Nothing Lost (18 page)

“I told that to the sheriff.”

“We are Duane's attorneys. We have different agendas. We need to hear it from your mouth, not from the sheriff's.”

“What's an agenda?”

“It's what we need to defend Duane.”

“He was brain-damaged at birth, you know that? That cord, the umbilical shit, it was wrapped around his neck, it really fucked him up, is that an agenda?”

“Possibly.”

“He was a real fuck, Duane, you know that?”

“In what way?”

“He didn't like having Boy around.”

“Why?”

“Because he's half colored. Duane was into that white-supremacy bullshit. He hated niggers.”

Teresa took a deep breath. “So was there anything specific he wanted you to do?”

“He wanted some Clorox. He washed his fucking hands with Clorox and this fucking wire brush until they bled.”

“Anything else.”

“He wanted me to wash his shirt.”

“Why?”

“I didn't fucking ask.”

“Did you wash the shirt?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You ever get tired of asking those fucking questions? Why don't you get a job with that fucking sheriff?”

“Why?”

Merle Orvis ran her tongue over a canker sore on her lip. She seemed to be weighing the possibility of not speaking. But not replying might jeopardize an opportunity to become an extra in Carlyle's shoot. “He wanted me to say he'd been here all fucking night,” she finally said. Hostility clashed with calculation. “I said I couldn't do that, I'd been over at Boobs, some people saw me. Shit, I didn't know why he wanted me to say that, but I knew he needed like some kind of alibi, like on TV,
NYPD Blue
and them. And I said fucking no, I'm not going to do it, and he fucking hit me. You don't love me, he said. Well, he got that fucking right.”

Boy tapped Teresa on her knee. “Titty.”

Teresa smiled and stood up. She reached down tentatively and patted Boy on the head. He began to cry.

“You've been very helpful,” Teresa said.

“You going to see Duane?” Merle Orvis said.

Teresa nodded.

“Tell him I still love him.”

Another nod.

“You know that Jamaal Jefferson? He was at the funeral. Put up the reward money.” She shouted toward Lester Ray, who was slumped in a torn and sagging fake leather chair with its springs sticking out watching
Jeopardy!
on a small black-and-white TV set. “Lester, what is he? Six-ten, two-fifty?” Lester did not move. “I am fucking talking to you, Lester, you hear me?”

Lester Ray continued staring catatonically at Alex Trebek on
Jeopardy!

“Fuck you, Lester.” To Teresa: “Jamaal going to be at the trial?”

“I don't know,” Teresa said.

“I read in
People
he prefers white girls,” Merle Orvis said.

“Pee-pee,” Boy said.

Teresa lit another cigarette. It was the last in the pack. She crumpled it slowly and searched in her bag for another. No luck. After three or four quick puffs, she threw the cigarette out the car window, and the crumpled pack after it. In the rearview mirror I could see the ash spark as it hit the highway. I did not tell her that it was a violation of the South Midland penal code to throw a cigarette out a car window. It could start a blaze in fire season that could take down six thousand acres overnight. “I generally only smoke on the street now,” she had said when she asked if I minded her smoking in the car. “When I was a little girl, my mother said that only a certain kind of woman did it. What kind of woman? I would always ask. Just to see how far I could push her. Don't be bold, she'd tell me. ‘Bold' was my mother's all-purpose word for any behavior she disapproved of. If she ever knew how bold I really was, I think she would've crawled up Golgotha on her hands and knees.”

It was nearly midnight.

We had been on the go since dawn. I would not count the day as a success. We could not even get rooms for the trial at the Lovat Hotel across from the courthouse. The press had taken up all the available space, and the jury would also be billeted there. We finally got three rooms at a place called Motel DeLuxor on the outskirts of town, one room for each of us, and a third we would set up as an office. The owner had a droopy eyelid, which perhaps accounted for the unshaved patches of beard on his face. He seemed to think DeLuxor was a fancier name than DeLuxe. In every room he had placed a pamphlet that said, THE WAY OF SALVATION:“Before God Saves a Man, He convicts him of his sinnership. His blood can wash the foulest clean. Turn over to Him regulation of your life. Obey Him with all your might and He will conduct you to heaven.”

