Nothing Lost

by John Gregory Dunne

  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.

  PART THREE

  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 Ed
gar 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.