek
when she was fifteen. The slash line was LOST YOUTH: TOO OLD TOO SOON. Carlyle hadn't seen it that way. “What's so great about being a kid anyway?” she had told
Newsweek.
“Chemistry tests? Being a pom-pom girl? Going to the prom? Getting knocked up? Getting totaled in Kile Purdy's Crown Vic?” She was the official face of the Jacquot cosmetic empire, with her own product line. Marty had negotiated a Jacquot deal paying her six million dollars a year, escalating by the end of the contract to nine, plus a hundred thousand dollars a day for public appearances. Her contracts stipulated that she would only travel by private jet. She had been on seventy-seven magazine covers around the world, forty-one of them shot by her favorite photographer, Alex Quintero, who also directed her Jacquot commercials, which he had parlayed into a Hollywood film contract, two one-man photography shows at the Gagosian Gallery, and induction into the Fashion Hall of Fame. On the runway in Paris and Milan, she earned fifty-eight thousand dollars a show, and she was booked three years in advance. Her website—Yo! Carlyle—was the Internet site most visited by men and women under twenty-five. The site had a shop selling Carlyle postcards, Carlyle beauty products, and Carlyle exercise tapes, a bookshelf selling Carlyle's fashion tips, a message board, a fan focus where each month one of Marty's staffers answered five letters in her name: “Yo! Carlyle: Please tell me what I'm supposed to do with my cellulite. I'm 19 years old and maybe just a little overweight. Thank you—Tarawa.” And the answer: “Yo, Tarawa: Carlyle's Action Cream is just the ticket for those fat thighs. Use it, love it, get a life—Carlyle.”

She was seventeen years old.

She had made nineteen million dollars that year.

She was crouched over a computer in Marty's office, absorbed in a website called Famous Flesh. She was smoking and chewing gum, oblivious to Marty, equally oblivious to me. Famous Flesh (as well as Celebrity Skin, Notable Nookie, Boobs & Pubes, and other soft-core sites) published bootleg photos of models and celebrities taken at fashion shoots where models casually walk around naked backstage between wardrobe changes, plus nude photos taken at isolated and expensive island resorts with long-range lenses, even photos and occasional videos of celebrity copulation. She was of course looking for the latest photographs of herself, not so much in the interest of pursuing litigation as in comparing herself to her contemporaries in the beauty business, with a running and derogatory commentary of their every physical flaw, real and imagined. “Look at that roll on Kate, Kate, you look like a baby elephant . . . Clea, they droop, your tits weigh more than I do . . . Alex says Carrie's got a clit ring . . . what if some sicko dude pulled it . . . hair pie and clit ring . . . Xan, don't you know pubes are gross, get them waxed, a Mohawk's so much cooler.”

She was five-eight, according to the computerized fact sheet Marty's staff updated weekly (as they did for all Three V models)—119 pounds; bust, weight, and hips 34-23-34. A rubber band caught her hair, off blond that morning, in a ponytail, and there was a space between her front teeth that softened her otherwise sulky erotic looks. She was wearing jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Printed on the back of the sweatshirt were the words RIKER'S ISLAND. It was a souvenir of a fashion shoot Alex Quintero had done on Riker's, with Carlyle modeling the spring Prada line surrounded by inmates and hacks. The official at the Department of Corrections who sanctioned the shoot was fired, and editorials in the
Post
and the
Times
and
The Wall Street Journal
decried “Prison Chic.” The phrase became a battle cry. It also made Carlyle and Alex Quintero famous. Or infamous. Which was essentially the same thing. She had five tattoos (this too from the fact sheet): a shark's tooth bracelet on each wrist, a rose on her navel, and a dragon climbing out of the crack in her ass and up her back. The fifth was an ankh over the scar on her left arm where she had accidentally shot herself when the licensed Manurhin 7.65mm she was carrying in her Kate Spade bag discharged at a Donna Karan AIDS benefit in Miami Beach. One last look at the competition on Famous Flesh: “Lynch, you're so old even your finger won't fuck you.”

She twirled around, planted her elbows on Marty's marble-top desk, and looked me up and down, blowing bubbles, not speaking.

“This is Teresa Kean,” Marty said finally.

I thought I hadn't registered on her radar screen.

I was wrong.

“Those your own boobs?” was the first thing Carlyle said to me.

The second was “You had a hysterectomy yet?”

And the third: “What are you anyway? Sixty?”

And the fourth: “That guy in Washington, you fucked him to death, right?”

