Nothing Lost

by John Gregory Dunne

  I knew why Teresa wanted to meet me there. She wanted to be in charge, and if our meeting did not go well, the site allowed a quick get-away, don’t call me, I’ll call you, a pleasure to meet you, and she would be gone, the faint lingering smell of Fracas the only indication that she had been there, diluting the smell of stale urine that seemed to permeate the rest of the building. It was Murray Lubin who told me that she had been making inquiries. She needs someone who knows his way around the courts here, Murray had said, knows the names and numbers of all the players, and where the bodies are buried; I told her you were the only one, especially about where the bodies are buried, the best man in the state. Murray did not expect me to believe that, and I didn’t. Murray would have first tried to promote himself into the job; it was a trope with him. He would have licked the soles of Teresa Kean’s shoes to get involved with the Lajoie case, would have done it for free just to get the ear of the big-time national crime reporters, not to mention daily face time with Alicia Barbara, who had rented four rooms at the Lovat Hotel in Regent for herself and her crew.

  I, on the other hand, claimed not to be particularly interested. Or so I tried to convince myself in the event that I was left only with that lingering scent of Fracas. I was not willing to admit how much I wanted to get back into the game, even on what I knew was the wrong side. There was a premonition of something else, something I was able to sort out only in retrospect. It was the way the rich seam of chance winds its inevitable labyrinthine way under the rough terrain of the everyday. Think of it—a bee sting and a myocardial infarction. If one or the other had not occurred—if Maurice Dodd had not been communing with his hybrid musks in a backyard Capital City greenhouse or if John Broderick’s clogged left anterior descending artery had not at a particular moment malfunctioned in a specific Washington bedroom—none of what happened would have happened. Proof again that our lives are funded by the coinage of coincidence.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Let’s do the math on the blood relationship between Alice Todt, aka Carlyle, and Duane Lajoie.

  Her half brother. The half brother Alice Todt, aka Carlyle, said she didn’t know she had. Until that day her mother said she had to help her half brother Duane out. Her mother said her half brother Duane was being defended by a Zulu. Or whatever they call themselves now. The Zulu she was talking about was Earle Lincoln.

  I had taught Earle Lincoln at Osceola Community College of Law. Tutored him when he finally passed the bar. At age thirty-nine. On his fifth try. BARTENDER PASSES BAR was the way the weekly newspaper in Questa headlined the event. Earle Lincoln still tended bar at night in Questa. To pay the rent. And child support. And alimony to two former wives. I failed to tell him during our teacher-student relationship that he had more future tapping kegs than he had as a lawyer. Duane Lajoie was his fourth client. The other three had been DUIs. All found guilty.

  On the subject of Alice Todt’s mother. Also the mother of Duane Lajoie.

  There’s a lot to assimilate here. Josefa Carmody Todt Barr Sledge Das. Three husbands followed by a religious rebirth. She was now a disciple of Roshi Gurjanwaia. With a new name. Shehnaz Das. And a new enthusiasm. The Gurjanwaia Method of Meditation.

  Shehnaz Das ran seminars on the Gurjanwaia Method of Meditation (always referred to by its full name) at Amritsar University of Mental Purification in Divide County, North Dakota. As Josefa Sledge (her third husband was Conway Sledge, a part-time pimp and bookmaker), she had taken a voyage of personal exploration to the Indian subcontinent where at Varanasi she bathed in the Ganges and nearly died of dysentery. Upon her return to South Midland, she left Conway Sledge, changed her name to Shehnaz Das, and dedicated her life to Roshi Gurjanwaia. Shehnaz Das claimed that the dysentery she had picked up in the Ganges had purged her body and mind of all their evils.

  The evils possessing Josefa Carmody Todt Barr Sledge, before she became Shehnaz Das, had not been in short supply.

  Allie Vasquez had checked her out. For J.J., of course. I had asked her to bring me up to speed after Murray Lubin told me about Teresa’s inquiries. Allie showed me the discovery, and I spent half the night copying it at the Kinko’s downstairs. Allie was waiting for me outside Kinko’s at five-thirty. She took the file and got into her car without a word. I had little doubt that J.J. knew I was on her private distribution list. At some point it might become useful to him. Give him the edge he was always looking for.

  Shehnaz Das was still only thirty-five, Allie said.

  Josefa Carmody Todt Barr Sledge Das had led a full life.

  She had exploded into puberty as part of a floating hegemony of rootless children, the flotsam of feckless parents and random liaisons, blowing through the underside of Kiowa and Cap City, in and out of crash pads of friends and boyfriends, a week here, three days there. Human repos in an environment where dreams were the currency of hope.