Do you believe? he had asked.

Absolutely, Teresa said quickly. I think she was afraid I might say something smartass that would cost us the rooms.

We talk to the Lord every evening, the owner said, his eyelid flickering. We set up tables out by the food center.

The food center was the collection of vending machines. Chips, candy, cookies, soft drinks, and pre-packaged roast beef sandwiches, the meat a little green. Not even the ice was free. Fifty cents a bucket.

We'll definitely try to come, I said. I'm into the Lord.

A warning glance from Teresa.

Still. It was better than staying at the ranch Carlyle had rented. It's quite a spread, we were told. It looked a movie set. I thought it would be perfect for Carlyle, at least as Teresa had described her. Her whole life sounded like a location shoot. I'm sure she imagined herself going over the next day's legal strategy with us every night in the bunkhouse. Or was it around the campfire? With that photographer of hers snapping away in the background.

Even then I had a bad vibe.

Teresa hadn't spoken since the last cigarette. Nor had I seen another car for miles. It was as if we were on an abandoned highway. Then from out of the night the terrifying screech of an air horn and a tractor-trailer right on my tailpipe. It was like an early Spielberg movie I had once seen after sex with a stranger.
Duel,
I think it was called, paying more attention to it than to the prissy young civil litigator wearing a wedding ring and Jockey shorts. Chicago, as I remember. A conference on white-collar crime when I was with the A.G. Was it his room or mine? Mine, probably. If his, I would have been out of there. Watching the movie so avidly was an implicit invitation for him to leave. To get out. Go. There was a paper name tag pasted to the lapel of his suit jacket, which was hanging from the knob of the bathroom door. Hello, I'm Chuck Something. From Des Moines or Des Plaines. Maybe De Kalb.

As the trailer passed, air horn blasting, the airflow nearly knocked me off the road.

Teresa gave no indication that she noticed.

“You know, right after I got out of law school,” she said suddenly, “I was studying for the bar, and my father defended someone named Rocco Campobosso. One of these people.” She pushed her nose to one side of her face. “He was a collector for the Cuccinello crew. From one of the New York families. Which meant it was a full-ticket case. Large dollars. They ran a construction and carting company. A front, of course. Executive Red Ball. Exterior demo. Interior dismantling. That was Rocco Campobosso's line. Dismantling. People. Who couldn't or wouldn't make the vig.” Her head rested against the window. She seemed to be in some other place. “He threw someone off the George Washington Bridge once. The Jersey side.” Then briskly, “But that was a private thing. Daddy said he was doing a favor for someone. Hudson County couldn't make the case.”

A private thing. A favor. I felt like an innocent.

“Usually he'd start off easy.” She was back on Rocco whatever-his-name-was. “With a message. He'd send a hearse to your house. From a funeral home. A long black Cadillac. Usually from Pellugio Funeral Services. Two guys in black suits and black fedoras would ring the door-bell. ‘We're here to pick up the stiff,' they'd say. It usually did the trick and payment was forthcoming. But then there were those who didn't get the message. Or who maybe thought Pellugio's made a mistake, got the wrong house.” She stared so long out into the night that I thought she had lost whatever thread she was trying to knit into the narrative. Then: “He had a way of dealing with those people. You could almost call it unique.” She paused. “He'd pour dry-cleaning fluid down their throats. They'd find the money. Oh, yes. They always found the money. It was not an experience you'd want to go through twice.”

I jammed on the brakes.

A deer had bolted from the side of the road and stood frozen in the glare of the headlights. As the car skidded to a stop, the buck turned and bolted across the highway, disappearing into the blackness.

Again Teresa seemed not to have noticed.