Okay. Smart mouth was the language of criminal courtrooms, committee hearings, and chat-show mud wrestling, nothing I hadn't heard before, and I was better at it than a dim teenager whose every whim was satisfied, and to whom no one ever said no.

Voice soft, eyes steady. Ready, aim, fire. “To question number one, yes. To questions two, three, and four, no.” And then a finger pointed at the sweatshirt: “I bet you think that hoody is cute. Let me tell you something.” Lean close, almost a whisper now. “You ever spent a night on Riker's, some bitch would razor your nipples off before you hit your cell and then ram a turkey baster so far up your sweetness you'd be sneezing metal filings.” A brief pause for effect. A bubble splattered over Carlyle's surprised, sullen face. One final shot. “When you're twenty, you think anyone's going to remember you?”

I apparently made an impression.

Three months later, I got a call from Marty. She got right to the point. Carlyle wanted me to defend her half brother.

What's the charge? I asked.

Murder, Marty said.

CHAPTER ONE

In the three months before Martha Buick called Teresa, not all that much happened.

Poppy McClure spoke on behalf of Republican candidates in eleven states from Maine to New Mexico. The Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard named her its Woman of the Year, and when she accepted the award in Cambridge, she came in full costume as her favorite female politician— Queen Elizabeth I.

Carlyle fired Martha Buick and Three V the day after Thanksgiving, went to Elite, fired Elite, went to Casablanca, fired Casablanca, and returned to Three V in time for the holidays.

Martha Buick bought her a black 290-horsepower Jaguar XK8 convertible as a welcome-home present, and at 5 a.m. New Year's morning, while changing a CD, Carlyle ran the Jaguar into an undercover police van on a stakeout in Union Square.

Carlyle was arrested for driving a vehicle without a seat belt and a valid registration, for being an unlicensed driver, and for reckless endangerment of an ongoing police operation. A Breathalyzer test was negative. The object of the stakeout disappeared in the resulting confusion. The black 290-horsepower Jaguar XK8 convertible was totaled. Carlyle was fined five hundred dollars in Manhattan traffic court and forbidden to operate a motor vehicle in New York for three years. Carlyle told the two New York tabloids and reporters for all the local TV channels that the restriction was no big deal because she always had a driver anyway.

Teresa Kean returned to Washington, and resigned from Justice for All. She said it was time to prepare for a new phase in her career, and that several publishers had asked to see a manuscript about the law she had been polishing for several years.

Martha Buick offered Teresa Kean the house in Sagaponack where she and her husband and children spent their summers. Martha Buick said that Sagaponack in winter was a place where Teresa Kean could work on her book without distraction.

Margaret Dudley gave Teresa Kean a going-away party in Georgetown attended by crime professionals, a deputy White House press secretary, members of the legal community, lobbyists, two cabinet secretaries, Sunday talk-show bookers, a cable-TV host, several print and television reporters, a visiting actress making a film in Washington, one pundit, a weekend anchorwoman, a widower Supreme Court justice with whom the actress was said to be having an affair, three ambassadors, two senators, and four congressmen.

Poppy McClure attended the event briefly. Poppy and the actress had their picture taken together. The photograph of Poppy and the actress appeared on the front page of both the Capital City
Herald
and the Kiowa
Times-Ledger.

President Dixon McCall sent a note praising Teresa Kean for a job well done.

Maurice Dodd prepared his case against Bryant Gover and Duane Lajoie. He resisted the discovery motions filed by the attorneys for Gover and Lajoie until ordered to comply by Judge Tracy.

There was nothing unexpected in the reports filed by the South Midland Bureau of Investigation that were turned over, under the laws of discovery, to Francis Howar and Earle Lincoln, counsels for the defense. Bryant Gover had a history of violence and had been in constant trouble with the law since his first arrest as a juvenile offender. His arrest and incarceration records were filed as separate attachments to his file. Duane Lajoie had a history of violence and had been in constant trouble with the law since his first arrest as a juvenile offender. His arrest and incarceration records were also filed as separate attachments.

The SMBI had run an extensive background check on Edgar Parlance and found no other entanglements with law enforcement beyond his incarceration at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City for grand theft (auto) twenty years prior to his murder. Documents on file at the Colorado Department of Corrections indicated that Edgar Parlance had been born in Wunder, Arkansas, and that he was nineteen years old at the time of his incarceration. An SMBI check of birth records in Fletcher County, Arkansas, failed to confirm Edgar Parlance's date and place of birth in Wunder, Arkansas. SMBI investigators checked school records and the records of child welfare and foster-care agencies in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, South Midland, North Midland, Nebraska, Texas, and Georgia—all states where Edgar Parlance claimed to have lived as a child— and failed to find any mention of an Edgar Parlance whose probable dates corresponded with those of the victim.