  Josefa Carmody found herself pregnant and alone at thirteen. On her fourteenth birthday, she gave birth to a premature three-pound-eleven-ounce son at St. Fintan of Cloneagh Foundling Hospital in Halloween County, just across the Midlandia Wash from Kiowa. The baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck, so that the oxygen supply to its brain was cut off until the emergency room staff could disentangle it. Josefa Carmody told the admitting Sister of Mercy at St. Fintan’s that the father of her son could be one of three possibilities, none of whom she could identify with any degree of certainty. The admitting nun told Josefa Carmody that a good home would be found for her son, and that she could, if she wished, give the boy a Christian name, as it was possible that some time might pass before proper foster parents could be located, since special children needed special parents. Josefa Carmody said she would like him called Duane, and when the nun asked if any of the possible fathers might be named Duane, Josefa Carmody said no, Duane Box was the lead singer of an Amarillo rock group called Duane & The Dudes that she had heard on WROK, “The Voice of Rock in Rhino Land.” Josefa Carmody thought Duane had a cool sound.

  The nun’s name was Sister Alice Faith. Last name Maguire. Sister Alice Faith did not tell Josefa Carmody that the oxygen deprivation endured by her son at birth had perhaps left him brain-damaged, which was why he fell into the category of special child.

  Sister Alice Faith said that Saint Faith was the patron saint of prisoners.

  Josefa Carmody said that if she ever had a daughter she would name her Alice Faith. Because Sister Alice Faith had been so much nicer to her than her own bitch mother had ever been. Alice Faith Todt was born three years later. Her putative father was Karil Todt, aka Bruiser Todt.

  Bruiser Todt was a long-haul driver who long-hauled himself out of Josefa Todt’s life shortly after the child who carried his surname was born, and after laying a bruising on his wife, who was ten weeks pregnant when they got married.

  Bruiser Todt had only known Josefa Carmody five days when they exchanged their wedding vows at Feathers, the keno bar on the Chippewa reservation in Chippewa County where she worked as a waitress and a keno runner, sticking whatever tips she received down between her pushed-up tits, and where she was available when she was off the clock, freelance, hire your own lawyer if Chippewa County vice moved in, which they only did if someone pulled a blade.

  Bruiser Todt said an eight-pound-nine-ounce baby did not compute as premature.

  Seventeen years later, terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, Sister Alice Faith wrote to Josefa Carmody, now Shehnaz Das. An attendant with dreadlocks in the hospice in Duluth where Sister Alice Faith was waiting to die had searched and found Josefa Carmody’s latest name and last known address on the Internet as a way of perfecting his computer skills, in the hope that said skills would offer the opportunity of a better job than cleaning up the drool, vomit, and excretions of old people. With death so near, Sister Alice Faith no longer felt constrained by the strictures of silence she had sworn to observe. In her letter, she said she had never forgotten the frightened little girl who on her fourteenth birthday gave birth to a
baby boy she named Duane. When Duane was four, Sister Alice Faith wrote, he had been placed in the care of a French-Canadian family named Lajoie in Albion County, and the Lajoies had subsequently adopted him. She had hoped, Sister Alice Faith wrote, that Duane, special child that he was, would lead an exemplary Christian life.

  But apparently he had not.

  His adoptive parents weren’t much of a help, Allie Vasquez reported.

  They were killed in a hunting accident when Duane was eight. Pascal Lajoie, called Pete, shot his wife Mercury in the back of the head with a .22-caliber CZ 452 Deluxe while hunting white-tailed deer out of season. Pete said it was an accident, one of the deer had spooked Mercury, she had stood up just as he was trying to take the deer down, but the Albion County sheriffs said that until somebody proved different they were calling this one a homicide. Mercury, it seems, was a regular at the Albion County Emergency Room, broken ribs, broken cheekbone, household accidents, she said, she was always falling down the stairs to the root cellar. Little Duane, or Dummy Duane, as his father called him, was another frequent visitor to County Emergency, his list of injuries including a broken wrist, a broken pelvis, each injury credited to that root cellar again, although the root cellar did not seem to explain the cigarette burns on his back and arms. Pete said he’d plead to hunting deer out of season, that was clear enough, but he was no damn murderer, and he grabbed the CZ 452 Deluxe from a deputy, and put it in his mouth.

  Oh, hell, call it a hunting accident, Lew Lodge, the Albion County sheriff, said. Pete shot himself out of grief, anyone would. Too much paperwork the other way. Duane went to a foster home. He lived in twelve foster homes in all. He ran away from every one. When he was eleven, a juvenile court declared him uncontrollable, and he became a ward of the state.

  Sister Alice Faith Maguire died before her letter to Josefa Carmody was delivered.

  Duane Lajoie had the same birthday as Josefa Carmody Todt Barr Sledge Das.

  Shehnaz Das telephoned her daughter.

  He looks like you, she told her daughter Carlyle. He has a space between his front teeth. Just like you. Just like me. My little boy Duane wouldn’t do anything like that. You got to help your brother Duane. What do you mean, you never knew you had a brother Duane? I was trying to give you a chance in life. You were my number one priority. That doesn’t mean I forgot little Duane. Who got you that job modeling at Teen Town? All that time you spent ditching school and going to Rhino Mall, you finally made it pay off because I knew Denise what’s-her-face at Teen Town. You remember the way you were when Waylon and Kile got killed? You were hysterical. Waylon was the love of your life, you think I didn’t know you and him were doing it? I washed your panties, I washed your jeans, I know what that stuff is, he must’ve done a bucketful. The night before he died, you don’t think I knew what you and him were doing back there? I never yet been in a trailer that was sound-proofed, and I have lived in more trailers than boys you’ve done it with. Who dragged you down to the Three V traveling show, you said you were so sad you wouldn’t go, you missed Waylon, you missed Kile, and I said they were dead and you had a life to lead, well, we know what happened, and look where you are today, and where Waylon and Kile are, you tell me who is better off, and it is because of me and Denise what’sher-name, and now you won’t help your brother Duane, he’s got some Zulu lawyer from Questa, not even Regent or Cap City, look at the picture I sent you and tell me if that’s not your brother.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Carlyle called Martha Buick.