While I wondered if anyone in the Cuccinello crew had ever seen a deer, let alone had any concept of the damage a twelve-point buck jacked in the headlights could do even to a sensible Volvo SUV like mine that happened to crash into it at seventy-five miles an hour. But then again I think I'd rather take my chances with the buck than with someone who might throw you off the George Washington Bridge. On the Hudson County side.

“However,” Teresa said. She seemed to be talking less to me than to herself. “This one delinquent. He choked on the cleaning fluid and went into cardiac arrest. Suffered permanent brain damage. My father worked out a deal. Everyone knew everyone. The prosecutor had been a student of his at St. John's. He'd worked with the judge at the Queens D.A.'s. So. Aggravated assault. Rocco Campobosso would do a touch in Attica. That's what they called it. A touch. They treated it like summer camp. Three years. Five. I can't remember.”

I concentrated on the road. In the distance I could see the lights of the two newest real estate developments south of Cap City. Rancho Rhino and Strong Valley. The second named after Dr. John Strong, who owned major parcels of the land on which Strong Valley was developed. Each parcel a gift from grateful Rhino boosters.

“You know what Rocco Campobosso's doing now since he got out of Attica?”

At last we seemed to be getting to the point. “No.”

“He's a consultant. On wise-guy movies. TV. What color blue suit does a Mob guy buy?” She did a gangster imitation, deep and rich with phlegm. “ ‘Electric-blue mohair, don't you know nothing?' Does he have a razor cut or not have a razor cut? Do you say you capped somebody or you whacked him out? Do you wear the pinky ring on the little finger of the right hand or the little finger on the left hand? ‘The left hand, of course, don't you know nothing? Because you use the right hand to hit somebody with, you wear the ring on the right-hand pinky, it might take out someone's eye, then some pain-in-the-ass A.D.A.'s going to load a charge of assault with a deadly weapon onto the indictment.' I think he actually makes all the stuff up, but you get the lowdown from Rocco Campobosso from the Cuccinello crew, it's got to be gospel, right? He's a made man, he's made his bones, everyone knows all the lingo.”

Another long pause. I knew she was going someplace. I just did not know where. Finally: “I ran into him in the street in New York a year or so ago. On Park Avenue. There's a BMW dealership on Park, and as I was walking by, I heard this voice. ‘Hey, Brendan Kean's daughter, it's Rocco.' And it was. It's not a voice you forget. It's a voice used to scaring people. ‘I'll suck your fucking lungs out.' And his face. It was like nine miles of dirt road in Calabria. And he starts hugging me. ‘Your father, God rest his soul, saved my life,' he said. I'm lost in his overcoat, it must be five thousand dollars' worth of vicuña, I can't move, I can't speak, all I can do is listen. ‘The touch he worked out was just what I needed, I coulda done it standing on my head, but I thought I'll make use of my time, I'll rethink my life. In Attica. I'm driving a BMW now, just brought it in for servicing, on Park Avenue, you notice, not out in Ozone Park, I'm making more than I ever made collecting for Cooch, I got a summer place in Point Pleasant, I never ratted anybody out, life is good.' The dry-cleaning fluid was from another place, another time. Now he's got something to sell.”

I thought I finally had made the connection. “Unlike Merle Orvis.”

“She's like a paper boat. No rudder. Just floats through life any which way. That child. Boy. Baby. Maybe we should get child welfare involved.”

“Getting Boy into foster care is not what you're getting paid five hundred thousand dollars for.”

Teresa stared out the window. As I focused on the highway, it struck me that Rocco Campobosso or the more unsavory members of the Cuccinello family were probably more comprehensible to her at that moment than Duane Lajoie or any of his satellites.

But then again.

Her voice came out of some other part of the night. “Max, who actually knew Edgar Parlance?”

In other words, she had her own internal circuitry. She just got to places more indirectly than I was used to.

“If you believe what we heard today, Teresa,” I said carefully, “he was the best friend of everyone in Regent. Couldn't have a birthday party or a barbecue without old Gar. Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.”