Anecdotal evidence, i.e., information supplied by the deceased, indicated that Edgar Parlance was thirty-nine years of age at the time of his death. There was no record that Edgar Parlance had ever been issued a driver's license. He did have a Social Security card, but it appeared to have been bought on the street. The SMBI report said that while Edgar Parlance had a checkered employment history, he enjoyed the support and friendship of all those he came into contact with, including former employers. He was especially active in community activities in Regent and Loomis County during holiday celebrations.

SMBI investigators said that after an exhaustive check they had been unable to discover any prior contact between Edgar Parlance and either Bryant Gover or Duane Lajoie. Their conclusion was that Edgar Parlance was the victim of a random act of violence.

J.J. McClure told the attorney general he was ready to backstop Maurice Dodd any way he could.

The A.G. said he did not think Maurice Dodd needed a backstop.

CHAPTER TWO

Willie Erskine was on the horn from Washington. Stacking up Poppy's outgoing calls like an air traffic controller. She would speak to him in five minutes. The midweek check-in. Would he be available? No. J.J. saw no point in making Willie's life easier. Willie tried to explain. Poppy was talking to the Speaker. He would be her next call. She and the Speaker were going over the agenda for the meeting of the majority caucus. Willie whispered, as if the information were classified. It struck J.J. that people in Washington did not seem to have names. Titles had more significance. The Speaker. The Secretary. The Director. The DCI. Venues also carried weight. HEW. State. Labor. And the ultimate: the White House. J.J. expected Poppy would want to know what he had thought of her letter in that morning's Kiowa
Times-Ledger.
Signed by Poppy, written by Willie. She had sprung to the defense of some preposterously rich cash cow accused of raiding the reserves funding the 401(k)s of his employees. The preposterously rich cash cow, code name CC in the inner sanctums, was a major party contributor from whom the White House, or WH, as Willie called it in a sepulchral whisper, was trying to put some distance. Poppy was on the attack in the
Times-Ledger,
her targets those middle-of-the-road Republicans ready to abandon the preposterously rich cash cow. The MOR Republicans were termites in the temple of conservatism, she said. No better than liberal Democrats. Politically correct. PC was the new McCarthyism. What, she asked, was wrong with the old? The preposterously rich cash cow—why not a cash bull? J.J. wondered—was a self-made man of wealth and position, Poppy/Willie expostulated, free of the commonality that infects the so-called polity. Blunt the inevitable bleats of bigotry that will naturally emanate from the cesspool on the sinister side of the room, the letter continued. Sinister proceeds from the Latin root
sinistra,
and in Latin
sinistra
means left. Left = sinister. Indeed. The letter made no more sense than any of Poppy's other jeremiads, but as always the richness of the invective made him smile. He wondered idly, as he occasionally did, how much Poppy actually believed of what she said. Probably more than I think, he supposed. Not everything, of course. The rhetorical overkill was just a tool. It got her on
Nightline.
A thought he would not share with her.

Willie Erskine was back on the line. Poppy had to take a call from the WH. Himself is in a dither. The president. Leader of the free world. Not likely. Willie still thought J.J. had not mastered the WH's food chain, or how far down it Poppy's caller might be.

I liked sinister, Willie.

That was Poppy.

And those termites.

That was Poppy, too.

Sure it was, Willie.

I just cleaned it up a little, Willie Erskine said. He could not resist. The urge to suggest that he had made some small contribution to Poppy's public pronouncements was too strong. Just a polish. Grammar and punctuation. Then the thought that he might have implied too extensive a contribution, and that J.J. would tattle to Poppy, took over and Willie returned to his officious tone. WH is going to be on for a while.