  Marty Buick called Teresa Kean in Sagaponack.

  I haven’t been in a courtroom in five years, Teresa Kean said. I haven’t done a murder trial in nearly eight.

  She wants you. No one else. You.

  Marty, I’ve been doing victims’ rights. I can’t just up and defend a murderer. And not just any murderer.

  Oh. How about a rapist?

  Give it a rest.

  Tell me what you’re going to do.

  I’ve got options.

  Which are?

  The civil side. Taxes.

  Depreciation. Book-value depletion. 8-Ks. Offshore partnerships. Asset redeployment. Monetization.

  Okay, so you know all the terms.

  I run my own company.

  The only reason you’re calling me is because she fired you.

  And she hired me back.

  And this is the sort of thing you’d do to keep her?

  Yes.

  So you don’t get fired again.

  I’m her agent.

  You’re my friend.

  It’ll bring you back into the world, Teresa.

  I haven’t left the world. I like it out here.

  Last week you told me you were thinking of screwing the guy who plowed the driveway. The same guy who mows our lawn in the summer and bags the leaves in the fall.

  Well, I didn’t. He can keep on mowing your lawn.

  The week before it was the bag boy at the market. He was thirteen.

  He was six feet five. How was I to know he was only thirteen?

  His voice hasn’t changed.

  All right. I should’ve noticed. Anyway. I’m working on the book. It’s going well.

  How far along are you?

  Outlining. Making notes. I’ll probably start writing next week.

  What’re you going to call it? Not Just Another Lawyer’s Memoir?

  Teresa hung up. A moment later she dialed Martha Buick’s private number. Marty, she said, why does she want me?

  Because you told her that when she was twenty no one was going to remember her.

  Tell her I’ll talk to her.

  The picture was a mug shot, Teresa Kean told Max Cline. Full face, right and left profiles.

  What an awful picture, Carlyle had said. I mean, maybe you could Sytex it.

  Alex said the guy who shot it shouldn’t be allowed to hold a camera, Carlyle had said.

  “Duane” is so my mother, Carlyle said. Why couldn’t she call him Matthew? Or Jason? Or Bret?

  At least she didn’t call him Mohandas, Carlyle said. Like that Gandhi guy who wore the dress. You know. The one that Donna Karan copied.

  It might be cool, Carlyle said after some consideration.

  I suppose then I’d have to meet this guy, Carlyle said then. Duane.

  Alex said maybe we would work in a shoot, Carlyle said.

  A coffee-table book, Carlyle said. Me at my brother’s trial. Black and white, no color. Black and white gives it a mood. Full-page bleed into the gutter, sprockets for reality. Grease-pencil cropping instructions. I mean, like you are fucking there.

  Maybe I could have a sty in my eye, Carlyle said. Like to show the strain at the trial, my life’s not all that shallow glamour shit.

  Alex said don’t give up the motion-picture rights, Carlyle said.

  Shehnaz Das is such a lame name, Carlyle said.

  “Alex is the photographer?”

  “Quintero.”

  “Is she really that awful?”

  “She’s interesting in a way.”

  Nothing more volunteered. I realize now that why Carlyle was interesting to Teresa at that point was still only an instinct, a shimmer, perhaps even a sense of foreboding. It took me a long time to pick up what it was, and even now I am not sure I ever did. An educated guess is the closest I can come. With, God help me, some input from Stanley.

  “Carlyle says Duane has a girlfriend,” Teresa said.

  “Then she’s checking in with the folks back home?”

  “Almost daily.”

  Of course she would. There was nothing more satisfying than the return of the native. I hoped her interest level would be as transitory as that of any other self-absorbed teen. If not I suspected we would have a hard time keeping her on a leash. A suspicion that unfortunately proved all too prescient.

  “Carlyle says she’s seventeen, she’s fat, and she has zits. She also has a son she claims is Duane’s. Carlyle says it’s not.”

  “The
girlfriend’s name is Merle Orvis.” I took an envelope from my desk and slid it across to her. Inside was a set of color Xeroxes, copies of Polaroid snapshots Merle Orvis had tried to send to Duane Lajoie at the Capital City Correctional Center, where he was undergoing psychiatric observation. The hacks at the CCCC had confiscated the pictures and sent them to the A.G.’s office. Allie had passed me copies. “She’s actually eighteen, she is fat, she does have zits, and the kid is almost three. He’s called Boy. He’s also half black. Which lets Duane off the hook.”