The turnoff to Cap City loomed ahead.

“Tell me why you stole that candle from his room.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

TERESA

Well, that went badly.

An insufficient answer, then ten miles of freighted silence past the malls and mini-malls and industrial parks that surrounded Capital City like a commercial moat. She wondered if there was such a thing as unfreighted silence, and how it differed from freighted silence. That was how the mind worked when two people were trapped in a car unwilling to speak to each other. One additional word and the nascent partnership of Kean & Cline would have vaporized. Could have vaporized. Might have vaporized. Perhaps. Possibly. So. Concentrate. Think good thoughts. Teresa counted the grain elevators rising in the night distance. A sudden unwanted image elbowed its way into her consciousness. The grain elevators reminded her of Jack Broderick's last hard-on. A prostaglandin E-1 event. That was an area of concentration she did not need. Her last sexual adventure. How long now? Stop counting, she warned herself. Celibacy was the operative ticket post-prostaglandin. She would give up sex as she used to give up peanut butter for Lent. Except she had never liked peanut butter. She had looked up prostaglandin E-1 in the
Physicians' Desk Reference
she kept in the small office adjacent to her bedroom. Next to the
Merck Manual.
Teresa Kean, she thought, prepared for any medical emergency. Except for a postmortem erection. Prostaglandin E-1. Warnings. Precautions. There were no indicators that the carnal interaction the prostaglandin E-1 was supposed to facilitate would lead to myocardial infarction. She implored a higher power. Please, get me off this subject. She looked over at Max. He was peering out at the highway as if it were an unmarked, unpaved road in a strange foreign land where he did not speak the language—Urdu, say, or Farsi— or understand the local alphabet. Driving required all of his attention. Teresa craved a cigarette. God, for ten years she had not smoked, and now she wanted a butt stop. Wal-Mart. Food Treasure. A carton of Salem Lights. Easy on the throat. How to occupy the mind rather than converse with Max.

“We'll talk,” Max said suddenly.

The SUV had pulled up to the main entrance of the Rhino Carlton-Plaza. She had not even processed the trip through town. What she had noticed was that Max kept both hands on the steering wheel and did not make a move toward opening the door. She also noticed that the door-man who swung it open had a rhino emblem on his peaked hat. She wondered if when the case got before a judge she should wear a rhino emblem on her court clothes. She assumed everyone else would be wearing one.

“Tomorrow.”

“Good night, Teresa.”

“Good night, Max.”

Teresa leaned back against the pillows. Plastic. Not feather. Housekeeping had said there were no feather pillows. If there were no feather pillows, she doubted that room service could rustle up a bowl of iced and thinly sliced cucumbers. Something to put on her eyes that would ease out the markings of age she so acutely felt. Forget avocado slices, her usual protection against the plague of time. Avocado was a rare delicacy in Cap City.

The telephone rang.

Twelve-ten. It had to be Max. Only he would call at this time of night. “Teri—”

“Who?”

“Teri Kean.” Whoever was calling pronounced it
Keen,
not
Kane
as in
Citizen Kane.

“Teresa Kean.”

“Of course. Who'd you think I was calling. My girl never makes a mistake. A whiz with numbers. She can track anyone down. Doesn't matter where the location is, she'll find you. Right off the top of her head she can get Marlon. Tom. Julia. Beepers. Cell phones. She got Ridley once in Rabat. Rabat, for Christ's sake. That's in Algeria.”

“Morocco.”

“Morocco. Tunisia. Who cares. They're all the same. Sand-nigger countries, excuse my southern, you didn't hear that. The point is she tracked him down. Nine-hour time difference, he was setting up a five-camera shot, twenty-five hundred extras, beautiful downtown Rabat, he's losing the light, she gets his beeper number, he takes my call, everyone takes my call. Teri Kean. You take my call right. In wherever the fuck you are, Kansas City . . .”