J.J. wondered what had happened to the P.A. from the C-Span green-room. He thought of her whenever he had a bagel and cream cheese. What is it about you and bagels all of a sudden? Allie said. She had antennae for any sudden or transient irregularity in someone's routine. If there was a change, there was a reason, and beyond the reason usually some dereliction, however slight. A passing fancy, J.J. had said. An answer that was not exactly untrue. Allie did not need cream cheese to get motivated. I can think you off, she had once told him. He did not doubt it. Occasionally in court she would stare at him, her face a mask, not blinking, and he would feel the beginnings of a hard-on. He would busy himself with a transcript or an exhibit or whisper to Harvey Niland or Patsy Feiffer or whatever assistant was at the prosecutor's table until the moment passed. Watching him, she said, she could think herself off, too. He did not see Allie all that much anymore. She lived in a small apartment unit halfway between Capital City and Kiowa, and it did not have the privacy she insisted on. She did not want visitors with Rhea there, or neighbors talking. She'll learn about that stuff soon enough, J.J., I'm not going to push it. Mommy, what's an orgasm is a question I'm not prepared to answer from a kid four years removed from her first period. If I'm lucky. Latin girls grow up faster, that's one thing we all learned, I got my first tampon at eight, Rhea's only half Latin, if who I think is the one
is
the one, and I'm reasonably sure he is, so maybe she's on Anglo slowdown, I hope so.

It was the first time she had ever mentioned Rhea's father. Or a possible father. He wanted no more information. It was not useful. His physical encounters with Allie were quick, unplanned, intense, ingenious, and usually occurred in the courthouse now, because there was something so depressing, so furtive, about the motels available for a late-afternoon before-dinner tumble. Adultery Manors, Allie called them. There was also the possibility of running into someone he or Allie knew. An acquaintance of either sex practicing something more adventurous than the missionary position that was the feature of the marriage bed. Strangely enough, the courthouse was the safest place late at night, he could lock his door and they would climb on the conference table, the cheap Naugahyde couch did not have enough purchase, she said, it made her ass slide around, or her knees when they were in that configuration. Once they even performed on the floor in the A.G.'s office. The Worm and Mrs. Worm—Nancy Reagan Wormwold, that perfect name—were visiting Grand Coulee Dam. Mrs. Worm's father was a hydraulic engineer, she had this thing about dams, and J.J. was acting A.G., with access to the A.G.'s office. It was uncomfortable on the rug but it was worth it, Allie said, imagining what the Worm would have thought had he known. Another time, Allie's idea, standing up in a utility closet by the service elevator shaft, surrounded by pails and mops and brooms and rags and detergents and Dustbusters and industrial vacuums, her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck. In the pitch-black closet, her bare bottom had bounced against the electrical fixture, suddenly switching on the light, it was so surprising that he dropped her, but she did not stop or cry out, she just grabbed hold of him, sitting on a bucket, and pumped it until he came.

Imagine Patsy in here, Allie said, turning the light off and plunging the closet back into disorienting darkness. It had already occurred to J.J. He tried not to hit a pail with his foot, causing some unnecessary noise that might bring a janitor from the night cleaning crew or a deputy from the sheriff's detachment that guarded all the country buildings in Capital City. Something I should have thought of sooner, he thought. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and vigorously rubbed the stickiness away. A sudden memory. When his father shopped at Parker County Dry Goods in Hamlet, he always bought suits with two pairs of pants ordered from the Sears catalogue. A reminder to J.J. of how much a country boy he actually was. And preferred to forget. A second pair of pants would have been perfect after an occasion such as this. Throw away the soiled pair and he still had the suit. Get rid of the handkerchief, too. He did not want Carmencita picking it out of the dirty laundry basket. Simple though she was, virgin that she probably was, Carmencita would have her suspicions about why the handkerchief seemed glued together. Carmencita was the latest of the women of no known age who arrived periodically at his and Poppy's house from the village in Sonora where Poppy's mother had come from. Poppy's so-very-rich mother. The mother she had never known. Carmencita was preceded by Elena, Elena by Rosario, Rosario by Alcibiades. Guadalupe, Crucita, Arxenta, Natividad, Inocencia, Orquídea. He had lost track of how many had come and gone, what they looked like, what their names were. The women cooked, they cleaned, they wore white uniforms, they spoke Spanish to Poppy when she was in residence, but never to him, although his Spanish was Anglo perfect. They would never meet his eye, and then for no apparent reason other than the frigid South Midland winters they would disappear back to deepest Sonora and immediately be replaced by still another docile inhabitant from the same village. It's not a village, Poppy would say irritably, it's a hacienda. He loved it when Poppy was snooty.

Big deal, Harvard Law School, Allie said. J.J. had never mentioned Alcibiades or Guadalupe or any of the others to Allie. And certainly not the hacienda. She was still musing on Patsy Feiffer. For a moment she placed his hand between her legs, squeezing it with her thighs, then rapidly adjusted her clothes.

UVA, J.J. said.

What's UVA?

For people whose first choice was Harvard Law and didn't get in.

Like SMU Law and Osceola Community?

Something like that, J.J. said.