“Capital City.”

“You're better off in Rabat.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Ten o'clock.”

“It's after midnight.”

“Not in L.A., it's not.”

“Who is this?”

“Marty. Marty Magnin.”

“Who?”

“A Martin Magnin Production. You heard of that, right?”

“No.”

“Jesus. A kidder. Kansas City. The city of kidders.”

“Mr. Magnin, I'm going to hang up now.”

“Wait. You got the flowers, right?”

So he was the one responsible for the gangster-funeral mountain of white flowers that covered every flat table surface in the room. Tulips. Casablanca lilies. Freesia. White lilacs. A bouquet of white roses on her pillow rather than the nighttime chocolate. She had to put some vases on the floor so she could see the mirror to cream her face. The card had simply said
Marty.
In her exhausted state after the endless day in Regent and the tense ride back with Max, she had assumed Marty Buick. But Marty would never have been so vulgar. A perfect
Phalaenopsis
was more Marty's style. Three hundred dollars for two sprays. Those flowers. They reminded her of death. Pellugio's on Sullivan Street. That's twice in one night Pellugio's came up.
Six Generations. A Hundred Years in the Community. Family Owned. Family Focused. Serving All Faiths.
As long as the deceased was Catholic and Italian.
Pre-Need Planning.
A sound feature, her father once said. Since most of its clients expected to get whacked. There was something reassuring about Pellugio's. Again something her father had said. They do it right. There was always someone at the rosary talking about what should have been done to Marlon Brando in
On the Waterfront.
They shoulda thrown that fucking snitch off the fucking roof of his fucking apartment is what they shoulda did. Naw, an ice pick in his eye is what they shoulda did. A hot poker up his ass like they did to one of them English kings, I saw it on A&E when I was inna can. They got cable inna can now? Ogdensburg. Minimum security. You can fucking order in almost. You tried this fucking cannoli? Every mourner at a Pellugio interment received a loaf of Pupella Pellugio's homemade lard bread, as well as a baseball cap that said PELLUGIO'S—PRE-NEED PLANNING. Angelo Pellugio, patriarch of the sixth generation, invariably called her father Mr. Brendan Kean. We meet again, Mr. Brendan Kean. Too often, Angelo, you know my daughter Teresa. I haven't had the pleasure, Mr. Brendan Kean. Even though she had attended half a dozen wakes and rosaries at Pellugio's on Sullivan with her father. Lulu Con-stanza. Silvano de la Torre. Carmella Concetta, Dino Concetta's ninety-nine-year-old mother. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kean. She favors you, Mr. Brendan Kean. Another thing Angelo Pellugio always said at the wake of one of her father's clients. Martin Magnin could have taken a lesson in manners from Angelo Pellugio.

Teresa saw no reason to acknowledge receipt of the flowers. Not with the memories they carried. Holy communion every fucking day, Dino Concetta had said of his ninety-nine-year-old mother. She wanted to make fucking a hundred. Dino Concetta was born without a right thumb. Which made him less than the optimum hitter Brendan Kean always said he wanted to be.

“No.”

“You didn't get my flowers?”

“Mr. Magnin, I'm tired, I've had a long day, I want to go to bed.”

“Wait a minute. We got to talk. We've got pals in common . . .”

“I think that is extremely unlikely.”

“Jack.”

Oh, God.

“Jack Broderick. He was a pal of yours, right?”

Is there anyone who did not know that Jack Broderick had died in her bed?

“He was my writer, Jack. One of them anyway. A pain in the ass, you want to know the truth. Like all writers. But I figure you know that already.”

She did not know what to say. There had to be a reason Martin Magnin had called. And she knew she would not get to sleep if she hung up without finding out what it was.

He was still locked on Jack. “He did that thing about the kid movie star. The one that gave Shirley Temple a run for her money until she got all fucked up. Blue Tyler. I own that story. I mean, he did it on my tab, he never delivered, I figure I own the rights, I got to get my money out. I got my people busting his people's chops. If there's something there, it belongs to me. We go to court, we got a solid case, my people say. That kid, that Blue Tyler, there's a major motion picture there somewhere, and I want to make it, and no pain-in-the-ass writer's going to stiff me.”

Teresa stifled a laugh. She tried to imagine the look on Martin Magnin's face if he knew that the woman he was talking to in room 1012 of the Rhino Carlton-Plaza Hotel, Capital City, South Midland, was Blue Tyler's daughter. Then a moment of panic. Had his people found something? Had Jack left something in his papers? Angelo Pellugio, Dino Concetta, Blue Tyler. Teresa felt depleted, as if she had been sentenced to solitary confinement in a prison of the past. LWOPP. “Mr. Magnin, why did you call?”

“Your rights, Teri.”

“What rights?”

“We need you to sign a release.”

“Why?”

“So we can use you in this picture.”

So there had been something in Jack's files. Her voice seemed to rise an octave. “What picture.”

“I got the wrong room? This is Teri Kean, right?”

Her voice was strangled. A step from hysteria. “My name is Teresa.”

“Who said it wasn't? Teri Kean. The chick that's going to defend that nutcase who chilled what's-his-name, the schwartz, Eddie Parlance.”

Teresa touched her forehead. It was damp with perspiration.

“Jessica's dying to play you.”

“Jessica?”

“Lange. You're about what? Fifty? Fifty-five.”

It's what I feel, certainly. Maybe even look like. A bowl of cucumber slices would be just the ticket right now. “No.”

“Jessica's around there. Give or take. We put some clamps in, she can do thirty-five. No. That's a stretch. Forty. ‘With Jessica Lange as Teri Kean.' That sounds good, right? You can get behind that?”

She could not think of anything to say.

“And I've got Jack sniffing around. He loves Jessica. From
Postman.
”

Jack. Don't ask. Context clues, the nuns in seventh-grade English at St. Pius V would always say. The Postman Always Rings Twice. Jessica. Jack. Nicholson. “Really.”

“He's never done a
fageleh,
Jack, and he might be a little long in the tooth, you got to be a hundred to get that Kennedy Center Honors thing, but he's a very good personal friend, and if the price was right, I think we could work something out with Sandy Bressler.” She did not dare ask who Sandy Bressler was. Context clues again. Lawyer. Manager. Agent. “You think your partner would sign off on that. ‘And Jack Nicholson as Max Cline.' ”

It was too much to assimilate. “Mr. Magnin, I won't sign a release. I'm going to hang up now. Don't call back. Good night. And thank you for the flowers.”

“I thought you didn't get the flowers.”

“I made a mistake,” Teresa said as she hung up. She took the bouquet of white roses from the pillow and held it beneath her nose, breathing in the aroma.
And Jack Nicholson as Max Cline.
Max would appreciate that. It could ease the strain. The considerable strain.

“Tell me why you stole that candle from his room?”

CAPITAL CITY—NEXT THREE EXITS.

Max maneuvered the SUV onto the turno f.

“That candle is evidence,” Teresa said.

He still did not answer.

“And yes, I did read the property report, and yes, I know that moron sheri f did not have the exact number down in the inventory. And it's a good bet that cretin who was coming on to me copped one, too. Or maybe three. To improve his juggling skills. But I'm an officer of the court, Max. And so are you. If you were still with the A.G., and you knew I'd lifted a piece of evidencefrom the room where a homicide victim lived, you'd drag my ass up before the ethics committee of the state bar, right?”

“Right.”

“Why then?”

“It's complicated.”

“What isn't?”

Max shrugged.

Outside the car window she could see houses. Every one the same. Every one with a basketball net and backboard jutting out from its garage.

“I'd like to put this on hold, Teresa.”

“There's a reason?”

“Conceivably.”

“And that's all I'm going to get out of you?”

“Yes.”

And it was.