And this is a starter job for her. She thought she'd come out to the sticks, the people out here aren't so smart as she thinks she is, she'd move up fast, and then she's gone. Chicago. L.A. New York.

Even during sex Allie had the ability to make connections. She's from Connecticut, Allie said.

Farmington.

Where's that?

The fancy part of Hartford. J.J. had of course checked out Patsy's résumé when he conducted the job interview, and hired her. Her father was CFO of a secondary insurance company. Steadman Feiffer. The third. Her mother had been a vice-president of the Hartford Junior League. Her twin brother was autistic and had been in an institution since he was two. Steadman IV. No other siblings. Economics degree, without honors, from Bowdoin. Bowdoin was almost certainly a second choice, or third, as UVA Law School was. No one not from Maine goes to college in Maine as a first choice. Vice-chairman of Campus Republicans. Summer intern for the Republican minority in the Connecticut legislature. Hobbies: golf and tennis. Golf handicap: 7. She actually put that down. She must have known the résumé was thin and needed filling out.

You know a lot about her, Allie said.

And you're asking a lot of questions about her.

You want to fuck her.

No, I don't. She's a harassment suit waiting to happen.

I didn't say she wasn't a harassment suit. I said you wanted to fuck her. You just won't.

It was a discussion J.J. was not prepared to continue. How's Max? Still queer?

If he wasn't, J.J., you'd still be working for him.

I should know better than to have a postcoital discussion in a broom closet, J.J. thought.

Señor J.J., Allie said. She gave it the Spanish pronunciation—Señor Hay-Hay.

“How did it play?” It was Poppy calling direct from one of the hideaways on the House side of the Capitol. She knew J.J. would never remain in Willie Erskine's holding pattern. But she always had Willie try. WH must have rung off. She had waited until a recess during her subcommittee hearing to make the call. The subcommittee had something to do with the economy. She was the chair. Democrats think you can tax this great nation into prosperity, was what she said every time she gaveled a session to order. A Poppy-ism grown a little wilted. Always objected to by the minority. And never sustained by the chair.

“Led the letters page.”

“I meant the protest.”

Of course. Poppy would be interested in the march of university coeds and women faculty members who had descended on the A.G.'s office yesterday protesting his decision three days earlier not to prosecute Jocko Cannon for allegedly attacking Brittany Barnes, the SMU sophomore swimmer who had refused to withdraw the battery charges she had filed against him. For allegedly dragging her down three flights of stairs in Rhino Hall. And allegedly fracturing her skull and cheekbone. And allegedly knocking out her two front teeth. “Allegedly” was a word that adhered to Jocko Cannon like a tick. It was whispered in the courthouse that his father, Ralph Cannon, Sr., retained an attorney whose sole function was to monitor the movements of his son, and to be available at odd hours for the spreading of paternal largesse and the removal of potential embarrassments. He's just a company lawyer, Poppy said, no one special, it's what company lawyers do, it bloats their hourly. In other words she did not deny that Ralph Cannon, Sr., kept babysitters watching Jocko around the clock. The A.G.'s decision not to proceed against Jocko would allow him to play against Florida State for the national championship New Year's night in the Orange Bowl. J.J. knew that Poppy's sympathy for Brittany Barnes was nil. Nor did she doubt that her multiple fractures were the work of Jocko Cannon. A bad kid, she had said more than once, someday his father is not going to be able to buy his way out of a scrape. What she cared about was how the A.G.'s decision might inconvenience Gerry Wormwold if she should decide to challenge him in a gubernatorial primary.

“Page four, below the fold, in both the
Herald
and the
Times-Ledger,
” J.J. said. “The story was dead when the A.G. said he wasn't going to move forward. Jocko can play. Rhinos versus the Seminoles. That's all that counts. You could hardly call it a protest. A bunch of women marching is just a bunch of women marching.”

That had been Allie's verdict.

Allie had been out on the steps in the event the march turned ugly and she had filled him in. The Kiowa and Cap City papers had both estimated a hundred and fifty marchers. A figure that came from the Rhino athletic department. Bigger than that, Allie said. The jock flacks would like to pretend it didn't happen. Closer to three hundred. Plus the football goons. Brittany Barnes had walked with the women. Many of her supporters carried placards showing her in a neck brace, her smile showing the gap in her mouth where her front teeth had been. The football goons also carried photo blowups, theirs of ten or fifteen Rhino players whose teeth had been knocked out in games or scrimmages. One of the toothless Rhinos was Jocko Cannon. HEY, BRIT, GET A DENTIST, the crude lettering on Jocko's poster said. JOCKO DID.